I'm a 14-year teacher. I started this blog to chronicle my learning about new technology and how to incorporate it in my classroom, but I love to learn about and practice other things, too - so here are my thoughts about teaching and learning!
Sadly, my class on Learner-Centered Innovation is coming to a close! I am happy to have finished the book since I tend to buy lots of professional books with the hope and desire of reading them all and improving my teaching, but many of them end up just being skimmed. It takes more concentration for me to read a book that I'm thinking of putting to use instead of one that I'm reading just to learn about something (or just as an escape!), but it is always worth it. This course was taught by one of my colleagues and friends: Emily Keeter, the science teacher on my team. If you have not checked out her blog yet, you're missing out! It's definitely not just for science teachers - it's for everyone who wants to learn and grow in the classroom. Last summer, Emily also taught a course where I read The Innovator's Mindset, which piqued my interest in shifting my planning and instruction. I took this course as a follow-up to that one because I think I could have done better during the last school year, and I want to improve this upcoming year with a concrete plan for how to help students discover their strengths and work toward their goals. This book is full of specific ideas about innovation for both students and teachers. One main thread of the text deals with school culture and the growth mindset. We cannot say that we value innovation if we also punish mistakes (on any level). When we take risks, there are bound to be mistakes or failures because that is an important part of the road to change. However, as Katie Martin writes, "We can change policies and implement new programs, but if we don't empower teachers and create school cultures where people feel valued and free to take risks, we will miss out on our greatest opportunity to change how students learn...We know that kids and adults learn better when learning has an authentic purpose, subjects are integrated, and the learner has agency and choice in the process" (75). In other words, the risks that we will take will allow our students to create for an authentic purpose that deals with multiple subjects in a way THEY decide. This will hopefully lead to more engaged and interested students! While I enjoyed reading the book (although it is not without its flaws), the best part of this course was, hands-down, the interaction with my colleagues. I think Emily did an incredible job of differentiating the options for responding to the three books from which we could choose, and her faith in our ability to select the ways that worked best (and NOT just the easiest way!) for us made me want to try new things. This is exactly what is discussed in Learner-Centered Innovation. For example, I decided to do a video blog and create a graphic for two different weeks instead of writing a traditional blog. I am much more comfortable writing, but I knew that if I didn't try something new, I wouldn't know how my students felt when I asked them to take risks. The process of doing something that was challenging for me was eye-opening; I had to ask for help from other colleagues (hi Katie!), try different ways of saving and uploading, work with different templates, and pare down my ideas about the book to the basics. I ended up being very proud of what I did and happy that I had the experience of struggling and failing before succeeding so as to have empathy for my students. I learned an incredible amount from my colleagues in this course. I have taken classes with several of them in the past, and I am always so impressed and excited by what they bring to our discussions. I don't think we get enough time to collaborate with our colleagues who are not part of our department, and I barely know who teaches at the elementary schools (unless they have taken other courses with me in the past). Hearing how teachers in every subject and grade would apply the same ideas in different ways was very eye-opening for me, and every time I posted an idea about how I would do something in my classroom, their comments made my idea much better. I cannot overstate the importance of continued discussion and time for working together in order to put these innovative ideas into action.
Thanks to canva.com and Katie Nelson for making me look like I know anything about creating graphics!
As a follow-up to my previous video reflection on relationships and education, here is a booksnap that distills one of my major points into one page. If you haven't tried (or heard of) booksnapping, here is a blog from Tara Martin that explains it very well. I like it a lot and find that it helps me to focus my thoughts since there's only so much that you can put in one snap - and I tend to be somewhat verbose! :) This particular booksnap is from page 219 of Learner-Centered Innovation. There were many parts of chapters 8-10 (which I read for this week) that I could have snapped (I was particularly interested in the radical candor section, but I'll save that for another time), but I stuck with the same thread as my video reflection for this one.
This week, I am trying video reflecting! The question I am answering is: Why are relationships so important in innovation and education? True to form, this video is longer than I intended it to be because I just really have a lot of thoughts about things, so I can't embed it here. Here is a link! Additionally, I did not directly address innovation in the video, but I did talk about feedback and growth. In my mind, innovation cannot exist without those things: if you are not receptive to feedback, you will not be able to push yourself out of your comfort zone to innovate and you certainly will not be able to improve your efforts. Similarly, you will not grow if you are not receptive to feedback, and growth is essential to innovation.
Image from http://ixd.prattsi.org/2017/04/what-are-you-really-hearing-effectively-processing-feedback/
It's that time of the class again - 150 word limit challenge! Here we go... :) Part 2 How do we create classrooms where student and teacher voices are not only heard, but needed?
For Students
Image from http://dannywoo.typepad.com/my-blog/2013/10/student-voice-series-1-josh-acosta.html
This part seems easier (maybe I mean "more organic" or "easier to think about doing" - it's certainly not easier to manage or plan than everyone doing the same thing, but it's better!). If we truly do embrace the idea of personalized learning, then our teaching is nothing without our students' voices. Again and again, I thought of the point that the person who is doing the work is doing the learning (I know it's brought up here, but I heard it first somewhere else and it's stuck with me for a long time). In order to merge student voice and learning, we should "...revis[e] [our] lesson plans to shift the cognitive load onto students, providing opportunities to engage in higher-level tasks and allowing students to drive the learning experiences" (202). We literally cannot do that without student voices.
It's that time of the class again - 150 word limit challenge! Here we go... :) Part 1 How do we create classrooms where student and teacher voices are not only heard, but needed? For Teachers I think we need to be valued and trusted. There were so many ideas in chapters 5-7 of Learner-Centered Innovation that I was excited about, but all I kept hearing from the little voice in my head was "Time, time, time." I don't mean that I don't have enough time in the class periods (although we could always use more of that), I mean that we don't have enough common planning time with our departments and teams that is OURS. We have agendas that are set by other people and data that we have to read and respond to and we allow schedules to dictate what we do and do not do. I will never stop thinking about this point: "We aligned the staff meetings and team collaboration time to ensure that teachers had time to design new and better learning opportunities, try out some things, receive feedback, and continue to revise" (203). Honestly, that is my DREAM.
Image from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teachers-want-to-be-heard-its-time-to-listen_us_58dbb2cde4b0f087a3041e6b
(HERE is the article where the pull quote came from in case you are interested!)
This week, I read the Foreword, What If?, and Chapter 1 ("The Evolving Role of the Educator") in Katie Martin's Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion, and Unleash Genius. The question I chose to answer was about how to encourage taking risks in the classroom. This is something that I've been thinking about for years because I've been trying to reconcile two seemingly opposite needs in the classroom: the need to provide a safe space for mistakes and the growth that comes with them and the need to have assignments that are graded at some point for my trimester report cards.
(image from http://www.wbrettwilson.ca/redefining-success/)
I have a poster in my classroom that says something like "Never be afraid to make mistakes; that shows that you're trying something new" - but it's badly misspelled! I can't remember it exactly and I can't get to it now, but I always think about the student who wrote a reflection about it for her journal and basically said, "That's crap because we always get a lower grade for mistakes, so why try?" That idea has stuck with me for years now, even after the student is in college. I started to wonder how to provide genuine opportunities for students to practice and make mistakes and take risks that would eventually lead to mastery of the concepts, and I haven't come up with much, sadly. I don't grade rough drafts except for completion (full credit if it gets done on time, partial if it's late, but nothing about the content is graded - I just use Google Docs to give comments), and I don't grade grammar practices (I assess the concepts taught in the students' writing). However, I don't know about providing a space for "real world" mistakes. However, I do see a real need for this. I welcome any suggestions and fully support the idea that "Learning is messy. Today's technology provides easy access to answers, but if we focus only on the answers and not on thinking, questioning, and solving, we rob students (and ourselves) of great learning experiences. Perhaps more significantly, we fail to develop the critical behaviors that will empower them (and us) to be lifelong learners" (Martin, 20). Only by making the mistakes and avoiding the easy answers will our students really engage in the learning process that will take them far beyond our classrooms. Only then can we begin to fight the "Is this on the test?" question and the fear of losing points and replace them with genuine interest, perseverance, and the willingness and ability to learn from the mistakes that they see as lessons, not failure.
One of the many things that I've admitted about myself on this blog is I have a hard time being concise and still getting my point across. I'm working on that as I teach my students to do it in their writing; I do all the assignments I give, so I am working on it as a student AND a teacher! :) Chapter 10 in The Innovator's Mindset is titled "Less is More," and it's something that I need to be reminded of regularly. When I first started teaching, I assigned homework every day because I thought that was expected of me (from both the administration and the parents in my district). I don't know that it was difficult work, but it was definitely time-consuming, and while I never assigned anything I thought was busywork, wanting to be respectful of my time and my students' time, I definitely gave more work than was strictly necessary. Part of that was because I wasn't yet efficient with my time in class, and part of it was because I thought it was a necessary part of "being a teacher." There are several obvious problems with this. First of all, not all the work that I was assigning was necessary for mastery of the material. Second of all, I don't think I had a good reason for every assignment other than "practice," which is important, but not at the rate that I was assigning it. Finally, I was drowning in the work I had to grade, which meant that it took me way too long to get it back to the students, and when I eventually did, it wasn't meaningful feedback since it had been so long since I collected it (I'm still working on efficiency, trust me!). All of these problems could have been solved by this mantra of "Less is more." If I assigned less work, the work I DID assign would be more meaningful, and students would have more time to spend on it. Also, if I took more time to figure out what was actually necessary, I would probably have realized that some of the work was great and some of it was stuff I was giving just because it looked good or gave them something to do. Assigning less work would also mean that I wouldn't feel behind all the time, and I could spend more time on the higher-quality assignments that were significant to the student's learning. Finally, assigning fewer pieces of work to complete would mean that I could stop feeling so rushed about all the curricular elements that I have to complete and focus in on the skills that are necessary to successful learning. When I read in The Innovator's Mindset that Guy Kawasaki recommended that "[Schools] should teach students how to communicate in five-sentence emails and with ten-slide Powerpoint presentations," (154), I almost stood up and cheered. I teach those skills deliberately and specifically because students tend to be long-winded about things that don't need explanations and silent on things that do. I believe that those skills are easy ways to assess students in the school environment and make sure that what we're teaching them has a direct connection to the world beyond the schoolhouse. Something that made me pause in this chapter was when I read "If we aren't intentional, we may promote confusion and burnout, instead of inspiring innovation and deep learning" (154). It was directed at school leaders about teachers, but it is easily transferrable to teachers and students as well. If I have students write down 50 important quotations from a novel when 10 will do, that probably won't inspire them to enjoy the book or develop a love for reading. Sometimes 10 won't do, but I should start to look for the times when I can reduce the number of "things" the kids have to do and look instead of how they can show their learning in ways that make sense to them: "Instead of trying to do everything, let's focus on what we want learners to know and do and select and master resources to create learning experiences aligned with the vision that has been co-created with the community" (156-157). Another important point from this section was that innovation and creativity need time to develop. If we're constantly rushing from one unit to the next, trying to complete work on 35 different standards, of course our students are not going to be engaging in deep learning, and they're going to feel as rushed as we do. We will always have too much to do, I think, if we are not permitted to take charge of our own standards or requirements. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon - operating outside of the structures of the Common Core or state standards or whatever your school has - so the important part is to try to see where those standards fit in your school's and classroom's vision. Hopefully, there is some overlap! This chapter gave me an answer (I think!) to a question that I've been pondering for a long time: how do I use digital resources to show student growth in writing? I used to have students print out each draft and then staple them together with the final copy so I could see how their writing progressed. Many kids were able to hold on to all their drafts, but some weren't, and it became a logistical nightmare for me to page through all of their different drafts to see how (or if) they had improved. Now that I have started using Google Docs, it is much easier to collaborate with students on their writing, but the problem is that I don't have a record of their first draft when I go to read their final draft because the program saves their changes immediately. I know I can re-open my comments to them, but that's tedious. So, I'm wondering if the digital portfolio idea that George Couros talks about here can help with that. Could I have the students upload each draft of their essay (hopefully with my comments) along the way of the writing process? Then, they could see how they had grown, and I would have a clear digital record of their progress. I am very excited about this possibility! I haven't worked with digital portfolios in my own classroom, but I did them during college, and I remember being proud of the final collection of pieces. The end of this chapter was very clear: "Focusing on a few key things promotes innovation in teaching and learning. And this sharp focus allows you to do more - with less confusion, frustration, and stress. At the same time, by sharing those ideas and learning experiences with other teachers - within schools and around the world - you can help deepen understanding, allow for transformative learning, and disseminate ideas for innovation" (164-165). I think this will be my new mantra for the upcoming school year.
If I liked The Innovator's Mindsetbefore, I LOVE it now. The first three chapters are useful, reflective, and show that George Couros understands what it's like to be on the receiving end of change, not just an innovator. One of the main problems that I have with educational consultants and other people who try to push their programs on schools is that they start from a place that assumes there are major flaws in the organization and that people don't really want to change. This book doesn't assume that; in fact, it assumes the opposite. I love that. It makes me WANT to change. And, with the idea that "...innovation is not about changing everything; sometimes you only need to change one thing. That experience can lead to new and better learning opportunities" (60), it makes me hopeful that I CAN and WILL change. One thing that really resonated with me at the beginning of this book was the idea linked to Simon Sinek's "Start with Why" idea (his TED Talk is one that I have been shown by several administrators, and it's actually pretty good). I have often said that we have complicated teaching beyond all reason, and to see this idea echoed in a book that I think is very practical and important is affirming. Couros writes that "...it scares [him] to think that we have taken the most human profession, teaching, and have reduced it to simply letters and numbers" (18). Grading, standardized tests, data meetings - these have their place, but I would argue that we have elevated them beyond that place. Instead of focusing on these things, Couros says that we need to empower our students and inspire innovation instead of demanding compliance. As Katie brought up a while ago, there is a time for learning the rules and following them (as a society, we agree to rules and consequences if those rules are broken, and they have their place in school as well), but there is also a time for making sure that learners can come up with their own paths. I like the "learner/leader" instead of "student/teacher" dichotomy because it reminds me that teachers are also learners and students are also leaders. This is something that I will try to remember as I continue to teach. Sometimes, I need to give my students information quickly and efficiently so they can do something with that information, and I have no problems with lecturing at those times. But what this section of the book made me think about was if there are times when I can change that to let them discover the information on their own. Ideas like "...translating knowledge into action is perhaps even more important than acquiring information" (34) and "Innovation starts not by providing answers, but by asking questions" (38) make it clear that the students are missing out on crucial opportunities for learning when I am the one who is posing the questions (even if I DO have them look for answers on their own). The example of the mitosis lesson that Lisa changed in chapter three was a great example of how this can be done simply but effectively. I sometimes think that "Would I want to be a learner in this classroom?" is a difficult question for me to ask myself because I'm usually the happiest in what we would call a "traditional" classroom. I like to listen, I like to take notes, and I generally don't like to be asked to work in groups or be creative with showing my learning. But I do have to be responsive to my learners, and although I'm sure there are learners like me in my room, I am equally sure that there are learners totally unlike me who need me rethink some of my techniques. Finally, the inclusion of empathy and reflection in this section, especially the third chapter, gave me hope and made me very happy. I think these are two essential qualities for all humans, regardless of age, career, background, etc., and the importance that is placed on them for innovation makes me think that perhaps, becoming better innovators can make us better people.
Reading the introduction of The Innovator's Mindset was easy for me and, for the most part, I agreed with what George Couros had to say. Watching the #IMMOOC Season 1, Episode 1 and the #IMMOOC Season 2, Episode 1 was a different experience for me. They were longer (more than 30 minutes for both) and conversations between several people instead of just a written piece, which made it a little more difficult for me to follow. However, I found that by listening to them and doing something else at the same time, I was able to pick out what resonated with me instead of feeling like I had to listen to everything carefully and take a ton of notes. (I mean, who am I kidding, though? I still took a ton of notes). I'll separate thoughts by episodes in case you want to watch any segments on your own. Season 1, Episode 1 Right out of the gate, I was turned off by Dave Burgess, Mr. Teach Like A Pirate, saying that we should generate "buzz" for our classes the way that PR people generate buzz for product launches. I understand what he's saying, I think - we should get kids as excited for our classes as they are for games or movies or other things - but I equated his "buzz" with "selling" school, which is something that I refuse to do. I DO want kids to be excited about their classes, which I think is the main point he's trying to make, but I think that by trying to "sell" stuff to kids, we are underestimating them. I hope that part of my job is to show students how learning itself can be fun and engaging without having to resort to too many over-the-top techniques. One of the things a professor told me when I was a preservice teacher was that at the beginning of his career, he felt like he had to put on a show - a "circus in the suburbs!" - for the kids every day. That's what I DON'T want to do. However, I could be making too much of this because later in the episode, Dave says that he doesn't try to sell books, he tries to spread the message of the books, which I totally agree with. That PR thing really gets me, as I'm sure you can tell. Another thing that I had mixed feelings about was the use of cell phone or other personal devices in the classroom. One excellent point that was made was that we always talk about preparing kids for the "real world" in school, but we don't let them have "real world" experiences. In the real world, kids will have cell phones and iPads and everything, and they also won't have us telling them what to do every step of the way. So, I want to approximate that experience, but I also know that kids aren't always responsible with their device use even WHEN they are monitored. And I do not agree that kids will only be distracted when they are bored, and I know that kids can get distracted with pens and paper, and I get that they won't ever learn how to manage their devices and distractions if we don't give them to chance to practice. But how do I balance all of that in the classroom? When the choice is manage one more thing (a cell phone) or continue to expect them to NOT be in the classroom, right now, I choose to manage one FEWER thing and not have them. In the long run, I have no answers. Just more questions. Some great points were made that clarified important ideas to me:
Every child's current level of achievement is based on their past experiences and we need to honor those experiences.
You cannot go into an organization and immediately start changing everything. Don't try to change anything until you have a list of each person in that organization and at least one of their strengths so you can lift them up and make them better.
When we ask, "What is best for this learner?", is it difficult NOT to move forward. Don't focus on the changes, focus on the children and what is best for them. Any changes made need to be in service to the learners.
If we do too much, we are taking the learning away from the students. We need to be prepared, but we also need to make sure the students are doing the learning, and that means not OVER-scaffolding.
Botton line: put the students at the center of the learning. Listen to them. Trust them. This is how you bring positive change - NOT change for change's sake - to a school.
Season 2, Episode 1
I am failing again at being short. Sorry! I get excited about trying to be a better teacher...the good thing is that several ideas are repeated in this episode, so I don't have to repeat myself (and I'll try not to). A central idea of this episode was that if kids are given the chance to take hold of their own learning, they will do it. An excellent, appropriate example of gamification was given where elementary students saw that no one in their school was recycling - they fixed it by creating a basketball hoop over the recycling bin, awarding points per item recycled, and having an overall winner of the most points at the end of the school year. I love this! It's real-world problem-solving: see an issue, figure out how to fix it, and implement a system. Another important point was that new isn't necessarily better and that schools are creative places now - we are not in crisis mode and having to start from scratch (this is on average - I acknowledge that some schools ARE in crisis and need interventions). For example, a student can learn a lot about systems thinking from playing chess: they don't need a fancy app or expensive computer lab for that. One of my new favorite terms is "content-agnostic." I think I'm interpreting it correctly when I say that it means the changes we make and the teaching strategies that we implement shouldn't be about the curriculum: they should be about the students, and therefore they would be applicable across classes. Again and again in these conversations, the point is made that we shouldn't teach curriculum, we should teach our students. I totally believe this. It's why I have a hard time answering the question, "What do you teach?" I always say "Seventh and eighth graders" and people want to know, "No, what subject?". Of course, I present curriculum to students, but if I'm teaching them something that is ONLY applicable in our Language Arts classroom, I think I could improve upon that teaching strategy. In other words, curriculum should inspire possibilities, not squash (very technical term) them. I will leave you with a few thoughts about reflection. It was pointed out in this episode that teachers have time for reflection and planning (although never as much as we would like) and that students should have that time too. They need timely, specific feedback (NOT necessarily grades), and they need to have their natural curiosity encouraged. Anyone who learns anything becomes more curious; "lifelong learning" is not just a buzzphrase - it should be something we are modeling and encouraging every day. Just like shared inquiry, which I spent time exploring with my colleagues last week, in a truly reflective environment, students will never really reach an "answer" for some of these big questions if we and they are learning organically. Yes, students need to know the right answers for things like parts of speech and punctuation, but I believe we need to move away from "How can I get an A on this assignment?" to "How can I learn more about this topic?". From this conversation, I also learned that there is no such thing as a "shallow topic." Sometimes, we are reluctant to let kids do all of their work on one topic - basketball, dance, reptiles, etc. However, if they are truly interested in that topic, it becomes a wealth of possibilities for research and inquiry. And if that's what we want students to be practicing, it shouldn't matter the topic. This, and building relationships with our students, are critical pieces of the puzzle of learning.
Formative assessment and I have a complicated relationship. On one hand, I love it for the information it provides me and my students and for the fact that it keeps me updated on their progress in a much quicker, more easily accessible way than summative assessments do. On the other hand, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the management of formative assessments and feel guilty that I don't do them often enough or use the information quickly enough after I get it. I think I need to revisit how and why I use formative assessment, and I also need to expand my definition of what formative assessment actually is. I mentioned on the Padlet response that my definition in practice can be quite narrow: I think of formative assessment as exit slips. Because of that, I end up with hundreds of little slips of paper (Post-its, index cards, scraps of reused paper, or, if I'm really organized, an actual typed and copied handout) that have good information on them but get lost in the shuffle of the rest of the paper in my classroom after I have glanced through them. If I am more deliberate about what I ask for in formative assessments and if I can use some of these tools, I think I will be able to use the information I get much more successfully this year. Here is a clip of one of my favorite educational leaders, Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli2), talking about formative and summative assessments.
I created a Google Form about sentence types and enabled Flubaroo (@Flubaroo) to grade it for me. I don't think this gives me better or quicker data than using the Schoology (@Schoology) quizzes, which also grade automatically, so I probably won't use Flubaroo too much. I can see that this would be helpful if I were using Google Classroom because then everything would be in one place, but since we already use Schoology as our learning management system, I like everything to be there. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Flubaroo; I love the idea, but I think it would be an extra thing for me to manage. Feel free to take the quiz if you would like to! (Please take one moment to appreciate the fact that I had to manually adjust the size of this form in the embed code and I figured it out and IT WORKED. #progress)
I was already familiar with Socrative (@Socrative) since I used it in graduate school (and I also did my Google Hangout On Air about how to use Socrative. That being said, I still struggled with creating an exit slip that wasn't pre-populated and ended up making a quiz instead and saving it as an exit slip - more problem-solving on the fly! (It seems like a long time ago that I said one of my biggest issues would be seeing roadblocks as opportunities; I still struggle with this, but I HAVE learned to look for answers to my questions and try several things before throwing up my hands in disgust. Again...#progress. :) ) I like Socrative a lot because it is easy, quick, and does not require any additional hardware or software since all the kids already have iPads. I think this is formative assessment at its best because it gives you immediate feedback and it is easy to see exactly where your class is on any given concept. I also like the reports that can be generated after students are finished with the quizzes. I will have to do more work to create exit slips or quizzes that are specific to the content of my class, but the pre-populated ones are also useful, which is a rare find for me. My room number is T6DOMEWS if you would like to take my quiz on Things 1-28. I know that several of my colleagues use Kahoot (@GetKahoot), and I have actually administered a few of them while subbing for other teachers in the building. My Adventures kids were also really into them! They are super easy to write and I love the fact that there are literally millions of them that are available for immediate use. Not all of them are useful, though, and there are a lot to sort through, but I'd rather have that problem than have too few resources! The few times that I've used Kahoot in the classroom while subbing, the students seemed really into it and liked the immediate feedback when each question ended; they also liked that they could see who was winning after each question because they liked the competition. I could see a lot of potential with Kahoot because as the teacher, I could also see how many of the kids got a question right or wrong as well as which kid got the question right or wrong. I was a little worried that they wouldn't want the other kids to see that they were wrong, but the students didn't seem concerned about that. This would be great for literary factual recall questions or a quick check at the end of a lesson to see who got it on the first try and who didn't. The only thing I'm not sure about it whether or not the results save; Flubaroo and Socrative are good for that, and I don't know if Kahoot does it or not. Finally, Padlet (@padlet). I love you, Padlet! My first experience with Padlet was not good, though, because it was at a district-wide institute day and had literally hundreds of people adding to the same one, which got really overwhelming really quickly. However, now that I have used it on a smaller scale and created one of my own, I am in love with it. I went to the Scholastic Reading Summit (@Scholastic, @ScholasticTeach, #readingsummit) this summer and got so much inspiration about independent reading AND technology, and one of the best things I learned about was using Padlet with students to share independent reading suggestions and responses. In the past, I've had students share their independent reading books verbally and I've kept a list of them, which I then added to Schoology and MAYBE three or four kids would refer to when they needed new independent reading books. However, with Padlet, the kids can add to the list whenever they want and access it easily from their iPads or phones. It's available for Apple or Android and free, which is my favorite price. I think I'm going to have the students put it on their iPads and use it as much as possible for brainstorming - we could do it with independent reading books, selecting quotes for essays (which I do on Schoology discussions now), topics for research projects, and so many other things! Another great thing about this is that it's not limited to just one class, so if I wanted to do a cross-curricular exploration with another teacher, that would be really easy. Please share your favorite books with me!
This was one of the only weeks of this course where I felt that each "thing" I did was useful. Although I liked some more than others and felt that some would be easier to implement in my current classroom than others, none of them were overly flashy or difficult to learn, which means that none of them will stand in the way of the skills or practice the kids need to do. It also means that none of them will be difficult for me to teach the kids (if they're not already familiar with them - they usually are!). I will be implementing the use of Padlet on the first day of school - literally - to collect their summer reading titles and get started on the culture of reading in our classroom! Some of these tools have applicability outside of the classroom and formative assessment. As I mentioned, I've used Padlet in professional development (as a student, not the presenter). It was a good way to get feedback, but I think it needed to be more organized (the grid view would have helped). I can see using Socrative in a department or faculty meeting to collect responses because you can have open-ended questions, but Flubaroo and Kahoot seem like strictly classroom tools. I would love to hear about other uses! When I was looking around for other examples of formative assessment in the classroom, I came across this blog that included the rubric below (it's bigger on the post). I really like the idea of using basic rubrics like these because they are not content-specific, and they encourage reflection. Since this is supposed to be for formative assessments, the number is not the grade on the assignment because the assignment is not graded. I need to remind myself that I should not be assigning work because I need the numbers in my gradebook. I need to be okay with much more feedback that is not linked to grades because the grades on the summative assessments will come if the feedback on the formative assessments is timely and focused. One of my biggest concerns is that students are far too focused on the grades they get rather than the learning that takes place. Maybe more formative assessments and feedback will help with that.
This "thing" was really difficult for me! I already feel like I have too much information to digest regarding my teaching practice, too many things I'd like to learn or implement, just from talking to my colleagues and attending conferences. Add in Twitter and blogs and my head just about explodes! So while this list of bloggers was helpful in that it gave me some direction (rather than just Googling topics I'd like to learn about) and more people who could help, it was also sort of overwhelming because I wanted to read everything everyone wrong. And take notes. And ask everyone follow-up questions. I settled for reading the most recent post of each blogger to see if he or she were someone I would learn from. It turns out that I was following a few of them on Twitter already, so I was semi-familiar with their ideas. The blogs that I thought were worth following for me were ones that dealt with educational technology in general or language arts specifically; the blogs that were more geared toward STEM or new gadget/products don't really interest me and aren't applicable to my classroom, which is what this course is all about for me. Of the list we were provided, Audrey Watters and Josh Stumpenhorst wrote the most readable blogs for me. They were musings on how to improve education in general and what technology can do to help us. I feel like these two write much in the same way that I do; this doesn't mean their blogs are better, it just means that they feel familiar to me and therefore I am more likely to read them. Vicki Davis and Scott McLeod both have a wealth of information to share that is curated very well, and they use podcasts and voice notes, respectively, which is a cool way to interact with their audience. I loved that Smart Brief on Ed Tech allowed me to choose which categories I wanted to hear more about in their newsletter, and I was already a fan of Edutopia, both in terms of their content and how they deliver it. I'm also looking forward to reading more of Monica Burns' reading and writing tech tips because I'm always looking for other teachers who are incorporating technology into the subjects I teach. As always, I appreciated that many of the blogs had newsletters I could sign up for and read at my convenience, and several of the bloggers are also on Twitter, which is my preferred social media platform right now. One thing that I learned about my own blogging from looking through these blogs was that I should try to make my entries shorter and more focused when I'm writing for a larger audience. Since these entries are reflections for class, I tend to write longer, and I think that's okay. But if I were trying to build an audience from strangers on the internet, I would want to have shorter, more focused pieces that others could read quickly and easily. I appreciated the blogs that had cleaner layouts (not with ads or including photos or Twitter feeds) and I liked when they linked to articles for further reading. My students don't blog for an audience beyond our class, but that might be a good way to get them some real-world "publishing" experience. If we incorporate that into class, I'd have them read some student blogs and decide who they wanted their audience to be so they could focus their content more easily. However, all that being said, Dr. Alec Couros' "The Connected Teacher" video was my favorite part of this "thing." He said so many important and relevant things in under 13 minutes, and he said them in an easily understood and organized way. I often (okay, almost always!) find myself wanting to take notes when I watch these videos, and the fact that he listed two or three important things and then reiterated them made that much easier for me.
I think my favorite part of this video was when he said that the question we need to ask ourself is "What endures?" Over and over again, I've heard and believed that the most important thing about education is the relationships that we build with our students and our colleagues. Dr. Couros said it here beautifully: the tools that we use to teach will come and go, but the relationships that we create will endure. We should "build the kind of relationship that [we] are willing to continue even when the tool goes away." This is a great way to understand that our goal should be to connect with people in such a way that it will make us pursue the relationship even when the tool we used to build that relationship is no longer around. In other words, if I connect with an author via my blog and that relationship matters to me, I should be motivated to continue that relationship via another means if my blog doesn't endure.
The other thing I really liked was when he identified two central questions and three steps that he expected his students to explain. Although he teaches undergraduate students, I think these are also applicable to my middle schoolers, and I will be doing my best to incorporate them into my classroom next year.
Central Questions:
1. How are you making learning visible?
2. How are you contributing to others' learning?
(image via https://icestentatious06.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/umbrella2.jpg?w=586&h=505)
I found this image and I thought it matched with Dr. Couros' message - it also reminded me of the end of the video when the man interviewing him said that they had used the word "learning" much more than the word "education" in their chat. That stuck with me because I think it's worth noting that today, we talk a lot more about "education" than "learning" when we decide on policies for children. What is the point of the education if the children aren't learning? (More on that later, I'm sure.)
Steps to Show Learning:
1. Here is my learning.
2. Here is what my learning meant.
3. This is how I perform my learning (help others to learn).
(image via https://isb21.wikispaces.com/file/view/21st_logo.jpg/33110593/21st_logo.jpg)
I think this image sums up what Dr. Couros was talking about when he said that networks are essential in education. Our students (and we!) have to be learners, but they also have to be creators and collaborators. I especially like how the person who created this image included the adjective "tenacious." I have noticed that the longer I teach, the more I encounter students who lack perseverance and critical thinking skills. I think it's because so much information is readily available to them; they have learned that they can find the "right answer" almost instantly, so they are unused to solving problems for themselves. When we build networks and connect with others, we need to be tenacious and flexible so we can find what we need and figure out how to use it. This is a great reminder for everyone.
I also found this image that I think speaks to what we've been talking about during this course so far and in our department and team meetings this year. It's something that I'll revisit throughout the year, hopefully, to help my lessons reach more students and stay on track.
(image via https://wisconsin2008.wikispaces.com/file/view/whereto_long2.jpg/35046937/whereto_long2.jpg)
Before beginning this course, I knew there was a ton of excellent information available to me online via social media and other teacher networks. It's been fun discovering all of the different perspectives and ideas in the teaching and learning world, but it has also been overwhelming. I think part of what I need to do this summer is learn how to manage and review the material that's going to be the most applicable to what I'm doing in the classroom. Otherwise, I'll just collect an online version of that file cabinet in my classroom that hasn't been touched since 2008.
I have created the Google+ Community Independent Reading Life. If you are part of District 36 and want to talk about how we can continue to help our students become lifelong readers, please join!
Okay, I have a confession to make: before I started this week's "things", I kind of thought that "Social Media Manager" or similar jobs were fake. Like, how much time can it take to tweet or post Instagram photos or keep up a Facebook page for a business? After learning more about Google+ and the communities, however, I totally take that thought back. There is so much to curate when you're really engaged in social media and branding, and there is way too much content to read everything on every social media when you're trying to continue your professional development on your own. So, to the supremely talented Social Media Managers who keep the content coming, to the committed educators who blog, post, tweet, and share so I can learn, and to the larger online learning community: my apologies. You have a Herculean task! The thing is, there's a lot of great stuff out there. Google+ is one of the few social media platforms that I haven't really explored because I wasn't that interested in it. I've only used it professionally, not personally - a few years ago, our eighth graders started participating in Global Nomads Group, a fantastic organization that connects students across the world. (On an unrelated to Google+ note, I am always so proud of the kids who come in to school at 6 am to talk to their counterparts halfway across the world!) They use Google+ to have video chats and post reflections on their conversations, so I set up my profile because I had to moderate the girls' groups. All I ever did was read their comments and sometimes respond; I didn't really get involved with everything that Google+ had to offer since it seemed kind of overwhelming and I didn't need another social media account to manage. This week, I have enjoyed taking the time to add my colleagues on Google+ and organize them into circles. I have to keep everything I do in this class professional; I'm only following people I work with even though my personal contacts have popped up on my suggestions of people to follow list. If I start using Google+ for my personal use, it'll end up being a big time-suck and I'll basically use it as a second Facebook. I like having everything organized into circles and groups because then I know where to look when I'm looking for something specific. I created the D36 Learning 2.0 circle for this class, the D36 circle for my colleagues who are and aren't in this class (since it's going to end this summer and I still want to have my co-workers added), and the Authors circle for authors I'm following (so far, it's just John Green, but I'll add more). When I have some more time, I'll probably make more circles, but I'm still getting used to this platform, which makes me reluctant to do more adding until I've practiced with it more. I joined several communities, most of which have to do with education or ed tech since I'm only using it professionally. Here they are: Mystery Hangout Google Apps in Education Educators on Google+ EdTech Google Plus Pro Tips 36 Things...D36 Learning 2.0 GEG Chicagoland The Winnetka Experience: MLI Reflections Winnetka University Reflections Advisory Ideas and Links (thanks for starting, Emily!) I also explored the photography, food and drink, and education general communities. There is a wealth of amazing information on Google+, but there is also a lot of useless junk. It takes me much more time to go through people's postings on Google+ than on Twitter or Facebook because there are so many more people in the communities; it's not just people I have chosen to follow or "friend." I had my notifications turned on for one day and I got about 75 emails, so I promptly turned them off for the more global communities and only kept them on for the specific Winnetka communities that had both far fewer people and posts that I was sure would be useful to me personally. I'm really interested in the Mystery Hangout group - I think it would be very cool for my students to connect with another classroom in a different location and try to guess where they are. I would love to volunteer for this group but don't have any students until we start school again, so I'll have to remember to keep checking in with them. The GEG Chicagoland group had some interesting "real life" opportunities where I could actually meet up with people to talk in person about the integration of technology in the classroom. This sounds like a great opportunity but not one that I think I'm going to take advantage of right now since I'm still learning here. Maybe when I have more to offer to the conversation? I think the Advisory Ideas and Links group will be the most helpful for me since it is geared specifically to the Washburne advisors, and I'm grateful that Emily started it since we do need to share more across the school. I scheduled a Hangout on Air for next Monday, July 11 about Socrative. I'm nervous about running it because I'm still not sure that I totally understand how to do it, so I'll probably do some practice ones before Monday. When I watched parts of the archived hangouts (Maureen's "Giddy for Google" and Josh Denson's "Teachers as Innovators and Entrepreneurs" as part of the EduOnAir (#eduonair)), it was pretty amazing to me how the participants came together and bounced ideas off each other. There was the usual lag time and some awkward talking over each other that comes with online collaboration, but overall, people seemed to really benefit from the meeting. I enjoyed Emily's Hangout about how to use Recap - she showed how the app worked, included examples of what her students had done with it, and answered all of my questions about what it did. I think it will be a cool thing to integrate into my classroom next year, mostly taking the place of paper and pen exit slips. It was also beneficial for me to participate in a Hangout before having to host my own because it showed me exactly what I didn't know about how Hangout worked. I had trouble joining the Hangout and figuring out how to comment, but we worked it out in the end. Thanks, Emily! :)
Ah, Twitter. I have loved Twitter since 2013 when it enabled me to connect directly with educators from around the world in my International Education graduate seminar. I had the privilege of learning from Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of Finnish Lessons. (You can follow him on Twitter at @pasi_sahlberg.)
In this TedxEast talk, he makes a lot of really great points and also opens with a joke that he told in class and I've been laughing about ever since.
Using a hashtag with our class course number, we had weekly discussions with prime ministers, ministers of education, global educators, professors at other universities, and countless other leaders in our field. This would have been impossible without social media in general and Twitter in particular. I would argue that it is the single most important connectivity tool that we have right now: it's easy to use, provides an instant connection, and allows you to learn from others with a single "follow" click. Before taking that class, I wasn't really interested in using social media to learn. I had a personal Twitter but didn't use it that much - I mostly tweeted about reality TV and new restaurants. I didn't have that many followers, and almost no one that I knew in real life was on Twitter. But when I went back to school, a lot of things changed. I was able to be immersed full time in a community that supported and provided opportunities for continual learning, growth, and reflection, and Twitter seemed a natural outgrowth of that. It is one of the rare cases in my life where technology made everything better instantly and easily. We were encouraged to tweet in during class time using the class hashtag, and Pasi kept our hashtag live feed on a screen projected in the front so we could refer to it during our discussions. It provided a way for us to respond to the material in a timely way even if we didn't want to raise our hands or if the discussion had moved on before we got a chance to share. It also provided a way for other educators to join in our discussions even if they couldn't be there in person. We were able to talk about educational reform with world leaders without ever leaving our classroom. This was amazing to me! Upon my reentry into teaching, I found almost immediately that it was impossible to maintain the energy and motivation to learn new things that I had rediscovered in grad school. There simply was not enough time to plan lessons, grade papers, attend meetings, continue my professional development, have an actual life, AND spend time on Twitter or other online teaching communities to keep up with what everyone else was doing. It was a rough welcome back, and I felt incredibly guilty that I was not giving my best to my students, colleagues, family, and friends. Once I readjusted, I realized that I could still maintain my Twitter learning, but it would be different from when I was a student. I had more responsibility again, and my continuing education would have to look different. I started by trying to make lists and categorize the people I followed, but I didn't really like that (I'll try it again, but the organization didn't really help me much). Then I tried to only follow people I knew would tweet about education, but I also wanted news and other information. The thing that really helped me organize my Twitter experience was hashtags and Twitter chats. Scholastic recently began their Summer Reading Summit conferences, and I have followed along from afar with the hashtag #readingsummit, gaining new resources and people to follow with every tweet.
The great thing about the hashtags is that the feed will show you all the activity from people using it: who followed whom, who retweeted what, etc. This gives me even more information and inspiration.
I also followed along with #ISTE2016 since several of my colleagues were there along with many of the educational gurus that I follow on Twitter: Jennie Magiera (@MsMagiera), Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp), and Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth), just to name a few. Even though I couldn't be in Colorado with them, I benefited from their learning because they would tweet out pictures, links, resources, and notes from their experience. All of this FOR FREE and FOR MY CLASSROOM USE! Amazing.
Finally, I learned about Teachers Write (#teacherswrite) this year from a retweet that led me to Aliza Werner (@alizateach), who is now one of my favorite people on Twitter. She is a prolific tweeter of excellent material - we first got into a conversation about book choice and how important it is for students - and through talking with her, I also got to connect with Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks), author of The Book Whisperer, one of the best books I've ever read about matching students with books. This is an incredible personal and professional development opportunity for me as a writer and teacher of writing, and I've enjoyed the first week and am looking forward to more. Truthfully, I'm a little behind, but this has made me much more accountable for my own writing!
Over the past few weeks, I've followed many more people than I usually do because of my activity on Twitter. I've learned that you only get out of it what you put into it (like with most things) and so I've made a conscious effort to do more than scroll mindlessly. I followed Donalyn, Aliza, and Sylvia (usernames above) as well as Kate Messner (@KateMessner), an author who founded Teachers Write, Susan Cain (@susancain), the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (a book I loved and that changed my whole approach to teaching, especially since I am an extrovert), and Silvia Tolisano (@langwitches) who wrote this article from this week that I really liked. Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) was in one of the related articles this week, and I saw that he did a lot of discussing specific issues with other teachers via hashtags, so I followed him too. There are many more, but you can go to my "following" list and check them out if you're really interested!
Here's Susan Cain's Ted Talk in case you haven't seen it (which I know is unrelated to this "thing" but I think everyone should see it):
I'm currently at 136 followers, which is definitely on the low end, but certainly better than when I started; a friend of mine from grad school who has his own educational consulting company is currently at 3,450 followers (Simon Townley, @The_Gorilla_LC) and used to say that when I retweeted him it was like "shouting into an empty room." The truth hurts sometimes. :) I have picked up more followers pretty steadily - a few a week, usually - from following more people, tweeting more focused information and ideas about education, and participating in the Twitter chats. I can see how if I wanted to dedicate more time to this, I could "build my brand" on Twitter and other social media. I'm not into that for now - I'm just in it to learn more and connect with people I wouldn't otherwise get a chance to talk to. I also tried Hootsuite and Tweetdeck; I can see how they would be useful for that brand building, but for now, they're just fun to look at and see Twitter in a new way. They make it easier to see my interactions with people, and that's cool.
I could say a ton more about Twitter and how much it has helped me in my professional development, but this is probably long enough as it is. I'll say, in closing, that the program Elluminate came up in several articles and is probably worth exploring, and that this article about hashtag PD was very interesting. There's so much good stuff out there that will literally come to you if you let it! P.S. I'm @_maggie_coyne_. Let's chat! P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I liked learning about the link shorteners like Bitly because I often run out of characters when I'm tweeting and I refuse to shorten my words into textspeak like 2 or ur, but it's SO frustrating to have those shortened links blocked at school! Often, I'll try to click on an article that is related to what I'm teaching only to find that I can't get to the resource because it uses a link shortener. Is there any way around this?
