Illinois Computing Educators (Thing 12)

Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) seems like a great professional community. I like that their resources are online for everyone to view, not just members (although there are probably more things available for the members - I'm not one, so I don't know). As I looked through the past events, several of them caught my eye: I liked the idea of the EdCamp Illinois very much because it seemed like participants can make their own choices about the sessions they attend and if they don't work out, they could change their minds! I usually feel kind of boxed in at professional development seminars, so the freedom of choice and applicability to the classroom really appeals to me. The Whatever It Takes conference also seems cool because they have different levels of training based on how comfortable you already are with the technology being presented. I also like how they are focused on classroom and school culture as well as incorporating technology because as I have said before (ad nauseam to those of you who have been reading these entries), I take exception to the idea of putting the technology first. I think we should think about what would make our schools better and then see if the technology can help with that improvement. One of the speakers at the Whatever It Takes conference also maintains this blog, which I think will be a good resource for me.

I have never been to an ICE or other technologically-focused conference. I tend to spend my professional development time and money on things related to writing and reading, but over the last decade, I have seen more and more sessions and resources at literacy conferences begin to include technology. At first, I was reluctant to attend those sessions because there no guarantee that our district would pay for or support new technology, and I preferred to spend my time learning about things that I could control. I can implement new curriculum or activities into my own classroom with no or minimal support from other people (although it always helps to have a second pair of eyes!). After looking at the resources available from the conference on the ICE website, though, I think that it would probably be a good experience for me. I like that there are sessions on building partnerships and connecting what students do in the classroom to the larger community through technology, and there were several workshops that looked connected to literacy even at first glance, like digital storytelling and writing. Several of them also mentioned leadership and creativity, and these are skills that each of our students will continue to need beyond their school experiences. Finally, I loved that the presenter notes for many sessions were readily available and that there was a shared document for each session where the participants could take notes together. That's a great example of the technology in action!

Another example of the technology in action making things easier is dotstorming. I visited the NICE Meeting Ideas dotstorming board and was, at first, a little confused about how it worked. I thought the dots were all pieces of information about each idea, so I was trying to click on them, but then I realized it was really only for voting about what people would like to learn about in future meetings of the Northern Illinois Computing Educators (NICE). There were some great topics; I voted for Student Feedback/Self-Assessment, Global Audience/Publishing, Student Leadership/Voice, Lesson Development/Technology Integration, and Blended Learning. I also suggested the topic of Creating a Community of Readers (no votes yet, but hope springs eternal!) because I think it is so important that my students know how to seek out and find a community beyond the classroom. I would actually love to use dotstorming in the classroom; I often ask students for feedback on several choices, and this would be easier and more readily available for future use than asking students to raise their hands and writing down the numbers on a post-it. It's also good that your name is not linked to your choices (at least I don't think it is) because then, students who pick an "unpopular" choice would not feel self-conscious. I could see using this to decide which Autumnfest booth my advisory wants to do or what day to give a quiz in English. The more choice students have, the more they will own their learning.

I will definitely explore ICE and NICE more in the future. I will also look into attending a conference because I know the more comfortable I get with technology and the more I can talk to teachers who are implementing it successfully in their English/Language Arts classrooms, the more likely I will be to implement it in mine. Learning about the apps, programs, websites, and extensions on my own or through an online community can really only take me so far. I know I need to talk to people in person and be able to ask follow-up questions on the spot for me to really learn it. Going to a local conference is a bonus because it is likely that I'll meet people who teach near me or in communities like mine, so I can hear about experiences that would be directly applicable to my classroom. Going to conferences like the annual one from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) or Scholastic's Reading Summit always leaves me energized and inspired, and it's time some of that enthusiasm was directed toward the technology that can help me reach more students.   

Twitter (Thing 9)

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?

Google Chrome (Thing 5)

I have mixed feelings about Google Chrome. On one hand, it's definitely faster and more efficient than the other browsers I've been using, so I think I'll continue to use it. On the other hand, being asked to link my professional email to a browser and install apps and extensions that ask for permissions to "read and change all the data on the websites I visit" makes me really uncomfortable. It's not that I'm trying to hide anything or have anything to hide, just that I think we have too much of our information on the internet as it is and I would like to minimize my contribution to that.

To that end, I installed three apps that had permissions with which I was comfortable: Typing Club, Newsela, and Desmos. Typing Club was a great find because I've had several parents ask me about how to help their children become better typists; I actually just emailed one to tell her about it. I liked that it had a series of increasingly difficult typing skills (including how to sit properly at a computer) and that it was very user-friendly. It's easy, you don't need a program (I used Mavis Beacon in the 90s, which is still around, it seems!), and installation takes only seconds. Desmos was cool because the graph appeared instantly and was pretty to look at, and Newsela is a wonderful service overall (I particularly enjoyed the article about Harry Potter increasing children's tolerance of others).

I looked around the Chrome store and saw some other apps and extensions that looked cool; Readability and Instapaper spoke to me since I'm someone who consistently has more than 20 tabs open because I click on articles that I would like to read but don't have the time to in that moment. Both seem like they would save me some time and browser crashing because they allow me to save articles and read them offline if I want to. For classroom use, I like the idea of read&write, which allows students to look up definitions of words and hear passages read aloud to them.

I would recommend Chrome to my colleagues because it does work better than other browsers, and I know that other people like to customize their experiences even if I don't. It works well with the Google apps that I like because it is designed to do so, and even if I'm not using it to its full capacity, I like what it does for me.   

Google Apps (Thing 4)

Google has done some extraordinary things for education. I may be late to the party, but I didn't realize how much they have that is geared specifically toward teachers and students! I have used Google Docs in several classes that I've taught (both in District 36 and out of it), and this year I started with more spreadsheets and forms. This is the rare case in which I can say that the technology has made my life easier literally every time I've used it. All Google-related apps or programs that I've tried have worked exactly the way that they were supposed to work...the first time! :)

Google Docs has been the best collaborative tool that I've ever come across (no hyperbole!). The ability to read the documents as they come in and make comments in real time has fundamentally changed the way that I run my writing and reading workshops. Instead of having to wait for a paper copy of the essay to be turned in, I can see the minute that students are ready for me to comment, and since I can type much more quickly than I can write (and more legibly!), I can offer much more specific, focused feedback on their writing. They can also write comments back if my suggestions have been unclear or if they don't know how to do what I am suggesting. Here's what I used to have to do when giving feedback on student writing:

All the information is there, but it's super cluttered and probably hard for the students to read which comment goes with which sentence or paragraph. Now, here's what it looks like in Google Docs:

I know it's small, but hopefully you can see that the highlighted words correspond to the comments on the side and how much easier that is to follow than the "track changes" feature in Microsoft Word. I like Word very much, but I don't think it was really designed to collaborate, whereas Google Docs absolutely was, and it shows. I like that the comments are still available but hidden after the student checks "resolved" and that the earlier drafts are still there (which I didn't know before watching this intro video).

 

The second app that has been great for collaboration on a more professional level is Google Sheets (I mostly use the spreadsheet but have also branched out into the schedule when doing conferences or other meetings.) I haven't used the spreadsheet with students yet, but since I am lucky enough to co-teach, that tool has been invaluable for sharing data with each other. Our students work with Wordly Wise 3000 online, which is a great program but was a challenge in terms of managing the transfer of scores from the program into my gradebook. An additional challenge with the program in terms of record-keeping is that since it's self-paced and has different levels, each student could very well be at a different lesson or level at any given time. I have my students complete one lesson per week on average, but since they could be on different lessons and levels, it's not like I can say, "Do lesson seven of level eight for Friday." This was a nightmare for me until I discovered Google Sheets! I can keep each class's scores for each trimester in the same document thanks to the handy tabs at the bottom, and my co-teacher can input grades, adjust scores when students retake lessons, or check in with students about lessons they're missing without me having to be there or hand over a paper copy of the information. Here's what it looks like:

The due date and post-test score are across the top; in each column, I record the lesson that is due on that date and the score each student received on that lesson. The gray boxes are lessons that were submitted late, the blue boxes are lessons that were retaken so I know to average the scores, and the red boxes are scores that were lower than 79%, which means the lesson needs to be retaken. 

The third app that I have started to work with much more this year is Google Forms. I've used this with students as well, mostly for collecting information about projects in which the students have a certain amount of choice. For example, when I taught Shakespeare this year, I offered a choice of either A Midsummer Night's Dream or Macbeth. In the past, I would have taken class time to summarize each play and then ask the students individually which one they would rather read. This year, I created a very simple form that they completed outside of class; it provided a summary of each play and asked them to choose which one they wanted to read.

The REALLY cool thing (at least to me) was that the results of the form were automatically collected into a Google spreadsheet, which made it very easy for me to see who wanted to read what. (The last column is usernames, which I have cut off on purpose, but is obviously really important to this kind of use for the form.)

Another thing I use the forms to collect is information about how they are progressing on a long-term assignment. For this form, I wanted to know which person versus society conflict they had chosen to research from their Civil Rights book group, why they had chosen that one, and what information they already had.

This form will give you either individual or summary responses and can also be exported into a spreadsheet. The individual responses just look like the form filled out, and the summary response view gives you a list of all of the answers to each question. It also provides a quick view list at the top of who has and has not responded - a very important tool for managing assignments, at least for me.

This is just the start of the first question ("What conflict did you choose?"). The pie chart - which updates in real time and is sort of cool to watch if you have time! - is what percentage of each class responded.

One app I would like to get better at using is Google Calendar. I think it would be great for collaborating professionally - then my colleagues and I wouldn't have to call or email each other to schedule all of our meetings - and I probably wouldn't forget things or have to use a dozen post-its stuck to my laptop. David Lee's ed tech blog seems like a good place to start for me, and although I've know about TeacherCal for a while, I haven't really used it, and it seems like this would be cool. Finally, this video brings me full circle: back to the beginning of this entry where I said that Google has done extraordinary things that are applicable for education specifically. I love it. You can attach documents to your calendar! Who knew? (Probably everyone else, but not me. :) ) You can also share the calendar so your co-teacher can edit and view! (I did know that, but I'm excited about it all over again.) 

P.S. This video is from 2014, but I think the basic information is the same. I'll find out when I try!