Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Online Agendas: Using Google Slides To Keep Students and Parents Informed

Google Slides is a powerful tool to use in the classroom. From student collaborative activities, to direct instruction by you, to an excellent opportunity to show screencasts of processes, Google Slides is an important tool to use in the classroom throughout the year. The final products are easy to share and between Google Sites and Schoology, teachers in our district have an opportunity to push out content to students and parents with ease.

One other great use of Google Slides is the class Agenda. Agendas are a great tool for students and parents to see what is happening in the classroom. It helps the teacher stay organised as well. Have a student who has been out for some time, no need for them to ask you for the work or what they missed, they can check the class Agenda. In the past, agendas are only as visible as they were left on the whiteboard or chalkboard. Technology allows for those Agendas to be permanent, and interactive. Google Slides is an excellent tool for this as well!!

A friend of mine, Tech-guru, podcast host, and all-around good guy working as a TOSA in the Roseville district, Ryan O'Donnell shared with me how he uses Google Slides for this purpose a while ago. Much like I use the same Google Slide deck for my weekly Tuesday Tech Tips, the agenda is used in this manner. You will always put the most recent week's agenda as "Slide 1" so any student or parent accessing the file will see that week's agenda first. The previous ones will be in descending order as they click the next slide on the slide deck. Below is the TTT Slide deck for you to see how it flows.



I made some Agendas for each site based on his example. The templates I have made give you an idea of things you can do on your agenda. After you have access to the templates and make a copy of your own, you can customize it however you'd like.

Here's how:
  1. Access the Agenda Templates
  2. "Make a Copy" of the Agenda from your school
  3. Open the file and make any changes you would like - this file is now owned by you and you can tailor it to your needs
  4. Delete elements I created in the file and fill in the necessary information you would like to pass along to students and parents
    • Add images, video, text, links to assignments and outside resources, etc.
  5. Google saves your last keystroke when you have online access so no need to save
  6. When you want to make the next week's agenda, all you need to do is make a "Duplicate Slide" and then make changes to the one in the top position
To Add to Google Sites:
Google Sites embeds Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, Maps and other products seamlessly on your site

To Add to Schoology:


If you need some assistance with this process or anything else, please let me know and I'll walk you through it.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Saturday Cafe? Do You Want PD on Saturdays?

Folks, if you would please let me know if there's any interest out there for holding PDs on Saturday. This would be a multi-time slot situation where you can come and go when it's best for you, but I need to know if there's any interest before I pull the trigger.

Cheers,

D

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Reading Comprehension Task: Black Out Text

Going through Twitter # searches for EdTech ideas is a daunting but exciting task. Exciting because there are countless innovative and inspiring teachers in the world harnessing and leveraging technology to help students become better humans. Daunting because there is so much content out there that sometimes I go numb just looking at it. I have however found a number of educators and organizations that I lean on to get some amazing ideas and resources.

A view of my Tweetdeck - feel like a day trader sometimes watching this thing
Eric Curts, of Control Alt Achieve is one of my favourite go-to resources for new trends, tips, and resources. A while ago he posted on his blog a reading comprehension technique geared towards the use of Google Docs and a 1:1 environment. It was a techno-twist on an existing strategy called "Text Reduction Strategy" where students would identify the main ideas and points of articles or a given text and "black out" the irrelevant information using the highlighting or paint rolling format tools in Google Docs. Students use their critical thinking skills individually or collaboratively to identify what is essential versus non-essential information. Instead of having to summarize the text, they have virtually created one with the text's own words. The full detailed blog post is here but I will give you a snapshot of how it works.

Black Out Text Reading Comprehension Activity:
Step 1: Locate and copy text you would like your students to use on the Internet or other web resources
Step 2: Paste the text in a Google Document and set up the activity with directions at the top
Step 3: Push the assignment out to students via Schoology, your website, or other means
Step 4: Model the process for them - show them how they can access the highlighter or paint rolling tools in Google Docs and demonstrate how they are used.
Step 5: Allow time for students to complete the activity
Step 6: Analysis and Debrief - depending on your style, you can hold a discussion, a competition, have them create a visual or auditory product, run a Kahoot, Quizizz, or Quizlet Live activity

This method can be employed in any class that asks students to make sense of complex text sets. I like the idea of allowing students to collaborate as well - whether they are working on the same document simultaneously or they are comparing and contrasting and building consensus at the end.

If you give this strategy a shot in your classroom, let me know how it works out for you and your students. If you need some assistance with implementing this strategy or any others related to EdTech, hit me up and I'll help you out!

Breakout EDU: An Educational Experience Worth Trying

For those that have had the pleasure of participating in a Breakout/Escape Room game in Sac or other cities around the United States, you know how exciting these experiences are. You and a group of strangers locked in a room with only clues and puzzles to help you breakout. For some, that seems like a nightmare. For others, especially the clever ones who love puzzles, well...this sounds downright exciting.

There are some brilliant innovators that took the idea and applied it to an educational experience a while back have been making their mark in education circles. Thus, Breakout Edu was born.

The concept remains the same, however, you don't lock students in a room.  Instead, you use a simple plastic or wooden box locked with a series of different types of locks. What you place inside the box is up to you. How the kids get the box open is the fun part. You as a teacher would leave a series of content-specific clues for them to analyze and as a class they would set to work getting that box open. However, they must understand....they only have a limited time. As these games are timed and if they don't get inside the box, well...they don't get to see what's inside.

Example of the wooden box option
Now, I've participated in one of these activities at a conference and I must say they are a lot of fun and very challenging. I was in a room full of educators and we were all working tirelessly to come up with solutions to the clues and puzzles. We used our expertise, critical thinking skills, communication skills, teamwork, and our phones. This game incorporates all of these things and more as it is a game that is best played with all members of a group working together. We bounced ideas off each other, debated the merits of ideas, deduced from what we already knew, we used our powers as web sleuths to identify information that may help us, and...we had a lot of fun!

We never did see what was inside the box. We ran out of time. But the experience getting there was exciting and all of us reported that we wanted more time to figure it all out (we had 1 more lock to go!!!!). This activity was engaging, fast paced, intellectually stimulating, and required no one sitting on the sidelines. It was an all hands on deck situation.

Since Breakout Edu started, they have been growing a following. You can purchase their products and classroom-ready games through them. Or you can design the box yourself and create a game on your own or visit the site where teachers have shared what they created.

If you want to go a no-cost route and harness the power of those Chromebooks kids have in their hands, you can create a Digital BreakoutEdu experience for your students. Same concept, no box, all digital tools. The link will take you to a series of links that show you how you can design your own digital box using Google Forms and how you can create a game for your students.

These games are great as an inquiry-based activity at the beginning or middle of a unit. It can be used as a formative assessment tool to find out what your students have learned. They could also be used for reviewing concepts covered in class before a test. The game is great for every subject and every concept. All it takes is a bit of work on the back end to develop the clues, set up the "box," and let your students roll with it.

I'll be hosting a Digital BreakoutEdu PD next month at BR & NU to demonstrate how I created the game. That is, of course, after all participants try to Breakout of my game....if you can. 😜

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Twitter: Not Crazy Twitter...Only The Good Stuff

I've been on Twitter since 2009. It was my first way to communicate with students outside of the classroom. For those that use Remind this was my Remind before Remind came along. I didn't really know what to do at first.  I really didn't know how to use it.  Back then, there weren't a ton of students using Twitter - it was all about Facebook...until we all killed that for them.  I used this tool sparingly at first and then as I became more comfortable (and more students began to follow me), I started using it much more.

I went beyond using it as a mere communication tool when I realized the power of it and the game changer that was the use of hashtags. I would have my Government students live tweet their reactions from a Presidential Debate. I had my History students try to raise awareness of a social issue that was important to them. I would get my students to do some wild things and they ate it up (not all of them of course...but, ya know).

Twitter helped me realize the power of "flipping the classroom" and publishing to a "global audience" ... long before I realized I was doing any of that in my classroom. Further down the rabbit hole I went as I sought out new technologies to help me engage students and be efficient the delivery of my curriculum.

I stopped using Twitter as my "student communication" tool when I discovered Remind, but Twitter then became something else for me. It became a Professional Learning Network. Again, before I could put a name to it. I was learning from other educators on what they were doing in the classroom, how they incorporated new technologies, how they curated History and Psychology resources in the classroom, how they were harnessing and leveraging the power of EdTech to expose students to new heights. I was impressed and awed and humbled to see what others around the world were doing with new technologies. And I got thirsty.

It was around 2013 I started to notice how social media was changing and growing rapidly. I still had my old students following me on Twitter (long gone into the sunset en route to their new post-Bear River lives) but now I was gaining new ones. Fast. Even though I wasn't using it in the classroom. Even students I didn't have in my physical classroom. Students at the school I'd never met.

Instagram got big, Facebook wasn't cool anymore, Ask FM became a place kids could cyber bully each other, Vine happened, and then other social media apps and sites were popping in and out of the awareness of students. All the while, Twitter was growing along with these changes....faster than others in some cases. More and more students were using Twitter and I found my role on it change once again to "father-ish figure" - posting random things that I was interested in while also chiming in on conversations my students were involved in where they may need some advice on or guidance with.

It was about student connection. Letting them know that in that vast world of online content and virtual connections with others, they still had someone physical in their lives that they could trust and lean on when things are rough. The latest example of this was just before break when, sadly, Bear River lost two amazing young men in a car accident. I really felt the disconnect with my former students since I left the classroom back in August. I'm there, but not "there." A couple tweets and replies later on Twitter and I like to think I may have helped them (even for a minute) deal with the emotional toll they were experiencing. If I did, the few seconds I took out of my day was more than worth it.

So this post...this post is about advocating for trying something new. If you're not on Twitter yet, go sign up. Make your account. Go find some other educators like you around the country that you can learn from (a simple search of "biology high school teacher educator" will get you loads of search results). Tell your students you're on there and see if they are brave enough to follow you.

If you are on Twitter already, push yourself to try something new. Join a Twitter Chat, start posting really cool things you're doing in the classroom, encourage your students to publish their work for more eyes than just yourselves and for a greater purpose than just a grade, or start a class hashtag and have all your students use it to publish their work on a given assignment or topic.

The uses of Twitter will benefit you and your students in the long run. It will help bridge the technology divide between educators and students. Incorporating publishing on social media in the classroom is engaging to large swaths of students, garnering more student buy-in to your activity, curriculum, and classroom. You can connect with other peers and educators around the globe to learn new things, processes, strategies, and open opportunities for yourself as a professional and your curriculum as a whole. I'm not saying Twitter will make you a better teacher, or it will fundamentally shift your relationship with your students. But you may find travelling down that rabbit's hole can be rewarding for your craft and your students. Go ahead...give it a shot.