Activity Template: The 8-Event Collaborative Timeline Challenge

Google Drawings is one of the G Suite Apps that does not get as much love as some of the other ones. Docs is used pretty frequently for writing and taking notes. Teachers use Slides for lessons and students use it for assessment and creativity. Sheets gets all your data and your list-making (we love a good list, don't we?) But Drawings is an underutilized program that needs its day in the sun! There are so many uses for it in the classroom as you can create images that can be quite interactive.

One of those uses is to create interactive timelines. Wait! Before you leave thinking this is just a post for Social Studies teachers, it is most certainly not. Any subject can incorporate the use of timelines into their curriculum. Whether it is researching an author and how it has shaped their writing in an ELA course, identifying the key events and movements in the development of nuclear technology in a Physics class, or studying the cultural history of a nation in a World Languages class, timelines are extremely useful for a student's understanding of curriculum. Let's dispel the myth that timelines are only for the History class.

As a Social Studies teacher, timelines were essential but I hated just making kids slap a bunch of events together on a line of time and calling it good. I think it is all well and good for them to understand sequence but what was lacking was their understanding of cause and effect or key importance of one event or events over others. We need to push our students to go deeper and think critically on what makes evebts so important within a given subject. We need to force them to evaluate information, make choices, and justify those choices using evidence. This is where this activity comes into play.

The 8-Event Collaborative Timeline Challenge

This is a template and an activity idea for those interested. Of course you can alter it as you see fit (don't like the number 8? Go with whatever number moves you). The idea for this activity is straight forward: get students to make informed choices and justify those choices. In the process they are hitting on the 4 Cs of 21st century learning - Collaboration, Creativity, Critical-Thinking, & Communication.

The detailed rationale and instructions for this activity are embedded on the file (click the pic below to access it and save a copy for yourself) so here is a brief snapshot of how it works: After brainstorming and discussing key events as a class, students will collaborate in small groups or partnerships to develop their top events. They'll work together on the timeline creation and their justification for selecting the events they did. When turning the activity in, you want students to have access to each other's products so the audience is not just you. They can access their peers' work and generate some interesting discussions. From there you can take it as far as you'd like (I include some ideas on the file below). You can use the finished product as an assessment or you could create a formative assessment using your favorite product.

Click the pic to access the file and see instructions for the activity - instructions are outside of the canvas so you'll have to use the slider to see them all

Timeline activities shouldn't be static. The students need to interact with events in order to fully grasp them. Instead of plotting 20 events on a timeline, let them evaluate all 20 and choose the <enter number here> most influential events. They'll be able to dive deep into their learning....and they'll thank you for not making them do all 20! 😝

Google Drawing: Students Create Memes

Memes...MeeMees...whatevs you call em, students are using them. Ms. Keri Kemble at NU incorporates some great lessons using micro-writing and having students create memes is a great critical thinking activity for students to whittle down a story or concept into a singular image with limited text.

Google Drawing is a G Suite App than can help with this and the great Alice Keeler a heavy weight in the EdTech world, has a great template and step by step process on how to let students create memes to demonstrate their understanding. You set the topic/subject and push out the template and get them to create.

A great wrap up to this activity is to create a Padlet and have students post their work and comment on other's work. You can host the Padlet (through embedding) on your Schoology course or website.

Great for visual learners and those that are having trouble understanding difficult concepts covered in the class.

Check out Alice Keeler's other templates when you get an opportunity, check out her other great resources, and give her a follow on Twitter for great ideas in real time!

If you need help incorporating this into your curriculum, do not hesitate to get in touch with me!

Voice & Choice Activity: Show Me What You Know!

Student engagement is key in the 21st century classroom. Technology can help engage students but nothing beats sound lesson design and flow that piques and quenches a student's thirst for understanding the world around them.

Students invariably want greater control of their learning experiences. It's a lot more than just "What" they learn. Providing opportunities for students to express their voice and choose the method in which they express it is just one of the ways students get engaged in any classroom.

One easy-to-implement strategy that addresses this need for engagement and allows students to take control of their learning is through the old "menu option" assignment. Although not a new idea, its a powerful one and with technology the opportunities for student creativity goes beyond the traditional paper-and-pen method.

An example of this is the document embedded below from a group of teachers in the UK who literally took the "menu option" idea and used a popular restaurant amongst British teenagers as the basis for their choices.

If you'd like a copy of this doc, grab it here: Cheeky Nandos Copy

Utilizing the menu options giving students 'voice" and "choice" is an easy way to substitute assessment ideas using technology. The students will feel empowered to produce their best work if they feel they had some control over their choice. Especially when they publish their work for you and their peers to see....the focus of this post.

Show Me What You Know!
This idea comes from one of the creators of the Hyperdoc movement, Lisa Highfill. The idea is pretty straight forward - when appropriate in the curriculum, allow students to choose how they showcase their knowledge and understanding of what they have learned in order to demonstrate mastery.

If you would like to see other examples of this idea, visit her site here and while you're there poke around some of the other areas where she provides rich ideas for the classroom.

I've created one below as a Google Slides template for you all to have copies of. You will have to edit it to change elements on the file including: how students turn in their work to you, some of the resources you want to give them a choice to explore, or anything you'd like to add to personalize the assignment. After you edit it, simply copy and paste it into an already existing Slide deck, publish it to the web, or embed it in your Schoology course or on your website.

Get your copy of the above file HERE.

Give this a go and see what you get from students. Encourage them to explain themselves in a rich manner. Push them to produce their best and most creative work. Publish their work to the class, to other classes, to parents, to the world. Don't be scared you might not be an expert in any of these technologies. In fact, its best you aren't. Encourage your kids to be the experts. Learn with them. They may surprise you how much ownership they take on knowing you can help them only so far.

If you need help implementing this (or similar ideas like it) please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

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.