Last Night in Ed Tech

Yesterday, we had out last instructional night in Ed Tech. It was bittersweet; for one, I’m happy the semester is coming to a close, but I’m also sad that this was the last time I’ll experience the class.

The lesson was about Digital Citizenship and while we had a lot of fun goofying around with the project, I think it was an informal night.

The last lesson we learned a meaningful take-away about rules and being flexible with them. This week, I think we witnessed the reverse. When given very few rules, students will run away with the ideas you’ve given them with abandon. It’s important to find the balance – being flexible with the rules you’ve given and making sure that they are given in the first place.

The second thing is that teachers need to understand that their students are seeing things online that we would prefer they not. While it’s not up to us to take away their choice of viewing that inappropriate material, it’s up to us to be model responsible behavior, as well as make sure that we communicate and give opportunities for them to practice safe and well-meaning, internet etiquette.

Finally, while everything was happening around us last night, I realized just how easy it is to forget about those things, to forget about being responsible. Being irresponsible is much more fun than the reverse and it’s important that we keep this in mind. We need to monitor our students’ activities and provide them with opportunities to see how fun and rewarding the right activities can be (instead of being mindless activities with no inherent value that may or may not end up harming someone in some way).

I’m curious how best we can implement activities that teach digital citizenship to our students without getting too repetitive. My brain isn’t coming up with great ideas, and I plan on doing more research on this for my activity this week.

Lastly, my second question is about how we can model digital responsibility. While I have some ideas for my classroom, the first thing I think of when I think of trying to teach my students about this topic is a place where teachers are mostly off limits from interacting with students – social media. How can we both model responsible use of social media and provide opportunities for students to practice and demonstrate that behavior on social media if it’s still taboo for teachers to interact appropriately with students online?

Mission 12 post

Tonight in Ed Tech, we discussed project based learning. The first thing I learned was that my overall classroom design and educational philosophy suits PBL.

The second thing was that is important to be flexible with your students. If you students are feeling an activity or getting tired, it’s important to change rules or move on.

Finally, I learned that it’s important to make sure that the content matches the activity. I felt really unprepared for the assessment and feedback because we only heard the info once or twice.

I still have questions about how to implement project based learning for subjects that are informationally heavy. I also still wonder how best to know when students aren’t motivated anymore. My action for this week will be to research that.

Digital Media Lesson

This week, I worked with Megan to talk about digital media in the classroom – or making digital media. I think this lesson honestly worked out better than my last one, even though there were definitely some technical issues to start with. In the future, I’ll have to be sure that I make plans B, C, D, and E in case something happens. Or at least make plans that are flexible without certain and specific items/things.

Again, I think this group of students gets lost when we play a video. I’ve seen this time and time again throughout everybody’s lesson, I wonder why I didn’t think of this for our videos tonight. I did want to play the fair use video since I used images from it for the pre-assessment, and wanted to connect the two tasks together in a fun way, but I still think that Megan and I lost them with the videos.

I think anytime there’s instructions like what we had tonight, we should definitely type them up or provide different modalities for students to understand that information. After first explaining the tasks, I had to explain it again a couple of different ways. While that might have just been the way I was describing the task, I think that it would be better support for the students by presenting them in a cohesive, written format.

I definitely think there should be more focus on the Assessment, Exit Ticket, and Feedback. In the last lesson, I didn’t get any feedback. In this lesson, while I did get feedback through SeeSaw, there were only two students who participated in the Assessment. This just wouldn’t fly in a public school classroom. I need to make sure that the students are focused on the tasks throughout the entire lesson. This is definitely exacerbated by the fact that Ed Tech is three hours long, but in a school setting, I’ll have to make sure that students are focused for the full day. That’ll be a lot harder, and I want to find some strategies that I can use when the time comes.

Now, we did do some things right. From the get go, I think we had some productive discussions about how we can actually use digital media strategies in a classroom. I think it was good to talk about how not everything needs to be done in one go, all at once, in one entire day. Instead, you can split up tasks throughout the 9 week period, and it’s more attainable for the students to maintain their focus on the project and on other subjects. I also loved how immersive our lesson was, and how people got so entranced by the story boarding website! I think it was a great addition to our lesson, even though we didn’t fully accomplish everything I had wanted to get done 8 o’clock.

Last night in Ed Tech

Last night in Ed Tech was fun an interesting! I had already learned a little bit about self-organized learning, but I had never really experienced what it was like as student. It was a great eye-opening experience!

I think the first thing that I learned was that even though students are learning through a self-directed process, structure is really important. I think there should be a way to communicate the end-goals first and have them displayed. If there are any resources or instructions, those should be somewhere. I want to make sure that my students don’t get lost throughout the whole process.

The second thing was about how you can use Google Docs to make a board game. I think if you had a bigger class, you may need multiple versions of the document so that students have enough room to see their game piece and instructions for the next step.

Finally I learned a little bit about Twitter chats. I’m still kind of confused about how to be involved. It seems like twitter chats are hosted around one person’s twitter, but it seems kind of difficult to find the questions that people are answering. I guess this is probably the first thing that I’ve looked at in this class that actually scares me a little bit!

I wonder if there’s a way to make the Google Docs board game work on a mobile device, or if there’s a similar alternative that allows anonymous use to edit like that.

My second question was about gamification – other than class craft (which I feel like I wasn’t able to explore too much because of its cost),  what’s out there to make it interactive and fun for students? Is there another resource that allows some customization of resources.

Group Chats, Discussion Boards, and Class Websites

Tonight, we had a lesson about communication and collaboration with parents.

First, I do really like the idea of using group chats to communicate with everyone. I think that Remind may be an okay way to do this, but its definitely for more short-form messages and is about as personal as a newsletter. However, I have a feeling it will reach a lot more parents and student through this method, which is always great!

While I also like the idea of a teacher website, tonight I realized how static they are – they’re typically only a one-way communication and this isn’t going to be my goal as a teacher. After looking at the chapter on Moodle, I think I like the idea of a class wiki or forum (though you could even have a class twitter or facebook group). I think it would be a fun way to not only keep parents in the loop, but give students access to those conversations and be able to contribute. There could be real opportunities for collaboration through online discussions.

As well, I appreciate the discussion that we had about providing too much information too parents. It’s a sad thing that we have to think about, but as our professor put it, “You never know what your students are going home to.” While this is a sad fact, I think it will definitely help your students to focus on positive reinforcement anyway – you want your students to focus on developing their weakness into strengths and that can only happen when they’re given confidence and motivation through positivity.

I have a few questions, though, after reading the text. It suggests that teachers can use Instagram in the classroom to connect to parents (after all, some of the students I’ll be teaching in high school/middle school are already using Instagram). But, I’m curious to overarching privacy policies – besides district policies, does this break some kind of privacy by even just filming/photographing students, but not their faces?

I’m also curious about what kind of learning-management systems you can use in the classroom that are pretty cheap. I like the idea of having forums, parent portals, and assignment all available and separated for different classes.

I want to take a deep dive in website customization over the next few weeks while I’m improving my classroom website. I want to actually work on putting some resources and articles in there, as well as researching if Wix has a way to add forums/discussion boards or maybe password protected areas for information that should only go to one class and not the other.

 

Team Teaching Round Two

For the second round of team teaching, I’m paired with Megan and we’re working on digital media. It sounds like a fun and interesting topic, not only for us as teachers, but for students as well. I know that when I was school, YouTube made creating things so much more accessible and I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Reflecting on my first lesson, I think that biggest thing that I can improve is motivation – I want to make this as a fun a lesson as possible, where they almost forget that they’re in a class and are just being instructed to have fun. I know that I have long way to go before I can fully reach that benchmark, but I want to make progress towards it with this lesson. I think Megan and I have some great ideas to get attention and keep things moving!

For this lesson, I want to make sure that our students (or, our classmates) will experiment and try something new. I want them to click buttons and explore with the content we’ll be presenting. For the actual content of the lesson, I want them to see that making digital media not only makes a lesson more engaging, but can also help teach students about technology that they may not have come across of their own accord.

 

5 Ideas for using Technology on a Snow Day

Today, my campus closed at 3pm. While I would have loved for it to be closed earlier in the day, 6 out of my 8 hours of classes were cancelled! This got me thinking – there can be unpredictable snow days for students and teachers, so how can we make sure that they are still learning on those days?

Some people answer this question with online classrooms. But this isn’t an always an option, like we’ve talked about previously in class. Too many students may not be able to get to internet or have the available devices to do anything regarding technology while they’re snowed into their house; they shouldn’t have to miss valuable information because they don’t have access to it. Not to mention that online classrooms may not be engaging for every student. However, there are a few things we could do to make sure that students still have something academically engaging in their day away from the school building.

The hardest part of this would probably be able to communicate ‘assignments’ to every student – perhaps there should be an outstanding class rule (“If we receive a snow day, remember to journal about your experiences.”)?  You could use apps like “Remind” or “Class Dojo” to keep in touch with parents or students (depending on ages) to make sure they know what to do. I would have to think more on this, and how it can be effectively implemented.

Here are some of my ideas (besides virtual classroom days)

1. Blog

Perhaps you can have student blog what they’ve done during that day off (or maybe they have an online class journal for the duration of the school year, but can use a blog to journal). If they don’t have access to the technology, they can journal like normal. (Note: they could also journal about an academic topic, or creative; the subject matter definitely doesn’t have to be extremely limited)

2. Creative Project

They could design a publication or digital artwork, write a story, or design a web page  using computers, cell phones, or tablets (or papers) that showcase a topic of their choice that has been discussed in class. This could actually work as supplemental material for what’s being discussed in class and give them to opportunity to express their ideas concerning that topic.

3. Online Quizzes

Now, before I say anything else, I’m talking about pre/post assessment type quizzes. They wouldn’t be graded (and the students should know that it’s not graded) and they can be a great way to keep information in students minds and assess what they’ve already learned and retained from the class time. Using these, you wouldn’t be taken much time out of a student’s snow day, but still keep their minds actively thinking about the topic your teaching. If students don’t have access to this quiz, they aren’t missing vital information nor is their grade in the class being penalized.

4. Bonus Point/Reward Opportunities

This article has a couple of great ideas! One such idea comes from Jill Anderson, a fourth grade teacher. She creates a list of snow day activities that she gives students with plenty of advance. Upon completing an activity, they add a specific part to their snowman. Once the snowman is complete, they can receive a reward of some kind. These activities can be related to technology or complete paper based. Perhaps you could have students Snapchat a book that they’re reading, research a historical figure and make a short video about them, send in a video explaining a math topic that they can apply in their everyday life (like units of measurements and helping their parents cook), or journal about an experience.

It’s a great idea because doesn’t necessarily need to affect their grades, but can motivate them by giving opportunities to earn rewards towards a class pizza party, a prize from the prize chest, or other rewards. It can also be used as extra credit or bonus points depending on what you would like do.

5. Online Discussion

Discussion in obviously an important part of education, and online discussion is also a way to teach and reinforce internet safety to students. I got this idea from this article from The New York Times. Tine E. Marchiano of Pascack Valley High School had her students watch an online poetry reading on her own Youtube Channel and start and participate in discussion about it in the comment section.

What’s great about YouTube is that you could also do a short lecture, demonstrate a math problem, or… truly almost anything you could do in your classroom in person. The great thing about YouTube videos is that they can be privatized – your students only need the link to be able to access the video, and this can be distributed through the apps mentioned above, or Google Classroom. The students would need a YouTube account, however.

You could also start and continue a discussion or Twitter or one that you can create on a classroom webpage (through a forum/discussion thread made through comment sections like on YouTube). The options are endless, but I think that the YouTube example could be incredibly engaging! This way, you can still get supplemental material to you student and continue to keep them engaged!

 

Planning for lessons with technology

Tonight’s lesson was super fun! Having us take some time and do some actual planning with resources was a great idea! There were a few things I learned. A lot of apps available aren’t quite well fit for a ton of disabilities, delays, etc. Planning a lesson for students with various DB is really difficult when considering group work (reading levels, motor skills, etc). A little competition can be incredibly useful in a classroom.

After all is said and done, how can technology assist with different disabilities in a classroom? And, how can we integrate smartphone use in a class when all of students don’t have smartphones?

Finally, as mentioned in the class, I want to find different ways to fundraise for technology – at the end of the day, I will have to be the advocate for my students and technology may be one way to help them learn. But, it’s only feasible if you have the funding to use it.

First Team Lesson

Tonight, my group gave what was my first team taught lesson. There are a lot of things that go into team teaching before the lesson even begins.

When you’re making a lesson by yourself, you have every idea you could possibly think of in your head and you don’t have to explain that work-in-progress to someone else just yet. But with team teaching, you’re working on those ideas and brainstorming with other people – to get your ideas out there, they have to be more developed than normal. Then, you have to make sure that everyone in the team understands what’s happening, and often times, you may not know yourself. After having a few weeks to work on the lesson, I’m grateful that my team had this length of time to work out the kinks before giving the lesson tonight.

I definitely made my part of the lesson too difficult. I think I’ve put myself in an echo chamber and forgot that most people aren’t as familiar with deciding as I am. That made the scavenger hunt much more difficult than necessary. But this is why we have pre-assessments and data for our students! I need to be more careful about that in the future.

I think I need to work on sectioning out the lesson and making transitions between parts. It seemed hard to really grab attention without a solid transition between the sections.

I think giving time for explorations of the website was a good idea. It got some of the students ideas really flowing and it was great that they could figure out how to apply them for the different grade levels/standards and use them in their future classrooms. Our timing overall was fairly good. After seeing the presentations from the others and looking at their pre- and post- assessments, I think the overall point of the lesson was achieved – people were sharing their resources, thinking about them critically, and learned something they will find useful.

Finally, I think we, as teachers, needed to be more involved with each other’s projects to act as a second set of eyes. A lot of that came down to the differing schedules of the three of us, but there was definitely more I could have done to support my team. But we had good ideas and okay implementation throughout our lesson.

Overall, I think we did fairly good for our first lesson!

Learning Menus, Quiziz, and Reaching Standards.

Last week, the class discussed differentiated learning. As a future special education teacher, this topic is near and dear to my heart – after all, all of my future students will need some differentiation from regular education and will have to have some differentiated between peers.

The first thing I found interesting was the learning menu. This seems fairly interesting for an elementary school classroom and I can see how it can be implemented with younger children. The first question I have about the lesson, though, is how this can be well implemented in a secondary (high school) classroom situation. While left unchanged, it could certainly be just as successful, I worry about some students thinking it may be too silly. I would like to know if there are any ideas about how this could be implemented for those reluctant students.

The second thing I learned was a little unrelated to differentiated learning, however. I learned that I really don’t like the “Quiziz” program. While it can be useful in some settings and situation (such as changing the order of questions, or making answers longer than questions to gauge and assess reading), I’m quite concerned about how the scoring system works. You can see the points other people are scoring and how many questions they got wrong. These two things don’t always align. One may answer a question correctly, but get less points because of the length it took to answer. The timer seems like a way to punish students for taking their time with a quiz, reading the questions and answers with care, and thinking about their responses. I don’t want my students to feel like taking their time is incorrect. My action for this week will be to research other fun and interesting online assessment tools that could take the place of the quiziz in my classroom.

Finally, I appreciate that no matter what kind of lesson we’re teaching and if it is differentiated or not, we always start with the standards. What do we hope the students will learn? After this, we can then move on to how best to help the student reach that goal. I liked learning that these two things are the same, no matter what kind of lesson you’re teaching.

My second and final question has to do with introductions to material. What are some good transitions between sections of the lesson that can readily prepare the learners for the topic you’re about to cover? Background information is important, but sometimes, even that can start out too quickly depending on what students already know.