This week I am away on an offline vacation. Rather than let the blog be dormant or rerunning old posts I decided to give some other people a chance to share their experiences and ideas with you. I hope you enjoy the posts.
It’s
terrifying how much education policy is made with little to no teacher
input. There are millions of teachers around the world, but the impact
of our voices does not match those massive numbers. How can we fix this? How can we, the educators, amplify our power? The answer is online unity.
As a Boston Public Schools teacher who runs a travel blog and a Global Education site,
I straddle the travel blogger and education blogger worlds. What many
educators don’t realize is that travel bloggers have accomplished
something remarkable that can be replicated by teachers. Through online
unity, travel bloggers have changed how travel is done, and who profits
from it.
It
used to be that big travel companies had all the power in travel and
got all the business, but nowadays if you Google a phrase like
“Traveling for Teachers” you are more likely to get an independently run
website than a corporate mammoth. (Try it and see!) Because the online
traffic now goes to the little guys, this has caused seismic changes in
how the travel industry runs.
I just returned from the 800-person TBEX Travel Blogger conference (which
was packed with travel companies jostling to work with bloggers) at
which the CEO of Blogworld declared: “You bloggers deserve a
professional conference, because you have proven that you are professionals. Travel bloggers have changed the travel industry forever.”
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear someone say that to teachers, with regards to education?
Learning from the triumphs of the travel blogger community, here is what we as educators can do to amplify our voices and impact through online unity:
• Create a blog, and/or guest post on education sites. As
educators, we have vitally important words to share about what is going
on in education, and we must write for readers beyond our own schools.
It is YOU who needs to be heard by the world. Yes, you. Please write.
• Embrace social media. Once you’ve created a blog or article, get it read. Do this by cooperation with others via social media. Join the Education Bloggers Facebook Group and Twitter Chat,
and find mentor bloggers who can teach you tricks of getting traffic
through Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google Plus, Pinterest, SEO, and
more. Travel bloggers have been doing this for years, and their
collaboration has paid off immensely.
• Go to conferences. In-person networking is vital to forming powerful online partnerships. For example, it was at the wonderful EdCamp Boston Conference that a group of us came up with the idea for the Education Bloggers Facebook Group.
• Do not feel guilty about becoming a successful education blogger or “Teacherpreneur.” People
try to silence teacher voices, making us fear being heard. Teachers are
discouraged from being outspoken, business savvy, or compensated for
work we do beyond traditional teaching within the classroom. To that I
say, “Pshaw!” I am proud to be both a teacher and a hard-working entrepreneur. Because...
• Having a powerful online presence with a global audience makes you a better teacher. “Oh my gosh, Miss Marshall--” one of my 7th grade students squealed last week, “I can’t believe you have almost 4,000 Twitter followers and were published in the Huffington Post!”
“Indeed,”
I replied with a smile. “That’s why I’m so strict on all of you with
grammar lessons. I want you to write for world audiences, too, and when
you do, your writing needs to be fabulous!”
Lillie Marshall (@WorldLillie) is a teacher in Boston Public Schools who runs the Education Bloggers group and chat, along with two GlobalEd websites, AroundTheWorldL.com and TeachingTraveling.com. You can also find her on Google Plus.
This week I am away on an offline vacation. Rather than let the blog be dormant or rerunning old posts I decided to give some other people a chance to share their experiences and ideas with you. I hope you enjoy the posts.
Formative assessment has been stuck in a rut
for years but tablets and Smartphones have the potential for increasing
the amount of formative data that teachers collect and use on a daily
basis. The
combination of touch screen devices and cloud storage allows teachers
to create a manageable flow of connected data, collected on the fly
using mobile platforms, but ultimately available for reflection and
action steps on any device with Web access.Unfortunately,
not enough teachers know about the power of their own personal handheld
devices. EdTech buzz is usually focused on tools that require one-to-one
or at least a large amount of classroom computer availability, but so
much can be done with one handheld device and access to the cloud. Student facing assessment platforms like Compass get a lot of attention along with student response systems like Socrative, but both require students to have their own devices they can use to beam back formative information directly to the teacher. These
apps are great if teachers have the devices, but in order to increase
the actual numbers of teachers who are using these tools to personalize
instruction we need to shift our national focus toward how these tools
can be used when a teacher has a personal tablet or Smartphone at their
disposal. The Highlander Institute
has been working with teachers on a three app system that collects all
of the ongoing formative data a teacher might need in order to more
efficiently and effectively group students for differentiated instruction. There
are many formative assessment applications on the market, but each one
has its limitations. We’ve chosen the following three because they are
cloud based, free, and they compliment each other’s weaknesses.
Evernote:
(E-portfolio Formative Assessment) Set up one folder for general
classroom observations, then make a dedicated folder for each student in
your class. Instantly your phone or tablet becomes your eyes, ears and
brain. Collect visual data, record audio, and add notes as you have
time. Later, process all you collected and decide who achieved mastery
and who you need to meet with the next day. Read more…
Metryx:
Missing from the current app market is the ability to track a
percentile score in a flexible and ongoing basis. Teachers using exit
tickets, online activities, pop quizzes, problems at the board, or just
oral questioning need a way to document their students’ correct or
incorrect responses in one centralized location. Metryx is the
on-the-fly, flexible formative tracker that allows teachers to choose a
skill, choose a student and take in quantitative or qualitative data.
Metryx also analyzes and graphs the data automatically and separates
students into groups based on how close they are to achieving mastery.
(Currently in beta with Version 1 ready for the fall).
Educreations:
Sometimes a yes or no answer is not enough. You need a way to sit with
that student and observe the ways they attack a problem. Place a tablet
with Educreations between yourself and the student and hit record.
Everything they write, everything they say, and their step-by-step
process will be recorded on the screen for you to review later, share
with colleagues or parents.
There are other formative assessment apps we like for specific and targeted tasks, like PickMe for randomizing classroom student responses or ClassDojo
for tracking positive and negative behaviors over time, but the three
app system described above is a great entry point for teachers with
limited hardware, but a strong desire to use more formative assessment.
* (Disclosure notice: the author is also the CEO of Metryx)
Shawn Rubin is the Director of Technology Integration at the Highlander Institute
This post could be subtitled “Show me the Money!” You
see, I’ve hired a good number of teachers over the years, and, while
I’ve hired some top-notch teachers, I’ve also been burned a few times
(BTW, I consider being burned once “too many”).
As
an educational leader, I need to ensure that all students in my
building have access to a great teacher. Not just good, great. In the
past I’ve relied mainly on responses to interview questions to determine
who would be a good teacher. Sure, I asked for writing samples and
examples from class and questions about development and lesson planning
and so on. But I very rarely asked for demonstrations, prototypes, or
products.
This
hiring season, that’s all going to change. My new motto is, “Show me
the money.” If you interview with me, you better be able to demonstrate
that you have the skills to help students be successful 21st century
learners. I’m no longer interested in answering the question, “Can you
teach?” Anyone with an overhead projector can stand up and ‘teach.’
What I want to know is can you use the latest technology and
methodology to facilitate learning, collaboration, problem solving, and
creative thinking?
Because
we are living in a digital world I don’t want to see this stuff in a
three-ring binder with a cute cover. I want you to use digital tools,
the same ones your students will use in class, to demonstrate why I
should hire you. Here’s what I want to see (feel free to comment about
anything you want to show me that I left out).
1) Your professional Social Media persona.
What
you don’t have a professional SM presence? Well why not? Every
teacher and administrator should have, at a minimum, a professional Twitter and Facebook page. If you have access you should also sign up for Edmodo and may consider Google+
which is growing, especially among professionals. I want to see how
you are interacting with parents and students. I want to see who is in
your personal learning network (PLN) - in other words, who you are
learning from. I want to see how you augment what’s going on in the
classroom.
I do not want to see your personal
Facebook page or Twitter stream. Your personal and professional lives
should be chronicled on separate pages. Facebook will not allow you to
create two accounts but as a teacher Facebook will allow you to set up
Page (formerly Fan Pages or Groups). All you have to do is click on
Create a Page on the login page (highlighted). The page will
automatically be connected to your account.
Creating
a page rather than an account will enable you to communicate with
students and parents without friending them (I never recommending
friending students). Twitter allows you to have more than one handle so
there’s no problem there.
2) Your blog.
I
believe everyone should write. Having a blog forces you to work out
and organize your thoughts and ideas. You can blog about any aspect of
your professional life. If you’re looking for your first teaching gig
blog about what you plan to do when you get your own classroom, what you
did as a student teacher, or about great teachers. Write about
methodology, pedagogy, or any other ‘ogy’ you can think of. Write about
your challenges and your successes. Write about anything. Just write. Wordpress, Blogger, and Edublogs
all have excellent and free blogging tools. My only word of caution
with blogging is to keep student information confidential, you don’t
want to wind up on the 6 o’clock news because you wrote about Sammy’s
bloody nose, bad behavior, or poor test grade.
3) Your digital portfolio.
I also want to see everything else you’ve created on-line, your web projects, your student videos, your animotos, your Vimeos, and even your VoiceThreads
but I don’t want to spend the entire interview typing web addresses so
make sure you pull everything together into one site. Sites like Flavors.me, Glogster and Scoop.it will
allow you to pull from many web sources that way during the interview I
only have to type in one address and you can guide me through your
digital life.
And if you’ll allow me just one more …
4) Your email.
After
the interview I may want to email you. That’s why now is the perfect
time to set a professional email account. Call me old school but when I
see a candidate’s email address as, “cutebunnies1972@something.com” or “camaroguy@somethingelse.com” or even, god forbid, “hotandsexy69@inappropriate.com”
it really makes my skin crawl. As a hiring manager my thoughts
immediately jump to whether or not you have the maturity to handle a
classroom. Email is free. Set up an account with some variant of your
name and use that for all professional correspondence.
Good Luck!
Scott A. Ziegler has 20
Years of experience in public education having served as a teacher,
school administrator, and district level administrator. He is life-long
learner, lover of all things tech, devoted husband, father of five,
and weekend adventure seeker. He also practices what he writes and
invites you to connect via his blog, Twitter, Facebook (under construction), Linkin, or Flavors.
This week I am away on an offline vacation. Rather than let the blog be dormant or rerunning old posts I decided to give some other people a chance to share their experiences and ideas with you. I hope you enjoy the posts.
My
students hate English class. They hate to read what we tell them to
read. They hate to write what we tell them to write. They really hate
grammar and sometimes, they hate the teacher just because of the
subject. To them English class is an unnecessary block of drudgery
because they “already know how to talk.” That has never made sense to me
because language is something that binds us all together. We hear it
before we are born. But then I was that rare student who loved English
class. Words are magic to me.
Teachers
have magic readily available. It’s called TECHNOLOGY. We all know tech
mesmerizes them. It’s time to use that to our advantage instead of
making teens leave the most tactile, personal, intimate part of their
world outside as we expect them to produce work that is the best of
themselves. Educators have to realize three points: tech isn’t going
away and neither is a teen’s fascination with it, tech will change how
we teach, and we have to teach teens to think while using that tech. So
how do I suggest a teacher use technology?
Use What Is Right In Front of You- Even
if you only have one computer and a projector, you can use technology
to get them writing. Dangle the fun. The internet is full of videos,
good videos, that are just waiting to be written about by students. Tim
Hawkins made a parody of Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel”. It’s
called “Cletus Take the Reel.”
It’s clean, funny, and short. Parody, compare/contrast, cause/effect,
tone, metaphor, etc. Why not use a video that is interesting to them to
get them to write. The internet is full of them.
Allow Students to Connect to Their Interests- The
hardest part about writing is coming up with a topic. The rest is easy.
If you only concentrate on the prompts, story starters, organizers, and
outlines, then the passion of writing is removed. Students will be more
likely to write and write well if they come up with the topic. Allow
students to bring their world into the classroom. They don't want to
write about your topics. They want to write about what is important to
them. All sorts of stuff goes through their heads. They need to know crazy thoughts can turn into good writing. Teach
them the joy of writing, then, teach that sometimes you just have to
write about what you have to write about. When you do that, you get a
different outcome with students.
Blog With Students- Students
do not value assignments like the old days. Our value was determined by
what discipline waited for us at home. Today, that is not a factor. If a
teacher assigns busy work (how much of your assignments are just
that?), the student becomes disengaged. Before I had access to a
computer lab, I blogged with students using one computer, the internet,
and their paper/pen. Put their work up in your room if you have to but
give students an authentic audience. Their writing will change if they
know that the world will see it. Blogging is free and paperless. Once someone who they don’t know comments on something they wrote, their whole attitude changes.
Use visual sites and microblogging- A great way to get students to write is letting them add pictures to their writing. Sites like Glogster, Storify, Animoto, ToonDoo, and VoiceThread let students add text and images to their writing. Microblog using sites like Twitter or Tumblr.
Twitter allows a user to post a tweet using text. One popular
assignment I used was a cell phone novel using Twitter. These
assignments force students to summarize without realizing it.
There
are so many uses for technology and we are not using them effectively.
Instead of reaching for the teacher’s edition, do a search of your own.
Look for websites that use lists and interesting facts. When you find
them collect them using a calendar. Here’s mine.
(Start with the beginning of school date.) Use these to get students
thinking about their opinions. Nobody wants to write to the city council
about the color of trashcans in the park. Yet we keep shoving those
topics in front of them. Use current events such as news sites to get students looking at their world. When teaching poetry use the songs
that define them to demonstrate literary devices. Teaching students to
write is about connecting their world to the text in front of them.
Technology makes them a captive audience. I say, let’s use it.
I
have been an English teacher for 23 years. My life revolves around my
husband, kids, books, and students. My love affair with all things bound
began when I was four and I don’t expect it to ever end. My passion
lately has been to help teachers realize that technology has a place in
our world just like the paper and pen did when we were young. You can
find me at lisa.byrdnest5.com or @baldmisery on twitter.
This week I am away on an offline vacation. Rather than let the blog be dormant or rerunning old posts I decided to give some other people a chance to share their experiences and ideas with you. I hope you enjoy the posts.
Surely
any passionate educator would say the teaching practice is one of trial
and error, success and failure. I am no different. Whatever hasn’t
worked in our classroom, the students and I have simply altered,
enhanced, or sometimes completely overhauled. Quitting is not an
option. We collectively supply the energy needed to create a
collaborative and engaging atmosphere of shared knowledge. To allude to
a favorite baseball great, we “Pete Rose” any challenges in our AP
Language or American Literature classes by diving in headfirst and
supplying a zest for learning that is clearly palpable in our classroom.
The great Ralph Waldo Emerson,
who once stated “The world belongs to the energetic,” would surely
agree. In essence, our students transcend selfishness, boredom,
narrow-mindedness, and unoriginality by embracing an academic setting
that demands participation.
Even with the success of our project-based assignments and
some traditional teaching methods, the most tested and highly effective
solution for creating this active environment is our implementation of
learning structures. The students and I totally create them ourselves.
With names like “Stage Fright,” “Recording Artists,” “Force Field,” and
“Six-Shooter Firing Squad,” these organized but spontaneous designs
have been the foundation of our success in Studio 113, an interactive Language Arts classroom that houses a basic recording studio, a hexagonal, raised stage, green screens, a smartboard, and a secondary room for digital production.
One of our top ten structures is one verbosely named “Flip Forum, Unaware Speaker, and Silent Discussion.”
At first, it may not appear overly exciting, but the students’ feedback
reveals a clearer vision. Actually a conglomeration of three
mini-structures, the design is highly effective. First off, the
students are placed in one of four teams that will eventually rotate
through four structured areas. Stations A & B, circled around our
stage in the middle of the room, constitute the “Flip Forum” discussion,
where students analyze and discuss the assigned literature by sharing
their original ideas, flipping over their assigned numbers located in
front of them on stage, and then calling on classmates to continue the
thread. A continual backchannel via Polleverywhere
is viewable on a drop-down screen, and students are also encouraged to
enlarge the discussion audience by using Apple’s Facetime or by simply
switching to “speaker” on their cell phones. There is nothing quite
like having a student’s mother offer her opinion in real time.
Obviously, I remind the students a few days before to prepare any
outside audience members with a tentative schedule for our “Flip Forum”
discussion. If communication on the assigned prompts needs to be
extended, Voicethread is embedded on my webpage for afterschool continuation, or students can use Posterous to send in their video-recorded opinions to our class blog.
Station C, “Unaware Speaker,” invites the students to record
a team member to speak to the assigned prompt while pretending to be
oblivious to the symbolic and silent acting performed behind him. One
particular student, acting as the camera man, will frame the video with
the acting appearing directly over the speaker’s shoulder. Students can
choose to share camera, speaking, and acting responsibilities in this
station. All videos may be later mashed-up into an original video in a
style determined by the class after completing all rotations. Ideas
range from movie trailers to newscasts to music videos to any original and appropriate student proposals.
Finally, Station D is one that adds a bit of serenity to the
bustling learning environment. The “Silent Discussion” asks students
to explore the prompt by contributing in a TodaysMeet chatroom or by using a Twitter
hashtag. Of course, I follow along on my iPad or laptop as I stroll
through the stations and observe the students sharing knowledge in a
variety of ways.
A few educators in my PLN question the effectiveness of the
“Flip Forum, Unaware Speaker, and Silent Discussion” in their classrooms
due to a perceived lack of technology. That may very well be the case.
As I have witnessed so many times, students are eager to share tech
gadgets, knowledge, and ideas to circumvent any problem caused by
technology or the lack thereof. However, no worries. I have used this
exact same structure with Post-It notes, dry-erase boards, rolls of
bulletin board paper, rotational manila folders, etc. Whether it’s old
school or tech-integrated, the students are encouraged to express their
original ideas.
But the next structure I want to share with you is way too simple, yet it’s extremely effective. In fact, the “Wax Museum” structure comes with a warning. Although no technology is required, the energy level in the class will
skyrocket the moment the students understand the level of freedom
allowed to create a motionless, symbolic “wax” statue that successfully
addresses the assigned prompt. Here’s how it goes. 1. Students are
instructed to use any appropriate items in their possession and any
within the classroom (or my storage closet of tech gadgets and props for
that matter) 2. While focusing on the prompt at hand, students should
plan a “wax” statue that will be held without movement for up to five
minutes or more. 3. Students are given roughly 15-20 minutes to discuss
and prepare the assignment. 4. Once all teams are ready, students are
instructed to hold their positions quietly and as perfectly still as
possible while I record their creations with a video camera. 5. Lastly,
the students continue to hold their positions while one or more team
members explain their rationale while only moving their lips. Simply
put…students love it.
Honestly, I am not sure if Mr. Emerson’s quotation stands true for our class. After all, our energetic students in Studio 113 may not actually own
the world after an invigorating class, but there is one certainty: I
can guarantee you they will share their classroom of knowledge and
creativity through engaging structures, project-based learning, and
forward thinking. That’s all I ask.
John
Hardison is a facilitator of learning in an interactive classroom
called Studio 113 at East High School in Gainesville, GA where
literature creatively comes to life on a stage with students as the
stars. In the past 14 years at East Hall High School, Hardison has
taught AP Language, American Literature, World Literature, and Applied
Communications. Through original learning structures and a shared
classroom concept, students are inspired to connect literature with
their own talents and interests. Follow John on Twitter @JohnHardison1
and his class @Studio113_EHHS. Hardison blogs monthly for GettingSmart.com and shares his interactive structures in workshops at local technology conferences.
Blogs from GettingSmart.com
The Structure Factory Blog
John Hardison’s Studio 113 Webpage
