April 22 – 26

Last week was a state testing week and much of my time was spent making sure that the online testing we were trying out was going well. Not exciting and certainly not a memorable ed-tech week. I was able to make into classrooms before and after testing and saw some great uses of technology. Science teachers are teaching biology and anatomy through online exploration of body systems in their annual medical school. In Language Arts students were reviewing for the STAAR test using Socrative and Turning Points to provide last minute clarifications to students on TEKS they were not quite grasping. Now that testing is over technology is in full use for the next month. I will be busy!

The other bright spot this past week was I got notification from Google that I was selected to be a Certified Google Apps for Education Trainer! Last year I participated in training and testing for this certification and finally this winter I finished my application and turned it in for consideration. I am a little overwhelmed at this moment trying to make sense of what exactly this means, but at the same time am excited at the doors that could be opening for me.

• Where did you watch the video?
• Summarize what you learned?
• Ask a Question that you have or that someone else might have?

Of the fourteen teachers that were to attend all but three logged in to moodle and answered the questions.  Those 3 teachers were male teachers, not sure if that is relevant, but I found it interesting.  :)    The summaries and questions were good to see ahead of time and let me know what concerns the teachers were walking in the door with and I was able to prepare to address those concerns at the beginning of our session.

When it was time to meet face to face I had prepared example assignments of how a teacher might assign an inforgraphic creation to students.  I included the data they would need to create the final product  so that we could get to the heart of making an infographic with PowerPoint   I tried to make the assignments and data relevant to their current or upcoming units of study and based on a PBL approach more than a straight forward assignment.   I wanted to try to model best practices all around as much as possible.  I also had prepared a handout that covered the basics of how we were going to use PowerPoint and the tools that would be most useful in this assignment.   I made sure to focus on things that were new or different than the normal use of PowerPoint so that I did honor there time with me.

I began by thanking them  for watching the video ahead of time and answering some of their questions they had asked.  I also told them we would now get started with creating their own infographic and I would not be talking about what an infographic was since they had already learned that.   I wanted to re-emphasize that the time they had already invested was worth it and I would be honoring that.

Overall they had positive things to say and were excited to walk away with something practical they could use.  They also appreciated all the hands on time and got a good feel of what would be involved in making an assignment like this for their students.  The biggest confirmation that this was time well spent is that the 8th grade teachers are assigning an infographic to their students for after Spring Break.  Looking forward to seeing this strategy played out in the classroom!  I also look forward to trying out the Flipped PD model again in the future.

Here are my take-aways so far:

1. It is a lot of upfront work!   
2. Have a good outline of what you want to cover and then create your presentation.  I started with the presentation and had to scrap it as I needed to get a better focus on the outcomes of the session.
3. Determine the best format to present the information.   What needs to be video, what needs to be written and what should be done face to face.
4. Choose a presentation tool to fit your audience.   I chose Prezi for this training because it allowed me to zoom in on the images so I could point out the details.   I thought using powerpoint would be too flat for a video and would lose their interest for this.  Also – I haven’t played with it in a long time and wanted some practice.
5. Make sure you are having a good hair day if you are going to include a webcam shot of you during the presentation.  Vain I know, but this video will be around for a long time.
6. It takes a lot of work!   I know I am repeating myself, but I have spent hours on a simple presentation becuase my hope is to create something that I can use again and again with different groups.  That makes the time investment worth it.

I am going to set up the video in our district’s moodle and will incorporate an embedded google form to ask questions after the video.  I am choosing google forms to demonstrate how the teachers can use them on their own websites when they are intimidated by moodle.

Here is my Prezi that I will be narrating and recording with Camtasia Studio.   The topic of the training will focus on creating Infographics in the social studies classroom using tools they are familiar with, more specifically Powerpoint.

In your inbox, click on the cog/wheel and choose “Settings” from the drop-down.

Click on the “Labs” tab from the top menu.

From the list of labs, scroll to the “Undo Send” lab.

Click the radio button to “Enable” this lab.

Be sure to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page.

Now under the General Settings tab you can set the amount of time available to undo the sending of the email. Choices range from 5 to 30 seconds.

When you send an email a pop-up will show on the top of the gmail page that will allow you to “undo” the sending of the email.

Clicking “Undo” will stop the email from being sent and allow for any changes that need to be made.

Student Motivation Ideas:

•  Make your subject personal.   Show your own enthusiasm and relate the material to the lives and interests of the students.
• Ask students to think about the materials and then use their statements as you study the readings.
• Be able to answer – Why do I need to know this?
• Get to know your students on a personal level.
• Measure student’s progress and show interest in helping them be successful.
• Promote good will!  State what is going well and connections that are being made in class with the materials.
• Make the classroom a safe place to learn, to participate, and take risks.
• Role model what a learner looks like and what mastery looks like in what you do.
• Understand that your class is not the most important thing in your student’s life.

When giving assignments:

• Give students a purpose and focus for reading, like take a side that you have to defend in the next class period.  Research shows that students do not see a correlation between reading and academic success so only 20% of them will do the reading.  Make them see the connection in your classroom.
• Assign reading that is essential to the understanding of the course.  The less is more approach.
• Focus in on what is worth knowing from your content.
• Make the assignments challenging but attainable for your students and expect success
• Differentiate whenever possible in what is to be learned, how it is to be learned or how the students can show mastery.

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 References

Hobson, E. (2004). The IDEA Paper #40: Getting Students to Read. The IDE.A Center. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_40.pdf

 Svinicki, M. (2005). IDEA Paper #41: Student Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Learning. IDEA Paper #41. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/Idea_Paper_41.pdf.

Teaching Resources – Motivating Students. (2011, October 11).Teaching Effectiveness Program. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/faqs/

1.   Pinterest –have you heard of it?  I know most of you have since I see your pins all the time.   Pinterest is a web curator site, or another way to organize your links that is social and visual.   You set up “boards” to which you “pin” websites. Each board can have a theme and you can look through other people’s boards (if they make them public) for more ideas.  Other users can follow your boards, like your pins or re-pin your pins onto their own boards.  There is a section labeled Education that displays people’s pins(website finds) that have to do with education.

I have created an account on Pinterest dedicated to educational resources.  If you would like to check it out (or follow them) go here:  http://pinterest.com/techrobin/

If you need an invite to Pinterest, please let me know!

2.  Livebinders  – http://www.livebinders.com/ – collect all your resources, images, videos, pdfs, websites, and group them into a “binder” where students have easy access to the websites that you have.  Inside the binder you can divide the content into tabs and each tab can have sub-tabs.  Students can create accounts and add the binder to their own collections or create binders on topic assigned to them.

 Examples:

• Algebra 
• Social Studies
• ELA – Hunger Games
• Science 
• Technology & Web 2.0 for Educators
• Art 

3.  Linoit – http://en.linoit.com/ – An online collaboration tool in the form of Sticky Notes.  Create a bulletin board of ideas and files on any topic.  Organize ideas and resources be rearranging the sticky notes on the board.  This is an easy, visual ways for students to find the resources or information they need.  This can also be a great collaboration tool as students add in notes (if you allow that) and collect ideas.

4.  Diigo – http://www.diigo.com/user/robiny – Diigo is a bookmarking website that allows users to create groups, share links and have discussions.      Researching biomes?  Give the websites you find a specific tag and gie that link the to students so anytime you add more resources their list is updated without having to add a link to your website.

This is a resource that I have been using for a long time and still love it.  I can add bookmarks from school and still retrieve them from home.   They also have apps that are useful for mobile devices.

5.  Wall Wisher – http://www.wallwisher.com/ – another online bulletin board that has been around for a while.  You can add stickies that contain text, images or links to websites.   This tools is great for collecting images of a certain topic and them having students use those images for their projects and since the kids can help add in the resources, this can be a great collaboration tool.

Here are a few tools to help in finding content suited to the different levels in your classroom.

Twurdy - http://twurdy.com - Need to find content to help in differentiation in the classroom?   Twurdy searched the internet and labels results with a readability score.  The darker orange the background of the result is the higher readability level it has.  This would be great when searching  for materials for struggling readers and for the gifted students who need more of a challenge.   The have their own scale system so be sure to check out the feature to turn the age level to understand their system.

Google Reading Level - Google also has a search filter that will sort results based on Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Reading Levels.   Type in your search term(s) and then click on the reading level you want to focus on to see the websites that fall in that category.

Text Compactor  - http://textcompactor.com/ - Create a summary of your text by pasting in the passage, drag the slider to show how much of the text you want to keep in the summary and then view the results.   You can also cut and paste the results into a text to speech program or into a language translator to help process the information even more.  This could be used for those ELL students or for struggling readers to comprehend the text.  Or use it in the writing process as students pasting in their own writing and determining if the created summary really reflects what was intended by the student.

Sweet Search - http://www.sweetsearch.com/ - A search engine designed to give results based on analyzing the credibility of the website so students will have access to information that is more accurate than random sites.   This website also contains widgets that you can place on your website so that students can use it as a launching point for searches in class and at home.

Differentiating Product

This is easy with Web 2.0 technology tools.  Students do not need to all create the same product, but choices can be given to allow them to choose a method that is more in alignment with their intelligences.  All these tools help students create.  According to the Digital Bloom’s taxonomy – creating is on the high end of the spectrum of critical thinking tools.  You don’t have to be an expert in all of these tools.  Tutorials already exist in youtube or by talking to other teachers who have the how-to papers ready to go.  Students are ready to learn the program to accomplish the product so let them try!

Create:

• Videos : Animoto, MovieMaker, PhotoStory,
• Webpages: Google Sites, Wix, Weebly, Wikispaces
• Interactive Timelines: Dipity
• Interactive Posters: Glogster
• Interactive Presentations: Voicethread, Prezi, Thinglink
• Audio presentations: Podcasts with Audacity

This list is not comprehensive, but this should get you started.

Management of Differentiated Products:

Worried about grading all these different products?   With the design of a good rubric grading can be easy as the content should always be what you are looking for no matter what the packaging is.   Rubistar is a great place to start in designing a rubric.

Tammy Worcester had a great idea of how to gather all the links/products into one place with a digital dropbox.  Using a google form, create a place for students to turn in their links for easy access to all products posted online.

Example:

Resources:

http://cooltoolsfor21stcenturylearners.wikispaces.com/Flexible+Learning+Paths