Strategy Sharing

During the September and October Strategy Sessions, some great ideas were shared. I'm posting them here so everyone can benefit!

In September, Dan Inns shared how he starts out a new unit and prepares students for new learning by using a variety of interactive technology tools:

"When we start a next section of the course, I will have students brainstorm using pollEverywhere or wordle.  We then identify key words that match with the IB Sports, Exercise and Health Science syllabus and we will do a T/P/S (Think Pair Share) or a W/P/S (Write Pair Share).  Alternatively I may ask the students to do a 5 minute exploration on a given 'word' and then feedback to the rest of the class.   I have also used Plickers with a selection of 5 questions to establish what the students already know."

Plickers allows you to set up a student response system with printed hold-ups that you can scan with your iPad or phone and easily collect the data. It gets every student participating and gives you accurate information about what each student knows. You can read more about it here and print out your own cards here.

Another great idea for implementing a modified "hold ups" strategy was shared by Doug Andrew. If you don't have physical whiteboards, Doug suggested creating a Google presentation with enough blank slides for each of the students in your class. Assign them each a slide and they can type in their answers. So innovative!

Mr. Jerry Koontz introduced Newsela to the 4B cohort and posted about it on the Schoology Strategy Sessions group. Newsela is a free website that features current news articles; topics range from politics, science, environment to social trends and quirky events. According to Jerry, "The most useful aspect of the site is that articles can be leveled to the appropriate lexile reading level of each student with the click of a button. The same article, different reading levels. The students enjoy reading the articles and each one comes with a 4 question quiz and short writing prompt.  All done online so it's easy to check progress. Although the benefits to an ELA program are obvious, this website also could be used by Social Studies, Science, Health, and Spanish teachers (articles are available in Spanish)." 

One last handy tip, brought to you by James Linzel. James wanted to display a timer for pair shares, table group discussions and other activities to manage pacing in his class, but he was not happy with having to toggle between a presentation and an online timer. He discovered that there are a plethora of countdown timer videos on youtube that you can embed in your presentation. Just do a google search for the time that you want, e.g. "3 minute timer video." Seamless!

Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas in the first two sessions. See you in November for more inspiring suggestions. 

Tech Tip Tuesday: Surveys and Stickies and Polls, Oh My!

It's that time of year when your Inbox is flooded with requests for feedback via a variety of surveys and polling tools. Why not include your students in the fun? Here are three tools that are great for gathering students' opinions all year long, and of course they can also serve as quick and easy checks for understanding. 

ParticiPoll is a service that you can use to add interactive polls to your PowerPoint presentations. Your polls are created and delivered within your PowerPoint slides. Once you've added ParticiPoll to your PowerPoint you can create as many polls as you like. Each poll can have up to six response options. The best aspect of ParticiPoll is that you don't have to leave your slidedeck at all in order to administer the poll and see the results of your poll. Your audience can respond to your ParticiPoll poll through their cell phones, tablets, or laptops. To respond they simply go to the URL for your poll and choose a response. When you want to display the poll results you just click to the next element in your PowerPoint slidedeck and the results are displayed for all to see. All polls are anonymous.

AnswerGarden is a neat service that allows you to embed a open-ended feedback tool into your classroom blog or website. With an AnswerGarden embedded into your blog your students can simply type responses to your question and see their responses appear in a word cloud. Creating an AnswerGarden is a simple process that does not require you to create an account. To get started go to the AnswerGarden homepage and click "create AnswerGarden." On the next screen you will enter a question or statement for your students to respond to. To share your AnswerGarden with students you can give them the link or embed the AnswerGarden into your blog. Optionally, before sharing your AnswerGarden you can turn on moderation of responses and set an admin password.

Dotstorming combines a bit of Padlet (online sticky notes) with a polling tool. On Dotstorming you can create a space for people to post digital sticky notes. Those notes can contain text and or images. That part of Dotstorming is just like Padlet. What makes Dotstorming different is that once the notes are posted, you can have people vote for their favorite notes. As the creator of a Dotstorming space you can restrict the number of votes that each person can cast. For example, you could say that each person gets two votes and once those votes are cast they're prevented from casting any more votes. After the voting is completed, you can sort the notes according to the number of votes they received. See Dotstorming in action in this video (from freetech4teachers.com).

Tech Tip Tuesday: Google Drive 101

For those of you who are relatively new to using Google Drive, I have compiled a few links to help you master some of the basic functions and features.

Five Essential Google Drive Skills for Teachers

How to Make Copies of Google Docs that Aren't Directly Shared with You

Three Google Drive Features that Impress New Users

As always, if you would like personalized support, I am happy to be of service!

Tech Tip Tuesday: Two Time Savers for Assessment

Today's tips can help you use Google Apps to save time in two different assessment scenarios:

1. short, formative quizzes 
2. written assignments submitted using Google Docs.

Formative Quizzes
If you are giving an assessment that can be administered using Google forms (multiple choice, T/F, simple fill in the blank), I recommend using Flubaroo, a free tool that not only automatically scores student responses, but also:

• Computes average assignment score
• Computes average score per question, and flags low-scoring questions
• Shows you a grade distribution graph
• Gives you the option to email each student their score, and an answer key
• Lets you send individualized feedback to each student

This is a great way to get quick and dirty data on what students know in relation to specific learning targets in a timely manner. The Flubaroo user guide has clear, step by step instructions for how to set this up, and I am happy to provide support, as well.

Written Assessments
When providing students with feedback on written assignments, you may find yourself writing the same types of comments repeatedly. While this is good information for you, in that it identifies a skill that many students still need to work on, it can be exhausting to write or type the same thing over and over. If your students submit their work using Google Docs, you can create shortcuts, which allow you to type in a simple abbreviation that will then automatically convert to the full length comment. For specific instructions on how to set this up, check out this post from SmartBlog on Education.

Tech Tip Tuesday: QR Codes

Where will this QR Code take you?

During one of our recent learning walks, one teacher's take away was a reminder that he needs to be more conscious of incorporating opportunities for movement into all of his classes, even if that just means getting students out of their desks for a minute or two. Using QR codes is one way to get students up and moving. Here are some resources that will help you get started or perhaps provide you with some new ideas if you're already using them.

Here are a few quick ideas for getting started with QR Codes (from freetech4teachers.com):

• What QR Codes Can Do for You!
• Three Ways to Make Useful QR Codes for Your Students (includes info about the QR Treasure Hunt Generator)

For a more in-depth, philosophical and pedagogical discussion of this strategy, I recommend "QR Codes: Pushing the Narrative on Scannables" from Edutopia. 

If you are using QR codes in a lesson, let me know. Your colleagues would love to see this strategy in action!

Tech Tip Tuesday - Save & Share Browser Tabs

The newest twist on TTT is "Tech Tip Tuesday", a weekly blog post that includes a quick technology tip that will enhance teaching and learning in your classroom, help you stay organized and ideally, save you time. If you have a Tech Tip suggestion, you can: a) send it to Susan Payne, b) share in the comments, or c) do a guest blog post. Let's pool our collective knowledge and learn from each other!

Today's tech tip comes from SmartBlog on Education:

Tech Tip: How to save and share multiple browser tabs

By Ari Flewelling on January 12th, 2016 | Comments (0)

You’re sitting in your classroom researching websites for an upcoming lesson and you have about ten tabs open in your Google Chrome browser when you realize it’s almost 5pm and you need to leave to go home. One problem, what are you supposed to do with all the tabs? Here are two solutions to help you:

• TabCloud: This Google Chrome extension lets you save and name tabs. For example, say you have 10 tabs open pertaining to “The Great Gatsby.” Simply on Tab Cloud, name the group “Gatsby” and save it for later. You can access the tabs again by clicking on Tab Cloud.
• One Tab: With One Tab you can save your group of tabs and share the list as a web page or via QR code. This is great when working with students because you only have to share one link instead of several. You can also favorite tab groups if there are groups of tabs you use on a regular basis.

Innovative Discussion Format

Last week, Year 2 Innovation Institute students participated in a cross-curricular collaborative discussion, during which they were expected to reference texts from both their American Literature and their AP US History classes. Tiffany Kelley and Katie Elliott combined their 1B classes so that students could hear a wide range of voices and perspectives in a conversation focused around four guiding questions:

1. How are ecosystems and human society interdependent?
2. What does it mean to be safe in Colonial America?
3. What types of games do societies play?
4. How do power dynamics influence individual and collective action?

Upon entering the classroom students were randomly assigned to be in one of two groups. The fifteen students in the green group started in the inner circle and had approximately 30 minutes to discuss the first two guiding questions. The yellow group began in the outside circle, and each student was assigned to one of three smaller groups. These groups engaged in an online Skype chat that focused on the same two questions, and they also referred to the content and dynamics of the discussion happening in the inner circle. The online format provided an archived record of each student’s participation, allowing the instructors to primarily focus on recording notes about the inner circle students’ comments, questions, clarifications and references to the text. These two pieces of evidence enabled Tiffany and Katie to provide students with individualized feedback about their strengths and where they need to improve.

About halfway through the period, the yellow group moved to the inside circle for their face-to-face discussion of questions 3 and 4. In order to ensure more equitable participation from each individual (an issue that had surfaced in the green group’s discussion), the yellow group decided that they should raise their hands if they wanted to respond to the person speaking, and the current speaker would then call on someone, making an effort to distribute opportunities for participation equitably.

The concurrent online discussion was something that Tiffany had experimented with last year. “As an introvert, I am very interested in exploring ways of engaging all students, not just those most comfortable with sharing ideas aloud,” she says. “Last year I tried using Skype in the classroom, with small groups on Skype having a conversation where they could not only volley ideas digitally but also respond to the ideas being shared orally. This created more depth in our class discussions – as well as a bit of frustration. If the Skype group is too big, ideas are lost. Some students have a hard time listening to the inner, oral discussion and carrying on a digital discussion at the same time. Katie and I tried to use Skype to engage such a large group of students – some students liked it and others didn’t, so we will be refining ways of engaging all students as we continue to team teach and integrate our disciplines.”

Overall, Tiffany and Katie felt that the students did well with this format.  Reflecting on the experience, Katie said, “I was happy with the connections they were making, but felt that some students needed to work on using detailed evidence to support their opinions.” As part of their homework, students also reflected on their part in the discussion in preparation for a debrief of the entire process, which took place during the following class meeting. At that point, they also received individualized formative feedback on the amount and quality of their contributions to the conversation, so that they know what they did well and what they need to work on for the next formal discussion.

Using Twitter for Learning

Six PxHS staff members met at lunch today to explore using Twitter as a learning tool. Sascha, who has been using Twitter for about two years, walked new users through some of the basic features and demonstrated how to use a Twitter client like TweetDeck to organize various feeds on interesting topics using popular hashtags. Instructional Coach Susan Payne shared the following resources, which also include ideas for how to use Twitter in the classroom. We plan to do another session on September 11, so mark your calendars for 1:00 if you would like to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. If that time doesn't work for you, feel free to drop by and I would be happy to give you a personal tutorial.

See this link for an overview of nuts and bolts/how to use Twitter for your own professional learning. Click here for a list of useful hashtags.

A Sampling of Classroom Ideas:

7 Ideas for Using Twitter in the Classroom – Things you could try right away!

30 Innovative Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

35 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in The Classroom  (various content areas represented)