The first time I ever heard of ISTE was on twitter. I was participating in a twitter chat and EVERYONE was UBER excited about this ISTE. I looked it up and discovered it was the International Society for Technology in Education. But it is sort of like TED Talks -- most people aren't sure what TED stands for. If you ask someone what ISTE stands for you will get a few variations - International Society of Technology Educators (wrong) or International Society of Technology Education (also wrong). Technically this was the 3rd ISTE that I have attended, although that first year I went to ISTE Live which meant I could sit in on about 12 different sessions via a live feed. It was held in Philadelphia that year, and so I had to crawl out of bed at 6 a.m. for some sessions. I was really jealous of all the people who were actually there, and determined to go the next year. This year's ISTE was held in San Antonio, Texas. ISTE 2018 will be held in Chicago - start fundraising now. Just like last year, the Google Classes were really popular and some of my favorite. People line up for them sometimes an hour before they start and the room has limited space so you might not make it in the room. I went to several: One on using Google Earth in the classroom, one on Google Tips and Tricks, and a few more on various Google apps or tricks. I learned a TON of cool things. You might consider following @friEDTechAmy. She has also kinds of tricks to using Google. I really enjoyed her class. FREE T-SHIRTS One of my FAVORITE things at ISTE is the exhibit hall. EVERY tech COMPANY on the planet is there, and I LOVED talking to the makers of the products that I use in my class. I got to talk to the designer of Bloxels, who I had also spoken with last year when the company was in its infancy! It was great to tell him how much my students loved his game builder and how excited I was to see him succeed. I also got to talk to the people at Wonder Workshop, Class Dojo, Brain Pop, GoNoodle, Khan Academy and Google. Google just launched their internet safety program and it is amazing! It is called Be Internet Awesome and it is really great. DISRUPT THE SYSTEM ISTE also has an area set up called the Playground where you can actually put your hands on products and use them. I had entirely too much fun playing with Spheros, Rasberry Pi's, Dash and Dot Robots, Audrino's and all kinds of Google products. I met up with a really interesting organization focused on hacking educational apps. They were sporting these really cool Sons of Technology t-shirts. Their stated goal is to come up with ways to use educational apps that the designers never even thought of. They showed me how they had hacked Quizziz to create a collaboratively made quiz incorporating Google Sheets. It really pushed me to think about being creative in how I use the products. They were a big deal with a lot of the companies who loved their unique ideas, and wanted to see how they used their products. Quizziz also announced their new app Zip Quiz - students can practice skills at home using questions from the Quizziz database. They can even compete head-to-head with other students. I had a momentary stroke of genius when I suggested using Zip Quiz to play a Family Feud style game. I think I almost impressed the Sons of Technology guys. THINGS YOUR MOTHER WOULDN'T APPROVE OF The most significant part of ISTE though, are the human connections. They have tons of meet ups and campfires - where you can get together with people who have the same interests as you, teach the same subjects as you, or use the same products as you. I went to the Class Dojo meet up, the Go Noodle meet up, hung out in the blogger's cafe, and went to the Khan Academy meet up. Everyone I spent time with was a total "stranger" to me in that they were all people who I knew only through twitter. In fact, I roomed with a teacher from Tennessee who I had only met once before at last year's ISTE for a twenty minute lunch. We even stayed at an Air B and B, so technically, I roomed with a stranger in a stranger's house. Heck, we even took Lyft everwhere so I was always getting into a stranger's car! It was amazing to meet up with educators who I had been talking to online (via twitter) for years! Some of them are technology teachers just like me, and we were able to talk about things that work and things that we've created. We shared websites, and apps and our favorite people to follow on twitter. ALL of the companies that I am involved with are REALLY responsive and interested in how teacher's use their products and how they can support us even more. It is great to be able to talk to someone who can help improve your daily classroom life. READY, PLAYER ONE? I really enjoyed listening to Michael Matera who is a gamification genius. I had already purchased his spreadsheet which is a work of genius! Using Google sheets, he built a zillion formulas so that I can easily input my students and gamify my entire curriculum! It was great to see him in person. I had looked at some similar spreadsheets (Alice Keeler), but was intimidated about the amount of work involved. His spreadsheet is so sophisticated - it would've taken me years to develop something that complex. I am excited to put it into place this school year! LONG STORY, LONG If you get the chance to attend ISTE2018, DO IT!!! You will meet amazing people, get a change to talk to the makers of education apps, and be exposed to all the "surprise" updates of the summer. It is the best conference I've ever attended - and whatever you do, DO NOT SKIP the annual Ed Tech Karaoke Night. They use a live band, and you would be AMAZED at how many LIBERIANS are willing to perform AC/DC songs LIVE. Jen's List of ISTE TIPS and WONDERS
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Google Friends Learn to Code
I get far too excited about the craziest things, and when it comes to technology instruction this is no exception. The world of education has exploded with all kinds of websites and apps that describe themselves as "A Coding Game". Don't get me wrong, my students love Code.org and Tynker.com just as much as anyone, but these are not programming websites. Students who play these games do NOT learn to code. I might be the only teacher on the planet who hears about Hour of Code and responds with, "Meh." All of this has nothing to do with these websites, and everything to do with my students. I do not want to waste my students' time playing games; I want them to learn to code. I suppose to an outsider this might seem like a finer point, but I contend it is this finer point that separates the real from the pretend. While my students might immensely enjoy playing a Star Wars game where they use blocks of prewritten code to move a robot from point A to point B, it won't help them code and app or build a website - not for real, and I am all about the real. I have taught my student the very basic beginning of JavaScript, HTML/CSS and a little bit of SQL. These are real programming languages and just the beginning of what I want to teach them. Some of my students have pursued Ruby on their own, and I will be introducing them to Swift next year. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? Allowing kids to play games that utilize code without teaching them to code, leads them to believe that know how to program the computer. As they move on in school, they might choose to sign up for computer programming classes thinking that they are well prepared. Having students sign up for more computer programming classes in both high school and college might seems like a positive thing, but if we have not prepared them to succeed in these classes, we are introducing them to a frustrating experience that may, in fact, cause them to turn away from the very thing we hoped to encourage. Think of it this way, we don't have elementary students play the board game Operation, and then tell them they are surgeons. The game might peak their interests and push them toward studying human anatomy, but it doesn't make them proficient at anything - except keeping their hand steady enough to move a piece of plastic. SAVING THE FUTURE ONE LINE OF CODE AT A TIME My goal is to not only teach my students as much code as possible. I also want to make it possible for teachers to see not only the importance of teaching students to code, but the ease with which it can be done. I hope to set up a website as my part of my capstone piece that not only shows the researched reasons to promote learning true code, but links to ways to easily teach code. It will also have links for students and even parents to build up their own skills. In the future, I am hoping that our school will develop a business in which local businesses can have students create state of the art websites. This will give students real-world experience and provide them with funds to use for the future education, and will create strong ties to our community. It was last year that I discovered the wonders of Google Forms. I had used it off and on from time to time, but after attending ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) and was able to squeeze into the room dubbed the "Google Classroom", I learned about all the updates Google had made to their forms feature. They introduced Google Forms - Quizzes, and t was amazing. It was one of the things that really pushed me toward a paperless classroom. Google Forms is a MUCH more efficient way to assess your students, and to provide them with meaningful feed back quickly. I loved how quickly I could type a response to my students with detailed information on how they could make their responses even stronger. I loved that I could return their results within seconds, or if needed hold those results until every section of my class has completed a quiz or a test. I use Google Forms regularly in my class. In my reading class, my students take their weekly (curriculum) required vocabulary tests. I can embed pictures that help them remember the word meanings, and even include video clips of someone signing in ASL which is one way that I teach them meaning. It is so powerful to be able to support them with context clues, so that my students could be successful. I also use Google Quizzes for our weekly comprehension assessments. Here are some of my favorite features:
Moving Forward and SITE As I move forward with my driving question, I am hoping to accomplish two goals: 1. Demonstrate the need to shift toward "true" coding instruction in schools and 2. The ease with which ANYONE (students and teachers) can develop coding skills. Therefore my audience also addresses two audiences - teachers and students.
Sociocultural An obvious area that will need a great deal of focus involves the peopel who will be learning. The teachers who consider including coding in their classroom come from a varied environment and with different skills regarding technology. Some teachers love and embrace technology - always looking for new ways to innovate and move forward, while others are reluctant to incorporate any technology in their classrooms. They don't see themselves as technology experts, or may even see the increased use of technology as a negative trend in schools. It is imperative that I make sure to engage all of these individuals. Teachers are on the front lines of technology instruction, and so they must be fully trained and supported in order to train and fully support their own students. The students who will be experiencing the training also have diverse background and exposure to tech. Access to technology is the new divide - those who have WIFI and devices and those who do not. Any study that addresses anything technological must take into account that not everyone has access. It is not just a matter of differences in the quality and types of equiptment, but more than that, some students have no access or equiptment at all. Informational The biggest question that I have faced all along, is what has laready been studied regarding the impact of computer programming on critial thinking skills. Despite the tremendous push for more and more inclusion of coding in the classroom, there seems to be little study of what impact this has on students' thinking skills. If I am to persuade my audience of the necessity and importance of coding instruction, I must have evidence and support of its value for students. My own research was a small and limited study, and while it supported the concept that coding instruction does impact critical thinking in a postive way, it is far from enough to convince a school or a teacher, that learing HTML is an essential and important skill for the average 5th grader. I will also need to look at what support materials both the instructor and the student will need to succeed in teaching and learning coding. I am already aware of many places where students can learn to code, and plan to include descriptions and evaluations of them. I hope to create an ongoing resource hub and plan to garner input from other more experienced coders. Technical Considering the technical aspect of this endeavor could feel overwhelming. What access to technology do students have? What resources exist within the community? How can I overcome the technology gap between students who have access and those who do not? What are the necessary steps to take a student or a teacher form zero knowledge of computer programming to proficiency in some of the basic skills? What computer languages and/or activites are appropriate for each grade level and who is that determined? It is clear that my Capstone is in it's infancy stage with more questions than answers at this point, but the SITE model is helping to refine and clarify what it is that I hope to accomplish with this project. I understand the importance and impact of developing an understanding of coding and am slowly beginning to think of ways that I can demonstrate this importance, and support others to consider dipping their toes in the waters of coding instruction and learning.
A.
I am a huge fan of using social media to fuel your personal learning network (PLN). I began utilizing Twitter nearly two years ago, but really embracing it as a PLN support system, a year ago. I have made connections with fellow educators around the United States, and connected to resources that have transformed not only my classroom, but the classrooms of my coworkers. I have spent a great deal of time sharing the power of social media with my coworkers and have even set up smaller twitter chats to help them see how they can connect with other educators. One of my most powerful connections involves a teacher who lives in Tennessee. We met in a twitter chat and discovered the following: we both teach technology, we both teach at a Title 1 school, we both teach students who have little to no WiFi access outside of school. It is so powerful to share ideas, tips, and plans with someone who has a similar teaching position. It is so rare, particularly when you are a specialist, to find someone who is doing just what you do, and I only found her because of social media. It is important to remember, however, that my twitter account is a professional one -- it isn't appropriate for me to retweet news from my favorite film actor or musical group. As a professional, I must make sure that my twitter account is professional too. This caused me to create two twitter accounts - one is personal and one is professional. Thoughtfully and carefully tweeting, retweeting and responding is important as I maintain a professional social media footprint. B. I do not follow any students on social media. I do follow several former students, but did not start following them until they were 18 years old. Having taught high school for nearly a decade, I found this a necessary and essential policy. I do NOT want access to my students social media accounts, and have made my personal social media accounts private. According to district policy, teachers must not be social media friends with students. However, I do occasionally accidentally stumble across a student social media account, or have researched a student's social media in order to solve a problem, or research issues of bullying. One extreme case occurred when I was teaching high school, and one of my freshman girls was suicidal because of them rumors a boy was spreading about her through social media. I contacted my principal and showed him the posts that had written about her, and her own posts about her personal despair. We met with her and her parents, and were able to get her the help she needed. While, I disagreed with some of the responses my principal made (the boy suffered NO consequences for his actions), I am grateful that I took the time to listen to my student, and had the technical savvy to research the situation. Today that young lady is twenty-five years old, and a crisis counselor. Social media was a powerful tool in this situation, and gave me the evidence I need to force the principal to take this issue seriously. I do not have a class Instagram account or class Facebook account. Having spent a year being filmed for a documentary, I am VERY aware of the necessity of waivers and student's privacy rights. I have seen some fantastic examples of using a class Instagram, and am not necessarily opposed to its use but would NEVER include pictures of my students faces without permission, and would endeavor to use pictures of projects and work, rather than people. It is ESSENTIAL to be familiar with your district guidelines, your school's guidelines, and which students have opted out of your school's media release. I've included a link to the document we created regarding creating social media guidelines because I'm really proud of the document we created, and also because I think it is important and useful information to consider. CLARK
Key Ideas Costs of Ineffective Training
BAGGIO Key Ideas
Clarity is everything.
When planning any lesson whether it is reading instruction or technology instruction, it is essential to know and understand what it is you want your learners to master. Clark breaks down the important components to ensure that this clarity of purpose takes place before beginning your lessons. Clark's Developing Technical Training lays out the process of building and creating effective lessons to support technical training. Moving from assessing need to implementation are a series of steps that looks closely at what skills and understanding is necessary for corporate and classroom success. Tying this together with Dervin's Sense Making and understanding how our students process information, empowers educators to create lessons that effectively deliver essential content to our students. It isn't enough for math teachers to understand how to add and subtract themselves, but rather they need to know the essential steps for completing these processes, and understand how the individuals they teach understand and process those steps. All of this is pushing us closer and closer to providing content that is not only pertinent to our students, but digestible and practical. The driving question I began with: What impact does learning a computer programing language (html/css) have on critical thinking skills, remains relevant to me and my students. As I continue forward building our technology design lab, I want to ensure that content I deliver is practical, accessible and relevant. As my students begin their journey through the digital landscape, it is important that I thoughtfully empower them to navigate this road in ways that are safe and useful. No learning exists within a vacuum nor is it disconnected from other subjects or content, so as I build lessons I must not only look closely at the content I am delivering but ways to connect to other areas of student learning. Need to Know: Which computer languages would be most useful to students? What activities are supported with these languages? How can computer programming become embedded with regular course content? How can I create cross-curricular connections? Audience: Teachers who use technology or hope to begin using technology. Update to driving question: Is teaching computer programing an appropriate use of educational time? OR Is Hour of Code a waste of time? I have recently become VERY addicted to screen casting and have been using ScreenCast-O-Matic. I have even taught my students how to use it, requiring them to create a screencast of a slide deck as the last assignment of the year. I really appreciated how easily it synced with Google Classroom. All my students had to do when they had completed their assignment was click a button and add it to their assignment!
Last week, however, I discovered Soapbox which is a free Chrome extension! It has some amazing aspects that other free screencasting programs lack -- the ability to edit! Soapbox not only allows you to edit your material, but even edit the view. You can start out with a shot that includes your screen, and a small webcam window in the corner, but then you can switch and have the web cam go full screen. You can also have the computer go full screen, and can even add an action statement at the end of your video. This is a tool that would be awesome for classroom instruction, and to introduce to students who in my classroom are working with Chromebooks. I love finding useful extensions that work well with what we already have. I tend to use Safari at home, as I have a MAC All in One, but have added Chrome as a choice so that I can play around with Soapbox this summer. I am really looking forward to working with it next week during curriculum development -- my favorite week to gear up for the next school year. I've seen it used and used it on a very limited basis to date, but loved its sophisticated look and ease of use. I think my students will be really excited about it. You can find it in the chrome extensions. My foray into a digital classroom experience, stemmed from necessity. That's the way these things usually go, isn't it? I had just been hired at my current site as an ELD instructor, and I would have 8 different classes coming to see me each day. It was a complicated schedule that left me with trying to figure out how to manage so many classes. I also had to update my credential — as I had earned my teaching credential in the DARK AGES, and needed to add some certifications. In the process of taking a class online, I was assigned looking at some online resources. IN the process of doing this homework, I saw a blurb about Class Dojo. The rest is history, as they would say.
I had been overwhelmed with trying to keep track of classroom management with 8 different classes, and Class Dojo was the perfect solution. This was in the early days with their own digital experience, and it was pretty much simply a class management app. They have made quite a journey in the last three years, and so have I! We have both come to see the digital experience as one that can really add to the classroom, not just logistically but in the areas of collaboration, community, creativity and even mental health. Their emphasis on building a positive classroom community that supports the learners fits beautifully with my own. I plan to continue to use this app as I have for the past three years. Looking at my classroom and determining "how I am going to incorporate teaching digital literacy" is pretty much what my class is all about. I begin the first project each school year focused on making sure that my students are safe and competent on the internet. Many people tend to focus on cyber bullying and the largest aspects of safety (not giving out personal information), but I am trying to fine-tune these lessons, especially because I teach the same students for four years. I want my program to progress, as they progress. Common Sense Media has the best material I've seen, and I use it in conjunction with Near Pod to build lessons where students look at things like digitally enhanced use in advertisement, and gender roles. Understanding the world of digital media is a new aspect of reading comprehension. Students must be taught how to interpret this new vast world. The other aspect that I consider part of digital literacy involves the how of digital life. I spend a good portion of my early classes — especially with my 2nd and 3rd graders teaching them all about Google docs, slides, sheets, forms, email, etc. I also spend a small portion of each class with my 2nd and 3rd graders teaching them keyboarding — however, I do not simply let them play keyboarding games, but rather teach them correct hand position and help them with drills. I would love for our school to be able to purchase and use Keyboarding without Tears which is a phenomenal program that supports reading skills, while practicing typing. Tragically, it is VERY expensive. For now, I direct them while using Typing Web -- requiring them to work on the lessons — not just play the games. Our school is in a fortunate position, in that we have a credentialed teacher in the computer lab (technology design lab). This is not something most schools have, and computer time become less digital instruction, and more completion of various computer programs/games (FAST Math, Gigi Math, Read180, iRead, etc). I am hoping that our model becomes the norm because asking teachers to add true digital instruction into an already packed schedule is an awful lot to ask. |
AuthorJen has been teaching school for awhile now. She's learned some stuff, but she's got tons more to learn. Archives
October 2017
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