Taking the Edge Off of Tech

As someone who is incredibly excited about the opportunities provided by technology, sometimes I don't realize why some are not as excited as I am. I am constantly looking for technology to enhance learning as well as open new dimensions of learning for my students. But for many, new tech tools can be a bit frightening - especially if you're trying them in front of a group of teenagers who may or may not be very forgiving. I was reminded of this fear recently in a tech class I was teaching for teachers as one teacher explained her anxiety about "messing it up" in class. This opened up a great discussion about the value of mistakes and the relationships built by learning together. I always tell my class, "Okay guys, this is new for me so let's try it out and see how it works. I value your feedback on this."

This anxiety over trying new technology combined with a lack of understanding about the function and benefits of many available new tech tools often inhibits meaningful technology integration in classrooms and can limit student learning.

In the last part of the school year, our Technology Focus Group decided to create a series of short videos designed to communicate the function of these new tech tools while at the same time addressing the anxieties by giving some basic how-to information. We shared these on our school's professional development group in Edmodo so that they would be readily accessible to all school employees. These videos were posted roughly once every two weeks with a challenge to try it and share your experiences. I wish I could say the feedback was immediate and positive, but actually, we have not had a lot of feedback from teachers... yet. It takes time, and we will continue these infomercials in the coming school year. Below is a video that we shared to communicate the many uses of Google Forms and to provide basic information for getting started.

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ISTE2014: Alan November's #1st5days

Alan November's session on the last day of ISTE really resonated with me. What do teachers and admin do the first 5 days of school? Teach procedures! What do we need to be doing? Building relationships, cultivating passions and helping students find their own ways to learn.
Teachers should ask students "What's your passion?" and then help them find the best minds to follow. November gave great examples of how our students, though we may call them digital natives, do not necessarily know how to harness the power of the web (Google, social media +) to learn and grow. With one student who was shocked to find that November learned so much on his own rather than through a class, November asked him what he wanted to do? When the student replied that he wanted to be an entrepreneur, November pointed him to Twitter and the Harvard Business Review. But following HBR is not enough. November showed him instead how to draw from the much smaller group of people/businesses that HBR was following. These are the ones that HBR has already determined to be worth it. Follow these people to learn about starting your own business.
"It used to be a teacher's job to teach the information. Now the teacher's job is to teach how to find the information."
One of the things we need to teach in the first 5 days is rigorous research skills. Regardless of what subject area we teach, all teachers must teach students how to do research online. For example, while all of our students know how to type key words into Google and do a search, they do not fully know the "grammar and syntax" of Google. In trying to find how many schools in the UK teach the American Revolution, most people would enter something like "schools in UK that teach American Revolution." The results from this search and the one a well-versed Googler might use are dramatically different. Using site:uk in the search bar yields results from the UK. Certainly I need to do some learning on Google grammar and syntax as well!
Luckily, we can all access the Google Guide to instantly have these tips available.
How different would the start of the year be if instead teachers asked what students wanted to learn about and then helped them learn the ways to explore these ideas? Summer, yes, but teachers are always planning... The beginning of school is perfect for this. It shows we care about what they want to learn. It helps build relationships between teachers and students and build community within classrooms. It sets the tone for the year - teacher as a facilitator to learning. It lets students know that they matter and gives teachers a space to encourage them on their individual paths.
Ready to hone my Google search skills and plan my 1st5days!

Google Forms + Google Maps = Wow!

Google continues to impress me... I can't hide my excitement over all things Google! At ISTE2014, I was able to sit in on some of the sessions in the Google for EDU theatre area. Glad I sat in on Moss Pike's session about Using Google Maps to Tell a Story. He went over how to use form responses as data for automatically generating maps.

1. Create a Google Form and send it to gather location information. You could use this at the start of the year with students entering the most interesting place they went over the summer and the farthest distance they traveled over the summer. Moss also incorporating so scale info such as how highly you would recommend to a friend or how expensive the place was.
2. Go to mapsengine.google.com. You can use this site to create a new map based on your form responses spreadsheet. The maps engine allows many levels of customization, including layers, labeling formats and styles, as well as drawing directly on the map, connecting points on the map, and measuring distances on the map.
3. After naming your map, you can also give the initial layer a name. For example, if you ask students for two different places, you can plot the most interesting place on one layer and the farthest place traveled on another layer.
4. Choose Import and select your responses spreadsheet from your Google Drive. You'll get a message that Google is fetching the file. Just a note, I first got an error message because some of my column headings had incompatible characters in them. The best approach when creating your form is probably enter a one or two-word name for the question and then give specifics in the Help Text. This way your column headings will be simplified.

5.  You'll be prompted to choose which column(s) in your spreadsheet represents locations where you want placemarks on the map, and then to select the column that represents the name of the location or person. 

6.  You can create other layers and go through the same import process to add different information to the map. When you click on a placemark it provides all the info associated with that particular entry.

7.  If you choose the Style menu, you can style the pins by the data values using categories or a color gradient. For example, you can color code locations that were highly recommended differently from those that were not recommended. Same with cost.

I'm sure this is just a small bit of what the Google maps engine can do, but it's enough to get me started using it and exploring more!

3 New Things for the New School Year

Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher suggested picking just three things to work with from all of the many ideas and inspirations brought on through ISTE. This is not an easy task! The three that come to mind for me for my middle school math classroom are

• Integrating Minecraft as a means for student exploration of concepts and demibstration of learning
• Teaching coding as a way to build and strengthen student perseverance and problem solving skills
• Building an online library of student-created instructional videos teaching math concepts and skills, similar to MathtrainTV as mentioned by Alan November

With our implementation of GAFE and our purchase of Chromebooks for everyone, the instructional videos are certainly possible and something I have done before as a teacher. While I've never had students create instructional videos, I can definitely see this as a strong learning tool for students as well as an excellent resource for other students. I am excited to use WeVideo to do this, along with a screen casting app, possibly ScreenCastify. My students really enjoyed creating video PSAs last year and did well with Windows Live MovieMaker with very little help from me. 

Coding... We have such a need for this at our school! I am somewhat in shock that so few schools teach computer science in today's world. With a game-writing approach I think my students would love this! Code.org has many training links and Tynker, a collection of coding resources with a teacher dashboard (an ISTE find), is also a possibility. So many coding tutorials and projects to choose from. I think I would like to build this into my class on a weekly basis. 

Of the three that I'm considering, Minecraft feels the most foreign to me. Although I have Minecraft EDU installed on my laptop, I have not yet explored how to build in it, or how to teach 7th grade math concepts with it. Luckily, @MrBrotherton has plenty of resources to share from his own classroom experiences teaching with minecraft. Lots to do this summer!

ISTE2014: Favorite Quotes

Broadband is the new electricity. (Jaime Casap, Google), Seize the limitation (Phil Hansen, Experimental Artist), Never underestimate the power of a kid who is driven by his passion to create (Rafranz Davis), The new divide is between those who have power and autonomy to choose their own learning path and those who do not, (Jennifer Roberts), RAKtivist (Tamara Letter), We must have a disrespect for the impossible (Jaime Casap), Iteration is the new failure (Jaime Casap), Making helps us see ourselves as producers, not just consumers (Dale Dougherty), We need to ask what if instead of settle with what is (Phil Hansen), Body language is the most democratizing interface (Guy Hoffman), It's time that we get uncomfortable for our profession (Jeff Charbonneau), Ask kids "What's your passion?" then help them find the best minds to follow (Alan November), It used to be the teacher's job to teach the information. Now it's the teacher's job to teach how to find the information (Alan November), I'm going to make stuff up. It's your job to figure out when I'm making stuff up (Alan November), We first need limitation in order to become limitless (Phil Hansen), What is your passion and how will you use it to impact the world? (Angela Maiers), You are a genius and the world needs your contribution (Angela Maiers), When you give students a purpose you give them the power to be masterful (Hugh McDonald), Passion is not what you like to do but what you are willing to endure for (Angela Maiers)

ISTE2014: Notes from Ignite Sessions, Day 2

So much discussion about augmented reality this year -- I feel a bit behind. I've had Aurasma on my iPad for some time now but admit I have not explored the possibilities! Enjoyed Tricia Anton's talk about AR including creating Aurasma iMovie trailors and AR flashcards as well as using augmented reality as a starting point for writing.
Another big topic at ISTE this year - Genius Time, 20% Time, Innovation Day, Play. Enough pop on this to make we want to explore, even though I only see my students for 65 minutes each day. Jennifer Bond talked about Nurturing Students' Passions with an Innovation Day that was dedicated to students creating anything they wanted to, a "Passion Time." I want to do some exploration on ways to get started with this in Jonathan Jarc also talked about 20% time from the perspective of 20% Inquiry Time, based on a Google idea. I did not realize that Google Maps and gmail came out of 20% time -- very cool! He challenges students to investigate, learn something new and produce something. They keep an activity log and turn that in with their digital product - an app, a game, a video.
middle school classrooms - departmentalized, short meeting time.
Liked Trisha Callella's challenge to close the generational technology gap by flipping the learning. Children teach adults through instructional video. This topic came up many times over the conference. Alan November pointed out that teachers' perspectives often fail to account for the new learners' feelings and process. We've known it for so long! Children can more easily explain to other children something that they have learned. I know I learn material/concepts best when I am asked to teach it to others -- our students do too! Great idea to have students create these instructional videos, both for adults and for other students.
Billy Krakower was the first person at the conference that I heard talking about Mystery Skype calls and I can't wait to try it. What a great way to engage student's curiosity, questioning and problem solving skills!
The more I heard about coding and how it increases students' ability to persist, to overcome failures and to learn from mistakes (Jack Lawicki) the more sold I was on teaching my students to code -- even if I myself am not a coder. I'll learn with them! Another tip from ISTE presenters - learn with them, it's okay to be uncomfortable, put ourselves in the place of learner just like our students.
Loved Tamara Letter's sharing of how she pledged to do 40 random acts of kindness and later took this into her classroom with student bloggers documenting the RAKs. She has inspired me to be a "Raktivist"!

ISTE2014: TakeAways from the Opening Ignite Sessions

My first ISTE and I was totally pumped up after the first round of Ignite Sessions! The format is wonderful for getting across a range of great ideas in a short amount of time - 20 slides, 15 seconds each, total of 5 minutes per presenter. Similar to Pecha Kucha. Really want to incorporate this into PD for our school - a learning and inspirational showcase that provides lots of jumping off points for following your own path.
Presenters and takeaways:

• Reshan Richards, developer of Explain Everything, different ways to do formative assessment, hence, the app! Can't wait to check out his constructivisttoolkit.com.
• Pat Yongpradit, Director of Education at code.org. Hard to believe that in today's world only 1 in 10 schools offers computer science. Mine does not, but I certainly want to get started with it! They are creating a K-5 curriculum and already have so many resources on code.org. Need to educate, advocate and celebrate computer science!
• Rafranz Davis shared about her son who followed his passion for making puppets, a great example of self directed learning. He learned watching YouTube and shared his work with others online. Love her quote, "Never underestimate the power of a kid who is driven by his passion to create." Check Braeden out at Braedensartplanet.blogspot.com. Her charge - "Make sharing a goal!" Learn -- Create -- Share.
• Tanya Avrith on digital citizenship suggests we have students create acceptable use guidelines and says we must look at children as "citizens of a connected world." We have to provide opportunities for them to be actively engaged online, to practice digital citizenship in our classrooms.
• Jennie Magiera shared on PD and the need for authenticity. She suggests developing IEPs for teachers - Individual Exploration Plans. Teacher need connection.
• Thanks to Nicholas Provenzano I now have an appreciation for Phineas and Ferb. My nephew watches this show and I never watched with him to see that it is a show about makers!
• Consider the difference between teaching content and creating collaborative learning spaces. "The new divide is between those who have power and autonomy to choose their own learning path and those who don't," Jennifer Roberts. Makes so much sense! In today's schools, how many students actually get to do this? How can teachers work to find the balance between district pacing guides and student self-directed learning paths?

What a great way to start the conference! Wish I could hear more from all of these presenters!

ISTE2014: Dembo's Digital Storytelling

Steve Dembo's session on Storytelling for the YouTube Generation was one that I joined late after leaving an unproductive session -- and I am so glad I did! Of course, he is an excellent presenter and simply being in the room lifted my conference-tired spirits -- but the takeaways -- wow! Dembo shared digital stories from teachers across globe who have remodeled, remixed and renewed digital storytelling formats. I realized just how old-school my storytelling models were!
Some ideas I will be exploring this summer and in the upcoming school year:

• Kinetic typography
• Using social media as a publishing tool during screencasting - a text conversation, a series of facebook posts, comments, replies and likes
• WeVideo, a Chrome app with an incredible range of customization and editing tools. This free app will let place a video within a video allowing students to insert themselves into the screen as they talk about what is playing in the background video. Great idea to download a starter kit of video clips from Discovery Education that students can use as material for creating their remixes.
• Remixing - love his example of remixing a Katy Perry video with goat screams! Yes, it is better! 
• Recapping a story in 1 minute in 1 take. Great Forest Gump example.
• So many more!

I am grateful that he shared his presentation materials - so much shared in so little time, it was difficult to keep up!