Battling the Cue Blues

So, I'm starting this blog post during the 2nd day of CUE.  Who knows when I'll finish it.


Honestly, I'm a little disappointed so far this year.  I'll still come back next year because maybe it was a fluke.  I left many sessions early so far, and the planning of the rooms did not go well.  If you follow me on twitter, you knew how I felt about the Leslie Fisher debacle.

Since they were smart enough to put her in Oasis 4 on Thursday, I was able to see her Tools You Can Use Tomorrow session, which I saw at ISTE.  There was a ton of stuff that was new that I was learning about for the first time and lots of new additions to things I already knew.  One thing that I need to look into that she mentioned was Insert Learning.  Their webpage says:

 "InsertLearning is a Chrome extension that lets you turn websites into interactive lessons. Our toolbar is preloaded on this page so you can try it out without installing anything or signing up. Click on the buttons to transform this text."

I need to figure out what I can try this out with.  I'm thinking maybe something informational to prepare either my 11th graders for The Great Gatsby or my 10th graders to A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Any suggestions on good websites for either of those?

I skipped the Thursday keynote in order to (barely) get in and see a session by Brent Coley about Google Forms.  He didn't revolutionize my thinking about forms, but he definitely had me thinking of some pretty neat uses for them.  I use a Google sheet to keep track of parent contact.  He uses a gForm.  I didn't think about using that, which would give me a time stamp that I don't currently have.  So, I need to create a form or add the time to the date when I fill it out.  I think I'll also be turning the PLC minutes into a gForm so I have all the information throughout the year in a spreadsheet.  Oh, the joys of being the "boss" (read: the bullet-ridden messenger).

I enjoyed the Google Innovator's Slam that featured people like Alice Chen and JR Ginnex-Orinion.  I found out that EdTechTeam's CheckMark extension can now be customized; so, I might use it now.  I also got some neat little hacks to gSlides with videos that I might give a try (you can autoplay and shrink a video for music in the background of a presentation)....

It's the last day of CUE.  Took a break and am coming back while I wait for my first session.  Apparently, the "theme" of putting big-name presenters in smaller rooms has continued.  They have Alice Keeler is a smaller room already filled (pretty sure I won't be able to get into her next session, which I planned on going to) while other rooms have a sprinkling of people in it.  For those that don't know, Alice is a Google Classroom Guru.  If you use Classroom, you need to check her out.



I've already learned something about a tool I use that I didn't know and Kate Baker's presentation hasn't even started.  I had no idea that Actively Learn had a gDoc add-on.

So to reflect on yesterday (Friday), my morning sessions pretty much sucked.  It was a mess with not being able to get in for Leslie Fisher, too many people, and I left all the sessions I actually got into early for one reason or another.  I had an over-priced lunch in the Rocks Lounge at the Renaissance and then checked out Ann Kozma's Diamond Time session.   It was a great session.  Totally hit me in the feels, especially the #LAM (Life Altering Moments) section.  One of our students was shot at the Vegas massacre, so that hit home.  The rest of Friday was kind of a dud for me.

Yeah!  Got into the 2nd Alice Keeler, so I'll continue with this once I get back home from the Springs of Palms....

I lazed about the majority of the rest of the weekend.  My calves were certainly sore.  Saturday's sessions were much better, despite the issues I've already stated.  I really enjoyed the Kate Baker presentation.  I really need to find a way to incorporate and try out Formative.   I may try it with my colleagues the next time I need to do some PD instead of trying to fit it into what I'm doing in class. I also learned that with PDFs, I can also add graphic novels to Actively Learn.

Alice Keeler's session on Classroom tips was really good and that was a session that could have been a double session.  The biggest thing that resonated with me was the fact that she doesn't make copies of any of her gDocs, Slides, etc.   She names the versions and restores back to the "original".  I think I may give that a try with some of the things I do, especially the stuff I use every year and make copies and rename with the date to keep track.  That would certainly help illiminate (eventually) my "archives".

I go in for a morning presentation on the premium aspects of NoRedInk tomorrow, taking the rest of the day off for my CT scan, and then back for ILT meeting and then physical therapy.  I may have to take the next day off too.

I've Done Bad, but Google Classroom Has Done Good

Well, I haven't done much better in being a more consistent blogger, have I?

My excuses are kind of piss poor too, or maybe not really.  June was crazy, as the last weeks of school usually are.  Then I was off to ISTE in San Antonio (Had a nice trip, but wasn't that crazy about ISTE this year.  Maybe more on that later) before I came home and got a call for a surgery I didn't think was going to happen, and then I had said surgery and was recovering from it.  Surgery wasn't that serious (deviated septum), but it did take a big chunk of energy from me.  Now, I'm getting prepared to go back to school.

We have a really short summer in our district this year.  Preparing for and recovering from my surgery took the majority of my July and now school starts in less than two weeks.

I have a lot of Feedly posts to read through, so I should definitely have some Read Reports coming out.  Maybe I'll space them out some.

But I'm super duper, mega excited for the new Google Classroom updates released this week.

I'll admit, the animation in the Google for Ed blog post about the updates got me really good thinking that there was a way to toggle between a Teacher View and Student View, but since that doesn't seem to be a possibility, it was...

via GIPHY

But let's talk about some of the updates that actually DID happen:

Single View of Student Work: If you go to your Student tab, you can now click on a student and see all the assignments for that student.  You can also filter that page for work that has been turned in, graded, or is missing.  For someone who deals with a lot of late work from apathetic 11th graders, this is my favorite update.  I think this is the one had me like...

Reorder Classes:  This is the one that most people have been waiting for.  You can now click and drag your classes around on the homepage to put them in any order you want.  This also changes the order in which they appear on the drop down menu.  This is great for those of us that want to put like classes together even if they aren't next to each other during our day.  For instance, last year, I could have had my 1st and 4th period 11th-grade classes right next to each other.

Decimal grading:  Pretty sure this one is self-explanatory (If it's not, there is a link above you can use).  This was only an issue for me on occasion, but sometimes you just don't want to give that full point for something, so now you don't have to.

There were 5 other Google Classroom-specific updates, but I'm kind of apathetic to them, so I don't have much to say on them (Hey look! I'm acting like an 11th-grader).

Overall, this update had me feeling verklempt.

The Read Report Lives (Part 2)

Continuing on in trying to catch up and be a better blogger, here are a few more articles from my Feedly and my thoughts on them.

Screenshot

Back in April 2016, Google's Education Blog talked about 4 Ways to Use Polling in Google Classroom.  If you use the Question function on Google Classroom (GC), and choose multiple choice instead of short answer, you can create a way to poll your students without creating a Google Form.  I had forgotten about this since I don't tend to use the question function and instead use Verso for online discussions.  But, I've already set one up for next week to help my 11th graders, who are doing a very big research paper, self-monitor their progress.  The blog also mentioned it's a good way to get student feedback, for exit tickets, and to guide student discussions.


At the end of the same mother, Sylvia Duckworth from EdTechTeam, talked about taking her knowledge of (what was then) GAFE for granted and what she did to make sure to pass the Google Level 2 exam.  She offered 3 Tips to Rock the Google Level 2 EDU Certification.  I'm sure I kept this because it was my plan over the summer to get my Level 2 Certification, but that didn't pan out.  Then my district offered Level 1 Certification courses, but I already had mine and so I asked if Level 2 would be offered.  They said it would be, and it was, but the class in December got cancelled.  It is now in May.  I've gone and checked out some of the training modules, but I haven't had the time to really look at them or the resources our Program Specialist put together.  Maybe I can get some of that done during Spring Break in April (Ha. Then I would have come full circle).  One thing I have done when looking at the modules is I go straight to the Review Quizzes and see what I don't actually know and then study that instead of reading over information that I've already figure out on my own in my usage of the G Suite products.



In May, Jennifer Gonzlez at the Cult of Pedagogy posted (and podcasted) about ways to make better use of Twitter.  She talks about finding your tribe, having conversations, sharing, participating in Twitter chats (mine is #caedchat - though I need to get more involved with it), do research, and communicate with students and parents.  Now, I have my personal twitter, which I use for the first 5 things Jennifer mentions, but I created a school twitter for my students/parents.  I don't get much traction out of the latter, but then again, most of the kids seemed to have moved to SnapChat.

In that same month, Valencia Clay over at Edutopia posted about Intrinsic Motivation vs. Standardized Tests. I think, at the time, I was interested because I had been working on my action research project with my two partners, and a large part of it involved extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.  She'd used a lot from the work of Daniel Pink and his book, Drive (which you should read), but one thing in her article really caught my attention.  One of the questions she says we should have students explore is "How will achieving well on this exam impact me a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now?"  Now, I'm admittedly biased against any high-stakes standardized testing and think there is too much of it.  I also think there is too much no-little-stakes standardized testing (my 10th graders take 5-6 a year). But, some of these standardized tests can impact a student.  Our 11th-grade students take the SBAC and have the EAP questions attached to it.  That can impact them because - depending on how well they do on the mixture of questions (SBAC and EAP) - it determines whether or not they need to take ERWC or any remedial English or Math courses in college (it essentially replaces placement tests).

I think that's a good plethora for now.  Next time, we'll cover the month of June and maybe more.

Add-Ons Can Save Lives, Or At Least Time

It's been awhile since I've made a post about anything other than Kid President.  It's been a very busy year.  I no longer have to worry about my Master's Degree, but I'm department chair this year and become a site rep for the union.  We also have had a lot of administrative absences for various reasons and a few of us have been picking up some of the slack when we can.

Last week, my Safe School Ambassador "club" hosted an Anti-Bullying Week.  That kept me pretty busy, but that's a kind of busy that is definitely worthwhile.  We got some help from one of the AVID classes and created a "Take What You Need, Give What You Can" board to share

#takewhatyouneed #givewhatyoucan #endbullying #bpawsitive

A photo posted by Miss Barron (@missbarronsfhs) on Oct 24, 2016 at 2:30pm PDT

I'm, as always, behind in my grading.  One thing that helped me so far this year is a Google Doc add-on called JoeZoo.  It's not perfect.  It would be great if you could go from giving grammatical feedback on an assignment, to grading it (using a rubric to give it a grade) instead of having to go back to the start screen.  But, if you use many of the same rubrics for different assignments, it's pretty handy.  I just had to set up my districts narrative rubric once, and now I can use it with multiple assignments.  It saved me a lot of time and it will show the students the areas they need to work on.

It also integrates with your Google Classroom (GC), so you don't need to enter in all your students and assignments.  If you have them in GC, it's there in JoeZoo.  I still suggest edits for mistake students make because the feedback function is not foolproof.

I discovered two new Docs add-ons the other day as well that I'm pretty excited about, though like JoeZoo, they aren't foolproof (apparently, it's nigh on impossible for AIs to identify comma splices).  These two add-ons have similar functions:  proofreading.  One is called GradeProof and the other is Proofread Bot.

GradeProof Screengrab

GradeProof reminds me of Grammarly in function and aesthetic.  I really like it.  It gives statistical information too like how many words, sentences, etc. the paper has.  It also gives a readability score and a "grade level".  The grade level isn't really what most teachers would consider a grade level.  What it is is a number of years it is estimated one would have to be in school in order to underestand the text.  So, my students and I figured out that the higher a readability percentage, the lower the grade level was.

Proofread Bot is interesting in that it explains the error and why it shouldn't be made.  I like that about it because it teaches along with guiding you through corrections that maybe should be made. This tool in particular could assist students in self (and peer) editing. Here's a video to see it in action:

I was a little surprised to hear about the change in name for GAFE to G Suite.  I'm curious how that will affect the Ed Tech world.  For instance, will EdTechTeam rename their GAFESummits?

Nurturing Learning Communities Reflection 6

Here was this week's reflective prompt for my class: Do you have any global connections? How did you acquire them? If you don’t how will you try to make global connections? What do you hope that your global connections will do for you? What can you do for them?

Virtually, that is

I know that I have "global" connections, but they are indirect connections through PLNs and such.  I have one person from Germany that recently added me to one of their lists and followed me on Twitter and one from the Dominican Republic.  Is that global enough?

This did make me think about the fact that I don't think you can force connections.  This is a world of lurking more than dialoguing between each other.  At least that how I feel right now, as I tried to engage people last week in various discussions with questions posed to various hashtags.  I got no response other than people adding me to lists or favoriting my tweet.  I'm not trying to scold anyone with that, but it is a bit hard to make connections, at least meaningful ones when people don't respond.

Like I said last week, I think Google+ might be better for making connections.  At least if you are a part of the EdTechTeam's Google+ community.  I really enjoy EdTechTeam.  I went to one of their FutureReady Summits last summer, probably a year ago today actually, and right around Thanksgiving, I went to one of their GAFE Summits.  I'm going again in August as it's in my neck of the woods.  

It was during the last summit in Temecula, that I started making some of my connections.  I was able to do that through the GEG SoCal Google+ Community.  At both the summit and at CUE, they did a meetup, which is both intimidating and fun.  If you wanted to get started with finding a GEG (Google Educators Group) for your area, start here.  I highly suggest it.

Cue 2016 Takeaways and Thoughts

Like the last few years, I was really excited to attend the National Cue Conference in Palm Springs this year.  One more year and I can nab a 5-year member badge ribbon.

Our school had a very large contingent this year with 12 people (including two admin).

One day, I'll feel knowledgeable enough to present.  It's a goal (#goals).

The opening day Keynote with Brad Montague, co-creator of Kid President, was

His positivity and energy and love for all were so palpable.  It was really inspiring.  The quotes and information that stood out were:

• ”You were once a child, too”
• “Be what you needed when you were younger”
• “Lots of things are contagious: fear, anger, hate...viruses.  But joy, hope, love are the best kinds of contagions.”
• “Treat everybody like it’s their birthday”
• “Haters gonna hate.  Huggers gonna hug!”
• Keep sharing your voice
• You are powerful
• It doesn’t matter who gets the credit.  It matters that it happened.
• Choose joy!

I missed out on my friend Crystal Kirch's session on Flipped Classrooms because her room was overflowing with people, and there wasn't any room. Isn't that AWESOME?

I left my first session part way through. It wasn't what I thought it would be about. I can't use Minecraft with my students since it doesn't work on a Chromebook. There is more to game-based learning than Minecraft people!

I then went to a session by Alice Chen because it's Alice Chen (and it had the word Zombie in the title). I really loved her two journal templates and Question and Answer Challenge. I haven't done any dialectical journaling with the students this year. I may try the Buddy Journal with A Midsummer Night's Dream with my 10th graders at the end of the year instead (or maybe in addition to). I may do the Team Journal with 11th graders and The Great Gatsby, or I may switch it. I think I may even try the Question and Answer Challenge with my 10th graders and the "American Translation" section of The Joy Luck Club (JLC) on Tuesday!

She had another idea that I really liked as well. It involved taking a piece of text and putting it into a Google Doc to share with the students. Give students commenting access and have them, essentially, annotate the text as a class. They can ask questions about parts they read that confused them or they want to discuss. Then, the other students in the class answer the questions in the comments, creating discussions in the margins. I think I may give this a try with the parable in the last section JLC and with my 11th graders and "The Lowest Animal" this week.

Next, I went to Malia Hoffmann's session on Building your Personal Learning Network. She was my first professor in my Master's program when it started last year (two more classes to go). I'm not new to PLNs, though I'm not an expert on them either. I got some good information (but not a Kindle fire) and was able to share some of my own. I learned about Cybraryman who curates a list of educational edchats on Twitter. I participate in some of them outside of the actual chat dates. My goal is to try and start synchronously participate after I'm done with my Master's.

I finished off the day with a few of my colleagues at the Google for Education Certified Innovators Panel SLAM. Here are a few things that I found noteworthy that I didn't know about before:

• Using the accessibility features on the Mac to create a magnifying glass for screencasts (maybe) and presentations. (Directions here)
• CrafyText - "CraftyText is a simple app. It allows you to enter text, which then shows up big in the center of the screen. It works on top of your favorite website."
• Sortd- Helps you organize your email into lists and move them around based on priority.  I have created lists for emails from students and one from professional colleagues.
• SAS Writing Reviser - this is a Google Doc add on.  Essentially, it can be used by students to check their paper for possible needed revisions.  It will look for a number of things like wordiness, passive voice I'm going to start using it with my own writing as I finish my Master's program.
• Form Values - I apparently already had this installed.  I never used it before though.  It basically will save form values (or question options) that you use a lot for you so you don't have to constantly retype them.
• Draftback - is a Chrome extension, so it will only work in Chrome with Google Docs.  It basically creates a movie that plays through all documents revision.  This would be good for both teachers and students.  It could also be a good plagiarism prevention tool.

I really like slams.  I get a lot of good ideas to share with my school through the Weekly Tech Tip I share out.  

I didn't go to Friday morning's keynote.  I might try and find it on CueTube, but since the speaker has a focus on coding, and as an English teacher I have yet to find a reason to try and incorporate that into my curriculum, I took my time getting ready in the morning instead.

My first session was about Tech Tools in the Writing Classroom.  There really wasn't anything new but the speaker was engaging.  I did have some minor takeaways though:

• Since the brain likes novelty, don't tell kids they have 5 minutes for something.  Tell them they have 4 minutes and 44 seconds to complete something (and then don't actually time them).
• Use the Boston Globe's Big Picture site for visual writing prompts.
• When using something like Today's Meet to back channel, let kids know that you can make a PDF of what they say in it and send it to their parents if need be.

Next, I went to a session presented by Lisa Highfill with a few of my colleagues.  She's known as one of the pioneers of the Hyperdoc.  A few possible takeaways that I might use:

• Have students create memes of their favorite lines from literature
• Have students annotate text using the highlighting function and commenting functions on a Google Doc
• Next year, instead of having students do reading logs, have them do reading BLOGS!
• Use a slide deck that is publically accessible to help students choose their next book to read.

We toured the exhibit hall after that.  My colleagues got free cases for their Chromebooks.  Mine was too cutting edge and they didn't have one for it.

One suggestion I have for CUE next year in regards to the exhibit hall is to bunch all the similar booths together.  That way you can avoid areas that don't pertain to you whatsoever (which as high school English teachers was a great number of the booths), or adequately comparison shop.

Then one of my colleagues and I headed over to the Hard Rock (which I personally think was kind of tacky, especially considering the price) for a session that was about game-based learning, but was really about how an elementary school district created a game-based learning platform.  That is not something that we, as two teachers without any district personnel, could really learn from, so we left.

I went to the OCCUE affiliate meeting for the first time.  I need to get more involved next year, but certainly not as a board member.  I won a MakeyMakey, but I gave it to the Librarian for her Maker Space.

Saturday morning I got up, packed up, and headed to the convention center.  I nabbed some information from one session on badges before it began for my Action Research Project for my group in my Master's program.  Then, I put on my tech leader hat and headed off to John Corippo's session on Rock Star PD.  Despite the fact that it was geared towards administrators, I found it enjoyable and filled with good ideas.  I wish my administrators had been there.

I kept my tech leader hat on and stayed in the room for the next session about TOSAs and Tech Leaders collaborating.  But, this was another example sessions not actually "advertisting" what they were "selling" and I left with my friend Crystal Kirch who gave me some tech to look into called Seesaw and Verso.  So, it wasn't completely wasted.  I then spent a nice lunch with her and another friend, taking the next session off (which sounds like a solid plan considering there was a power outage).

I nabbed a couple of presenter resources on ELD stuff before the last session I went to with Isabelle Selak, which was about using NaNoWriMo in school.  It was a good presentation, and I think that next year I might try it out as an after school club with students and teachers who are interested in trying it out.  I'm always torn about trying things like this out during class because I get pulled in the direction of covering the required district content and teaching my students in a way to be best prepared to critically think and write, and these roads hardly ever meet at a crossroads.

I have VERY mixed feelings about the closing keynote.  I found I agreed with much of what she, Pearl Arredondo, said in the keynote, but one thing she did say put me on the pro-charter alert.  But after doing a little googling, I see that her actions don't seem to be matching up what she is saying.

Two months of turmoil....tranquility tested.

I know.  Trust me, I know.  It's been over two months now since I last blogged.  I'm sorry for those that actually read what I put out there.

I'm just going to be bluntly honest (not that that I'm often not), and tell you this last month, in particular, has been emotionally taxing.  I was hoping to get caught up on my grading during the holiday break, and while I did in the last week get the 5 sets of 5 blog posts and 4 comments graded, I ended up having to deal with something a little more pertinent, particularly that first week.

The Sunday before Christmas, I got into a car accident, or more accurately, I was forced into a car accident.  I've been dealing with the aftermath ever since.  I'm physically okay for the most part, just lots of trips to the chiropractor.  And, the logistics of everything but bodily injury have been taken care of.  But, emotionally--between thinking I was going to die (yup, she went there) and already being stretched thin emotionally with work and my graduate work and having to replace the life saving car that I had had for 9 years (a very pretty blue Honda Civic that I called Belle) with a new car (a very pretty blue Kia Soul named Luna)--it has been noticeably draining.  

But now that the semester is over, all the grades are in (well, all except maybe two, but that depends on if I get an essay on the positive effects of procrastination from a particular someone on Monday morning, and if one student is out of the hospital and can take their final--I hope that is the case), and I finished the working draft of my section of a group literature review for my graduate group's action research project on badges in education, I have a little time to sit down and do some reflecting on my teaching through the written word.

Let me start with the most important tech tool EdTechTeam Google Summit I mentioned in my last post gave me.  I've used it with my 10th-grade honors students a few times now.  I love it, and the kids are still making up their minds about it, but let me--if you don't already know about it--introduce you to ActivelyLearn.  

There are different pricing level's, but there is a free level, which my account reverts to tomorrow (I think) after getting a free trial upgrade from the summit.  You can find some content that comes with questions and notes built in; you can start completely from scratch or add your questions and comments to the ones that already exist.  You can add media right into the story.  I put pictures and videos in the margin notes, which was  helpful with "Murders in the Rue Morgue".  You can also add media and directions to the beginning of the story, like this video I added for "The Tell-Tale Heart".

The aspect I enjoy most about ActivelyLearn though is the ability to grade by question, rather than student.  This is immensely helpful in seeing where the weaknesses and needs are for the class.  For example, for "The Raven" (we just finished a unit of Edgar Allan Poe if you didn't guess), I had added a question about the setting of the poem.  If I was grading it student-by-student, all questions at once, I might not have caught the fact that many of them were forgetting that setting is both time AND place and address it with them.  I was also grading as they were reading and answering questions so, in some cases, they were getting real-time feedback from me on their answers.

I also like the fact that teachers can reset students' answers, or that students can request this themselves.  That way you can give them a chance to get it right.  Sometimes they still don't get it.

I was tempted to give him points for persistence.

But, they often come up with answers that make you chuckle.

As a Walking Dead fan, I enjoyed this answer.

ActivelyLearn integrates well with  Google Classroom.  You can set up your assignments for Classroom from ActivelyLearn.  You can also pull your roster to create the class from Classroom as well.  

You don't have to be an English teacher.  They have content for various subject areas and grade levels, and--depending on your price plan--you can upload your own text.  I highly suggest you check it out and, at least, give it a try.  I'm probably going to try it with my 11th graders for "The Battle with Mr. Covey" and "The Lowest Animal".

I think I'll leave it there for now.  I'll follow up with a quick post about the fun we had reading "Masque of the Red Death" in my next post.

Still Treading Water

Just...GAH!


I'm so overwhelmed and haven't been able to read my Feedly or get a post in.

I should be grading or planning, or at home packing for this weekend's EdTechTeam Google Summit, but I decided to try and get a post in.

So what has been going on since the last post?  Let me tell you...


With broken up weeks because of holidays, and testing, etc. We haven't had a Passion Project Day in a while, and it looks like we may only have one after the students get back from Thanksgiving Break and before "Winter" Break.  I'm still making them blog about it though, to hopefully encourage them to work on it.  I've decided to start making the blog post due every other week though instead of every week.   I have barely made a dent in grading them, so if I'm drowning in them, the kids must be too.

Still on the subject of the Passion Project, we (mostly) finished up our presentations of our proposals.  There were a few things that stood out to me:

• One student said the project is helping them start to figure out what they want to do in life.
• One is doing a project about the bass guitar and naming it "All About That Bass" (I thought that was cute)
• One is doing his on the topic of the brain and depression.
• I have a few groups of students who are going to make their own video game
• One is going to learn American Sign Language
• One is doing one on Slacklining
• One group is doing one on preventing baseball injuries
• and, one is doing one on Autism because he wants to give families back hope.

The group of 5 I talked about in my last post are still together.  I pulled them aside and asked them to figure out how to break into two groups or to create a presentation to convince me to allow them to stay together.  They did a pretty good job, though one girl was the clear "ringleader".

Besides getting blogs and comments graded and into the books, I need to start planning out the elevator pitch that I originally planned for the end of the semester...I guess we will see.

Last week, I had a really transformative experience when I participated in a training for Safe School Ambassadors with 6 other teachers and 15 students.  It's really hard to put into words what it was like, but I'm looking forward to helping students (and myself) change for the better and help others change because of that.  This also inspired me to say yes to a request to send me to Orlando in February for an Anti-Bullying conference that I didn't want to do previously because I didn't want to pulled out again.  But, this issue is really important.

I will be spending my break coming in to do work.  I need to plan out the Edgar Allan Poe Unit for my 10th graders all the while going into their To Kill a Mockingbird essays do when we get back to give them feedback.

I'm hoping this enormous feeling of being overwhelmed will lessen a bit when I finish my Masters at the end of the school year.  I need to find more time to fit in some yoga.

Read Report for September 2015 Part 2

Here are the posts I found interesting that were written up at the end of September.

The EdTechTeam talked about student tech talks under their #ONENEWTHING hashtag.  I really liked the idea.  I don't think I could do it that often, but maybe once a grading period.  I like the idea of students presenting tech ideas.  I especially like the idea about having them sumit, via Google Form, what they want to talk about (they don't need to know about incognito mode).

Another one from EdTechTeam, is about designing a Google MyMaps lesson.  I'm sure this would be really great for social studies teachers.  I could see possibly using it myself with students for historical backgrounds on novels and stories, or to map out the journey of the characters in a novel or in a story the students create themselves.




Over at te@chthought, they made a top 10 post about knowing you are doing it right.  I found it interesting, particularly numbers 5 and 9.  My mother can attest that I have a penchant for not doing what I am told, and I think I have brought that into my adulthood.  I also have issues with some of the higher higher ups not thinking about the individual student and only looking at them as data points.




I came across this post from Connected Principals about why educators should blog.  I think the first point stood out to me more than any of the others.  Blogging requires reflection.  It's so true.  I often find that I have something in my head that I could blog about, but then I never seem to find the time, or I have to make time and something else (grading, planning) suffers.