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.

And the Semesters Turn, Turn, Turn

First, I'm nervous/anxious/excited to try my hat as a presenter at the OCCUE Techfest 2017.  I'll share my slide deck with you all after Saturday.  

I am so bad at this blogging thing.  I'm sorry it's been so long, but like any of you teachers know, things get busy.  But with my last final done for the semester and all my grades (pretty much) in, I have a moment to breath and try and reflect on this past semester.


My last post, back in November (shame *clang, clang* shame *clang, clang*), talked about add-ons, including JoeZoo.  Well, since then, JoeZoo has made some changes.  They now have the add-on called JoeZoo Express and they have the web app.  It's still a really useful add-on to use, but you'll have to jump through some hoops (like getting your district to install it to get all the features) to get the full array of features.  I used to use it mostly for its MonkeyChecker, but I find I really like the rubric function a lot.  If you set it up right you can get it to do all the adding to get the score for each essay.  I may move to JoeZoo for the big 11th-grade research project coming up instead of Goobric.

Each year, I feel like I have less and less time than I did the year before.  For next year, I really need to decide what is most important for the students to know (I know, we all say this every year), and take more time.  I need to decide what is and isn't important, and this includes for common assessments.  If I don't think my students really need to know X, then maybe I'll adjust my own copies of assessments and not test for X (or convince my PLC we don't need to include it).
Looking back at my workload this past semester, I need to move forward with assigning deeper, more meaningful assignments.  Again, many of us say this all the time, but it's hard to get myself to do it because I feel so much of a work of literature is meaningful and I want to share all my knowledge with the kids about it.

I also think that when I try and add meaningful assignments (like the Passion Project for my 10th graders and Kid President Blogs for both 10th and 11th), I feel like I'm falling behind the other classes because I have to take time out of the week to do these things that other teachers are not.  That puts some pressure on me to try and catch up.  It kind of makes you feel like a bad teacher if you aren't able to go the same pace as everyone else.  You aren't one, but you sometimes feel like it.

Next year's Poe unit for my 10th graders will include less poetry I think.  I can easily cut out "Ulalume", but I really don't want to give up "Dream Within a Dream".  And, I certainly don't want to cut out "Eldorado", "The Bells" (perfect for talking about sound devices) and "Annabel Lee".  I can't cut out "The Raven" (you can't talk about Poe without reading "The Raven".

If I cut out one of the three short stories, it will probably be "The Black Cat".  Despite its difficulty, I want to continue to do "Murders in the Rue Morgue" because it's a departure from what Poe is known for and the birth of the detective story.  In case you were wondering, the last story is "The Masque of the Red Death", and that is NEVER coming out (ah, symbolism).  I think I might also switch it back to starting with the stories and ending with the poetry.

I'm nearly paperless in my 10th-grade class so just about everything is due through Google Classroom.  I think one of the problems with time that I am having is because the technology has made the students...lazier (for lack of a better term).  If I were to assign a "worksheet" on symbolism in "The Masque of the Red Death" on paper and it was due the next day, students would typically go home and finish whatever they didn't in class and bring it back done the next day.  That is overwhelmingly not so with these kids when an assignment is online.  The majority of students still haven't' finished it the next day in class.  We've had this discussion multiple times and I just have to get better about putting a time on the due date and giving homework cards to those students who don't have it in on time (I will admit that going to blended-learning has negatively affected how I handle homework cards consistently).

My 11th graders, by in large, have the same problem regardless of if it's an online assignment or a paper one (I'm less paperless in this class), but many of them try and use the online aspect of an assignment as an excuse for poor motivation and achievement.

My goals for this semester:


Ease up on my workload.  I don't need to grade every assignment.  

• Get better with electronic assignments and homework cards.
• Throw it back to how I used to be as a teacher and come up with more project-based assessments with choice (still have to do the common assessments with 11th grade though).
• Get more helpful screencast videos done for the students.

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?

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.