I'm a high school English teacher moving into the world of blended-learning (I'm using more technology in my classroom). This blog will be about my adventures (or misadventures) in that process.
Here is my slide deck for my first conference presentation. I wanted to do something for those of us that already use Google Classroom. We don't need to know the basics, but it would be awesome if we could learn some tips and tricks to maximize its usage, right? This is a live document and I will be adding to it.
The room was pretty packed, so I think I hit on a need that some of this conferences often lack.
If you have any tips or tricks that you would like to share for Google Classroom, please leave a comment. If you would like me to include it the next time I present on Google Classroom, let me know and I'll give you proper credit.
I also went to three other sessions besides my own.
The first one on an app for the tablets called Argubot Academy by GlassLabs. It combines gameplay with teaching kids how to discover and identify the correct type of evidence to support their arguments. Despite the fact it's geared towards middle schoolers, I think my students could find it fun and useful. I won't really be looking into it any further until it's available on the Chromebook, which is something that they are apparently working on according the to presenter (Laura Compton).
The second was about the classroom management app ClassDojo. I once signed up for a few years ago, but it seemed a little too elementary school for my students, and maybe it still is in regards to the aesthetic of the icons for the kids. But, I might give it a try next year. It had a lot to offer in keeping track of specific behaviors and assigning specific points for those behaviors. It might do the kids and I well to have certain behaviors be worth more and subtract more for their participation grade. I particularly liked the suggestion by the presenter, Tracy Edmisten, to use a zero point value to keep track of the number of times a student goes to the restroom.
The last session I went to was about using Hamilton in the classroom. The biggest takeaway I got from that was finding out about the site Genius. It's a site where people can read up on annotations about lines in a song, or even add some themselves. The annotations seem to be really thorough.
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.
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).
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.
