The Read Report Lives: the trilogy

Shall we make this journey to get caught up on all my saved Feedly posts a trilogy?  It will probably be more.

We reach the "summer" months with a post by Jacqui over at Ask A Tech Teacher.  Jacqui writes about the 7 Must-have Tools for Ed Conferences.  Now, I love Ed Conferences.  I'm at one right now (CATE).

• Her first suggestion is a navigation app on your phone.  She suggests WAZE, and I agree, but I would also have a backup like Google Maps.  Depending on the conference, you may need to travel around the city to find your sessions, let alone if you are driving to the conference itself.
• Her second is to download the conference app if they have one.  I've been to a few conferences that don't have a Sched, and it drives me crazy trying to decide and keep track of possible sessions to attend.  Here is a little personal tip when going to conferences and dealing with the schedule:  Choose multiple options for each session so that if one turns out to be a dud or full, you can go right to another choice instead of searching through the schedule to find something else.
• Next?  Don't paper and pencil it.  Bring tech that is easily transportable.  My first year at CUE, I brought my laptop for use in the hotel room and my iPad for the sessions.  I no longer bring my iPad and instead bring my Chromebook and only my Chromebook.  If I charge it overnight, I don't (usually) need to charge it during the day.  It's light-weight, and taking notes on a keyboard is easier for me than trying to do it on my iPad.  I have my phone for anything that needs a QR code, but now I won't even need that thanks to different Chrome extensions.
• Note taking.  Jacqui talks about Evernote and Notability, but I tend to create a shared notes document with my Technology Committee or anyone else that is attending the conference, so we can all add to our resources (and sometimes divide and conquer the sessions).  Nothing works better than Google Docs for that.  In the past, I would create a table of contents, but now I just use the heading functions and the outline tool.
• Messaging App.  You're basically going to need Twitter.  Most conferences have hashtags that you can use to share and converse about what is happening.  I use Tweet Deck so I can have multiple columns of hashtags open.
• QR Reader.  Numerous apps you can download for this.
• Digital Scanner.  She talks about using it for business cards.  I've never used it for that, but I have used it for making copies of receipts for reimbursement.  I use the app Tiny Scanner, on my iPhone.

Heading backward into March, Alice Chen wrote about how sharing on social media helped her become a better educator.  I'm nowhere near as a prolific tweeter and she certainly has more blog cred than I do, but I do agree with her.  Blogging, however sporadic I may be with it, forces me to reflect on what is going on in my teaching.  While I know that some people do read these blog posts, they don't seem to spark conversations (yet?).  As I've gotten more active on Twitter, I find myself building a more robust PLN and creating conversations.  The trick with Twitter is finding the right hashtags so people see what you have to say.

Jumping back to May, and another post by Jacqui, we have a post about using the SAMR Model to direct your technology integration.  I definitely agree with much of what she wrote about.  Her suggestions remind me a little of Catlin Tucker's suggestion about (and I paraphrase) learning to use one tool really well before adding other tools to your box (and then use the ones that you like the best/most in your tool belt).  We have Federal Program Monitoring this year and in our mock assessment, one of the evaluators mentioned how there was a lot of substitution going on by teachers.  Well, of course, there is.  We've only had 1:1 for one grade level for a year.  It is going to take time for many of the more veteran teachers to integrate tech in the classroom beyond what they do on the whiteboard.

I'll stop there.  For today at least.  If you have any blogs that you follow, let me know.  I would love to add them to my Feedly.

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.

Nurturing Learning Communities Reflection 5

This week's journal prompt asked me about what tools I'm finding most beneficial to my learning community.  By tool, I'm assuming they mean what platform.

I would have to say that right now, I'm finding Google+ the most beneficial.  At the very least, it's being the most communicative.  I feel a bit like I have to be a little spammy to get a response, and I'm not entirely comfortable with that.  Google+ won't allow for sending one post to multiple communities, so I have to make a public post and then share it with the communities I think the post would apply to.  I may be irritating those in multiple shared communities.

Depending on what communities respond, I may just start sharing with those communities in particular.  Right now, it looks like the winner is +EdTechTeam's community.

I've purposely asked specific questions on Twitter with PLN hashtags and gotten no direct response.  I've had a lot of people add me to their lists, but no actual responses to the questions I posed.

This is in anthesis to what I've read and been told about Twitter.  I wonder if it has something to do with the end of the school year.  Maybe Google+ is taking over as the educator's preferred way to interact with groups of like-minded educators?

The prompt also asked me about Open Education Resources (OERs) that I have found.  As part of my requirements for the NEA Foundation grant I received, I had to sign up for their OER site, Curriki, and contribute.  In using the search term "open education resources", I found the OER Commons site.

Nurturing Learning Communities Reflection 2

So, two classes down, six more to go.

This week we were supposed to start contributing to the networks we "joined".  I had already been building networks on these platforms, but I was a lot more passive about it.  So, I've gone out of my comfort zone and started to try and take a more active role with my contributions.

This isn't easy for me because I don't like pushing myself on to other people.  I don't invite myself over to other people's homes or parties, metaphorical or not, even when I know I am probably welcome.  I don't want to force someone to be fake nice to me.

So am going about contributing by sharing articles or information that I think may be of use to people.  I started with trying to start a dialogue on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter about Google Spaces.

So is Spaces a way to try & cross file sharing with social media? https://t.co/Ie3Y9WFmkh #occue #futureready #edchat #edtech #edtechchat

— Mindy B (@Miss_MindyB) May 16, 2016

On the Facebook group and on Google+ I started a very brief dialogue, but it fell flat on Twitter. That's the thing about social media. You can put yourself out there and no one has to return the favor and respond. I put myself out there with this blog, but very rarely do I get responses to my posts. However, thanks to the blogger data, I know that people read them. On the social networks, you don't usually know if people read your posts, so it can be a bit discouraging. That's why I think it's good to start slow.

On that note, that's why, knowing in particular that my classmates might be struggling with getting into Twitter, when I read the blog/podcast mentioned below, I used it as an opportunity to try and contribute meaningfully to Google+ and the cohort's facebook group.

Ultimately, you just need to keep trying. I'm hoping this class will push me to build strong networks of people who will support me and allow me to support them.

What I'm Working With

I've already blogged about my LMSs and what kind of Chromebooks I'm using.

Here are a couple of other sites that I use, whether a lot or sparingly:

Quizlet is a website that allows teachers and students to make online flashcards and study them.

Quill.org is a site I found that allows students to practice Common Core grammar and conventions.  I have not used this as much as I would like to as when time is short (and it often is), grammar always seems to be the first to go.

Here is a tutorial video for teachers.  And, there is a separate one for students.

Google Apps for Education is what I am using the most (read:  all the time).  With Classroom, it makes going digital too easy.  

One thing I like about moving my 'worksheets' to things such as Google Docs is that I can add things in color, including the student's answers.  My students and I also find that putting the questions in a table with a corresponding column for them to put the answers in is even better (and easier for me to pre-format with the color coding).

Here are some screen shot examples of how I can use color coding in tables.  Before I attach it to Classroom in an assignment, I make sure that I have already set up each box to the color I want.

I really like Schoology.  Apparently, my district is looking into getting a bid for a district-wide LMS.  I'm going to suggest Schoology.  I really like that I can automatically push updates to my school Twitter.

 I also like how all upcoming assignments are in the corner of the page.

But what I like about it most of all is the ability to create discussions and then get analytics on the discussion.  That means that Schoology will keep track of how many times a student responds and the traffic/popularity with dates and times (not that I wouldn't notice since I get an email sent to me each time a student responds).

If anyone has any other useful tools, sites, etc. that you think I should try, let me know in the comments.