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.
This past week was...sad and scary. I didn't really do much in trying to connect and got myself out there on my PLNs. Maybe after sharing this blog post, I'll go out and ask a question about trust and see if I get any responses, which I can then discuss next week. So why did I fall short in participating in my PLNs this week? Why was it both sad and scary? On Monday, Memorial Day, I got an email from my principal that a senior (whom I had as a sophomore) had passed away from an apparent suicide. I've since had this weird vague sadness about it. There is some disconnect because I don't have an empty seat to remind me of his absence every day, but I do have my memories of two years ago of a smart (if not slightly apathetic about school) kid rapping and beatboxing under his breath. I have my memories of the student who spoke so eloquently and philosophically about life and music; though I didn't always understand what he was saying, I got the meaning behind the words. I also have my anger. I will admit. I have my moments where I'm angry at him for doing it. Also my anger at the school for only telling his current teachers about the services and not the entire school. He had teachers all four years he was at our school. He had other teachers who cared about him. His family started a GoFundMe to help with expense, they are almost at their goal. Please consider donating.
That was the sad (or part of it) so on to the scary. On Thursday, after school, I had just done a walk around the school and sat down to gather my things to head to class when a shelter-in-place call went out over the loud speaker. I went to lock my door and pulled a teacher and about 20 kids from the hallway into my room, turned off the lights and pulled down the shades. I called the office to let them know I had 20 kids in my classroom and to ask what was going on. I was told an armed intruder. It took about 20 or 30 minutes before we were given the all clear to resume what we had been doing. Luckily, there hadn't been an armed intruder, but the possibility of one. The suspect turned himself in to police before he entered the campus. So, how do you deal and cope as an educator when life gets real?
The suggested prompt for this week was: What have you seen that you think may violate creative commons, fair use, or copyright law? Did you do anything about it? Why or why not?
Personal Screenshot
Nothing but the work my students complete comes to mind. I've been trying to instill the need for students to respect people's work by doing image searches that filter for those allowed for reuse. I go as far as to do an image search on their blog posts about their Passion Project for the images they use to make sure they show up under such a label and mark them down when they don't. Since I've started to make such an effort not to use anything that isn't labeled for reuse, I know how hard it is to ignore some excellent images because they haven't been labeled as such. It's a process that is going to take time. Especially since when you do an image search for "labeled for reused" and then filter for such, you get a group of photos like these. I do notice that a lot of the people I admire in the EdTech world, particularly those that blog, do their best to follow copyright laws and adhere to creative commons practices. I always do my best to give credit, where credit is due. This applies in particular in the education world where we want to share and build off of other's great ideas. Then this made me think of those who don't want to share for whatever reason they may have: insecurity over their ideas or competitive need to be the best. In class, we've been talking a lot about PLCs and PLNs (Professional Learning Communities and Professional/Personal Learning Networks for the acronym-impaired). We talked, in particular, this week about trust in both and what both PLCs and PLNs need to work well. I think some PLCs don't work very well because sometimes schools, districts, the teachers within it themselves create an atmosphere of competition. The point of participating in a PLC is for the benefit of all the students, not just one set of students. So, trust is broken when educators hold back things that worked for them because they want their students to do better than the other teachers. What I personally need from both and PLC and PLN is reciprocity. I can't continually give and not get anything in return (and this itself could lead some teachers to stop sharing). I think, from experience, that when educators are just starting to build and explore PLNs, they are going to, more naturally, take than give. Now that I'm getting more comfortable communicating and sharing in the social media world of education, I've been making the effort to share more instead of just take. It's okay to capture up great ideas for awhile; but at some point, you should start to give back. Sometimes, being reciprocal isn't always about sharing your work and ideas, but giving feedback to those that do. It doesn't need to be tit-for-tat.
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.
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.
So on Saturday, a week ago this posting, I walked in my graduation for my MAED.
I am not, however, actually done. I have one more class: Nurturing Learning Communities.
For this class, we'll have to journal weekly, so I'm going to take the opportunity to use this blog to do so. My hope is that maybe it will help me blog more consistently as a whole after the class is over.
For our first assignment, we were instructed to join three new social networks and make connections with 50 people per network. Our instructor, in our face-to-face meeting, felt that number was a little too high to make it meaningful. I kind of agree for those that are just dipping their toe in reaching out to the educator community on these networks. You want to start slow and try and build relationships and not just lists and circles and groups of people you never end up dialoguing with.
I am already plugged into most of the effective networks. So, I hope I will be forgiven for not joining new ones. But, this assignment did push me to reach out and add more people to my circles on Google+. I had to think carefully about the people I wanted to add. I just didn't want to add people whose names were unrecognizable or that I knew nothing about. I went through my G+ communities members and added people to my circles whose names I recognized from GAFE Summits and CUE and EdTechTeam interactions.
This assignment also pushed me to find out about Twitter lists. I had noticed in my TweetDeck feed that people had added me to some of their lists, but never really looked into it. So, I found some lists that looked promising and subscribed and created a few of my own.
I'm hoping that this class will push me, even more, to reach out and create PLNs on these platforms. What platforms do you use? What do you like about one over the other?
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.
And yes, I used the words cray cray. Since my last post...
It's been very busy, and I've barely been the in the classroom. At the end of February, I attended the National Conference on Bullying and Child Victimization. I mentioned agreeing to this in a previous post. I learned a lot about bullying. What it is, and what it isn't. A quick run down for those that don't know:
There needs to be an imbalance of power. For example, a group of students against one student or upperclassmen against lowerclassmen.
It needs to be repeated.
If there isn't an imbalance of power or it's not repeated, it might be mean (and still needs to be handled), but it's not bullying.
Don't label:
A student who bullies instead of calling the student a bully.
The targeted student instead of the victim.
We took the red eye out so we could spend one day at Universal and experience the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was amazing. I can't wait to experience the one here in California.
We also did a half-day pass to Seaworld, which was within walking distance of our hotel, and enjoyed the afternoon and evening there.
At Universal, Seaworld, the hotel, and the restaurant across the street, I was consistently amazed at how friendly everyone in Florida was.
The biggest takeaway, the session that stood out to me most at this conference, was the one I attended for the One Leg at a Time group. This is a student-led initiative and not an adult one (there are of course adults involved). It was really amazing and inspiring to see these kids take an active role in being better people and trying to get their classmates to be better people too.
I had three days in the classroom when I got back--interrupted by the weekend--before I had to be pulled out with half the department to grade district writing assessments, which is never fun and--considering our school does school-wide writing four times a yea--very unnecessary for us.
I finally had a full week with my kids after that, though time with my 10th graders was interrupted with registration one day, and then another time this past week.
Then, I was out the last two days for CUE 2016. But, before that...
All hell broke loose on campus because of a phone app called Ogle. I was notified about it by a student early Tuesday morning before my 10th graders registered. I downloaded it to see what the student was talking about and showed admin right away. It is a horrible, horrible app that the students are using to bully and demean each other and staff (the post about me is so awful and vulgar that I can't show you) and distribute porn (including nudes of each other).
Threats were made against the school through this app, which is anonymous, and now the FBI is involved.
Despite the horrid way many of us were made to feel, there were a few lights that this darkness revealed:
Many students are willing to report such behavior and do what they need to to protect themselves and their friends.
Many students care enough about their teachers (me) to stand up against those that say vile things about them.
The week before all this went down, I was put in charge of the group of kids called Safe School Ambassadors I talked about before. I have a feeling/am hoping that a lot more students want to join us for tomorrow's meeting and make a difference in the culture of the school and how we treat each other.
She mentioned some that were unsurprising, like Formative. I really want to look more into this one, but with everything on my plate the thought is a little too daunting for this school year.
One I'm going to try for sure, in fact right now, is Noisli. Noisli is a white noise app. Currently, I've just added a crackling fire to listen to since I have the sounds of rain from an actual storm outside. It's making me feel just a bit more toasty. I can see playing this is class to help students focus, or allowing students to listen to it instead of music they spend too much time picking in order to help them focus and be productive.
Another that sparked my interest was Write About. Jennifer writes that Write about "provid[es] students with an online space to write on high-interest topics and get feedback from their peers". The other things she mentions, like a collection of writing ideas and voice recordings, intrigue me. But --yup, I have a but--the free version only allows for 40 students. This is something that as a teacher in a secondary (junior high and high school) classroom frustrates me with many programs out there for teacher-to-student use. Why do only elementary school teachers get to try things for free? Or, why do secondary teachers only get to choose one class?
Over at Ask a Tech Teacher, Jacqui Murray talked about a service called Storyboard That. I was intrigued by it because it appeared to allow students to create comic book style storyboards, which would be a great tool for sequencing the plot of a story we've read in class, instead of doing a flow map. It seems to have multiple visual uses and some work already created, like for Romeo and Juliet. But, it's only free for a two-week trial. The pricing isn't outrageous. Elementary school teachers, you could get away with $60/year, and I would spend $75. They do have department and school pricing, but there always needs to be someone who tries it first.
Jacqui also supplied me with a tip for my Chromebook I didn't know about.
So, I had a bit more fun with "The Masque of the Red Death" this year during my 10th-grade Honors' Poe unit than I usually do besides setting up the colored strings of lights to coincide with the colored rooms.
I was going to try and memorize and perform the story for the students, but with the car accident I mentioned in the last post, that didn't happen.
Instead, I bought all the students masquerade masks from Amazon for them to wear while we read. They appreciated the fact that I bought them something and seemed to enjoy wearing them.
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.
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.
