This is the instructional technology blog for Deerfield High School. "Free Tech Tools" will be posted on Tuesday. Musings about teaching and learning will be posted on Thursday.
It's really not about all the flashy Apps available. It's about connecting students and providing them with a variety of learning opportunities.
DHS English Teacher David Hirsch has taken the opportunity to use instructional technology to open our students to a world of Classic Literature. Faced with the daunting challenge of teaching freshman A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Mr. Hirsch decided to use technology to meet kids where they are. In addition to providing the traditional paperback novels to his students, he copied the text provided by Project Gutenberg into a series of Google Docs, and he made a recording of himself reading the novel and made that audio recording available to the students as well.
His students read the book, using the format they chose, and then annotated the readings together on the Google Doc that had been shared with the whole class. Mr. Hirsch calls this "Social Annotating." His students were going online to help each other understand Dickens.
Mr. Hirsch explains the activity and the success his students have had in the video below (part of the Innovation in Education Series in the Principal's Newsletter):
DHS English Teacher explains "Social Annotating" to Principal Audris Griffith
Innovation without flash, and based on very sound teaching philosophies. The best teaching rarely comes packaged in a premium subscription. When I first asked Mr. Hirsch about this project, he told me, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done..." Well, he didn't say that; but it would have been funny.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would normally try to end my blog post with a probing question, or a challenge. However, my principal, Audris Griffith, is retiring and this is her last monthly newsletter as Principal of Deerfield High School. I have only had the privilege of working with Audris for a short time, but I wanted to take this opportunity to say that it has indeed been a pleasure. I am certainly not alone in saying you will be missed, and we wish you the very best!
Classroom Pic I chose mostly because it shows the new
co-teacher capability of Classroom!
Automation and Innovation Come Together in the Google Classroom Assignment Feature
@joe_edtech This is the second in a series of 3 Free Tech Tools Tuesday posts on Google Classroom.
WARNING: If you know me, you've heard this next statement before, and I apologize for the repetition - more or less. New technology is not about allowing us to do what we've always done before with more efficiency; technology is about improving what we do by allowing us to do things that could not have been done before. However, it is nice when efficiency comes along with innovation. That's what we have with the Assignment feature in Google Classroom.
I know lots of teachers who have gotten used to sharing a Google Document with their students so that the students can make a copy and share it back to them, and then they can go into Google Drive and search for the files in "Shared with me," and...UGH. I'm already exhausted. This process is dramatically streamlined in Classroom, where you can share a template, or prompt, or graphic organizer with your students. Each of your students will automatically have their own copy to edit, and all of the student files will be organized and sorted in one folder.
Creating an Assignment in Classroom
As you can see from the screenshot to the right, when you create an assignment in Google Classroom you can title the assignment, write a description, give it a due date and time, and attach a file, embed a Drive document, assign a YouTube video, or attach a link to a website. If you embed a file from Google Drive, you can choose whether you want each student to get a copy to edit, view, or if you want everyone to collaborate on the same document. If you teach multiple sections of the same subject, you can send the same Assignment to all of your classes at once.
When you look at your Classroom "Stream" (homepage, wall, timeline - Google chose "Stream" to remain consistent with the language they use on Google Plus), at a glance you can see how many students have turned in the Assignment, and how many are still "Not Done." There is a spot right underneath the assignment for comments. If you want to post clarifications or reminders for your whole class, you can post them there. Likewise, if you allow students to comment, your students can ask clarification questions for the good of the class. You can add resources or change the due date by clicking the three vertical dots in the upper right hand corner of the Assignment and choosing the edit option.
When it comes time to grade, click the title of your Assignment and it will take you to a page your students can't see:
The grading page lists all of your students in alphabetical order. When you create an assignment and share an item from Drive, your students are the owners that item. When they submit it for grading (they will have to click a "Done" button in the upper right hand corner of the doc), you become the owner. From the grading page, you can click on a student, access the document, grade it, and then assign points to it. While you can interact privately with your students on their docs, you can also have a private conversation with a student by adding comments on the grading page. Once you are finished with the grading process, you can "Return" the assignments to your students and they will own the documents again.
By the way, your students don't have to hand in Google Docs. As is the case when you make Assignments, when your students turn in assignments, they can attach files, Drive Docs, YouTube Videos, or links to webpages. Also, because there is a lot of flexibility built into every tool inside Google Apps for Education (blessing and curse), you don't have to use the grading feature inside classroom at all. If you click the "Folder" link at the top of the page, you can access all of the assignments directly from your "Classroom" folder in Google Drive. If this is your preference, Classroom streamlines your life (and Drive) by automatically organizing all of your Assignments and classes into folders on "My Drive."
The Assignment feature in Google Classroom is similar to or even more robust than the same feature offered in other Learning Management Systems. However, the Classroom Assignment Grading page falls a little short of Edmodo or Schoology in that it doesn't YET allow for hand-written annotations. This is only a matter of time.
So, it's a blog. A little bit of self-indulgence and personal ambition is to be expected, right? In a completely selfish attempt to better understand the research that I want to do in my doctoral program, the posts over the next few Thursdays will focus on getting to meaningful measurement of 1:1 programs. I will provide in text citations for a number of pieces, if you would like a full reference list or links to any of the individual documents, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Part I: The Problem
In 1997, the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology called on school districts throughout the country to spend the money necessary to equip American schools and classrooms with modern educational technology (Richtel, 2011). Since that time, literally billions of taxpayer dollars have been invested in improving technological infrastructures, Wifi access, upgrading access to technological teaching tools, decreasing the student to computer ratio, and the latest big push in education, to support 1:1 computing in schools by providing every student with full-time access to a mobile computing device (Bebell, Clarkson, & Burraston, 2014; Bebell & Pedulla, 2014; Stager, 1998). Without a doubt, the call to increase technology has been met. The student to computer ratio has been reduced from a high of 125 students to a single shared school computer in the 1980s to today’s national ratio of three students per school owned device; and nearly all of the classrooms in the US have some kind of access to the Internet (Russell, Bebell, & Higgins, 2004; Snyder & Dillow, 2012). With the introduction of powerful yet affordable mobile technologies, like Apple’s iPad and the Google supported Chromebook, the number of 1:1 programs has accelerated (Bebell & Pedulla, 2014).
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the 2015 Consortium for School Networking Conference in Atlanta. While it was clear that everyone in the conference hall shared the belief that 1:1 technology in the hands of students has the power to transform education and improve student learning, it was equally true that a great many of the school leaders present were struggling with measuring student success. In one session about responding to the critics, school leaders discussed ideas about delaying measurement until they had achieved full-integration, or attempting to measure key pieces of data that have little to do with student achievement (attendance or referral rates), or simply not measuring success based on integration, but instead holding focus groups with stakeholder groups to explain the need for technology based education. This actually mirrors suggestions made by Bebell and Burraston (2014) who called the relationship between technology integration and student achievement a complex issue (of course, it is) and encouraged schools to start measuring using a variety of different datasets, student achievement comprising just one small component of the measurement.
There is great merit to what Bebell and Burraston (2014) wrote, and some merit to what the attendees of the CoSN conference said, but it all misses the point. As the Director of Instructional Technology, I hear from parents and stakeholders on a daily basis. I hear from teachers even more frequently. Whether taxpayer or reluctant teacher, the question is always the same. How does the use of technology improve learning for our students? Bebell and Burraston (2014) are right; it is a complex issue. However, there are existing and comprehensive studies have helped guide our answers (Gulek & Demirtas, 2006). When we provide our teachers and students with the proper resources and support, we can help facilitate learning by creating classrooms and other learning opportunities that capitalize on Constructivist learning theories and will improve student achievement, even when that achievement is measured through traditional standardized tests. In order to continue to provide opportunities and access for our students, it is incumbent upon us as Instructional Technologists not to shy away from state imposed testing measures, but to use them to prove our point.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How have you begun measuring your technology integration programs?
Image Capture of a Professional Development Class I taught using Google Classroom
Is Google Classroom The Answer?
@joe_edtech
I thought about building up the answer to that question in a long drawn out "Who Shot JR?" mystery (If you don't get that reference, please ask an adult.). But I can't. As of today, the answer is no, Google Classroom is not the best LMS on the market - it isn't even the best "free" LMS. However, if we treat Google Classroom as if it were in beta, and it is really less than a year old, we could confidently conclude that it is a good start.
Let's start by talking about what Google Classroom is. It is the component from Google Apps for Education that is designed to be a learning management system (LMS). So, in Google Apps districts I often get questions from teachers about the best Google tool to use with their students. The answer is, it depends. But it helps to look at the original purpose for each of the Google tools. Blogger is strictly a blogging tool - despite some interactive features, it really is about one way communication of ideas. Blogger is about posting writing to an authentic audience. Google Sites is a fully capable, easy to use Website creation tool best for posting and accessing static resources. Google +, currently hooked up to life support, was really designed to be a social network for connecting and communicating with friends, colleagues, like minded people, etc. All of these tools CAN be used to manage an online component of the classes you teach. ONLY Google Classroom was designed to be a complete classroom solution.
Over the next several weeks (4, I think), I'll spend some time talking about specific capabilities in Google Classroom, but today I just want to introduce the product and talk about what it does really well. Classroom allows you to organize your students and materials in a way that is fairly simple for your students to understand, post assignments with due dates, share copies of Google Documents with all of your students in an organized and easy to use way, grade and return online assignments in a variety of ways. It also allows you to set up easy communication with your students. By that I mean that there is not only a spot for public discussions, but Classroom also facilitates easy private conversations with individual students about assignments or work in general.
If you were cynical, you might say that all learning management systems allow teachers to post assignments and facilitate communication. You'd be right. The advantage of Google Classroom is that it is a part of the Google Apps Suite, and this is particularly true if you are teaching in a Chromebook school, since the students "live" in Google Apps for Ed, you aren't asking them to go somewhere else to log in and access class materials. Everything is in one world - ish.
It is also important to talk about obvious areas for improvement for Google Classroom. I see three must-haves before Classroom becomes "the answer" broadly. First, it does not currently support co-teachers (a future post will show you work arounds for this problem - but it is a serious problem if you work with a co-teacher or in course teams).See Update Below! Secondly, it does not seamlessly integrate with all other Google Apps. For instance, when you make an assignment, there isn't a calendar event created for all of your students. Finally, classroom is modeled off of the Google + "Stream." As of this moment, it is difficult to manually organize assignments and announcements. The most recent assignment will appear at the top of the stream and will move down the stream as you add new ones. If you have students who have difficulty organizing information, they will require a little direct instruction before Classroom becomes natural and easy to use.
I know parts of this post sound negative, but I am actually very hopeful about Google Classroom, otherwise I wouldn't spend so much time on it. As I said, if we are talking about this as a tool in development, which it clearly is, they are off to a great start. And, if you aren't using an LMS to organize the digital components of your classes, Google Classroom is a great way to start and will allow you to do things with your students that you've never been able to do before - and that is the point of technological advancements.
Classroom is available for all Google Apps for Education domains. In District 113, the students already have the Classroom App installed on their Chromebooks and should be ready to go.
WAIT-
***UPDATED - Of course this happens the day I post this blog! Whatever, I'm very happy. As of today you can have co-teachers in Google Classroom. As I said, Classroom continues to improve!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Tuesday I'll look a little closer at the Posting Assignment feature and the ability to share docs inside Classroom. In the mean time, click here for some resources I've put together to help you get started with Google Classrom.
A Flippin' Success: Chromebooks in a Freshman Science Classroom
@joe_edtech
One of my favorite made-up words is "transformativeness" (I want to give Renee Hobbs credit for that. I heard it first at her workshop on Fair Use in the Classroom.). I think of that word everytime we talk about our 1:1 program. We didn't roll out Chromebooks so that teachers and students can do what they've always done more efficiently. We rolled out Chromebooks so that our students could have learning experiences that were never possible before.
It is still early in our program, but we already have some success stories to tell. For instance, Mr. Bill Stafford, science teacher, has been experimenting some with the "Flipped Classroom" instructional model. In a nutshell, in a "Flipped Classroom" model, students receive lecture instruction at home from online videos or interactive materials, and then practice the skills they learned in classroom with the guidance and support of the teacher and collaborative groups. In this model, students are up and active in the classroom as they interact with the material.
When she works on math homework in the traditional model, my daughter only has her parents to turn to for help at home. That is a problem when they were both liberal arts majors! In the "Flipped" classroom model, parents can actually watch the instruction with their students at home, and students have their classmates and teachers to rely on for support when they are working towards mastery. (For more information on the flipped classroom, you can visit the District 113 "Flipped Classroom" Resources page. Or you can join my partner Lisa Berghoff and I for our Education On Air session on April 9.)
The following is the first in a series of videos that we are producing in conjunction with our monthly principal's newsletter to highlight some of the "transformativeness" that is happening in our 1:1 classrooms. This is Principal Audris Griffith interviewing Science Teacher Bill Stafford about his "Flipping" experiment:
How complicated is the reading you assigned for your kids last night? Do you know the readability level? If you are like me, you have a ballpark idea based on a scale of "everyone should be fine" to "we might have to talk about some of this more in depth tomorrow." However, there are some free tools out there that can provide you with a little bit better information about digital texts than the aforementioned Taylor method.
Analyze My Writing is an incredibly easy to use tool with a great deal of flexibility to it. You don't even need an account to get started. Simply navigate to analyzemywriting.com, paste any text into the textbox on the page, and Analyze My Writing will give you a breakdown of the text in the following categories:
customizable graphs for Fry and Raygor readability measures
punctuation marks
most frequently used words (with word cloud)
most common word pairs
Whether you are teaching kids to be conscious, analytical readers, or you are having them peer review their own writing, Analyze My Writing seems like a great piece to include in your discussions.
Do you use a tool like Analyze My Writing with your students? If so, tell us about it below - along with your successes and challenges.
(PS - For all of my loyal readers - mom - and those of you looking for the series on Google Classroom, they will start next week. An adventure in automotive ownership prevented me from putting the final piece of that series in place this week. I'm sorry for the delay.)
I am certainly not to a point where I am ready to write my doctoral dissertation, but I am getting pretty close. And I have spent an awful lot of time over the last two years contemplating good topics.
For the last several years, I've been working with incredible staff members in two different school districts who are working to transform their classrooms through the integration of mobile technology. This is certainly no small undertaking, and it takes a special kind of teacher who is willing to dedicate hours of extra time learning the device, experimenting with apps, learning different communication methods, and practicing with different work flows. For the last three years, I've started every professional development course I've taught by saying, "I don't mind putting in the extra time to work with the teachers in this class, because I'm with teachers who are willing to work a lot harder to try something innovative for their students."
Those efforts have been rewarded. In every case, we have qualitative and quantitative data that supports a continued investment in the mobile classroom. And that makes me think. I've read an awful lot of accounts of failed 1:1 programs, both in terms of achievement and sustainability. But, in different settings, I've seen the success growing every year. So, as I begin to think about writing a dissertation in Instructional Technology and Design, I keep getting drawn back to the idea that the concepts that we follow in our technology initiatives aren't really that complex. Surely success must be replicable. What really is the key to success when it comes to integrating technology in the classroom or supporting a large scale, 1:1 computing program? Is it:
Teacher led initiatives?
Taxpayer support?
Administrative support?
Robust sustainable infrastructure?
Sustained Professional Development?
Instructional goals, not budget or convenience, driving the decision making process?
The right device?
Or is it some combination of all of these things?
In a completely selfish effort to begin to hone in on my topic of study for the next few years, I will spend portions of the next several weeks telling segments of the success stories from my current high school as teachers go about the process of integrating Chromebooks in the classroom in several different academic areas.
In the mean time, if you have a success story to tell about technology integration and how it transformed teaching, please link to it from the comments box below.
One of the many things that has impressed me in my short time at Deerfield is how globally aware our staff and students are. As proud as we are to be DHS Warriors, I don't get an insular feeling of isolation at all. All eyes are focused on the future of our global community.
With technology in the hands of all of our staff and students, our global connections can become more than just theoretical. At a National School Board Conference a short time ago I was introduced to the online tool called ePals, designed to give students authentic cross-cultural experiences and provide teachers with ideas and tools to work with partners in other parts of the world.
From the ePals website, "Teachers use the free ePals Global Classroom to create real world, culturally- enriching learning experiences for their students. With ePals classroom matching, a high school class studying Chinese can connect with a class studying English in China, or the classes can work on a special project together."
Here's a short video that shows you what ePals can do and how to get started:
For the High School Classroom:
There are a lot of tools included in the ePals suite, and you may want to use some of them with your classes. I've found that the tools we have in Google Apps are probably better for collaboration and production with high school students, but ePals overall has been designed to be a safe place for students as young as the elementary age to develop authentic global connections. The "Classroom Match" tool is what really makes ePals powerful for high school students.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you used ePals or a similar tool to make global connections in your classroom? If so, please share your experiences below.
