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.
Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts
Flipped or Blended - Make Taking Notes on Videos Easy and Visible with VideoNot.es
@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff
One of the common complaints I hear about Chromebooks is how difficult it is to multitask on them. Sure you can open an endless number of tabs across the top, but moving between tabs to accomplish goals can be difficult. So, what do you do if you have a presentation or a video you want to give to your students, but you also want them to actively take notes or synthesize material?
If you are using an online video, VideoNot.es could be a great solution for your students. An add-on to Google Chrome, VideoNot.es allows you to split your screen and watch an instructional video on the left and take time-stamped notes on the right.
And because it is all integrated with Google Drive, it is simple to share notes in collaborative groups or just between student and teacher.
According to Mirriam-Webster, brainstorming is defined as a group problem-solving technique that involves the spontaneous contribution of ideas from all members. Brainstorming is such an important part of the learning process. It is imperative that students learn how to generate ideas, collaborate, and then make decisions about next steps for problem-solving.
The main issue with traditional brainstorming in the classroom is that not every voice is heard. We tend to cater to our outgoing, confident students in these activities. It's not that the quiet kids don't have thoughts to contribute, they are just, well, quiet. Also, once your list of ideas has been generated, the next step is to discuss the merits of each idea and then make decisions about next steps. Again, this is an exercise that will most often involve a few students. It can be awkward to make these choices as a group, even if all voices are heard. When the goal is to engage and involve all of our students, it's time to add some new tools to our toolbox.
I'm excited to tell you about Dotstorming. Dotstorming is a real-timegroup brainstorming and decision making app. This free tech tool allows all of your students to participate in brainstorming activities in 4 easy steps. You create a dotstorming board, invite participants, add ideas, and vote on the ideas that you like. This site is no-frills and easy to use. You can whip up a dotstorming board right in the middle of class and your students will think you're a genius. Here is a video showing you the features of Dotstorming.
Want to try Dotstorming as a participant? Click on this Dotstorming board to brainstorm your favorite tech tools. Please feel free to add images or text. Don't have anything to add? That's ok, just take a look at what is on there and vote for your favorites. I can't wait to see which one wins!
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.
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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!
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.
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Have you used ePals or a similar tool to make global connections in your classroom? If so, please share your experiences below.
For several years now, I have begun every Tuesday by posting information about one "free" Web 2.0 tool that teachers can use with their classes or for professional development. Not surprisingly, one of the tools that has really taken off has been Twitter. Actually, Twitter has seen tremendous growth in the last year and a half just among professionals in education both looking for PD and the opportunity to share their success stories. I'm at a conference right now and participants are using Twitter to record notes on sessions and speakers, and share new discoveries with their teams back home. (If you are interested, you can search #CoSN15 and check out what's going on.)
Also, while students don't use Twitter as much on their own as they did a year ago, they do tend to use social media more regularly than they use email for social or immediate conversation. One of the speakers I heard yesterday said his son told him his presentation on school technology is flat wrong because, "you keep talking about how we use email. We don't use email. Email is for old people." Well, I don't wholly agree, because email is for a whole host of professional purposes. Nonetheless, savvy teachers and coaches have noticed. If you want to quickly get information to your class or your team, send a Tweet. Even if they don't have wireless Internet at home, we find that most students do have access to mobile phone technology 24/7 (whether they should actually be using them 24/7 is a topic for a different post, but here's a preview, "Go outside! It is nice out!").
When I first started discussing Twitter with my Warrior staff last Fall, I told them that the best reason to be on Twitter was for professional development and staying current with educational and technological trends. One of the things the we all noticed when we started using Twitter on a regular basis was how frequently and consistently some bloggers would be posting. @edudemic and @rmbyrne post through all hours of the night, and I was baffled. How in the world did they have enough energy to be that prolific?
Then I stumbled across their secret. They manage their accounts and schedule tweets to be sent at certain times of the day using third party software like Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a web 2.0 tool that allows you to manage your social media presence all on one screen. For educational leaders, this means that you can follow your "Home" feed in one column, your favorite bloggers or news sites in another, and watch the entire thread of a Twitter Chat in a third column. However the greatest feature Hootsuite offers is the ability to schedule a Tweet for later delivery. For teachers and coaches, you can now schedule reminders for your students or team members to be delivered at the time of day that will have the most impact for them, even if you are happily snoozing away by then.
Hootsuite has some very nice getting started videos that are short and easy to watch. I recommend this one, #HootTip: How to Schedule, AutoSchedule, View and Edit a Pending Post. If you want to do a little more with Hootsuite, and manage your entire Social Media presence, or have a school activity Twitter account managed by more than one person, there are some very good in depth tutorials out there online. This is a good and fairly comprehensive by Steve Dotto from dottotech: Hootsuite Tutorial: How to Optimize Your Social Media. If you are a teacher or administrator, and you want to use Twitter to contact your parents and students, make sure to check with your school's board policies and procedures. For teachers, it is a good idea to have your students follow you. It is NOT a good idea to follow your students! Avoid that if at all possible. If you think this kind of messaging can be valuable but your students and parents, but you aren't ready to try Twitter just yet, you should check out Remind or Edmodo for good alternatives.
They Completed Your Google Form. Now, How Do You Read Their Answers?
@joe_edtech
While your students will sit for HOURS completing the PARCC assessment, perhaps the reason the State and Federal Government have adopted such tests is that they are incredibly easy to grade - objective tests with a lot of selecting the right answers. All you have to do is run the answer sheet through a simple computer program and you have mountains of "achievement data" to turn into pretty graphs.
In the real world, and in the classroom, answers are not always objective. And most teachers want their students writing critically and creatively. Ask any Google Apps for Education teacher and they'll tell you that forms are the most efficient way to assess for learning, formatively or summatively. But, have you ever tried to read a free response answer or an essay on a Google Spreadsheet? If you have, you just winced. If you haven't - DON'T DO IT!
The Google Add On Store offers two great solutions for taking the written information in Google Form Response Spreadsheets and turning it into something useful. The first, and easiest tool is called "Save as Doc." This Add -On takes a column from a spreadsheet and saves the data in a very readable Google Doc. (See below for a demonstration of the "Save as Doc" Add On.) "Save as Doc" is probably best used if you want to generate a discussion with a group or quickly glance through answers to check for understanding. At a recent workshop, I had teachers fill out a form on which they wrote down some ideas they have about student grades. Rather than opening the results spreadsheet, I used "Save as Doc" and displayed the anonymous answers to the group to generate a full discussion.
The other Add On worth discussing is a little more complicated, but is perhaps my favorite Google Tool, and will prove worth your time to learn and utilize. autoCrat, by New Visions Cloud Lab, is a tool for merging data from a spreadsheet into a Doc or into another spreadsheet. Imagine giving your students an online quiz using Google Forms and having a Google Doc generated for each student with their answers displayed in an easy to grade, easy to comment, and easy to share way. You can also use autoCrat to create certificates or mail merge letters. Written directions for autoCrat can be found on the New Visions Cloud Lab page, or you can watch the video, created by Jay Atwood, embedded below for step-by-step instructions:
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One of the benefits of being a part of the Google Apps for Education Community is that all GAFE Teachers and Trainers create "how to" materials for using Google products. While the first video is mine, the second video is posted by a fellow Google Education Trainer. If you find another good video tutorial for a Google Add On, please share it with us in the comment box below.
This blog post is essentially a summary of an article titled "Social Networking: Boundaries and Limits Part 1: Ethics" which appeared in the March/April 2014 edition of Tech Trends, an AECT publication. The APA citation is below.
Some of my recent blog posts have focused on getting the most out of social media tools for professional development, and making meaning out of noise by curating stories from social media. But, occasionally I like to share some of the research in the field. Last Spring's edition Tech Trends magazine included an article that started by summarizing some of the statistics about how many of our students are using social media on a regular basis and for what reasons. I had to share...
According to studies from 2010 and later, 74% of kids 13-18 have at least one account on a social networking site, and most have more than one. (I'd like to point out that most of this research was completed before the explosion of the use of Twitter by young people.)
Students don't just use social media for communication, they use it for news and research. One study cited by the authors suggests that as many as 68% of high school students use social networking to research colleges and universities.
The prevalence of social media amongst college students has caused professors to change instruction. According to a 2011 study cited by the authors, up to "91% of college faculty reported using social networking for professional and/or educational purposes. According to the faculty responses, 70% viewed utilizing social networking as a valuable tool for teaching in the classroom."
In that same study, 58% of college professors suggested that social networking is an important way to support collaborative learning.
It is logical to conclude that these percentages have increased sharply since the research was completed in 2010 and 2011. And that leads us to another couple of conclusions. First, it is important for us to spend time in K-12 teaching students appropriate social networking skills because they will likely need those skills when they are in college. Secondly, by the time they get to high school, a majority of our students are already using social media. If we don't spend time teaching them social networking skills and digital citizenship ethics, we've given them the Internet with no safety net.
The article covers several other items that are worth discussing, but one that I can't pass up has to do with "Social Role Theory." The authors say, "A faculty member is placed in a potentially problematic ethical position when he/she takes on the dual role of teacher and friend to a student when utilizing social networking" (26). In other words, in K-12, it is important to provide our teachers with ongoing professional development in effective and appropriate ways of using social media with our students, and for each school district to provide clear guidelines and policies for teachers and administrators to follow.
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Aragon, A., AlDoubi, S., Kaminski, K., Anderson, S., Isaacs, N. (2014) Social networking: Boundaries and limits part 1: Ethics. Tech Trends 58(2), 25-31.
