Blended Bulletin, Issue 8

Cool Tools

Ourboox is a free digital publishing tool that lets students create picture or text-based books and publish them. Unlike some digital book creators, Ourboox allows users to upload any images, rather than using their limited library of images. Digital storytelling is a great practice in having students demonstrate their understanding of a concept!

Common Sense Education's Graphite website has provided a list of online museums that students virtually visit for free. Though not as immersive as the Google Expeditions that were highlighted in a previous Bulletin, these sites are great alternatives for experiential learning.

Professional Learning

In How to use video and Google Forms to encourage deeper learning, a high school social studies teacher describes how she elevated the use of video in her classroom by releasing control and responsibility to her students.

Learn these SAMR model essentials straight from its creator provides an overview of a useful framework for deciding when and how to use tech in your teaching. 

A college student describes how student agency is fostered and developed in ‘Student Agency’ Is Not Something You Give or Take.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 7

Cool Tools

Kudzoo "is a free student benefit program that grants students access to deals, giveaways, scholarship opportunities, concert tickets and once in a lifetime experiences based on student's grades and achievements." Students can download the app, scan the report cards, and receive rewards points at places like McDonald's or Pizza Hut. I wish this existed when I was in high school!

Recently, I was shocked to learn that there is an algorithm for taking the square root of a number. In my math classes, taking the square root was only the press of a button on a calculator. It was never necessary for me to memorize the algorithm because technology did it for me, and then I could apply it. Ok Google is a technology that has the potential to decrease the time teachers and students spend memorizing formulas and algorithms and increasing the time spent in applying mathematical ideas to complex problems. Ok Google is simply a voice-activated search with the not-so-simple capability of completing complex tasks such as graphing parabolas. I urge you to activate this feature in your browser and test its limits!

Professional Learning

The Role of the Teacher white paper delineates 10 reasons why a teacher is vital to the success of blended learning. Each reason details why teachers make blended learning "click" (ha!).

The article How Modern Education is Adapting to Millennial Lifestyles details some of the reasons why digital tools are so effective in reaching our students. 

Teacher Laura Thrash details the challenges she had to overcome in being a blended learning first year teacher in The Curious Case of Missing Computers and the First Year Teacher.

In 'A Cat is Not a Dog' and Other Advice for Blended Learning Teachers, a high school student presents some strong do's and don'ts for blended learning teachers to follow. I would listen to her if I were you!

Blended Bulletin, Issue 6

Blended Brags

In Susan Johnston's English class at JMA, students are working through personalized learning paths in grammar. Students are using NoRedInk in an independent computer station as they look to increase their skills in grammar, editing, and revising. In the span of five minutes in Susan's class, I heard one student proclaim, "I HATE THIS!" "Why does this have to be so hard?" and "Wooo! Finished! What's the next one?" Students are learning through struggling, and it is great to see!

Because October is Connected Educator's Month, I would also like to highlight the long-distance connection that Justin Taylor has created between his students and students in a classroom in Memphis, TN. Justin and Zach Seagle, a social studies teacher at The Soulsville Charter School, have co-planned an American Politics course and are holding discussions between the two classes. Justin and Zach are using Vialogues, reviewed below, as a means of sharing videos of class discussions and allowing the students to comment about the other class' discussion. Here is a link to one of the videos that you can view upon creating a Vialogues account, and a screenshot.

Cool Tools

As described above, Vialogues is a great tool for video instruction. Read my full review here!

We all know that parent communication is very important, but it can also be a challenge. Remind is a free communication tool that allows you to send bulk or single messages to parents from your computer or mobile device. The ingenious idea is the Remind does not communicate through your phone number, but rather one generated just for the use of the app, thus maintaining your privacy. Remind has also recently added Spanish translation.

TalkingPoints is also a free parent communication app that functions in a similar way to Remind. The key difference is that TalkingPoints has some added features like a library of messages and polls to send home. Most importantly, TalkingPoints translates over 200 languages, both in the messages you send and the messages sent back to you.

Professional Learning

In the webinar Adaptive Technology: Driving Dynamic Blended-Learning Environments, Michael B. Horn discusses much of what he wrote in our summer reading, Blended.

With Arne Duncan resigning as Secretary of Education, EdSurge created an informative interactive timeline of his term: Timeline: Notable Moments Along Arne Duncan's Education Journey.

Nicholas C. Donahue, president and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, authored We can do better than one-size-fits-all education to make the case for student-centered learning and personalized learning.

CNN provides an interesting look into how social media has affected being a teenager in #Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens.

In What to Do When Your Flipped Classroom Flops, Carolyn Fruin shares the lessons she learned when her flipped classroom initiative failed for her, her students, and her students' parents. This is a great example of failing forward!

Blended Bulletin, Issue 5

Welcome to October!

Blended Brags

Last Wednesday, Google came to Bulkeley!

In its attempt to improve experiential learning, Google has created Google Expeditions. Expeditions are immersive, virtual reality field trips to places across the globe and solar system. The concept is simple: View Master meets phone app. The result has the potential to be brilliant. Four Western Humanities classes piloted Expeditions and had the chance to view ancient Roman ruins up-close. 

As "Oohs" and "Ahhs" filled the room, possibilities for classroom application seemed endless! Currently, Expeditions are only available through the Expeditions Pioneer Program, but the free app along with Expedition kits will be hitting the market soon. 

Cool Tools

HSTRY is a digital timeline creator with a lot of capabilities. As a teacher, you can create a class and view the creations of your students. The timelines are very interactive, allowing for pictures, videos, sound, and quiz questions to be embedded. Students can also collaborate on a timeline. Here is an example of a timeline I created in collaboration with students on the BHS Moot Court Team.

GoSoapBox is a web-based student response system. This program will allow you to give formative assessments that can take the form of polls, quizzes, students determining what question should be asked, and a confusion barometer. Check out these unique features here. 

Kahoot! is another web-based student response system. Like the above website, this tool is great for formative assessment. It allows you to conduct quizzes and polls and has the feel of a game.

Professional Learning

While digital tools should only be part of the decision-making process in blended learning, when you choose a tool, you want to make sure it is high-quality. In Five Simple Steps to Edtech Dating, the author describes a process for evaluating a tool's usefulness. You might try it out with some of the tools I have suggested above!

This past weekend, the first national Digital Citizenship conference was held right in our backyard in West Hartford. Read about DigCit expert Mark Ribble's baseline for digital citizenship in The 9 essential elements of digital citizenship and learn why this topic deserves a national spotlight.

We all know about the equity issues around Internet access in our community, so you may find it a relief to know that some members of Congress are also concerned about this gap. Read about a bill that proposes to solve this issue in Digital equity bill targets ‘homework gap’.