Takeaways from MassCUE 2016

by Jessie Rosario, Journalism and Media Academy

As first year teacher in the Hartford Public School system, I didn't know what to expect from the MassCue conference on Blended Learning. It was the first time I heard about this style of teaching. I was curious about what it had to offer and how it would change the dynamics of my classroom. I wanted a structured environment but one that would cater to students needs and diverse ways of learning. Schools have limited digital resources. However, I am lucky to be in a district that has provided students with their own computers. Students don't have to rely on the limited digital resources in the building and they can use their computers daily to research, complete online reading comprehension tasks and explore the online world.

In my Reading classes I use stations to incorporate the blending learning approach. Students in my reading classes use the online program ThinkCerca to read/listen to stories and answer comprehension questions.  They are also read independently and work in a small group to complete a comprehension task. On the other hand, my Seniors use the computer to research topics for their Senior Capstone Project. They are currently typing their proposal letters, finding credible sources and creating annotated bibliographies using their personal computers.

I attended many workshops geared towards Reading and Google. I thought it was important to find resources that were related to the subjects I teach and sources I use in my classroom. Reading is an area that I am an expert in, but I am always looking for new ways to motivate my students to read. I wanted something more current to keep track of my students reading and help them make progress. I attended 2 workshops and networked with someone about reading programs that I could use in my own classroom. The first workshop I attended was about transforming independent reading. The workshop was run by two individuals who were passionate about transforming the way we keep track of reading and student's progress. One of the individuals was the publisher of Read 180 and created the book wizard feature for Scholastic. He was branching out and created an app called Moxie Reader. This app, geared towards students reading levels, would track reading and progress. Because I have many students in my class that struggle with fluency, I was interested in learning about a program called Read Naturally. This program, which could be done with paper/pencil and/or on a computer, allowed teachers to progress monitor students on fluency. Students also worked independently to read passages and improve fluency. The presenter also taught me a good strategy to use with my students to help improve their comprehension. I was able to use this strategy with one of my reading groups and it was very helpful. Although they did not offer a workshop, I did network with an individual that offers a program known as MyOn. This program, like Moxie Reader, allows teachers to monitor reading. In addition, it provided benchmark assessments to monitor progress in reading. All 3 programs are great and would be a great addition to our school. They would provide resources for reading intervention and also incorporate the Blended Learning approach.

With the implementation of Blended Learning, students at my school were given their own personal Chromebooks. These Chromebooks are used on a daily basis in all classrooms. Although I am familiar with Google Chrome, I was unfamiliar with some of the features we are required to use in the classroom. Google Classroom, Google Docs and Google Drive are some of the features of Google Chrome that I am currently using in my Capstone classes. Google Classroom allows me to post and receive work from students.  Google Docs is used to submit and revise/edit papers. Google Drive is used to keep track of documents I create and also to receive any paperwork from my students. Because it was the first time I was using these program, I attended many workshops on Google. The first one was about providing feedback using google drive. In this workshop, the presenter gave me useful information about Google Docs, including how to provide suggestions/comments, grading papers using rubrics (OrangeSlice) and adding 'add-ons' to Chrome to help me in monitoring and revising papers. You can check out resources from this workshop here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XriuugEm9bXZepJGMqwV3xEf58gD8iDwoMDYrjIcxyg/mobilebasic

As far as the reading sources, I have not had the chance to use them this week. However, it has opened my mind to all the possibilities for programs and resources I can use to provide intervention for my reading classes. The Google workshops provided resources I could use in my Capstone classes to help students through the process of completing this graduation requirement. I am currently using the add-on (OrangeSlice) to create rubrics to grade my students proposal and annotated bibliography. I also included the Draftback, chrome extension, to monitor students revisions on their proposal letters.

Besides these workshops, I also attended another one called LinkIt! that talked about how to collect data within schools to "improve the strategic use of data and enhance the efficiency of data-driven processes at the leadership and classroom level."  

Overall, the workshops and conference gave me insight in the endless possibilities that Blended Learning has to offer to transform my classroom into a student-centered classroom. I am hopeful that this will work but still need support in using it in my classroom.

How to Stay in the Game: Virtual Co-Teaching and Collaboration

By Zachary Seagle (Social studies teacher, The Soulsville Charter School, Memphis, TN)

and Justin Taylor (Social studies teacher, Bulkeley High School, Hartford, CT)

In the summer of 2015, we participated in the Hollyhock Fellowship Program, a two year residential fellowship at the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching at Stanford University that addresses the complicated educational realities that inner-city, early-career high school teachers face.  Participants are clustered together in content areas and further divided into the particular courses they teach.  Both of us (Zach, a fifth-year teacher in Memphis, Tennessee and Justin, an eighth-year teacher in Hartford, Connecticut) taught an upper-level government and politics course and quickly realized that we had common teaching practices that we wanted to hone and perfect.  Doing what normal teachers do, we commiserated around the unstable workload that we each experienced in our own contexts: grading, lesson planning, data analysis, ad hoc administrative requirements, and an assortment of additional educational woes.  In our work together that summer, we decided to stop reinventing the wheel and plan and execute similar core practices throughout the year.  

In the first year of our virtual co-planning model, we first wrote common assessments, then later common lesson plans and projects, before beginning video conferences to reflect on and edit our work.  We discussed issues that we faced in each of our courses, identified trends, and problem solved on potential solutions.  After a while, we began to film both ourselves and our students, shared the videos and tagged particular teacher/student moves in the classroom, and offered critical feedback.  We both grew tremendously.  We returned to Hollyhock in the summer of 2016 fully confident that our experience co-planning improved student achievement.  In 2016, we invited two other teachers to join our common class and expanded what we were collectively working on.  

This year’s ambitions include flipping our classrooms to create more opportunities in the school day for collaborative application tasks.  By utilizing this virtual co-teaching method and a host of online platforms, we are able to achieve the level of collaboration we were seeking. Using HyperDocs, we structure our course around a unified organizational system, divide the workload, and ensure that we create sufficient flexibility in our individual teaching schedules.  Besides teacher collaboration, we want to press our students to collaborate as much as their teachers.  To facilitate student collaboration, we utilize the online platform Slack, a real-time message board, for our students to engage in safe and structured political discourse across four classrooms.

Each week, students post, react, and upload media messages that are scored on a common rubric. In addition, students share their written essay work via Pathbrite, an e-portfolio platform perfectly designed for classrooms through their unique feedback tools. Students in one classroom are paired with partner e-pals in another class to score and provide weekly reflection on others’ work.  

Another example of student-to-student collaboration that is only possible because of intentional teacher-to-teacher collaboration is our Socratic seminars.  Each unit of study is centered on a common essential question in which we assess via a structured socratic method.  Each classroom films their Socratic seminar discussion and uploads to Vialogues, a video discussion tool in which students tag their group’s discussion moves and missed opportunities.  

Our partnership has enriched our core instructional practices in both expected and unexpected ways.  By sharing responsibilities for the design and development of curricular materials, we are building a more robust collection of tools than any one of us could have created while working alone. We not only have increased the volume of materials, but also the quality and diversity of resources. Our core classroom structure is a blend of our affinities for particular instructional practices, allowing each of us to specialize in the design of specific materials, like simulation tasks, primary and secondary sources, curated online content, and assessments.  

The availability of identical classroom materials, including common formative and summative assessments, has created multiple entry points for deep analysis of student performance.  We now routinely norm our grading practices around selected student work to ensure that all students are held to an equally high level of academic rigor - one that we hope will adequately prepare them for the challenges of an Advanced Placement exam or a college-level government course.  This practice permits meaningful analysis of student data, identification of trends in achievement, and opportunities to isolate and name best practices with a sample size greater than any one class.

In addition to students benefitting from more rigorous curricular materials and higher quality instructional practices, we find that our students are operating with a greater sense of accountability. While the critical eyes of a close classmate or a teacher may inspire some commitment to quality work, nothing engenders higher stakes than a large audience of one’s peers.  This structure of e-pals not only elevates the nature of academic discourse, but also forces them to process voices and viewpoints they would not otherwise encounter while learning in smaller, geographically-defined spaces.  

While the benefits of this collaborative approach far exceed the drawbacks, the partnership is not without its challenges.  None of us shares a common school calendar or bell schedule, so we are always mindful of when others won’t be teaching and make plans to adjust accordingly.  Of course, this is further complicated by the panoply of interruptions that are inherent in the nature of schooling, such as state-standardized testing.  We have addressed this issue, as best we can, by creating lesson structures that are both prescriptive and flexible - ensuring that our students have common experiences across days of instruction, but that pieces may be moved around to accommodate the inevitably unpredictable school calendar.

While the ability to draw on a rich assortment of pedagogical moves has unequivocally enriched our collective classroom practice, it has also required each of us to operate well outside of our comfort zones. As teachers, we frequently settle into instructional habits and routines that may not consistently meet the diverse learning styles of our students.  While our approach is built on a philosophy of not deviating from a set of clearly defined instructional experiences, these experiences are inherently more diverse and dynamic than the ones each of us was developing before our partnership.

As we look at the year ahead, we are eager not only to improve our own practice, but also to share with others the principles of design that have fundamentally altered the nature of our work.  In our classrooms, we hope to build additional opportunities for our students to engage in meaningful collaboration with one another.  It is our hope that the ratio of student-to-student interaction in virtual spaces ultimately reflects the frequency of teacher-to-teacher collaboration.  In our teaching practice, we are planning to meet more regularly through video conferences to discuss and reflect on shared experiences, as well as delegate planning for future units.  In our communities, we hope to enlist the support of others in this work, growing a network of teachers who can work together to leverage the power of edtech to facilitate collaboration amongst both teachers and students to truly transform the nature of this work.

Blended Bulletin, Summer Edition 2

Cool Tools

Stupeflix is a free drag-and-drop, online video editor. If you're familiar with Animoto, Stupeflix uses the same type of editing "magic" based on themes of your choice. What Stupeflix has over Animoto is premium features for free! You and your students will be able to create videos up to 20 minutes in length and access the website's full range of themes and editing options.

Google announced some interesting new tools and features at last week's ISTE conference. First is Google Cast, an app that allows students to instantly share their screen with the teacher's. Read more about it here. Second, Google has now released the Expeditions virtual reality app for free! The app has been in beta since we test drove it in the fall, but now all Android users, and soon all iOS users, are able to download the app and participate in VR field trips all around the world. Finally, Google has added a quiz feature to Forms that allows for automatic grading. Many teachers have already used the Flubaroo add-on for this, but Google has added this function directly into their app. When you create a Form, click the Settings icon to see how to activate the new feature. Learn more here!

If you are interested in checking out some Maker projects to include in your classroom, explore PBS LearningMedia's Makers resources for some neat ideas!

PBS LearningMedia also has a great collection of art resources in The Art Assignment, a series of interviews with artists revealing their inspirations, methods, and techniques.

Professional Learning

Want to know if your students are truly engaged in your classroom? Check out this infographic. Thanks, Kelly and Natalie from Education Elements, for the helpful resource!

Video chatting opens up a range of possibilities for enhancing projects and lectures in the classroom. Check out Five Ways Teachers Can Use Video Chat in the Classroom for some good ideas.

One of the quickest ways to learn new classroom technology is through video tutorials. Richard Byrne, author of the popular Free Technology for Teachers blog, has a comprehensive YouTube channel teaching you how to use great tech tools.

‘Curiosity Is a Powerful Motivator’: Spotlighting Student-Centered Learning highlights the impact that SCL has on both teachers and students in addressing issues of social justice.

As seen in The Connecticut YOUTH Forum Talks Student-Centered Learning, SCL isn't just a priority in schools! See if you can spot the Bulkeley student!

Blended Bulletin, Summer Edition 1

Blended Brags

Bulkeley and JMA both presented at the district's community update on the High School Centers of Innovation. JMA students presented projects that they created during Content Day, a weekly flex day in the schedule where they create media with the guidance of experts. Bulkeley's presentation featured an overview of the changes that shifted teaching and learning during the past school year and blended learning testimonials from students. It was great to have the opportunity to share our important work with families, community members, teachers, and district leaders!

Cool Tools

Check out the Digital Public Library of America for tremendous primary source resources.

By now, many of you have probably seen this emotional speech from a high school valedictorian in Texas revealing her status as an undocumented immigrant. Well, she is just one of many undocumented immigrant students who wish to go to college but face struggles in achieving that reality. For these students, DREAMer's Roadmap is an app that connects them to a database of scholarships that undocumented immigrants can apply for. Check out the story of how this app came to be here.

Padlet, everyone's favorite "corkboard" site, recently released updates that made some significant improvements. Most importantly, it is now easier to customize and share your padlets, and you will no longer have to answer the most common question, "How do I type on this?" Padlet has introduced a pencil icon, in addition to the standard double click feature, to allow users to post on boards.

Professional Learning

How can we change schools to better reflect modern business and industry conditions? What does education reimagined look like? asks us to refocus on teaching the desired skills, knowledge, and dispositions of today's workplace.

Unpacking whether blended learning works urges researchers to ask the right questions of blended learning; not whether or not blended learning works, but, what works, for which students, in which circumstances?

When thinking about your classes for next school year, consider adjusting how you plan and use the ideas in Design Thinking and PBL.

Something else to think about this summer is connecting with other educators on Twitter. Get inspired by reading Before We Were Connected: How To Achieve a Statewide Professional Learning Network.

Though the meaning of "growth mindset" tends to get stretched, Does Your Curriculum Have a Growth Mindset? offers some important questions to ask when assessing the effectiveness of what you're teaching.

How Deeper Learning Helps Children Succeed discusses the importance of deeper learning methods, especially PBL. Worryingly, the excerpt also points to evidence that low-income and minority students are not given the same opportunities for deeper learning as peers in more well-off districts.

Learn about systemic inclusion of student voice in Vt. High School Takes Student Voice to Heart.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 31

Blended Brags

In lieu of the usual shout-outs and kudos, I'd like to invite you back to the blog again tomorrow to check out our year in review!

Cool Tools

Google's Global Forest Change Explorer is an impressive aggregation of data culled from Google Earth and researchers about deforestation across the planet. The maps and layered images will for certain lead students to ask big questions!

If students have an Android phone, they can download Google's new Science Journal app and start gathering data from the world around them. Students can track anything from the volume of a dog's bark to how much light enters a tinted car window and keep records right on their phone. Since Google also recently announced that Android apps will be available on Chromebooks, there may soon come a time when our students' Chromebooks can be used for sophisticated data measurement!

EasyBib is offering free access to EasyBib EDU for teachers and their classes for next school year. This EDU account allows some class management features for teachers that you wouldn't have with using the standard version of EasyBib. Students can also have notebooks of their citations for different projects they may be working on, and an annotation tool seems to be in the works! If you are interested, sign up for access by filling out this Google Form here by August 1, 2016.

If you're a Planboard user (or, even if you're not...), Chalk.com has recently improved Markboard. The interface is a thing of beauty and the tool seems to have potential in making several types of student assessment/feedback more effective and efficient.


Professional Learning

Whether a 1:1 classroom will be new for you next year, or you've had some experience in a 1:1 room, check out the tips in 10 steps to a better one-to-one experience as you think of planning for next year.

In Professional development should make teachers feel urgent, not small and isolated a National Board Certified Teacher makes the case for increasing the professionalism of teaching through sharing best practices via web resources and video.

Check out High School of the Future for an in-depth look at Salt Lake City's Innovations Early College High School, where learning is hyper-personalized for every student.

Another important step in having students own their learning may be to have students lead parent-teacher conferences. Find out why and how in How to Shift to a Student-Centered Approach in Parent-Teacher Conferences.

As we think about continue to grow as student-centered teachers next year, you may find inspiration in the article Why Good Professional Development Is Crucially Linked to an Educator’s Attitude

Personalized Learning Summit 2016 Takeaways

“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting.  If they want different results, they must change the way they do things.”   Tom Northrup

Wow.  My experience in these two short days has been profound.   Northrup’s quote included in a keynote address by Michael Horn, coupled with a visit to a well known tech company has diverted my attention from professional development around strategies and best practice to the importance of culture and space.  It is so essentially important that all stakeholders know and understand the vision and mission of the school.  How else can we expect buy-in and fidelity to our vision?  To move beyond compliance to “this is how we do things around here?” This change needs to happen.

I realize that we already have our list of words/phrases that create our foundational vocabulary, but I think we need to go further than that.  Yes, we need to know and own those words/phrases, but are they easily articulated?  And perhaps we need to revisit them given our learning over the past year.  But there needs to be more.  How do we build it into the DNA of our culture? Suggestions welcomed!

Of course, we also need to be able to identify our culture in the makeup of our space(s).  Investment in new mobile furniture is imperative to promote collaboration and ease of transition in the classroom.  If we want to model what is going on in the workforce, rows of desks facing front is NOT the answer.  If we want to grow individuals reliant on guidance and focused on a central personality, then we can continue as we are.  If we want students that are self-reliant, that own and drive their learning, then we must change the way we set up the classroom and the learning experience.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 30

Blended Brags

This kudos goes out to Danielle Knobloch who is already thinking about plans for next year! Danielle sees room for improvement in her blended classroom and plans to implement consistent structures for the beginning and end of class. She has specific plans in place to increase and improve student reflection in her classroom, asking questions about what students have learned, and also how students have learned. Awesome work!

Cool Tools

Amazon Whispercast is a freemium tool that connects teachers with a large library of eBooks (some free, some not) that can be digitally distributed to a class. Teachers can also upload their own content for easy distribution. Thanks for the suggestion, Laura Pels!

Here's an interesting take on summer reading. Newsela has unveiled Camp Newsela. Through this web tool, students can join a club (i.e., Strong-of-Stomach Club) and be assigned articles to read over a 2 week time span. When the club achieves its reading goal, students will have the chance to donate to DonorsChoose projects.


Professional Learning

Without clear communication, learning movements like project-based learning and makerspaces can be scary to parents in low-income communities. Why the Language We Use About Learning Determines Inclusivity discusses how to make deeper learning stick and be successful for all stakeholders. 

In The Personalized Learning Mindset, posits that personalized learning is not something you do or accomplish, but rather is a way of being. Check out the three proof points of someone with a PL Mindset.

Saying 'No' to the Slide: 20+ Summer Opportunities for Educators and Students offers lists of ideas for both students and teachers to continue learning over the summer. These lists have a distinct edtech flavor.

Thoughts from the Education Elements PL Summit

Education Elements, our blended learning consultants, recently hosted their 2nd annual Personalized Learning Summit in San Francisco. Amidst the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and lots of sea lions, this conference provided an opportunity to hear about best practices in the field from presenters and to network with leaders from other schools and districts.

Here are a few takeaways:

1. Walk Your Talk- During the PL Summit, I had the opportunity to tour the headquarters of Pinterest. Though admittedly I am not the target demographic of the app, I am secretly (okay, not-so-secretly) an avid Pinner. Needless to say, the visit to Pinterest was definitely a highlight of the conference! While at first it was cool to feel like I was on the set of Silicon Valley, it quickly became apparent that this company is driven by a clear purpose and all of the organizational decisions they make are in accordance with that purpose. This is best demonstrated by Pinterest's core values: We put Pinners first, We knit, We're authentic, We go.

There is much to learn from how Pinterest practices these core values. By putting Pinners first, Pinterest has committed to perfecting the user experience. If students are our users, what are schools doing to perfect student experiences? All decisions teachers and school leaders make need to be for the good of students. The core value, We knit, refers to the collaborative workplace at Pinterest. All meeting rooms had glass walls and different teams consistently met together. To really best serve our students, teachers should be just as open and collaborative in their practice. We're authentic captures the reflective environment of colleagues in Pinterest headquarters, where high-level goals are set and actions towards those goals are honestly assessed. Teachers shouldn't be afraid to set ambitious goals and risk falling short; instead, they should be empowered to set those goals and supported if they don't quite get there. And finally, We go describes the need for Pinterest to always be ready to change and try things. Schools should feel that same sense of urgency to try best practices. There needs to be a spirit of planning and iteration, and not waiting for the next school year to try something.

2. Learning Like Our Students- This takeaway seems to be the culmination of a lot of my learning from conferences this year. As we seek to personalize learning for our students, especially in blended environments to ensure that learning can happen anytime, anywhere, shouldn't we practice the same type of learning as teachers? Teachers love learning, but traditionally, that learning is meted out in small doses at regular times over the course of the school year. When that chance for professional learning finally comes around, it often misses the mark in terms of content and delivery. These reasons are why I've been so enamored by microcredentialing for professional development. Microcredentialing is the idea that teachers should have the flexibility of place, pace, path, and/or time in their professional development. A microcredential could be awarded to a teacher that demonstrates (competency-based) their learning or expertise of a concrete teaching practice. Many districts incentivize this by awarding CEUs, college credit, or money for completion of microcredentials. While there is still a lot to explore with this, such as how can we incentivize in this district, the idea that teachers should be empowered to learn anytime, anywhere is something that sticks with me.

3. We're Not Alone!- In one particular session, and in conversations with leaders from other districts, I found it remarkable how similar personalized learning shifts have been across the country, from California, to Wyoming, to Myrtle Beach. Both the successes and struggles that we have in Hartford are similar to those in other districts in their first years of implementation. What was great to see were videos from districts a few years advanced from where we are, and the impact their changes have had. While it may seem like we have a long way to go to become a student-centered district, it is important to know that we are moving in the right direction and we have co-travelers on this journey!

Blended Bulletin, Issue 29

Blended Brags

On Sundays, I get weekly reports from our digital content providers about our students', teachers', and schools' progress. Despite some obstacles, we've had several teachers jump in to start using IXL, ThinkThroughMath, and ThinkCERCA. Bringing in digital content to the classroom is no easy thing, especially when you think about what may go wrong, so I applaud the risk-taking! I'd encourage everyone to check out the digital tools that you have access to and to start thinking about how you might use them next year.

Cool Tools

Newsela has done a lot this school year to update their tool with new content and new capabilities. Most recently, Newsela announced the release of Time Machine, an archive of historical accounts of significant events. These articles still feature different Lexile ranges and are tied to reading standards. Newsela also recently released text sets, some of which partner these historic articles with current events.

Professional Learning

One of the key grappling points with blended and student-centered learning is how much personalization is too much. In Bursting the 'Personalization' Bubble: An Alternative Vision for Our Public Schools, the author advocates for a renewed use of cognitive science in designing new instructional practices.

In What a Decade of Education Research Tells Us About Technology in the Hands of Underserved Students, the author reports on her review of literature that basically concludes, "overall, students who are black, Hispanic, or low-income are more likely to use computers for drill-and-practice, whereas students who are white or high-income are more likely to use computers for simulations or authentic applications." The author goes on to suggest five uses of technology to help fix this inequity.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 28

Blended Brags

Thank you to all teachers and students who played a roll in the Nellie Mae site visit. We had a large number of enthusiastic visitors and they were treated to interesting classes and engaging presentations.

Nellie Mae visitors enjoying their luncheon Q&A at Bulkeley.

Students in Susan Johnston's class created this video to show how much they love Blended Learning!

Justin Taylor and Jessica Chirdon are combining their two classes and co-teaching students through a research paper related to the Holocaust. To do this, they are using a flex model where students are mostly working independently, but data from EdPuzzle videos on research/writing skills is being used to inform them which students to pull into small group instruction. Justin and Jessica set themselves and their students up for success by explicitly teaching the expected behaviors for each area of the room.

Cool Tools

Google Slides just introduced a new feature that you may have recently noticed called Q&A. The feature allows a presenter to share a link where audience members can submit questions in a back channel. The audience can "like" questions that have been asked so that the presenter can prioritize questions that are popular in the group. I played with this feature last week and found it extremely easy to use! Check out this promotional video:

Because I can't get enough of cool physics experience, here is Physics Girl, a series of free video resources from PBS LearningMedia.

ThinkCERCA has updated their lesson library to include filters. This should making finding the "just right" lesson even easier.

Professional Learning

Can growth mindset theory reshape the classroom? According to this article, it can, but now the research needs to be turned into effective practice.

A middle school teacher reflects on incorporating reflection into her PBL classroom in 

Reflect versus Critique in the PBL Classroom. An interesting read that differentiates reflection on process from critique of product.

As we know, technology for technology's sake does not work. Five Myths About Classroom Technology (And What To Do, Instead) challenges us to think about classroom technology best practices.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 27

Blended Brags

On Wednesday and Thursday last week, a team of teachers from JMA and BHS joined our wonderful coaches Natalie and Kelly from Education Elements for the final workshop of the year. On Wednesday, these teachers opened their classroom doors for walkthroughs. Visiting their classes, we were able to see engaging Kahoot! games, choice lectures through EdPuzzle, authentic reading and writing practice with ThinkCERCA, and other thoughtful ways of using technology to enhance instruction. We were also able to see station rotation models that allowed for small group instruction and for students to have ownership of their learning.

On Thursday, the team came together for a Reflect and Plan academy. Teachers shared their best practices and worked on what changes and improvements they would like to make for next year. I can't wait to see what they have in store for 2016-17!

 Professional Learning

In It’s Time to Stop Hiding Behind Graduation Rates, Nicholas Donahue, the president and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, discusses how college and career readiness needs to be the measure of success for schools, not graduation rates. How do we improve college and career readiness? Student centered learning.

When Celebrating Learning Differences Is At the Heart of School Culture shares the stories of two schools as they use specific knowledge of each of their students to personalize learning.

The idea behind Let Teachers Design Better Ways to Use School Time is that when time is a variable, teachers should have voice in how it is used in order to avoid time wasted.

Why Flipped Learning Improves a Teacher’s Questioning Skills shares another benefit of flipping your classroom: teachers can ask question that might actually be answered! (Due to the ability to personalize questions for individual or groups of students)

“Can You Hear Me?!”: The Power of Student Voice shares the process and takeaways of one school when they included student voices in reshaping their school.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 26

Blended Brags

Last week, 9th-12th grade Bulkeley students sat down with the software developers for Middlebury Interactive Languages to provide feedback about their tool to support ELLs. Students were able to voice their opinions about the software to the developers in hopes of making the product better. I was deeply impressed by the students making suggestions for the product to improve their learning and not just to make the product more enjoyable! To learn more about MIL's partnership with Hartford Public Schools, check out this article.

Cool Tools

Win the Whitehouse is a fun simulation where students create a presidential candidate and try to make it to the Oval Office. The game takes students through picking a party, establishing their opinions on political issues, and making it through the primaries and election processes.

US News Map is an interactive map of the United States that displays the reporting of news stories over time and locationally. The site also allows you to view images of the original newspapers.

Professional Learning

How can Social Studies benefit from digital content? The Value of Modern Social Studies in Cultivating Real World Literacy shares top resources for bring history to our students' fingertips.

It is often easy for us to claim a buzzword as us ("I am a blended teacher"), or think of a buzzword as unattainable ("We can't do blended here"). ‘It’s Personalized, Online, and Blended’: How to Make Edtech Buzzwords Substantive tells us that when it comes to buzzwords, actions speak louder than words.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 25

Blended Brags

Recently, the school counselors and college and career specialists have been working on learning and rolling out a digital tool called Naviance. Naviance is a college and career readiness portfolio platform that offers a range of tools including curriculum, planning, surveys, document collection, and many more. Our students will be using this site to produce their SSPs. The truly great part is that these SSPs will live with the students for at least their high school careers and will be a collaborative effort among the students, families, teachers, and counselors.

Cool Tools

Edulastic is a free tool for building and assigning standards-based formative assessments. The really great thing about this site is the library of assessments from the community of users.

Professional Learning

In The difference between being eligible for college and ready for college, I found one of the most important reasons why student-centered learning matters. SCL practices get our kids ready for college by instilling them not just with content knowledge, but the knowledge of how to learn.

Thinking of trying out PBL? Read 4 Ways to Promote Growth Mindset in Project-Based Learning to ensure that your students are learning from their failures and reflecting on their progress.

The interesting interview in Blended learning can enable teachers to focus on cognitive skills helps to illuminate how a transition to blended learning makes good teaching great.

Read how TED-ED clubs encourage students to use their voice in producing authentic speeches for an audience.

Blended Bulletin, Issue 24

Blended Brags

Where to start? So much to brag about!

First and foremost, Chromebooks are finally in our classrooms and in the hands of our students. Carts are being used at Bulkeley Lower and at JMA, and over 260 11-12 graders at Bulkeley Upper now have devices to take home.

Chromebook Kickoff
On Saturday, March 12, from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM, just under 200 students and family members came to Bulkeley High School for the first ever Chromebook Kickoff. Students and families first learned about Chromebook care and HPS policies in two brief presentations, given in both English and Spanish. After passing through these stations and signing some paperwork, the students received their devices. A big thank you to Stacey Rosado, Diana Gonzalez, Myrna Rivera, Billy Conroy, Kevin Clemens, Diane Anthony, Yolanda Baez, Gayle Allen-Greene, and Kim Childress for making everything run smoothly for all 10 hours! A special thank you to the student volunteers from Bulkeley's National Honor Society for guiding families around in the school and helping with childcare, as well as the Women's League for providing childcare.

ThinkCERCA Training

Last Thursday, English, social studies, and science teachers at Bulkeley and JMA all received the first round of training to use ThinkCERCA as integrated digital content in their blended classrooms. The teachers were excited by what they learned and know that it will have an impact on student literacy. Steve from ThinkCERCA was energetic and responsive to the needs of the teachers, and I know I don't just speak for myself when I say that I can't wait to see this software in action!

Social Studies Site Visit

Last Friday, Kevin Clemens, Justin Taylor, and Janice Milroy travelled to Maloney High School in Meriden to see examples of station rotation models in social studies classrooms. The group walked away with some important insights and spent the afternoon drafting or revisiting their instructional designs. Below is Kevin's unique design where instead of thinking about classes day-by-day, he designed around the principal learning objective of certain class periods. 

Blended Bulletin, Issue 23

Blended Brags

Last week, Mario Sousa-Pena, Wendy Turek, and Kaitlin Sullivan visited Platt High School in Meriden to look at blended learning using station rotations. They took away some important lessons and spent the afternoon revisiting their classroom designs. One important note to share was that students will not use their devices unless we give them a reason to do so!

Cool Tools

As you may know by now, one of the tools we will be using systematically is ThinkCERCA. Research from a rather extensive pilot in Chicago suggests that ThinkCERCA is one of two literacy tools that has a statistically significant impact on learning. We will soon be having training with this platform, but if you are interested in getting a head start, here are some online training modules.

As an update Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides have all new templates that you can choose from. To find the templates, go straight to docs.google.com. The templates will appear at the top of the page.

PBS has created Election Central as a teaching tool for what promises to be an historical 2016 in politics.

Professional Learning

No matter how many articles I read about technology programs, growth mindset's place in the change process remains crucial. Check out an interesting way to chart growth mindset in Does your school have a growth mindset when it comes to change?

As we move to student-centered approaches, the answers we should use to answer the question, "Did that lesson go well?" need to change. Find out how in How to Move from First-Person to Learner-Centered Teaching.

In a follow up to the WALL-E article from last week, Interaction With Digital Content: 5 Actions to Look For In Your Students’ Online Experience offers ideas about what to look for to ensure students are actively using digital content.

What would happen if we asked our students to design their school experience? How high school would be different if students could design it offers some ideas. My favorite line: "I was passionate about it...You could think and use your ideas, and be creative."

Webinar: Register for Engaging Struggling Learners in Online and/or Blended Environments which will be shown on Tuesday, March 15 at 6:00 PM. Remember, even if you can't tune in then, you will be sent a link for a recording.

Platt Visit!

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to visit Platt and observe and interact in three different science classrooms. Our focus of our trip was to see station rotation. We observed three teachers that plan together or in the same system as one another.One helpful tip I learned with implementing stations was using a timer that accounts for transition time. This timer will reset itself as well so you do not need to remember to do that in between each station. It is a google app meant for training and the transition time is really the “rest” time. 

Being in the teacher’s classrooms, you could tell that the students were accustomed to the stations and many of the students were eager to complete the stations. I really liked that it was a standard set up that they always had a drawing, reading, video, hands on or simulation activity and a vocabulary station. These stations also have their own designated area so students know exactly where to expect each station. It was clear that this routine benefited the students. The teachers did not assign where students needed to start but just stated that there could only be 4 or 5 students at each station. I liked this aspect because students were able to start where they felt most confident or where the best style for them to start learning the content. 

A blended learning detail that I enjoyed was seeing their use of QR codes. The code was not 100% necessary at the station since the teachers tablet was available at the station but but having the QR code available for students that were absent would be really helpful. We also saw that the students used QR codes to access their online textbook and other materials so they were very comfortable with this process.