This week, I've suggested two YouTube channels that work as great teaching tools. While acknowledging the issues we have with YouTube access, there are many fantastic YouTube channels to which you can subscribe. Rather than searching for and curating individual videos, channels provide some consistency in instruction and are usually regularly updated. You and your students will be engaged by some of the YouTube "celebrities" featured on channels, like the ones suggested below.
Veritasium is a YouTube channel featuring scientific experiments and demonstrations. What I like about this channel is that the creator relies on the knowledge of the masses for hypotheses and explanations of his experiments. He updates weekly and encourages interaction through live links embedded in his videos, discussion in the comments section, and asking viewers to send in their own videos to him. Here's a sample:
CrashCourse is a wildly popular YouTube channel created by John and Hank Greene. John Greene is the author of well-known young adult novels like The Fault in Our Stars and Papertowns and Hank is his YouTube celebrity brother. The two together form and entertaining and intellectually challenging duo who celebrate being nerdy about all sorts of subjects. CrashCourse features videos that explain complex topics in different subject areas through the use of humor, pop culture references, and talking really fast. Here's a sample:
Professional Learning Deeper Teachingis a white paper uses the example of two Algebra teachers teaching the same concept in different ways to make the case for student-centered approaches.
May the Forecast Be With Youattempts to draw parallels between the future of education and the long time ago galaxy of Star Wars.
For some local flavor, watch the video Hartford Boundlessto learn about a new partnership between Hartford Public Schools and the Hartford Public Library to help make learning happen anytime, anywhere.
Blended Brags
On Wednesday, December 16, Education Elements hosted a Launch Academy at the Mark Twain House for a group of teachers and administrators from BHS and JMA, as well as Central Office team members. Throughout the busy day, attendees had the opportunity to develop and refine key plans for the implementation of blended learning. The day started with a little warm up with our favorite yoga instructor, Maximo, at GoNoodle.
After this little bit of silliness, the group continued to work on their Design Workbooks with peer sharing through a gallery walk.
To close out the morning, attendees were able to pick 2 of four sessions to work through: Developing Self-Direct Learners; Teacher Role in the Student-Centered Classroom; Formative Assessment; and, Conferencing, Student Reflection and Feedback. These sessions were all taught through different modalities, and at the end, everyone was asked to state one intention to act on based on their new learning.
In the afternoon, the group had much-needed work time on a few specific tasks: creating a walk-through tool for blended learning, developing a PD plan for blended learning, and revising design workbooks. Finally, the day ended with a Demo Slam for attendees to share their new learning from the day. This also gave Danielle Knobloch to show off her new selfie stick that she won earlier in the day!
If you are interested in seeing more details from the Launch Academy, please check out the agenda from the day and our very own website that we are building in collaboration with Education Elements. On the website, click "Launch" to view resources from that day!
Cool Tools CommonLit is a free resource that provides high-quality material for teachers and students. The website hosts a collection of texts tied to certain themes and essential questions. For each theme, there is a range of texts for each grade level and genre. Each text also has embedded footnoting for vocabulary support, text-dependent comprehension questions, and discussion questions. It is not a curriculum, but rather materials that can be used in many different contexts.
Chronas is a tool that will help you and your students answer "How did the world look when...?" While it is still in beta testing, this website seems to have amazing potential. At key events in history, starting with the fatal ambush of Roman Legions in 9 AD, you can view a map of the world highlighting certain regions and cultures. By interacting with the map, you can open up Wikipedia articles tied to place you click at the time of the map. If I didn't have to write this blog, I might still be playing with this site. If you want your mind to be totally blown, check out this video.
If you were excited by Gina Rodriguez's video on Kaizena, you might also consider checking out SnagIt. Either as a desktop tool or Chrome extension, SnagIt allows the teacher to offer feedback on student work through audio or screen-capture recordings. Check out this more detailed tutorial from Alice Keeler. Professional Learning
Future Ready update adds new resources and PD for leadersdiscusses the exciting updates to the federal Future Ready initiative that now seeks to develop superintendents, principals, and teachers in digital learning through personalized modules.
Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with many teachers to work on blended learning designs using Education Elements' "core four" as a framework. Starting with Hartford's vision of placing students at the center of their learning, teachers developed problem statements to finish the thought, "I need a way to..."
To solve the problem, they then considered tactics in the areas of Small Group Instruction, Data Driven Decisions, Integrated Digital Content, and Student Reflection. I enjoyed many fruitful conversations and appreciated the teachers' willingness to be innovative practitioners.
In reflecting on these meetings, I was struck by the thought of how important it is to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in our teaching and in our students' learning. Often, this idea is captured as "growth mindset," and while I think that is an important theory, I would like to offer a more practical approach. In brainstorming new teaching and learning designs, it would have been easy for the teachers to stick to the phrasing, "I wish that..." However, in our discussions, we mostly spoke through "What if..." and "How can I..." If you stick with wishes, no matter how positively intentioned they are, you run the danger of waiting for a new reality. Implicit in "I wish that..." is the idea that you do not have the agency or capacity to achieve the wish. In "What Ifs" and "How can I's," there is a promise that you will act to make your idea a reality. As we continue to innovate in our teaching, I would encourage this community to keep asking "What if..?" and then, "How can I...?" to make student-centered learning the reality in Hartford. Cool Tools
For yet another way to produce instructional, Khan Academy-style videos, try using Office Mix. This is an add-on that will appear right in the menu when you open PowerPoint. Because it is built into PowerPoint, Office Mix has the added benefit of familiarity; therefore, it is quick and easy to use. It also has some built-in editing features, though not to the same extent as some other tools. Here is an article that explains how to use it. The new way to create flipped video in 60 seconds without adding software. Professional Learning Can a Truly Student-Centered Education Be Available to All?discusses the reality of public demand and skepticism of student-centered learning.
Cool Tools
If you do one thing today, you need to check out the NEW Smithsonian Learning Lab. As a fair warning, it may be the only thing you do today, because it will be easy to get lost in all of the open educational resources (OER) on this site. The Smithsonian Institute has put together a comprehensive educational website that allows students and educators to discover materials from any of their museums/zoos, create collections of the materials, and share with peers and classes. While they have not created quizzes or anything like that about the materials, they have made a clean and simple website that puts the Smithsonian's vast collection at your finger tips. In a quick search, I came across a photo of the Seinfeld "Puffy Shirt" from the National Museum of American History, a video about astrophotographers from Smithsonian Education, and a video of the National Zoo's adorable Sloth Bear cub playing harmonica. Have fun with this one, I know I will!
If you are worried about the degradation of the English language caused by texting, then you and your students need to check out Words U. Available in the App Store for iOS, this free app integrates into the phone's messaging system, much like integrating emojis. When turned on, a user will type a text as normal, but upon clicking send, the app will replace certain words with SAT-level with vocabulary while maintaining sentence structure and even idiomatic expressions. The vocab. word will be highlighted in blue and the user can click on the word to get the definition. Sounds like a great way to learn vocabulary in a very frequently used context. Check out a demo video here.
CECA took place at Mohegan Sun Casino, this conference showed me how many tools we have to work with our students. Here I have some notes about excellent apps to implement our Chromebooks. I am really sure students will be engaged with all this new material. You only need your google account to sign in here.
Padlet-is a virtual wall that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device.https://padlet.com/
Wideo-Engage your students with animated lesson or inspire them with new projects.
Kaizena- is the best place to help students improve their work on Google Drive. Voice feedback for writing is nothing new. Stanford experimented with recording verbal feedback for students on cassette tapes back in the '80s, and there's been a steady stream of research ever since Aug 2014
Lucidchart-is a web-based diagramming software which allows users to collaborate and work together in real time to create flowcharts, organisational charts, website wireframes, UML designs, mind maps, software prototypes, and many other diagram types.
Socrative-is a cloud-based student response system developed in 2010 by Boston-based graduate school students. It allows teachers to create simple quizzes that students can take quickly on laptops – or, more often, via classroom tablet computers or their own smartphones.
Piktochart-is a web-based infographic software which allows users without intensive experience as graphic designers to create professional-grade infographics, using templates.
Three takeaways from the 2015 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference:
1.Received a basic review of the blended learning models
2. Lots of new information that I can use with all of my classes on the application of Google Education apps and add-ons such as, Goobric used with Doctopus, and Google Forms and Sheets with the add-on of Flubaroo and using Google Drawing.
3. Socrative.com for a last minute exit slip and quick way to ask students questions and get responses and data back from students.
4.Let them ask questions session is about QFT and how this method gets students to develop their own questions for a more student directed lesson. Also how to use these questions for assessments and to track students engagement in the topic.
Cool Tools Listen Current is a freemium tool that curates interesting public radio stories and provides teaching resources for them. Listen Current organizes the story by subject matter and current events. It offers suggested comprehension and discussion questions for each story. Listen Current also has a partnership with Socrative to provide quizzes for their stories. The paid version allows teachers to create classes and track student progress. The paid version also offers support for ELLs.
Google Art Project is a digital collection of over 200,000 works of art from art galleries and museums around the world. Users can view the art, read pertinent details, and even create their own galleries of interesting pieces. Read below for an idea of how to use this tool in the classroom.
Block Posters is a neat classroom design tool that simply allows you to upload an image and create a poster from it using standard 8.5"x11" paper. If only it laminated, too!
ThingLink is a freemium tool for educators that allows users to upload an image and make it interactive through links. It is hard to explain exactly what this tool is, so a better way to do it is through this example.
In A New Vision to Personalize Writing Instruction, the author discusses one of the frontiers of edtech: writing. Google add-ons Doctopus and Goobric are used as examples of technology that can enhance writing through feedback and revision, but the edtech world is still looking for a more comprehensive strategy.
