My technology integration goals for a new school year

This school year I will be transitioning into a 4th grade classroom after about 15 years as a digital coach. Prior to my work as a digital coach I taught 4th grade for eight years. Over the course of my travels from school to school as a digital coach, I've met a lot of awesome teachers doing a lot of awesome things with their students. I've worked with many of them and explored many digital tools. Now I'm ready for my own classroom!

I'll be team teaching with a reading coach who will focus on ELA. I will teach math, science, and social studies for the other half of the day. Naturally I've done a lot of reflecting this summer on what I want to do with my students. I've thought long and hard about how I envision using technology as a tools to help my students. I've come up with this list that I don't feel I can compromise on. None of these digital tools or opportunities was available when I was in the classroom before, so I look forward to seeing what my students and I can accomplish with them.

Mystery Skype - I'm so excited to have my own class this year where I can do as many Mystery Skypes as I want! My goal is to Skype with all 50 states.

Global Learning - I've signed up to participate in Adventure16 and I want to investigate projects at Digital Explorer to find something for my students to participate in. I realize our social studies focus in 4th grade is Nevada, but I strongly feel that students should become global citizens as well. My goal is to find a global project we can team up with someone to work on and then find something local as well.

Interactive Notebooks - I'll be using Interactive Math Notebooks, but I want to explore adding a digital component with the goal of being a full digital interactive notebook next school year. Ideas I have are to use augmented reality with the printed version (links to demonstration videos, digital manipulatives and tools, etc) and explore something like Google Slides for full on digital notebooks next year.

iPad tools - I know I'll have at least 7-8 iPads in my room, but I hope to have a complete cart. Regardless, a few apps I want to have students use are Book Creator to create math books either as a digital portfolio or skill/unit based evidence of their learning. Explain Everything would be the perfect companion app for this project.

GAFE - students have full access to Google Apps for Education, so we'll be taking full advantage of those tools, including Google Classroom.

Blogging - I'm a strong believer in blogging so my students will definitely be using blogging as a way to reflect on their learning. I'll continue this blog with a focus on digital tools I discover and how we are using them in our class. Our class website will also have a blog as the home page to keep parents informed of our work.

Remind - speaking of keeping parents informed, I also plan on using Remind on a regular basis. I was on the parent end of it this summer with a non-school related event my kids were involved in and I absolutely loved it!

Websites - there are several websites that will be woven into our class work: XtraMath for math fact mastery, explore typing.com to increase keyboarding skills, GoNoodle for those important brain breaks, and EdPuzzle to hold them accountable for videos we see.

Plickers - our school has CPS Responders but I don't really like them. I'm going to use Plickers instead, which I think will give me a lot more flexibility and power with my formative assessments.

Presentation tools - I am big on teaching students proper presentation skills and giving them a variety of tools to demonstrate their learning. I also can't stand PowerPoints, so instead we'll learn how to use powerful tools like ThingLink, Haiku Deck, and Adobe Spark.

Video making - I will have a green screen station set up in the corner for students to create videos to demonstrate knowledge and learning. I'll have Do Ink's Greenscreen to integrate with the other video and picture apps.

Augmented Reality - I mentioned using AR with interactive notebooks, but I really want to explore using AR in a variety of other scenarios as well. I'll need to explore a few apps and see real case uses in the classroom.

Whew! Now that I look back at that list I see a lot of fun this year! I don't think I've bitten off too much, because a lot of this will integrate well with our curriculum. I always love to see real use examples from other classrooms. Please share your ideas and tech integration goals with me in the comments below!

Read More »

Maker Movement: Bring it on!

image from Mrs. Wideen's blog

The Maker Movement seems to be all the rage in education. I've read about it in my Twitter feed and seen many articles about it in Feedly. I've always been drawn to the philosophy of "learning by doing". It drives my teaching and presenting. I feel that hands on lessons and workshops are far more beneficial than "sit and get". I get the Maker Movement and I'm glad to see it happening!

For the past 4 months I've been on my own little maker movement quest. It all started with my daughter's dresser. The drawers kept falling out of the dresser. I tried repairing it, but it's a cheap particle board, so what really can be done? Being a man I figured I could build one for her with my own hands in a couple of weeks. After all, my dad was a wood worker so it must be in the blood somehow, right?

During the months of February and March I researched and planned. I found a design she liked, but didn't like the assembly method, so I decided to build it using a more "fine furniture" type method. Summer break was coming up and I knew I could dedicate hours on end each day to build the dresser and would have it done in no time. Well, 2 weeks turned in to a month, then two months, then a summer time project, then "It'll be done by next week", and finally "I am determined to finish this by her birthday!"  

I am proud to say that I put in the last screw 15 minutes prior to leaving the house to celebrate her birthday on September 30. My 2 week project was finally done after four months.

Along the way I learned quite a bit. I had no experience designing and building anything more complex than a toolbox for some Cub Scouts - and I had to look that up in the book first! Here's an incomplete list of things I had to learn about as I went through the process.

• SketchUp software to design the dresser
• what wood was best for a dresser (I settled on poplar)
• what joints to use
• how to assemble the entire thing together
• all about routers, which I had never used before
• how to join two boards together to make one wide one
• the different grits of sandpaper and when to use them
• how to paint (types of paint, brushes, sanding between layers)
• how to apply polyurethane

I learned so much during this process. By coincidence I even used some of the math my daughter was learning about in her high school geometry class - and I pointed that out to her.

When the process was finally done, when I put the last bolt in to hold the mirror in place, the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction was worth it! I had made something! I had spent time and effort and time on something that now stood before me. I had used my brain to solve puzzles, fix problems, analyze, synthesize, and learn how to do from scratch. It was functional, it looked good, and I had made it!

What does this have to do with educational technology? Plenty. This is an example of what I feel technology in education should be used for - for students to create, demonstrate and showing learning. Wouldn't it be great if students could show the same enthusiasm for learning? Have the same feeling of accomplishment? The same experiences of critical thinking and problem solving?

I've seen a disturbing trend in the last few years that has really bothered me. It seems that more and more schools are acquiring technology in order to put students in front of it in the hopes of "closing the achievement gap". Schools purchase programs such as ST Math, Ascend Math, Read 180, Compass Learning, etc and put kids in front of a computer and expect the program to teach them. More and more those students seem to be the ones who are achieving poorly in school and have to suffer through this. We are expecting the computer to do the teaching instead of the teacher.

Most schools I work with have iPads, anywhere from a 1:1 environment to multiple carts to share among classrooms. I've consulted at several schools to help determine apps to use on the iPads. Usually when I look at what's already on the iPads I see a lot of apps with questionable educational value. I don't feel iPads should be used to "entertain" a student with games. I've written about my app selection criteria before and my recommendations boil down to any app that students can use to create with or show their learning.

I welcome the MakerEd movement in education. I hope it gains some serious traction and doesn't become the latest fade that's cast to the side. This is exactly what technology is for. It is to be used as a tool by students where they can create, explore, and show their learning.

I don't want to be asked What can my students play on the iPad?, What are some educational websites where I can send my students?, or Can you teach my students how to make a PowerPoint? Instead, I want to be asked:

• How can I get my students to write more?
• How can my students demonstrate <this concept> to me?
• How can my students explain the process they went through to do X?
• How can my students share what they've learned?

Bring on the Maker Movement! I'm ready for it! I'm not a master wood worker by any stretch of the imagination. But my daughter can now store her clothes in a dresser that works!

Read More »

Teaching above the line: SAMR

I have been helping teachers integrate technology into their curriculum for the last 12 years, first as an Educational Computing Strategist and now as a Digital Learning Coach. In all those years I have frequently been asked how to integrate technology with this lesson or that theme. Even within the last several weeks I have been asked to come up with a technology rich lesson based on selected standards from the Common Core. Many times it seems we are trying to force technology into a lesson where it is not the best tool. We are trying to use technology for the sake of using technology.

I believe that we need to rethink this approach and use technology when it can significantly change what we are doing. Dr. Ruben Puentedura created the SAMR model to help teachers integrate technology better into teaching and learning. The idea behind using technology is not just do the same old thing, but with a technology twist. The purpose of introducing technology is to enhance or redefine the teaching and learning in ways that are not possible with analog tools.

Image the creation of Dr. Ruben Puentedura, Ph.D. http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

As an example of applying this model to a typical classroom assignment, picture a teacher giving the assignment for students to write an essay responding to a piece of art, music, or poetry.

At Substitution the students would use a word processor to write the essay instead of paper and pencil. They are simply substituting one tool for another. There is no functional difference and it wouldn't affect the outcome of the assignment one way or another.

With Augmentation the technology allows the students to add hyperlinks, graphics, significantly change the layout, etc. They can do more with the essay than they typically could with paper and pencil.

At the Modification level the technology allows for a significant redesign of the assignment. Rather than just writing a static essay, students can share their writing using a blog so that students can receive feedback from multiple peers in order to make edit cycles richer.

The Redefinition level allows for the creation of new tasks. Instead of writing a response essay, students convey deep analytic thought using visual and text rich creations such as a video production.

This model meshes with my vision of technology in the classroom. I don't believe we should be shoe-horning technology into a lesson just for the sake of using technology. If it doesn't change the way teachers are teaching and the students are learning, then it may not be the best tool for the job.

I realize that teachers need to start using technology somewhere, and maybe that is by using a word processor. But teachers can't stop there and call it technology integration. Teachers need to teach above the line - use technology to teach and learn in ways that otherwise could never happen!

Read More »

Student Led Technology Family Learning Night

For the past several years Triggs ES has hosted a Technology Family Learning Night where parents and students could have hands-on time with the school technology. We've tried to make it a learning experience, but it usually turned out to just be a teacher facilitated play time with technology. This year we decided to approach it differently and model the night after a traditional hands-on technology conference - with students leading the sessions instead of the teachers!

We have a teacher from each grade level (K-5) on our technology team, and each one agreed to help their students master a particular iPad app or computer program. We settled on Toontastic, Haiku Deck, Educreations, and Book Creator on the iPads, and Prezi and Comic Life on the computers. Students spent time from the beginning of the school year working with these programs for classroom projects and really got to know them. Certain students were then asked to be the presenters during the sessions of our Technology Family Learning Night.

Our goals for the night were: give students the opportunity to be leaders in their sessions, showcase school technology and how it's used in the classroom, and give parents hands-on opportunities with apps and programs they can use with their own devices at home.

As families arrived for the night they were assigned a group and given a schedule to follow. Sessions were 15 minutes long with 5 minutes to rotate. Each room had 10-12 iPads, and the student-presenter's iPad was connected to the projector so they could display the app they were teaching about. Parents were also notified that they could bring in personal devices with the apps already loaded if they wanted. Student-presenters then demoed how to use the apps while families followed along on their iPads. We also gave parents a one page tutorial on each of the apps.

Here are the student presenters in action:

Kindergarten students led a session on using Toontastic for narrative writing.

1st Graders taught families how to use Book Creator to write a story about Jack and Jill.

2nd Grade students demoed Haiku Deck for sharing info on apples.

3rd Grade students led sessions on teaching math with Educreations.

4th graders used the computer lab to teach Comic Life and extreme sports.

5th graders showed off their mastery of Prezi.

Our GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) teacher also set up a STARLAB where students could explore the solar system. She had her students record information about the solar system and played the audio as part of the experience. Families were able to use this as one of their sessions.

The STARLab set up on our stage.

I don't think there's any better way of showing off technology than to have the students teaching what they know!

I'd love to hear how other schools have organized student led workshops. Sound off in the comments if I didn't give enough details!

Read More »