791 Blog #7- Insights on Transitioning to Remote Learning My mind is very obsessed right now with finding the magic combination of learning activities that will keep my students engaged, connected, learning, and challenged in a positive way. What is that magic combination? And is it humanly possible because right now I feel like I am doing hours and hours of lesson planning to try and find that magic formula. How do I keep the lessons simple and direct enough for my kids with wifi issues and disruptive learning space at home to get through and still meet the needs of my kids that are craving a challenge and look bored out of their mind with the pace online. The learning I have gained from my Touro classes has basically taken my technical skills and teaching methods from something equal to about a TV dinner of variety to a pretty solid buffet of educational experiences and options. Some of my “recipes” need more practice, but I am so far from where I started in March 2020 that I just have to take a moment to enjoy the new tastes and flavors that are becoming my new teaching staples. The tools that are really adding spice to my lessons are Hyperdocs, Ed Protocols, Screencast, Edpuzzle, Pear Deck, Google forms, and Google slides- especially for group projects. When we need to review and just play together, Gimkit is my kids’ favorite online game. Mote is my new go to tool for giving voice notes for feedback in Google classroom and Google Classroom in general is working really well for assigning and grading class assignments. Before the pandemic in March, I only used GC for delivering the link for a test or project. I can’t even imagine how I could do virtual teaching/ remote learning without Google classroom and these other tools. Before I was exposed to all ideas from the reading assignments in this class I mostly planned and taught to the whole group synchronously. The idea of having my students move through a lesson using a Hyperdoc or Screencast where they drive the learning individually and have choice about how and when they will do the learning, plus choice about how they will show me they accomplished the learning- these ideas were so far from my pre-covid style of teaching it’s just hard to even imagine. After looking back over my notes from Baggio, Clarke, and Dervyn and exploring the ideas in the UDL website I realize that the real beauty of a big, diverse learning buffett is that the learner gets choice in how they learn because they probably know what works best for their brain when it comes to learning new information. They also probably have a way to demonstrate their learning that is especially meaningful and enjoyable for them, a way that taps into their unique personality traits, point of view, and individual learning preferences. For so long my teaching served the same course to every student. I always tried to “make learning fun” but fun and engaging to my tastes may be a really unpleasant learning experience to a student that has different preferences than me. Choice is so fundamental to learning and I think I can make it a priority in my lesson planning and it will become a new protocol for me and my students.
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702 Blog #6 Video Tools & Flipped/ Blended Lessons
After watching the various videos about blended and flipped classrooms I was feeling very inspired. The Edutopia video was especially motivating to watch as students worked in different groups, some watching a video and taking notes, others in groups working problems, some working at the whiteboard with the teacher. The teacher described it as “organized chaos”. As students finished the work, they would grab an exit ticket and work a problem to show they had mastered the concept. The learning was so collaborative yet individualized. This kind of learning seems very powerful to me. The tools that I tested out from the large palette available is Mote, for verbal feedback, Nearpod, for lesson planning & delivery, and Screencastify, for recorded lesson delivery. I am also using Peardeck, Kami, and Edpuzzle at school and I have used Wevideo in the past. I found Mote to work seamlessly with Google classroom and I love the reports I get back that tell me if students listened to my feedback. I am hoping to get my kids to add Mote to their Chromebooks so they can also give me verbal comments and questions. Mote saves time and I like that kids can hear my tone of comments, which is usually encouraging but occasionally stern. Also Mote could be extra fun if you add in sound effects or a guest voice. Imagine hearing Captain America or Darth Vader recognize the high quality of your assignment! Nearpod was tricky for me. I like the premade lessons a lot, but when I tried to create my own using my slide presentation from the Amplify curriculum we are implementing at Redwood, I struggled. I like the creative options like Climb The Mountain and drawing (it’s like having Kami built into a slidedeck!), but the slides where I just wanted to have kids answer a MC question, the font was very small and not easy to change. Peardeck seems easier to use than Nearpod, but Nearpod did have some quality premade lessons. Of course Peardeck is free for me and Nearpod I would eventually have to buy. Screencastify is still my favorite because it is just so EASY to use and the fact that it meshes with Google Classroom so well. I have not had my students try making videos in screencast yet, but the project that I used for my lesson plan, Newton’s Project, requires kids to present their end product in a photo or video, so this will be a good opportunity for students to learn Screencastify. The main barrier for many of these tools is access. Kids have to have computers and wifi. Our students do have computers. Wifi is still an issue for some, but most have figured out a time to work when the wifi at their home is less taxed, or they got a hot spot. My favorite tools, Mote, Kami & Screencastify combined with Google Slides, are already available to my students in Clever or as add-ons. For me there are a few other tools I would like to get good at like Adobe Spark and Nearpod, but some of these require a financial commitment and I have already paid for Quizlet, and a few science websites, so that limits my access. I like the idea of using videos as a learning tool because it does allow students to control the speed of the learning. I realized a few years ago that the “family movie” experience that I so enjoyed in my classes when we all watched a Bill Nye video together and filled out video questions was headed for the history books because this generation is so used to consuming video content individually on a computer screen that they had trouble concentrating on a big screen across the room. When I assigned the same video to individual viewing they had much better focus and success filling out questions because they could pause and repeat as needed. I have done assessment using videos in Google forms or Edpuzzle and found it to be effective, but I have not had students videotaping themselves to show or explain their knowledge as a form of assessment. This would be fun to try I think. 791 BLOG #6 TRANSLITERACY and how it relates to your experience as an educator or provided learning for others around this concept? Heidi Julien, professor of Information Science at SUNY, Buffalo, stated at an Information Innovation conference, that perhaps “we should not get too fussed over the labels that we use but we do have to understand that contemporary understandings of literacy have expanded from our traditional understanding of reading and writing ... but these days we also talked about interpretive and a creative abilities or competencies across a range of text both written and multimedia.” Transliteracy does have a lot of labels and definitions. In today’s world educators and students are able to get and give information in so many different ways. When I began my career in education I was using textbooks, lab experiences, and verbal instruction as my main vehicles for delivering instruction. Science videos were an extra treat and often outdated. Today in my classroom my students gather information from a wide variety of resources besides me. They are confident using online simulations of science concepts, science websites for researching, I have them watch Youtube videos in Edpuzzle for some lessons, we use digital articles from science websites and Newsela and they annotate them in Kami. Students collaborate on projects using Google docs and Google slides. Demonstrations of science activities are submitted using Flipgrid and TikTok. In order to participate in class they have become experts at Zoom, clicking from one tab to the next, and accessing Google Classroom to get assignments and submit them. If they have any unanswered questions, their first instinct is “Let us go to the Google,” as the Amoeba Sisters (science youtubers) would say. This is just the tip of the transliteracy iceberg because they are also using social media apps for communicating with friends, finding out about news events that concern them, shopping online, accessing music, movies, and other entertainment. Many of them use apps for transportation, directions, ordering food, and seeking online help with medical or emotional needs. In our digitally connected world it is actually important for students to grow these transliteracy skills. Soon enough they will need to do online banking, apply for colleges, pay bills, plan travel adventures, and probably network with future employers or co-workers. The power of Transliteracy is exciting to me because it gives young people a voice that can be heard around the world easily and quickly, compared to more traditional literacies. I think of the voices of Malala Yousafzai, fighting for education equity for young women, and Greta Thunberg, demanding we take action to stop climate change. Because these young people have access to new forms of literacy and digital media, they are changing the world and helping to solve world problems in a new and innovative way. Photo credit Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash AdGoogle Forms are one of my favorite teaching tools. I initially used them for tests and quizzes and used the key feature to have it grade itself. This feature alone deserves repeating- IT GRADES ITSELF!! The last time we finished a unit and the kids were taking the unit test online, I had the coinciding spreadsheet open so as kids submitted their quiz I could instantly see their score. I put the scores right into Google Classroom. I don’t think I have ever given such immediate feedback. Because kids could immediately see their scores, I also had kids ask if they could review more using Quizlet and their notes, and then try the test again. They seemed so much more motivated and connected to their learning because of the instant feedback. An idea I heard from a Matt Miller podcast was to collect student responses and then put those words into a Wordle or Word Cloud (I used Tagcrowd recently- Wordle seems to require a lot of downloading now and using different browsers), which makes a graphic image with the words. Words that were submitted more frequently are larger than others. It is a really creative way to analyze data. I did this with student responses to the question, “What traits make a good leader?” and once we had the word cloud then students did some self-reflection and picked a trait they were going to try and grow in themselves over the next few months during our class projects. I also used this idea at the beginning of a unit on ecosystems to find out what students already knew about ecosystem services. It would be a fun way to introduce a discussion about what is needed to be a good collaborator in lab groups. Google forms have been the tool we used at Redwood for our student ASB elections for the last few years. We have Homeroom teachers put the link to the ballot in their Google Classroom stream. We set up the form so they can only vote once and closed the ballot right after Homeroom. It worked so great and we were able to announce the winners by the end of the school day. I was so thrilled to not be counting paper ballots anymore! Adam Schoenbart’s idea from the EdTech website idea that I am going to try with my next project is to use a Google form to have students share their link to their project slide presentation into a Google sheet and then have students view each other’s projects and give feedback. It creates a database that can be used for the project with those students, but also can be viewed by future students doing similar projects. For my capstone project I need to collect data about student interests because I want to create affinity groups in my period 6 class which we are using as our Homeroom class this year. I want to plan small group SEL activities that students would complete in these affinity groups in order to build better relationships between students and to create a support network that they could rely on when they need academic help or just friendly encouragement during tough times. I will also need to use Google forms to collect student feedback / reflection on whether these affinity groups are making a difference for students. am Schoenbart Schoenbartam Schoenbart BLOG Consider the elements of ‘SITE’ and the needs of your learners or audience(s). How does SITE apply to you as a learner?
The SITE model is a powerful lens for viewing learners through. As I get to know my students this year, I am learning about their sociocultural subcontext. I’m beginning to know who they are friends with, what types of hobbies and sports they enjoy, and the powerful influence of their families in their school success. A lot of this information is difficult to learn because I teach so many students (164 this year) and the fact that I see them only 3 times a week, and some only online. It is really challenging, but I put time into getting to know them individually. Recently I asked them to fill out a survey for me and along with some silly, fun questions I also asked them who their hero was. I got a little teary eyed reading their answers because so many of my kids put their moms as their hero. They said their moms worked so hard and took such good care of them that they saw their moms as heroes. I also asked them what motivated them to do hard things and again most of them said their parents because they see their parents working hard to help the family. Students said they want to get good grades and do hard things to make their parents proud of them. I felt a big, beautiful wave of sociocultural subcontext wash over me. I teach really wonderful people. I also get very frustrated for them because I see the technical subcontext that is making school difficult for some of them right now. Even with the availability of hot spots, I have students that get dropped from calls or their computers take forever to load our lessons. They are so faithfully trying to be engaged but some days the wifi issue is just a huge obstacle when they are at home. When the wifi is working correctly, my students are very capable and adventurous about technology. The science curriculum we are using this year has a lot of online simulations and my kids have persevered when figuring out how the new program works. They are super kind about sharing tips and tricks with each other too. I have also discovered that many of my students that are missing assignments or missing class are at home juggling childcare. When I reach out to them to find out why they are missing so much class or work, they sincerely apologize and then tell me that it’s hard because they have to babysit younger siblings so their parents can return to work. One of my students is in charge of 4 other siblings! For many of my students their Informational subcontext has had to increase. They have all become so proficient at sending emails (with subject lines!) and asking questions to get the information they need as far as class lessons and concepts. Because of our limited time together for teaching and learning, it seems like most kids have gotten comfortable advocating for themselves in email or online at the end of class when they need something explained again or a grade checked. I have even had students ask me to do a screen cast on a specific concept they missed or did not understand. I love having them be so aware of their own learning needs and that they have the courage to advocate for themselves. For me personally as a learner, the sociocultural subcontext keeps me going. The people connection, my circle of family support, and the network of learners that teaching creates are the sparks that get my engine going. This last year of teaching online and starting this master’s program have really grown my technical skills and even changed my mindset about technical parts of teaching and learning. The technical and informational subcontext are very interconnected for me right now as I learn new techniques and ideas for delivering my content to my learners. |
AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
March 2021
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