Unit 1 complete

While the other History Teachers were having their students make books, my students were making amazing ThingLinks (www.thinglink.com) with the same criteria. I feel like I am able to nail down how my project can differ, while still being the same concept, and I am more comfortable with that considering what my admin wants to see. For the project they had to discuss the same seven topics using the same criteria of at least five sentences and having a picture. We started working on them Tuesday and they were due by the end of class today. I had 22 students finish early yesterday. They emailed me and asked me to take a look so they could make any needed changes to improve their grade since it wasn't actually due yet. The students doing this were general ed, special ed, and EL alike. I was happy to help them out and the main thing I found was just that they had missed a picture or minor mix-ups with things. They came in today, read their emailed feedback and got right to work. Many students wanted to go further and add appropriate YouTube videos to enhance their ThingLink.

There are some serious leaders emerging and I am thinking of trying a "table leader" idea where that student is responsible for making sure everyone understands the assignment and stays on task. They want to help each other. Even ones that aren't doing great themselves and trying to help others when they know the answer. There is such pride when they are able to. This week was a lot about the students just reflecting on their own knowledge, connecting the dots, and helping each other. I had some ask if they could Google the next topic since we are moving on starting Monday.

What I am struggling with though, is students that are frequently out. I have everything on the website the night before with detailed instructions, links to videos, etc, but they aren't doing the work when they are out. I suppose this is a problem no matter what, but I find that since it isn't on paper, it takes them a week to make up the work because they will only do it during intervention (15 minutes twice a week) and they are still lost afterward because everything was out of sequence. My website is getting more traffic since I explained that the work we do on the Chromebook can be accessed form any computer, even their phone. Some are especially excited by the Drive App. They love that they can do their work on their phone during lunch - their friends don't even know that they are working! I feel like I am connecting students that might otherwise fall through the cracks and it makes me unbelievably happy.

Casualty

This week we had our first Chromebook casualty. The screen is cracked and the LCD looks like it is bleeding. Very sad. It turns out we might have a warranty after all, so it might be replaced. I don't know how it happened, but the rules have been tightened up. No bags on the tables at any time, even if they aren't touching a laptop. The damage looks like it is from pressure, so I'm not taking any chances. In terms of what students have been doing: they used advanced search to look for and compare/contrast powerpoints on Napoleon. I had tried this with the French Revolution, but it didn't work very well. I think this was because the French Revolution is such a big event so there was too much out there. I though the Napoleon assignment went really well with students being successful. The level of work output is increasing as students become more used to working on them.

We did take a day off the laptops to do a simulation and students just seemed confused without the laptops. I intended to go right back to them the next day, but we had a big power issue and were lacking WiFi. I just decided to ditch them for the day and I had a mixed reaction. Some were thankful to be on paper and others were not as engaged and verbally expressed their dissatisfaction. I had a suggestion from Twitter that I install offline apps for those kinds of days, so I will be looking into that.

Today was a difficult day because of Google's birthday game. All the kids wanted to play the game and unfortunately even after a warning they were still doing it and the computer was taken away. I told them if they finished the assignment we could talk about playing it, but they were not deterred.

Failure, Success and a little confusion

The title pretty much sums up the first 5 weeks of school. Yes, 5 weeks. We start earlier than most, but that was good since I was so excited to start the year. Really! I started with Google Drive, having small assignments with Presentation and Documents, even a little something in spreadsheets so they could get the idea of cells.Mainly though, I focused in Documents because I wanted to start with things they were familiar with. For the beginning of the first unit I was basically transferring the worksheets the rest of the department uses into docs so my kids could use it as an organizer during powerpoint. Yes, still doing that too.  I was hoping to break away from that, but I wanted to start with something they were familiar with, plus, the Ancients it just seemed too difficult of a concept, so I was waiting until the French Revolution, which starts this week to break out of the mold in a serious way.

Now all the while I'm basically making digital worksheets and still plugging along with powerpoints, I did want the students to create something to show their understanding of the Enlightenment Philosophers and I though Glogster would be a perfect platform. We went through the process of signing up and we waited for the confirmation emails. And kept waiting for the confirmation emails. After about 3 minutes of wasted class time 1st period, I decided the students should get started on their gathering of images for their Glogster, so I had them copy and paste the URLs into a Google Doc while we waited for the confirmation emails. I asked a student to check his email in 15 minute increments, but sadly the email never came. So, the next day we switched gears into ThingLink. This is an awesome site I learned about at CUE Rockstar. It did not require a confirmation email! So the kids signed up and used their research for the day before and boom, awesome things were created. The only problem I found was the learning curve for some students was more steep than others. Some were done after one day, others needed a lot more time. I am still trying to figure out how to deal with this, especially since I two of my classes are half special education students. I hate seeing kids just sit there and waste their time.

Thursday we had our PLC meeting and I explained my (non tech) simulation I was planning and while their came up with a "four corners" idea, which made me really excited. I like having the kids up and moving and thinking critically. I hate powerpoints. My colleagues did not seem very excited about the ideas, but they have their own teaching styles, which is fine. But, now for the confusing part. I had a meeting with my VP the next day to go over goals for the year. She suggested I work on being more consistent with group. That her and other VPs talked and I need to make sure I have some things in common, like the "Four Corners" idea that was decided on in the PLC. I tried to explain that I am digitizing worksheets and doing powerpoints, just like they are (nevermind that I don't intend to for long), but my students are not transcribing the notes since they have access to the presentation on the class website. I did not mention that the "Four Corners" idea was mine because I do not want to seem cocky, but This whole thing sent me for a loop and I am now confused and concerned. Do they want me to use the technology to its full extent, or as an IEASC cohort member said "just to look good"? I'm trying to work up the courage to ask her.

Google Apps for Education Day 2

Day two started off with Richard DeVaul, who works with Google's Project X (their secret projects)! He gave us some insight into the idea of Moonshot - making the impossible, possible. The idea in education right now is to try and fix things, make it better, but DeVaul's idea is to tear it down and start over. Our system is not working and "fixing" it isn't going to work because we are on the wrong track. We look at the world as having problems that are too big to fix, but that is because we are looking at it all wrong. We need to look at everything as having a solution, even if it seems impossible. In school it is bad if a student fails at something, but that is the wrong attitude. Failure is a learning process, you get data from it. As long as you fail quickly, repeatedly, and efficiently, you are doing trial and error. You are learning what doesn't work. It reminded me of Thomas Edison finding so many ways to not to build a light bulb. Each time he learned something new about what doesn't work, so you can come up with another way that might work. If you fail the right way, you generate new results and support learning. The most important thing about failure though, is that you keep trying. By continuing to try after failing you are learning the most important lesson - persistence. As a system, we have taught students the opposite of this, so we need to model this. We need to model failure! I think I do this well, especially since I've gotten the Chromebooks. When a lesson goes south I apologize to the students and we make adjustments and try again. I tell the students I make mistakes and it's not bad if we learn from them. An entire classroom full of Moonshot Thinkers may not be possible right now, but he challenged us to try to create 10 per year. I think that is a possible goal.

Since I have the Chromebooks now I want to go paperless next year, or as close to it as I can get. The main idea with this is to stay organized, figure out a system of folders through Drive. You can have students peer review through comments on Docs and there is even a way for teachers to add voice comments. When something is finish if you "publish" it it takes out all the comments and makes it look pretty. The idea was shared that if a student did not get an A, they were required to fix it and then their score was averaged. In Drive some nice features are that you can see when a student was working on the paper (did they wait til the night before to start?) and you can use some scripts like Doctopus to "embargo" or take rights away when assignments are due so they can't work on it anymore.

I made a Google Voice number! I am excited to be more available to parents and students in their level, being able to text when necessary and at times more convenient for them, even if I'm not in my classroom. A bonus is that everything is logged into the account online so you can go back into it and review conversations if necessary. I can imagine this being a way of showing evidence of parent contact as well. With this number you can call, text, and email to and/or from the number.

The presentation on 20% time turned into a mix of that and student blogging. The 20% time was pretty basic of what it is, but I was thinking of the idea of an "I wonder" project where at the beginning of a unit students come up with a question about the unit based on the introduction activity. They can use Preferred Activity Time and outside time to find the answer if needed. Students will need to make a presentation explaining their question, the answer, and how they got to that answer. This is still an idea in the works, but it is something.

With the blogging there was some discussion over open blogging and kidblogger to make it closed from the public. The key to it is when you start you start small. In 5 minutes, they should have 3 sentences, then up to a paragraph and so on. I can see this being a way for student to reflect on their work, talk from the perspective of someone from the time period we are currently discussing.

Google Apps For Education Summit Day 1

I was lucky enough to got the the Google Apps for Education Summit a couple weeks ago and it was exactly what I needed to revamp and amp up for this coming year! Dan Russell was the keynote day one and he was mind blowing by discussing the idea of literacy and how it is not just knowing how "to read and write" because there are so many other kinds of literacy and depending on how fast you write (or type) will change the speed at which you can think, which accelerates the chances of you getting an answer right or wrong. There are so many types of literacy because there are so many types of language, including math and HTML. He went as far as to say you have to be "literate about being literate," which was so insightful to me because a lot of times students are just going through the motions and sure, they are literate, but do they understand they are literate and what that means as a whole? With Common Core coming, I think this will become more obvious, but you need to have a skill set and know when to use the right one to read, write, answer questions, and do functions within a specific domain where that skill set is the one required. Processing through all the ones you have and being aware of which one to use is a whole other type of literacy. This was an amazing way to start the conference as it already had me on my toes.

Next a little intro to edmodo and how well it works with Google Drive... I will be trying this out in the coming year, so look out for posts related to that later.

Through my IEASC program I've been learning more and more about student ePortfolios and I love the idea. I think I will have students create a Google Site and use that for their showing off their Performance Tasks and blogs throughout the year. The main idea here was to have the students take it as their own. If you are too strict with guidelines and don't let them personalize it there is no buy in, but you need buy in for them to be effective. When I did the travel commercials last year a lot of students wanted their videos showcased because they were so proud of them. That is what you want from students. The school this presenter was from actually buys a domain with the student's name as a senior gift to them so they can take their portfolio with them. They start it in elementary school, so it really is an all around portfolio that represents them. I think this is amazing. Some examples he shared with us:
www.kristopherredman.com - Junior in High School, presenting since early high school, already offered a job with TechSmith
www.kazmediaservices.com he wants to show media because that is what he wants to do as a career. He had a difficult name, so he asked for a special circumstance domain name.

I learned about Flubaroo at a recent conference, but this presentation discussed Doctopus. Both of these are scripts you can use with Google Drive. The main discussion was making things easier with Form, Sites, and Scripts. This is something that if they work in harmony, will make a teachers life much more easy because it is more organized automatically, less hand grading, and communication is clear between you, students, and parents. One of my goals this year is to keep up better on my Google Site, which will be a necessity since my students will get their assignments from it. Last year I was emailing out all the assignments, which was very tedious and time consuming. I think this will work better.

As my last session of the day I got to talk Chromebooks with someone that has been implementing them for over a year and working out a lot of the problems I faced in the month I had them last year. Don't get me wrong, I love the Chromebooks, but we had wireless issues, Java issues, app issues, and then there is the classroom management piece that goes along with it all. One of the big issues that I am worried about is the idea of building class culture. I think one of the things I do well is to build connections with students, but in front of computers they feel more individual, less connected to the class. This was the cubical feeling I got from the students last year. I think this is where I need to use some of the techniques from the blended and online course I'm taking in the IEASC program.

This was a filled day of learning, but also questions. That is the hard part. You have to take everything away and say how am I going to use this. I am still working on that part, but the school year is approaching, so it is time to get started!

WeVideo MIddle East Travel Commercial

I have forever meant to write this blog post to share my experiences with WeVideo, but the school year ended and I floated away from everything. So overall the students were in groups and given a Middle Eastern country. They were given eight demographics and told to collect information on all countries. In the past students would make a travel brochure on a country, but this year they made a commercial about their county. They used WeVideo collaboratively, which worked out great for some groups, but others had a lot of issues with the videos not syncing. I think the site still has some work to do as it is still a new project Google is working on, but it is the only real internet based movie maker, so it worked. I gave the students a rubric to work with, which I thought was simple to follow. Here is a link to the Rubric. When students turned in their video they also had to reflect on their own work and grade themselves and their group and give reasons for the group. I always find that students are very hard on themselves. I give an optional comment box at the end where a lot of students said they worked hard and hoped I liked the video, that the assignment was hard, but they liked it, some told me that they really disliked the project because they are bad with computers, and so on.

Even if students dislike a project, I like that they are honest enough with me to say it. They know I will not take it personally and it will not effect their grade positively or negatively. I work hard to build that relationship with my students because I think it is important. One student's comment really hit me hard though,"There is no way anyone could legitimately get an A on this commercial, give the rubric, the time limit, and amount of knowledge on the computer. Terrible activity when not given enough time." I was shocked when I read this because 1. I had no idea the student felt this way 2. I completely disagreed with the student. I struggled with how to respond, but I knew I needed to. I wrote a long email that turned into me defending my decisions and thought that was not the best choice and maybe he was not the only one to feel this way, so the next class period I asked students if they were confused or scared by the rubric. It was a resounding yes! I realized that what I meant by he rubric was not being understood. I pulled up the rubric and we discussed section by section the meaning of everything. After that they told me they felt relieved. I went through this process with every class, including the one the student that brought this to my attention was in. He did not say anything to me or ask any questions, but I did not want to call him out, so at that point I let it go. I apologized to all the classes for any misunderstanding or undue stress that the rubric had caused. Now that they understood the grading better, they were excited to see their scores, and other students' videos!

I made a spreadsheet of all the videos, which can be found here. I made them into QR Codes and put them around campus like a scavenger hunt and the plan was to have students review each others' commercials, but there was so much traffic to them that the district cut access thinking that there was something inappropriate in the site. This was unfortunate, but students used their personal data plans to view commercials and got a buzz going on around campus about them, which was very exciting for me.

Sorry about the length of this post, but a lot happened in the two weeks we spent on this assignment that I thought needed to be shared. I will definitely do this activity again, but with all rubrics I will explain verbally what is meant and make sure everyone understands we are not shooting for TV ready the first time out of the gate.

Technology fail

Today was kind of a disaster. Documents weren't loading correctly because I had emailed students a document where the pages were landscape and docs just wouldn't do that. I also realized I was lacking a digital copy of one of the placards with information, so I took a picture and emailed it to myself and forwarded it to the students. The first period bell rang without me knowing class was over so there was no clean up time with the laptops and students were scrambling. I felt like a complete failure, but I didn't give up and I felt like it got easier every period. I got the idea to ditch the doc and use a presentation instead, which worked really well. Students were looking up definitions, filling out spreadsheets, and answering questions about data charts. I feel like it was straight digital replacement of worksheets, but at least they learned a basic understanding of putting items into a spreadsheet. They are getting information together because they will be creating a tourism commercial for a Middle Eastern country. I am unsure of how it will go, but it should be interesting. I feel like I am giving them a lot of freedom, which could be a great thing and it could be a disaster.

The students finished their Prezi timelines today and as they walked in I had students ask if we were doing any more because "they were kind of fun," which is something I have never heard about a timeline before.

I'm looking back on the digital things that I have taught them, and in 2 weeks we have used documents (shared with everyone, shared with only me, private), creating tables in docs, filling out forms, Google image search copying image and copy image URL, filling out spreadsheets, creating spreadsheets, creating Prezis, researching, taking screenshots and putting them into docs, and more I'm sure. I think this is amazing.

Timeline is messing with my timeline!

So this timeline project is taking way longer than I thought it was going to and I'm okay with that for this year, but I'm worried about how long things will take next year. Part of the stipulation with this pilot was that is be curriculum driven and I stay on pace with the department. Since it is the end of the year it doesn't really matter, but I'm thinking for next year: how is this all going to work?

I know it is not for lack of trying because students are making a serious effort, even coming in at lunch to work because they "want it to be awesome," which just makes me ecstatic. I realized a couple things today, including that it is important when signing up for thing like Prezi, we need to check to make sure students receive the email saying they joined or keep track of the URL to what they were working on to be able to get back. A student also gave me the idea that all students should have a document where they save all their passwords, but I feel like that might not be a great idea. Maybe an app to keep track of them all.

I've been thinking more about next year and thinking about logistics. Will I need to put a special section in the syllabus to explain that we will be a laptop classroom? I am waiting to hear more about this from District.

Timelines via Prezi

I've seen people do amazing things with prezi.com and thought there would be a way to make a timeline using it, but in the end I decided to leave it up to the students. I provided them with information on four Arab/Israeli conflicts and asked them to summarize the information, decide the best choice of action given the circumstances, and add a picture from Google. The students got to decide the template they wanted to use and design the rest however they wanted to. Some students ran with this freedom, but others struggled and wanted me to confirm what they were doing was correct constantly. In terms of using the program, many were able to play with it comfortably while others were confused or frustrated at it not doing what they wanted it to do.I was surprised by the students that became leaders in the classroom and disappointed in the students that continue to think they can get away with doing things they knew to be wrong.

I have a spreadsheet set up to put all students name, period, and link to their presentations, but it is accessible to every student to edit. I did this not only to make it easy to grade, but also because I wanted students to know other people could access their presentations. I feel it is important to open the audience to make students feel more inclined to do better work. I told the students if anyone messed with other students' work in any way they would receive a zero. They are also aware that this is not the place to goof around. Unfortunately one student wrote "Hi, how are you" in the spreadsheet, quickly deleting it, and thinking he got away with it. After looking through the revision history I had a talk with him and asked him flat out "Did you think what you were doing was wrong before you did it?" and he admitted yes, but thought it would be funny. As consequences go, he lost the laptop for a week and will instead get a paper timeline to complete as did the other five who are without laptops right now due to consequences. I think students are realizing that it is serious and not fun to be the only one without technology. "Tech down, eyes up" is also working really well to allow me to be in the front explaining something and then letting students loose and watching from the back.

There are many students that are willing to help other students and then are eager to get back to work because they are engaged in the task. I was even thanked by a student for showing them tools within Drive because they have an old computer with a lot of problems and had to write a research paper,but Drive took so much stress off them knowing that their work was saved and they didn't have to start over. I'm so happy to be able to show students these tools to make things easier for them.

By George, I think She's Got It!

I tried out the geography game/quiz today and it was amazing. http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Middle-east_Geography.htm was fin and engaging for students. There were numerous positive comments and at the end of the day some student left thinking I just let them play all day, which in a way I guess I did. The website has a tutorial to teach students where things are and then levels to progress through. I had students working toward mastery, so they did level 1 until they got 100%. Only one student was unable to complete this task. I showed step by step how to take a screenshot and upload it into a Google Doc so they could show me their score for credit. This worked well because they did not have to be perfect from the outset, but rather could improve and do better. This took pressure off the students and the atmosphere in the room was electric. Students that finished early were told to try level 2 and when they got 100% to screenshot and add it to their doc to show me. After that they were asking me if they could continue to levels 3, 4, and above. One student finished level 7! They were laughing ("It's like a puzzle!"), challenging each other (I'm on level 3, what level are you on?), and assisting in helping others with technology issues. Students were considerate and willing to honestly help rather than chastise one another, which was great to see. Today felt like the world opened up for both the students and me, because I saw a glimpse of what teaching with the laptops from the beginning of the year could do and how engaged and happy to learn students could be.

Procedures are also coming together. In the morning as students enter they are now allowed to get the laptop and follow a specific way of moving about the classroom. They go up specific aisles and down others. The laptops are not opened until I tell them to, which is not until they are quiet so they can hear all directions. I have started to use, "Tech down, eyes up" when I need to make sure their focus is on me and not split between me and what they are doing. Some students are starting to call me "strict" and they want things to go back to how they were, but I think most understand that the laptops are a privilege and just as they can lose them, so can I and I think they are an amazing tool and a gift that should be treated with respect.

Finally thinking outside that stupid box

For the most part I was very happy with the progress my students made with doing different things inside of Docs and tasks within Forms. Unfortunately in one class I had quite a few students that lost the laptop privilege because they were typing in other people's assignments. They had been warned day one, but unfortunately decided to do it anyway. I am debating about whether or not to show the students what I actually see with revision history or not. Students were surprised by the paper document and honestly, I disliked using it with the laptops. It seemed like a waste. I will have to keep this in mind.

I was proud of my own realization today though. I was going back and forth about how to do geography with the laptops and today I found my out of the box answer. Before I had always handed students a blank map and they used their book to fill it in. I thought I should use Google maps somehow, but I don't have much time this year before the semester is over. I decided this would be a good idea for next year, but what about now? Do I print out the blank maps and just have them fill it in from the internet? After the experience today I thought it would not be a good idea. Then remembered what I told my students today, "Tell Google what you want and it will usually give it to you." I used my own advice and stopped typing in "1:1 maps" "laptop classroom maps" and so on, and instead typed in "Middle East Map" Some of the first things I got were online games and quizzes! I am going to have them use http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Middle-east_Geography.htm tomorrow and see how it goes. They will be able to work til mastery and take a screenshot of their score for a grade. Those that do not have a laptop will be given the old blank paper maps to fill in.

A friend recommended this video. A real inspiration about relationships with students.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ted-talks-education/speaker/rita-pierson/
"kids don't learn from people they don't like"
"you will not like all your students, but they should never know it"
"This job is tough, but it is not impossible"

The journey begins

Today I started doing actual lessons with Drive and I think it worked out well. The students were commenting that this was so much better than writing. Some had some difficultly, but I think opening up the backchannel and allowing for conversations to go on, even if they were slightly off topic added to the thrill and seemingly scandalousness of the situation.  They felt like they were getting away with something even though they were doing what I told them to do.

The assignment itself was simple enough and really just switched out a laptop for pen and paper to comment and create questions about a series of pictures as an introduction to the Middle East unit we are starting. I would say overall success.

1:1 Day 1

Yesterday being Teacher Appreciation Day, I thought it was appropriate that this was the roll out day for the Chromebooks. I didn't plan it, but it was nice. I work very hard every day to bring a meaningful experience to students, but sometimes that is difficult when we are so confined to four walls and a board. Yes, I can show them things, and ask them questions, but I've always wanted my students to be creators. Now I have been given that chance.

I started out yesterday with tech people to help students who didn't know their passwords or were having some tech issues, so it went rather smoothly. Once everyone was in we did an intro to the touchpad since there are some shortcuts. I explained all the icons at the bottom and we went into Drive. Student immediately thought we were going to write a research paper because that is all they believe can be done. Depending on how long log in took, some classes stopped there. Others were able to create a table and label the categories.

In terms of management, I did have a couple instances where students were playing in other people's assignment and they have lost the laptop for a day or two depending on the severity. Today I will open up the backchannel for conversation because I believe it is important for them to talk, but I would rather I be able to moderate it.

Overall, for day 1 I think it was a success!