Flipgrid Fever…Catch It!

Posted on November 27, 2018 by MadisonITS

Flipgrid is a video discussion platform that is made for today’s iGen students — digital natives who know YouTube celebrities by name and snap selfies without a second’s thought. While at first I had my doubts about a digital tool that seemed to encourage a sort of narcissism that Gen X-ers like me are quick to criticize in younger generations, I see it now as a great formative assessment tool that fosters verbal communication skills. With the right teacher supports, it promotes reflection in the same way that teachers’ videotaping their own lessons does. So how does it work? In short, students use the app to respond to their teacher’s prompt, taking short video selfies that get uploaded to their teachers “grid” or collection of submitted videos.

I had been hearing a lot about Flipgrid over the past year or so and had played around with it on my own, but I had yet to find a teacher here in Madison who had found a use for it in the classroom, until last week. When eighth grade social studies teacher Robyn McManus contacted me to make sure Flipgrid was compliant with Connecticut’s student data privacy law (it is!), I jumped at the opportunity to see the app in action. She had the excellent idea to use it with her students as a formative activity in preparation for presentations they will be delivering at the end of their current unit. Creating these short 30-60 second videos allowed students to reflect on their speaking mannerisms…by counting how many times they said “like” or “um,” or did they “uptalk” too much? But it was also a formative teaching tool for Robyn, as her prompt was designed to show how well students understood and could reflect on the previous week’s readings.

As you can see to the right, students can use Flipgrid on a Chromebook or laptop equipped with a webcam (these students chose to create their video as a trio), or it can also be used with a smartphone or tablet’s front-facing camera.

I was impressed with how well students engaged in the task at hand. While some students chose to complete their videos in the hallway where it was more quiet, the majority who stayed in the classroom had no problems tuning each other out while they recorded their reflections. Many, on their own, chose to use the app’s virtual stickies to plan out what they wanted to say and use them as cue cards, and they all had fun applying various playful stickers to their videos in appropriate ways.

There are so many ways teachers can use of Flipgrid in the classroom, across all grade levels and content areas. I’d love to sit down with you to discuss the possibilities in your classroom. In the meantime, check out the ways this teacher infuses #FlipGridFever in her classroom. Then check out this educator’s guide to the in’s and out’s of managing Flipgrid. Note: Teachers should, and students must, log in to Flipgrid with their MPS Google accounts.

Help Students Evaluate Online Sources with eLink

Posted on June 8, 2018 by MadisonITS

Let’s face it…setting students loose on the Internet to find good sources for any research-based learning activity can be messy. It’s much easier to point them to the sources we’ve selected for them. But by doing that, we’re not giving them the opportunity to learn how to find and evaluate their own sources independently–a skill that is more important than ever, given the sea of spurious, misleading, and heavily biased information that exists on the Web. Our district’s Library Media Specialists to an excellent job showing students how to evaluate and cite sources, yet the transfer of these skills isn’t always visible in the work students do outside of the Library Media Center. So what can teachers do to reinforce these skills?

I recently came across a great content curation tool called eLink that has some interesting potential in helping students curate web content more carefully, and in helping teachers assess the way students evaluate sources. Like all good digital tools, it’s simple. As students find sources they believe are credible and will help them with their research, they add them to their eLink pages, which are essentially web pages with a slick, modern-looking visual representation of all their hyperlinked sources. The example below might be something students create in a Health class.

Because eLink pages are so visually appealing and professional looking, I suspect that students will choose their sources more carefully, knowing that they are “honoring” these sources by including them on their eLink page. The eLink layout also makes it easier for teachers to assess their students’ sources. Rather than having to copy URLs from a Works Cited page and paste them into a web browser (ugh), teachers can just visit their students’ eLink pages without that hassle. Moreover, this user-friendly interface allows teachers to quickly see what sources students are synthesizing as they develop their own findings.

This wouldn’t mean that students are off the hook for a properly formatted Works Cited page. I envision eLink as a formative assessment tool. Rather than see that students have used less than credible sources after they’ve turned in their work, teachers can have students submit eLinks in the early stages of their research. Student submissions might indicate that teachers need to revisit how to evaluate sources with certain students, correcting bad research before it’s too late. But that’s just one idea. How can you see students using eLink? Leave a comment below.

Digital Learning Day…Aren’t we beyond this in 2018?

Posted on February 22, 2018 by MadisonITS

Today marks the seventh year the folks at Digital Learning Day are celebrating digital learning. As I wrote about this day four years ago, isn’t the term itself redundant, considering the Digital Age we live in where pretty much anything you want to know or learn can be found on the Internet? And when I consider all the effective ways my colleagues in Madison leverage technology to make our students’ learning experiences richer, more personalized, more authentic, at this point I have to wonder, Can we even afford to take the digital out of learning?

To me, pretty much every day is digital learning day. But in the spirit of the occasion, I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight a digital tool that you may not be familiar with. It’s a powerful collaboration tool called Padlet, which is essentially a virtual bulletin board. It’s free, easy to use, and makes students’ thinking visible. So how does it work? Take, for example, the way Polson Health teacher Susan Quinn is using it in part of her 7th grade Drug Unit. In order to encourage her students to make healthy choices about drug and alcohol use, it was important for her to not just give her students information about drugs, but to get them to reflect on the basic human needs that drive all of our choices and the ways we can meet these needs in positive and negative ways. After teaching students about the emotional needs of Love & Belonging, Freedom, Fun, and Power, she’s having them use Padlet to brainstorm in groups the negative ways teens try to meet their emotional needs through drug and alcohol use, as well as all the positive alternatives through which they can meet their needs. For love & belonging, it could look something like this…

The thing I love about this tool is how it makes all students’ thinking visible, allowing the teacher to quickly address any misconceptions a student may have. To learn more about Padlet and how it get started with it, go to Padlet.com, sign in with your MPS Google account, and check out the video below. Happy ~~digital~~ learning!

Explore Perspectives and Limit Biases with These News Source Tools

Posted on February 1, 2018 by MadisonITS

Since the dawn of 24/7 cable news some 30 years ago, the lines between fact and opinion in our news reporting have become increasingly blurred. The dawn of the Internet has amplified this effect, bringing with it many different perspectives across the political spectrum through which we digest our news. This can be a good thing as it has given previously marginalized voices a platform, but it has also facilitated the spread of “news reporting” that not only contains obvious biases, but outright falsehoods and flimsy conspiracy theories–actual fake news. Now that we have a president that has weaponized the term fake news for his own political gain, the very concept of reality can seem to be up for grabs. It’s no wonder the public’s faith in the news media is at an all-time low.

So how can we and our students better navigate the media landscape to detect bias and determine fact from fiction from opinion? Two news source tools that I’ve come across recently that are up to the task are AllSides.com and Read Across the Aisle. The former is a website that presents every news story with three articles: one that slants right, one that slants left, and one from the center. This is similar to KCRW’s excellent Left, Right, & Center podcast. Read Across the Aisle is a mobile app that aggregates current news articles from over 20 news sources across the political spectrum, ranging from HuffPo to FOX News, and it comes with a handy reading habits meter that tells how balanced your media diet is. As you can see at the bottom of the image to the right, I’m doing pretty well staying in the middle. The other cool thing about this app is that embedded in all of its articles is the research-backed BeeLine Reader the that displays color gradients that wrap from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This, according to the app’s website, facilitates visual tracking and enables the reader to focus on other aspects of reading, such as decoding and comprehension. Another great tool that Polson Library Media Specialist Dawn Fiorelli discovered recently is Factitious, a fun, interactive game designed a to test users’ ability to detect fake news from real.

If we’re to succeed in our collective goal of producing well informed media-literate citizens who will someday chart the course of our nation, these tools are vital. For every standard-bearing “rock-solid” piece of reporting, there is a revisionist counterpoint article that seeks to invalidate its claims, calling into question what is real. Even the sober-minded fact-checking sites we sometimes direct our students to, like FactCheck, Politifact, Snopes, and many more, have come under attack for being biased. The result can leave one feeling unmoored, head spinning, out of touch with objective truth. Who do I believe?! Or worse, we end up feeding our own confirmation biases by retreating to our respective media silos. To co-opt a term from our Tweeter-in-Chief, Sad! Hopefully, with some carefully designed learning activities that leverage some of the tools linked above, we, as educators, can reverse this unsettling trend and foster in our students a balanced media diet. Let me know if you’d like to explore the possibilities together. You know how to reach me.

Teaching for an Automated Future

Posted on May 22, 2017 by MadisonITS

The challenge we face as educators to prepare our students for uncertain futures and an ever-changing workforce isn’t anything new. That’s a big reason the district vision was reshaped years ago to put key 21st century capacities at the center of recent curriculum revisions. Multiple studies have shown that large numbers of jobs are at risk as programmed devices and automated systems continue to seep into the workplace. With workplace automation on the rise, the question of how we educate people for an automated world becomes even more pressing.

A recent NYTimes article “How to Prepare for an Automated Future” is a great read that affirms much of what we’re currently doing in our classrooms. The article touches on all of our 21st Century Capacities, making the claim that schools will need to teach the traits and skills that machines cannot easily reproduce–creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, self-direction, and collaboration. It’s a short read, and I highly recommend reading it in its entiry, but the quote that stood out to me the most was this:

People still need to learn skills, the respondents said, but they will do that continuously over their careers. In school, the most important thing they can learn is how to learn.

This quote reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a good friend who does not work in education, but as a marketing & communications director. He was explaining to me how more than ever his job demands adaptability and new learning. As industries constantly evolve and the foundations of our economy remain somewhat shaky, he can’t rely on the stability of one or two jobs that span his entire career. In the ten years that I’ve known him, he’s had successful jobs for three different architecture firms and, as of two weeks ago, a construction company. As he splits his time between an architecture firm and the construction company, he must now, on his own, “up-skill” by teaching himself key aspects of the construction industry. This means knowing which questions to ask and involves a great deal of online research. In short, it means knowing how to learn.

Is my friend complaining? Not at all. And it’s because he’s positioned himself to work in a field that cannot be easily automated or outsourced, and he’s honed his skills and his capacity to learn (often leveraging technology) in a way that allows him be more efficient with his time and resources. This increased efficiency has expanded his opportunities for more work and income, yet not at the expense of time away from his family and personal interests.

I think it’s worth mentioning that my friend is also one of the most creative people I know. His creativity and passion for the arts have allowed him to write and record some highly regarded music, and I doubt he’d be a successful songwriter or marketing & communications director if he didn’t come from a community and educational system that fostered creativity and supported the arts, as well as the core subject areas.

UPDATE:

For some insights on how communities need to come together to shape and thrive in future economies, this piece by Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes is essential reading.

Revisiting Bloom and Webb in the Digital Age

Posted on April 17, 2017 by MadisonITS

Bloom’s Taxonomy is one of the oldest, tried and true educational design principles that we all learned in our certification programs. Created in 1956 by educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom, its main purpose was to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts. As such, it works well for planning instruction. It was revised in 2001 to put more emphasis on the cognitive processes by which learners encounter and work with knowledge. Notice how each level was renamed to a verb or gerund–an “action word.”

Those of you who got certified more recently may have come across some variation of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy in your coursework, while more veteran teachers may have come across it during a PD activity or through a PLC. This updated version aims to expand upon the skills associated with each level by matching different technology applications to each level and the skills associated with them. Common Sense Media does a nice job explaining how technology affects Bloom’s Taxonomy in the video below, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

When planning instruction, finding the right piece of technology to foster the higher order thinking skills you’d like your students to develop can be tricky. As always, I’m happy to help design learning experiences with this in mind. When it comes to choosing the right piece of technology, I often turn to the SAMR model. To see the connection between Bloom and the SAMR model, here’s another great read from Common Sense Media.

I also found these visual representations of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy helpful. The second one does a nice job marrying the Bloom and SAMR models…

When it comes to planning assessments Webb’s Depth of Knowledge is king. Similar principles to Bloom regarding higher level thinking but with more emphasis on the thinking processes required of students, which is why it really helps us as educators as we assess student learning. That said, here are some technology uses that align with Webb’s DOK…

Collaborate Better with Team Drives

Posted on March 14, 2017 by MadisonITS

G Suite for Education has just launched a new way to organize shared files among a group of people who are collaborating with a common purpose. It’s called Team Drives, and it enables teams to simply and securely manage permissions, ownership, and access of shared files. Up until the launch of Team Drives for Education, Business, and Enterprise customers, collaborating on files in shared folders for projects, committee work, or the like could get dicey. Individuals sometimes accidentally delete files that belong to others, or lose control over personal files due to unwanted edits by collaborators. But with Team Drives, a separate collaborative space is created where, by default, all members share ownership and full control over files. Permissions can be adjusted so that only certain members of a Team Drive have full control over files, but because this new space allows us to compartmentalize which work is shared and which is personal, I wonder if that separation alone will reduce the number of lost files, or lost versions of files. In other words, perhaps if everyone has total control in a Team Drive, then all will naturally be more careful about what is added/deleted/modified. Group work would be just that. And when the need to share personal work with a team arises, the personal work can be preserved in My Drive, as long as a copy of the file is placed in the Team Drive. At least that’s how I envision it working.

As for students’ use of Team Drives, I see this as a great enhancement to Drive and an effective collaboration solution. I’ve witnessed first-hand students experiencing confusion over shared files, with many never having even created a shared folder in Drive. Since Team Drives improves security and reduces confusion over shared folders, this new feature offers a great way for students to collaborate on digital files. Team Drives are not yet available to students, but I will let you know when that feature is made available to them.

To get started with Team Drives, have a look at the video tutorial below as I demonstrate the creation of Team Drives and discuss some best practices.

New Google Sites is Finally Here

Posted on November 18, 2016 by MadisonITS

As many of you know, I’m an advocate of students creating and publishing in what is now the most widely read medium that exists — websites. Until recently, it took a considerable amount of effort to get students equipped with the tools needed to create websites easily, safely, and responsibly. Now that Google has updated their Google Sites application, there is nothing holding us back.

Sites can be used by students to create learning portfolios, to share their understandings and important information, to promote civic engagement and raise awareness, to promote products in the consumer sciences, and to build communities and collective understandings around shared interests. Regardless of a website’s purpose, having students create them calls on them to develop essential skills, such as problem solving, media literacy & design, being aware of audience & purpose, and developing a writer’s voice.

I’d love to sit down with you and design a learning experience around student created websites for your classes. In the meantime, see how easy it is to build a Google Site in the video below.

Go here for more information from Google about the rebuilt Sites and what this means for “Classic” Sites users.

Main relevant 21st Century Capacities: Synthesizing, Design, Product Creation, Reflection, Citizenship

Let the Sparks Fly

Posted on May 25, 2016 by MadisonITS

Adobe has just release a suite of products that have amazing potential when it comes educational applications. In fact, it’s the best educational technology tool I’ve come across in the past year, joining the ranks of the Google Apps suite, WeVideo, Kahoot, and Diigo. It’s called Adobe Spark and consists of three web apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. They are all easy to use and work on any device–Mac/PC, Chromebook, or Android/iOS. Each has its own mobile app, so you can start a project on one device and finish it on another. Setting up an account is as easy…like a lot of web apps these days, you just log in with your Google username and password. Oh, and it’s free! Here’s a brief overview on each one…

My favorite is probably Spark Page. Compared to the other Spark apps, I see more potential in Page across subjects and grade levels. Basically it allows you to create visual web stories, or the kind of modern, media-rich articles you’ve probably come across on the Web. In addition to text, students can add scrolling images with captions, videos, links, and photo galleries. It’s easier to create than a website, but can be shared across the Web just as easily to reach an authentic audience. And it’s super slick. Here’s an example I made about a global social issue that social studies teachers might have their students examine. Click through to see how it all unfolds. Main 21st Century Capacities: Synthesizing, Analyzing, Design, Imagining, Product Creation, Engaging in Global Issues, Citizenship

Next is Spark Post. It allows you to design great looking graphics meant to be posted somewhere on the Web, whether it’s a meme, a flyer, an announcement, an advertisement, cover art, you name it. Here’s another example that serves as a companion to the Spark Page project above. Main 21st Century Capacities: Design, Product Creation, Presentation, Engaging in Global Issues, Citizenship

And then there’s Spark Video (formerly Adobe Voice). It’s essentially a digital storytelling app that allows you to create and narrate animated videos that contain images, icons, and text. It’s also easy to use and comes with themes and templates, such as Promote an Idea, Tell What Happened, A Hero’s Journey, Personal Growth, and Teach a Lesson. I haven’t created one yet, but you can visit Spark’s Inspiration Gallery to get some ideas. Main 21st Century Capacities: Synthesizing, Design, Imagining, Product Creation, Presentation, Engaging in Global Issues, Citizenship, Perserverance

As the year winds down, time is a rare commodity. But if you made it to the bottom of this post, you could probably spare a few more minutes to explore Spark. So if you’re looking to try something new to keep your students engaged at the end of the year, let me know, and I’ll be happy to explore its potential with you.

Cool New Google Slides Features! | ITS Tech Talk

Posted on May 9, 2016 by MadisonITS

My K-6 ITS counterpart, Michael Ginsburg, just blogged about some great new Google Slides features that can make your and your students’ presentations much more interactive. No matter how good your students are at creating presentations that don’t bore, making them interactive has always been a challenge. And it’s worth noting that in order to meet the Madison standard in the capacity of Presentation, students must present their findings “in an interactive, purposeful manner.” Click the image or link below to learn more.

Source: Cool New Google Slides Features! | ITS Tech Talk

Leveraging Technology for Learning

A discussion of some of the best uses of technology to support authentic learning experiences.

Category Archives: 21st Century Capacities