Sunday, April 5, 2015
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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How AltSchool Blends Old Fashioned Learning with New Technology | EdSurge News
- how successful students can be when they learn in small, personalized communities that champion project-based learning, guided by educators who get a say in the technology they use
- 20 students between the ages of five and 10. He eschewed grade levels and standardized tests in favor of what he called a “micro-school” model with “learner-centered curriculum,” which focused on student “playlists” that tap into individual learning needs.
- community of students grouped in pre-K to 1st grade, 2nd to 5th grade, or 6th to 8th grade--becoming both mentees and mentors of their fellow students with each passing year
- three to four coveted years with their classroom teachers instead of one
- waldorf-style
- project-based learning and real-world lessons.
- Field trips are a weekly occurrence
- TECH STACK AND PD: Personalization for both students and teachers goes hand-in-hand
- Most classrooms consist of teachers and students. In AltSchool, you may find a third party—engineers.
- “Studying teachers, what they need, how it relates to the personalization--that’s the main focus of our engineers and user researchers. We study the hacks and workarounds that teachers use on paper and on a whiteboard, and work that into the platform.”
- Personalized Learning Plan, which shows students their assignments for each day and helps teachers keep track of and assess student’s learning.
- On my.altschool.com, students log in via their iPads or Chromebooks to see what teachers have assigned them for the day. Teachers will select a “Focus” project or activity-based assignment for the day and send it to students’ playlists, and once it’s completed and submitted by the students, teachers can label it as approved or ask the student to go back and make edits.
- To assess project-based learning, submissions typically require some sort of documentation, usually in the form of photos of projects taken by students.
- “Alt Video,” that allows teachers to film and later observe student performance
- space for teachers to send notes to parents about individual students
- a “classroom composition” tool where teachers can observe their student’s performances as a whole
- “learning targets” aligned to Common Core, Next Generation Science, and California state standards.
- AltSchool will open its platform to other districts and schools as a resource
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Privacy Pitfalls as Education Apps Spread Haphazardly - NYTimes.com
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In addition, some education privacy law scholars say that the direct-to-teacher marketing model circumvents federal privacy laws.
One federal law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, requires school districts to maintain the confidentiality of student records and to keep control of those records even if administrators outsource certain school functions to vendors.
Another federal law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, allows schools to act in place of parents in allowing online providers to collect personal details from children. But the Federal Trade Commission recommends that schools not delegate that decision to individual teachers.
- To help school administrators evaluate digital education services, the Department of Education recently issued best-practice recommendations for contracts. Last year, the Consortium for School Networking, an association for district technology professionals, introduced a free tool kit with data security questions for schools to ask their online service providers. And on Tuesday, a coalition of several dozen educational groups issued a set of principles for responsible use of student data.
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Why Opting Out of Student Data Collection Isn’t the Solution | EdSurge News
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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How Intrinsic Schools is Breaking the Laws of School Innovation | EdSurge News
similar to alliance's newest model (with the 'commons') for high school
- personalized learning model
- Intrinsic’s “pods” are designed so students intuitively use different areas of the learning environment for teacher-led instruction, peer-to-peer learning and independent work.
- Pods serve 60 students and are staffed by three adults, two core subject teachers and a special education or assistant teacher.
- Each area of the pod is named and uses visible landmarks for easy student navigation.
- allows me to do small group instruction or one-on-one tutoring the majority of each day,”
- students rotate through each space during the 90-minute English block, Ashley and her co-teacher Bryan Podell never teach more than 15 students at a time.
- plan four or more literacy lessons, sometimes using different novels, that are tailored to the needs of each group
- piloting a mastery-based classroom where students are learning six different levels of math ranging from Algebra to Pre-Calculus, reflecting the diverse academic needs of their students
- The structure makes it difficult to revert back to the whole class approaches found in traditional classrooms.
- co-teachers 90 minutes of common planning time every day so teaching teams can thoughtfully design the flow of student activities across the different pod spaces
- Paradoxically, adopting more structures and systems in its second year resulted in more innovation, not less
- changing everything means changing nothing
- structure unlocked innovation. These initiatives lie in stark contrast to Intrinsic’s earlier innovation attempts where too much complexity meant defaulting back to traditional structures and approaches.
- beginning work on second-order innovations
- creating a “genius hour” to support more student choice and independence
- building mobile data tools that teachers can use while commuting on the bus
- strategically using adaptive software to further individualize learning
- school innovation tends to go down once students start showing up for class
- Intrinsic has a one-to-one Chromebook implementation and uses Hapara for course management and Securly for content filtering. Grade level teams choose online content but popular math software includes Think Through Math, ST Math, Khan Academy and IXL. ThinkCERCA, NoRedInk and Reading Plus are the primary literacy programs. Intrinsic builds custom data dashboards for its teachers using the Jasper programming language and pulls data from Illuminate Education, its student information system.
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Sunday, March 15, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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3 Ways to use Google in Art & Art History Classes - from Jennifer Carey - EdTechTeacher
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@DavidGeurin Blog: What if schools were more like Google and Starbucks?
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Reaching Math Students One by One - NYTimes.com
- The American educational system, then, creates a permanent math underclass
- School of One, a method for math teachers to personalize instruction,
- Rose and Rush then left the city department and established New Classrooms Innovation Partners, a private nonprofit organization that now works with schools to use Teach to One, a program that evolved from School of One.
- classroom is the size of four rooms
- all four seventh-grade math teachers and some aides circulated, teaching 120 students as a team.
- students find their names on airport-style monitors outside the room, which tell them where to go
- monitors also tell the students which of several learning modalities they will use.
- some answered questions at a computer. A few feet away, others did work sheets in pairs. Five students sat at a table with a teacher, solving equations. At one end of the room, Reisman worked with 23 students on a multiday probability project.
- Centers - laptop, collaborative work, small group instruction.
- M.S. 88 is part of a broad evolution in teaching math, employing technology to provide students with a lesson personalized for each.
- first step, now widespread, was the digital lesson, usually a computer game or video
- Computers can also administer and grade math quizzes
- New Classrooms has a library of 12,000 lessons, some created by its staff, but most bought à la carte from companies like Pearson and IXL.
- a third are online, and the rest are taught live
- every math class ends with each student taking an online quiz that tests whether she has mastered today’s lesson
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- How difficult is it to achieve this? Sounds like the ideal, the goal - at least in math.
- next step is the real innovation: the educational equivalent of an air traffic control system. Each student’s daily exit quiz is fed into an algorithm, which produces the next day’s schedule for each student and teacher.
- (Teachers get a preview, and can override the schedule.)
- If a student has mastered a skill, on to the next one. If not, she gets another day’s instruction, this time through a different modality. (The algorithm is aware of which modalities work best for her.) It’s an enormous departure from traditional teaching.
- we’ve had a lot of difficulty translating that model of what students know into actionable information. The information we give teachers is either too coarse or too fine. It’s either ‘Johnny can’t do math’ or ‘here are 186 characteristics on seven dimensions of proficiency’ and the teacher says ‘I can’t look at all that.’ The value proposition of School of One is: by telling you what the next instructional step is, we’ll help you thread between that.“
- Many brands of technology save teachers from spending time making up and grading tests. School of One also regroups students and matches them with the just-right lesson.
- timesaver overall? Not necessarily,
- collaboration School of One requires takes extra time, he said, but teachers can spend less time on rote work.
- $40,000 a year more than other math tech programs
- $100 per student
- valuated students using a comprehensive test called Measures of Academic Progress
- second year, however, School of One did much better
- progress statistically similar to the national average
- collective gains for the 15 schools were 47 percent higher than the national average.
- highest among the worst-off students
- gains may be in part due to the fact that these are schools that decided to put a lot of time and money into improving their math teaching
- sewing together various pieces of technology, something Mitchell called “Frankensteining.
- only School of One, he said, recommends the appropriate next lesson for each student and organizes the classroom accordingly
- Why should a school try an expensive, disruptive high-tech platform that’s still unproven? The answer is: in order to prove it.
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Professionally Designed Templates to Use in Google Docs and Sheets
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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Montessori For All: Personalized Learning For The People | EdSurge News
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Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Good Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms Add-ons for Teachers
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- What technophiles forget, neglect, trip over—pick a verb–are the multiple purposes for tax-supported schools in a democracy. They and many others futurists err—my verb choice—in equating access to information with becoming educated. The purpose of schooling is reduced to acquiring information.
- Googled facts do not add up to knowing something.
- Tax-supported public schools have been and are social, political, and moral institutions whose historic job has been to help children and youth acquire multiple literacies, enter the labor market well prepared, vote, serve on juries, contribute to their communities, think for themselves, and live full and worthwhile lives.
- Few policymakers, philanthropists, technology futurists have challenged (or are willing to challenge) the swelling embrace of automated instruction that promise transforming schools into information factories.
- Effective teaching, like work in other helping professions such as medicine, social work, and religious counseling is anchored in relationships. Those student/teacher relationships convert information into knowledge and, on occasion, knowledge into wisdom about the self and world. Teachers, then, from preschool through high school are far more than deliverers of information.
- No software program that I know has algorithms that either make instantaneous decisions when events pop up unexpectedly or split-second moral decisions.
- So, because of multiple purposes for schooling and the daily press of classroom decisions, I believe that automation of teaching is not around the corner.
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New Network Backs Blended Learning at Aspire Public Schools | EdTech Magazine
Ting Vogel - Director of Technology
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10 Tools to Celebrate Black History This Month and Year-Round | graphite Blog
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For the Children Who Fell Through the Cracks
Harvard Law
- 15-year-old had the kind of PTSD that is suffered by combat soldiers
- Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a collaboration between Massachusetts Advocates for Children and HLS
- Education Law Clinic, where children and their families can get legal help securing education services
- linked childhood trauma to developmental problems. Its victims, they have found, are often unable to focus on learning or to trust adults. They often suffer from hopelessness, lack of control and diminished self-worth. Remembering traumatic experiences triggers anxiety that suppresses the area of the brain associated with language, making it difficult for them to communicate effectively.
- children who experienced trauma were two to four times more likely to skip school, act out or bring other problems to the classroom
- U.S. schools suspend more than 3.3 million students annually, according to the National Education Policy Center, 95 percent for reasons other than using drugs or carrying weapons.
- landmark publication “Helping Traumatized Children Learn,” which came out in 2005. Colloquially known as the Purple Book, it has become a go-to resource for educators, advocates, and parents, and has been bought or downloaded more than 100,000 times, with requests for translated editions coming from as far afield as Brazil and the Netherlands.
- In an elementary school in Brockton, south of Boston, educators got a graphic representation of the issues many of their students were facing when a social worker from the district attorney’s office superimposed the coordinates of gun and drug offenses over a map of the school district. Gasps were heard in the room, the principal, Ryan Powers, later recounted for a New York Times blog. But then the teachers went to work. For students who had trouble grappling with their emotions, they set up beanbag chairs in quiet corners, gave them headphones to listen to classical music or excused them from class to go for walks. Police began letting schools know when they visited an address where children live so counselors could look out for problems. Eisner and Ristuccia worked closely with the school, and after two years of integrating this new approach, the number of students sent to the principal’s office with discipline problems plummeted by 75 percent.
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Sunday, February 15, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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OPINION: Four Lessons From D.C. Teachers Who Catalyzed City Wide School Redesign | EdSurge News
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Insights to Catalyze Personalized Learning
What can other districts learn from the way that personalized learning has unfolded at these two schools?
- A bottom-up change process, starting at the classroom and school level, has the potential to lead to whole district redesign
- Seed funding can act as a catalyst to carrying out great visions.
- Personalized learning should not be a cookie-cutter process; what works in one classroom or school may not work elsewhere.
- Efforts to implement personalized learning must balance innovation with scaling effective tools and models.
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Teachers as Researchers: Changing the Dynamics of PD - Work in Progress - Education Week Teacher
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Three false dichotomies in blended learning | Christensen Institute
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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A watershed moment for technology in education - The Washington Post
- “E-Rate,” a little-known but critical program under the auspices of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). E-Rate is an 18 year-old program originally designed to help schools and libraries pay for telecommunication services
- using it as a tool to support broadband Internet deployment in our schools
- The modernization of E-Rate, by bringing Wi-Fi enabled broadband Internet to our schools, creates the necessary backbone for the deployment of technology in education
- economics of education technology finally make sense
- experience now shows that digital learning transforms education
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3 things great teachers do with technology | eSchool News | eSchool News
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Leading Motivated Learners: Student Led PD
- included choice in sessions - everyone had the opportunity to choose between three different PD sessions where various apps were being featured and basic training was being offered
- professional development was led by our students
- thirteen fifth graders facilitated our staff learning by sharing various apps that they loved using and felt like experts in regards to application
- student voice (#StuVoice)
- "Geek Squad"
- students had an opportunity to teach others about various tech resources based on the fact that they had developed a level of expertise with those resources
- Educreations, Sticky Notes, Bitmoji, iMovie, Haiku Deck and Near Pod
- children were given time in their classroom to prepare presentations and then had a chance to present to their classmates and refine their presentations. The groups were then paired up and assigned to a room so that each room featured two app presentations by two different groups (3 rooms in total). The staff then had a choice of which presentations they wanted to participate in and went to that room. The staff members were informed in advance about the apps that would be featured and were encouraged to download the apps of interest and bring their devices to the PD sessions so they could be more interactive.
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10 Essential Tips For Meeting Tech Needs of Low-Income Schools | MindShift
- 1. KEEP GOALS AND MISSION IN MIND
- Technology shouldn’t force a school away from its guiding principles; it should be implemented thoughtfully to complement those goals
- 2. TECH SHOULD COMPLIMENT NOT REPLACE
- needed to do more conceptual building.” That’s why she chose ST Math as a
- 3. INVOLVE FAMILIES
- When Vinci donated tablets to its kindergarten students, Encompass had the company train parents on how to use them.
- Achieve3000 in Language Arts because it offers letters home in Spanish, access to student dashboards by mobile device and even an audio function so parents can listen to the articles their students read
- 4. DON’T LET TRENDS DICTATE DECISIONS
- Although tablets and laptops are trendy right now
- Tablets? Maybe. Laptops? Don't seem to fit the mold of a 'trend.'
- 5. SUPPORT TEACHERS
- They need professional development and the ability to offer input into what software and models the school uses. “It’s not about the online content, it’s about the structures and putting it in a meaningful way for teachers to use it,”
- 6. USE TECH TO FREE UP TEACHER TIME
- Computers aren’t teachers, but they can offer a space for students to practice skills they’ve learned or explore new ones while a teacher is working with smaller group of students.
- 7. TRACK DATA
- 8. EXPECT EXCELLENCE, NOT ACHIEVEMENT
- “In private schools it’s about excellence, it’s not about achievement,”
- 9. UNDERSTAND START-UP WORLD
- good luck working with small start-up businesses, in part because she’s entered those relationships with her eyes open.
- hen a start-up company changed its business model, deciding not to work directly with schools anymore she wasn’t surprised or taken off guard
- 10. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH VENDORS
- When she interviews a potential tech partner she is looking for how responsive the company will be to her school’s needs and whether they can produce data in useable ways.
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15 Best Google Drive Add-Ons for Education @coolcatteacher
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5 Ways Administrators Can Use Google Apps - from Jennifer Carey - EdTechTeacher
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Chromebook Creation: Slides, Thinglink & Snagit - From Greg Kulowiec - EdTechTeacher
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Getting Proactive in the Quest to Protect Student Data | EdTech Magazine
- important to have a written data governance plan that recognizes the different sources of data that the school district has. I think districts should have policies about how the data can be used — how do teachers sign up for apps, how is information given to online vendors, what’s the process before signing contracts for data use?
- data governance at the district level
- actually know what data you have. This means creating an inventory of what you are collecting, and then to be transparent, to post that inventory on your website. Also include information about what data the school collects, how it is being protected and what it is used for. Once you build in the governance and the transparency around your data systems, the technical challenges are the easy part.
- Make information about student data practices and polices easy to find.
- Publish a list of the personal student information you collect and you plan to use it.
- Make sure parents know what, if any, personal student information you plan to share with third-party vendors.
- Effectively communicate your data usage plans and policies to parents and members of the public.
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Sunday, February 1, 2015
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: Everything Teachers Need to Know about Google Classroom
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Teach Tech Trussell: Google Classroom, Doctopus and Goobric - The Ultimate Workflow!
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The Three Most Important Questions You Can Ask Your Teenager | Michael Mulligan
- Preteens from affluent, well-educated families... experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country. As many as 22 percent of adolescent girls from financially comfortable families suffer from clinical depression. (pp. 45-46)
- Deresiewicz claims that this generation of highly accomplished, college-bound students have been robbed of their independence because they have been raised in a petri dish for one purpose only: to attend an elite college that ensures their and their families' economic and social status.
- Instead of being nurtured towards real curiosity and a genuine sense of citizenship, these millennials are conditioned to think that everything they do is for the purpose of looking good in the eyes of admissions officers and employers: you earn good grades not because they mean you are learning something, but rather because they will help you stand out from your peers when applying to the Ivies.
- Many college students who fall apart under pressure because they cannot conceive of the fact that hard work and learning are positive outcomes in and of themselves
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Recent Video | PBS NewsHour | PBS
Marshallow Test
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10 Online Learning Trends to Watch in 2015 [#Infographic] | EdTech Magazine
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Weekly Diigo Links
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Google releases guide to help schools integrate its technology into classrooms | 9to5Google
- 5-step approach to deploying a digital education solution
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Friday, January 2, 2015
5 Google Chrome Extensions for Teachers to Save Time in 2015
By today, you've undoubtedly read numerous feel good blog posts this holiday season, all meant to jump-start your motivation and excitement for the coming 2nd half of the school year. Instead of providing inspirational words (of which I have few), I decided to contribute in a more practical manner (with a nod to the motivators for taking care of that!).
So here are 5 Google Chrome Extensions to add to your repertoire this year. Since time is always the enemy, I chose the following in hopes that they bring you tidings of great efficiency... or something close to that.
So here are 5 Google Chrome Extensions to add to your repertoire this year. Since time is always the enemy, I chose the following in hopes that they bring you tidings of great efficiency... or something close to that.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Public Domain Image Search
Students of all ages are often tasked with projects that involve finding and using pictures and digital images from the web. Ensuring that our students are using images that are free to use (what we call "public domain" images) respects individual copyright and creative work - and allows for teachable moments about these themes. Finding public domain images can be limiting, however, so I share with my students the following list in order to maximize their search options.
Friday, September 5, 2014
How to Cite a Textbook
One of my goals this school year is to blog more often, in much smaller chunks. So it begins, a splattering of random information on teaching history, using technology in the classroom, and whatever else.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Submitting Digital Assignments with Google Forms & Screenshots
Google recently updated its Forms to allow embedding of images and videos opens the door for great possibilities with surveys/quizzes/etc. It's especially helpful in one area: using Google Forms to submit student work. (Credit to +Greg Kulowiec for opening my eyes to this!)
My 7th graders completed timelines on major events of the Civil War using the program Timeglider. In order to share them with me, they would need to change the sharing settings and find an obscure link to their timeline. Knowing the confusion caused by this from past experience, I created a simple form where they would only enter two pieces of information:
To create the images, I simply used my Mac's built-in screenshot feature (command + shift + 3), then cropped and annotated the image using Mac's built-in pdf viewer, Preview.
Since Google Drive also allows for embedding of videos, this would be an easy to way to incorporate screencast video tutorials for the same reason. I use these often to show students how to use the various online tools we utilize in class.
My 7th graders completed timelines on major events of the Civil War using the program Timeglider. In order to share them with me, they would need to change the sharing settings and find an obscure link to their timeline. Knowing the confusion caused by this from past experience, I created a simple form where they would only enter two pieces of information:
- Their name
- The link to their timeline
In order to get this information, I now used screenshots to show them exactly how to share it correctly. Since the screenshots can be embedded in the survey, it simplifies the process for the students.
The result? Zero questions. Nearly 100% of links correctly submitted within 4 minutes of the start of class. (Realized I was missing one step that through off a few students... always learning!)
The result? Zero questions. Nearly 100% of links correctly submitted within 4 minutes of the start of class. (Realized I was missing one step that through off a few students... always learning!)
To create the images, I simply used my Mac's built-in screenshot feature (command + shift + 3), then cropped and annotated the image using Mac's built-in pdf viewer, Preview.
Since Google Drive also allows for embedding of videos, this would be an easy to way to incorporate screencast video tutorials for the same reason. I use these often to show students how to use the various online tools we utilize in class.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Ukraine: Teaching Perspective through Current Events
As a history teacher, relating the past to the present is integral to my success. If the name of this blog - and it's origin, Faulkner's quote - fail to acknowledge this point, perhaps the project below will.
For our (extremely short) unit on Europe, we will focus our attention on the ever-changing situation in Ukraine. There are a number of reasons for choosing Ukraine besides its relevance to the news, including its connections to the USSR, World Wars, and Russo-European relations, as well as protest movements, imperialism, and democracy in general. For our sake, however, the unraveling crisis/unrest/protest (whatever you prefer to call it) in Ukraine also provides an important opportunity to analyze perspective.
Our project is outlined below. We began by having our 8th graders read background articles on the conflict, as well as articles from sources chosen to intentionally reveal bias. Our students have been assigned groups based on three perspectives - pro-Russian Ukraine, pro-EU Ukraine, and international. Within those groups, they will create content that will ultimately become a website representing the conflict from their group's perspective. Within each group, there will be seven different assignments. While wee are assigning the groups, we are not assigning the specific assignments. This is purposeful so as to allow students to asset map and identify strengths and weaknesses within themselves and the group. The final product will be a digital website created by each group sharing their work - a kind of digital magazine from their perspective.
So what do you think? What are we missing? How would you change it? How could we do it better?
Our hope is that this project can be recycled and tweaked for years to come in order to analyze perspectives around whatever current protest movement is occurring - wherever that may be...
For our (extremely short) unit on Europe, we will focus our attention on the ever-changing situation in Ukraine. There are a number of reasons for choosing Ukraine besides its relevance to the news, including its connections to the USSR, World Wars, and Russo-European relations, as well as protest movements, imperialism, and democracy in general. For our sake, however, the unraveling crisis/unrest/protest (whatever you prefer to call it) in Ukraine also provides an important opportunity to analyze perspective.
Our project is outlined below. We began by having our 8th graders read background articles on the conflict, as well as articles from sources chosen to intentionally reveal bias. Our students have been assigned groups based on three perspectives - pro-Russian Ukraine, pro-EU Ukraine, and international. Within those groups, they will create content that will ultimately become a website representing the conflict from their group's perspective. Within each group, there will be seven different assignments. While wee are assigning the groups, we are not assigning the specific assignments. This is purposeful so as to allow students to asset map and identify strengths and weaknesses within themselves and the group. The final product will be a digital website created by each group sharing their work - a kind of digital magazine from their perspective.
So what do you think? What are we missing? How would you change it? How could we do it better?
Our hope is that this project can be recycled and tweaked for years to come in order to analyze perspectives around whatever current protest movement is occurring - wherever that may be...
Saturday, March 22, 2014
What has me thinking - March
Beg, borrow, and steal quickly became my mantra as a young teacher. And I'm still young. So I'm still stealing. You get the idea. Thanks to +Patrick Larkin and +Steven Anderson for the idea behind this. I'm going to try sharing (occassionally) a few blog posts, articles, videos, or other media that have me thinking this week. We'll see how it actually turns out.
6 Lessons from Daniel Pinks #ASCD14 Session by +Joe Mazza
Dan Pink is well known for his research behind motivation (hence the name of his bestseller, "Drive"). His focus at #ASCD14, however, seems to be persuasion. Joe's post highlights key aspects of Pink's keynote that you can use immediately in your day-to-day life as an educator, all geared around motivating those around you and moving the dial forward. Lots of great takeaways - will be referring back to this often. (As someone who did not attend #ASCD14, I still enjoy accessing the great people and content from the conference.)
The Overprotected Kid by Hanna Rosin
The research on the importance of independence, risk-taking, and play experienced during childhood is quite clear, from Rosin's article. This (long) fascinating read is filled with nostalgia for the explorative-nature that childhood used to embody. It raises thoughtful questions about what it means to allow our kids to face challenges - to experience and therefore overcome fear - and how heavy pushes for playground safety in the past 3 decades has yielded little-to-no change in injury outcomes. As an educator, this article validates what I think of as the struggle: letting kids work through an issue on their own, without much intervention, with a healthy amount of failure and challenge. Lots of connections here to the maker movement, as well. Having taught both in public and private schools, I am especially interested in what we consider to be "good" parenting, and how much of that involved letting go.
Teach Kids How to Code And You Give Them A Skill For Life by Nick Morrison
As of September of this year, "England will be the first country in the world to make computer programming a compulsory school subject at all levels." Raises the question: what are we doing here in the US? Lots of interesting references to programs around the country. While addressed far less than it should have, the fact that coding teaches vital life skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and understanding cause-and-effect should be the number one reason for teaching coding in schools. Interested to see how the US responds to the UK's innovative decision.
Reading PSA by 9th graders at the Emma Willard school
The power of the PSA (Public Service Announcement). Such a great example of the creativity our discover find when given the opportunity (or responsibility). We ask our students to create PSAs multiple times during the year, but this video is pushing me to expand my understanding of what one can/should look like.
Rethinking Learning: The 21st Century Learner
This video captures such a critical aspect of education technology use that goes ignored all to often: kids need to be creating. They need to be less of the consumer and instead be the ones using the technology to create (whether it be videos, presentations, games, infographics, timelines, maps, games, fliers, simulators, etc etc etc). The push for edtech in schools is too often focused on how it is changing the teaching and not the learning.
6 Lessons from Daniel Pinks #ASCD14 Session by +Joe Mazza
Dan Pink is well known for his research behind motivation (hence the name of his bestseller, "Drive"). His focus at #ASCD14, however, seems to be persuasion. Joe's post highlights key aspects of Pink's keynote that you can use immediately in your day-to-day life as an educator, all geared around motivating those around you and moving the dial forward. Lots of great takeaways - will be referring back to this often. (As someone who did not attend #ASCD14, I still enjoy accessing the great people and content from the conference.)
The Overprotected Kid by Hanna Rosin
The research on the importance of independence, risk-taking, and play experienced during childhood is quite clear, from Rosin's article. This (long) fascinating read is filled with nostalgia for the explorative-nature that childhood used to embody. It raises thoughtful questions about what it means to allow our kids to face challenges - to experience and therefore overcome fear - and how heavy pushes for playground safety in the past 3 decades has yielded little-to-no change in injury outcomes. As an educator, this article validates what I think of as the struggle: letting kids work through an issue on their own, without much intervention, with a healthy amount of failure and challenge. Lots of connections here to the maker movement, as well. Having taught both in public and private schools, I am especially interested in what we consider to be "good" parenting, and how much of that involved letting go.
Teach Kids How to Code And You Give Them A Skill For Life by Nick Morrison
As of September of this year, "England will be the first country in the world to make computer programming a compulsory school subject at all levels." Raises the question: what are we doing here in the US? Lots of interesting references to programs around the country. While addressed far less than it should have, the fact that coding teaches vital life skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and understanding cause-and-effect should be the number one reason for teaching coding in schools. Interested to see how the US responds to the UK's innovative decision.
Reading PSA by 9th graders at the Emma Willard school
The power of the PSA (Public Service Announcement). Such a great example of the creativity our discover find when given the opportunity (or responsibility). We ask our students to create PSAs multiple times during the year, but this video is pushing me to expand my understanding of what one can/should look like.
Rethinking Learning: The 21st Century Learner
This video captures such a critical aspect of education technology use that goes ignored all to often: kids need to be creating. They need to be less of the consumer and instead be the ones using the technology to create (whether it be videos, presentations, games, infographics, timelines, maps, games, fliers, simulators, etc etc etc). The push for edtech in schools is too often focused on how it is changing the teaching and not the learning.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
4 Tools for Sharing Your Story Beyond Social Media
How to ensure your story reaches all community members
With more and more schools moving towards digital marketing via social media, many schools are looking for ways to share their story on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+ (among others). One important question to consider is "how will community members who are not (yet) using social media access the same content?" Just because a parent is not on Twitter does not mean that they lack interest in the exciting updates we are sharing on social media. With that, here are four tools to help you share your story by reaching those stakeholders who are not engaged through social media.
Tagboard
http://www.tagboard.com
Tagboard acts as a website that curates all the current posts associated with a specific hashtag. If your school has a hashtag (which it should!), you can direct traffic to this site as opposed to forcing community members to pay attention to a specific social media feed. Just like Storify (see below), Tagboard pulls posts from multiple sites (Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Vine, Facebook, and App.net).Tagboard is automatically updated with the most recent posts for the selected hashtag. As opposed to sending out the link at the end of the week, parents can check the Tagboard throughout their day to see all posts as they are posted. You can even set up the tagboard page with your own cover image, avatar, and description - making it feel like your own website. To check out your school's hashtag, simply type it into tagboard.com, or go to tagboard.com/yourhashtag. Our school's is tagboard.com/trinityNOLA.
One of the best examples of an effective tagboard is PS10 in Brooklyn (http://www.tagboard.com/ps10bk). Led by +Chris Casal (who first introduced me to tagboard on his website), their tagboard includes posts from teachers all over the school, as well as others who use the hashtag #ps10bk. This provides a glimpse into classrooms from all the different grade-levels, plus visitors, parents, administrators, and other community members. The brand of PS10 shines clearly and genuinely through their tagboard.
Tint
https://www.tintup.com/
Tintup - or Tint - is a highly professional, made-for-the-big-screen version of Tagboard. NASDAQ used Tint to display social media posts for their hashtag... on their giant, winding billboard in Times Square, NYC. But schools can find Tint useful, as well. Tint pulls posts from all the major social media outlets using a hashtag (or specific account). You can add up to 2 streams of content for free; for schools, this would allow you to display the school Twitter feed along with the school hashtag as an effective way to share your story.Tint works great as a display in multiple places - including on a localized TV monitor, embedded on a website or in an email, or viewed on a mobile device. As more schools put up TV displays in their admissions or welcome centers, Tint seems like an obvious choice to share your story and establish your brand for visitors. Additionally, the service could be used to share social media posts on a school's website, no longer limiting the website to carrying just the school's individual Twitter or Facebook feed.
Twitter Fontana
http://twitterfontana.com/
If the constant flow of social media feels overwhelming, Twitter Fontana could be a good way to slow down and focus on content. This service displays posts one at a time, on top of a blank window, allowing viewers to read each post individually. Viewers can even pause the stream, as well. There are a few slight personalization options, which include changing only the color scheme and the transition-effect for each post.The simplicity of Twitter Fontana is what makes it worth your time, though. Share it via email or display it on a TV monitor to allow community members to engage with your story. The "full screen" option makes Twitter Fontana a great option for large displays. Keep in mind that Twitter Fontana, as the name implies, only includes posts from Twitter (by hashtag, Twitter handle, or general search).
Storify
https://storify.com/
Storify is a platform that collects social media into a singular feed that can be embedded in a website or email. You decide which posts are shown, what order they come in, and which platforms you use. It can pull posts from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, and Flickr. You can even embed a URL to a separate page or promote a specific social media feed; the latter is a way to convert more community stakeholders to follow your feeds, especially when they see the great content they would be able to see in real time. Use Storify as a weekly newsletter to parents about what happened this week at school, or to share all the posts from a recent, exciting event.Here's a recent example I created for our school at the end of an exciting week. It includes Tweets from our school account as well as teacher accounts, Instagram videos, pictures, and links.
The link to this Storify can easily be shared, as well, for easy access on the web.
These are just four tools to curate and share your social media content. What works best for your school will depend on the content you are displaying, the brand you are trying to convey, and the audience with which you are communicating. How are you using these tools currently? What other tools can schools use to be effective marketers of their brand? What am I missing?? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!
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