MACUL sessions: Ideas for Creative Projects

The first session I went to at the MACUL conference on Friday was the most interesting and most inspiring for me in terms of how to use different tech tools in the classroom to assess students. The session was called Ideas for Creative Projects and the presenter was Justin Cowen (@jepc71). Justin spent about an hour presenting various tech tools that either students or teachers can use to make learning more interactive and engaging. His forum for the presentation was a Trello board which was an interactive board which allows both the presenter and the viewers to click on various links to take them to different places on the internet, documents, etc. A link to the Trello Board that he used is here: https://trello.com/b/rlglE0sZ/macul-2015-ideas-for-creative-projects. This link will take you to the Trello Board he used and allow you to access the tech tools that were featured in his presentation. Among those were Peardeck, Easl.ly, Canva, Thinglink, Soundcloud, Adobe Voice, Autocrat, readwritethink.org, and chromville. I will discuss Canva a little bit further because I think it is something that all of us MACers could use tomorrow if we had access to computers in our placement.

Canva is a program that allows students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept using a variety of different visual mediums such as a poster, business card, and presentation among others. Students can create infographics using a variety of different options in terms of text, photos, layouts, and backgrounds. There is an option to upload photos to use as backgrounds or just to bring an added element to the infographic. Here is an example of the poster Justin created as an example of a project students could do: Earth Day. This is just one example of how students can use a simple program to create posters that demonstrate their understanding of topics. Easel.ly is a very similar program but allows students to create more extensive infographics. With the right amount of instruction, it could be a valuable tool in classrooms.

Overall I found the MACUL conference to be very helpful and very interesting. I found it valuable to hear a variety of perspectives on technology and classroom experience and the many different presentations I heard were often inspiring. It was refreshing to see that there are hundreds of teachers in the state of Michigan who took time out of their busy schedules in the classroom to attend this conference and dedicate themselves to becoming better educators. As a quick side note, the names of the tools from Justin Cowen's presentation are also posted in the Google Doc that Jeff created. I hope that you all find them useful and helpful!

Technology Teach-In Proposal

As a History teacher, the exploration of primary documents is one of the most important teaching tools at my disposal. The problem with primary documents is without the proper scaffolding or space to ask questions, students may not see the value in using them. The ELMO is the most useful tool that I have to work with to help scaffold students' learning with primary documents. The ELMO allows me to model my own process while explicitly stating what I expect from students. Since the ELMO is a pretty standard piece of technology, I have also decided to work cell phones into this particular lesson using a PollEverywhere poll that allows students to give feedback and ask questions anonymously.

When exploring primary documents, I prefer to use the iREAD method. This method involves sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating texts among other skills. For this particular lesson, I plan to model how to go about sourcing and contextualizing a text. Using the ELMO to display my own copy of the text on the SMART Board, I will guide students through this activity. Information about the source of the text will be annotated using arrows. Information regarding the context in which the text is written will be mark using stars or asterisks. Because of the ELMO, I am able to both state out loud and mark on a paper the reasons why I chose particular parts of the text as either information regarding the source or context of the document.

As I mentioned before, I plan to incorporate student cell phones into this activity as well. Most students in my class seem to feel uncomfortable asking questions in a public forum, especially on things they haven't seen before. Using PollEverywhere eliminates the anxiety students feel about asking questions publicly by providing them with an anonymous forum. This forum provides a space for questions, comments, and concerns that students can simply text in. For those students who do not have cell phones (I know there are a few) I will make it clear that I will also accept written responses. The combination of the ELMO and cell phones provide both myself and my students with an opportunity to use easily accessible technology to work together to advance their learning and teach them valuable skills in discriminating information.

Thoughts on Edublogs

As a history teacher I was naturally drawn to Eric Langhorst's blog Speaking of History. Mr. Langhorst blogs about a variety of topics including his own classroom, conferences he has attended and spoken at, and tools that he uses in the classroom. It was the variety of tools that he blogs about that really sucked me into his blog. He uses a variety of different google functions that I didn't even know existed to make teaching history a more fun, realistic experience for his students. He combines Google's street maps function with a trip planner and a landscape time lapse in order to teach his students geography. This is very relevant to me as it is something that my mentor teacher and I are struggling with in our classroom right now. We typically assign map assignments for the students to complete out of the textbook but there is no exploration and it becomes a task in following directions rather than a geographic exploration. The tools that Mr. Langhorst discusses on his blog are very useful for history teachers and I urge my fellow historians to click on the link above and check it out!

As far as another edublog goes, I decided to check out Teachers at Risk. Something about the title of the blog drew me to it and the first blog was about the difference between teasing and bullying. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately because we have been focusing on bullying at my placement quite a bit recently. I also decided to check out the documentary Bully which I would encourage my fellow classmates to check out. But anyway, the blog that I commented on gave a clear definition of bullying but was unclear about their thoughts on teasing. Bullying is a repetitive behavior that is that is intentional, aggressive, and negative and typically exists in a relationship where there is an imbalance of power. Bullying is a serious problem and one that needs attention. However, the purpose of my blog comment was to probe the author on her thoughts about teasing and how quickly teasing can escalate and how damaging one isolated comment can have on students. Although the blog drew a lot of attention to bullying, I felt like the issues associated with teasing were brushed over. Teasing in the classroom is something that I look for and mediate because I think it is important that all of my students feel safe and comfortable in my classroom.

Thoughts on Tech Tools in Use Presentations

I want to start off by saying that I thought that all of the groups did a fine job on their presentations. This blog is in no way an evaluation of the presenters and my only goal is to evaluate how I think I would or wouldn't use these tools in the future as a teacher.

I think that the most useful tool for me as a teacher in terms of organization was padlet. I am typically pathetically unorganized and having a space to organize lessons in a visual manner is extremely helpful for me. Google Drive is a useful tool to organize all of the materials that I need but it is more of a hard drive type organization system with folders and files and such. I like Google Drive and all of the different options that it has but it is nice to have access to a method of organization that allows me to visually organizations many different kinds of media. It's also a useful tool in the sense that I can share my lessons with students. If I have access to laptops in the future, padlet is also a useful tool for posting multimedia assignments and projects in one space for the class to see or as an organization method for them to turn in assignments to me. I definitely see myself using this tool in the future for organization and hopefully for student work.

Another tool that I think would be useful is Socrative. The ability to use formative assessments in the middle of class is a useful tool for assessing whether or not students are actually understanding what I am teaching them. If they aren't getting the concepts that I am teaching then there isn't any reason to move forward with the lesson. In order to understand concepts more deeply, students need to understand factual and conceptual knowledge and Socrative is a great way to assess this knowledge. I also like the fact that you can turn formative assessments into fun, team activities using this tool. To me, these would feel less like quizzes if I am able to work with a team in a competitive manner.

All of the tools that we have been exposed to through this assignment require the right amount of access to technology. It is hard for me to use these tools in my placement because it's almost impossible to gain access to laptops. Obviously padlet is accessible to me but only as an organization tool and not as one that I can use to collaborate with students. Let me know what other people thought about all of these tools. Can you see yourself using them in your career?

Tech in My Placement

When I explored the technology that was available to me at Lincoln High School I was excited about the opportunities in my classroom but generally disappointed by what was available at the school. In my own classroom, there is a smart board, LCD projector, elmo, white board, and computer at my disposal. I consider myself lucky to have all of these things because many teachers do not have access to technology of this nature. However, when I explored what the school has to offer I was a little disappointed. It is nearly impossible to access lap tops for my students during class and hard to rent out the media center. Admittedly I don't need access to these pieces of technology to help me be more affective. While I do think they are useful, most of my student have access to a smart phone and can look up information with their mobile device if need be.

In addition, I am also aware of the fact that not all school districts have access to the resources that Lincoln does. We are fortunate to have a SMART board and projector. There are many classrooms that don't even have white boards! I don't think that technology is necessary to be an affective teacher but I do think that is a useful tool to connect with students. I think Rory does an excellent job with this based on the survey that he showed us in class. Using google docs and chrome books he is able to learn a lot of information about his students that he wouldn't otherwise know. This is something that I hope to do in the future and something that I don't think my mentor teacher does a good job of. While he does make it a point to get to know his students, based on my observations, I don't think he understands their interests or what drives their success. Technology is a good way to bridge that gap and we have technology that is adequate for doing so.

Would love to hear what other people think about this. What kind of technology do you have in your classroom? Do you think it is being used properly?

Reflection on the David Theune Presentation

The David Theune presentation was fantastic. David is passionate about the profession of teaching and extremely creative when it comes to assignments. His creativity and passion for teaching were inspiring to me and I really appreciate all of the things he does. He recognized that not all schools are as fortunate as to have access to chrome books and such and made suggestions about what teachers could do to compensate. I love the idea of consulting with other teachers in the building on presenting assignments to each others classes. In addition, I think it is awesome that David invites parents to come to observe class whenever they want. I don't think any of my teachers ever did that and maintaining that parent-teacher relationship is vitally important in the student learning process.

In addition, I believe it is vitally important that teachers become active parts of their community. David took that idea and ran with it, partnering up with local non-profits and giving his students the opportunity to have a positive impact on their community. As a history teacher, this is something that I want to somehow incorporate in my own teaching. I think that teaching history gives me a unique opportunity to help students connect with their community in positive ways and I am open to learning about any method of doing so.

David's connection with technology is great as well. He is an active member of the social media community, maintains a blog, and streams his classes among other things. I think this is a great way to connect with parents and the community and maintain relationships with students while informing them of academic work. I hope to utilize technology in my classroom as effectively as David does in his. It can be a vital tool in student learning if used correctly.

Reactions to Connections Across Disciplines

For this assignment I read through Holly, Stephen, and Matt's lesson plan about linear functions. The purpose of their lesson was to get students to understand how to graph linear functions. The unique part about their lesson plan is that it incorporated a tablet/web application called Geogebra. I had never heard of this app before reading through their lesson so I decided to do a little research of my own (this could also be procrastination). Geogebra is easy to use and helps students understand different geometric and algebraic functions. I think using this app could be helpful because it provides kids with a different kind of visual representation of the function and also allows them to be hands on in the sense that students are in charge of operating the app.

In terms of their pedagogical approach, I appreciate the fact that they wanted the students to prove their work before they graph their line or find the equation on the app. It is too easy for students to just plug in numbers on an app and that is definitely something that I fear when bringing technology into the classroom. Forcing the students to show their work and explain what they did is very important, especially in this lesson.

Since all three members of this group will teach different content areas, I appreciated how they talked about how the lesson structure would transfer to different content areas including history and english. Although I don't know of any apps that would necessarily work in my content area, I would be willing to experiment with them if they did exist. I want to hear what other people think about the idea of incorporating apps in the classroom in their content areas. Does anyone think this could work outside of math?