EdTech with Teacher Candidates

I got about 30 minutes to share some thoughts on integrating tech into a middle and high school history classroom tonight with an awesome group of teacher candidates from Stanford's Teacher Education Program (STEP). As a STEP grad, it was cool to be able to go back and share some things that I do to try to thoughtfully integrate tech into a history classroom.

I stressed using tech for students to create (not consume) and preached the Twitter message (get on Twitter now, darnit). I walked them through the SAMR model as a guide for tech integration and gave examples of SAMR and Google docs.

It was a good conversation, but too short! I also got to hear Bobby Cupp talk about how he integrates tech in his classroom. Give Bobby a follow - he's a super thoughtful guy!

Here's the document I shared with them.

How Do You End Up Bowling With Awesome People at Fall CUE?

Okay, so this isn't a super serious seeming question. And yes, fall CUE was over a month ago. But bear with me...

Pic via @mrsfadeji - thanks Amy!

The backstory: Saturday night at fall CUE I ended up going bowling with a crew of awesome people. An eclectic group of folks with no common strand - location, subject area, teacher/administrator - other than they were connected educators. Everyone knew everyone from the Twitterz. That was the commonality.

Sidenote: this night was a freaking BLAST. Not an upset - get a bunch of teachers together and you’re bound to have fun.

It was here, with this wide-tanging group of people, that I wondered how people ended up there bowling. This question spawned the title of this blog post. How do you end up with this group of folks? There were newly connected educators. Folks who have keynoted big conferences. People who run conferences all over California. It was an enormous mix of awesome folks and since this gathering spawned the question, it seemed like a good place to try to get an answer.

I think that everyone needs a push - or needed a push - to get involved and connected. I wouldn't have been bowling with this group of people if I hadn't met Diane Main - my edtech momma - at the MERIT program in 2011. And then proceeded to go do stuff she told me to do: yes, the inaugural edcampSFBay. Yes CUE Rockstar. Then at some point I just went off and did things. Not awesome stuff, but stuff nonetheless.

I needed that push though. I needed to be told to go and DO. But does everyone need that push? This seemed like the group to pop that question to.

And the consensus - unanimously - was that yes, folks needed the push. Everyone there could identify someone who had pushed them to get connected, someone who said go do this thing. Or these things. From the newly connected to the veterans, everyone got a push from someone.

I followed this conversation up with other folks as well. Out of all the folks I talked to, I only found one person who had organically gotten connected and involved in the edtech world.

So what? Well, it means people need to be encouraged to go and do. Hit up that conference. Start blogging. Think about presenting at this event. #EduPressure. #EduEncouragement. Whatever you want to call it.

I've heard too many folks - awesome teachers who do spectacular things with their students - say that they have nothing to share. That what they do in their classroom isn't really that cool or innovative.

SHENANIGANS.

In the follow up to this admission of 'I don't do anything cool' my follow-up question is always about a cool activity or project they do in their classroom. And inevitably, within five minutes, we've found at least one conference presentation or blog post that could happen right now. Often times it is several.

What else does it mean? Well, for me at my site, it's easy to get discouraged. Outside of the tech I got through grants (and my private wifi network that I got through whining to the right people), there isn't really any functional tech on my campus. Or a wifi network that is robust enough to support even the most rudimentary BYOD program.

For obvious reasons, this makes it really hard to integrate tech at Hillsdale. So what can I do? Yeah. That's the question. I'm lucky to be part of an awesome three-headed instructional technology committee, the first of its kind at Hillsdale. I'm hopeful we can keep pushing forward. I know we are advocating for the right things from the district.

I'm also pushing hard to get folks at my site to apply for MERIT this summer. Two weeks of intensive - and paid! - hands-on edtech goodness did wonders for me. In fact, eventually - once I got hooked into the Twitterz - it revolutionized my classroom. So I've slowly been talking up MERIT to a group of about ten teachers on my campus.

I'm not confident that my approach - how I try to get people more involved and comfortable with edtech - is the right one. I do know, though, that I'm trying to push. Gently (though I know some would argue a more gentle touch is needed) but a push nonetheless.

What is your approach?  How do you encourage people to get more involved and comfortable with edtech? With revolutionizing classrooms and education?

Assume Positive Intent

Often when people talk about using technology in class, the concern of, “But what if the kids go on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc when they are supposed to be doing work for class” comes up. And my response - always - is that when you assume positive intent around student tech use, good things happen. If you assume kids are using tech to do work for your class, they will: treat them like adults and you’ll get the behavior you hope.

And this is what I do in my class. Usually.

Except for today when twice I asked kids to put devices away. And they were doing work for class. Matt was looking up a Russian colonel who attempted a coup before the Russian Revolution in 1917. Sanchit was reading an old paper of his to compare writing styles between Humanities writing and history writing. And I didn’t assume positive with their tech use.

Assume positive intent. 

Better tomorrow.

Funding Technology In My Classroom

Some context. Because, you know, I’m a history teacher: we always need context. I live and teach in Silicon Valley, the technology capital of the world. I have one school desktop in my room that is supposed to be for my personal use - students use way more often than I do. I have eight Chromebooks in my room that I was lucky enough to get funded through Donors Choose. They are awesome and are heavily used in class. Other classes at my school don’t have devices this powerful. There are netbook carts that live with our ELD program, but many of them struggle to run any of the Google apps that get heavy usage in my class. This isn’t typed out of jealousy, pride, or anger, but just as a fact: my students regularly have access to eight of the most powerful devices that go into student hands at from school.

Yes, there is a tech issue at my school. And in my district. I’m working on that. As part of the instructional technology committee (it is what it sounds like) as well as the district digital task force (who spent the year looking at what 1:1 implementation would look like in our district), I have tried to get involved in these conversations. As the year would down and the digital task force made their recommendation for starting a 1:1 pilot at school sites next year, I was not thrilled with the results. There will be somewhere between two and five laptop carts given to each site. How those will be assigned is unclear. They might be assigned to one teacher. A cart could get assigned to a group of teachers. It was very unclear.

I also made another decision: while eight devices was great, my classroom was going to be 1:1 next year. That meant I needed twenty more Chromebooks. By the start of the next school year. And I was going to have to come up with the money to fundraise them.

Donors Choose to the rescue! I put together a Donors Choose project proposal and got it approved. Twenty Chromebooks through Donors Choose? $6,062.26. Now, to come up with the $6K plus...

Thankfully, I’ve got some awesome friends and family and they raised about $3,000 pretty quickly. So, the question becomes - how to find that rest of the money? And here is where the story gets interesting.

Could my school fund it? I talked to our education foundation (the fact that public high schools need an education foundation to fund classes and supplies is for another time). Well, they aren’t supposed to be buying technology for teacher and student use: technology is supposed to come from the district. It isn’t. The foundation could only donate money if they were directed to by our school’s governing council.

Could the school’s governing council fund my project? That’s a sticky, sticky question (and a reason I never want to be an administrator). I made a request for the funds and spoke at the meeting - no money for this project.

What about my parents - could I ask them for money to fund this project? When I broached this idea with my principal, I knew the loaded nature of the question. Yes, another loaded question. We aren’t supposed to ask for anything from parents (outside of money for field trips, no more than $10). There is one ask for money per year by our school, by our education foundation, at the beginning of the school year. Teachers at my school are never supposed to make direct requests for anything from our parents. So could I ask my parents to support my project?

“Wow. Well, I bet you’d raise $2,000 to $3,000 in no time at all.”

That number suprised me, but that is also only $18-$25 per family. And I was able to ask them, and many parents supported my project. Which is, you know, all kinds of awesome.

But these facts remain: my classroom will be 1:1 next year. And these devices won’t come from my district. And they won’t come from my school site. They will come from the generosity of my friends, family, and parents of current and former students. And this leaves me feeling, well, something. Far beyond grateful to have such a supporting group of people behind me. That is for darn sure. But also concerned. When a teacher with a compelling vision for a 1:1 classroom can’t make that happen without incredible generosity of their community? Something isn’t right here.

#MIflip Thoughts

So several months ago - I’m not sure when, really - a Twitter conversation started about a flipped learning conference in Michigan. Free. Hands on. With some relatively serious folks (David Prindle, Dan Spencer, David Fouch, Delia Bush, Doug Ragan, and Brian Bennett) organizing it. Since I was lucky enough to meet David Prindle at MERIT two summers ago, and since I knew David Fouch from G+ conversations about flipping history classes, I threw my hat into the ‘let’s make this conference happen’ ring.

It was certainly a unique experience to plan an entire conference via Google+ hangouts. I don’t think there was one in person meeting in the lead-up to this conference. That’s just a neat fact - we’ve reached that point where entire learning experiences can be planned online!

So why was MIflip a great experience? Several reasons:

• I love meeting my PLN in person. It is really neat to get to move someone from ‘internet friends’ to friends. I got to do that with some folks I have learned a LOT from.
• It was free. ‘Nuff said.
• It was on a Saturday. Only people who wanted to be there were there - slackers and people who aren’t interested in improving their craft don’t go to optional conferences on Saturdays.
• Brian Bennett’s keynote. Brian focused on making one little change, focused conference attendees on thinking about one thing that they could focus on and take away from the conference that day and use in their classroom on Monday. At a conference with such a wide experience range, it makes sense for teachers to focus on one little thing. Also, given the climate of education and the myriad of issues facing it, the idea of focusing on changing just one thing is appealing - it gives a both a sense of purpose and immediacy to the conference.
• Getting to facilitate sessions with Dan Spencer, David Fouch, and Delia Bush. Yes, That was bragging. But to get to share ideas with a group of people who are so talented and dedicated, well, that’s pretty cool.

Finally, huge props to Dan Spencer and David Prindle for doing so much work to make this conference happen. And also to David Fouch, who went above and beyond and opened his house up to me for the weekend.

I'll leave you with this: MIfllip cleanup courtesy of Brian and David F. Shaky camera work by yours truly...

Briefly

A brief update via Twitter: 

That is all.

Okay, it isn't. Those boxes contain 8 Chromebooks that my (incredibly) gracious friends and family funded for my students. I am REALLY excited to see what we can do with these tools!

#EdCampLA

On December 11th, Bill Selak, one of the EdCampLA organizers, tweeted out that people should really think about joining him for a day of great learning in January. The conversation to the right occurred:

After talking Cheryl Morris into joining me, EdCampLA was on. The 4am wakeup yesterday morning was tough, but the day was incredibly worth it. Why? Thanks for asking.

Getting to meet members of my PLN in person. I have learned from and with Matt Arguello, Kate Petty, and Jo-Ann Fox on Twitter for a while now. To get to meet them in person was great. It is really nice to get to put actual faces together with Twitter handles and pictures.

Meeting smart, dedicated educators. EdCamps attracts people like this. It is a huge part of why I go to them.

I got to be part of a really neat conversation about flipped classrooms. The idea behind EdCamps sessions is that they are conversations, not presentations. To start this session on flipped classrooms, Cheryl and I introduced ourselves, talked about what we do, and then let the discussion unfold. It was really neat to see the conversation unfold - we covered a lot of ground in 45 minute!

I also attended Stephen Davis’s Teacher Confession session as well and came away really impressed with the idea. Like impressed enough that I think it should become an EdCamp staple, similar to Things That Suck (more on this session later). Stephen explained the germination idea - a hashtag that got batted around on Twitter - and his desire to have teachers to have a place to share their failures and embarrassments in a comfortable environment. The thing was, the environment was was a room full of teachers that I had never met. However, these teachers were EdCampers (folks who will willingly travel for an optional day of PD on a Saturday). The tone of the room was excellent - even though no one in the room knew more than one or two other people, it was a great experience - very refreshing, open and supportive. I’m not sure I could pull off facilitating that discussion - the job Stephen did establishing the right feeling in the room was amazing - but it was definitely a unique and valuable experience.

The last session I attended was the Bill Selak-hosted Things That Suck. A fast-moving place for EdCampers to discuss controversial education topics, Things That Suck never fails to disappoint and this session was no exception.

However, the possible highlight of the day was finally getting to meet Crystal Kirch in person. Having had numerous Twitter and Google+ conversations with Crystal, it was strange to meet her in person - it felt like I already knew her. The power of the internetz... It is always nice to move people off the ‘Internet Friends’ list. Andrew Thomasson, here’s to hoping you’re next.

Thanks for the photo, Kate Petty!

I got back to my apartment 17 hours after I left it. It was a whirlwind day, but so so amazing. A HUGE thanks to the awesome EdCampLA organizing team!

Why I'm Excited for 2013

Classroom innovation
I’m excited to keep blowing up my history classroom, to keep pushing on what a history class is and what a history class can be.

Student discussion series
I am looking forward to talking with students, former and current students, about what school and history class is, and what school and history class can be. I’ve already started to publicize these sessions with my students, and I’m excited to hear what they have to say and how I can incorporate their ideas into my practice.

EdCampsFoDayz
1/12: EdCampLA, 2/16: EdCampCV, 2/23: EdCampMadWI. I love EdCamps. I love the format. I love the energy. Three EdCamps in the first two months on the year? That’s all sorts of #EduAwesome! I’m particularly excited about EdCampMadWI: I’m taking my mom, who has been on her local school board for about 20 years, to her first EdCamp.

Chromebooks
I was lucky enough to have a Donors Choose request for 8 Chromebooks fully funded. I am SO excited for what this will allow my history students to do!

Conference basketball season
I’m lucky enough to get to help coach the JV basketball team at my school. In the offseason, the coaches and athletic directors chose to realign the basketball divisions geographically (as opposed to power leagues as they had been). This means that my kids will be able to play against their friends and two rivals twice each season, as opposed to once last year. Full gyms on a Friday night? Heck yes!

COflip
More soon. Promise. :)

#etmooc
I don't have a huge idea of what #etmooc will be like, but the people who are organizing it, and the people who are involved in it, will make it a place where I learn a ton about educational technology.

#MIflip
I’ve been lucky enough to get to help organize the first MIFlip conference. I excited to get to head out to Grand Rapids for the conference and hang out and learn with all sorts of crazy-intelligent folks.

CanFlip13
Flipped learning conference? Organized by Carolyn Durley and Graham Johnson? That conveniently allows me to explore the mountains of British Columbia for the first time? Done and done.

The roadtrip up to CanFlip13
Redwoods. Oregon coast. Old friends. Hiking across Olympic National Park?

More conversations about flipping history
I was lucky enough to come across Tom Driscoll and David Fouch, two history teachers who flip their history classrooms, on Twitter. I’ve gotten the opportunity to talk about what a flipped history classroom looks like with them several times on Google+. I’m hopeful that these conversations will continue in 2013!

The 18 things I forgot to list
Self-explanatory. I'm getting old.

Incredible Gratitude

Before winter break, Twitter exploded with the news that Donors Choose had lined up one of their sellers that was going to sell Chromebooks to teachers for $99. Clearly, I was interested. When I heard that you could have your donation matched by the Donors Choose board of directors with a match code (INSPIRE), these already super-affordable Chromebooks became even more affordable. However, finals happened, then winter break happened. And I still hadn’t put together my Donors Choose project.

Well, finally it happened and I put my project together. The project was reviewed and went public on January 2. I was hopeful to have a decent chunk of the money donated by January 9th, when the match code deal ended. Needless to say, I was blown away when I learned that my project - about $1000 - WAS FULLY FUNDED IN TWO DAYS!!!

I am so incredibly blessed to have such a supportive family and set of friends. I was hopeful my project would end up being supported, but I was absolutely blown away by the generosity of my people! My students will have an opportunity to do some amazing work in the classroom thanks to these 8 Chromebooks - yes, stories of it will get shared here. Here’s a hint of what part of their use will look like.

Student-Created Test Review

I ran a test review in class today with my kids, and it went well - they were thinking and engaged in what they were doing. Plus, they created a giant collaborative review sheet to be used for studying for whenever they choose to take their unit test. I figured it would be useful to write it up and get it out there. A big thanks to Lisa Highfill - I took some ideas that I’ve seen her present at the Silicon Valley CUE conference and tweaked them for my 9th graders. I like how it turned out.

First, I identified the ‘big stuff’ from my unit: in my case it was a unit about the old democratic revolutions of the late 17th and 18th centuries. This list had about fifteen terms on it: revolutions (American, Glorious, and French), Enlightenment thinkers (Locke, Rousseau, etc), and documents (English Bill of Rights, US Constitution, etc).

Students were divided into groups of three or four. I did a bit of rearranging to make sure someone in each group had a public Instagram account to post pictures to while creating the groups. After choosing an initial term from the list above to create a picture of, they went off to various parts of campus to create their image. Each image was uploaded with a specific hashtag - in my case, #LShistory - so I could find their picture once it was posted. After their image was uploaded, groups completed the Google form - shown below - to explain what their picture was portraying as well as how their picture showed this thinker/document/revolution. As various groups finished at various times, I sent groups back out with another of the unclaimed terms to create another image.

We spent the last fifteen minutes of class with groups explaining their images to the rest of the class. I used Gramfeed to track pictures associated with the hashtag and show them to the class - a group’s picture would appear and they would explain how it showed the idea to the class. I also created another column on the spreadsheet the Google form was feeding into and added the link to the specific picture that each description was for. What came together was a spreadsheet that my students had created that grew as the day went on. I published this spreadsheet as a web page and gave all my students the link to it for perusal at their convenience to prep for the test. Check out the spreadsheet here.

Thoughts:

• I liked this activity. It was engaging, but it also made students think. How will I represent the Declaration of Independence in a picture? What about the French Revolution? The knowledge that had to show (or come up with) to understand the unit then compose the picture hopefully helped to solidify some of this information in their head.
• The explanation portion was good for the students, but the questions they got from their peers about their pictures was even better. Groups were pushed to explain their pictures on a deeper level as their peers asked clarifying questions. Some groups even said they wanted to go and change their picture based on feedback from their peers - it was nice to see students really pushing other students to clarify the meaning behind their picture.
• I liked this activity and will definitely do it again. I also want to incorporate video into this review activity. With the direct mobile upload that you can do with YouTube - log into YT then click ‘Upload’ then click ‘direct mobile upload’ for an email address that will send movie clips from mobile devices directly to your YT channel (see below) - at some point this year my students will make videos for concepts and upload them directly to my Youtube account for test review.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Publicizing student work!

So in an attempt to do several things, all very sneakily, I had my students create collaborative Google presentations that defined the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse. Students then had to offer a couple solutions for places to retreat to before finally concluding with one ideal location to head to to survive said apocalypse. It was an attempt, through a high-engagement topic, to get them more comfortable with collaborative Google tools, introduce a watered-down version of citing sources, learn to get copyright-friendly images, and to start, very loosely, weighing arguments against opposing arguments.

It went well - students were certainly engaged. The feedback I got was good - more is still coming in, but see below. Also, as a bonus, I learned that Flickr, a great site to get copyright-friendly images from, was blocked at our school. After talking to our IT guy, I was able to get it and almost all other websites at our school unblocked. Not Facebook or YouTube (but I’ve got a YouTube workaround that works) yet, but progress.  

Check out the project description here and the final products here. Enjoy them!

Classroom Applications From CUERockStar

I was lucky enough to spend three days this week at CUERockStar, a teacher technology camp. The learning I was able to do there was great and will make up the bulk of the post below. I also continued my summer theme of introducing myself to my PLN – it is always cool to walk up to folks (at CUERockStar it was Jon Corippo, Danny Silva, and Robert Pronovost) and introduce yourself. Connecting a face with a twitter handle is always fun.

So what’d I learn? I’m going to stick to practical applications in my classroom. Check them out!

Edit confirmation in Google forms: When students submit something, anything, in a Google form, they get a page showing their response that looks like this:

Ramsey Musallam showed a way to edit the text of this ‘thanks for your submission’ textbox. To do this, while on your Google form, click ‘More actions’ then ‘Edit confirmation.’

This is especially useful for teachers who are flipping their classroom. If students are aware of the topics they had difficulty internalizing, either based on their responses to questions on a Google form or just through their own metacognition, teachers can use this ‘Edit confirmation’ tool to link to an extremely quick (like 20-30 seconds) video explaining the answer to a particular question from the Google form. Another strategy here could be to link to a specific point in the video students watched that goes over the content that the question dealt with (for instance, at 1:45 of the video I discussed the causes of the French Revolution).

Additionally, if teachers link these short explanation videos with URL shorteners such as goo.gl or bit.ly that track the number of times that URL is used, teachers would then know what areas of content students are self-selecting to review (in addition to the feedback the teacher would get from the answers students submit on the initial Google form). Pretty awesome – and easy – tweak to implement!

Instagram test review: I’ve been lucky enough to see Lisa Highfill present before, at the Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators conference. She has been greatly influential in pushing me to use social media more in my classroom. I was lucky enough to go along on a photo walk and class in Yosemite National Park at CUERockStar that she co-led with Nicole Dalesio. I learned more about cool photo editing apps on an iPhone (my favorites, all paid apps: PhotoWizard, Snapseed, and PhotoToaster) and also heard about application of Instagram in the classroom.

Lisa talks a lot about using Instagram to document learning in her classroom, and I plan on doing this. However, she teaches 5^th graders. I am hopeful that I can build on the fact that I have students who have their own Instagram accounts. Using her ideas, I came up with an idea for using Instagram for test review with my 9^th and 10^th graders. Students get assigned a topic out of the unit – I’ve outlined this project for my first unit of the year about democracy and revolutions. Assume there are seven student groups who draw for the topic of their photo: one for the French Revolution, one for the Glorious Revolution, one for the American Revolution, three for the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers, and one free choice photo topic. Students review the content of their assigned topics then go out and take their pictures from somewhere on campus that represents, to them, the topic they chose. These pictures would then be posted to Instagram and Twitter using the class hashtag so I can locate the pictures.

After giving the students about 20 minutes to review their assigned content, wander campus, and take and post their group pictures they will return to my classroom. I will upload the hashtagged Instagram posts and each group will present their picture as well as an explanation for how their picture shows their assigned topic. I am hoping that this emphasis on the higher end of Bloom’s taxonomy will help students to internalize more of the content than they would individually.

How to apply Explore-Flip-Apply in a history class: However, the coolest classroom application that will come out of CUERockStar for me? I’ve written about what Exlore-Flip-Apply (EFA) might look like in a history class before, but to get to pick Ramsey’s brain for a half hour about this topic was a real treat. This will become a subsequent blog post – I need to finish off my democracy and revolutions unit plan before I write about it, but here’s the teaser for you – the picture that came out of our discussion:

So there are my CUERockStar classroom applications takeaways. Clearly, the last one – EFA in a history class – has the largest ramifications for my teaching. For the West Coasters that might stumble across this post, CUERockStar is well worth checking out. As a final note, I’ll let you know what tech tools I’ll be buying based on my experience at CUERockStar.

·       Upgrade my MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion

·       Reflection app for my MacBook – this will allow me to mirror my iPhone 4S to my computer screen (which can then be projected to my class through an LCD projector), creating a mobile document camera. What a cool way to show student work. Or elicit feedback. Or do any number of super cool things!

Screenshot of my MacBook with Reflection showing
my iPhone 4S's screen on my computer

·       A Wacom Bamboo Splash pen tablet