Article - Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming Teaching

Source:
Herold, B., & Smith, C. (2015). Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming Teaching. Education Week, 34(35), 8-14.

Summary:

Schools have spent billions of dollars on technology to create student-centered, hands on and personalized learning experiences to help student achievement grow. However, that largely isn't happening. More teachers are simply using technology to make their lives easier or to supplement their instruction than are to use technology instead of using it to help students take control of their learning. The ISTE standards are referenced along with a quote from someone at ISTE who explains that teachers can do student-centered learning without technology, and have been for years, but technology isn't going away and they want teachers to use it effectively.

A very student centered lesson utilizing iPads is described and a 24 year veteran teacher explains that she had probably only stood at the front of the room for a total of 3 hours. Yet at this school, there is only about 5% of teachers using the technology at the same level as this veteran teacher.

A study done by Larry Cuban from Stanford came across similar findings in a study of a technology-rich Silicon valley school. He had looked at the same school almost a decade before and found that most teachers were using technology in an innovating way. When he looked at them again ten years later he found that most teachers were again using teacher-centered approaches instead of student centered approaches. In yet another study, researcher Kelly Shapely found that teachers found technology more useful for themselves than for the students.

The next section focuses on barriers towards implementing technology, saying that access to technology is no longer as big a barrier as it once was. Instead, the second order obstacles of teacher lack of understanding, and lack of understanding new instructional practices and how to choose the right tool for their students for the right purpose. Other barriers mentioned are the peer pressure more innovative teachers may feel to teach more traditionally, or less experienced teachers being deterred by experienced teachers who think differently. Another teacher expresses that it takes a lot of time and work to do it wholeheartedly as well.

The final section explains different tips for success with technology integration. They mention that the one approach to professional development that many researchers and experts agree on is the kind that takes place consistently during the work day and addresses the specific challenges classroom teachers face, instead of just focusing on the technology. They also mention using the "early adopters" in schools to teach other teachers instead of bringing vendors to teach and forcing teachers to go. Even with these tips, it ends with saying that for the time being, the innovative teachers creating lessons aligned with the ISTE standards will be the outlier.

Reflection:
There are a few quotes from this paper that stuck with me the most, and the were from the beginning and the end of the paper. The first is "The introduction of computers into schools was supposed to improve academic achievement and alter how teachers taught. Neither has occurred." The second quote being "When all the stars are aligned, you can think about fundamentally changing how you've always done business. But remember, changing how we do education is like trying to move Mount Everest."

While these two quotes have more of a pessimistic view to them, I feel like they are realistic. People are resistant to change, even if there is something that is clearly not working, just because it "has always been done this way" people shy away from change. These are slightly disheartening in a way, but I feel that by using those early adopters, and by being an early adopter myself who sees the value in using technology in innovative ways, I can share my enthusiasm and desire to get others on board to slowly but surely help other teachers be more innovative in their use of technology in the classroom. Even if it takes a long time.

Blended Learning - Breaking Down Barriers

Source:
Horn, M. B., GU, A., & Evans, M. (2015). Knocking Down Barriers. Education Digest, 80(8), 18-25.

Summary:

Three authors from the Clayton Christensen Institute explain how California superintendents from several districts are implementing blended learning. They met and discusses the barriers that came up and solutions to those barriers. There were three categories that the barriers fell into, redesigning teacher roles given contract provisions, purchasing and managing technology and infrastructure, and recognizing online classes as valid for universities in California.

 Redesigning Teacher Roles
-Barrier: Elementary teachers have interdisciplinary credentials vs. specialized subjects
-Workaround: Teach English Language Development

-B: Secondary Level teachers have specialized credentials
-W: Teach together in a large space

-B: Per ADA, students need supervision by certified professionals
-W: Open sight lines - certified teacher who can see students

-B: Class size limits
-W: Average the students per teacher across the grade level

-B: Teacher union contracts
-C: Side-letter agreement restructuring the professional day to allow more flexibility

Technology and Infrastructure
-B: Bids for contracts over $50,000
-W: Borrow request for proposals from other districts and tweak them

-B: California guarantees that students can' pay fees to access ED - BYOD could be violation
-W: Don'r require BYOD - provide devices for those who don't have them

-B: Providing access at home and school to all
-W: Allow BYOD and supplement, look for foundations and grants

Postsecondary Approval
-B: UC and CSU require freshmen to have completed certain courses in high school - approval for online classes has changed and creates a lag
-W: Don't designate whether the class was online or face to face on transcript

There is also a list of 11 suggestions from the superintendents.
1. Use qualified substitutes
2. Train learning coaches
3. Develop a professional development center
4. Create professional development time outside of the school day
5. Encourage teachers to design
6. Rely on early adopters
7. Ensure clear communication channels
8. Don't bring admin into classes early on
9. Build a wall around costs
10. Make some decisions centrally
11. Know what's free

Reflection:
I was unaware that there were multiple districts in California taking on a blended learning approach in their schools. Most of these barriers and suggestions are general enough that they could directly benefit almost any school, while the others that are more specific to California could be tweaked to fit. I'd like to look up more information about these districts in California to see how they implement the blended learning in actuality, after reading about their workarounds to the barriers they've come across. How successful have they found this approach to be? What does the community think about it? This has caused me to think of all kinds of other questions.

Technology (and innovations!) of the Past - The Ditto Machine and Peer Editing

In looking for information about the ditto machine, I came across the article referenced above in the infographic I made. I found this article very interesting and made some comparisons to today.

Source:
Bissland, J. H. (1980). Peer evaluation method promotes sharper writing. Journalism Educator, 34(4), 17-19.

Summary:
James Bissland from Bowling Green State University introduces two tools for teachers to use called the Feedback Profile Project and the Peer Evaluation and Review System (PERS). Both tools take student writing and give them lots of audience feedback in addition to the teacher's comments. In the Feedback Profile Project, experts look at student papers with the help of computers. This became problematic because not all teachers have access to computers and finding experts would take time. PERS is a simpler approach. Students write their papers with spirit duplicators and then the masters are collected. They are stripped of their names and given a code to differentiate between them. They are then duplicated and put into packets and given to each student. The order of the stories is varied in each packet, but they all include an evaluation tool.

When it comes time to review the packets, students are told to first rank them in order. The next step is continue looking through the materials and then to explain why they gave the score they did. They would then be graded on their story, get a grade based on their paper's rankings, and finally a grade of their comments on other papers. The work now shifts to the teacher tallying and totaling to get point totals and a ranking system.  Finally, students are given all of the different pieces which provide for a great learning opportunity for students at all levels and discussions amongst themselves. The instructor of this class found that using PERS allows for great amounts of qualitative feedback peer feedback, it reflects the gate keeping decision process, it gives plenty of time for the writers and critics to have face to face discussions, the feedback is based on familiarity with the audience, the judges are guaranteed, the competition increases interest, and having students critically analyze and assess other students' successes and failures helps to compare to their own writing.

Reflection:
I had a smile on my face while reading through this because you can see how much thought and process went into the PERS process and how beneficial and potentially groundbreaking it was at the time. There was a need for qualitative feedback and they had found a solution, largely in part to using an everyday tool (the duplicator) to make the learning happening in the classroom able to reach heights that were not possible before. With having Google Docs now, it is so much faster for students to share their papers and get feedback from numerous people. They can even leave the feedback inside of the document instead of needing to print off copies. It really makes me think about what articles we might look back on more than 30 years for now about an innovative technology integration example that has long since been replaced with something faster, better, etc.

Remaking the Grade

Source: Barton, A., & Thomas, W. (2017). Remaking the Grade. Independent School, 76(4), 92-100.

Summary:

In this article, middle school dean Annie Barton, and director of curriculum and instruction, Thomas Wendell, share the experiences that their school went through with moving away from the traditional approach to grading. They shared that three years ago, they had attended a conference that left them questioning their traditional grading practices and whether or not they were accomplishing what they wanted. They determined that they didn't and also decided that middle school was a good fit for shifting away from traditional grading practices because middle school students' brains are still very much malleable.

Their next in the process was to look at their school mission and pinpoint what they wanted students and teachers to work towards. They came up with three categories that would be reported to show student achievement, academic mastery, productivity, and contributions. Productivity focuses on individual behaviors like resourcefulness, mindset, and others. Contributions has a more community based focus.

Their next step was to create rubrics that allowed for teachers to show where students were at in their learning of the three different areas. They decided on a 4 point scale, with each section labeled exceeding, meeting, approaching, and unsatisfactory. Meeting+ and approaching+ were two subcategories that could be used as well. They have made over 100 changes to the rubric and still consider it to be a draft as input has caused and will continue to cause changes.

In the 2015-2016 school year, 6th grade teachers began to implement their mission-based system. They knew that they would have administrative support and were ready for their to be bumps in the road. They found themselves questioning new things as they came up, how often to assess, the weight of formative assessment vs. summative assessment, etc. What they found was that there were fewer discipline problems as teachers had conversations with students about productivity and contributions to class which led students to more understanding and self reflection. They also shifted away from trying to get the best percentage and instead were asking for more feedback. This pilot helped them to then transition to policy. They would implement it one year at a time and for the time being, only keep it at the middle school as high school transcripts are something that can be high stakes.

They have been working with their community to explain their purpose for the shift and the benefits that this kind of mission based system can have, but still have three common concerns come up. One concern is that it seems more subjective than A-F systems, the second is that it might be less rigorous, and the third is that it may hinder students' college prospect. To respond to the first concern, they state the numerous studies from many years that show that A-F grading is indeed subjective and also explain how their rubrics have clear key behaviors and that teachers meet regularly to be sure that they are on the same page. For the second concern, they explain that they have yet to see a student earn all exceeding, whereas earning all A's was very commonplace. Having removed extra credit, teachers are also focusing on more depth than breadth to challenge students towards mastery. And for the third concern, it seems to be focused on two specific things. Parents are concerned students won't know how to earn A's at the high school, which doesn't have missions based currently, as well as what might happen for their college hopes if the high school does get rid of traditional grades. The school addresses these concerns by explaining that while students are no longer "gaming the system" to earn A's in middle school, they are learning other very important skills that will indeed help them to earn plenty of A's. For those concerned about their students' college prospects, the school explains that the New England Board of Higher Education and the New England Secondary School Consortium met with admissions officers from highly selective schools in the area. Through the meeting, they determined that students with proficiency based transcripts would not be disadvantaged.

The last part of the article is some self-reflection of where this school is at. Their 8th grade teachers will roll out the last portion of their new policy this fall. While they are confident in the successes they have had so far, in both the students' perceptions towards learning and their teachers' knowledge of where students are in their learning, they understand that it is difficult to fully comment on their results while they are still in the implementation process. There are still certain aspects of implementing it at the high school that they want to look into further before they decide to do the same kind of system there. In the end, they give themselves a score of Approaching+

Reflection:
I enjoyed reading this article, especially because the authors were very honest in what they presented with the difficulties and concerns that arose during the process so far. I think that this kind of model or some other kind of standards based, objectives based, target based system is something that is perhaps in works within my district. I don't know how far in development it is. At a conference I went to, I  heard from Garth Larson, whose district is doing something similar with their grading. What I like about both of these schools/districts and what they did with the grading is that they focus on what is is that students are learning academically as well as behaviorally. Both have included a portion of their grading system that reflects some self-regulatory skills that students need as well as community based skills that students also need to be well rounded citizens both inside of and outside of schools. I feel like the social-emotional side of middle school students is often overlooked in the extreme push for higher standardized test scores. Implementing an approach like this may be one way to help bring back more emphasis on the social emotional side of learning as well. All teachers understand the importance of the social emotional and how those skills are just as important, if not more important, than the academic skills. They should all work together, be taught, and be part of conversations that students have with their students. It is clear that in this middle school, that is definitely the case.

Flip Your Students' Learning

Source: Sams, A., & Bergmann, J. (2013). Flip Your Students' Learning. Educational Leadership, 70(6), 16-20.

Summary:

Authors Aaron Sams and Jonathon Bergmann start off the article with two sentences that set the tone for the whole piece, "Flipped learning is not about how to use videos in your lessons. It’s about how to best use your in-class time with students." They go on to explain that having students go through the lecture at home allows for the teacher to have more one on one time with the students in the classroom. This kind of approach may not work as well in classes that are heavily inquiry based and instead those that have more didactic information. Teachers should think about how they could use flipped learning to increase the face-to-face time with students.

After having decided on where this could come in, the next step is to think about the how. The article lists multiple real examples from classrooms along with links to the videos. Some of the ideas for how to do this are as follows: videos to preview units, videos to pose questions, to review concepts that are needed for upcoming lessons. They go on to explain that the idea of sending students home with something to do in order to be prepared for the upcoming lessons is not anything new. It simply helps to create a more student centered approach where teachers a free to help more students one on one.

Bloom's taxonomy being looked at in conjunction with flipped learning can help to take some of the lower levels of work outside of class, in turn pulling the higher levels back into the classroom. To add on to that, as teachers create a library of lessons, a mastery approach can grow out of Bloom's as well.  In their classrooms, they have students move on to new objectives only once they have shown that they have mastered them. This then changing how assessment works because students need to prove that they have mastered something.

After having done some reflection based on the Universal Design for Learning, Aaron and Jon determined that watching videos was not always the best way for all students to learn. Instead of them being a requirement, they were added to other resources as an option for students to choose what best suited them. Something else that became tied to more choice was the traditional assessments. Students still needed to show their understanding, but they got to choose how to best show their understanding. The authors then explain scenarios from classrooms with varying students, subjects, and needs.

The next section on the article focuses on ways for teachers to get started with flipping, Jon and Aaron explain that they didn't develop their approach in a year and learned new things along the way. One word of advice that they had was to think of the flipped classroom more as flipped lesson, flipped learning, or flipped thinking, because they don't convey the idea that flipping lessons is a 100% kind of thing. Instead, they suggest that teachers implement the videos and other aspects when they are necessary, and to start slowly. Maybe flipping one lesson or unit each semester, quarter, etc.

In the end, the explain that a flipped classroom gives teachers the ability to meet the varying needs of their students in a flexible way. A student-centered way.

Reflection:

I enjoyed reading this article because while at first glance you might think that it will be all about how to make videos for all of your lessons, it really delves into the reasons behind flipping lessons. More so than flipping them just to have students working on application in the classroom instead of listening to lecture. What it all boils down to is using the flipped lessons as yet another tool in the tool kit for helping students to determine in which ways they learn best and to work through things at their own pace. I think a major underlying message in this article, and something that is important for me to remember as well, is that there is no one perfect solution, or tool out there. It is a combination of lots of different approaches with the idea that students have some choice and say in their learning as well.

As I move to another grade level of language arts that I haven't taught before, but keep my two Spanish classes this year, I struggle with which classes I want to try some of these ideas out with. I don't want to take on too much, trying to jump in with these ideas full time in all of the different areas. Two different grade levels,  and three different curriculums (all which are still being written) for language arts, Heritage Spanish, and Spanish 1 are a lot to handle. I will have to keep reminding myself that it will not be perfect in one year and that taking on too much at once can have the opposite effect. Like Jon and Aaron suggested, I can use videos and resources that are already created and set a goal to start recording some lessons instead of trying to set of goal of recording all possibilities.

Podcast

I made a podcast on how I might use podcasts in my classroom. While I thought I was in a quiet spot, my cat was feeling like he needed some attention, so you might hear him in the background! :)
 

Open Resources - A change for schools?

There are more and more open resource websites for teachers popping up all the time. Here are a few that were shared with me or that I found through a quick search: The OER Commons, Illinois OER, Share my Lesson, and LearnZillion. All that I have looked at have a few unique aspects to them, but something they all have in common are free resources, lessons, or other lesson tools that are available to teachers.

Do websites like these have the potential to change schools?

In my opinion, when looking at just the resources that are available, they don't. They can't.

I don't think that I've heard of schools or districts (that have been successful in great growth) say, "You know, the one factor that helped us be the most successful would be the resources that we used in our classrooms." Resources, whether they be textbooks, Chromebooks, or programs online cannot cause change on their own.

When teachers, administrators, and curriculum coordinators come together, having already determined what their objectives are in reaching their students, and then they look at using some of these open resources. That is when I think change can begin to happen.  Many districts, including mine, are having their teachers create new curriculum to replace textbooks and textbook curriculum. This is something that is daunting and time consuming for teachers and schools, especially when teachers feel like they need to create the day to day activities for classes all from scratch. I think that this is where open resources can come into play to help influence change. When schools and teachers have already come together with a common goal in mind, these resources can be picked and used to support that goal and remove some of the daunting tasks of curriculum writing.

Syncing OneNote Notebooks - Screencastified How-To Video

Our district recently refreshed the staff laptops with new ones. Staff could choose between "the clam shell laptop" which has a touch screen, but has no tablet capabilities, or "the 2-in-1 laptop" which is a full tablet and laptop in one. As part of picking the 2-in-1, staff went to training on how to use features of Windows 10, tablet mode, and the smart pen. Microsoft One Note was one of the things we were trained on.

A few of my colleagues and I were working together in a self-paced room because we had all used One Note before. I had always used the desktop version of One Note, and one co-worker had used both the desktop version and the app version and preferred the app version's layout and ease of use in the classroom. We didn't think that the notebooks were syncable between the different versions, but when I was playing with my new laptop at home, I figured out that they were! So, I decided to make a video showing them, and anyone else in my district, how to sync between the different versions.

Adaptive Learning: Are We There Yet?

Source: Waters, J. K. (2014). Adaptive Learning: Are We There Yet? (Cover story). T H E Journal, 41(4), 12-16.

Summary:

After watching the TED Talk in class, I was more interested in the topic of self-paced learning. I found this article, from 2014, three years after the TED talk that right off the bat explains how what they call adaptive learning has been "heating up" because of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They argue that adaptive learning and personalized learning, while normally used interchangeably, are actually different things. According to the article, personalized learning is something teachers have always been doing and includes adaptive learning, differentiated instruction, etc whereas adaptive learning is data driven and not always linear.

The article then goes on to explain that there are two different types of adaptive learning, those that the teacher looks at data and makes changes or reteaches as needed and assessment driven models where a program makes its own adjustments without the teacher.

The next section describes that there were many different companies that were teaming up with Microsoft or creating their own web based programs for adaptive learning. Examples: CogBooks, CCKF, Knewton,Triumph Learning, and ALEKS. A few programs are looked at in more detail next. Knewton's infrastructures allows 3rd party vendors to make their products more adaptive and generates data to create learning paths. Another platform maker, Smart Sparrow, uses content created by teachers to give adaptive feedback.

Up next is the explanation of data and how it is used. Because students are in school for a long time, you have the potential to track them throughout their education to create a "learner profile." Due to the amount of information that can be learned, the more a student uses adaptive learning, the more personalized it becomes.

Finally, the article goes on to explain how adaptive software has varying levels of adaptivity to it and can help to really personalize a student's learning experience. The tools can pinpoint specific areas of challenge to students instead of just the broad topic they struggle with. The article ends with the notion that adaptive learning can help teachers to become more outcomes-oriented and can be very powerful as well.

Reflection:
I went to the First Educational Resources conference that was held in my district last week, and the idea of flipped classrooms, personalized learning, standards based learning, and learning for mastery were all things that were mentioned or hinted at a lot, so I found it really interesting that some of these topics were touched upon in class this morning with the TEDTalk video from 2011. I wanted to look more into what I thought were the main ideas of the TEDTalk and came across this article. I enjoyed reading it, even though it is a few years old, especially because I looked up some of the tools that were mentioned to see if they were still around. Many of them seemed to be in their infancy in 2014, of the 6 that I looked up, they were all still in business. I plan to spend more time looking through their websites to see which of them, if any, might be feasible to use in my classroom as I plant to move towards a more blended, mastery based, student-paced classroom. It is exciting to see when ideas are brought up in many different ways in different contexts. It helps to solidify my vision for my classroom.

Links to the 6 Platforms
Triumph
Smart Sparrow
ALEKS
CogBooks
Knewton
Realizeit

The Paperless Classroom is Coming

Source:
Scherer, M. (2014). The Paperless Classroom is Coming. Time, 184(15), 36-38.

Summary:
Michael Scherer begins by explaining a back to school night in a tech savvy teacher's classroom. Parents had many concerns and not enough time to voice them. Scherer explains that because of President Obama's initiative to get all students technology that this technology classroom would become more regular. This teacher is aiming to be paperless and started off his teaching career as a computer lab teacher. He is taking his activities from writing problems down on paper to doing things with the knowledge that they could not do without the technology.

In the next section, Scherer talks about some of the glitches that schools need to overcome when using more technology. Many schools think that if they simply buy technology, that something will happen. Teachers and parents may have steep learning curves on how to use them correct. He goes on to explain that increased blue light exposure could lead to eye problems, and that computer use could lead to other health problems as well.

After this, the article moves back to how devices in the classroom can help to personalize education, increase scores, and help to motivate students in new ways. The article ends with the explanation of how the teacher at back to school night is very excitedly sharing YouTube videos, work from his students, and explanations of technology use in college. One of the parents that was originally showing concern told the teacher, "I love your enthusiasm."

Reflection:
Our district, or school, I'm not entirely sure, has recently explained that we are short on paper. They have encouraged teachers to use less paper in their classrooms. I have been using the computers a lot in my room in new ways instead of paper pencil worksheets, sharing documents through Google, and posting to our learning management system, Schoology. Yet, I am not completely paperless myself. In some ways, I like the idea of being paperless - less mess, easier to find everything that I need, students and myself can have access to things more easily. Despite this though, I agree with some of the concerns the parents had and have more of a blended approach in my room. I share the majority of things with my students electronically in some way, but also print certain things for them.  Trying to be semi-paperless really helps to make me think about what things should be printed and what things would work better or be okay electronically. Paperless is great, but sometimes I feel like we (teachers and students) still need to manipulate paper materials. This is the reason why I still have a plan book! I tried keeping my plans online and found that for me, paper plans were much easier.

Catlin Tucker - Tucker Time Station Rotation

Source:
Tucker, C. (2017). Stations: A Shift That’s Worth It. Educational Leadership, 74(6), 86-87.

Summary:
Catlin begins by explaining how the traditional classroom structure really does not allow for any personalized instruction and that many teachers have used a traditional "stand and deliver" model of teaching. She argues that technology with the use of stations will help to increase personalization of learning within the classroom, even if the stations span more than one day since secondary classrooms have more time constraints than elementary classrooms.

Catlin suggests a three lesson station design: one station being a teacher led station with small group instruction, a second being an online station, and a third being an offline station. The teacher station is time for the more traditional station that is used most often, grouping students by ability level and providing the correct amount and level of instruction needed based on those students. One way that she takes her one on one time with students and adds in technology is to use the time for synchronous editing in Google Docs. She gives feedback using Google's suggest mode and follows up in more detail. For the online station, Catlin explains that she uses online tools like vocabulary.com and NoRedInk to give students practice with the specific skills they need help with. She recommends that students not work with technology at every station. This leads into her final station, the offline once. She explains that they should "encourage communication, collaboration, and problem-solving." She explains suggestions of tactile tasks, interpersonal tasks, discussions, and choice boards with different activities for students.


Reflection:
After reading through the previous article on stations in the classroom, I've planned out a way to use them in my language arts classes this fourth quarter. I spent some time looking between articles on blogging (as this is what one of my stations will be for in my classroom) and just more information on using stations but also incorporating technology within them. In the end, I decided upon reading more about using stations with technology and liked this article because the author, Catlin Tucker, was someone I follow on Twitter, and I recognized the name!

As I have decided to implement them into my classroom, I really like the idea of using stations with my middle school students. I'm looking for ideas on more ways to use them, and although some of the ideas in this article were ones I had heard before, there are a lot of great ideas in here. I already have my students use Google Docs and have given them suggestions using the "Suggesting Mode" in Google Docs. Generally, I will do this at home and leave feedback trying to explain it to my students. I love the idea of suggesting in with them in class while I am working with a small group. It is so hard to sit down and talk with all students about their papers, and this would be a great way to ensure that we are having a good conversation, I am sharing what I want to share with them, and I am not taking over their computer to give feedback. I'm excited to try out stations in my classroom this week and see how they go. I plan to use the suggesting mode and comments capability of Google Docs while I am meeting with students as they plan their group websites out. I also want to re-look at NoRedInk and check out Vocabulary.com.

Tech Time Savers

I enjoyed watching David's Top 10 Time-saving Tech Tips and found myself reading the transcript to be sure that I didn't miss anything since he went through them so quickly. I didn't know that you could use the spacebar to scroll down a webpage. My school laptop has a touchscreen, so normally I would use that to scroll up and down on websites. I was also not aware that hitting the B or the W keys would black out or white out the screen. Definitely something I'll use in class!

I oftentimes use a lot of control+____ shortcuts on my computer. The basics, ctrl+c for copy, ctrl+v for paste, and ctrl+z for undo, etc.

I really like using ctrl+f to find specific phrases or words in a piece of text as well. Combing ctrl+f with the replace option in Google Docs or Microsoft Word is also a major time saver for me. I use it when I am creating multiple copies of very similar documents that have a few minor words that need to be changed, like names for instance. I use it to in a matter of seconds, change all of the copies of the same word, even if there are 50 with just a few clicks on the keyboard.

I'm sure there are other shortcuts I use as well, these are just the ones that popped into mind first!

Future Ready Framework - Collaborative Leadership

After looking through the Future Ready Framework, one that really seemed to stick out to me was the collaborative leadership gear. It appealed to me because it encompasses all of the other gears and is important to the success of digital learning. It focuses on having the district leaders believing in the framework as well as the students, teachers, administrators, parents, etc.

This is something that is definitely important in all aspects of life, but especially in school. If you want to have success in something, you need to have support and help from various sources. Being part of the technology pilot in my district and now being right across the hall from someone else in the pilot has helped myself and my co-worker collaborate together to help create and share new ideas. There are other teachers that I work with on writing curriculum and discussing curriculum and because we have been a part of the tech pilot we are able to help support each other as well as help other teachers incorporate technology into their classrooms.

The district is also in the process of creating a technology steering committee to gather evidence on implementation of the technology in the pilot, plan for the future of the district in regards to technology and help to create and alter policies as well. They have invited members of the technology pilot to join the committee as well as other administrators and teachers. I like to see that the district seems to be moving towards and fitting with the collaborative learning ideology of the future ready framework.

Renovating Literacy Centers for Middle Grades

Source: 
Hodges, T. S., & McTigue, E. M. (2014). Renovating literacy centers for middle grades: differentiating, reteaching, and motivating. Clearing House, 87(4), 155-160. doi:10.1080/00098655.2014.886550

Summary:
I am always looking for new ways to keep students engaged in their learning and also working collaboratively while they do so, the article "Renovating Literacy Centers for Middle Grades: Differentiating, Reteaching, and Motivating" by Tracey Hodges and Erin McTigue touches on this subject. The article begins with descriptions of what disinterested and unengaged students might look like during a traditional whole group lesson. It goes on to explain that as the industry is moving towards globalization, teachers need to move away from students working independently and move to more student collaboration. Hodges and McTigue (2014) define literacy centers as "a framework of short, independently oriented activities conducted in small groups and focused on teaching specific literacy standards" (p. 155). From their experience in the classroom, the authors suggest that the centers include activities that are easily updated to match the standards and objectives but aren't something that need to be recreated. They also suggest that the centers change every 10 minutes, with each center focusing on one specific skill. 

After introducing the idea of literacy centers and suggestions for how to set them up, Hodges and McTigue go on to discuss the advantages of literacy centers. The first advantage that is discussed is the idea of differentiation. With literacy centers the students are in specific groups and the centers are made specifically to fit the needs of the group. While students are working in centers, it allows the teacher to sit with a specific group in order to enrich, reteach, etc. Going off of the reteaching idea in regards to differentiation, reteaching overall is another advantage that is listed. With many concepts to teach and not enough time, centers provide for multiple opportunities for reinforcement of a topic during one class period. The third advantage that is listed is motivation and self-regulation. Centers give students time to practice in self-regulation because they are in charge of their own pacing while working collaboratively. The fourth and final advantage that is listed is the opportunity for technology integration and management. Some of the integration ideas that were listed are class blogs, online discussion boards, simulations, learning modules, and other online forums. These would allow for easy collaboration and monitoring by the teacher.

The next focus of the article is on specific types of centers that the authors have found success with in their language arts classrooms. The first type of center listed is a gallery walk. They explain gallery walks as an alternative activity to more traditional comprehension questions. Simple posters are made and hung around the classroom and students are challenged to write examples, definitions, etc. Another step to the gallery walk is to have students evaluate each other's work the following day. The following suggestion for center type is Interactive White Boards (IWBs). Hodges and McTigue explain that the advantage to IWBs is that students will be working collaboratively in a kinesthetic environment with the content displayed visually instead of the traditional paper and pencil. The third type of center listed is computers. Blogs are one technology tool that were mentioned specifically because they allow student writing to be published for peers. Using computers in the 10 minute centers doesn't allow for extended composition, but does allow for short, daily writing. The fourth center type listed is iPads or other iTechnology apps. They described a specific app, PoppletLite being used to created visual, interactive mind maps about the book, The Outsiders. After discussion of using apps in the centers, the authors alos listed other examples of how centers can be adapted to individual classes. Examples include: vocab races, WebQuests, concept maps with IWBs, and more. 

The final two topics discussed in the article are on student accountability and changing the traditional roles of students and teachers. Hodges and McTigue explain that clear guidelines and expectations need to be in place and reviewed often to ensure success with middle school students. They share their management tool that they call Center Completion Cards and resemble Bingo cards as one way to hold students accountable for their learning and center assignments. As far as changing the roles of students and teachers, they suggest that middle school teachers exploit some of the instructional techniques, such as centers, from earlier grades to include engagement, fun, movement, and creativity for students. In the centers approach, the teacher becomes the facilitator who provides differentiation and helps students to monitor their own progress. These centers help students to become a community of learners, which mimics what they will be part of in the real world.

Reflection:  
I have used centers or stations in my classroom before, but have not thought this deeply about the benefits that they can include. I most recently used them in my Spanish 1 classes, and revamped them from what I had done last year to make them completely technolgy tied. I liked the results that they had, although I gave students 15 minutes instead of the suggested 10 and because our class period are just over 40 minutes, our 5 stations had to be split between two separate class periods. 

I really like some of the specific ideas that they included for middle school students and language arts classrooms and think that many of the ideas listed would work in my classroom. I don't have access to iPads, only Chromebooks, but was recently introduced to Google Drawings in a new light and I could use it to have students creating mind maps and other visual representations of their learning in ways similar to Popplet that was mentioned in the article.

I recently also re-arranged my classroom in a way that makes centers more applicable to the set up. I want to try to utilize centers a lot more often in my classes, and not just my Spanish 1 class. The benefits that were listed in the article were the same benefits that I noticed when I tried centers in my Spanish class. Students had good conversations with each other, they were more engaged than if I had used a more traditional whole group lesson, they had more (positive) pressure to perform since they were  in smaller groups, and they enjoyed it. Many students mentioned how quickly class seemed to go by. I like the idea of a class blog for students to post to, and I like the idea of using technology in general to allow for students to collaborate with each other in new ways, see ideas easily from groups that they aren't a part of, and potentially collaborate with other classes. I have three language arts classes and they will be reading memoirs in small groups as part of our next unit. I can envision having a blog set up so that students who are reading the same book, but are in different class periods, can have conversations about the book. One of the centers could be creating questions to post to the blog and one of the other centers could be students responding to one another on the blog. Instead of writing general summaries of what they read, they could create a visual outline of the chapter, etc. The more I think about it, the more ideas I get!!