Category:

Good Teaching

Explore effective teaching strategies, tools, and resources. Discover ideas to enhance classroom practices and inspire student success.

Back to School Apps for Lesson Planning

by Miguel Guhlin August 15, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

“Does the TEKS Resource System have an app?” asked a classroom teacher in one of my sessions. “I want to pull up my lessons.” The question got me thinking. After some fruitless searches in the Google Play store, I failed to find an app. But I did find a few, no-cost apps that teachers may want as they head back to school. Care to see what they are?

App #1: Effective Instructional Strategies

Looking for a collection of research-based instructional strategies? While you may look no further than John Hattie’s list of effective strategies, where’s the app? If you’re wondering, you may disappointed to discover there is no an app. Until now.

Thanks to the magic of Glide, a website that lets you turn a Google Sheet into an app, it’s pretty easy to make your own. The resulting product works on any device, not only your smartphone. With that in mind, I’ve created a Hattie effective instructional strategies app.

lesson planning

The Strategies That Work app includes a short list of effective instructional strategies. As a technology director, I wish I had known about John Hattie before now. They are a real eye-opener when it comes to popular technology-focused strategies.

While Hattie says that “Everything works” with the 250+ instructional strategies we use, not everything accelerates student growth. Want an illustrated, quick reference on your device with links to video and more info? This app will get you started. What’s more, I’ll be adding more instructional strategies at least once a month. Want to help me? Make contact via Twitter @mguhlin.

Get the Strategies That Work app

App #2: TEKS

Are you a Texas educator? You may want to have quick access to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Any teacher worth their salt will soon have these memorized (well, if they write lesson plans). But if your brain isn’t cooperating, why not load the TEKS app onto your phone? You can find the TEKS in detail for any content area. Give it a try.

Get the TEKS app

App #3: Lead4ward

The Lead4ward folks have a lot of fantastic resources for schools. As a classroom teacher, I love their app’s “quickchecks.” These provide a wealth of activities such as one-question quizzes, seven little words, etc.

The list of quick checks is a searchable collection of assessments. You can tap on the assessment and get instructions on how to use it in the classroom.

What a handy aid! And there’s even more included in the app. Why not check it out?

Get the Lead4ward app for iOS|Android

These three apps make it easy to engage in lesson planning. You can find instructional strategies that align to the TEKS and assess learning. Give them a try.

August 15, 2019 5 comments

Good Teaching

We All Need a Little Good News

by Lori Gracey August 14, 2019

written by Lori Gracey

It’s become painful to turn on the news today. So much unhappiness and destruction around us; it’s enough to make anyone see the world in a negative light. And if you’re an educator trying to help students learn about current events, it can also be a dangerous path to tread as you try to locate appropriate stories for them to read and discuss.

Good News Network

Along came the Good News Network, a website and free app that is dedicated to being “an antidote to the barrage of negativity experienced in the mainstream media.” Founded in 1997, GNN has an archive of 21,000 positive news stories from around the globe available in both English and Spanish. It also includes a Good News in History section for each day and you can search for stories by region or topic.

To be honest, the site does have ads on it. And its design is a little clunky. But, for me, the positive stories more than make up for these small failures.

I especially liked the story about the owl who discovered a children’s paddling pool. It made me smile and laugh out loud. And isn’t that what we all need a little more of today? So take a look at Good News Network the next time the world has got you down.

August 14, 2019 0 comments

Good Teaching Professional Learning

Professional Development: Make It Personal

by Matthew Crutcher August 12, 2019

written by Matthew Crutcher

Think back to your last staff development event. Were you engaged the whole time, or was some of the material not quite relevant to you? Or maybe your admin team brought in a trainer to discuss the basics of OneNote, but you are already a OneNote genius. As teachers, we differentiate our instruction for our students to meet their needs — so why are we not practicing what we preach when it comes to professional development? As lifelong learners, we should be exposed to the same opportunities that we are providing our students. It’s time that we start personalizing our staff development!

When I was a classroom teacher, many of the staff meetings I attended were lecture style, sit-and-get sessions. The material was not always aimed at what I was teaching and there was an overall sense of inefficiency during the hour-long meeting. That is, until I had this one specific training. On this one occasion, I felt that the staff meeting met the needs of not only me and my team, but the whole school. We were given the choice as to what we wanted to learn, and this idea has stuck with me all these years. It has shaped and influenced my current teaching technique as a digital learning coach and personalized professional development.

Creating Choice

Let me walk you through that particular occasion. We all met in one room to review our norms, then we were given the menu. The menu was divided into two 20-minute blocks and a 10-minute wrap-up at the end. During those 20-minute blocks, we had our choice of four different sessions we could attend. Very similar to a conference you might attend, each session had a short description, so teachers knew what to expect going into that lesson. For each time slot, the sessions were different so that those presenting in the first block could attend something in the second and vice versa.

The choices we had were sessions on: ELAR, math/science, technology, and special education. At 3:40, we were released to our first session. Then, 20 minutes later, an announcement was made to move to the next session and then the next one began. For our 10-minute wrap-up, we discussed the main themes of each session and as a ticket out, we posted our favorite things about the new method on a “parking lot.”

So, what did it look like behind the scenes? A few years later, after I had left the classroom, I asked my then principal how she organized that meeting. She told me that the administrative team met with several people weeks before the staff meeting and asked them to present something related to, well, whatever. Those staff members then prepared their presentation. The people that she chose were those looking to move up into a leadership role or those currently in a leadership role. She said that it took some time and effort to plan the whole thing, but in the end, it was a very valuable learning experience for the entire staff.

Blended Delivery

With the advancements in technology over the past several years, one idea for staff meetings is to make them blended or even flipped. With a blended delivery, students (or in this case, the staff) would conduct a short activity or watch a short video prior to the staff meeting. This front-loading of material allows the meeting host to begin right away, not having to use valuable time to introduce the material. For example, the professional development is on student motivation. Admin could send out a TED Talk or another video for staff members to watch, and once the meeting begins, staff immediately break into groups to discuss the video. This eliminates having to use the first 10 minutes of the meeting to watch the video.

With a flipped method, the entire staff development is conducted online. One great way to conduct flipped professional development is through a learning management system. When designing the professional development, you could set up a module that staff members move through with a quiz or discussion at the end for accountability.

With a flipped delivery, staff members are free to work on the program or activity when they want, where they want. If the entire third-grade team wants to get together after school to complete the activities, they can. Or, if someone is unable to attend a meeting, they can complete the assignment at home. The ability to work on the training when it’s convenient to them will help ensure they are engaged and the training is effective.

Conclusion

Traditional staff development still has its place. When it is time for STAAR training, or when new campus discipline programs are being implemented, the entire staff should be together. For many other concepts though, giving the teachers options when it comes to what they learn and how they learn is the way to go. You’ll have staff that appreciates the opportunity to pick something of interest, and you’ll be modeling what we expect our teachers to be doing with their students.

Matthew Crutcher is vice president of TCEA’s Campus Technology Special Interest Group (CAMP-SIG) and a digital learning coach at Lamar CISD.

Photo: Headway

August 12, 2019 0 comments

Good Teaching Professional Learning

Make Coaching Connections

by Diana Benner and Miguel Guhlin August 7, 2019

written by Diana Benner and Miguel Guhlin

Do you know how popular instructional coaching jobs are? It was the most often job posted on TASAnet’s website. Of the 2,491 jobs posted in July, 2019, coaching accounted for 195 positions. That’s about eight percent of all jobs available in Texas public schools and charters. Why so popular? Let’s revisit a few facts about coaching, as well as discuss a few resources.

The Facts about Coaching

The facts about coaching are making their way into the educational community. Without fancy graphs or charts, you’ll want to pay close attention to the research.

This summer, thousands will take part in hundreds of hours of professional learning. Only twenty percent of those thousands of educators will transfer a new skill. That’s right, of the educators who get training, only a few will change their practice. Even if schools assign principals to offer feedback on lessons, it is an impossible task. Principal feedback is ineffective when sporadic and inconsistent. What’s more, it has the stigma of a job appraisal. Feedback offered in this way can create negative effects at a high rate (38%).

What’s more effective? You guessed it! Coaching. As shown in the chart below, eighty to ninety percent of those teachers will apply learning from a workshop in a classroom (source: Joyce and Showers, 1995).

Now that you know the effectiveness of each approach above, take a moment to reflect. How many professional learning sessions did you attend at the start of the year? Of those, how many stopped short of coaching? What’s more, consider how important the other components are in support of coaching. Many “trainers” do well with theory, demos, practice, and training. They often don’t do feedback or coaching. Practicing new skills isn’t often done either.

Coaching: Interpersonal Relationships

Thinking about going into coaching? The most important component is, hands-down, building a strong relationship. This reflects the data and trends in my blog entry, Embrace Lifelong Learning, or Else. The 2022 Skills Outlook from the Future of Jobs Report 2018 highlights the following:

Emotional intelligence. It is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions and includes the ability to handle interpersonal relationships. You must achieve this in a judicious and empathetic way. Some call emotional intelligence “EQ” or “interpersonal skills.”
Leadership and social influence. The ability to maximize the efforts of others towards the achievement of a goal. It stems from your social influence (source).

Emotional intelligence is often included in the catch-all term “soft skills.” Soft skills reflect how you work, communicate, and problem solve as a part of a team. Interpersonal skills play a key role in this. Once you see the ubiquity of relationships, everything fades in significance.

Back to School Coaching Resources

As the new year starts, you’ll want to be aware of the following resources. Let’s take a look.

coaching connections

Resource #1 – Future Ready Instructional Coaches Framework

The Future Ready Instructional Coaches provides instructional coaches with research-based strategies. What’s more, you get protocols and resources that you can use to be more effective. Here are some places to look:

Get connected to other coaches and begin your learning journey.

Resource #2 – Videos to Watch

It may be a truism, but coaching trumps professional development. Now you know the research shows how ineffective “theory, demonstration, and training” are. Those beautiful materials you prepared? Worthless without feedback, practice, and most important of all, coaching. Check out these two videos on coaching:

Resource #3 – Collegial Coaching

Have you heard of collegial coaching? I discussed it in another blog entry, Coaching Made Less Difficult. Dr. Dawn Wilson and Dr. Katie Alaniz do a nice job of distilling instructional coaching wisdom. They are, of course, relying on Jim Knight’s work. But they are making connections for educational technology. Be sure to explore their resources featured in the blog entry above.

“Coaching means side-by-side planning and working together with the same end goal in mind – Learning!-Dr. Dawn Wilson (@drdkwilson)

coaching connections

Listen to the Podcast | Access Book Info

And don’t forget to review their coaching model.

Resource #4 – Adopt a Growth Mindset

Close your eyes. Take a moment to slow down and take a deep breath. Now ask yourself, how are you changing what you say to support growth mindset thinking? You will first need to adopt a growth mindset for yourself, and encourage others to adopt it as well. Consider the diagram below:

coaching connections

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities are fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed. This can be achieved through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

All great people have had these qualities.

Source: Mindsets

Why do this? Teaching mindsets (e.g. fixed vs growth) enhances relationships. And what’s the most important aspect of coaching? That’s right…relationships and trust.

Image Source: Adapted from Killion, J., & Harrison, C. (2017). Taking the Lead:
New Roles for Teachers and School-Based Coaches, second edition. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward.

Resource #5 – Coaching Tools

Want some coaching tools? You may need an overview of coach roles and help on allocating time. You may need a weekly lesson planning template. Be sure to check out these tools shared via Tools for Learning special issue.

Ready to make some coaching connections? Be sure to get connected to other coaches. Build your own coaching PLN via Twitter and social media. The sooner you find your tribe, the better off you will be.

August 7, 2019 0 comments

Digital Literacy Good Teaching

Blue Light Bad

by Lori Gracey July 30, 2019

written by Lori Gracey

There have been a number of studies that have come out over the past few years warning us of the damage that the blue light from our devices is causing, especially in terms of sleep. And it seems to be especially true for teenagers. Let’s look at some ways we can help students (and ourselves) to block out the light effectively without hurting our eyes or impairing what we are looking at.

What the Research Says About Blue Light

“Blue light from screens can delay the release of sleep-inducing melatonin which interferes with the natural body clock.” (Source: National Post article) For adolescents who use a device in the hour before bedtime (and what teen doesn’t?), they are three times more likely to get less than five hours of sleep, which can be greatly detrimental to their mood and learning. A lack of quality sleep can lead to serious health issues down the road, such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. In addition, “teenagers who used screens before bed needed an extra 30 minutes to get to sleep compared with those who did not.” So, to bottom line it, our devices are not good for getting enough sleep and are hurting us.

How to Filter Out Blue Light

Now that we know how bad the blue light from our phones and computers and tablets is for us, the question comes up of how we block it out. The good news is that there are lots of free solutions available, depending on your device. These solutions change the color palette of your display so that you can still see to use it, but the blue light does not shine through.

Windows – Microsoft added a blue light limiting feature to Windows 10. Called “Night light,” this feature shifts the Windows 10 display to show warmer colors that reduce the amount of blue light that’s emitted. It’s easy to turn the Night light feature on:

Open up the settings menu by searching for it in the Windows 10 search box, or press the Windows key and X and then click Settings.
Choose System from the menu.
Select Display from the left-hand menu if it isn’t already.
Toggle the Night light switch to on.
Click on Settings to configure the Night light. Schedule when the feature will turn on and off to match your sleep schedule or leave it at the default, which will turn itself on at sunset and off at sunrise based on your location.

Mac – Apple introduced Night Shift in 2017. To turn it on: blue light

Open System Preferences.
Select Displays, then click on the Night Shift tab.
You can set when it comes on and off by selecting Schedule.

There’s also a great, free third-party program that has a few more features if the standard operating system options aren’t enough for you. F.lux is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and is what I use on my laptop.

iPhone – Introduced in iOS 9.3, the Night Shift feature in iOS allows you to filter out blue light and adjust the warmth of the colors in your display. To turn it on, go to Settings and then Display& Brightness and then to Night Shift. The options here are similar to those offered on Windows and Mac computers.

Android – The fastest way to turn on the blue light filter on most Samsung Galaxy phones on is to pull down your notification shade and swipe down again to access quick settings. One of them is called Blue light filter and you can tap to toggle it on and off. If that’s not an option on your phone, look at Settings and then Display and then Blue light filter.

This is probably good information to share with your students at the beginning of the school year. Be radical and have them all get their devices out in class one day and change their settings to filter out the blue light. Helping them get more and better sleep will result in big wins in the classroom, and isn’t that what we all want?

July 30, 2019 0 comments

Android Chromebooks Good Teaching iOS Tips and Tricks Online Tools and Apps

Learning to Juggle with Seesaw

by Guest Blogger July 22, 2019

written by Guest Blogger

Are you a juggler when it comes to education?

Have you ever wanted one spot to keep track of everything as a teacher? Sometimes, we educators feel learning something new is “just one more thing to add to our plate.” But being a digital leader means sharing and collaborating effective, efficient ideas and tools. Seesaw Learning Journal is such a tool. It even can help educators communicate effectively and efficiently with both students and parents.

Seesaw is a platform to encourage student engagement online, where they can showcase their voice and ownership in their work. It is a student-driven online journal that can be used in many ways and is available through the web, iOS, and Android.

Ups and Downs of Seesaw

seesaw There are several benefits to using Seesaw. Students are able to showcase their best work for parents, peers, and teachers. Students are able to explain their masterpieces, and take pride in ownership through their use of camera, video, drawings, and notes, especially when they know it is being published. This helps shy students who want to speak but are not very vocal. Teachers benefit from Seesaw by being able to use the student journal as a paperless storage for work samples, to show and discuss at parent conferences, and even use as an assessment tool. Additionally, teachers can make private notes and give feedback.

Seesaw is also user-friendly for families. Parents can see and comment on all their child’s masterpieces, and they can communicate one-to-one with the teacher. Best of all, multiple parents or any family member can join and comment. I have one student right now that has her grandma, aunt, and mom connected, and they all comment on her work!

The core Seesaw service is free for teachers, families, and students. It is a key part of their mission to impact as many students as possible. They also offer Seesaw Plus and Seesaw for Schools, which are optional paid upgrades for teachers and schools who want to do even more with Seesaw. You can view a comparison of Seesaw, Seesaw Plus, and Seesaw for Schools features here.

As for the disadvantages of Seesaw, if students are signing in through a class QR code, they are not able to edit previous work. This requires the teacher to navigate this extra step. The appearance of the dashboard needs to be updated to be more appealing to the student. The disadvantage for the teacher is printing out invitations to the parents. You must download the entire class PDF file, not just one student’s, in order to send the QR code home. The con for the parents is the lack of push notifications on iOS and Android. On tablets, students are not able to draw on a still picture while recording their voice. For example, when my kindergarteners are reading a list of sight words, I like them to check them off as they read. They can on Chromebooks, and it may come Android soon.

Using Seesaw Learning Journals

Teaching students to use Seesaw Learning Journal is an easy task, even for kindergarteners. First, students can sign in either by email (recommended for grades 3-12) or by QR codes (recommended for grades PreK-2 ). I teach kindergarten, and in my classroom of 19, the students log in and add their “Wow Work” (best work) themselves on Chromebooks and tablets by signing in with a class QR code.

Next, students can add content by camera, video, notes, Google links, drawings, or even by uploading a PDF. My students this past week chose their “Leaf Projects” to showcase. They appsmashed with Chatterpix and uploaded it to Seesaw. Some then chose to type a sentence about their projects; others choose to type describing words. It was their choice, their voice, and they have ownership in their work.

Third, students have a choice when it comes to assignments within the “Activities Tab.” The assignment can be specifically for a certain student or be the same for the whole class. Finally, the student logs in and clicks his name, then his activity tab. After they complete their assignment, they save it to their Seesaw account.

Grown-Up Growth

Teaching the adults to use Seesaw is my favorite. After using Seesaw for six years now, my interest sparks each year as Seesaw is updated.

As a teacher, the class is set up by entering your students’ names and their email addresses, if you chose for them to sign in with emails. The teacher is then able to let students upload their work and can give feedback and comments about their work. Teachers also have the option of giving the students more power by letting them comment on their peer’s work. This is recommended as long as a digital citizenship lesson has been provided.

Next, teachers get to differentiate student work in the activities tab by only assigning certain work to certain students or the whole class. The activities tab provides teachers with a single place to see who has completed and turned in their assignments and who is still working on them. Teachers can also tag certain TEKS/objectives to certain activities. This makes it easy to pull up reports on a certain TEK and see if you need to reteach that concept, or if your students are grasping the lessons.

Seesaw has a plethora of activities already made for you. They are sorted per subject, per grade level, and are available to add to your students’ accounts. No reason to reinvent the wheel! The teacher can simply copy and adjust it to the student’s needs. The Skills tab on Seesaw is a great way to assess a child on a four-star scale.

Staying Connected

Another great part for teachers is the parent communication. For years, I used Seesaw, Class Dojo, and Remind for parent communication. I was all over the place, with some parents connected to this one but not that one. The last two years, I have only used Seesaw, and all my parents are connected in one place.

This makes it easy to send out announcements for the class, to send flyers home, or even a quick message. You can communicate to the parents/families, or just to the students, or just to one parent. It is a great way to send weekly personalized messages out on how their child is learning and participating in class. I also send out a weekly announcement on what their child is learning in my class for that week. I was able to embed my link to my Google document to sign up for parent/teacher conferences and was able to get real-time feedback.

As you can see, there are many pros and just a few cons to using Seesaw Learning Journal. Overall, Seesaw is user-friendly for the students, parents, and teachers. Give it try!

Laressia Martin is an educational technology leadership expert and elementary educator. You can learn more about her on her website or on Twitter.

“Vitz-9572”by Jon.Proehl is licensed under CC BY 2.0

July 22, 2019 0 comments

Good Teaching Online Tools and Apps

A New Tool to Help Students Draw to Remember

by Lori Gracey July 17, 2019

written by Lori Gracey

You’ve probably heard the latest brain research focused on cementing learning that says that drawing something can help a person better remember it. This works regardless of the age of the student or the content he/she is trying to master. And, good news for folks like me who can’t draw a straight line, the benefits of drawing are not dependent on the students’ level of artistic talent, suggesting that this strategy may work for all students, not just ones who are able to draw well.

So when we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way, layering together the visual memory of the image, the kinesthetic memory of our hand drawing the image, and the semantic memory that is invoked when we engage in meaning-making. In combination, this greatly increases the likelihood that the concept being drawn will later be recalled. (Source: https://www.edutopia.org/article/science-drawing-and-memory)

A New Tool for Drawing

But if you’re not an elementary teacher with ready access to markers, crayons, map pencils, and other drawing tools, there is a new online resource that you may want to check out for your students: Brush Ninja. Brush Ninja is a completely free, online drawing site that requires no account registration or login and works on any device. It’s incredibly easy to use (the designer of the site tried to make it simple enough for his 2 1/2 year old to create with) and contains no tracking or advertising, something very rare today.

Besides being a drawing tool, the site is also a simple animated GIF creator. That’s perfect, for example, for math students who can draw their thought processes while working a problem and then use animation to show the final result. If your students have access to Padlet or Buncee, they can easily post their creations to those sites and share them with others.

Drawing things encourages people to think of topics in multiple ways, which makes them easier to recall later. Animating things takes this a step further. The addition of movement introduces repetition which reinforces the topic being learned. (Source: Brush Ninja)

Resources for Brush Ninja

Brush Ninja

There’s a two-minute video that explains how to use the site (that’s really as long as it takes to learn it). Richard Byrne has also created a nice handout on Using Brush Ninja and Screencastify to Make Science Presentations.

If you’re trying to think of lesson ideas to use with Brush Ninja, how about these?

Have students explain vocabulary words using quickly-created animated GIFs
Use the site to draw their understanding of the main idea or setting or plot of a story or a play they are reading
Have them draw historical figures or literary characters for other students to guess their identity
Draw and play a scene, stopping before the climax and ask students to predict what will happen next
Explain a scientific or mathematical process by drawing it
Use Brush Ninja as a screencast-type tool to create short tutorials on software your students (or other educators) are using
Discover what your students already know about a topic before you begin teaching it by having them draw in a KWL (what they already Know and what they Want to learn) way
Let students discover their creative side by designing their own animated GIF shorts

The ways you can use this to learn are really endless. And remember that each time your students are drawing with Brush Ninja, they are increasing the likelihood that the information will be retained!

July 17, 2019 0 comments

Good Teaching Online Tools and Apps

Interactive, Differentiated Activities with Deck.Toys

by Lori Gracey July 10, 2019

written by Lori Gracey

New websites and tech tools come out every day, almost every hour. But finding just the right ones to help you and your students can take time. Here is one new resource that I find particularly useful for education: Deck.Toys.

Deck.Toys

If your students have access to individual devices, whether from a cart or in a 1:1 program, Deck.Toys is a tool that you should check out. It is a “classroom engagement platform” that brings gamification to learning easily via interactive lessons. The lessons can be accessed from any device, although they are easiest for the teacher to create using a laptop or desktop computer.

The teacher shares the unique classroom web address to students directly during the lesson or via your LMS. Then, students join your classroom instantly with their Google or Microsoft accounts. If you are not using Google or Microsoft accounts, then students may still join your classroom as a guest or with a new username and password.

Deck.Toys

Creating the Lessons

It’s really easy to create lessons with Deck.Toys using its drag-and-drop capability, although there are also lots of lessons already created that you can use. You can build complete lessons within minutes with your existing teaching content such as study sets, PowerPoints or Google Slides, images, videos, links, sites, or PDFs.

You begin by building a map full of Activities for your students to complete and conquer. Your map will usually consist of Signposts (instructions for students), Slides (content you want them to learn), and Study Sets Activities. Each of these Activities has their unique functionality in ensuring an interactive lesson is created. There are 18 different Study Sets activities that you can use (below). Deck.Toys

Just use the drag-and-drop gesture to add the Activities that you desire. Once you have finished configuring your Activities, you connect them with a Path. The Path guides your students to proceed with the Activities in the planned order. The activities can be set to be teacher led or student paced. There is an excellent getting started guide available for teachers. And you can experience a Deck.Toy math lesson yourself here.

It also provides for instantaneous tracking of students’ progress and answers as they move through the lessons for early intervention and immediate feedback. At the end, you can also generate a classroom report to get a summary of all completed activities and answers submitted by your students

Perfect for Both Teacher-Led and Student-Paced Lessons

In the Teacher Sync mode, every device will be synced to the teacher’s screen. This is great at the beginning of the lesson where you are introducing fundamental lesson concepts and to get students aligned with your content. Annotations made on the slide will also be synced.

You may then turn the classroom into the student-paced mode by switching to Free Mode. In Free Mode, students can Deck.Toys explore and choose their own paths and activities to complete. Students may gain mastery on the Study Sets by repetitive review and self-practice. When they are ready, they can collaborate or challenge another classmate in real-time.

Deck.Toys Pricing

Deck.Toys has a full-featured free plan that includes two classrooms and up to 35 students per classroom. If you need more, there is also a reasonably-priced Pro plan for just $4/month. They also offer campus/district discounts.

I think that Deck.Toys is the next step in helping us better engage students in real learning with the gamification and fun aspects that they need today.

July 10, 2019 0 comments

Good Teaching

Embrace Lifelong Learning, Or Else

by Miguel Guhlin July 9, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

Did you know that the World Economic Forum identifies five trends that everyone should know about? The Fourth Industrial Revolution has arrived, a tsunami of technology change. Embracing these five trends could prepare us for change. In this blog entry, we’ll explore one of the trends.

The Five Trends

Let’s review the trends, then reflect on them from an education perspective. The five trends the World Economic Forum identifies include the following:

Automation, robotization and digitization are coming. The problem is, they look different depending on what industry you are in.
Significant job disruption lies ahead. Displacing 75 million current jobs, machines and algorithms shift the division of work. That news aside, 133 million new job roles may emerge at the same time.
Big shifts between who does what. Currently, humans do 71% of the work. In 2022, that will shift to 58%. What has changed the division of labor? Machines (robots) or algorithms.
New work tasks push workers to learn new skills. Check out the chart below to see the shift.
Embrace lifelong learning, or else. Each of those replaced will need at least 101 days of retraining and “upskilling.” If you plan to be working between now and 2022, you have some learning to do.

What do these trends mean for us as educators? Here are my initial thoughts on that final trend: embracing lifelong learning.

Make It Real

Do you know what irks me about reports like these? They never quite turn out the way you expect. As someone who’s leaning into middle age, I’m reminded of Ms. Nelda Crabknee. At fifty-five years of age, Nelda didn’t want to learn exciting new teaching strategies. She’d seen it all before, and retraining seemed like so much hocus pocus. Instead, she decided to retire in a year.

For folks like Nelda, I ask myself, “How can we make lifelong learning real?” When teachers succumb to human nature, learning new stuff may lead to retirement.

One way to make it real involves relying on strategies that work. Human beings have not changed all that much. One thing is certain: We will still have to consume content to learn it. How do you make lifelong learning real? You learn how to engage with that content in ways that align to how our brains are wired with proven strategies.

Proven Strategies

You can’t solve problems if reading presents you with an insurmountable challenge. A 2018 research study found primary students push themselves to read difficult books. As they get older, that push weakens. Can you imagine them as adults? “Wait, we have to read that technical text on stationary robot operation?”

“Over eighty-five percent of the reading and writing we do as adults is nonfiction,” says Tony Stead. Consider that students will need to devour nonfiction writing to be future ready. There are four building blocks to improving reading comprehension and engagement. These building blocks assist students in ways that will not change in the future. Those blocks include:

Staying engaged. Working through complicated texts, manuals, and video tutorials can be tough. Students need to learn to look for different clues and ideas in what they read.
Improving literacy. In studying manuals, texts, and websites, students may skip words they don’t know. Instead, they need to be able to figure out what they mean.
Enhancing comprehension. Students must be able to do more than decode text. They have to understand what they are reading.

And one final building block that ties into the World Economic Forum’s trend number five. That block is being able to learn on their own or in group. Many of our students struggle alone, trying to figure out how to learn on their own. Yet learning is social. Knowing how to learn as part of a team prepares them for the future. Let’s take a look at some strategies that may help our children get there.

Strategy #1: Summarization

“Your daughter has trouble with summarization,” the teacher told us. She said it in a much kinder tone and used my daughter’s name. As for myself, I was a bit at a loss. I had noticed my daughter tended to repeat everything that had happened.

Summarization involves identifying the main idea and most important facts. For me, outlining text was a great way to capture those ideas. I switched to concept maps in high school when a teacher modeled it for me. It became my go-to strategy.

If you know John Hattie’s work, you know that summarization has an effect size of .79. Since the hinge point for student growth is .40, which is a year’s normal growth, .79 is significant. It’s almost two year’s of a student’s normal growth in half the time. How do you teach summarization? There are many strategies. One of my concerns, as Tony Stead points out in his book Is That a Fact?, remains the focus on storytelling. I assure you that the work of tomorrow will require comprehension of nonfiction.

For students, summarizing can be straightforward. They can learn to circle the main idea, underline details, and use sentence starters to summarize.

Sentence Starters

Some sentence starters you can introduce students to include the following by category:

Summarizing a Process might involve one of these:

The first step to solving___is to…
When solving for _, first __, then ___, and finally .
To solve [name of a problem], first [describe the first step in a solution]. Then [describe the second step and so on].
Follow these steps to….

Summarizing and Interpreting Visuals can have students saying:

The image/video shows…
This table or drawing suggests…
The graph or picture shows….
After looking at this image, I now understand….

Summarizing Ideas in a Nonfiction Text may begin in one of these ways:

The main point is…
One important detail is…
This page or paragraph is about…
Today, we learned about a new word/idea/concept….

These are some powerful ways to get students engaging with text as they identify key content. Think of the many ways students can use technology to do this. Explore paper slide videos as one way to do this.

In future blog entries, we’ll explore other strategies in the context of reciprocal teaching.

Practice Makes Perfect, or at Least Better

Want to prepare yourself for lifelong learning? Learn to read and comprehend technical texts. Practice working with others to summarize in an effective way. Use strategies like summarization with your students to speed their annual academic growth. Have fun and keep pushing!

July 9, 2019 0 comments

Digital Literacy Good Teaching

Helping Students Ramp Up Their Tech Skills

by Lori Gracey July 3, 2019

written by Lori Gracey

You’ve heard the talk about digital natives, about how this generation of students who were born with technology in their mouths know everything there is to know about devices and software. You’ve heard that they don’t really need any practice in using tech because it’s embedded in their chromosomes somehow. What you may not have heard is that is all just a bunch of hooey.

The Facts About “Digital Natives”

As EdTech Digest reports, “They use it a lot, to be sure, but their range is quite narrow, and not very deep. They’re okay at the basics (email, texting, surfing the internet, etc.), but when it comes to using technology to learn, it’s mostly passive consumption of information.” The EU Kids Online Report found that “… only one in five [children studied] used a file-sharing site or created a pet/avatar, and half that number wrote a blog … While social networking makes it easier to upload content, most children use the internet for ready-made, mass-produced content.” And a survey from the Pew Research Center found that children probably know a lot about social media and usage convention, but are unaware of the difference between the internet and “World Wide Web” or what Net Neutrality means.

What that all means is that it is even more important today to teach students how and when to use technology than it has ever been. And that’s not something that can be left to the “tech teacher.” For most students, there is no technology teacher for them until high school. That’s way too late to learn best practices in hardware and software use.

How Prepared Are You to Teach Tech Skills?

With that in mind, how ready are you, regardless of the subject or grade level you teach, to show kids the best uses of technology? If the honest answer is “not so prepared,” then consider attending the Technology Acceleration Academy this summer. Held July 25-26 in Austin, the academy is a hands-on answer to teaching today’s students. Led by accomplished educators from around the state, participants will gain great expertise in both their own use of tech and in helping students use Adobe, Apple, Google, and Microsoft software and devices. Bring your own device and practice the skills that are shown, ensuring that you leave with all of the knowledge and skills that you will need to prepare your students for future careers.

Registration is just $239 for both days and includes lunch and a complimentary membership in TCEA for one year, which will help you to continue to hone your skills. Check out all of the great sessions available here. A few of them include:

Solving Problems Together – Looking for projects and ideas that will get your entire class engaged and working together? Then facilitating G Suite-based collaborative projects is for you. Explore technology in the context of problem-based learning (PBL).
Global Communication and Collaboration – Challenge yourself to use apps such as Flipgrid, Skype, Google Hang Outs, and Zoom. Experience real-world examples of how students can create connections with different cultures to develop a better understanding of our world.
Show What You Know Using an iPad – Bring your iPad and prepare for an interactive, hands-on session that will get students sharing and showing what they’ve learned, and how to apply it. You’ll leave with resources for your classroom.
Keeping Your Students Active and Engaged in a Google Classroom – Learn how to ensure that your students are active and engaged in an online environment using Google Classroom. You never have to sacrifice quality instruction when teaching in a virtual classroom.
Knowledge Management with OneNote and G Suite – Struggling to keep track of … well, everything? Wish you had an easy way to setup virtual meetings with others and share status reports by project? Let me introduce you to Microsoft Teams and OneNote. These tools work on all devices. Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, content, and apps together in one place. OneNote is a digital notebook, whiteboard and scrum board rolled into one. Want to learn how to do the same with G Suite tools? We’ll also explore that!
Ten Research-Based Practices That Accelerate Student Learning – Learn how technology can accelerate learning, especially when it’s used with ten teaching practices that are research-proven to help students achieve more.

So grab a colleague and register today for the Technology Acceleration Academy. Your students will thank you!

July 3, 2019 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts