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Five Ways to Succeed with Personalized Learning

by Miguel Guhlin July 19, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Ready to bring about transformation in your school district? As principal or department head, you’ve embraced personalized learning (PL). But now, you need to learn how to speed up its adoption and full integration. In this blog entry, we’ll revisit personalized learning. You will see successful strategies aligned to the research and best practices. See how technology can make adoption of PL faster.

Defining Personalized Learning

PL is not one-size-fits-all learning. It represents a diverse program encompassing a wide variety of instructional approaches. The strategies seek to address students’ individual needs. All educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches ,and academic support strategies are available. It’s all about whatever works best for enhancing student-centered learning.

What Is Best for You?

The role of educators in personalized learning environment has shifted (Source: iNACOL). The shift puts educators in the roles of mentors, coaches, and learning facilitators. More to the point, students take ownership and assume control of their learning, which means that learning becomes grounded in students’ interests and passions. Approaches like differentiated instruction and personalized learning plans become critical. What’s more, project-based learning and eportfolios aligned to standards-based knowledge and skills predominate.

A Splash of Cold Water: New Research Findings

However, a new research report reveals challenges about making personalized learning a reality. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a study via CRPE. The results splash cold water on successful adoption of personalized learning in schools. The study focused on two questions:

How do teachers and principals go about designing and implementing personalized learning approaches?
How does the organization’s environment support or impede school-level innovation and its spread?

In the report, the authors assert:

Personalized learning implementation efforts were not systemic or systematic. These efforts were not blended into the existing system.
Teachers and principals lacked what they needed to install PL-motivated classroom practices.
Principals failed to provide coordination to convert teacher innovations into replicable, campus practices.

Cooperation stimulates the human brain. (Source). “Human beings have evolved to get pleasure from cooperation,” says Dr. Robert Sussman. Achieving personalized learning, therefore, must involve cooperation.

Make PL a Reality

Are you ready to make personalized learning a reality? Take these report recommendations to heart. To assist you, find specific tips below. Each will help amplify your awareness of the necessary steps. Follow these steps to make personalized learning a reality on your campus. Let’s get started.

1-Embed Coaching Supports

Read the research on coaching? If you haven’t, you need to move to adopt coaching at your organization. Here are a few TCEA resources to get you started and moving in the right direction.

The Power of Video Coaching: Video coaching for professional learning is much easier. Learn how to put in place coaching to transform teaching and learning.
Coaching Made Less Difficult: Embrace the power of collegial coaching and set up mentees and coaches for success.
Effective Peer Coaching Tips and Resources: Peer coaching is a growing trend. It can help teachers integrate technology to engage students. Take advantage of these tips and resources to get started at your campus.

These three coaching resources provide all you need to embed coaching supports. With these supports in place, you can begin the journey towards personalized learning.

2-Change Management Support

Managing any new system can be dangerous as leaders face tough challenges. Being grounded in change management theory remains critical. Personalized learning represents a destruction of the old system. Here are a few TCEA blog entries to scaffold your change efforts:

Managing Change – It’s Not For the Faint of Heart: Change leadership requires a paradigm shift. Learn how to manage change on a daily basis.
Do One Thing, Be a Better Leader: What is one thing you can do that can make you a better leader? We’ve got the answer for you!
Three Steps to Professional Learning: Review research-based strategies available to support learning. Keep these strategies and questions in mind when planning training.
Teaching Digital Resilience: Encourage digital resilience and prepare students for today’s world. Also read Expanding Digital Literacy with Collaborative Inquiry and Communication Apps for Organizations.
Rethinking Learning for the Fourth Revolution: Educators must be active in rethinking learning. Here are the steps required.
Transforming Learning Spaces: Transform learning spaces of your school. This can lead to big improvements in student engagement and mastery. Here are three tips to help.
Five Practices That Speed up Learning: Learn five, research-based practices that speed learning.

3-Adopt Knowledge Management Strategies

Knowledge sharing remains a key tenet of successful organizations. The knowledge management process focuses on creating, sharing, using ,and managing knowledge and information. Often this information and knowledge is only in the heads of one or two people. Externalize that knowledge for longevity.

Most schools lack continuity of purpose. Embrace these simple practices and technologies to make knowledge sharing do-able. Technologies include:

Infographics Made Simple: Create infographics to capture and represent key personalized learning practices.
New Google Sites: Use the new Google Sites as a knowledge management repository. Save everything there. Read More New Google Sites Tips blog entry as well.
Microsoft OneNote: An Office 365 district? Rely on Microsoft Teams and Microsoft OneNote to create a knowledge management site.

Tools abound. Make the commitment to engage in meta-thinking about school and district practices.

4-Establish Communities of Practice

Creating communities of practice can be easier with today’s tools. Two reliable tools include:

Microsoft Teams: This provides one-stop shopping for all your meeting needs from live video/audio chat and text on your computer and smartphone to embedded content. You can even create professional learning communities (PLCs). Combine PLCs based in Teams with a OneNote Staff Notebook.
Google Classroom: Use Google Classroom within the Google Suites for Education.

Extra, free tools like Microsoft Forms or Google Forms can make data collection easier.

5-Seek Out Innovation Partners

Ready to expand your personalized learning initiative? Partner with individuals and organizations that are adept at personalized learning. Here are a few to start with:

TCEA.org: No surprise, TCEA provides personalized learning guides on the side to make PL work. Why not connect with TCEA and let us assist you in tweaking your PL initiative?
Personalize Learning with Kathleen McClaskey and Barbara Bray: One of my first webinars came from a PL panel I served on. Barbara Bray organized it. The authors have published a book, How to Personalize Learning. Be sure to visit Barbara and Kathleen‘s respective websites. See this Teaching and Learning Approaches chart.

Embrace Innovative Learning

Be sure to join us at the Innovative Learning Strategies conference for a learning experience focused on the intersection of strong pedagogy and technology integration. Sessions will share the best teaching practices and research-based strategies around innovative technology trends will be elaborated on.

July 19, 2018 0 comment

Chromebooks Good Teaching

UDL Chromebook Opportunities for Learning

by Miguel Guhlin June 19, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Classrooms are diverse. Curriculum needs to be designed from the start to meet this diversity (Source:Universal Design for Learning (UDL) video). Several Texas districts have adopted Chromebooks. How can UDL play a role?

Listen to Blog Entry

One way includes ebook creation with tools like Book Creator. See the connections that can be made between UDL and Book Creator. Before we do that, let’s revisit Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

UDL

What is UDL?

Universal Design for Learning is about reducing barriers to achievement. Learning preferences, learning strengths, and abilities are some of those barriers. It can help with personal interests and/or levels of engagement and has three guiding principles:

Engagement – Engaging learners. This is about motivating others to learn (Source).
Representation – Giving learners different ways to acquire information and knowledge.
Action and Expression – Demonstrating what they know in many ways.

“These three priorities align with different neural networks. They answer the “what,” “how,” and “why” of teaching and learning,” says Jules Csillag in How to Use Technology to Support UDL. Let’s examine how one of these priorities aligns to a tool like Book Creator.

Did You Know about Book Creator?

Reading and creating ebooks can support UDL. One ebook maker tool is Book Creator. I featured it in this blog entry on Creating gBooks, er, eBooks Just Got Easier. An excellent tool, Book Creator allows for collaborative ePub creation. Students have created over 15 million ebooks. It works on Chromebooks, iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Book Creator allows you to create a simple ePub without media. You can create an enhanced ePub with video, audio, and more embedded. Read their blog for TONS of ideas.

Supporting UDL with Technology

Countless technologies are available to educators. One technology, popular on tablets, became available for Chromebooks. Let’s explore one of priorities of the UDL guidelines and checkpoints with Book Creator in mind.

Engagement
- Access: It’s important to “optimize individual choice and autonomy” (UDL Checkpoint 7.1). Educators make this happen for students with voice and choice. One choice students could use to produce content is Book Creator. The ability to embed audio, video, images, and text on the page engages students. Students can exert control over “the color, design, or graphics of layouts.”
- Build: From this perspective, it is important to “create cooperative learning groups with clear goals, roles, and responsibilities” (UDL Checkpoint 8.3). Constructing ebooks provides rich opportunities for cooperative groups. Challenged to combine text, images, audio, and video, students can create various products such as interactive stories, digital portfolios, research journals, poetry books, science reports, and instruction manuals. Book Creator makes comic adventures possible, too (Source).
- Internalize: Assisting students in facilitating “personal coping skills and strategies” (UDL Checkpoint 7.2). These strategies can be blended into cooperative learning group dynamics. Students can learn how to behave and work together more effectively over time in cooperative learning groups.

More connections are possible for Representation and Action and Expression, too.

Making More UDL Connections

As you consider UDL guidelines, remember that Book Creator can accomplish the following:

Student books can be read aloud via text-to-speech capabilities.
Book Creator can highlight words as they are read.
Students can set the pages of the book to turn on their own.
Readers can choose a language or voice, as well as control the speed of reading.
Students can auto-play any media.

Ready to learn more about UDL and Book Creator? Get the Chrome browser add-on.

June 19, 2018 0 comment

Good Teaching Leadership

Five Practices That Accelerate Student Learning

by Lori Gracey December 29, 2017

written by Lori Gracey

Researcher John Hattie is one of my new heroes. His book Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement has really opened my eyes to the changes that we need to be making in our classrooms. In his meta study, Hattie compared the effect sizes of aspects that influence learning outcomes, pointing out that in education most things work. The question is which ones work best and where to concentrate our efforts. In other words, what changes accelerate student learning the most?

(Side note: To fully understand Hattie’s research, we have to understand that “effect size” is simply a way of quantifying the size of the difference between two results in a study. Cohen suggested that an effect size of 0.2 be considered a “small” effect, an effect size of 0.5 represents a “medium” effect, and 0.8 a “large” effect size. So we would want to see an effect size of 0.5 or higher as a gauge of what changes to make. The graphic below explains it well. Source)

accelerate learning

I’ve taken the liberty of picking five of Hattie’s top ten influences on achievement and examining them in terms of how technology might help us better use them for learning. Here’s what I discovered.

Self-Reported Grades/Student Expectations (1.44 effect size)

This had the biggest influence on achievement out of all of the ones that Hattie looked at. Students set their own goals, monitor their own achievement, and reflect upon their process of learning. The strategy “involves the teacher finding out what are the student’s expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations.” (Source) What technology could be used to help students better reflect on their own learning?

Blogging
Choice boards
ePortfolios (Google Keep, for example)
Flipgrid or VoiceThread reflections
Seesaw

Teacher Credibility (.90 effect size)

Trust, competence, energy, enthusiasm, and consistency are among the top characteristics students consider when determining if their teacher is credible and if they are going to choose to learn from them. Hattie defines this as the teacher being highly organized when teaching, having a powerful speaking style, and removing barriers between himself and the student. While no technology today will help students trust a teacher more, technology can be used to stay organized. Google Calendar, OneNote, and other items can help the teacher manage the content that is to be taught. Thrively can be used to help the teacher learn about student strengths and interests, which can help to build trust between them.

Classroom Discussion (.82 effect size)

Hattie defines classroom discussion as “a method of teaching, that involves the entire class in a discussion. The teacher stops lecturing and students get together as a class to discuss an important issue.” You can find helpful tips to take your class discussions to the next level here.

There are several powerful technology tools that can facilitate classroom discussions, including Google Classroom, Today’s Meet, Flipgrid (with video comments by students), Skype, and Google Hangouts. The key with all of these technologies is that the students are doing the discussion while the teacher is facilitating the conversation.

Teacher Clarity (.75 effect size)

Learning targets are clear and articulated with success criteria. Students should be able to answer: What am I learning today? Why am I learning this? How will I know that I learned it? Technology resources that can help with this include:

Blended learning
Flipgrid
Google Classroom
LMS (Learning Management System)

Feedback (.75 effect size)

Just-in-time feedback identifies where the student is at, what the expectation is, and what actions they can take to close the gap. It is far more important that the feedback be about the task, the process used, and the self regulation level than simple praise which contains no learning information. And the most powerful level of feedback of all is that given from the student to the teacher. (Here’s an excellent infographic on the seven things to remember about feedback.)

There are a wide variety of formative assessment tools available to educators today, including Nearpod, Recap, Formative, Socrative, Kahoot!, Plickers, Padlet, and more. (You can find an exhaustive list here.) But there are ways other than a simple quiz for students to provide feedback about their own learning. Consider blogging, Today’s Meet, an online discussion with private comments to the teacher, and reflection journals.

I would love to see teachers in teams embrace one of these “top five” ways to accelerate student learning and practice its use over a semester. To help them in the process, they can use the top five themselves as they learn the strategy. What do you think?

December 29, 2017 0 comment

Innovative Learning Strategies Conference banner

Announcements/Important Dates Professional Learning

Find the Right Tools for Your School at the Innovative Learning Strategies Conference

by Susan Meyer August 4, 2017

written by Susan Meyer

As a reader of the TCEA TechNotes blog, chances are you are an ed tech news maven. That means you likely hear about at least five new trends that are going to “transform education” every day. But therein lies the problem. We live in a world where new technologies and resources are coming out at lightning speed. Some tools and strategies really will provide incredible opportunities for learning and engagement while others will be style over substance and will disappear as soon as the next shiny robot, app, or software comes along.

They all promise the world. Students will be the most engaged they’ve ever been. Critical thinking skills will abound. Classroom management will become a breeze. It’s as if your curriculum was written just to be correlated to this new product. But how do you separate the true innovations from the flash-in-the-pan fads?

Enter: The Innovative Learning Strategies Conference

TCEA is here to help you figure out what technologies and strategies will best benefit your schools, classrooms, and libraries. We designed our new Innovative Learning Strategies Conference to provide the research-backed answers you need to select the best technologies and resources for your students.

The conference will tell you more about a number of hot topics from adapted teaching and blended learning to augmented reality and Future Ready Schools. Informative, interactive sessions will answer questions about the topics you want to know more about, such as:

What’s the real value of edcamps, Open Education Resources, and PBL?
What does leading research tell us about the effectiveness of Minecraft, makerspaces, and gamification?
How are Skechnoting and 3D printing best utilized in the classroom?
What barriers to implementation might you face with authentic assessment and globalized learning environments and how might you overcome them?

You’ll get the answers to these questions and more for all the tools and strategies at the forefront of education. Overall, you’ll leave with a concrete road map for what will work best for your school and environment and how to effectively implement those technologies and ideas.

Are You Ready to Spread Innovative Ideas?

The Innovative Learning Strategies Conference is intended for campus and district administrators, curriculum specialists, department heads, and other educators in leadership positions. We want to provide valuable information for thought leaders and influencers to share with their schools and departments. Because of your participants in this learning event, you will be able to gather great information and resources and spread it far and wide to have a huge impact.

The learning experience will take place in the TCEA Conference Center in Austin, Texas on September 13 – 14. For full details on how to register, hotel offerings, and a detailed schedule, visit the Innovative Learning Strategies website.

We hope to see you in Austin this fall so you can get the information you need to find the right technologies and learning strategies to transform your school!

August 4, 2017 0 comment

Chromebooks Google Tips and Tricks

Googleize Your Learning: Attend the Chromebook Academy

by Diana Benner June 20, 2017

written by Diana Benner

Are you ready to stimulate insightful engagement in your learner-powered, Google-enhanced classroom? Maybe you need some tips on streamlining your productivity workflow? Come Googleize your learning! Join TCEA members at the 2017 Chromebook Academy. You will discover innovative ways to use Chromebooks and Google Apps through hands-on learning opportunities with fellow educators who have extensive knowledge of Chromebooks and Google.

TCEA’s 2017 Chromebook Academy will help you strategically plan ahead as you capture new ideas that will transform student learning. This two-day academy is designed for those seeking to engage students and deepen their understanding of the GAFE environment through the use of Google-powered tools and devices. The Chromebook Academy will take place July 27-28, 2017 at the TCEA headquarters in Austin. These two days will provide you with proven techniques and practical advice that can be implemented in your classroom.

About Chromebook Academy Sessions

You’ll be able to choose from a variety of concurrent sessions that will help you tailor your learning to best meet your own needs. You’ll be inspired and motivated throughout the day. Lunch is included and will be phenomenal. You will also leave with handouts from all of the presentations. A few session titles appear below, but you can find the complete list online at the link above:

Writer’s Workshop 2.0: Leveraging Google Docs for Writing Instruction
Chromebook Management Tips and Tricks
Blended Learning for Brilliance: Students Shining Through Project-Based Learning
I Got a Chromebook, Now What?
Easy Accommodation and Assessment Tips That Will Blow Your Mind

How to Register

You can register online at a cost of only $239. TCEA will provide lunch for both days. But wait, there’s more! Each paid registration will receive a one-year TCEA membership, access to all session materials, and an opportunity to build a great Google and Chromebook PLN that you can always rely upon.

June 20, 2017 0 comment

Educational Trends

Six Ed Tech and Learning Predictions for 2017

by Lori Gracey January 4, 2017

written by Lori Gracey

It’s that time again when we put on our magic hats and pull out our crystal balls to make predictions about the important trends coming in the new year. I didn’t want to be left out, so here are what I believe will be the hot topics for 2017.

#1: Collaboration Finally Becomes King

The days of learning in isolation are finally over as free and inexpensive collaboration tools like Flipgrid, Slack, Skype, Today’s Meet, Google Drive, and more become used regularly in all classrooms. Educators have realized for a long time that we learn better and retain more if we work with others while learning. With the plethora of resources to make this happen easily, students and adults alike can now grow together, regardless of their location.

#2: Learning Is More Hands-On

With the huge growth and interest in the maker movement and the push to return to more “real-world” courses like those found in CTE (Career and Technical Education), student learning becomes more hands-on in all subject areas. The evolution of virtual and augmented reality makes this even easier, especially for those complex concepts that have long troubled both teachers and students alike. And the power of robots to teach coding, problem solving, and collaboration add to the hands-on emphasis.

#3: We Stop Talking about BYOD

In 2017, BYOD becomes the norm. Students are not only allowed to bring their own devices to use at school; they are strongly encouraged to. And those who can’t afford a device are provided one by their district. Teachers stop trying to know everything about all technologies and focus again on strong pedagogy and core content knowledge.

#4: Classrooms No Longer Look Like Classrooms from the 1900s

With an increased emphasis on the power of the environment on learning, schools being to rethink the way the regular classroom looks. Gone are desks in rows (and not in rows!). Instead, there is the beginning of flexible furniture that can adapt to student needs. In addition, the concept of the classroom as an assigned square box is being discussed as educators try to decide how to create innovative learning spaces with no new funding.

#5: Computational Thinking and Coding Grow

With the great help from organizations like Code.org, the need to teach all students at least the rudiments of computational thinking and coding is more widely accepted. In 2017, we’ll see a growth in the demand for computer science teachers, as well as in coding initiatives for elementary school students.

#6: Students Take Charge

Personalized learning, flipped learning, gamification, blended learning, and engaging formative and summative assessment tools add up to students being more in control of their learning journey. The content is still critical, but students will have more say in how they master it and how they demonstrate their mastery. (By the way, this rubs off on professional development for educators as they are given more choice in what they need to grow and become better.)

What Are Your Predictions for 2017?

I’d love to hear about your predictions for this brand new year. Please leave them in the Comments section below!

January 4, 2017 0 comment

Leadership Professional Learning Uncategorized

Activate Learning Innovators

by Miguel Guhlin December 22, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

Change can be difficult. But it’s almost always necessary. So how can we activate learning innovators in schools? In this blog entry, we will explore key technologies and action steps.

Getting Connected

Today, we have access to new technologies. Voxer, Appear.in, Edmodo, Twitter, blogs, Skype for Business, and YouTube Live are only a few. Decide whether the tool, such as GoogleDocs or OneNote Class Notebook, scaffolds learners’ efforts. Ask yourself, “How does this technology facilitate access and reflection across time, space, and devices?”

Growing from Network to Community

In a professional learning network (PLN), the more nodes (a.k.a. people) in your network, the richer the flow of ideas. Moving from information to innovative practice requires effort. Think of a PLN as a journey of learning and reflection. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) often involve groups. PLCs also describe a team’s shared journey of learning and reflection. Unlike a PLN, the PLC focuses on team efforts for achieving desired student outcomes. Which works best in your situation?

Activating Learners: Steps to Success

Allow me to share some action steps I have learned with past initiatives such as Pathways to Advance Virtual Education (PAVE), EC3 iPads in the Classroom , and the Technology Integration Lead Teacher (TILT) Program in several settings. Take these action steps to get a similar effort started in your school or district.

Organize learning around content that fosters innovation. That may be why one Texas district brought in George Couros, author of The Innovator’s Mindset, to lead #NISDTechCamp district-wide conversations (see my notes and materials).
Provide incentives that generate excitement among participants. Providing a stipend or technology equipment (e.g. iPad, laptop, Chromebook) that facilitates access is a common practice. When in a technology rich environment, offer options for various incentives. Remember incentives can also include badges for professional learning.
Use a blended learning approach to meetings, including face to face and online. Be sure to bring the group together, face to face, at the beginning, middle, and end of the initiative. Social media has replaced cumbersome learning management systems (LMSs).
Secure support from school/district leadership. Invite leadership to align strategic goals to your initiative and vice versa.
Support participants in creating an online portfolio of work with video and audio reflections that results in certification.
Let empowered individuals give back by helping others on campus.
Celebrate, such as with a dinner or graduation ceremony. Celebrate the efforts participants have put into learning. This can assist them in assuming a new, influential role.

An Example: Innovation Cohort

“Reach for the edges,” says Ryan O’Donnel via a Voxerchat I’m participating in (connect with him via the ConnectedTL Tribe Voxer chat) as he shares his vision in this Innovation Cohort Application. Notice that there are several components, such as required meetings, designing an innovation project, site-based support, financial reimbursement for time, and an application process. Many similar efforts exist, such as the Google Certified Innovator program, Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE), Discovery Education Network (DEN) Stars program, as well as many more (e.g. Seesaw Ambassador).

Invitation to Reflect

Please share in the comments what your thoughts are about these kinds of efforts. If you have participated in these efforts, how did they impact your work?

December 22, 2016 0 comment

Good Teaching Web 2.0 Tool

Video-Based Active Learning: Creating a Hypervideo

by Miguel Guhlin September 26, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you an educator fascinated with creating videos that feature great content, are available on popular media sites (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo), and feature YOU as the chief learning strategist and interpreter? Did you know you can also link to a particular time in a video or add “hypervideo links” that students can click on while the video is playing? Then you may want to take a closer look at the following tools that make hypervideo linking and annotating videos possible. What is annotation?

With annotations you can layer text, links, and hotspots over your video. They help you enrich the video experience by adding information, interactivity, and engagement. Source: YouTube’s Create and Edit Annotations

Let’s take a look at why annotating and hypervideo linking are so important.

The Value in Creating Hypervideos

When educators (and students) take advantage of the power of video annotations and hypervideo linking, they make it possible to create a more engaged learning experience for the viewer. That’s important because:

Thus while video documents are now more and more openly accessible and available, and constitute a learning material of great pedagogical value, their potential is not always fully exploited (Hobbs, 2006). Bringing the learners to a more active attitude while watching video documents can be achieved through various pedagogical practices and tools (Bossewitch, 2011; Zahn, 2010; Schwan and Riempp, 2004). (Source)

As you might imagine, the more active video learners are while watching, the more they are likely to retain for application.

Exploring the Tools

Let’s explore some free tools you can use to create a more active approach for your students. At the end of this blog, there are also some additional video note-taking tools shared with links to more information.

Tool #1 – YouTube

Did you know that YouTube features built-in annotation tools that you can use on your computer (not mobile)? Google’s YouTube feature provides a variety of annotations, which they elaborate on at their website, including the following:

Speech bubble: for creating pop-up speech bubbles with text. This will provide a comic book effect which will resonate with your students.
Spotlight: for highlighting areas in a video. When the user moves his mouse over these areas, the text you enter will appear. This allows you to frame a spot on your video and emphasize something that is happening.
Note: for creating pop-up boxes containing text. You can add a semi-transparent box.
Title: for creating a text overlay to title your video. This adds a big, bold title to your video.
Label: for creating a label to call out and name a specific part of your video. Similar to Spotlight, it will show text you have entered.

Tool #2 – EdPuzzle

Introduced to me by Paloma, a Fairfield ISD teacher, EdPuzzle.com is a free Chrome browser add-on (also get this EdPuzzle YouTube Chrome add-on that makes it easy to edit YouTube videos you encounter) that ensures creating videos is a breeze. EdPuzzle also allows you to include embedded assessment, enabling you to view your student’s’ performance on those assessments. Learners of any age can create their own videos, annotations, and assessments. Here are the steps according to EdPuzzle:

Take any video from YouTube, Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, etc. and make it perfect for your classroom and more engaging for your students. Make any video a true lesson by making it to the point, personal, and effective, plus get all the data about your students so you know if they truly understand the lesson. You can accomplish this by following these three steps:

Step 1:
Crop the video, using only what you need for your lesson.
Record your voice on top of it to explain it in your own personal way, add clarifications, a warm introduction, you name it.
Add quizzes along the video and check if your students truly understand the lesson.

Step 2:
Assign it to your class/classes and let your students watch the video and answer the quizzes.

Step 3:
Get meaningful data and insights about your students while they watch the video lesson or after they have completed it as homework. See at a glance how they are answering the quizzes and where in the video they are struggling to understand the concepts.

What’s more, EdPuzzle also has an iOS app you or your students can use, as described below:

For students, EDpuzzle provides an easier way to learn through video lessons outside of the classroom. Students can download the app and opt-in to receive video assignments directly with questions, so they can check their understanding through the video.

This is great for the blended learning classroom!

Tool #3 – VideoAnt

“VideoAnt is a web-based video annotation tool for mobile and desktop devices,” says the VideoAnt web site. You can “use VideoAnt to add annotations, or comments, to web-hosted videos.” The VideoAnt website allows you to login with your Google or Facebook account (to name a few), then enter the web address (URL) for a web-based video, such as one hosted by YouTube.

Hypervideo

Once you have loaded a video, you are able to add annotations throughout. A neat feature about VideoAnt is that it makes it possible to share your video annotations with a group you create in the VideoAnt web site.

Tool #4 – Flipgrid.com

This website create a video-based discussion group, enabling you as the teacher to post videos that students can respond to (again, via video). The “grid” represents your virtual classroom space and comes with secure video conversations. You set the topic via a video you create and then students respond to your topic. As the teacher, you can create a special code that you can share with your students, as well as password protect the grid you have created. You also have moderator rights, preventing students from posting inappropriate content by previewing their video contributions prior to sharing with the whole group. You are also able to embed your video group on a we site. Here’s a quick overview of Flipgrid.

Looking for tools that allow your students to take notes about videos? Check out this blog entry by Richard Byrne. In it, he highlights these tools:

VideoNot.es and TurboNote are two tools that allow you to take notes off to the side of the video.
Vialogues, not unlike Flipgrid, allows you to create conversations that revolve around a video.

As you consider these tools for video annotation, note-taking, and hypervideo linking, ask yourself, “How could I combine these (a la app smashing) to get a new view or design? More importantly, how could my students use these tools to create academic content and/or reflections on what they are learning together?”

September 26, 2016 0 comment

Educational Research Web 2.0 Tool

Assessment-Based Feedback Tool: Blooket

by Miguel Guhlin February 15, 2021

written by Miguel Guhlin

By now, most of you have tried Kahoot!, Quizlet, Quizziz, and many others. These tools work as game-based student response systems that provide you with formative assessment options. The teacher creates a free account and then can design quizzes with embedded images and video or use one of the many pre-created assessments. Students rely on an internet-connected device to respond, earning points as they score.

All of these assessment tools and many others such as Knowt offer teachers and students a way to engage in practice testing. They also provide pre-assessment and post-assessment data for instructional coaching. In this blog entry, I’ll introduce you to yet another formative assessment tool you may be unaware of.

First, though, let’s review some of the scientifically-based research around two key concepts: practice testing and assessment-based feedback.

Digging into the Research

As you already know, “formative assessment [serves] as a way to improve the caliber of still-underway instructional activities.” Contrast formative assessment with summative assessment. The latter is “a way to determine the effectiveness of already-completed instructional activities” (source: ASCD). A deeper definition of formative assessment appears below:

Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes.

Formative assessment has distinguishing features that include it being:

A process rather than a single event
A tool useful to both teachers and students
A source of assessment-based feedback to both teachers and students

As you may already know from TCEA TechNotes blog entries on feedback (d=0.64), assessment-based feedback must do the following:

Focus on the task or product, identifying whether it is correct/incorrect or provide suggestions for improvement
Provide information about processes students go through to perform a task or develop a product
Give insight into students’ ability to self-monitor and direct their learning through goal setting, self-assessments, and identifying next steps

What are some digital tools that can provide feedback insights to task or product? In addition to formative assessments, what are some ways student learning can be improved? Practice testing (d=0.46) is one approach. Practice testing is also known as retrieval practice or test-enhanced learning.

That video will give you an overview of practice testing and Knowt. Allow me to introduce you to a new tool you can use for retrieval practice.

Introducing Blooket

Another exciting digital tool, Blooket, supports teacher and student accounts. With a free account, teachers can use Blooket to host a question set with a specific game mode. This game is displayed via screen/projector, then students compete on their own devices. Blooket tracks student progress, keeping a record of student responses. In turn, students are able to track their statistics via global a leaderboard ranking. They can also buy and sell “blooks” and avail themselves of community-wide events.

Here are some observations from teachers:

“In Blooket, you’re given 8+ different possible game modes that use the same question set. Kids can gain points in different ways in each game mode. Blooket enjoys a ‘classic’ mode that is like regular Kahoot. Kids love it because they can play a different game mode to keep it interesting.”
“Many of the games are fun and encourage classroom engagement.”
“You can play it live or assign it as homework. It has made this year so much more fun for my classes since it works with distance, hybrid, and in person students.”

As you might imagine, Blooket’s game modes offer variety. “It offers power ups and random sabotage things you can do to other players,” says another teacher. You can follow these steps to get started:

Start with a question set. You can make your own, import one, or find one.
Decide on a game mode. There are several game mode choices. Find one you like.
Host a game and allow students to play. Students use a game identification number to join the game.
Play the game. As students play the game, they answer questions that target content that has been taught in class.
Review results. Students and teachers can review the performance data to identify areas of growth.

Don’t let the blocks turn you off from using Blooket with secondary students. One high school Spanish teacher (@SenoraCMT) raves about her use of Blooket in this way:

We were reading a chapter in Kristy Placido’s Noche de oro eBook and I wanted to pre-teach some of the vocabulary. Not pre-teach… more like pre-expose! So I made a Blooket.

After playing our first Blooket, I wanted to add one for ALLLLLL the things my students were studying so I made one for my book Bianca Nieves from Fluency Matters, I made one for my Huellas 1 Future and Conditional level 3-AP unit Atrévete, and Kristy Placido made one for my Huellas 1 ART based level 3-AP unit Bajo la mesa! When my Spanish 4 group finishes reading, I’ll make one for our next Huellas 2 unit, Orangután en mi habitación. (Find out more about the Huellas Curriculum here.)

Now that we know how it works, let’s take a look at some of the available features.

A Few of Blooket’s More Recent Features

Blooket has an amazing amount of features that enhance game mode learning. Some new free features include the following:

Extend/Reopen Homework
Discover Tab Filters
Automated Group Subscriptions
Button to Set Time Limit for All Questions
Remove Students from Homework

More features are available at a cost. Those include:

Removing the 60-player limit (+ Only)
Merging Question Sets (+ Only)

Curious about what Blooket looks like? Let’s take a look at pricing before I turn you loose to watch a few videos.

Blooket’s Cost

“I do pay for Blooket premium because it allows me to duplicate sets and have more in-depth reports,” reports one teacher. Wondering how much Blooket costs? Remember, you get free access to many features such as creating and hosting question sets in a variety of game modes. The free version also comes with unlimited question sets and the ability to edit those. In the table below, you will see what else you can get if you decide to pay for it:

Look Before Leaping

Ready to see what Blooket looks like in action? Here is a quick two-minute video you can watch to get an overview. Below this video, you will find even more walkthrough videos you can take advantage of. Check out this fantastic video from Master Heebs:

Some additional videos you can look at before leaping into Blooket:

Please let me know what you think about it in the comments.

Feature Image Source

Screenshot by author.

February 15, 2021 5 comments

Educational Trends Good Teaching

Coaching for Results, Part 3: Terminology

by Miguel Guhlin January 8, 2020

written by Miguel Guhlin

How do you blend technology into instruction while also providing coaching support? In this third installment of Coaching for Results, we’ll explore several key concepts. Then we’ll put it all together. Before we do that, it’s important to clarify vocabulary, so let’s begin with that.

Overlapping Terms

The following list of words and phrases often mean different things to people. Let’s take a look at each one and define it.

Blended learning
Coaching
Evidence-based learning
Instructional strategies
High-effect size instructional strategies a la John Hattie
Technology integration
Strategic technology integration

As you might imagine, quite a bit of confusion exists around each of these terms and they do overlap each other.

Clarifying Vocabulary

Let’s revisit what some of the terms used in this blog entry mean to most of us:

Blended learning: This term has resulted in much confusion. It is often seen as the successor to the term “technology integration.” Clayton Christensen defines the term as “not the same as technology-rich instruction.” It’s often seen as the way to blend technology into teaching and learning. Blended learning advocates incorporate the idea of active, engaged learning with a flipped classroom approach. Station rotation includes activities like small group instruction and group work. Advocates like Caitlin Tucker (see my Wakelet on her work) include online learning. Collaborative projects are a key component of Caitlin’s brand of blended learning.
Coaching: Many coaching approaches are teacher-centric. That is, they are about building relationships with staff. The goal is that these will result in changes to teaching practice. When we shift our focus from the teacher to student, then we may get the results we seek. Many coaching models exist. Two worth your time include Knight’s The Impact Cycle and Diane Sweeney’s Student-Centered Coaching. Diane’s efforts focus coaches on student-centered change efforts which transform teaching practice. We’ll come back to Diane Sweeney’s approach later.
Evidence-based learning: Many different kinds of activities find their way into classrooms today. Some are not evidence-based, or based on research that is in itself questionable. As Cathy Lassiter points out, “Many old assumptions about what works best in education have been disproven.” As a result, we have to rethink positions on certain instructional strategies. This requires accepting new research that challenges what we once believed to work. Evidence-based learning means no less than knowing how new research defines success. What we do as teacher and students must align to the findings of scientific research. This means new research takes precedence over what we would like to believe. Old, disproven assumptions offer opportunities for reflection and new learning.
Instructional strategies: This includes the entire collection of instructional strategies (sans ed tech) available to us. (Check out this extensive list here.) As educators, we’ve seen many instructional strategies. Some are research-based, many are not. How do you differentiate between cutesy activities and strategies that work?
High-Effect Size Instructional Strategies (HESIS): “We have no right to teach in a way that leads to students gaining less than d= 0.40 within a year,” says John Hattie (Visible Learning, 2009). These are research-based strategies that are shown to work. Now, when I say research-based, this isn’t your run of the mill research. You can learn more about these strategies online. As educators, why not use strategies that work best instead of those that are less effective? In particular, strategies that meet or exceed an effect size of >.40. These HESIS have the potential to accelerate student learning in one school year. Instead of one year’s growth that some instructional strategies offer, these accomplish more. For example, jigsaw has an effect size of 1.2, equating to three or more years of growth for a student in one year. If you focus on using high-effect size instructional strategies, students will learn faster.
Technology integration: This is an older term that many ed tech veterans have relied on. It is a catch-all phrase that involves using technology as part of teaching and learning. Some see it as an all-inclusive term that includes blended learning, while others dismiss it as first level use. Whatever your definition, the term is old, abused, and difficult to refresh. Many choose to abandon it in favor of “blended learning” (leading to confusion). Others use terms such as “technology-rich instruction” in lieu of it. Both replacement terms lack specificity.
Strategic technology integration: Weston Kieschnick coined this term. He refers to it as a merging of two components. That is, Hattie’s high-effect size instructional strategies with educational technology. The term includes the use of both desktop and internet-based technology approaches. This includes blended learning as both Caitlin Tucker and Clayton Christiansen define them.

Three Aspects

Now that we have a clearer understanding of terminology, we can get to the heart of good teaching. Achieving academic standards is accomplished through the union of three aspects of teaching and learning. Those aspects include the fusion of the following:

High-effect size instructional strategies
Strategic technology use in the classroom
Pupil-centric coaching efforts

We merge these so that we may construct evidence-based learning experiences. These experiences lead to accelerated growth as John Hattie defines it.

High-Effect Size Instructional Strategies (HESIS). Past assumptions have not held up. Consider Natalie Wexler’s and Cathy Lassiter’s perspectives. Hattie provides definitive work on the subject of what strategies work and when it is best to use them.
Strategic Technology Integration (STI). The prevalence of technology in today’s society makes strategic technology integration critical. That is, as Weston Kieschnick says, technology integration that elevates high-effect size instructional strategies.
Pupil-Centric Coaching Efforts. This is Diane Sweeney’s student-centered coaching. It involves doing pre- and post-assessments of student learning followed by discussions with the teacher and student about both instructional strategies and strategic technology integration.

How do we combine these into a working model? To simplify the process, Weston Kieschnick offers five actions we can take. With some minor modifications, we can see how these three components can work together.

In part four of the series, I’ll share the fusion of these three aspects in a working model you can use in your K-12 or adult classroom.

January 8, 2020 0 comment

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