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ed tech news
Educational Trends

Ed Tech News Roundup: Back-to-School Updates and PBL

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Howdy, folks! Welcome to another in a series of biweekly ed tech news roundups. We hope you enjoy — and if you have a story you’d like to see included, let us know.

Making a Plan

As the new school year beckons, a few folks are thinking big when it comes to learning. The Maker movement is marching past isolated building activities into a framework for learning, and immersive learning is offering new paths to engage students.

  • Digital Promise, an ed tech nonprofit, has revamped their Maker Learning Leadership Framework, designed to grow maker learning in education. [Digital Promise, STEAM Universe]
  • Immersive learning often refers to learning facilitated by multi-sensory digital environments. The underlying notion of using space to enhance learning can refer to physical spaces, too, and spaces where the physical and digital overlap. [School Planning and Management]

Kids These Days

The students funneling into classrooms across the country represent Generation Z and Generation Alpha (the children of Millennials), digital natives whose behaviors and preferences, always crucial to educators, are starting to gain the attention of the wider world.

  • NBC News jumps into the world of Gen Z looking for insights on the generation’s tech and social media use, which includes some interesting results (they don’t, for example, watch much TV). [NBC News]
  • One seemingly unstoppable trend among younger generations is a huge — and lucrative — fascination with esports. Take a peek into the first Fortnite World Cup with 12 year-old gamer “H1ghSky1.” [Vulture / New York Magazine]

Project Management

Engaging students with project-based learning can help them understand material in hands-on, real-world ways. But using PBL in the classroom can be a challenge. Luckily, lots of smart educators are sharing a wealth of experience.

  • Going deep into in-the-field experiences with PBL can help teachers solve some of their most common issues. [THE Journal]
  • For those putting together PBL lesson plans, reviewing a few do’s and don’ts can help avoid issues, too. [Ed Tech]

…And Finally

Ed tech innovations often reach students through a screen. But could new ways of delivering education through technology actually reduce screen time? This startup says it can.

Photo: Peter Gonzalez

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Generation Z
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Creating Snackable Content for Generation Z

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the current generation of students that we have in our schools, known as Generation Z, prefer their content in snackable chunks. They are looking for bite-sized nuggets of information that can be quickly consumed, understood, and shared. While we older folks may want to make fun of and perhaps even ignore this need, there is some research that shows that small bits of knowledge often create deeper meaning through references to shared stories or experiences. In other words, it works for them and their learning.

What Does That Mean for Today’s Teacher?

So what does that mean for teachers? How can you take the massive amount of knowledge that the standards say must be given to students and break it into manageable chunks that they will want to learn? And do that on top of everything else that you already have to do?

With a little planning, this isn’t too difficult. First, we need to really understand what is meant by “snackable.” Students are looking for content that looks like:

In other words, it’s something whose meaning can be grasped very quickly.

Old School Generation Z
Textbook Text message
Building slowly to a climax Attention grabbing
Dry Emotional
Takes time for the main point to sink in Meaning is grasped almost instantly

Creating Snackable Content for Generation Z

Once your students are somewhat familiar with the specific content/standards you want them to learn, then it’s easy to have them create their own bite-sized content and share it with others. But you have to first get them to that point. So here’s a possible process to follow to break a big lesson or idea into chunkable bites. I’m going to use the study of the Battle of the Alamo for my example in a Texas history class for seventh grade students.

Step 1: The teacher examines the standard that the students must master, making sure that she is very familiar with what is necessary to know about it. For the Alamo, although there is a lot students could know about the battle, the most important things are roughly when it occurred, why it occurred, and why it still matters today.

Step 2: With those specifics in mind, the teacher creates the first chunk. Start with an interesting data point, something that will grab their oh-so-short attention span. I created a quick graphic with my leading question for the unit (below) using Canva, a free graphics tool. The image is easy to view and the text is minimal, but emotional. It should grab their attention.

generation z

Step 3: The next step would be to get them into the unit. I would start by having them answer the question above using a collaborative tool like TodaysMeet or Padlet.

Step 4: Now, give them the content. Break them into groups and assign each a group a specific concept to cover. For the Alamo, this could be The Armies, The Leaders, Why They Fought, The Results, etc. I would provide them with information pieces like the ones below that are heavy on images and emotion. The students would also be able to search for their own graphics as well. The key to this step is to be sure that each group knows exactly what they need to end up with in terms of the content to know.

Step 5: After each group has presented their content (in whatever snackable format they wish), then give individual students an assignment that will assess whether they understand the key learning concepts you want them to know. This could be a formative assessment, a quiz, a project, a piece of writing, etc.

Step 6: Don’t forget about having students reflect on their learning and the learning process after this unit. I might go back to the original question of what they would be willing to do for and ask them to apply that question to a current event going on.

Some Final Tips

The time required to prepare this lesson is spent mainly in the planning part where the teacher must determine what is the critical knowledge that every student needs about that particular standard or concept. Once this is very clear, then it becomes easy to determine how to break that knowledge into chunks.

Notice that there was no direct teach going on by the teacher during this lesson. Direct teach would come in if a student or group of students needed additional help to understand the concept. This frees the teacher up to wander around the room helping as needed while the students are doing the teaching and learning.

To learn more about Generation Z, check out this blog about their characteristics and this blog about the use of explainer videos with them.

 

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Explainer videos
Educational TrendsGood TeachingWeb 2.0 Tool

Five Reasons Why Explainer Videos Help Teach Generation Z

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

As Generation Z will be highly responsible for shaping our future, along with other young generations, teachers need to aid and support their social and academic development. From what we know about Gen Z, they are quite different compared to previous generations. Therefore, we must think of tools to fill the spots available for content reception to benefit both teachers and students.

Videos are no newcomer when it comes to supporting lectures; however explainer videos in general have exponential benefits that will support content retention. Five specific benefits include catering to the short attention span of the average Gen Z student through concise videos, offering ease of accessibility and mobility, providing visual learning opportunities, offering increased simplicity, and easily providing a variety of information and a simple way to update content.


This video has been created with mysimpleshow.

1. Simple videos for short attention spans.

A student’s attention span might, excessively speaking, decrease as I am writing this. After all, the average attention span of a Generation Z individual is about 8 seconds. Massive amounts of information expressed in long texts is outdated. What explainer videos offer is a condensed version of a lot of information. It’s the main message, the key points, or the announcement of something in a simple and video-based way. Thus, we combine the different needs of Gen Z with short, image-heavy, snackable information. Explainer videos ideally are around one to three minutes in length, with two minutes as the sweet spot, meaning high engagement.

2. Mobility and accessibility

Thanks to fluency across five screens, explainer videos allow viewers to access the videos anytime and anywhere. This enables students and teachers to free themselves of these “hunger slots” during the day when no information will reach them. Thanks to the accessibility, explainer videos can be assigned as homework or played throughout the school day according to teachers’ and students’ assessment. Thanks to technology, you can bring the screen to any setting required, taking the classroom anywhere you like across the globe. This supports the preference of an independent working environment.

3. Visual learning

Adobe has conducted research that indicates that more than 50 percent of students and teachers assess “watching” as the most effective learning source, followed by online research. Explainer videos combine both of these factors, as videos are watched and simultaneously searched online, and search results likely contain additional valuable information. Extra bonuses are the audio aspect for aural learning, as well as possible subtitle options that assist in improving reading skills.

4. Simple messages

In addition to accessible, shortened information nuggets, let’s talk about simplicity. As Gen Z students process information faster, they require understandable information bits so the content remains memorable. Explainer videos pick up on the concept of apps using images, keywords, attractive design layouts, user friendly interfaces, and simple sentence structures. This further leaves space for creativity when considering students and teachers creating their own videos.

5. Variety of information and ease of updating content

Explainer videos are not bound to a subject – the possibilities are endless! A teacher likely doesn’t have time to write an entire textbook, but can create or search for suitable explainer videos, reducing working time immensely while simultaneously ensuring students a deeper understanding of the content. Another great benefit here? Updated information. Not only is most content in the videos rather recent, but it is often easier to adjust, revise, and update information in comparison to textbook updates, as video creation tools are online and thus accessible 24 hours of the day, seven days a week.

Generation Z has the future among them, and it’s time teachers support these students through technology – explainer videos to be exact!

This is a guest blog by Finja Kruse. Kruse is a teacher who has worked with children of different ages. She also  writes blogs and creates videos for simpleshow video maker. She has experience with different educational tools and is engaged in creative writing activities in school. You can contact her via LinkedIn.

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Generation Z
Web 2.0 Tool

Generation Z Is Here; Are You Ready?

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

You may be getting tired of all of the “generational” talk that’s been prevalent for the past 20 years. And that’s understandable, especially since it generalizes groups of people. But there’s a lot of research that shows that individuals in a particular generation do have some of the same traits and characteristics, based to a large extent on what was happening around and to them while they were growing up. That is true of the latest generation, Gen Z, too.

Who Are Gen Z?

Generation Z are the students that are currently in our schools and universities. Born from the mid 1990’s through today, this latest generation is markedly different from those we’ve seen before. That’s not surprising, since they were born and raised in the internet, connected, device-happy world. Here are a few key characteristics about your current students:

  • There are two billion individuals in this generation, making them the largest ever.
  • They process information faster than other generations, thanks to apps like Snapchat and Vine.
  • They live in a world of continuously updated information, which makes them dislike textbooks as out of date.
  • Gen Z can quickly and efficiently shift between work and play, with multiple distractions going on in the background and working on multiple tasks at once.
  • They desire more independent work environments, and 72 percent say they want to start their own business some day.
  • They are fluent across five screens (TV, mobile phone, laptop computer, tablet, and desktop computer).
  • Gen Z students want “snackable” content, short and image-filled. They don’t like a deluge of words.

How Can We Best Help Generation Z Students Learn?

It’s the last factoid about our students that is perhaps the most important at this time. And it directly impacts how we teach them every day. Generation Z will not, as a general rule, sit and read a chapter in their textbook and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. They are not adverse to hard work or difficult thinking, but they want the content given to them in short, easy-to-understand bursts. And that doesn’t mean watching a teacher-created PowerPoint.

Instead, try having the students take the content and create their own versions of it, using a tool like Adobe Spark. Spark allows students to create social graphics, web stories, and animated videos quickly and beautifully. A log in with either Facebook, Google, Adobe ID, or email is required. You can see an example of a social graphic here and an excellent web story about wolves here. Using Spark lets students have voice and choice, two important requirements for Generation Z learning. And the provided free templates help to ensure that they spend their time on the content and not on deciding what color background to use.

Adobe Spark can be used on the web, in the Chrome browser, or with the Android (beta version coming soon) or iOS app, all of which are free. Try it with your students today and see what amazing stories Generation Z has to tell.

 

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tech skills
Microsoft Tips and TricksProfessional Learning

Shifting the Conversation: Basic Tech Skills

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“Do you by chance know of a good basic list of tech skills that every teacher should know? If so, do you have a formal assessment for this?” asked a TCEA member recently of a colleague. “We’re a Microsoft district,” the member added. In this blog post, we’ll explore a list of expectations for teachers. We’ll also discuss some suggestions for formal assessments.

Shifting the Conversation

When asked what my list of basic technology skills are, I head over to Google, er, I mean, Bing, and do a quick search. There are a million lists of basic tech skills. The real question isn’t “What are the basic tech skills teachers need to have?” but rather: “How do you fundamentally expect them to shift teaching and learning for themselves, each other, and their students?” That question is more fun.

One simple way to shift the conversation involves asking yourself “How do students in classrooms today learn best?” For example, take a look at this chart (Source: Adobe Education Report) about Generation Z students:

shiftingTeachers working with Generation Z have some changes to make in their classrooms. You can break the expectations down in simple ways:

  1. Using digital media (videos/podcasts)
  2. Learning through hands-on experiences
  3. Developing team-building skills
  4. Solving real-world problems

How do these changing expectations impact basic technology skills that all teachers need?

Basic Tech Skills: A List

In the space below, you will find items relevant to the four expectations of teachers today expressed above:

  1. Using digital media (video/podcasts)
    1. Create folders to organize content.
    2. Organize files into folders, copying files from one folder to another.
    3. Work with filenames and extensions.
    4. Record screencasts with Powerpoint and Office Mix.
    5. Record a podcast with MS Sway online.
    6. Capture and share a whiteboard recording (audio+annotation) with Microsoft Snip.
    7. Record and edit audio clips using programs like Audacity (free).
    8. Record and edit video using programs like Shotcut (free).
  2. Learning through hands-on experiences
    1. Model and support the use of digital ink for learning enhancement.
    2. Create models for 3D printing using tools like SketchUp Pro/My.SketchUp (free for Texas schools via TCEA), Tinkercad, and Microsoft Paint 3D.
    3. Make and take in classroom-based maker spaces that incorporate coding (e.g. Creative Coding through Games and Apps (CCGA), TickleApp (view compatible drones) and DroneBlocks (view compatible drones), each of which works with different drones. This type of programming can be introduced to students using MIT’s Scratch and Scratch, Jr.
  3. Developing team-building skills
    1. Rely on GPS-enabled devices for geo-caching activities as a team or create activities for others.
    2. Have students form teams and then make a social justice video using their devices. Then publish the videos online using YouTube.
    3. Engage students in problem-based learning scenarios that require them to collaborate and communicate to solve a problem. Deepen the difficulty by separating them into different rooms (or work with another classroom) and work at a distance using an instant messaging/video technology of choice (e.g. Skype).
    4. Students can also construct virtual representations of learning tasks in virtual spaces (e.g. Minecraft: Education Edition).
  4. Solving real-world problems
    1. Adopt BreakOut EDU methods for use in the classroom.
    2. Encourage students to use Office 365 (e.g. Microsoft Office Suite) to engage in real-world data analysis to solve problems.
    3. Create problem-based scenarios using Powerpoint and Office Mix with built-in assessment.
    4. Enter students in the 3D Design Contest offered each spring by TCEA where they must solve an authentic problem using the design engineering process.

Bringing It All Together

If you’re working on developing teacher skills aligned to student learning needs, then here are three more tips to keep in mind:

  • Engage with Problems: Engage learners in the authentic purpose of solving a problem (problem-based learning/inquiry-based learning).
  • Encourage Collaboration and Implementation: Encourage and support adult learners as they collaborate on projects–sharing their own life experiences–focused on the creation of tangible product(s) with modeling and safe implementation opportunities.
  • Amplify Learners’ Voices with Tech: Amplify human voices with technology as they gather stories and share them (blogging, podcasts, video, media collections).

Conclusion

With these, any professional learning you invite educators to can be enhanced to achieve much of what they need to better meet learners’ needs. Be sure to visit the Microsoft Education Community for access to free professional learning that includes micro credentials (e.g. badges) that teachers can earn and share. And, of course, remember that TCEA Microsoft Innovative Education (TCEAMIE) Master Trainer Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin; mguhlin@tcea.org; 800-282-8232) is available to work with your campus or district to help develop skills with your staff.

 

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