Teaching Team Collaboration: How Teachers and Practicum Students Learn Together

I have the pleasure of working with some amazing grade level teacher teams that include preservice teachers in their planning. Experienced teachers scaffold teaching for preservice teachers by allowing them to observe each subject area before beginning to teach it themselves. All teachers attend weekly planning meetings together and ideas area shared by both preservice and inservice teachers to make learning more effective for students. In fact, they allow preservice teachers to plan units, teaching them when they are in the classroom, while their cooperating teachers teach these planned lessons on days when preservice teachers are not in the classroom. This working relationship brings new ideas to classroom teachers, while providing opportunities for preservice teachers to grow as planners and teachers.

One area where preservice teachers may add ideas is integrating technology across the curriculum. Since all these preservice teachers are required to have an iPad in our teacher education program, they bring ideas of ways to use devices with students in effective ways. Their cooperating teachers know the curriculum and pedagogy, and some use technology more or less depending upon availability of devices. When they work together they plan lessons that include technology in various ways. As a teaching tool, these team teachers help each other by supporting the technology and troubleshooting when infrastructure may not support the lesson. As a learning tool, these teachers together decide how and when to check out and use devices with students.

When teachers team for the benefit of students and value each other's input, exciting things can happen in the classroom. I get excited when I see online curriculum components effectively used in addition to the regular paper text, and even more excited when I see preservice teachers using their iPad to find answers to student questions in real time, create graphic organizers during guided reading, and provide an online reading station for students. Now as schools move toward 1:1 devices with students there will be even more opportunity for students to use technology to ask questions, locate answers, and share learning multimodally...hopefully! I believe teaming will be an important way to integrate these exciting and necessary technology skills and strategies into our schools.

Rapid Implementation of New Technologies: From Teacher Learning to Presenting in Days!

Many teachers amazed me this week with the effort they devoted to take new learning with technology, implement immediately with their students, and be ready to share with other teachers within a week or two! At the Nebraska District Educator's Conference five TEC21 teachers presented topics including: setting up online portfolios for each member of your class using Seesaw, coding using code.org, flipping the classroom using Explain Everything to create videos and post at Schoology.org, setting up a class at Storyjumper.com and having students write digital stories, and creating stop motion movies and iMovies. Some of these teachers just learned about these tools a week ago at our TEC21 workshop. They went back to their classrooms and immediately engaged their students in these new digital learning activities. Then they prepared a presentation to teach other teachers how to do this with their students! Amazing! Genius!

Last night we had our best graduate class yet as teachers came together to share the unique ways they are integrating technology in their classrooms: Remind app to communicate with parents, Educreations to create a screencast, Photo Booth to record students' reading fluency, Storybird for special needs students to write digital stories, Seesaw to empower students to upload work into an online portfolio, Chatterpix to put mouths on pictures to allow them to talk, Nearpod to insert interactivities into presentations, and more! Amazing! Genius!

I am constantly reminded of Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" where he explains that high-achievers invest 10,000 hours to become experts. For teachers to become experts at technology integration they too need to invest much time with technology: exploring, playing, collaborating, teaching, learning. When teachers invest the time to learn a new technology, they benefit, their students benefit, and the teachers with whom their share their expertise benefit! Remember the teaching uses with technology that you may think are obvious, may be amazing to another teacher. As Donald Leu finds in his research, "no one person can be expected to know everything there is to know about the technologies of literacy...Each of us, however, will know something useful to others."

So share what you know! Most technologies have not been around long enough for people to be experts. We all have something to contribute to this new area of teaching. What genius things are you doing and how are you sharing them with colleagues?

Take two minutes to watch this brief video "Obvious to You, Amazing to Others" as you consider what you do that will be genius to others!

Here's to becoming a technology integration expert to benefit your students!

A Piktochart on Blogging with Students across the Curriculum

Blogging with Students across the Curriculum

Nebraska District Educator's Conference

October 27, 2015

I share one great example of how quickly effective technology uses can be shared between teachers.

Last Saturday at Tech EDGE 15 presenter Nate Balcom shared Piktochart as a way to create infographics. Guy Trainin saw the presentation and suggested we make a Piktochart for our presentation at Nebraska District Educator's Conference today. Teachers attending the session learned not only the blogging information we included in our Piktochart, but also began making their own Piktocharts! Another teacher who attended Tech EDGE went home and created a Piktochart for her class. She shared this last night in our graduate class and now other teachers in the class are making Piktocharts too! What a ripple effect is possible when teachers share their ideas with others. With the rapidly changing technology, this is the way to stay current. Share!

This is the Piktochart we made. If you click on the title above it will take you to the interactive version of this infographic with videos, blogs, and websites linked. Try making a Piktochart yourself!

Assessing Student Learning through Apps, Games, & Projects

Today we presented Tech EDGE 15: Assessment of Learning through Apps, Games, & Projects.

In our visits to classrooms Guy Trainin and I are seeing teachers using innovative 21st century instruction. The next big step after innovating practice is figuring out how to evaluate innovative student products. We pulled together innovative educators from the field to share innovations in teaching and the evaluation practices that come with them.

We began with a Keynote by William Vann, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Immanual Lutheran School in St. Charles, MO. Under the title Authentic Moments: Maintaining Student Authenticity with Technology, Will led over 120 preservice and inservice teachers on a journey to his classroom to create circuits using a Makey Makey and use that device to play games and musical instruments online. Through expert questioning by the teacher and trial and error by students, they begin to understand what makes a circuit and how to use it productively. Will summarized the authentic moment as:

• forming lasting learning that "comes from a culmination of learning through our frustrations and failures," yet it's what we remember for a lifetime.
• "Creativity is an outlet for that moment."
• "The authentic moment is accessible for all students."

Will helped teachers set guidelines for student performance that meet standards. He suggested such rubric areas as: does the project work? did they create clear instructions for use? can it be reproduced?

Other teachers shared ideas for integrating technology to engage students as they teach content and collect data about learning across the curriculum at the same time. Examples shared include:

• Kahoot and Quizizz to get every student response
• Google Classroom and Actively Learn to organize learning and give formative assessments during reading
• engaging students in blogging and providing instant feedback online to improve writing and clarify content
• critical thinking via Minecraft for alternative assessments that clarify learning
• students creating iMovies and online graphic organizers to demonstrate learning
• gamifying the classroom emphasizing engagement and individual accountability
  

The expert teachers provided examples of how they assess creative student products for ISTE Standards and Common Core State Standards. Students ARE learning as they create innovative multimedia projects that demonstrate learning. We would be interested to know how you know your students are learning when they use technology in learning.

Guidelines for Effective Classroom Management

Classroom Management-Photo Credit

This week my courses focused on effective classroom management. We are looking at multiple formats for engaging learners in class to lessen behavior issues while also observing a variety of management styles in classrooms.

We are discussing Love and Logic by Jim Faye and David Funk (1995) as one philosophy. The three rules of Love and Logic encourage teachers to use enforceable limits, provide choices within limits, and apply consequences with empathy. Teachers treat students with respect, providing logical choices when misbehavior occurs.

Schools in which our preservice teachers are completing practicum use a variety of models of school-wide classroom management. As school begins, teachers are setting expectations for students that will allow for meaningful instruction throughout the year. Some schools use PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports), proactively defining, teaching, and supporting appropriate student behaviors to create positive school environments. Desired character traits are posted and reinforced, catching students doing well. Other schools use BIST (Behavior Intervention Support Team) where schools proactively build relationships and set high expectations with students and parents. Teaching expectations to all students and staff, teachers are encouraged to intervene as soon as inappropriate behavior takes place. If students are unable to change behaviors they are separated from the class and asked to examine their behaviors and feelings and make more appropriate choices next time.

Engaged Students - Photo Credit

All of these classroom management programs focus on building relationships with students as foundational. Robert Marzano suggests that "the quality of teacher-student relationships is the keystone for all other aspects of classroom management." When there is mutual respect between teacher and students, students are less likely to act out. The National Council on Teacher Quality suggests that principals discuss the "Big Five" discipline areas with their teachers: rules, routines, praise, misbehavior, and engagement. In the September 2015 edition of Education Update, ASCD says that new teachers should know these facets of classroom management from day one: organizing the physical enviornment, creating rules and routines, developing relationships, implementing engaging instruction, and handling discipline. Here are a few guidelines building upon those suggested in the article to assist teachers in implementing effective classroom management.

1. Be clear and consistent. It takes up to 21 days to create a habit. Students need to experience your model consistently over a period of weeks to learn it.
2. State your expectations before beginning each lesson. Students need to know what you expect for noise level, movement, and collaboration. Then engage students in learning; involved students are more likely to stay on task and not misbehave.
3. Teach procedures. Clarify how students should get your attention, get permission to leave the room, pass between classes, etc.
4. Engage students in setting classroom rules. A colleague at the University of Nebraska, Guy Trainin, uses the democratic classroom format, investing time up front to establish a classroom community where students feel their ideas area valued.
5. Be flexible. Continue to discuss these rules and procedures as a class throughout the year to be sure that they are accomplishing their purpose. If not, together make a change.

As the school year begins, take time to create and practice those all important classroom procedures and rules. Focus on building relationships with your students, and teach in ways that engage students. Wishing you a great start to the new year!

TPACK Informs Lesson Planning

TPACK - Image Credit

This semester I am intentionally planning lessons through the TPACK lens. As I teach each concept, I model a variety of pedagogical methods using technology to engage students in interactive learning. We began by introducing ourselves through creating a visual presentation in Haiku Deck. Posting the link at our Learning Management System site allowed everyone to view and comment upon each other's personal information as well as technology usage.

Padlet provided a back channel as we discussed literacy concepts and shared links to articles, videos, images and more. By organizing the layout in Freeform format students could post notes randomly as they experimented with the posting process. Later we used the Grid layout to stream student questions, comments, and resources so I could attend to each in order and see new posts at a glance.

Today we used Socrative to respond to and discuss an article read for class. I created five questions using a variety of formats to model how responses could be shown on the screen in real time as each student responded to each question. Then I demonstrated how whole class data could be downloaded instantly into a spreadsheet noting each response by individual student. We discussed how analyzing the responses would inform instruction and allow the teacher to respond directly to student questions next class period.

We are discussing lesson planning through the TPACK lens, and I am enjoying planning my lessons in the same manner! Seeing apps and websites used in teaching and learning should provide examples as preservice teachers plan their own lessons to teach in 21st century classrooms where each student has a device. I'm excited for this semester!

Three Effective Ways to Use Padlet as a Course Backchannel

Sample Padlet in Random format - Picture Source

Every teacher wants to know what each student is thinking, questioning, or misunderstanding during a lesson. Padlet.com is one way to find out. Simply create a new Padlet board and share the link with students at the beginning of class. Students may then double tap on the board to add any of the following during the lesson: a question, comment, key idea, link to a website, webpage, photo, video, song, document, article, or anything with a link.

This online bulletin board then becomes a collaborative source of student ideas on the topic of study. You may arrange comments in random fashion as pictured above, or change the layout to a stream or two column grid format where one comment follows the next in a column allowing easy access to questions being asked in real time.

Sample Padlet in Grid format - Picture Source

Following the lesson Padlet allows you to archive student responses in a variety of ways: share on your class social media page, save as a PDF or image, report individual posts in an Excel spreadsheet, embed into your blog or website, or create QR code to post and share (see photos below).

Three effective ways to use Padlet include:
1. Collaborative Project. Student groups can research a topic and post information to a single board. From this collection of links and information students can create a multimedia presentation on the topic. The presentation may also be posted to the Padlet. Visitors may access these presentations via the QR code created.
2. Formative and Summative Feedback. Ask an open ended question to begin the lesson and have students post all they know about the topic at Padlet. This background knowledge will inform instruction in the areas less known. During the lesson get feedback from every student to check understanding by asking a quick question. Or have each student write one question they have about content so far that you can answer as you teach. Summative feedback could be as simple as an exit question over a key idea.
3. Peer Sharing. Students can post a link to a writing or other assignment and receive feedback from others. With all samples posted at one site students learn from others and learn deeply as they provide feedback demonstrating understanding of requirements.

By opening a Padlet at the beginning of class and encouraging students to post resonses throughout the session you create a collaborative note taking and resource sharing location that can be archived for further access beyond the classroom. I encourage you to try Padlet as students arrive with devices!