AJ Huff – Coordinator of school community public relations

The Senior Experience
- class

What
- 21st century teaching and learning
- language arts credit
- students apply, 6 students in class
- blog about their senior year.
- Also go to the other buildings
- They get a MacBook
- Digital camera this year
- Taught to be responsible with social media
- Real life experience. Work in the administration offices during class period

Student videos

The project is the 4 Cs.

Why did we need the senior experience?
- additional help
- Social media experience
- Main Street Madison – parent lead public forum. People were visiting it for information instead of going to the school’s website.

The plan:
- First year the students were hand picked for the pilot.
- Wanted it to be part of the main website
- want video and pictures in the blog
- promoting the seniors
- highlight videos

How is it evaluated
- Students are earning language arts credit
- students still have to take senior English
- problem based learning
- website hits
- a lot less misconceptions posted on main street Madison
- track top pages on site, blogs are consistently in the top 10

People do want to hear about the academics

Risks
- safety: signed aup, contract, loan agreement for equipment,
- Money: permanent improvement funds,
- Responsibility: AJ Huff

“Don’t be afraid to take risks, especially smart ones. ” – Steve Jobs

Q: did you have to turn people away the 2nd year?
A: received a list of 40 recommendations from the English dept. Widdowed it down to 20, then discussed with the principal. 12 were asked to apply, of which 10 did.

Q: comments are blocked on the blogs, what about the FB page?
A: FB page is new, but hopefully can turn negative comments to positive.

Q: Any plans to open it to others?
A: not at this time

Q: How did you come up with 6?
A: Original plan was they would be paired, because they work unsupervised in the office.

Q: How will you use Facebook?
A: Ultimate goal is to still drive traffic back to the website.

Q: How often do the students post?
A: In the beginning they tried 1 to 2 times a week, but that became an issue with all the other projects. Now it’s around once every 7-10 days.

Q: How do you handle their personal FB pages?
A: That’s really outside of the jurisdiction of the school.

Q: How much do you change their articles?
A: Quick edits, try not to change the message. Did have a problem with one post, student talked about the whole family going to Florida for spring break.

Q: Controversal issues in the school?
A: Situation hasn’t come up

As part of the project the student get to keep the machine when they graduate from school.

The netbooks weren’t powerful enough, so now they’ve moved to more robust laptops.

How the idea was born
- Textbook costs and weight in book bags
- Utilize 21st century learning skills and tools

Need for change
- Only 28% of Ohio students (2011) who took the ACT met all four college readiness benchmarks
- 1968 Divergent Thinking Study by George Land – Created tests to identify geniuses.
• example question: How many uses of a a paperclip? 10 is normal, 200 is genius
•• 3-5 year olds, 98% genius
•• 8-10 year olds 30%
•• 13-15 year olds 12%
•• Adults (31 year average) 2%
•• (The same group of students)

Finite curriculum that we assess with a series of multiple choice questions.

Need to focus on how we are teaching students, we currently focus too much on the what.

Educators spend too much of their class time transferring knowledge. Then assign homework to be completed when the teacher isn’t around.

If you’re using the iPad in the same way you used the textbook, you haven’t fundamentally changed the delivery of content.

Flip the classroom
- Transfer knowledge is the homework
- Class time is spent answering/clarifying the knowledge that was learned for homework.

Example old lesson:
Round robin reading of the material, teacher adds their commentary through a powerpoint, then homework is assigned.

Flipping the classroom
Transfer happens on student’s time, classwork consists of working through questions about the material.

Barriers to flipping the classroom
- Availability and reliability of technology
- Teacher resistance to change
- The learning to read, reading to learn curve. Starting in grades >4 it’s easier to work, students can read for instruction.
- Educating parents about this chift in teaching

Advantages of flipping
- More time is spent on applied learning
- 3Cs communication, collaboration, creative thinking
- Student centered classroom

If the presentation was flipped
- Participants would have been required to watch the presentation before hand
- Broken up into groups, watch videos of teachers in the classroom, discuss
- Present findings to the group

Implementation
- What’s the home situation like? How many siblings share a computer?
- Ownership of the laptops, students take care of the equipment.
- Started with 8th graders
-

Q: Internet access for free/reduced?
A: Not provided.

Q: Buying textbooks?
A: Up to the textbook companies. Should they even buy textbooks?

Q: How do teachers with multiple preps do it?
A: Building it out slowly. Once it’s done, it’s done.

Where do good ideas come from?
- Does chance favor the connected mind?
- Steven Johnson video
• Recurring patterns to innovations
•• Slow hunch
••• Good ideas come from the collisions of other ideas that are stewing
••• Tim Berners-Lee, WWW. Took ten years
••• Sometimes it takes a hunch from someone else to combine with another hunch for the eureka moment.
• Great driver in innovations is connectivity

Important to provide
- Quality tech
- Adequate bandwidth
- Adequate tech support
• 7:15am on Tuesday, 3:15pm on Thursdays

William Daggett Rigor/Relevance Framework

Filtering
- We filter, exercise in futility
- By law, not necessary at home
- Ultrasurf: Created by the government for Egyptians to surf

Move to year round usage?

8th grade student
- Watching the lecture gives him the freedom to pause/rewatch and repeat.
- Can just ask a question if totally lost

Science teacher
- Gives students the ability to take responsibility of their own learning.

Some students don’t like the flipped classroom, they’re used to the currecnt way instruction is given.

Q: How do you do teacher training
A: Training during the week. Additional training for the teachers with classrooms that have netbooks.

Q: What do you say to someone who’s afraid of failure on the state test due to the change in structure?
A: They’ve never had a student come back and say they didn’t do as well on a state test, they come back and tell how much better they are at communicating. Supt: I want to know how the students are learning, and believes that they do well on the tests.

Q: How much time is spent on homework?
A: More time right now, as they learn, and not all teachers are doing it yet.

Q: How are you planning on staying up with technology? Software upgrades?
A: Cloud computing has helped.

Teachers aren’t excited about how easy it is to be fact checked.

Q: How long is a video?
A: Ten minutes average.

Q: How is video delivered?
A: Google Apps with Google Sites

Q: When they leave what happens to licenced materials?
A: District takes it off when the student leaves

Mississinawa Valley Local school district
- Pilot school for eDays

Replace snow days with eDays?
- ancedotes: take away sled time? Big learning experience

Background/History
- Supt. brought in through a video
- Learning can continue when the instructor can’t be in front of the students
- District covers 80 square miles, miss days after snowfall due to wind
- Superintendent Wendel formalizes plan that is used as a basis for the house bill
- House bill dies, could be due to lobbying from the AFT
- Applied for waiver days from the ODE to try it out.
- Big response from across the nation, spent a lot of time in interviews
- Governor Kasich re-institutes the 5 calamity days and adds 3 online days to the budget bill

School plan
- Teachers are already required to come in two days in the summer. One was used for eDay PD
- The other day was used to complete lessons
- Teachers were paid for two days, but more was put in on their own time.
- Prepare students and parents. Teachers took class time to show the students, parent meetings in the evening in an open computer lab
- Variety of lessons, and a student product (an assignment and assessment)

eLesson Components
- Target
Pick some standards that are hard to hit in the classroom due to other standards
- Instruction
Reading
Podcasts
Vodcasts
- Teacher contact information
–Duplicate the learning that occurs in a normal day

Lesson types
- Rubric was used to grade the lesson: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced
- Everyone was required to have a Basic lesson, but the goal was for the teachers to move to intermediate and/or advanced lesson plans
- Component of an eDay Lesson: Student Tasks, Student Product
- See Darke County ESC for rubric

What happens on an eDay
- Teachers/students notified
- Teaches enable lessons, using First Class
- Teachers will be available for consilt during day either by phone or email
- Students have 2 weeks to complete assignments if needed

What if students don’t have internet?
- Initial survey showed that only 11% did not have Internet, 50% free/reduced lunches
- Discuss with students ahead of time
- Weather permitting:
• Community building open with laptops and tech coordinator
• School building will be open
- 2 week window to complete assignments
• Work on them during non-instructional times of school day
• After school hours

Sample Pages
- First class

WHERE IS MOODLE? GOOGLE DOCS?

- Teacher is usually online to assist during the day
- Only open up the current eDay’s lesson, didn’t want students to complete all the eday work on the first day

WHY NOT? IF THEY CAN COMPLETE IT SUCCESSFULLY, WHY NOT LET THEM COMPLETE IT ALL?

- issues that cropped up: lessons took too much time, computer sharing in households with multiple students
- Teachers learned a lot of what works and what doesn’t work the first year
- Found out some students only had dial-up, video was difficult

NICE USE OF A DIGITAL CAMERA TO “SCAN” IN PAGES TO PUT ON A WEBPAGE

- Lessons are stand alone

I HOPE THEY AREN’T TEACHING SKILLS IN ISOLATION, THEY SHOULD BUILD SOMEWHAT ON THE FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR (MAKE UP DAYS WOULDN’T BE UNTIL ALL CALAMATY DAYS ARE EXHAUSTED, WHICH WOULDN’T BE UNTIL JAN OR FEB).

- Surfing the Internet took a lot a time because there is so much stuff out there. Actually inspired the teacher to integrate other resources that were found.
- Elementary PE: Timed sit-ups, push-ups, and measure reach.

NO SHOVELING SNOW?

- Teacher’s daughter wanted to do some of the activities after the eDay ended

Statistic Comparisons
- 100% of the teachers believed their eLessons were of high instructional value
- 72% of the students said they were able to learn by completing the eLessons
- 80% of the parents thought the lessons were of high instructional value
- 52% of the students said the learning equaled what they learn on a “regular” day, 60% of parents
- 100% of teachers, 57% of students, 67% of parents believed the school should continue the eDay program
- Older siblings liked helping the younger students complete some of their tasks

Lessons Learned
- Too much time between the actual eDay and when they are due. More information and tasks were given than what would have been given in a normal class period
- Students were frustrated in the completion of the lesson and the time it took
- Students are passive learners
- There should be no athletic practices during school time on eDays
- Parents view parental involvment as something that occurs inside the school
- Incorporate this type of technology throughout the year
- Online time cannot equal chair time
- Automated system for product return is necassary
– Need a consistent, agreed upon method for student/teacher communication
- Lack of completion consequences needs to be more fully developed
- More parent/student prep needed
- Need to have a contingency plan before you need the contengency plan

COULD AN EDAY BE USED TO ALLOW TEACHERS PD DAYS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR?

CONTIGENCY PLAN FOR SERVER ISSUES?

Q/A
Q:How do you deal with students special needs?
A: Modified classroom teacher lessons

Q: How did you structure your pilot?
A: 100% of the teachers involved, followed the steps listed above

Q: If two weeks are too long, are you going to change? Do teachers prepare lessons for each subject in self-contained classrooms?
A: Havent approached the two week window. Teachers create lessons for each subject.

Q: Moodle?
A: Looking at it.

Q: Costs?
A: Practically nothing, since First Class was already in place. Already had days in place for PD. Probably 4 or 5 hours for each lesson. Research takes time

Q: Union buy in?
A: Union and administration identified the need and mutually agreed to it. No one wanted to be there mid-June. Waiver days gave them two additional days at Christmas.

Q: No computer?
A: Places open for computer use, and two weeks to have things done.

Q: Outside of snow days, such as no electricity due to winds/ice.
A: Discuss as a district.

Q: Is there a real problem with students working ahead?
A: It depends on the teachers and how the lesson was designed. What’s in their lessons, how it’s set up.

Q: How did you report this to the state department?
A: The survey data was reported to the state, along with the waivers for the eDays.

Comment: Mt. Vernon had a day without electricity, so they just used the two weeks to get the work completed.

Teachers in elementary use Moodle and theme lessons.

Have you succumbed to the dark side? Do you use technology for good or evil?

Star Wars for Teaching from David Smeltzer on Vimeo.

In the process of setting her up, I decided I wanted a more portable way for her to write posts. I thought about giving her my 1G iPod Touch, but went on eBay to look at the iPhone 3G (I wonder how you are supposed to use the plural of iPhone 3G?). They seem to be selling for right around $150, so I bid on a couple and finally won one at $138. I’m not planning on activating cell service on it and will use it just like an iPod Touch. The advantage of the iPhone 3G of the iPod Touch is the inclusion of the camera and GPS (I’m not certain the GPS works without cell service, I guess I’ll find out).

With the Tumblr app installed, she will be able to post to her blog anywhere she has wifi access. I’m excited to see how well it works, and if she’ll stay away from Tap Fish long enough to find out what else the iPhone can do!

photo credit: davidsilver

This article started out as the top ten skills needed to use technology effectively, but as I wrote the list, I realized that technology shouldn’t be separated out. As we proclaim that technology is a tool, we also shouldn’t single it out when talking about what skills it takes to educate. The following list has a few items that are somewhat related to technology, the others are what I view as important skills any teacher needs to have if they want to succeed. Successful teachers will not find any surprises in this list.

1. mastery of your subject – If you don’t know your subject, your students will learn that rather quickly. You must know what you’re teaching, backwards and forwards. There are no shortcuts here. If you cannot answer a student’s question, use your searching skills to find the answer as quickly as possible.

2. classroom management – Whether it’s your morning math meeting or working in small groups, you will not have a successful class if you cannot manage it.

3. Your students don’t know as much as you think they do, and you know more then they think you do – There are a few phrases that have gained some popularity in the past couple of years that I disagree with. The impression that teachers are digital immigrants and students are digital natives is an incorrect assumption. Most students do not know as much as their teachers when it comes to using technology. And teachers do know more about technology then they realize. The personal computer is over 30 years old, for a majority of teachers this is longer then their teaching career. They’ve seen how technology has changed some classrooms, and can leverage that experience in their own classroom.

4. Ability to punt – Your day to day classroom will probably never work exactly as you pictured it in your mind, and your ability to punt and do something different is imperative. Supplies for a science experiment hasn’t arrived? Prepare to punt. Internet access down? Punt!

5. Keeping an open mind – “Those who say it can’t be done, are usually interrupted by someone doing it”

6. Understand cheap, fast or easy, pick any two – This is a phrase I use when talking to administrators when they wonder why something isn’t working the way they thought it should. The phrase basically means, you can only two out of the three items. For example, if you want it cheap and easy, it’s not going to be fast. Or if you want it fast and easy, it isn’t going to be cheap.

7. Know how to search – Learn the shortcuts for how to include and exclude search terms. Find out how to search for a particular filetype. If you need a presentation on the water cycle, learn how to search for one (with google use “filetype:ppt” as a search term).

8. Embracing life-long learning – Anything you learn today will be out of date before you retire. We don’t have to sharpen our quills anymore, or learn how to make dittos. Be prepared to learn every day.

9. Creating a personal learning network – Seek out like minded teachers as yourself. Email them, follow their blog, follow them on Twitter. Create your own blog and Twitter account. Learn to share.

10. Owning a home computer – I am totally surprised at the number of teachers that do not own a home computer. The new netbooks are priced at under $400 and desktops around the same price, so price isn’t much of an obstacle. If you can’t afford to buy, check out your local Freecycle or Craigslist for people looking at getting rid of older computers.

Anything I missed?

Unfortunately, your created page has a very unwieldy url. Mine is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Collins/181385642299. What I’ve done is setup a redirect from my website to point ryancollins.org/facebook to my Facebook Page. Be sure to become a friend when you visit!

One common question I see asked all the time is whether or not teachers should friend students on Facebook. Although you can set your privacy settings on Facebook to hide certain aspects of your life from groups of friends, this isn’t fool proof. Friending everyone including students and parents simply begins breaking down yet another wall between your professional life and personal life.

What you can do is create a Facebook Page for yourself. This gives you a presence on Facebook that can be used professionally which is totally separated from your person life.

“A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. Create one in a few minutes with our simple interface.”

Unfortunately, your created page has a very unwieldy url. Mine is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Collins/181385642299. What I’ve done is setup a redirect from my website to point http://ryancollins.org/facebook to my Facebook Page. Be sure to become a friend when you visit!

Facebook Pages are not limited to people either, you could also create a Page for each class you teacher or other departments within your organization.

More information about creating a Facebook Page:

• How to: Create a Facebook Fan Page
• 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
• How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

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Experience Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a new way — in real time. Dracula is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries,) and this blog will publish each diary entry on the day that it was written by the narrator so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have.

What a cool way to introduce classic literature to student’s brought up with blogs and social networking. I’ve subscribed to the feed and can’t wait to read the novel through Google Reader.