January 27

Nearpod

Ok, so Nearpod is really cool.  It’s awkward at first, but very cool.  It is perfect in a 1:1 situation.  Here is a quick summary, then I’ll share my lessons learned.  Also a shout out to my friend Adam Watson and his blog for the introduction.  (http://watsonedtech.blogspot.com/)

My lesson was on documentation using MLA format (Zzzzzzzz)  but not ONE student dozed off during my Lesson 

What it does is deliver information to student devices in a PowerPoint looking format.  Your device controls what appears on student screens, so you can advance text, a short answer question, a picture or a poll.  There are more features in the paid version such as websites and videos.  You can move forward and backward in the presentation and students simply look their screens.  Nearpod enables students to answer questions and you can see their answers on your device, but they can’t see each other’s.  If you like a student answer, you can hit “share” and the answer will be delivered to all of the screens in the room (minus the name of the student who created the answer).  Students can draw on pictures, highlight text, and answer polls.  You see all of their answers and can use the information  as a formative assessment.

Instructional Implications:

Students are asked to interact with you and the technology.  You can see, based on their answers, whether or not they understand the concepts.  They can’t “zone out” because they are constantly being asked for feedback.  They LOVE to see their answers shared and can learn from each other.  You can shift instruction on the fly based on their evidence of understanding.  You can even move to individuals in the classroom who are struggling and help one on one.

Lessons Learned: 

1.  It’s awkward not to have a slide or something on the big screen in front of class to guide my instruction.  I kept referring to the screen only to realize there was nothing there.  I had to look at my laptop to see what the students saw. (see #5 for a solution)

2.  If the WiFi is slow, students simply hit “refresh” to get the slides to advance.

3.  Don’t hit the “share” button until all students are finished answering.  If you do, it will interrupt their work to show everyone the slide you are sharing.  I THINK you can go back and they can pick up where they left off, but I’m not positive.

4.  For the “draw” feature, have students use the mouse to do the drawing.  If they are using iPads, they can simply touch the screen and draw with their fingers.  It took us 3 class periods to figure this out.

5.  If you are using a laptop and have another computer hooked to the SmartBoard, connect that computer to the Nearpod session too and what the students see on their screens will also show up in front of the class.

 

January 13

Best Research Moment of the Year :)

Today we had a educational “moment” with two girls working on a research paper about World War II topics.  The class has just finished reading Unbroken by Lauren Hillebrand.  These two selected a question about the Japanese POW camps.  The day before I shared a story with an English teacher my father in law, a farmer in our town, told me. During WWII, German prisoners of war were held in Shelby County and  used as farm laborers.  I had never heard this and found it almost unbelievable that POW’s would find their way to our small town in Kentucky.  These girls heard me telling the story and today I happened to see one of them typing “POW camps in Shelbyville Kentucky” into Google.  I asked her what she wanted to find she said she wanted to know about the prisoners I was talking about.  We switched from Google to a copy of The Complete History of Shelby County and sure enough we found several paragraphs about these soldiers.  As if that weren’t enough, we learned that a comp with more than 300 soldiers was on a farm directly across from our high school.  The look on their faces was priceless!  They were amazed, shocked and completely intriqued.  Phrases like, “this is cool!”, “I want to be a WWII historian”,and “Hey guys, look at this” were music to my ears!  As they left the library (having checked out the book) they were still talking about taking a “field trip” to the farm across the road.  Cool!!!  Yay!

January 8

The Moth….. Students as Storytellers

So our seniors, to meet the expectation of Speaking and Listening standards, are going to become storytellers.  I am collaborating with our senior English teachers to creat a Moth experience for our students.  If you haven’t ever listend to The Moth Storyhour, you really need to do so.   So far students have listened to stories, heard their teachers and principal share stories, and discussed elements of good storytelling.  Today students used survey monkey to vote on a theme for their stories and they chose “Embarassment”  So all of our seniors are going to begin crafting stories about a time in their lives when they were embarassed.  They will peer review, practice in small groups and the summative assessment will be each student telling thier story to the class (lots of trust and community building prior to this happening).

Now for the cool part:  Graham Shelby a local author, journalist and storyteller AND winner of a Moth grand slam which took him all the way to New York City’s Moth mainstage is going to come in and help.  He is going to do a workshop with all of our seniors and then those interested in taking the next step will work more closely with him to polish and perfect their stories.  We will host a Moth story slam in the evening in our school theatre where each of these students will perform their stories live in front of an audience.  Yikes!

January 8

1:1 here we come

 

Part of our 1:1 initiative has been to give teachers their devices this year to practice, and the district provided our school 6 carts of the same devices for teachers to use ” long term” in order to get a feel for what 1:1 will actually look like. We had teachers apply (http://goo.gl/forms/zKxhvEdwAk)   for them explaining how they would use them in their classrooms. Today we delivered the first cart of 30 to an English teacher. I felt a little like Santa. The other 5 carts will be here by the first of next week.  Their task is to teach, reflect, record, and share with the staff what it feels like to have students utilize technology daily, seamlessly, without having to “sign up” for a lab or a mobile cart.

January 6

2015 Reading Challenge

So I decided to challenge myself and my students to the 2015 reading challenge.  I have made some announcements and done (or am doing…sigh) a book display about it.  Today I had 9th graders checking out non fiction, so I announced it in every class and now have 13 student who have signed up to do it with me.  Now I’m nervous, because I have to keep this thing going.  Plus, I have to do it!  I asked a couple of boys what they thought about meeting once a month to check progress (or even every other week).  I’m thinking if I lure them in with food, they can come in, check off the list what they’ve accomplished, get an idea about what to read next and then head out.  Nothing formal, or even at a specific time, just a casual drop in to check the board (I haven’t created a board….this idea just popped into my head).  There are tons of reading challenges (Mark Zuckerburg  is reading a new book ever fortnight)  I liked this one because it is specific enough to broaden my reading horizons, but broad enough to make it feel doable.  We’ll see!  I’m currently reading Swamplandia by Karen Russell.  It will work for several categories.(book with a one word title, book by an author I haven’t read before).    Our group discussed whether or not it’s cheating to count one book for multiple categories.   I said yes, but some disagreed.  I told them it is for them to interpret.

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January 5

Crazy Helium App

helium boothSo here is my ridiculous use of Helium Booth.  It’s a free app on iTunes and I spent WAY too much of my break playing with it.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crazy-heliumbooth-free-helium/id652148051?mt=8

After many, many videos that are way too embarassing to post, I begin to think instructionally! (this one is embarassing too) Below is a link to a brief, yet effective (maybe, maybe not.) but definately fun use.  I can’t stop laughing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTyUy9Ed6Ic&list=UUzoqVURG5yNjnOq14oekItg

January 5

Janus (looking backwards and forward)

When in the classroom, I always had my students do a Janus project when returning from break.  Janus was the Greek god of beginnings and transitions.  It required reflection as well as vision.  So that’s what I’m doing now as I feel like my library is one big Janus project right now.  Janus  The Collaboration Zone has been a definate success.  Students like to work there and teachers are beginning to utilize it creatively and effectively.  So what’s next?  I’d be lying if I didn’t say the future of my role in the building makes me nervous.  Computers have been my trump card for a while now because teachers liked coming here.  They work, they come with instructional and technical support (me!) and students can spread out, access other information and create, write or share in a supervised environment.   So many incredible collaborative projects have begun when a teacher simply wanted to come to the library to type and discovered that I could offer so much more.   But what will happen when we go 1:1 next year?    My ace in the hole will be gone.   Part of me wants to get radical, get rid of 75% of my books and book shelves, purchase a huge e book collection, put up white boards, buy comfy seating, spend all of my budget on 3D printers, databases and software and instead of tiptoeing into the future just leap with two feet.    Then I stop and think (which may be the problem) and I go back to taking tiny steps like putting an old sofa in the periodical room and making a book display using a laptop that scrolls pictures.  Sigh…..

The good news is I was contacted by someone responsibile for facilities in the district and he wants to meet with me and my principal in a couple of weeks to discuss what my library could look like in the future.  District support for change is awesome, so I want to be ready for him with some of my tiny ideas as well as the radical ones (I have no idea where he stands on any of this).

Some of these changes will take money.  Cool furniture isn’t cheap.  The rest of the shift is mental, at least for me, as I try to embrace this transition to digital inforamtion and jump (carefully) with two feet?  or maybe just one toe at a time.