This is going to be fun!  Every day as I walk the halls students stop me…..  Can I give you this book?  Here is a fine.  Did you find that book for me?  I always direct them to the library.  Go ask Ms. Moffett.  She is at the desk and can help you.  Then one day while perusing Pinterest I saw the Little Free Libraries (my friend and librarian Beth Jones at MLCHS is collaborating with her art teachers to build one) and decided a Pop Up Library is what I needed.  A way for students to take care of library business, chat with me on their turf, and see that the library has some unique things to offer.  I found an old laptop cart (a very expensive thing that has now found its way to the back room), painted it, glued some cute folders inside to hold papers, fliers, poems, whatever, tied some old shopping bags to the sides of it, loaded it with books and voila!  I stacked some little stools on it so students could sit and browse.  I think I’ll swap these out for camp chairs I can strap to the top.  I envision visiting classrooms bookmobile style, going outside with it when the weather gets nicer.  Beause it was a laptop cart, it comes complete with power!  I can charge devices, run a Cricut or 3D printer!  Today kids looked at me like I was weird.  (The football coach was acting as my barker…..”get your library books here”) . so I can’t really blame them.  But I can totally see the potential!  I renewed a book and collected 2.  So I’ll count that as success.

I know this has been communicated and I’m sure I’ve received multiple emails about it, but I continue to undervalue KYVL (Kentucky Virtual Library).  Not on purpose, I promise!  I do have classes who utilize EBSCO quite a bit, but beyond that it is hit or miss.  So TODAY I discovered the Learning Center which is a test prep site that has ACT, SAT, TOEFL (don’t know what that is…should I be be embarrassed?)  and AP test prep.  Who Knew!!!???

Here is a screen cast I shared with AP teachers and guidance counselors.  I’m a little embarrassed that the information specialist in the building didn’ t know about this, but now I do and here it is!!  Next step is a display and maybe an email to parents!

Our parking lot is pretty rough and we aren’t due for a repaving until next year, so our new principal wants students and teachers to paint their parking spaces. It will be a great culture builder and we had fun!

I’m not super good at keeping track of resources.  That’s one of the purposes of this blog!  I’m trying to curate information so I can find it later.  My latest attempt is Symbaloo.  It creates a visually attractive group of tiles with weblinks.  They can be organized in multiple ways.  This one is for sites I think students and staff will find helpful or entertaining.  I plan to customize some in the future to include links for presentation tools, readers, sports fans, etc…  We’ll see how it goes.  Here is my first one.

Our storytelling event was a success! 7 brave student stood in front of a live audience and told their stories. Embarrassment was the theme.

Our 8th graders have a media class where they learn the basics of Microsoft Office, email and OneDrive.  All 8th graders rotate through this 9 week class.  As we get close to the end of the year, students are arriving in the class a little ahead of those who started the year in the class.  They already know email or OneDrive because of various classroom experiences, so the teacher came to me looking for ideas and one was to use AASL’s Best Websites for Teaching and Learning.  We allowed the students to browse and pick a site that looked interesting to them (even off past lists was fine) and then think like a teacher.  They used Jing to create a screencast teaching others (teachers or students) how to use the site.    While they aren’t as efficient as they could be, the end products are really good and I plan to share them with staff.  I placed them on my website under Student Work.

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.

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!

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.