Read & Write

This was originally written for my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials" October 11, 2013

You may have seen this app on your chromebooks. It often pops up as an add on app, and students randomly click on install or not without a reason.  Then they complain that there is a bothersome tool bar at the top of their screen that looks like this:

You can hide the bar when it shows up by clicking on the green and yellow square.  The pull down menu will stay and you can click on it again to bring it back.  So why would anyone want this or use this?

It is a text to speech app.  It will read what is on your document within google docs.  I think it’s a great tool for students to edit their work.  I often tell my students to read their work  aloud and listen for mistakes or awkward wording.  This does that out loud reading for them.  It is a simple replacement for kurzweil that doesn’t require extra software downloads.  It will work for pdfs that are saved within your Drive as well.  Students can scan text, upload to google Drive and open with Read&Write for google (you can choose “open with” by right clicking on the document name in Drive).  You do have to highlight the text you want read.

I’m sure it will do lots of other stuff, but I haven’t played with it very much.  But if you or your students use kurzweil, or you know students who have trouble reading or editing their work you may want to check it out.

This was first posted October 4, in my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials."

I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head right now that I think are related somehow.

The first is reflection on the staff meeting Monday.  I haven’t received much feedback, but what I have gotten has been positive. (might be selective sharing)  What I liked about it is that a) it was to some extent self directed PD, and b) it was based on things real teachers are actually doing in their classes.  I also think that having the ALPs as a shared document was a very practical way of giving staff practice at using ugcloud.  I’m not certain, but by the sounds of it, more people finished their ALP this year during the session than previous years.  Hopefully fewer people will be chased come November.

The second thing going around my head that I want to share is the title of a session I might go to at ECOO this year.  It’s called “It’s OK to be right where you are (it’s not OK to stay there).”  I love this idea.  It can be both affirming and a challenge.  I think it can speak to the life-long learner in all of us.  You are OK where you are, but how can you grow?  I think the ALPs ideally address this as well.  Think about what you’ve done to get where you are, set some new goals, and plan out how to get there.

The third related idea is the SAMR model.  It is a model of technology integration.  Like the ECOO session name, it’s OK to be at any stage at any given time, but you need to know there are other option for growth and change.  The challenge is thinking about how you most use technology for student learning, and thinking about how you can try new things.  Here’s the model:

Twitter Experiment in class

Yesterday I decided I’d inject a little bit of digital citizenship and connectedness into my grade 9 geography class.  We were talking about ecological footprints, so in class I logged into my @ODSSUnger twitter account and sent two tweets.  We composed the tweets together (OK, I did it, but I did it in front of them and got their input) in class.

The first one was fairly general: “My gr9 geog class wants to know what you do to reduce your ecological footprint #UngerCGC1P”  This is not my PLN twitter account, and I only have 43 followers (most of which are Orangeville businesses that just follow anyone/everyone in Orangeville with a twitter account), so I also retweeted it on my PLN twitter account hoping for more feedback.  

One response to this tweet was

From this we were able to discuss how this would help reduce his footprint.  How many different areas this would affect of his footprint.  We also talked about how this would be possible in the winter months.  The class seemed to think he must have a greenhouse whereas I thought he likely froze or canned his produce.  So we tweeted him back to see. We will (hopefully) look at his response on Monday.

We also sent a tweet to our Mayor Adams:

This was good in terms of giving the class something to talk about that was local.  Which one they thought was most significant, what each meant and how it affected our footprint and land use.

I appreciated that the students could see what we were talking about in class was something that other people were thinking about and focused on.

The added bonus was in a couple replies to Mayor Adams’ tweet.  

These two tweets allowed us to discuss point of view and bias. We looked at the profiles of each of the people and discussed how their backgrounds and professions may affect their view. This was all outside of my "lesson plan" but really got the students thinking and discussing with real life examples.

Since then there has been a discussion between Mayor Adams and Chris Halliday on twitter that I can’t wait to show my class.  I love that asking a fairly simple question on behalf of my geography class has blossomed into an interesting discussion that has moved beyond my room, but that my students still get to see it.

This little experiment of mine resulted in a few different good discussions and teachable moments that would not have happened had I not reached out beyond my class.

We got to talk about what I thought were good twitter etiquette guidelines. And as a class we wrote thank-you tweets to the people who responded.

I am thinking about getting the students to do a little side research about the EAB issue and what the students think the town should do about an arborist.

This is not something I have tried before, but feel fairly good about how it went and will try again.

What have you done to bring “real world” examples into your class?

What bonus ‘teachable moments’  have you had this week?

And if you would like to share how you've reduced your ecological footprint please tweet to @ODSSUnger and use #UngerCGC1P. Thanks!

GAFE Certification

Image from: http://memoirvita28.blogspot.ca/2013/05/college-life-exams-part-3.html

A few weeks ago I wrote the 6 google exams to become a Google Apps certified trainer.  Each of the 6 exams was made up of 60 multiple choice questions and there was a 90 minute time limit.  They were intense.  The good thing was that I didn't have to have every detail memorized in order to pass the test.  I had to know how to find the answer.  It's google, you are allowed/expected to search for the answer.  But it was still tough.

At least once, I found some piece of information to answer a question and thought "Oh, I didn't know I could do that."  But in the stress of completing the test I couldn't for the life of me remember what that was when I was done.  I just remember having the thought.  But I feel fairly certain that if/when I decide I want to try whatever that thing was I'll know I can go looking for the answer.

I really enjoy using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in school.  And one of the things I like about it is the availability of helpful hints and tips available.  I don't have to know how to do everything, I just have to have the confidence to go and find the answers.  Google is good for this, as is youtube.  Many people have uploaded screen casts about how to do anything you could possibly want to do.

Because I appreciate GAFE so much I spend quite a bit of time talking to others about its merits and how they can use it.  One of the toughest things I have to get them to believe is that they can play with it without knowing everything about it.  They can also find answers to whatever questions they might have.  Many time people come to me with questions about how to do something.  If I don't know off the top of my head, I will go with them to a computer and look it up, or I will look it up and email them links to videos or help pages on whatever they want help with.  I hope that eventually people will gain the confidence to search for the answer themselves.

Back to the Google Certification...  I passed all 6 exams.  I am now a Google Certified Individual.  It is my intention to complete the certification process to become a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer.  I believe that this process will be much more reflective and give a much more accurate picture of my ability to work with GAFE and pass on my knowledge to my colleagues and work with it in class.  On many levels I find this process at least as intimidating as the exams as it is much more personal.

I will continue to share my process in becoming certified here in this blog.  It is my goal to be done it this summer.  Wish me luck!

Tech at the Lake

I know a lot of people may be upset by this picture.  It was a beautiful long weekend up at the lake.  The kids hadn't seen each other all winter and here they sit, on devices (btw we don't have internet).  They should be running around.  They should be enjoying the outdoors.  They should be playing together.  All of these I'm sure are arguments from many.

They did run around.  They did enjoy the outdoors.  They played soccer; they rode their bikes; they played on the park...  It wasn't quite warm enough to swim yet. They did all the same stuff I did when I was growing up here in the spring/summer.  But when I was done running around I read, by myself.  Maybe we did crafts (I learned to macramé).

I know I may be a bit biased, but I think there is room for all of it.  And I think there are huge benefits to this.  There are 4 kids here (ranging in age from 9-12) and 3 devices.  They are playing Mine Craft.  What I saw that was "better" than the crafts we used to do:

• they shared devices around, and built on each others' worlds
• they shared knowledge - each of them was able to help the others (regardless of age or experience)
• I think they were developing problem solving, sharing and communication skills that are more transferable than my macrame skills

Added benefit:  I don't have any ugly plant hangers or owls that I have to find a place for in my house!

Barn Dwelling Macramé Owl

Photo credit: April Killingsworth, Los Angeles, USA, July 2005

from: http://www.macrameowl.com/macrame_owl_spotting.html

Reflection on April 20-21, Ontario GAFE

The following post was written for Bear Essentials (my school’s staff weekly newsletter).  I have a regular column “On-line with Lisa.”  I will cross post the columns to this blog.  This post was originally written for the newsletter the week of April 26, 2013. It has been slightly modified to reflect an online format.

Reflection on April 20-21, Ontario GAFE (google apps for education) Summit

Last weekend, I was one of 100 UGDSB participants out of 525 total participants at the Google Summit sponsored by ECOO and hosted by Eastwood Collegiate of WRDSB.  I’d like to share a few of the ideas that I found interesting from Sunday morning’s keynote by Molly Schroeder (@followmolly on twitter, Google certified teacher and Google Apps for Education certified trainer).

Google loves being in BETA.  Part of their philosophy is “launch early and iterate.”  The idea is that you don’t have to have something perfect before you try it out.  If something doesn’t work, or becomes obsolete it is not a failure, it is simply a part of a larger path to find something great.  Someone has actually created a graveyard for google products that google has killed (http://goo.gl/4XXfE).  You can leave flowers at the headstone for the google project you miss most.  I left a flower on iGoogle and Google Reader.

Kids are in beta.  It is part of our job to help them fine tune so they can launch.  It is important for students to be able to think about where they are in the journey, and not just be told “this is important for your future.”  

Interestingly enough, as I was thinking about writing this, and reflecting on the idea of “being in beta” from the google summit, I ran across a blog by Shelley Wright called “Beta: The Courage to Fail and Change.” (you can find it at http://goo.gl/QCUfN)  She writes: “I’ve decided to live my life in Beta. Always incomplete. Always failing. Always trying to get better.  ...  What if our kids learned that failure is a good thing, something to be embraced, instead of something to be avoided like the plague.  What if teachers were set free to teach messy, fail often & “fail fast”, as Seth Godin says. ... What if teaching & learning was a fluid process that was never finished?”  I love serendipity.

Another nugget from Molly’s keynote: speed date devices, apps or websites, but marry the transferable skills.  I really like this and think it’s tied to idea of being in beta.  Try something; use it while it works; let it go when it’s done (or when you are).  It is the ability to take the skills or knowledge you gain and apply them to another situation.  

The last big take away I’d like to share with you is that everyone has experienced something not working the way you wanted/expected.  The fact that it didn’t work isn’t what’s important.  It is what you do with that experience that is important.  Problem solve.  Hit ‘refresh.’ And keep trying.

GAFE and feedback

The following post was written for Bear Essentials (my school’s staff weekly newsletter).  I have a regular column “On-line with Lisa.” This was a guest post written by David Harvey, and English teacher at ODSS. This post was originally written for the newsletter the week of April 12, 2013.

I am a better teacher this semester than every semester before it.  This is not hyperbole, but a direct result of using ugcloud.  ugcloud is a board-supported cloud-based (no hard drive required) service where I create documents in an excellent, auto-saving word processor (google drive), share documents with students and colleagues, and where I receive and provide feedback on all of my students’ work through our ugcloud email addresses.  When I’m working with student writing, ugcloud becomes interactive and allows me to highlight everything from specific words to particular punctuation to entire paragraphs and make corresponding comments in the side margin.  The student sees both the highlights and the comments.  When the student clicks on either the highlighted section or the comment in the margin,  the corresponding information is highlighted.  There is a very concrete and clear link between their writing and my comments.  ugcloud also allows me to make an overall comment on a piece of writing which I often do when I’m done reading it.  

My teaching has become accelerated through ugcloud as it has allowed me to give students more precise, concrete, full-sentence feedback by the mid-term than I can usually manage in an entire semester.  The interim report, which often causes me great concern due to a lack of information, caused me no stress whatsoever this year, as at that point, I’d read and thoroughly commented on 6 pieces of formative writing in my 1D class and 9 in my 4U class.  The cloud makes things more efficient and effective, and while part of this is my ability to type faster than I write, another part of this is the closing of the feedback loop.  

We know that the shorter the time is between the work and the feedback the more likely the learning and, with the cloud, students no longer have to be in class (or even in the same country) to receive feedback, nor do they have to wait for me to mark 30 pieces of work before they get theirs back.  I mark them in the order in which they’re submitted and they can watch me work with their document in real-time.  As a result of the speed of things, I have never had a clearer understanding of my students’ abilities, nor taught them each so much on such an individual basis so early in a course.  I can open up their email folders and instantly see everything they’ve written, the order in which they submitted it, all of my feedback, and then each keystroke of editing the student has made while applying their new understanding.  

This is a game-changer.  While I’ve never accepted technology as the great saviour of education - and still don’t - I’ve never discovered and used a technology with such great benefits to both myself and my students.  I haven’t collected a single piece of paper from either class this semester - not one.  More importantly,  I’ve seen a level of improvement  in their work by midterm that I usually hope to see by the end of a course.  

I’ve witnessed what I consider three legitimate educational revolutions in my 14 year career, and this is the most recent and the most powerful one in terms of what works best for me and what works best for students.