Dog + Stick...

The Big Stick

When it all comes together....

Technology is often viewed as making our lives easier and helping to connect us in a whole new way.  Most times people associate technology with frustration, which can make my job as a technology consultant challenging.
Recently I was able to be a part of an experience that technology made an impact, connected people from across the country using 3 products.
This started with my sister telling me that my 5 year-old autistic nephew, Daniel did not want to go to school and it was greatly causing him some anxiety.  Unfortunately, they don't live close by about a 7 hour drive, so I often use Skype to talk and connect with them.  I asked her is she wanted me to make a video for Daniel and she said sure!
So, I used an app called Voxer.  Voxer kind of acts like a walkie talkie that records your message and allows people to listen to the message at their convenience.  I sent a message out to the great team of people I work with to see if they had any suggestions for my video.  They are amazing and had so many great suggestions, including video taping their kids on what they liked about Kindergarten.  They shared the short video clips with me through Google Drive, where I was able to download them on my iPad and put the clips together using iMovie.
The video turned out great and Daniel really liked the video.  It was just awesome to watch all of this come together in about 24 hours.  The technology made it slick and easy and it was used to communicate with people far away.

Camtasia Platform Switch

Camtasia is my favorite video editor.  I first learned about Camtasia when I was practicing a flipped classroom.  I got training when I attended FlipCon in Chicago using the PC version.  I love the playhead that allows you to select the clip area and the way you can make customized intros.  Two years ago, my PC decided to die.  Thankfully, my administration said, "What would you like?"  I have always been very pro PC, but my tech coach said, "Macs are better for video." So, I took her advise and took the plunge into the Mac world.

Now, Camtasia on a Mac is a bit different and took some getting used to.  But, I have enjoyed the ripple cut editing.  I've been using it for two years now and I just realized one of the biggest differences between the two different platforms.  When you export your video in the PC version, it asks you what kind of video you want to export, HD, mp4.  I had never realized that the Mac never asked me.  I've just been exporting and starting to notice that the video was slightly out-of-focus, or I was questioning whether or not I needed glasses!

That's because you have to set up the canvas to the ratio that you want when/before you edit the video.  Once you change the canvas size you have to resize any clips, annotations, or photos that make up your video to fit onto the new canvas. Ugh!  I've been working on many video products lately and never realized that I needed to change the canvas size, but I was noticing that the videos were not as crisp and clear as they originally were.  Thankfully, I have the original Camtasia files and I can resize my video pretty easily.

Lesson learned!

My Favorite App...

There are so many apps out in the world that help us to do just about anything that you want to do!  It is truly hard to pick just one, however when I was practicing my flipped classroom with students over the years, there is one app that I wouldn't have been able to do without -- Explain Everything.
Explain Everything works in a very similar way that ShowMe does, but comes with more bells and whistles to make it a teacher's and students' best friend.

Explain Everything allows you to record your writing and speaking in small chunks, so that if you mess up, you don't have to redo your whole video.  It then takes each of those little chunks and stitches them together into one video.  And my absolute favorite part of Explain Everything is how you get your movie.  You can send it to your camera roll, directly to YouTube, or Dropbox, Google Drive (my personal fav), and the list goes on and on.  It will connect to just about any platform that you could be using.

I would offer this as an alternative for formative assessments with students.  I would simply give them an iPad with Explain Everything on it and tell them to show me what they know.  I did learn the hard way that it's good to give a time limit, otherwise you could get an chatty student who makes you a 10 - 20 minute video.  I usually capped it at 5 minutes.  It was a great way to hear in the student's voice of what they actually understood and misconceptions stood out.  You could understand the depth that they knew by how much detail they went into to explain the concept.  Since I only had 5 iPads in my room (we were not 1:1), I had each of them logged into the same Google account and had the students upload their videos into a shared folder, making it easy for me to access and grade.

Even though it's not a free app, at $2.99, it's well worth it.

3-D Printing from NASA

3-D Printing never ceases to amaze me.  And quite frankly, I hope it never does.  I'm totally fascinated by the videos on YouTube about 3-D printed arms.  Have you seen this one featuring Iron Man?

It gets me every time.

3-D printing can make amazing impacts on people's lives, but as an educator sometimes it's difficult to figure out ways to incorporate it into our classroom in relevant ways.  Never fear, NASA is here!  NASA has recently released 3-D printer files of great space related artifacts.  This can be a great way to incorporate 3-D printers into a space or math unit.  You can discuss scale and examine what some of these space artifacts look like up-close without having to schedule a field trip to a museum.

Check out all that they offer at http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models/printable.  We printed the wrench they sent up to the space station and it turned out great.

Opening Doors...

I came across a really eye-opening article in this month's NSTA Reports titled, "Drifters Take Students on Scientific Ocean Journey."  It's a fantastic read about a geometry teacher who is not letting his subject confine him to only teaching right angles.  This teacher has an obvious passion for science and technology because he has his students design, test, launch and track devices on the ocean.
Being from land-locked Iowa, I am immediately jealous that he has the opportunity to offer this experience to his students and that he wasn't my geometry teacher.
I wish more teachers would open their definitions of what their subject could contain.  Science and engineering are such important life skills that transfer and could breathe life into any subject.  I wish that you have your administration's support not to be confined by the textbook or the test.  And, then maybe, finally we can answer the question student question of "When will I use math in real-life?"
I would highly encourage you to read this article and check out the work that these students are doing at studentdrifters.org.   Plus, if you go there, you can learn from their experience, they've even posted lesson plans - Bonus!

#teacherslovefreebies

Super Quiz Infographic

Made my day...

Sometimes the simple things can make my day.  I created a video about adaptations for my science class last year.  I left it to public view on YouTube.  I didn't always do that, because sometimes copyright made me nervous.  Almost a year later, I get a comment on my video...

And just because I was curious where Keira was from and I was surprised to see that she goes to school in Vancouver!  It was pretty cool to think that a student in Canada is learning from my video.

It made my day...

iPad and Collaboration Frustration

So, today I am stuck.  I never thought that I'd say this, but I am frustrated with the iPad.  I have always been an iPad supporter.  I have used to to create videos in a flash using iMovie, using ExplainEverything to create unique tutorials, and Skitch to annotate and create unique images.  I believed that this was the ultimate creation tool!

And then I ran into this.... a teacher approached me and explained that his district switched from a MacBook 1:1 initiative to an iPad 1:1 initiative.  With the MacBook program, he had transformed his classroom into a collaborative world using Google Apps for Education.  Students were able to collaborate on presentations in a way that he had never been able to before.
Now as a iPad school, iPads are not proving to be collaborative.  In fact, the Google Slide app is so limited that students can not even put images into a presentation created on the iPad, only text.

I have found a few apps that allow for a creative, collaborative whiteboard space.  But they are very informal and do not have the sleek look of a presentation.  I have started to explore some web 2.0 tools to see if they will work on the iPad.  But, I am starting to realize that the free world of web 2.0 now has dollar signs in its eyes.  Many of the programs I learned about 4-5 years ago now have fees associated with them or are very "clunky" on the iPad.

So, where does this leave my teacher.  I'm still looking, if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Guide on the side...considering Hapara

As teachers begin the journey from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, there often begins the worry of "What is that group doing over there?" I think that one of the biggest hurdles to get over is the idea of trust of in your students.  Most students really do want to be at school and be challenged to collaborate and create when they are there.  We as teachers need to create the environment that allows students to practice this style of learning.  When we have that environment established, it is easy to trust that your students because they will be engaged in the learning process.
But, when teachers are making the first steps towards this process, which I plan to elaborate on in later blog posts, it's hard for them to feel comfortable in this newly created environment.  It's easy to know what to look for when everyone is working on the same task, but when we allow students to have choice in the learning process it can be a little harder to spot the off-task, the confused, and those students that need the personal conversation.  More veteran teachers have a higher teacher "spidey sense" to alert us when a group of students is starting to go awry, but sometimes technology and student computer use can make it harder to detect.
Are there some tech tools that can assist us?
There is one product that can, at a glance, give us a nice snapshot of what students have open on their computer.  Hapara allows there to be a teacher dashboard where you can see all of the tabs that your students have open on in their Chrome browser.  It can be super-easy to see who has appropriate and non-appropriate sites open.  It also gives teachers the ability to close those tabs as well.
Two things to be aware of:
1) it only monitors the Chrome browser.  Great if you are a Chromebook school, not so great if students have access to other browsers.  Hopefully, students see how awesome the Chrome browser can be especially when you teach them about the different Chrome extensions to improve their computer use.
2) You don't want to be chained to the computer.  Being the guide on the side, you need to be able to be at different table groups.  You need to be available to chat, guide, and question students who are at different points of the learning process.  Keeping an eagle eye on the Hapara page will definitely hinder this process.
It has good potential, but it's important to remember the downfalls of this program as well.  I'm going to continue to think about this topic for future blog posts and if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Exploring Explore-Flip-Apply

I felt very fortunate to have stumbled across Ramsey Musallum's work on Twitter a couple of years ago.  As I was forging through my 1st year of flipping in 2011, I was often been smacked in the face by his common sense and simplified approach to flipped learning.  The use of google forms continued to transform what I was able to understand about my students.

This summer I felt lucky to have been in the audience to watch his keynote address at FlipCon13.   At the time, I was struggling with parts of flipped classroom implementation.  I felt as though there were great benefits of the flipped learning, but as a science teacher, I felt like I was losing the questioning and the student's ability to build their own knowledge which are such important parts of the science process.  I was very inspired my him sharing his journey that reminded me so much of my own.  It was great to get hear how he turned his flipped learning experience into one with an emphasis on inquiry.

Through a master's class this summer, it allowed me to further process and explore this journey with my class this last fall.  I explored an implemented the method of explore-flip-apply with one section of students during my chemistry unit and wrote a paper about it for my master's class.

http://amberbridgesmith.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/0/0/11003739/bridgeiapfinaldraft.pdf

I have been so interested in this process I have rolled this method out to my other 3 sections of science class.  Thanks for the inspiration Ramsey!

Google Forms as Rubrics

As a teacher, there are so many obligations and extras that come up from time to time.  So, when something comes up that makes my life easier, I take advantage of it!
I am lucky to have a iPad available to use in my class.  One way that I use it to assist in grading is that I use it in tandem with Google Forms.  First, I will create a Google Form off the the rubric that I have created and shared with students on the assignment.  When you have finished creating a Google Form, it will ask you if you want to share or embed it.  I copy the embed code and put that into a Google Site that I have created for myself.
Then, when I'm ready to grade my assignments, I pull out the student assignment papers and my iPad and I can just touch on the buttons in the Google Form on the iPad and submit a form for each student..so, easy!  Each time I click submit, it sends the results to a spreadsheet that I can work with very easily.
When I have finished grading, I go to the spreadsheet and I will run two features that I really like that is part of Google spreadsheets.
1) I use a vlookup to search for the students and their responses.  This way it automatically looks up and it puts it into alphabetical order.  No more weeding through a big stack of responses, it does the work for you. This has become part of beginning of school routine to set up a template that I can use the entire year.
Next, I copy this page and paste the values only into a new spreadsheet that I have set up with student emails.
2) I use the formemailer script on google forms where I can set up an email template and it will automatically send each student an email with my grading responses in it...love it!

Pumpkins and Cheer

Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the science department at my school cracks open the 70s yellow curtain divider that separates the 7th & 8th grade classrooms and we host a co-unit together.  7th & 8th graders are put into mixed grade groups and we explore science in a very hands-on way.
This year, the teachers were very inspired by the show Punkin Chunkin on Discovery/Science channels.
With a little assistance from a 7th grader who had a book called Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was able to give students some design templates to get started with, students have been building small catapults out of ordinary things and working to launch pumpkin marshmallows as far as they can.  It has been great to see their excitement with how far they have been able to launch their pumpkins!
One aspect that inspired me from the show was the basis of charity.  The Punkin Chunkin event money supports multiple charities both locally and nation-wide.  With this I put the word out to our fantastic staff, to see if anyone wanted to contribute to the cause.  With their amazing support and pulling out from their own pockets, we were able to gather $100.  From this, we told the students that the student group who shot their marshmallow the farthest would have $100 donated to a charity of their choice.  Last week, the student groups chose their charities they want to compete for.   They were very excited to choose their charity and many of them expressed that "that's pretty cool."  I'm so happy to offer students another opportunity to find a way to invest in the projects that we are doing.

Choice Assessments

During my ecology unit, I have evolved in how I allow to students to demonstrate their learning of concepts that we cover in class.  Middle school students relish the choice and freedom.  I think it helps connect them to the curriculum and make the learning more relevant to them, which can be quite the task with middle school students.
The basic skeletal design of my ecology unit is designed so that each week we explore a topic linked to a standard.  Students have a video that they watch on the topic and we have hands-on, very active labs that we collect data on to discuss and help us to extend our understanding of the standard.  Each Friday, students get to choose how they would like to be assessed on the standard.  I write 1 objective-based test that students take on senteo clickers and a write their reasoning on a piece of paper as to why they chose their answer.
Otherwise, I would make 5 laptops and 5 iPads available for students to use to create something to show their understanding.  I received ShowMe and Explain Everything Presentations, I had students create vocabulary explanations using google drawings, and create songs about their learning!  It was so great to see all of their creativity come out in different ways.  Also, I was able to share their products with other students who struggled with that week's concept.  A win-win where it was able to empower student voices, give them choices and have students learn from each other.

Student Conversations

After students did not perform well on an open-note assessment in my class, I had to ask myself, where do I go from here?  We had gone through the topic in class in many different ways.  We had done activities in different depth going up and down Bloom's taxonomy.  I had made them videos that covered the information.  So, I was feeling pretty stumped.

This is when I went back to a conversation that I vividly remember from a science methods class in college at the University of Iowa.  I very much respected this professor and this always stuck with me.  He asked the class, "What is the most important conversations in a classroom? Teacher to Student? Student to Teacher? Or Student to Student?"  In my naive pre-teacher ways, I volunteered the answer of student to teacher, because then as an educator I can understand what the students really know.  He very politely told me I was wrong - and that it was student to student because of their comfort level with people their own age and students are going to be able to talk to each other in "their own language."

This is the conversation that pulled me forward at this educational crossroad in my classroom and I made a shift towards students learning from students.  I have done things in the past with this approach, but I have tried something new.  I was inspired by the show the Amazing Race.  On the Amazing Race, teams have to complete Road Blocks that are supervised by clue givers.  I showed a clip of this show to my classes and we talked about the role of the clue giver.  The students told me that the clue givers were experts, who showed little emotion, who had to be tough and fair, and who to deal with people who were mad, frustrated, or happy.  We talked about how this related to learning and the role of a teacher.

I went back through the test and broke down the areas of the test and which areas students struggled with.  I created mini-activities based on these test areas.  I personalized the reteaching through the voice of a student.  At each table group, some students were clue givers and some students were learners.  The clue givers changed based on how students performed on tests and the other students had the opportunity to earn points back on the tests - if it was approved by the clue giver.  The clue givers listened to students and share their process and tips for how they solved this topic.  Some clue givers even led mini-lessons based on the topic.

It was really awesome to observe the power of student voices.  After the mini-lessons, I asked students for feedback.  And most of it was positive.  They liked to talk with their classmates about the problems.  They felt like their classmates did a good job of explaining the information.  Some BD students in my class who will not work with teachers or associates became engaged in class because they will listen to their classmates.  Two suggestions I'm taking into consideration was to make some of the activities more "game-like" and to be able to offer the clue giver and added incentive during this time.

Overall for me, it was a great reminder about the importance of student to student conversations.

CLE Conference

This week I'm attending the Creative Learning Environments Conference at Mid-Prairie. I will be posting my thoughts and reflections from speakers and work I've done this week here.

Day 1 Journal Entry - Speaker Kevin Honeycutt

There is a strong importance to tapping into emotions.  Emotions inspire.  Emotions make it memorable.  How many teachers want what they are doing in their class to be memorable?  That is the key to what motivates so many of us!  

There are a few quotes that jogged some thinking....

...Why do we force students to “wait to think” with hand-raising?  What if the environment of the classroom was not linked to an answer provided by a student who was brave enough to raise their hand? Do students think that they only need to come up with the answer if they put their hand in the air?

...tra-digital learners? Can students be both traditional and digital learners?  Are they to the place where they can problem solve in real-world situations? What would happen if you unplugged the internet during class?  Well, I know that all of them become completely helpless and they all look to the adult in the room.  In this case, the internet is controlling them, they are not controlling the internet.

A key to this is to make it real for students.  How does this become real?  Kevin shared the story of creating an author in a student.  That made it become real for the student the moment that they held their own book in their hands.  What if students did make their own product, their own book and it only sold 1?  Could a shark tank environment work in a middle school where they evaluate WHY it didn’t work?  Could they give constructive feedback to each other?  What if they studied sharks to understand how a shark tank works (video)?

Self Paced or Using Class Time

I've thought a lot about flipping the classroom as it has been a practice that I have adopted since fall of 2011.  There have been many benefits and many challenges that I've encountered along the way.  I truly believe that when I adopted this practice, it made a positive impact on my teaching and shifted the focus of learning in my classroom.  

As a non 1-1 school, I have felt a little left out, left behind when I learn of others who have truly flipped their classroom as I feel a but stuck in a flipped 1.0 mode.  I have experimented with some different techniques I have learned from other flippers, but have yet to figure out how to allow for complete personalization and self-pacing.  So, this idea has been rolling around in my mind that there are two avenues that flipping can be focused: self-paced learning or best use of class time.

I have embraced the idea of using the videos to make the best use of class time.  It was what made me fall in love with flipping.  But yet once I began this journey with flipping, I had no idea how much my class time would shift.  We are no longer spending time with the basics, but I am redesigning and restructuring lessons to encourage students to create, analyze, and apply the topics we are covering in class.  And I feel like my role as a mentor and coach have really shifted to focus on collaboration!  I did not know how much I would be teaching and modeling skills of collaboration, because these things do not come naturally to students at the middle school level.  

I wish that I could wrap my head around a way to include more self-paced learning in my classroom, but I'm not there yet.  I'm still trying to understand the fluidity if there is not a computer available for all students.  I live in an inquiry-based science world and personalization is key in my room, but I'm not quite sure how to completely release the reins...

Virtual Science Fair

So, inspired by Google's Science Fair - I've decided to try a virtual science fair, for students in my 8th grade science class in a rural school in Iowa.

This year, I'd like to collaborate with others and open the doors past the walls of my school building.  I am inviting people in virtually to view the top 10 scoring 8th grade science projects to help us decide on a winner!  Those who would like to participate will be asked to view and evaluate 10 student science fair projects - seen in a short (2:30 minute max) video the students created to explain their project & complete a short evaluation form for each video.
Let's break it down:
Who: Anyone who is interested in student science fair projects, could be people working in the science field, people who are passionate about science, teachers, or even students at other schools
What: review 10 videos created by students explaining the project they explored and complete a short evaluation form for each video during a two-week period
Where: At your home!  The videos will be posted on an online site and I will email you the evaluation form
Why Would I Do This?  To help give students an outside perspective on their projects that they have created and encourage students who participate in science inquiry!
How Do I participate? If you would like to participate, please just send me an email (abridge@mid-prairie.k12.ia.us) telling me your name and location and if you are a teacher who wants your class to participate - what age group will be participating.
The videos will be posted online April 14 - 26th I would ask you view the projects during this two-week window and complete evaluation forms by April 26th.

Google Hangouts

We all know that Google is taking over everything, but man is it making my life better and easier!

I can not say enough good things about Google Hangouts!  Have you ever done one?

I had seen the sweet commercial of dad & daughter at college & the muppets, but didn't think much about it.  Then I was asked to do a Google Hangout that would be record the interview that I was doing which would be uploaded to YouTube...and I was like WOW!  I learned a lot about this program and so since some of my best friends live far away I decided to invite them to a hangout.  My friend Jen calls it the "Space Meeting."  It has been awesome.  We have fun with the crazy hats and sound effects and it has been even better because we can all talk at once!  We have been trying to make a weekly/biweekly event.  And I've really loved it - it's reconnected us in a whole new way!
Today was a snow day for my school district.  We knew the crazy snow was coming, so I asked students if they would want to try to work on conferences online with me today.  For the most part, it has worked awesome!  With the screenshare feature, I was able to see their projects and give them notes of improvement.  I was able to get through 10 conferences today and I count that as a success!  10 conferences that I don't have to try to make up on Monday along with everything else that we missed out on today.  It was fantastic - I got so much done...I think I should be able to count this as a school day!!