Tips For Education

This year I tried a lot of new things: using EngageNY modules, teaching Shakespeare to middle school students, and testing out the web tool Storyboard That. All three of these new experiments came together for me in a performance task for an end-of-the-year unit. I wanted to expose my 8th grade students to Shakespeare before they reached high school. I decided that the play A Midsummer Night's Dream would be a good choice. It has an engaging plot, a lot of humor, and sets students up to successfully read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade. Fortunately, EngageNY has a module that focuses on this play , so I didn't have to come up with daily lesson plans. As the unit came to a close, the students were supposed to complete one final performance task: a Character Confessional. Here is the explanation from the EngageNY unit overview : In this third unit, and after studying the thematic concept of control throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, students will write a narrative that will act...

When students are working on long or short term projects, it is important for the teacher and the students to be able to easily track group progress. Trello does this in a very visual and drag-and-drop fashion. Signing up for Trello is easy, especially if you use the Google sign-in option.  The website uses the metaphor of a board where users create lists and cards. Each list can have multiple cards and users assigned to each card. Once the teacher creates a board and lists, students can easily be searched for and added to the board. Trello board for my students' screencasting project. Currently, my students are working on a video project with multiple steps. I have created a board for the project and a list for each step along the way. After adding my students to the board, they each create a card with explains where they are at on that step and who is in their group. When a group finishes a step in the project they simply drag their card to the next list, which is also the next s...

I am currently trying one of  Engage NY's ELA modules  in my English class. In order to build background for the novel for the unit, the module has the students complete a  Gallery Walk  with primary sources. The sources range from poetry, to images, to quotes from historical figures. I decided to digitize this process and brainstormed the best solution. I needed to recreate the sticky note aspect of a gallery walk, but also keep all of the student comments organized. I thought about putting the primary sources on a Google Doc and then having students add comments, but this would create too many comments in the margin since each student had to comment on each source. I decided instead to put each primary source on a Google Slide and create a link to a Padlet wall for that slide. Students spent time reading and observing each slide for the gallery walk, and then clicking on the link to add to the padlet wall for the slide. Students were able to add their comments...

As the new school begins you may be looking for ways to use Google Drive with your students. Recently Google created a new tool called Google Classroom and made it available to all GAFE accounts. This tool allows teachers to use Google Drive to distribute, collect, and grade assignments using Google tools. If you have ever used Drive before with students, you know that it can be a bit tricky to set up efficiently, especially for non-tech-savvy teachers. Google Classroom makes this much easier and I think it will be very appealing to many teachers. Thankfully Google has made available a lot of tools to help with the setup and use of Google classroom. Below is a link to the help section. Google Classroom Help Google has also included a short video that explains the basics of classroom. In addition many teachers have created walkthroughs. Roger Nixon created the video below that shows the teacher and student view side-by-side. Finally, Google made the image below that walks you through 1...

Instagrok is a research tool that allows students to search trusted websites and provides search results in a visual format. Students can view the websites within Instagrok and star the ones that fit their topic. This web tool also provides a work space for students to begin paraphrasing and analyzing the sources they have chosen. Students do not need an account to begin using Instagrok, but signing in allows a student to save her work from session to session. If a student already has a Google account, the student can sign in using this account. The opening page has a search box where students can enter a question or the topic they are researching. The results are presented in a visual web of terms and ideas related to their topic. Students can click on any part of the web to begin exploring websites which open up within Instagrok. If a website provides information that the student is looking for, the student can press the green pin to save website for view later. Instagrok also helps...

At a recent Edcamp, I facilitated a discussion about student research online. At the beginning of the session all of the teachers agreed that students have poor research skills. In addition, teachers felt unsure how to help students develop the research skills they needed. Based on the ensuing discussion at the Edcamp and input from other teachers, I think there are at least three ways to help students effectively conduct research online. In this first post I will focus on teacher guided research strategies. #1 Link List Perhaps the most basic method is creating a list of links for students to click through. This could be as simple as creating a list of hyperlinks on a Google document. Or it could be something more visually appealing like creating a Blendspace lesson. This website allows a teacher to drag-and-drop resources onto a grid that can be shared with students via a shortened url. Students can then proceed through the lesson one step at a time. I have included a link to video ...

I have been doing a lot of thinking for a  presentation  on technology in the English Language Arts classroom I am planning for the end of January. In the course of my preparation I came across the SAMR model developed by  Ruben N. Puentedura  It provides a framework for how technology impacts pedagogy. This YouTube  video  does a great job briefly explaining each of the stages. As such, the SAMR model can help teachers think about their own implementation of various tech tools in the classroom. While thinking about the best way to present the model to teachers, I came across a  blogpost  by Tim Holt that compared the various levels of tech implementation to ordering coffee from Starbucks. A person ordering from Starbucks can simply substitute its coffee for the homemade version or order a Pumpkin Spice Latte, which truly redefines an espresso drink. This metaphor gave me the inspiration to create the following slide (included here as a stand alon...