Where is Your Vision as You Drive Your Classroom?

This morning, I heard a powerful lesson presented by Chris Seidman. In the lesson, he gave an analogy to living your life that I immediately applied to the classroom. So, here is my twist to his analogy!

First of all, imagine yourself driving your car. You can continually look in the rear view mirror to see what is behind you, but without looking ahead, you will swerve and not be prepared for what is ahead of you. Additionally, you can continually look through the windshield without ever referencing what is around you, however your navigation could be altered if you do not reflect periodically on what is behind you. Or finally, you can drive looking through the windshield, ever so often checking your surroundings through the rear view mirror as you head toward your destination. Think of how small the rear view mirror is as opposed to the large windshield. This reflects the amount of time you should spend looking in each direction to maximize the probability of a successful journey.

As a teacher, you take your students on a journey of learning. If you continue to only use teaching strategies that you have used in the past, your students will not be prepared for what is in their future. However, if you are only implementing new teaching strategies and do not reflect back on effective strategies used in the past, there can be learning bumps along the way as well. Educators must have a good balance of using new teaching strategies that prepare students to be successful using 21st Century Skills, yet periodically look back on the strategies used in the past to help guide the implementation of 21st Century Skills so that student learning is enhanced and they are prepared for their future.

New students are about to arrive in your classroom, buckled up and ready for you to take them on a learning journey. Where is your vision as you prepare lesson activities for the upcoming school year?

Using Gaggle for Collaboration and Communication

Every year, the Instructional Technology department looks at the services and applications we offer for students and teachers to determine if we will continue with what we have or move to a new service or application. This past year was no different. As E-Rate proposals came in, we began to look closely at a new service for student email. To remain in accordance with the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), all student email and online navigation must be filtered when using school equipment. We looked at numerous solutions, but continued to return back to Gaggle as the solution we would use beginning in the 2014-2015 school year.


Gaggle's solution not only included student email, but also included an online classroom environment, digital lockers linked with Google Docs, student and teacher blogs, classroom discussion boards, and Gaggle Tube as a venue for students to watch YouTube videos that teachers have assigned for lessons. With the one-to-one project being extended to all 7th-12th graders, the Gaggle solution gives teachers one area where communication, collaboration, and sharing can all take place in a safe and filtered environment.

Gaggle filters uses human monitoring. This means that a person looks at the email, blog post, or discussion post to determine if school administration needs to be notified on flagged posts. Not only are they looking for inappropriate language, but also for posts that are harassing, bullying, or contain thoughts of suicide. In any of these cases, the school administration is contacted immediately, even outside of school hours.

On July 22nd, a group of teachers participated in the first overview of Gaggle. Below, you will see their comments about how Gaggle will enhance their classrooms, how they intend to use Gaggle in their classroom to enhance the learning environment, and how the use of the discussion boards and student blogs can be utilized for students to share what they have learned.

Preparing Students for the Real World - A Summary of Chapter 9 in Eric Sheninger's "Digital Leadership"

As school systems prepare teachers to educate students, the focus of student learning must move from what is scored on a test. Education must prepare students for what they will face beyond the school walls. Schools must begin to make changes so that experiences in real life are reflected inside the school walls.

Twenty-first Century Skills, or Essential Skills as Mr. Sheninger calls them, must be part of every teacher's toolkit for lesson activities to meet the diverse needs of each student. Incorporating activities that allow students to collaborate, communicate, think critically, and use their creativity to present new knowledge will help build these skills so that they can be productive outside of school. In addition, teaching students entrepreneurism through artifacts of learning, as well as global awareness through connections with their own peers around the world enable students to use these same skills in the workforce. And finally, lesson activities must be developed so that technology proficiencies, digital media literacy, and digital responsibility are part of the learning environment. Allowing students to solve real world problems with real work tools is the key to making sure our students our ready to tackle the world in front of them.

With this vision in mind, CISD has devoted itself to becoming a 1:1 school district. This next school year, every 7th-12th grade student will be issued their own netbook/notebook to use in class. Providing students with the technology is a key step that allows teachers to begin to make the changes necessary to fully integrate technology in their classrooms. A change in pedgogy is difficult for many teachers. However, when the teacher begins to move from the giver of all knowledge to the facilitator of student-centered learning, students become more engaged in their own learning and they begin to seek answers to their own questions instead of waiting on the teacher for those answers. When we engage the students in their own learning, their learning is enhanced.

References

Sheninger, E. (2014). Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times. Corwin Press.

Tech Academy - July 14-17

Over the past 4 days, a group of 18 teachers have worked on implementing 21st Century Skills and Technology TEKS into their existing curriculum. With 21st Century Skills, new technology TEKs, and secondary students in a one-to-one environment, teachers must be prepared to teach differently than they have in the past.

This summer in Tech Academy, we focused on several items:

1. Building a strong PLN (we can never learn enough)
2. Overcoming barriers when infusing technology
3. What is a flipped classroom?
4. Creating an infused lesson using a web app for students to present new knowledge
5. Maintaining a teacher blog
6. Using Google Docs
7. Gaggle.net

It has been another excellent week of training. I learned right along with the teachers as they shared new resources they found each day while spending time developing their PLNs. Teachers created their own videos that could be used in a flipped activity using applications such as Screen-cast-o-matic, Smart Recorder, and Powtoons. In addition, teachers went through the lesson activity themselves and created a student sample of a possible student product. The teachers this week have filled their teacher tool boxes with many useful resources as they transform their classrooms into 21st Century learning environments!

Teachers that attended from July 14-17, please reflect upon the week in a comment below. Also include answers to the following questions for me in your comment:

1. In Tech Academy, we used several web apps such as GoSoapBox.com. Answer Garden, Blogger, Google Docs, etc. Which of these web apps are you most excited about implementing in your classroom?
2. How do you see student using the web app you selected in #1 to enhance your curriculum?
3. What level(s) of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy can be reached using this tool? Why? How?