A year in reflection....without technology

My first 2 years of teaching, my students were one to one with iPads. I learned to absolutely love it! My creativity was on high, I was energetic about it, and could not stop learning about it. I then moved. I love my new life, I bought a house in the country, teach at an early college high school (one of the few). I have tools, I have support, only one thing missing....my technology.

At the beginning of the school year, I realize quickly I was going to miss my students having one to one. We have a wonderful program here called PASS, where instead of a student missing school from a suspension, or some other circumstance, they go to PASS. The thing is, they are still enrolled in your class. Now, I kept up with my PASS students "okay" this year. I felt like I could do much better. I told the administrator that runs PASS, how much easier it would be if my students have a device to get them work everyday. What she quoted stuck with me for the rest of the year, "Don't you feel like a rich person who has gone into poverty?" I do! I really do, it was so easy to go into technology, and then when I no longer had those resources, it was difficult to teach my way.

My Ag Power class was pretty easy to teach without technology, but I feel like they didn't create as much as my former Ag Power class. Yes, these students welded more, built more, and work on more hands on projects, but I feel as like the didn't create anything meaningful. I would love for them to get on a computer and create a "how to" forum and post how to actually do or make what they made in class for the world to see. I would love to have them make safety videos to share with other students. I wouldn't say that class was a flop, but there could have been more to it.

My Landscape Management class started out pretty good. We started with design, but it would have been great for the kids to find pictures of elements of design themselves, instead of my showing examples. It also would have been nice to do my plant ID quizzes on Quizlet, instead of old cards that get torn up and lost. When we went over pests, each student could have researched a pest and presented on it, but the computer lab is taken up by core classes (which they should be).

There was so much I could have done with my Food Science class. One day I wanted to discuss health inspection reports, and I had to show them ones from our community and read them to them. How cool would it had been, for them to look that up on their own. Maybe correct the problem, or discuss how too. Even though my textbooks are new, the data is from 2003. My standards say CURRENT trends....CURRENT! A lot has happened in the food industry since 2003!

Now, I am not complaining about my school one bit, just how I taught as a teacher this year, and how I felt a little restricted. I love my school, my administration, my co workers, and most of all my students. And I am very happy to say that, last Friday I found out that I will be one of the teachers piloting a Chromebook Program in my classroom! I cannot wait to show the teachers and students the wonderful things that can happen with one to one technology!

I'm back, and going Chrome!

First off, I would like to apologize for the lack of blogs. Moving into a new house, teaching a new school, and all that goes with it made the blog on the back burner. Also, the fact my new school is not 1 to 1 yet, the motivation and passion for 1 to 1 technology has been a little lower than it has been in the past. BUT GOOD NEWS! I am back! We have 4 more school days left, my finals are written, my kiddos are ready, and all I have to do is put those Scrantons in the machine, and upload those puppies into the gradebook, and I am ready for summer!

Now, the second part of the title of the blog. Going Chrome. Yesterday at our teacher's meeting, we were told about my school's 1 to 1 initiative. Our students are expected to be 1 to 1 in the high school by 2018, and a few more pilot programs will be implemented next school (of course I applied! Spent a Saturday making the movie.). Anyways, all the teachers in the corporation received a Chromebook to play around on for the summer. I love this. The best way to implement a technology tool in the classroom, is to get in into the hands of the teacher first.

Reason why, is because the teacher's are going to have to put on yet another hat once 1 to 1 is implemented. Even though my student's are very technologically savvy (they taught me how to use snapchat), they don't understand how to submit homework, and do actual schoolwork on the devices. Not their fault, and no they aren't stupid, they just  aren't used to that type of school culture. It's just like how I had to train my current students to put their worksheet in the set of drawers in the back of my classroom.

The past two days I have been playing around on this Chromebook, and I have so many great ideas and new things I want to try on here. I have already been making a lesson on SymbalooEDU, and looking into Chromebook apps. I'll be posting more on my discoveries I come across in the next few days.

Flipping the Classroom with EdPuzzle.

If you ever want great professional development and have a random hour to spare check out edweb.net. There are tons of great webinars on technology in the classroom, grant writing, pretty much anything you can think of. Also, you get a certificate for doing professional development for one hour. I was on there one night and introduced to EdPuzzle.

EdPuzzle is a site that allows you to edit youtube videos, or upload your own videos for students to watch. The part I love about EdPuzzle is that you can add questions to the video. The video will pause, and students have to answer the question before they can move on with the rest of the video. They have the option to re-watch a section as well. I used EdPuzzle in my classroom, I had 3 special needs students in my class. It was great because they could re-watch a section over and over again until they got it, and they were doing the same work as the rest of the class! You also can track whether or not a student did (or is doing) his or her work. I love this when I am on a conference and not at school. I can get on EdPuzzle and look at how productive my students are being with the sub (and email them if they are not).

You can see here what student watched the EdPuzzle, and what students did.

The other part of EdPuzzle I love is that it ranks students from lowest to the highest in your class. It's instant data that can drive your teaching the next time you meet with the students. A math teacher at a school I taught at used EdPuzzle and completely flipped her classroom. Students would go home, do the EdPuzzle, and come to school and do the assignment where she could help them in person. She said that her quiz scores improved from using EdPuzzle.

EdPuzzle color codes students that need help.

I am debating on flipping my agriculture classroom at my new school. The fact that I have an awesome shop, and access to a greenhouse, means I can do more labs. My thought is that I could create modules on EdPuzzles students need to go through, then have them do labs one they master the content. It's a working progress, but I may try it in a few of my courses.

It's a Kahoot!

Last school year when I was introduced to Kahoot, I thought to myself, “Sweet! an individual jeopardy!” I used it for a review in all of my classes, but I found that students towards the end of the school year when I was reviewing for finals, they were getting “Kahoot-ed” out. 

I wanted to figured out more ways to use Kahoot in my classroom than just a review game. I wanted to bring it into instruction.  I came up with 3 ways, that are very successful.

• Discussion after a reading the text.
• When you assign a reading to students to read at home, how do you know if they read and understand the reading? Often we quiz students the morning after, and then lecture. Why don’t we quiz and lecture at the same time? By playing Kahoot you are getting feedback on concepts over the reading. And because of this, you know what you need to discuss/explain more. It also brings every student into the conversation in some way.

• True/False Pretest/Pre-lesson
• Ever have a time when you can’t get students motivated for a lesson? I need to teach safety to my Agriculture, Power, Structure, and Technology, and students typically grown when I start the lesson. I started playing a true/false Kahoot before class with accidents, safety tips, etc. The momentum from the game of Kahoot keeps them going for the rest of the lesson.

• Ghost Mode!
• In the winter of last school year Kahoot came out with ghost mode. Ghost mode is where the students play once, then play again against themselves. I use ghost mode in my classroom by having the students play at the beginning of the class period, teach the lesson, then try to beat themselves in ghost mode at the end. Students think it’s fun to see improvement from the beginning of class to the end.

Students can play against themselves in ghost mode!

My Personal Digital Foot Print, And How to Help My Students With Theirs

If you google Nicole Terry, you first get a small banner of pictures of what I am assuming are "Nicole Terrys" but none are me. As you go down the list, the next post is a list of the "Nicole Terrys" on Facebook, a website of essays written by a Nicole Terry (not me), and then a list of "Nicole Terrys" on LinkedIn. Then another website that is not me, two youtube channels, not me again, and then, finally, my twitter account.

So if people just googled my name on the first page, you will find my twitter account. I am looking for myself "incognito" on google chrome, so it is as if a stranger is looking for me. On my twitter you will find silly quotes, my dogs, my cat, things about FFA, and things about education. No cussing, inappropriate pictures, or bashing of other people on there.

My Nicole Terry Facebook, I am not even one of the top searches anywhere. My Facebook is private, and only for my family and friends. Nothing on there is inappropriate by any means, but I did have it since high school, and like most high school students I would post moody things.

I have an app on my iPhone called TimeHop, and everyday it sends me the tweets and Facebook posts I posted in the past on that day. When I first got it, it was really fun. I saw my old posts on dog shows I won, pictures of old friends, really neat to sit there and take in some memories. Then I started getting posts from when I was a teenager. I never did anything that could get me in trouble, but I didn't post the kindest thing either. There was one post from when my parents were getting divorced, and I was angry with my mother, I wrote a paragraph about "what a mother was" and "how mine did not live up to those expectations" as my Facebook status. Now, I will never take away how I felt, but it really wasn't something I should have posted. Looking at my friends list at that time, would have I have told that to some of those people in person? No, so why did I post it for them to read online?

I read stories all the time of young teenagers losing friends, scholarships, getting kicked off of sports teams, suspended, and even expelled from post they have made online. I am lucky that, never posted things that cause that too me, but I did make mistakes.

The new school I am moving too is not one to one yet, but will be in a few years. Even though I am an agriculture teacher, I will share my online experiences with my students. I will stress, "if you don't want that audience to see it, then don't post it."

After taking some time googling myself and adding my town and college to the search, I can only find my twitter, LinkedIn, things I was involved in at Purdue, and some results from the dog shows. They only thing I can really be embarrassed about are some of my placings at the dog shows. :)

Curated Resources - Do you Symbaloo?

With all of these resources popping up everywhere, sometimes it is hard to keep up. Before I would rely on Google Chrome telling me what sites I was on in the past, but searching through your history is time consuming.

I have lost resources because I forgot all about them. In February, the eLearning specialist at my school had a challenge where we were to make a Symbaloo for one of our classes. I started one, and fell in love with it.

I have Symbaloo pages for all of my classes now. I also made a teacher page for myself. Every time I find a new tech tool I like, I add a tile to my Symbaloo page. They are all there, along with my professional development links as well. You can find mine at https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/teacherpage6. Other teachers, and companies create Symbaloos and share them with others.

 How Symbaloo works is that you just create a "tile" but copying and pasting a link in it. You can customize it by adding pictures and names to the tiles. Students can make their own as well when doing research.

Symbaloo is my homepage, it should be for every teacher.

Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is not just a test. In life after high school (and college for some), how many multiple choice tests does a person come across? What about true/false? None. Why do we test students knowledge this way then? When is a student going to be asked "Who was the 16th president of the United States?" in the real world? Now taking an analyzes of how the decisions of that president affected our country, that is something students can use in life.

Authentic assessment is testing the students on their skills, rather than just their knowledge. Theses assessments are more relevant than just a test to students.

Can authentic assessment be used in any subject area? My answer is yes. Every subject area has standards that promotes higher order thinking in students. Key words like "demonstrate", "create",  "evaluate", and "analyze" are actions that cannot be written on a multiple choice test.

Here are some examples of authentic assessments I have came up with for various subject areas:

• English: Have students write a letter in a form of a five paragraph essay on how they deserve something (a game, new puppy, award, etc.) This is authentic assessment, because they will have to evaluate themselves, analyzing their target audience, and create an argument for their purposes. This is real world application as well. I breed dogs, and if a potential puppy buyer cannot email me using proper grammar and sentence structure, or not be able to communicate with me in writing, I will not sell them a dog.

• History/Social Studies: Speaking to people not in education, most believe this subject area is useless. It angers me, because it is not just about the facts of history. It is what we do with those facts. In this subject area you can have students analyze the past, and see if it will happen in the future. Students can study what past presidents political platforms were, and compare them to the political platforms people are running for today. Students can ask questions in this subject area and make predictions on current events.

• Math: We do math everyday. We all spent money! Students can calculate spending, make charts of what they spend money on, and calculate interest. If that isn't relevant to students, I don't know what is.

Other subject areas like science, health, art, music, and the vocational areas all have "hands on" activities for students. Most of these activities have rubric for mastery.

I teach high school, I am used to teenagers when it comes to evaluating them. In high school and middle school, I believe these students can demonstrate mastery, based on my examples above. I struggle when it comes to the elementary level. I rarely ever work with these students, but I believe they can demonstrate mastery in subjects. We had a mini-economy in my elementary school. We were to create shops, pay "rent" for our booths, make something, and sell it to other students. We would then see if we made money, or lost money. I think examples like this show that authentic assessment works in the elementary grades as well.

The last question "Is it practical to ask teachers to complete these types of activities in the current, high stakes testing environment? YES! Why would we not? If a student can think critically, they can conquer those tests. If we have them analyze text already in class, or make calculations in real world settings, they can relay those skills on to a test. Most of the standardized tests are moving towards higher order thinking skills. If we expect those in our classes, they can apply them too the test.

Why should we teach students towards a test, when we should be teaching them towards the world they will be living in anyways?