WPP PART C

It has been a while since I last blogged about my Wicked Problem.  About a month ago we were asked to think of a wicked problem of practice that we encounter at our school/work place.  Well, most of you already know but I do not have a job as of now. However, I do have an interview soon with Sylvan Learning Center! YAY! Keep your fingers crossed.  When I came up with my Wicked Problem I was thinking of my students I left back in Michigan at my last school I taught at. I taught high school Algebra. The subject of mathematics is like a building block. Everything feeds off of each other and essential to learn and understand before moving on to the next level.  My students coming into their freshman Algebra class where missing the fundamental skills of math.  They seemed to not know their time tables, basic fractions, order of operation, how to add and subtract integers, etc.   It’s not that they weren’t taught the material.  They may have forgotten, may have not understand what was being taught because they were missing those previous skills that build off of each other.  When I was teaching, my co-teacher and I came up with using some technology-integrated lessons because our students each had 1:1 technology with the iPad.  This was my schools first year with the 1:1 iPad rollout.  We started using Study Island (our school paid for this and we were trying it out for a year) & Khan Academy (free).  We also attempted a few flip lessons.   Sadly, I didn’t get to have this experience too long, just shy of 3 months.  But I am more than happy to finally be with my husband.  He got back from Afghanistan at the end of November and that is when I left my school.  Now we are finally able to start our lives with each other.  

WPP PART C

My wicked problem of practice begins by implementing Khan Academy and Study Island into the classroom.  The beneficiary of using these resources is that students can go at their own pace and start at all different levels, start at the level that is necessary for them. This can help my students who are way behind and help those who are at the average level excel.  If you are unfamiliar with Khan Academy or Study Island, please read my WPP Part A & WPP Part B blog(s) to give yourself a better understanding of what these tools can provide to your student(s) and classroom.

For WPP Part C, we were to implement our project and report on surprises, unexpected bumps we had along the road, things that went well and pictures.   Unfortunately, you all recognize that I cannot implement my tech-based strategy with a class right now because I am not employed. However,  I did email my co-teacher to see how things were going back at the school I was teaching at and had explained my project and asked if he could possibly help me out.  I thought he could maybe give me some information of their progress, if they are still using these programs, etc.  Sadly, I never received an email back. He probably did read it but forgot to respond, we all know how many emails we get teaching. Ugh!  That is one thing I don’t miss.  I had informed my professor of this situation and she suggested a few alternatives. 

What I ended up doing was lots of research online. The past couple of weeks I have been researching to see if other schools/teachers have implemented either Study Island or Khan Academy. This was very difficult for me to find. However, I did run across some information of the different ways you could implement Study Island and increase its effectiveness as well as incorporating Khan Academy with Study Island.  So my main focus is on Study Island.

The first thing that needs to be done if you are to implement Study Island into your classroom and get the most of your time is set up lab time.  I would do a test run too.  Maybe only start with using Study Island in one of your class hours and eventually add two, then three… etc.  You can setup your classes through what Study Island refers to as “Class Manager.”  This isn’t necessary but I recommend it because it allows you to run reports and look at data, create assignments, assign certain topics, etc.  You can monitor the progress by looking at the statistics.  This is of great value because as the teacher you can easily see the topics that need reinforcement.  Furthermore, if you were to have a sub, this would be an effective tool for communication so they know what the students should be working on.

An incentive when working on Study Island is to provide some sort of in-class or contest ideas, some type of incentive.  We all seem to work harder when we know there is a prize, right?  This is teaching our students real life skills too, in the work force we strive to get that promotion and that is what our students are going to do but in the classroom. I think that each student should have a goal before they start, or maybe have some classroom goals.  Study Island is not just having students sit and work on practice problems but having that incentive to “want” to get better and put forth the effort.  As educators, we have to push their motivation switch.

Study Island has a lot to take it, it can be a bit overwhelming.  There are so many different ways to approach it/implement it.   You can assess what is learned in your lesson/topic in class and correlate it to what they do in Study Island.  Or for those that are really far behind, they can start from the top to bottom as a general review and having the “Class Manger” set up, you can see where that particular student is struggling. Another great way in implementing this amazing tool is focusing on the standards that have been points of struggle in previous assessments.   It’s not just implementing it into your classroom, but enhancing your lesson with Study Island into your classroom.  You can introduce or conclude your lesson with Study Island.  It even provides a Game Mode which is fun and engaging to the students.

What I love about Study Island is that it provides that feedback, automatic and instant feedback!  Students know right away if they got an answer right or wrong if they passed/didn't pass due to the icons the program provides (see above image).   The students as well as the teacher can check their score and progress.  If you don’t want to always have students using the technology, you can print worksheets and do in-class activities. Study Island provides all of this!   

Study Island has embedded Khan Academy videos within its site to help reinforce those middle school/high school math lessons. IF those aren't videos you are looking for, you can also just go to khanacademy.org. The videos give a brief, step by step lesson on a specific math concept and provide examples. If you look at the image below it gives a great implementation idea.

The main thing that I want all of you to know is that Study Island is available and is a great resource. Like all things though, it take time to learn. I still don’t know all the amazing things it can do. I recommend all of you go to the site,  www.StudyIsland.com and just explore.  See what it has to offer you in your classroom and if it is of great use to you, please create a class in the class manager and have fun with it!

Mobile Learning in the Classroom

Though I am only 24 years old, I have seen a ton of changes with technology within my lifetime.   I remember my first cassette tape, the Spice Girls, and how excited I was to get it! Can't ya tell?! 

That's me with the Spice Girls Cassette tap, oh what a fun birthday that was! :)

Yes, that's really my Dad! Look how big that is! HA!

Then I got their CD, but soon after that MP3s came out, now we have iPods and can store all of our music through the web on iTunes!  Fascinating isn’t it?! All of this happened within such a short amount of time. What will the world be like another 10 years from now?  My parents have a ton of Disney VHS tapes of all the classics; sadly we don’t have a VHS player anymore and want them all on DVD or Blue ray!  But will DVDs and Blue rays be here 10 years from now, or will there be something different?  I can remember the first computer my family got, with a HUGE monitor.   Now I own two laptops and an iPad and a thin flat screen monitor.  One day, these won’t be enough and I will need to upgrade. Wonder what those devices will look like?  As a child my parents filmed us with a big ole video recorder, now they have one that fits in my mother’s purse and has a lot better quality. 

 I can remember being in school with chalkboards, overhead projectors…now we have dry erase boards, maybe some of us are lucky to have Smart Boards, we have ELMOS, ceiling projectors, clickers, etc.  What is the future bringing us with technology? More importantly, what will it do to education?

If you look around us, today’s population lives and feeds on technology. We rely on the internet for everyday things, whether it is work relative or for our own entertainment. We carry our cell phones/smart phones everywhere we go!  We often ask ourselves, “How did we used to do it?”  We can’t remember. We live in a world that is fast pace and one where everyone expects simultaneous results.  We can communicate across the globe! It’s pretty cool, yet pretty scary at the same time.  

So where am I going with this? Let’s now talk about the education aspect.  We seem to not be bringing the ‘real world’ into the classroom. We are having our students learn the same way we did, even how our parents did: paper pencil, no cell phone policy, etc.  Is that how the work force is? Isn’t it our job as educators to prepare our students for college, the workforce so that they one day can give back to the society in a positive manner?   Some schools are trying to adapt with the technology, but all of us must do it.  We all need to be taking those tiny baby steps and gradually bring our students to the 21^st century mind set in the classroom.

I call myself “tech savvy” when it comes to explaining technological things to my parents and grandparents because I feel like I have grown and adapted to the technology throughout my lifetime,  I’m young and not afraid to push buttons and well, I’m working on my MAET.  But when it comes to my students, geeezzzz…they know so much! They know more than me! When I mention the use of technology or allow my students to use it in my classroom, right away my students become more engaged and motivate to learn.  That’s how they learn outside the classroom, so why not bring it to  the classroom.  The hard part we have to consider is the restrictions/rules.  It is vital that as educators we have good guidelines, a rigor structure and procedure that students follow and understand when they can use their device (know the proper etiquette), what is allowed/not allowed, etc. Some schools struggle with money issues and are not able to have the nice up-to-date technology, but almost every one today, especially high school students have some sort of cell phone/smart phone. That is why for this blog, I focused more on how we can implement cell phones/smart phones into the classroom (generally speaking the high school classroom). 

 I recently became a member of Classroom 2.0 and joined the group “Cell Phones in Education.”  I read some educators blogs, some I found very informative and others I was sad because they have the mindset that phones shouldn't be used at all in the classroom. I disagree.

What tools did I try?

When I had my classroom, I let my students use their phones to read books, check their grades on PowerSchool, blog, tweet, record video, audio, take pictures, etc. However, most of the time they had to ask for permission.  I think as a teacher, if you allow students to do these things and trust and respect them with using the technology, it is almost like an incentive to the students. They like using it; they don’t want it taken away and will hopefully be dependable and trustworthy while using it and use it wisely.   Cell phones today can do so much, things I didn’t think would ever be capable.

I have also tried a program called Socrative. Socrative:  “is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets” (socrative.com)  It is very easy to use and fun. However, I used this with iPads not cell phones. It provides instant feedback, collects the student's data into an excel document, allows you to edit and create your own quizzes which can be multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank...you choose. The kids really enjoyed this. I used it as bell work at least once a week. 

What ways am I thinking about integrating mobile technology into YOUR classroom?

Polleverywhere.com:   a way to gather live responses.  It can work with texting, web, twitter, etc.

Though I have not used this in the classroom, I would love to. This could be a good warm-up or wrap up.  You could post something like: “What did you learn yesterday? What are you still having trouble with?” etc.  What I like about it is the instant feedback.

Twitter- A lot of students have twitter.  Some teachers have shared that they created a twitter account for their students.  The teacher posts reminders of tests, assignments and even funny math jokes! Haha! The teacher that did this used hash tags of the hour and subject to help clarify what was for what class.  It is an instant connection and how we follow the world today.  Great idea!   I would love to do this if I had a classroom right now.  I recommend checking out this article I found about practical advice for teaching with twitter.

I also found an article on 40 quick ways to use mobile phones in the classroom.  Check it out! 

What challenges do I foresee?

The challenges that I foresee are those certain students who will use their cell phone or device for the wrong reason and ruin it for the others. How to deal with it, the consequences, how to monitor the students, etc.

Data Visualization Lab

I am amazed by all the different types of resources out there in creating infographics. Not only that, but the majority of them are FREE. I am a person that loves having a visual representation of any sort of information, whether it deals with numbers (data), knowledge, timelines…anything! As youngsters, we all start learning by picture books. When I read a book nowadays, (no there are not pictures)...haha...I take the words and create a picture in my head to help tell the story. We learn visually, remember things visually. You may not remember someone’s name, but you remember their face. You may not remember the name of the street but you remember landmarks on the street. I think you get where I am going. 

 When it comes to higher education (middle school and above) you start to see less pictures.  Kids start to become less interested because they feel bombarded with the words. Why can’t we still have all the text but have lots of pictures throughout and infographics to help explain the information? If I were to read a case study and read its results, it is a lot easier for me to look at the results through some type of visualization, graphs, bulleted items, charts, etc. I think most people are visual learners or have some combination of it.

The three resources that I explored through this lab were:  Glogster, Piktochart and Tagxedo.  I spent a good time playing on all of them and floating back and forth and deciding which one I wanted to use to create my infographic.   I ended up falling in love with Glogster. Reason being, Glogster is like making an electronic collage, every girl likes making collages! Haha…

Anyways, Glogster allows you to not only use photos on your collage, but text, videos and music! How cool is that! It’s a 21^st century collage!  It was free, user-friendly and in all honesty I really enjoyed this lab.  When creating my Glogster aka “Glog”, I thought of how I could use this in my Algebra class. I came across many ways I could use this in my class:  A timeline of a famous mathematician or the mathematics world/inventions, showing steps to solve certain problems/theorems, comparing things, showing data, etc.

I chose my glog to be an informational piece.  I put a collage together of the famous mathematician, Blaise Pascal.  Instead of reading a 5 page paper about a famous mathematician, students could create a Glog providing pictures, a brief summary of their contributions to the math world, pictures and videos. Please check it out here. 

Piktochart is very similar to Glogster a resource that allows you to create visual stories to engage your audience and provide visualization. However, with Piktochart I was limited to what layouts I could use because I was using the free version.  In addition, you couldn’t have videos and music clips on your infographic.  However, it is still a great tool and one that I will most definitely use in the future. Especially if it is something I would want to print out and provide copies to my students.  

Tagxedo turns famous speeches, news articles, slogans, themes, any words you want into a visually, interesting looking “word cloud.”   - tagxedo.com

Using Tagxedo was a lot of fun. I had seen word clouds before and always wanted to know how to do it, now I do! Tagxedo allowed me to choose the type of color of my wording as well as the shape of cloud, the theme, the font, the overall layout. Tagxedo was able to tag other words that corresponded to my topic of the famous mathematician, Blaise Pascal.  Please see my word cloud of Pascal below:

Words that relate to Blaise Pascal...

Due to it being this time of year (Valentine's Day) and loving Algebra, I created an Algebra word cloud shaped as a heart. haha! 

I love Algebra! :) 

Flipped PD

What am I thinking right now? There are so many resources out there for teachers. The hard part is finding the right ones that work for you. I being a math teacher have a hard time finding resources for the high school level. I want to make sure the resource I find is user friendly, something that not only I could benefit from but my students, I want to know how much it costs, how often I will use it, if it will engage my students, etc. My group creates a flipped presentation of two application resources that we all highly recommend each and every one of you who read our blogs check out and hopefully implement into your classroom.

"What technology can I use when teaching?"

Before you watch our screencasts or learn about these applications I want you to know that the flipped PD presentations will present:

• The Pedagogy/Why should Teachers use this?
• How to use it?

Both of the presentations go at a nice steady pace. Feel free to watch the tutorials more than once if you feel necessary or to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Both of these applications can be used for any subject. In our presentation, we focus these apps through the eyes of a math teacher. During the Quizlet presentation there will be a view breaks where you can repeat the previous section or take a quiz and answer a few questions to help give us feedback on your understanding. Please read about each before you watch! Enjoy!

EDUCREATIONS allows you to create and share amazing video lessons through a browser or iPad. My focus of my groups project was the pedagogy of Educreations, the “why” should teachers use it.  I want you all to watch the screencast so I don’t want to give too much away…haha. In a nutshell, I would say that Educreations turns your screen into a recordable whiteboard; it is a free application and very user friendly.  It really has a lot to offer!

 The thing that got me most excited about Educreations was you could finally get your chance at trying a flipped lesson. You could make your own video and have your students watch it that evening for homework, then the follow day in class they do the actual  'homework' but do it at school.  Students can stop, resume, rewind, and repeat the videos when necessary. They can go at their own pace. Furthermore, our group talked about how using Educreations you could have your students teach each other.  Sometimes the best way to learn something is to be able to teach it. This could also work as an incentive. If you feel a student in your first tri-mester class did an excellent job in a video explaining how to solve multi-step equations, you could use that video that the student made to show and teach his peers! How cool is that! Students would be working hard to get their videos shown in class.  You can have videos for students who are absent, videos on frequent/common problems; you can browse other teacher’s videos that may be beneficial to you, etc. Plus, you will always have a copy of it; it is saved on the application. I hope just hearing this you all want to sign up and get Educreations! Our screencast of Educreations walks you through the steps of the “how to” sign up and use.

QUIZLET is a great tool for students to study language, vocab…anything really! Students and teachers can create and share their own electronic flash cards or browse and find flashcards to help them study almost any topic. It’s a free and easy to use application. Quizlet is a simple way for students to study on their own through their own choice of technology whether it is their smartphone, computer, iPad, etc.  The nice thing about technology is it allows us to do lots of things in different locations. It is allowing us to take this online class. It is allowing you all to read my blog from wherever. Well, students don’t just need to study in their library anymore or in their bedroom. They can study wherever! What do they always have with them? Their phones! Students can use their phones to help them study for any particular class using Quizlet. They can browse and find flashcards that are already made, the teacher can create cards for them to download or students can just create their own. Using flashcards is an effective memory aid and helps people learn material quickly. The nice thing about having electronic flashcards is students won’t lose them, you can read them and you can share them/store them. Flashcards don’t just have to be a thing for the youngsters, it should continue on throughout one’s entire education. Learn more about the steps and “why” teachers should us this in the classroom by checking out our Flipped PD on Quizlet.

 

 

Group #2-Storyboard and Script

In our group we decided to do our Flipped PD assignment on two apps that can be used in the classroom with using an iPad or PC.  Due to the fact that each one of us are math teachers, our focus is how these apps benefit a math classroom.

We are creating our presentation as if we are presenting to our math department and/or at a math conference.  We have four members in our group, including myself so we broke down our project into four sections:

1. Pedagogy (Why teachers should use the app) of Educreations - Natalie
2. How to use Educreations - Liz
3. Pedagogy of Flashcardlet/Quizlet - Sophia
4. How to use Flashcardlet/Quizlet – Corbin

The first 10 slides show my storyboard for the pedagogical aspects of Educreations.  As a group we are using Camtasia to create our final project of the flipped PD, so as a group we had agreed upon creating a presentation through Google Presentation to later import on the final presentation through Camtasia.  As you look through the slides you will see:

• Why teachers should use educreations.
• How educreations works for the students
• How educreations supports learning
• Show through the eyes of a math classroom (6 different types of learning)

Very close to the end of each one of our portions of the slide you will notice that each of us provide a script that covers the slides we made and what will be said when we do the overall presentation of our flipped PD.

To have a better understanding you can checkout our timeline/script/notes on our Google doc. 

My Web Conferencing Experience

As a member of Group 2 (Math & Tech) we had to meet twice for our “first web conferencing.” This was due to the fact that we all weren’t there the first time around.   It has been difficult for our group because we are on different time zones. I being on Pacific Time, two on Eastern Standardized Time, and one being on Mountain Time it made scheduling this meeting difficult.  The first time we met was on a Friday afternoon and the three of us that were able to get together talked for about 45 minutes and collaborative and bounced a ton of ideas around for the technology/teaching tool. However, we weren’t sure if we were on the right track and decided to do a little bit more researching. Though we met for a while we didn’t really get anywhere! Ha-ha... A group member ended up putting a poll together through Doodle to decide what times worked best for everyone, very wise and something we will continue to do. We ended up meeting again the following morning because we could ALL be present. We had our web conferencing through Google Hangout.  

Doodle Poll

YAY for Saturday AM! :)

Was there any awkward or surprising moments?

HA…of course, it was the first time we all met! Plus, I had never done any sort of web conferencing before and had never used Google Hangout.  Let’s just say the second time around was a lot easier because I had already seen two of them and had a better idea of how Google Hangout worked after learning and experimenting with it the day before. A lot of times when I get nervous, I try making people laugh and I did that a few times throughout our discussion to help ease the tension and still try and have fun while learning.   There was a time though that was awkward were everyone was discussing about creating a Google doc and typing stuff in and I couldn’t find it. I was going back to my Gmail and went to ‘My Drive’ on the tool bar…not realizing you could also create a Google doc through the hangout itself.  Google Hangout = Awesome! So… they all walked me through the steps.  A bit embarrassing, but I figured it out.  I’m learning here and enjoying it.  

Instant messaging, having face to face conversation and creating a document together!

Though we all agreed on Google Hangouts, there was a lot of software that our group considered. As a group we mentioned a lot of them in our discussion board.

Besides the tools we had learned in our lab exercise, we considered the following:

• ·         Meetingl
• ·         meetings.io
• ·         Vsee
• ·         Face Flow
• ·         Microsoft Lync
• ·         WebHuddle
• ·         Yugma
• ·         Google Hangouts---WINNER WINNER!!!

I think I am becoming a huge Google fan, I think most Google things seem to be pretty user friendly.   The nice thing about Google Hangouts  we could not only have video conferencing, but instant message between all of us, view documents, watch YouTube videos on things we were discussing, etc.  Google Hangouts required a Google account and a Google+ page which is free, no installation. This was another reason why we choose to use this resource considering we all had a Gmail account and didn’t need to have another password and username to remember, ha-ha…and it was free of course.  As of now, we still all agree to continue to use Google Hangouts for our future conferences.

This experience could be useful in any classroom, but for a mature class. Maybe the advanced students or even 11^th or 12^th graders.  Using Google Hangouts is a great tool.  I would say a huge benefit for all of it is the time-saving.  A group of students could be working on a project face to face through the computer and not have to drive to each other houses; they can be in all different locations just as long as they have Wi-Fi.  The method of communication through my experience with web conferencing is just as effective as a face to face conversation.   In addition, being able to text, communicate verbally, instant message, access the Internet, upload files etc…it is crazy that that’s even possible!  I think if I were to use this in my Algebra class I would assign a group project were they had to write a report about a mathematician and each contribute some part to the paper, prepare a PowerPoint presentation and maybe provide some examples of what that person contributed to the mathematics world.