A Branching Form

I have read about these critters on Twitter, but never took the time to wrestle them in submission, until I signed up for #GCISDVV.

Google Forms have been a part of my practice for a while now, because they are so useful for pretty much anything. Last year, during a PBL, my students used their smart phones and Google Forms to take surveys about drug use throughout the school. They were amazed that their data was collected in a nice, neat package. I've used Google Forms for student opinion and feedback on multiple topics.

The forms I used before were one-purpose, flat and linear.

But these interactive forms - beauty!  Responsive and interesting! Differentiated! A web of knowledge!

I used this tutorial from Shake Up Learning. The tutorial is easy to follow, but at first, I couldn't wrap my head around how the page breaks worked, having never used them before. Once I had the 'OIC!' moment, the biggest problem was thinking up questions and finding supplementary material.

And the end result - my very primitive, branching form of nuclear review! 

GCISD Virtual Voyage

Because I have nothing but time *cough*not*cough* I decided to add one more thing to the list.  I'm committed to learning as much as I can about Google Classroom and other tools for next year, so I decided to embark on the Virtual Voyage. After looking through the levels, I decided to work on Level 2.

Lets see how many badges I can earn this summer!

Google Classroom

Four years ago, I was thrilled to be part of Cadre 2 of the Digital Classroom wave that was sweeping over Grapevine-Colleyville. At the time, I was teaching middle school, and I eagerly taught my students new apps and ways to think.  However, I have since moved to teaching high school and have come to realization that iPads and their apps are not really suited to the work I need from my high school students.

Along with my partner in crime, @nagyscience, who will soon be a digital teacher as well, we decided that we were going to commit to using Google Classroom in this down time during 'testing season'.  We would practice our skills and explore the possibilities of it so we could hit the ground running with it next August.

Luckily, I discovered +Alice Keeler, who is a certified Google certified teacher, and an invaluable Twitter resource.  I've clicked on nearly every one of her Tweets and as a result, I'm starting to see the possibilities with Google Classroom. I keep a Google document labeled '1516' to jot down ideas for things to implement in the coming year.

The best part of the experience so far is how quickly I can assess students' work and give them feedback. I'm also working on my 'descriptive feedback' skills, remembering my lessons from VALOR.

Most teachers consider May to be dead time, with seniors checked out, and everyone else looking forward to summer. Exploring Google Classroom has helped both me and my students keep focused during this last month of school.

Digital Learning Platforms

At my last observation-reflection session for VALOR, I was asked about several digital learning programs that I use.

Schoology is the basic digital learning platform that most of the science teachers seem to use. It works really well for organizing information and assignments by unit. I can collaborate with other teachers in the Groups pages, and create a library that can be shared. Schoology offers flexible assessment creation, including easy graphics, which are crucial for science as many of our answer choices are pictures instead of words. Schoology lets me attach a rubric to an assignment so the student can see exactly how they scored. I know that Google will do this with various add-ons, but with Schoology, those things are already part of the platform.

I am part of Cadre 2 for the digital classrooms, and back in those days, we were a lot less organized. Digital classrooms were not common, and many of the available programs did not suit our needs or were too difficult to use. Project Share was awful (horrible, ridiculous, and seriously wtf), and Edmodo did not offer a good way to organize content, so students would have sort through long threads to find what they needed.  I am aware that Edmodo has changed a few things since then. However, I switched to Schoology because it met more of my needs at the time and it continues to do so.

The second huge platform I use for my digital classroom is blogging. I am a firm believer that writing about a concept, reviewing peer writing, and getting feedback is one of the best ways to learn about that concept. I have been pushing my students to blog their thoughts for years, but not until recently did I clarify exactly what I expected from them. I use this rubric to evaluate their blogs. (Originally from here: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/05/a-wonderful-blogging-rubric-for.html but modified for my purposes). Once we implemented the rubric, the quality of the writing we received improved immensely. 

The other great thing about students blogging the concepts is that I can easily check to see whether the words on the blogs are their own or not. This enables me to closely monitor who is learning the concepts and who is not.

Students are able to choose for two different blogging platforms – Edublogs and Blogger. Edublogs has been involved in student blogging for many years and is supported by WordPress. The platform has many quirks, however, and some students find it frustrating. Blogger is Google’s blogging platform so with every student in the district having a Google account, Blogger is a logical choice. We have just started using Blogger this year, and my only complaint is that it seems to have a confusing navigation system for students.

In my blog, I link all the students’ blogs so that students can give each other feedback. I also have student email me when they make a post so I know which ones are updated. For a look at the student blogs, look at the sidebar of my blog, I Wonder If . . .

The last piece of the digital platform in my class is ActiveGrade. The physics department at Colleyville-Heritage uses this grading software because it supports standards based grading where Skyward does not. We grade on a three-point scale and load our standards, either the TEKS or the AP standards, into ActiveGrade. The site color-codes the mastery level so students can easily see where they need to improve. Here is a screenshot of the student page for an example student:

ActiveGrade is not the optimal program. For instance, we would like to see it calculate standards using mode, as this would be the best reflection of student progress. ActiveGrade does not offer the option, despite our complaints to customer service. We have settled on using Most Recent for the grading criteria, as it will reflect a student who is trending up, although it won’t help a student who has a bad week late in the grading period. ActiveGrade also requires about five steps to do something that should take one or two.  However, the program does allow use to export the standards and scores to Excel, where we can then convert them into something that Skyward will recognize. This adds extra time for us to generate grades every week, but I feel that the extra information the students have about their progress is worth it.

Obviously, as a digital teacher, I use many more programs, websites, and apps. However, these programs are the three corners of support for my digital classroom – content delivery, student innerput, and feedback from me to my students.

VALOR Reflections 2

This may be a bit rushed - my apologies. I was observed on Thursday, met with Phillip on Friday, and I will be observed again on Tuesday. For those counting at home, with the block schedule and the holiday, I'm basically being observed two days in a row, in the same class.

But that's a good thing. From a scientist's perspective, it's best to keep as many variables the same as possible. This will give Pink Cohort an opportunity to see if I can apply what Red Cohort said to me, as I just heard their feedback on Friday. And this will be to the exact same kids as Red Cohort saw.

Recalling my first VALOR observations reflections, one of the big issues I had was descriptive feedback. Well, sorry to say, that has not gotten any better. I have been struggling with ways to do it, given my teaching style, my subject, and the ages of my students. I can easily give trite and shallow feedback that is also descriptive, but high school students are pretty sensitive to things like that, and that's not the point anyway.

Therefore, I'm really excited to have some concrete and actionable suggestions from Red Cohort! Their idea was for me to flip statements or questions from my students to questions from me to them. Hopefully, this will lead the way not just to me being better at feedback, but also to changing the students' into a growth mindset.

I'm looking forward to applying those ideas tomorrow and to moving that dial on the feedback meter in the right direction!

We Should All Be Leslie Knope

Mark: Honestly, Leslie, it's going to be a long uphill battle. You are going to be super-annoyed with all the people who want you to fail. There is a sea of red tape, endless road blocks. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Leslie: Screw it. I'm gonna try to do it anyway.

-       Parks and Recreation

My son, Travis, is a legal adult and has been for a while, thus he can enter into contracts and pay for subscriptions. He’s twenty-one, so he’s a member of the millennial generation, the digital natives. A few months back, after nagging me about it for weeks, he put me on his Netflix account. I had been resistant to Netflix because I remembered the whole mess with mailing the DVDs and that type of thing.

Anyway, Travis took my iPad and installed Netflix, adding me to his account. (How times have changed, right?) Then, he showed me a few things and recommended some shows he has enjoyed. One of those was Parks and Recreation, which I finally got around to watching over this winter break.

I’m thoroughly enthralled with Leslie Knope. I feel for her struggles as another government employee, but the thing that comes through the most is her refusal to give up or to let the negative outlooks of those around her affect her positive attitude. Her job is frustrating and aggravating, and interferes with her life and her choices. Sounds familiar, right? But Leslie absolutely loves what she does.

And don’t we all love what we do? Otherwise, why would we be doing it?

Teaching is wearisome, maddening, rule-bound, and heartbreaking. Teaching takes up way more than an 8-hour day as we roll our eyes at people who say, “But you have summers off.” Teaching demands all our energy and passion.

That’s the key to me though – the passion. If we are passionate about our jobs, then we refuse to let obstacles stop us from doing the right thing. We find ways to make the impossible possible. We become adept at work-arounds and improvisation.  Because we love what we do.

These people are members of the community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I'm being yelled at is people caring ... loudly at me.

-       Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation

Everyone cares about education, and sometimes they care quite loudly and in our faces. Occasionally, I have a hard time remembering that my students and I aren’t the only ones in my classroom. There’s a whole raft of other people who are there in spirit.

When I have a parent mad at me, or someone posts a horrible article about the state of education, I try channel Leslie Knope and realize that they are acting this way because education is vitally important. How cool is that – to be doing something that matters so much?

Leslie Knope is no blind optimist; she knows the difficulties she faces and she finds a way to succeed anyway. When I’m feeling discouraged or tired, I try to think of Leslie and do what she would do.

Quotes via http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/characters/leslie-knope

First VALOR Observations and Descriptive Feedback

On Monday of this week, four of my peers plus one learning liaison descended on my class with the directive to look at specific things I was doing. This is much more in-depth than the 45 minutes the principal spends in my room for PDAS purposes.  So, yeah, I was a bit nervous to be under that level of scrutiny.  But I asked for it, right?

What I found from their observations is that I have a real problem with giving descriptive feedback. I think my biggest issue in grappling with that concept is how to do it when my subject is pretty cut and dried. If I ask a student how to find the force of gravity on Callisto, then they are either right or wrong.  Right?

Or, I can tell them, “You set that up correctly, but forgot to square the radius.”

If I tell them, “Well, you wrote that wrong answer really neatly,” then they are going to give me the ‘you’re a crazy lady’ look.  High school students have their condescension meters set pretty sensitive.

When I sat down with @LNormTeach to go over the observations, I realized that I’m so focused on finding out what my students are thinking that I’ve totally overlooked the inverse function – I haven’t tried to let them know what I’m thinking.

So I’m throwing this out to the Silver cohort . . . Help me figure out how to incorporate descriptive feedback into my classroom structure and practice.