Here’s a quick thing to do for fun – create a talking animated character to introduce a lesson, welcome people to your class webpage, etc. Check out the one on my new class page then create your own at voki.com! It’s free! (I didn’t embed it here because I haven’t paid for the upgraded version of edublogs that allows embedding.) If you want students to create Vokis as well, you can pay a $30 yearly subscription to get student accounts and class management tools. Get started – create your avatar-self now!
Teaching Students to Search Effectively
I’ve been on the bandwagon about teaching research for years. So I’m going to start this article by quoting one of my posts from 2009.
My Research Soapbox (from 2009)
Where do you go when you want a quick answer to something? Chances are you “Google it!” Where do you go when you want to become an expert on that topic? Typically, the answer remains the same. A recent study (no longer available online) found that “89% of college students use search engines to begin their information searches,” rather than relying on library resources. This ‘Google generation’ can quickly locate thousands of results for a given topic, but what they often fail to do is identify the most authoritative resources. They often waste time sifting through search results and getting a surface level understanding (sometimes a misguided one) instead of delving deeply into a few quality sources.
We must teach our students that researching is different than searching. Think of searching as that “gotta know now” type of question, where the most popular answer will usually do. Researching involves locating quality sources for the purpose of becoming an expert, so you can make an informed decision, solve a problem, etc. As teachers, we must take on the responsibility of guiding students to quality sources that encourage researching, not just searching.
New Thoughts:
After 16 years of teaching teachers, I have come to realize that most adults think they know how to do research online if they can get to Google, type in a keyword, and get a long list of results. That is how you find the “common” or popular knowledge on a topic, not necessarily the expert level information. A good researcher must be able to
- select good starting points
- narrow their search topic
- employ a variety of search strategies to refine their results
- evaluate the resulting links for validity and authority
- identify or infer author’s purpose
- locate relevant information in resulting sources
- organize, compare and use information from multiple sources
- cite their sources appropriately
The Common Core Standards for Reading Informational Text identify these skills beginning in second grade. It is imperative that we begin modeling at this young age how to use expert sources, think about the author’s purpose, collect and organize information, and tell where we found the information.
Some Recommendations:
- Realize that research is a multi-step process: Access, Evaluate, and Apply. Listen to my short pencast about this.
- Provide an information gathering strategy that supports collection and comparison of information from multiple sources. Listen to my pencast about the research grid and then download a copy to use with your students (pdf or MS Word format).
- Use expert sources. Start with the reference databases provided by the school and public library. Provide students with links to other reputable sources you have vetted.
- Use educational search engines. InstaGrok is an interesting one that even allows students to create a search journal to share with their teacher, check their understanding with quizzes, navigate their topic visually, and much more.
- Use subject-specific search engines such as Scirus.com for scientific information and Google Scholar (preview results to assess reading level).
- Get educated about searching! Check out Google’s Education resources including the live trainings link where you can view videos about effective search strategies.
- Explore an Evaluating Sources presentation Judy Bryson and I created after attending a Google workshop.
- Have some fun tricking your kids with spoof sites such as allaboutexplorers.com to teach them to validate their sources.
- Try out the CyberSMART lesson plans to teach students research skills.
- Teach the process, not just the product. Research is not something students should do independently and then turn in a report a week or month later. Model, guide, and monitor their process every step of the way from planning their research, to conducting research, to gathering their information. Consider having the research grid be the final product, using it to participate in a group or class discussion rather than requiring a formal piece of writing every time. This will allow you multiple opportunities to refine their research skills before delving into the writing skills. If they don’t have good research, they can’t write well, so get this first piece mastered through multiple learning opportunities before you move on to the writing component.
And finally, please teach your students to always, always, always cite their sources! Model this in everything you do – pictures in your presentations should have citations, etc. You can teach them to copy-paste the URL for an informal citation or generate MLA formatted citations using a citation machine such as NoodleTools Lite or BibMe (warning, this one asks for personal information to create an account).
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Creating Web-based Learning Experiences
One of the biggest challenges teacher face integrating the use of Internet resources in their classroom is getting students to the selected resources and ensuring they use them in a meaningful way. You can post links on your class web page, but you soon end up with a long list of links, students clicking and scrolling rather than really digging deep, and little assurance that learning is actually occurring in all those young minds. Some teachers create worksheets that ask students to answer questions using the website content, but then you have papers to grade and they are often skimming for a quick answer rather than reading for meaning.
Years ago I taught teachers to create webquests, an online problem-based learning activity. These are wonderful and definitely worth the time it takes to develop and implement them. However, you also need a tool for those everyday kinds of experiences where they need to learn something and demonstrate their understanding.
Say for example, that you want students to
- watch a video you created (perhaps as part of your flipped classroom),
- then use an online interactive or manipulative to explore the concept,
- read an article about how it relates to the real world, and
- write a reflection explaining what they learned.
You can do this using sidevibe.com. Using this free website, you can create a pathway of online learning, check their understanding along the way, collect their thinking through discussions or private reflections, and respond to them in a timely manner. Watch the video on their website, create a free account and get started designing web-based learning experiences where students are in the driver’s seat, navigating their learning and sharing their thinking with each other and you!
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Note about Summer Blogstitute
Sorry the posts haven’t been as frequent as I had planned. As always seems to happen, family and home priorities consumed my vacation time. As I wrote my last post, I also realized that I was approaching blogging too formally – feeling the need to dedicate hours to prepare a perfect post. That’s what books are for, and maybe one day I’ll write one. Blogs can be less formal, more free-flowing, and quick. So I’ll try to just jot some quick ideas rather than spending hours researching, writing, and revising. Summer is running out and I still have more to share so I will try to get it posted in a more spontaneous way.
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Getting Started With Flipping Your Classroom
This is definitely one of the hottest topics in educational technology right now so I was not surprised when I received an email from a teacher asking me to address this topic. Although I am not an expert (I haven’t flipped a classroom yet), I will give an introduction, suggest technologies you can use to get started, and direct you to some online resources for exploring this topic in greater depth.
The term “flipped classroom” refers to flipping the traditional model of presenting a new concept in class and having students practice the skill at home to having students watch a video at home to learn a concept, then use class time for practice. There are many advantages to this new approach including:
- Students can replay your instruction as many times as they need to for maximum comprehension.
- English learners can benefit from the repetition they need to improve their understanding.
- Parents can see how concepts are presented and explained.
- And, most importantly, your limited time with students can be spent checking, refining, and extending their understanding.
Check out this infographic for statistics about flipped learning. And while I haven’t flipped a classroom myself, I did use the flipped learning approach to prepare for the CSET science tests recently – I watched Khan Academy videos before going to class and then asked my professors questions about what I had learned. As the learner, I felt more in control of my learning, asked deeper level questions, and was more satisfied with my overall experience.
So how can a teacher get started flipping a classroom without becoming a video production specialist? The good news is there are a variety of tools you can use that make it quick and easy. But first, the most important point – don’t demand perfection. In fact, informal videos in which teachers take a conversational tone and correct themselves as they would in class are typically more interesting and engaging. So identify a specific objective you can address in 10 minutes or less, anticipate students’ preconceptions and questions they will have along the way, and then use one of the technologies below to create a video.
Possible video creation tools:
1. Livescribe Pen
One of the simplest tools to use is a Livescribe Pen to create a pencast. Watch my pencast on how to use a research grid or check out a math teacher’s algebra lesson. I like this technology because I can create the tutorial with a pen and paper and model for students how they should be recording the information in their own notebook. The disadvantages of this tool are no colors and no graphics. However, I think it is useful for teaching mathematical procedures and maybe even modeling notetaking or revision and editing strategies in writing.
To create your video tutorial with the pen, I recommend you write out the lesson in pencil, then push the record button and trace while you talk. Once you are finished, connect the pen to your computer and use the Livescribe software to send the pencast to Livescribe, Google Docs, or Evernote. I think I’m going to send my pencasts to Evernote this year so I can put them in a shared notebook along with links to other videos or resources.
If you are a Rialto USD teacher and think a Livescribe pen will be a good fit for what you want to do, email me to discuss how you might be able to get a pen to use in your classroom.
2. iPad App: Explain Everything
If you are so lucky to have an iPad, there are wonderful screen recording apps that make it easy and fun to create videos. My current favorite is the app Explain Everything. This app allows you to annotate and record audio over pictures, pdfs, and presentations. (Remember to be aware of copyright issues.) You can set up multiple slides with the content you will present, record the audio and annotation for each slide, then publish it all as a video that you can share through You Tube (not recommended since we can’t access it in district), Evernote, or Dropbox. You can also upload the video to VoiceThread where students can comment on it as a means of verifying they watched it and post questions you will answer the following day in class. Check out an example I did for my physics class on velocity.
3. Screencast-o-matic
Finally, a third option is to use Screencast-o-matic to record your computer screen and your voice. This is an easy first step toward turning your PowerPoint presentations into a flipped classroom video. You can also create videos explaining technology tasks you will expect students to do the next day in class. Best of all, you don’t have to download any software and you can publish your videos straight to their site. (Last I checked, videos on their site were not blocked by our district.)
Hopefully, you will find one of these tools to your liking, or more than one! Give it a try! Be sure to watch some Khan Academy videos so you can see that perfection really isn’t necessary – just be you, record a short lesson and see what your students think of it! If they give you any grief (as secondary kids are known to do) turn the tables on them and have them create the tutorials!
A quick endnote about student access:
Where I work, many teachers worry that their students don’t have access to the Internet. Please don’t let this hinder you. First of all, more students have access than you think, many just don’t admit it (ask how many have a Facebook or other social network account). Secondly, if you start doing this, more parents will prioritize a computer over the latest gaming system come Christmas time. And thirdly, you can always have these students watch the video before school or in the first few minutes of class while you start working with other students. The Common Core Standards expect our students to use technology, so we have to hold ourselves, the students, and their parents accountable for ensuring they have these learning experiences and opportunities. So let’s get the ball rolling!
More to Explore:
Lesson Planning Online
How does a 21st Century teacher plan? In the cloud of course! How does a teacher in the year 2012 budget crisis plan? Using free or nearly free cloud-based tools! Although our district’s new student information system (SIS) will have a a web-based gradebook (finally!), we likely won’t have funds for the “deluxe” version with an integrated lesson planner. So, this week I went in search of an affordable solution. I was determined to avoid the paper-based planner and yet the idea of typing separate documents for each week did not appeal to me either – lacks flexibility, doesn’t provide a year-long perspective, and doesn’t offer easy parent access.
So, my team teacher and I started by mapping out subject timelines using a Google spreadsheet. We are still working on this of course, but feel free to take a look at our work in progress. If you’d like a copy to use, here’s a template.
Next, we started to discuss specific lessons and their details. I considered typing each one separately and linking to it in the spreadsheet, but that seemed tedious. So I set off on a quest for an online lesson planner. There are so many out there! But I had clear expectations in mind:
- Built-in standards, both state and Common Core.
- A week-at-a-glance view with the ability to view each lesson in greater detail.
- Ability to share lessons with colleagues.
- Ability to export lessons in the event I need to change systems in the future.
- A parent view so they can see the standards, objectives, and assignments for each lesson.
I have to say the lesson planner tool in eChalk, our online learning managment system, set the bar pretty high. We had this feature years ago but funds to maintain this feature expired. So I need a free or very low cost solution until my district can afford to offer a more comprehensive tool.
I researched several and settled on one that costs just $10 a year – www.planbook.com. Here are samples of the various views it creates, all exported to pdf for those who want a paper copy:
What I like about it:
- All lesson plans in one place rather than in multiple Word/Excel documents.
- Includes click to select list of California and Common Core standards and lets you add both to each lesson. (Other systems made you choose one or the other.)
- Week and day views (other systems had only one or the other done well).
- Can include events such as assemblies, minimum day, holidays, etc.
- Show/hide lesson homework, notes, and standards in both week and day view. So, the week view can show just the lesson objectives and standards (like the boxes in a typical planning book), and day view can be used to view the more detailed lesson notes such as planned questioning, differentiation, etc.
- Easily “bump” a lesson to the next day if you didn’t get to it or need to insert a reteach day – it auto-shifts subsequent lessons on calendar.
- Extend a lesson across multiple days, then modify each day’s lesson as needed to show what part of the unit will be done that day.
- Set a custom time for a lesson that starts/ends at a unique time (i.e. extended Science time). (No other system I reviewed had this feature.)
- Allows teachers to import lessons from fellow teachers – select subject and date range to import.
- Provides parent/student view.
- Quick and friendly technical support!
Shortcomings of this product:
- Can’t attach files – have to post them in Dropbox or Google Drive and hyperlink to them.
- When starting a new year, you can choose to copy the lessons into the new year, but then it auto-populates the calendar rather than keeping them in an archive for you to select from and schedule manually.
- Can’t delete or hide planning boxes you are not using on a particular day, such as minimum days or days when another lesson extends into that time slot. (No product does this that I can find.)
- Doesn’t provide a standards report showing frequency and dates of standards taught and a list of those not taught. You can export your lessons and do this analysis in Excel (with some work).
- Is NOT tied to a gradebook program. (I don’t need this feature since our SIS will have one.)
- Importing events from a text file crashes the planbook – it can only import a file created from planbook. (I have a list of events exported from our school calendar that I wanted to import.) However, their wonderful tech support has offered to import my event list for me!
Despite these shortcomings, it seems to be the best product out there for a price an individual teacher can afford. Click the Tutorials link at www.planbook.com to see videos of how the system works.
I won’t lengthen this post with a list of the ones I reviewed and why I dismissed them in favor of this one, but feel free to comment with suggestions of others and I’ll share my thoughts on them. Happy summer planning!
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Your PowerPoint 2003 Presentations Don’t Have to Look as Old as Your Software
If you are having to work with PowerPoint 2003, you have probably used every slide design (background) so many times they are starting to make you sick. And your students are probably feeling the same way. You can instantly lose credibility with the current generation if your presentation is “old-looking.” Perhaps you have searched for templates online, but I often find this more frustrating than useful – most templates are for newer versions of PowerPoint or don’t fit the topic very well. Save time and make your own backgrounds that add interest and sophistication to your presentations.
PowerPoint builds your slides using a slide master. You can easily add images to this master for a unique presentation design. Watch this video to see how and use the directions below to guide you as you try it on your own.
- In PowerPoint 2003, go to the View menu –> Master –> Slide Master.
- Right-click the slide master in the left sidebar and click New Title Master.
- In the Insert menu –> Picture –> Clipart or From File.
* If you choose clipart, you can use the copyright free images built into MS Office.
* If you choose From File, you can insert a copyright free image from the web or one you created with your own camera or drawing software. - Once you have your picture on the slide, you can position it and use the picture tools to edit it.
* If you click on the picture and don’t see the picture toolbar, go to the View menu –> Toolbars –> Picture Toolbar. The Draw toolbar is also helpful when working with images. - Once you have your image the way you want it, right-click and choose Send to Back so it will be put behind your text boxes.
- Adjust the location, fonts, and animations of your text boxes as desired.
- Click the Close Master View button and your slides will have new backgrounds.
Did you find this helpful? Did you run into problems? Post a comment to let me know!
Summer Blogstitute
I will be returning to the classroom in August after 16 years of teaching teachers to integrate technology in their classroom. I am so excited about returning to my first love – teaching students – but there is so much I wish I had had time to share with others. So I’m going to try to purge this regret by holding a summer blogstitute. At least once a week I will post on various topics I think every teacher should know. So far, the topics I’m considering are:
- Tools for managing your electronic work and resources – Diigo, Dropbox, Evernote
- Student publishing including blogs, VoiceThread, and more.
- Teaching research, including the new InstaGrok and SideVibe
- Presentation tools and tricks, including how to make custom backgrounds in PowerPoint (even though we are forced to use 2003 in our district, your work doesn’t have to look like it), and using web-based presentation tools such as Google Docs, Prezi and SlideRocket.
Please comment on this post to indicate your interest in any of the above so I can prioritize them. Or, request another topic. And for all you “lurkers” out there who read lots of things online but never comment, please post a short comment so I know you are there – it will help me maintain my enthusiasm for this project through the summer!