Goofy to not DRIVE with GOOGLE

Google Drive is the MOTOR for Google Apps For Education (GAFE). An understanding of Google Drive makes the implementation of GAFE tools very simple. This post is simply a communication of what the teachers that I have worked with have shared about using Drive and how it has impacted their ability to teach/learn, capacity to communicate and to save logistic time!

To make this post more easily readable I plan to use concept images and simple statements. If interested in "HOW-TO" please contact me and I will send those details your way as soon as possible.

TEACHER TIME is at a premium and only the teachers truly understand this fully. Google Drive will save you huge amounts of time:

Below is a concept diagram of how Google Drive saves you time as you COLLABORATE with your colleagues OR empower students to COLLABORATE with peers:

Below is a concept diagram of how Google Drive saves you time as you COMMUNICATE with those members within your learning community (students and home):

TIME is something we all hope to spend wisely. I truly believe any time invested in understanding Google Drive will pay HUGE DIVIDENDS in the savings of time organizing, creating, managing a course in the digital age to empower learners.... and ourselves.

For many of us we understand that the only thing constant in education is change. And we can choose to look at this constant change as an obstacle or an opportunity. Google Drive is an opportunity that makes hurdling obstacles later down the track easier to overcome.

DuFour Galore!

In 2008 I finished my 1st Masters degree and the during the exit defense of my portfolio I was questioned about the image below. The image was created by me as a visual reminder of a quote from Robert DuFour's "Failure is NOT an Option."

The sign reads: "Veterinarian & Taxidermist"
The slogan reads: "Either way; you get your pet back!"

Let that marinate..............................

........................................WOW!!!

I interpret the meaning of this sign to apply to education. Our kids are enrolled into our system of learning for over a decade and in the spring of their 12th year the family and our community gets those kids back as young adults. 

Question that motivates me is HOW and WHO am I returning to the world after they experience my learning experiences and environment for a year... Was I the veterinarian that healed and empowered them?!! Or was I the taxidermist that returned a shell that was hollow on the inside and ill prepared to succeed in our world? 

The learning experiences we provide MAKE A DIFFERENCE to the student. Not all assignments must fit into these standardized boxes for assessment. We can choose to expose and sharpen a skill that aligns with a standard in a relevant way. Rigor does not have to sacrificed at all. 

Students are social media natives. Most students are GAFE savvy. Many teachers are making the empowered choice to learn and implement GAFE tools. For this post I wanted to show a very simple example that I implemented after being inspired by my wife (English and Reading teacher at Naperville Central).

THE LESSON
The lesson was designed for my AP Environmental Science class. The objective was to communicate how the current economy must change in order to be more sustainable for future generations regarding materials (matter) and energy. My assessment was very straightforward:

• Critical Thinking: evidence the student connected the concepts from the book "Cradle 2 Cradle" to the objective
• Creativity: generation of an infomercial (informative commercial) that markets their plan for change
• Communication: evidence that the message of the student resonates with the viewer/reader
• Collaboration: infomercials shared via a published hyperlink so that all other students can view and comment. 

THE TOOL

Slides is a simple presentation tool. I asked students to use slides as their tool and after creating their slides to publish them to the web so that Google Slides would convert their presentation into a url that can be shared and viewed over social media and more! GET THEIR MESSAGE OUT:)

There are many other (and better tools for this) tools to create audiovisual messages but they tend to require a little bit of instructional time on how to use. My students know Slides so that is what we went with. Some kids wanted to add music to further engage the viewer... great idea!

So, we used YouTube to find the music that would play in the background of the published slide show. As you view the examples below be sure to:

1. click hyperlink to music 

2. open slide show and start it

3. open your mind and let the messages sink in

All student infomercials link

Students can share via a link in Twitter or Tumblr.... http://goo.gl/dGlgbt  

Or Students can embed their infomercial on their blog or website....

Publishing w/ Picktochart!

Creating effective ways to deliver information is an art form that requires critical thinking and communication skills. The critical piece is more abstract in that the delivery has to be accurate and engage the reader to inquire further or be rewarded with clarification. The creation part has to appeal to the masses and provoke them to consider reading more in order for the message/content to be delivered as intended.

Picktochart is a simple to use technology tool that empowers students to create visual information more easily and in a form that is trending with social media. Info-graphics simply organize content in a visual way and by doing so effectively info-graphics promote discussion about the content they represent.

I recently challenged students to work collaboratively to create an assessment question based on their field experience to the Quarry. Simultaneously, I asked the students staying in class to work collaboratively to create an info-graphic to visually display and anchor a presentation about an Environmental Case Study.

COLLABORATION requires a simple Google doc to be set up. As the teacher, I set up the Google doc and empowered every student to EDIT it as they experienced the field trip via their smart phones. The resulting document for the field trip is linked here. The remaining students stayed back in class and completed a comprehensive note document of the Chesapeake Bay Case Study which is located here.

After the data has been compiled and time has been used to discuss and interpret students must be challenged to create a way to deliver that information to empower others with the same knowledge. One of the students decided to use Picktochart and the artifact created looks appealing and accurate. Some other students used traditional methods (paper and pen). Both were completed in the same time frame and I will allow you to determine which is product is more impactful on student learning.


Picktochart Tool for Instruction....                          Conventional Tool for Instruction....

The key to using technology to enhance the learning experience is realizing that the tool itself will NOT TEACH NOR LEARN. The tool can promote the information to be discussed and conceptualized more readily and that can teach others and learn others on a fundamental level!!

Post PARCC!

This post is a genuine reflection of my time investing in the learning environments of my colleagues as their peer in the process of educating our students. There will not be much discussion of technology tools because I have realized in my short time in this position that this position is 95% about INSTRUCTION and 5% technology.

Before PARCC, the laptops were in rooms and teachers were using them to modify and enhance learning experiences. I walked into rooms and collaborated with staff to create lessons or simply "think tank" options. When the laptops left the rooms to be set up for PARCC and then used it became more challenging to promote digitally enhanced lessons with those devices so some teachers and I focused on BYOT lessons. The 21st century teacher is flexible! We learned a lot about the limitations and liberties of BYOT.... together.

After the PARCC was spring break! Many teachers offered up unique ways for students to share their connections on their breaks to the content and concepts of the classroom!!! That is so cool to witness and model using twitter, vine, snapchat and more.

This week, we all return and laptops are back and learning is rolling on again. Today I went into six rooms and realized the following as I watched my peers DO WORK... and a craft it truly is for certain.

• Good teachers are good learners
• Good teachers have the humility to accept that they need to learn daily
• Good teachers have the courage to take calculated risks in how they introduce a lesson, facilitate a lesson and resolving a lesson
• Good teachers are willing to fail so that they can learn
• Good teachers want to deliver their lessons in a way that students will engage and connect with the lesson

So what makes a good teacher a GREAT teacher? Personally, I believe if you are doing all the bullets of a good teacher daily you are a great teacher. This job is not easy but it is like I tell my athletes, "if it were easy, everyone would do it!" We are not everyone. We are the ones that every student needs. Keep on creating! Keep on collaborating! Keep on pushing! My job is to help you overcome hurdles along the instructional way. Please do not consider my time invested in your lesson a burden to me... I LOVE LEARNING with you. 

So far, I have been able to work 1 on 1 with nearly 15 teachers to develop something that they wanted to develop (lesson, website, etc). Spring Break was a wonderful break but I am ready to develop some more! Send your ideas, your concerns, your needs and lets DO WORK!

Get Google Voice!! The Power is Voodoo

Google Voice is free with GAFE. Basically, it gives you a phone number (you have choices) that you connect to your cell phone (or not). The tool can be used many ways and below I will share the way I most recently utilized this instructional tool.

Google Voice:

1. Allows you to have a voicemail through google that compiles messages from the cell number you have assigned. 
2. The voicemails are sent as emails to your email and are transcribed. Each voicemail allows you to reply to that number with feedback or another question. 
3. This is a tech tool that reduces your take home 'stuff' to your phone or chromebook or iPad. 

Lets start with an example learning experience:

I wanted a different way to collect formative assessment to a learning activity completed in class. We learned about GMOs in the food system and critically investigated both sides based on peer reviewed science. 

I projected my google number on the screen and told students that the homework was to leave me a voicemail with their response to this question:

"Should GMOs be removed from the food system? Warrant your claim."

One student example:

 

TWO WAY COMMUNICATION!!!

After the student leaves a voicemail I can listen to it, read it and RESPOND! My response goes directly to their phone as a text... and they can text back!?! Below is a screenshot of my quick response to a student and her response back... 

Enjoy this tool and if you are ready to be EMPOWERED with it... I will be Hall Hawking!

Sheets, Forms, Slides!!

Google Drive is like Alice in Wonderland... you can travel further and further and further and get more and more overwhelmed at the power at your fingertips. My advice is master the basics and believe that the rest are pretty much built up from that foundation.

The basics are Google Docs (Word stripped of all the stuff you rarely use), Google Sheets (Excel stripped of all the stuff you don't understand) and Google Slides (PowerPoint stripped....). Google forms compliments Sheets by empowering you to make a form (easy BYOT implementation) to collect data that the form automatically organizes into a sheet (spreadsheet) for you to analyze or manipulate.

Lesson Example
The learning goal is to get students to understand why processed food has more ingredients than whole food items yet tends to cost less. This requires compiling data from a variety of sources (SCIENCE) that we can later analyze to draw warrants based on the evidence.

Google empowers the lesson by making it easy for students to choose a grocery store of their choice and use their Smartphone to input data they collect while visiting the store. They need no paper, pencil, backpack... All they need is access to the form and the critical thinking required to determine what observations to put in the cells.

Step ONE: Communicate the learning experience (Google Doc: example)
The screen shot from the example document has QR codes that students can scan with phones to open up the form OR the shortened URLs that the students can type into their browser to access the form.

Step TWO: Collect data and INPUT into the form (Google Form: set up example | final link view)
Students complete the form while on site and engaging in data collection. The compiling of data is done by google!!! So instruction and learning get to focus on WHAT the data says!

 This screen shot shows what the FORM looks like to the teacher as it is created in google forms.

*Notice you can "view live link"
*Notice you can "see number of responses"

______________________________________


The screen shot below shows what the FORM looks like to the student on their smartphone.

*Notice questions are clean and simple
*Responses can be scales, check-boxes, pull down menus, etc...

Step THREE: Check out the data!
The form inputs all data collected by each individual student into one spreadsheet (digital collaboration). Within the "responses" sheet you can view each cell and sort through the data.

Google will also "summarize responses" and this is a pretty useful tool based on the type of data you required students to collect.

Below is a screen shot of the compiled sheet example:

A summary of responses from one of my questions to illustrate a possible quick chart produced in seconds and ready to discuss or consider.

Step FOUR: Communicate the experience (google slides)
Students will use google slides to formally communicate their experience and base their message on the data of the class. This slide presentation will be submitted through google classroom for me to easily review and assess from my iPad from home.

#GettinGoogle

Socialization of School?!

A curious teacher contacted me with a desire to enhance a learning experience designed and used from the past. The lesson was based on discussion of perceptions of socialization in society. The foundation was school violence and the target to understand was what influenced the "student" to commit an act of school violence.

The teacher and I collaborated and created the following lesson. If you would like more access to materials please contact me and we will be sure to get those to you ASAP. 

I observed (and engaged with students) as the teacher facilitated the learning experience beautifully. Students were put into small teams of 4-5 and were provided laminated cutouts of the images RIGHT that represented the various areas to align along the spectrum of blame: community, school, home, media, and peers. The teacher used a google presentation to formally present to the class the content necessary to empower them to be content literate as they discussed their perspectives.

Each group was provided a CLAIM SHEET to organize their warrants for each claim that states their perspective of each area along the "SPECTRUM OF BLAME."

Students engaged in this by discussing and arguing for their personal views as well as listening to their peers' viewpoints until the team reached consensus. 

TECHNOLOGY TIME! Stoodle was the tool! The teacher provided the students a link that welcomed the entire class to collaboratively create an artifact that individually communicated their teams perspectives for each area along the blame spectrum (the live feed was being projected for the entire class to see in real time). 

Below is a screenshot of what was the end result.

This image was the ROCK that promoted discussion between teams and guided by the teacher. Some of the high level and critical thinking questions I observed:

• Why is the perspective of parental blame so various in range compared to community?
• Describe a home that would produce the least likely student to commit this crime?
• Why is media considered by most to be most blame-worthy?
• How should media respond to these events
• How could school be more safe? What power does the school have?

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

The teacher wanted to collect student perspective data about the class after the learning experience. Plickers was the student feedback system of choice and it has many benefits that appealed to me. The teacher must download the app (any smartphone) and print the answer cards (preferably card stock and matte laminated). The students clear desks of everything but the response card and when prompted they rotate their card to their answer. The teacher scans the room with her camera and all responses are compiled and the teacher has the option to display immediately or wait until the end. The responses are graphically represented to engage further discussion.

Just think how powerful it is to provide a learning experience challenging students to understand how five different areas influence school violence and then making it relevant by getting DATA from those students immediately and discussing the concept even more deeply as it relates to NVHS. 

BOOM!!

Another great day the Wildcat Way!

HallHawkin' | Lesson Idea

Today, I walked into several rooms and observed how teachers were using the laptop carts. My goal is simple "identify how the laptop technology is being used to enhance learning." The beauty of this goal is that it is win-win.

If the teacher is using the laptops effectively, and the lesson is engaging student learning... WIN.

If the laptops are not being used, an opportunity exists for me to offer up an idea of how to consider using the technology in the future.... WIN.

HALL HAWKIN' is what I am calling this experience because I plan on doing it often. I will cruise the halls seeking out learning experiences to enhance with technology. My disclaimer is that much of what I come up with may not be what the teacher wants but my hope is that they are stimulated into considering some version of it and taking the calculated risk to implement.

This role empowers me to exist as a CO-TEACHER/LEARNER. If the teacher is nervous about implementing technology, I will teach that lesson with them to help problem solve because "it takes a village."

One of the classrooms that I observed was learning about Modern Russia. The teacher was not using the laptops but the lesson was everything a great lesson is:

• Actively engaged students
• Students working collaboratively with a variety of "things" (textbook, notes, visuals, etc..)
• Caring teacher facilitating and relating to the students

The document linked HERE is a brief reflection and application of my observations of the Russian lesson. I shared it with the teacher so that s/he can decide if this idea has any potential in their classroom. 

Tech AND Text?!

I have heard this numerous times in a variety of ways, "If I go TECH do I lose my TEXT?" Seems logical that if you use digital documents and articles then you would not have the physical paper copies. The wonderful thing about instructional technology is that you the teacher are EMPOWERED to choose and diversify the HOW you teach what you teach and even more fun is CREATING learning experiences that the students will engage in and connect actively in a relevant manner.

Today, I tried to model this in my Earth Science classroom. This classroom is 1st period and has 34 students trying to figure out the basics of pastoral agriculture via Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma.

Serving students reading literacy is also important so thank you TEXT. Collaboration between peers in small teams combined with competition to respond to a shared document comprehensively is a recipe for a good learning experience so thank you TECH.

In the picture you can see three students in a team. All of them have text in hand (or near hand for the current student typing). In the front of the room I projected several questions to understand. The student is working on inputting the team's thoughts about each question. This team is 1 of 8 teams linked into the same GOOGLE DOC. Below is a video of that doc in real time. Notice the action!! Hear the discussion?!

This document is color coded because each group earns credit by contributing to the document. Groups CANNOT repeat information so this encourages them to read the previous responses and THINK more CRITICALLY. Fun lesson to facilitate. Diversified for various learning modes. Quick set up for any teacher that can create a google doc and share it. 

Giddy Up!

Today I was welcomed into this position by dozens of people from a variety of places within the walls of Neuqua Valley and beyond. Thank you for inspiring me! The requests for a supporting coach (me) from a head coach (you) ranged from:

• Social Workers Office : support data collection for students in need
• Special Education Office : create a way for TEAM teachers and students to easily access course information in real time. 
• Social Studies Teacher : support creating a course website to extend the classroom experience to the digital world. 
• Other teachers simply volunteered their rooms to be "victims" of learning throughout this process... I RESPECT IT, I NEED IT, I LOVE IT!

I also realized how many of us are less than excited about personally evaluating our own level of teaching to the digital society, the digital native student and this globally connected world. In my experience, most of us are already doing VERY WELL based on the criteria provided by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) for teachers. In the simple graphic below I plan to add links that will prove and support the HOW we can do WHAT we do for our students and each other as colleagues.

Keep it up! (for the record I trimmed this down to what I believed to be the most relevant for teachers in the classroom... like us).

My Mission!

Hello Colleagues!

While Melissa is away enjoying the challenges of the best job in the world (being a mother) I have been empowered to serve you in her role until she returns in May. Steve and his team have assumed much of her logistical role and liberated me to be a true instructional coach. This is OUTSTANDING! So what does this mean to you…

I will be available daily to serve your instructional technology needs in a one on one, workshop style format during the time you choose (classroom… I’ll co-teach! or during lunch or prep... get creative!).

---

This can happen TWO WAYS:

• YOU INITIATE… You email me clayton_figi@ipsd.org with a period, concern, need, idea and I follow up with you to do my very best to be as efficient and effective as possible until you're satisfied.
• I ENGAGE… I will be cruising around the classrooms with laptops to get ideas on how technology is being used (then migrate to other classrooms) to observe how technology is being used and identify how we could use it more effectively. My journey will be shared for you to use as you see fit and my hope is that it will stimulate further growth!  Rather than overload you with ideas, my goal is to  demonstrate and problem solve ideas WITH you until you're satisfied.

What will I being Coaching?!

• Short answer… anything you want me to related to using technology to make your role as a teacher more efficient or the lessons you create more enhanced learning experiences for your students. I am NOT an expert but I will problem-solve with you until I am useful to you.
• I can help you:
• with your website or digital classroom
• with collaborative lessons
• with quick formative assessments with BYOT
• teaching the triangle
• with graphics, visuals
• with blogs or social accounts to extend your classroom
• understand the GAFE (google stuff)
• and hopefully much more!...

DISCLAIMER: I will NOT use specific names or courses but I will share how we changed lessons, implemented technology, enhanced experiences and other resources that are instantly helpful to our colleagues and craft!

Follow the Journey!

Please follow along with me http://technvcoach.blogspot.com

Google Drive Folder: http://goo.gl/D4qtfB

My NV Science Google Site: http://goo.gl/aDrqdD