The Teacher Leaders Hero’s Journey

Teacher Leaders are agents of innovative school change

Situated in the heart center of education, teacher leaders are the true heroes of the education system.

Your vision and passion lead the quest for deeper learning and transformation. Your intuition and experience guide your path.

But what happens when you see the way to bring more meaningful and relevant learning experiences to your students, yet challenges and obstacles litter your path?

Maybe you’ve been there?

I have. So have many of the amazing teachers I get to work with.  So along the way, I’ve been collecting some tools and tips to pave the way for triumph (think: secret treasure map). I want to share them with you here.

To be clear, when I call you a hero I don’t mean to call you a savior or a tireless model of perfection. What I mean is more along the lines of what Cornelius Minor describes in his book, We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be: an imperfect and weary change-agent who is working to improve your own teaching, schooling, and the world. Heroes don’t always get it right the first time, and they get tired and hungry. But they rise again. And again.

So, teacher leaders, get ready for your quest. We’ve got your back.

Act 1: The Call to Adventure

For every hero who is called to adventure, the quest must be worthy.  The ring called Frodo, the ocean called Moana, the Force called Luke, and home called Dorothy.  These aren’t small potatoes: in order to leave the comfort of their warm, safe hearths, the call must be worthy. Much will be at stake.

For educators, we are perpetually reinventing our curriculum and our approach to better meet the needs of our students. I don’t think I ever taught the same unit twice – or at least the same way I’d taught it the previous time. It can be exhausting to be in a constant state of reinvention, yet at the same time, it can also be invigorating.

Kinda sounds like a call to adventure, right?

Alena Wehof and Sarah Marcus teach science at Proctor High School and were early adopters of a proficiency-based learning system. After a couple of years of implementing self-paced proficiency-based learning in their classrooms, they were beginning to feel the constraints of their school’s bell schedule.  Their call came in the form of a question: “How could a flexible schedule, within a school day, create opportunities for personalization and help students meet their graduation proficiencies?”

This question launched them into their own quest and has been a rich and deeply rewarding experience. But it hasn’t been without its own riddles or labyrinths either.
We can learn a lot from their quest, but before we begin,

What’s calling you to adventure, teacher leader?

Have you been wondering what it would be like if you moved part of your curriculum outdoors? Are you considering what would happen if you let students take on responsibility for running the daily routines of your classroom? Thinking about how those Genius Hour projects are going really well and you’re grappling with how to make more of the learning time that self-directed?
What is it that’s got you thinking, ‘what if…’? C’mon, tell us, teacher leaders!

Act 2: Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My

Setting out on your adventure is always exciting at first. Your idea is glimmering, waiting for implementation, just ahead.  The path is paved with yellow bricks that seem to sing to you as you set out…

And then.

Trials and tribulations. Unforeseen obstacles. Caves. Dragons. Poppy fields. Riddles. Know unknowns. Unknown unknowns.

For Alena and Sarah, they took a wrong turn in the labyrinth when they proposed a schedule change to their colleagues. While their colleagues were open to new ideas, they were perplexed by this suggestion.
Wehof and Marcus shared their quest at High Tech High's Deeper Learning conference.
Because Sarah and Alena were deep into developing a student self-paced curriculum, they could clearly see how shifting time could benefit students. Yet a schedule change wasn’t high on their colleagues’ priority list: Sarah & Alena were trying to solve a problem that their colleagues weren’t experiencing.

Because a schedule shift would impact everybody, and not everyone was yet on board, Alena and Sarah recognized they need to take a different path in their pursuit of personalized learning. And they needed everybody on board.

Out of their Hero’s Knapsack, they pulled…

Oh, if it was only that easy!

But I do have a tip for you here, and it comes from educational coaching expert Elena Aguilar: When you come up against unforeseen obstacles in the form of collegial hesitation or resistance, you need to Mind the Gap.  That is, you need to try to figure out what’s getting in the way- is it a capacity gap: is time (or energy or resources) a limiting factor? Is it a knowledge gap: does everyone has the information and understanding they need to carry the work forward? A skill gap? A will gap?

Aguilar’s Mind the Gap is an amazing resource to unearth what might be getting in the way- because knowing is half the battle. (Thanks, GI Joe.) Seriously though, if we can figure out why we’re not all on the same page then we have a better chance of figuring out how to get there. If it’s a capacity gap we need to find resources, if it’s a skill gap then we need training. You get the idea.

Oh, and here’s a #protip:

Aguilar warns us that a will gap (i.e. resisting the change) is often a cover for another type of gap! So if you find yourself battling resistance, use your Compassionate Heart Power and dig deeper: empathize. Put yourself in others’ shoes and ask questions with kindness.
Sometimes things feel out of our control and they may very well be, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have power. Some problems feel unbeatable- they make you want to run away!  Trolls! Enter: the Spheres of Control. This framework can help you see how you might approach these problems: what do you control? What you can influence? And…then there’s everything else. The magic here is that once you know where you can have the most impact you can focus your energies there.

What’s in your way?

When you think about bringing your innovation to life, what stops you? What’s getting in your way? Which gaps are at play? What systemic barriers exist? Where do you have the most control (or autonomy)?

Act 3: Redemption in Community

So, our heroes Alena and Sarah, instead of forging ahead on their own decided to form an….er… fellowship– that is a band of merry and hearty travelers with whom they would pursue their quest, for meaningful and personalized learning for all students, together.

They took a few steps back with their colleagues and realized that there was a constellation of knowledge, skill, and capacity gaps at play in their school’s implementation of personalized learning. They needed to slow down and learn and reflect together.

Fortunately, they had a few other tools already in their knapsacks. It’s one thing to have a meeting, but achieving true collaboration takes intentional planning. It also helps to use clear structures and processes to scaffold conversations.  Enter protocols and norms.

Alena had recently completed a course on the use of protocols and the facilitation of adult work. So for their next move, Alena and Sarah convened their school’s leadership team and trained their colleagues to use these structures in their already established PLCs.

Proctor Elementary School teacher leaders participate in a ‘Chalk Talk’ protocol.

Think these sound like just what you need, teacher leader? Learn more about protocols here: Getting Started with Protocols and Using Protocols for Equity.

The results have been overwhelmingly positive. The staff are now engaged in rich discussions about personalized learning and working together to implement incremental changes that move the whole school closer to full implementation. School culture is stronger.

While their quest isn’t over, they have found progress through fellowship – collaboration. It really is true that we’re stronger together.

Who are your traveling companions?

So the magic here was truly in collaboration.  Who are the folks- near and far- who can join you in this quest? While you’ll need your colleagues to bring big change to your school, reaching out to kindred spirits can bring you sustenance and inspiration.

Find your own personal learning network on Twitter, or consider TIIE’s Learning Lab.

We’re in this together.

Coda: Hero’s Knapsack

This, dear heroes, might be the most important gift I can bestow upon you as you embark on your quest.

Designed by the Tarrant Institute’s own superhero, Susan Hennessey, this Book Creator digital flipbook curates the #bestof the Hero’s Knapsack. Gaps and Spheres are in here, as well as a ton of other amazing resources that make working together with our colleagues in pursuit of powerful outcomes for all students…. a piece of cake. Or, at least, you know, manageable.

The Hero's Journey: Teacher Leaders as Agents of Change in School Transformation
Click here to launch the Hero’s Knapsack flipbook!

So are you ready?

Get out there! You can do it, teacher leaders! We’ve got your back.

Um, for real, reach out if you need help on your quest.

Go, hero!

And thank you.

Trauma-informed personalized learning

trauma-informed personalized learning

Seeing back-to-school activities & personalized learning through the lens of trauma-informed classroom practices

I had a eureka! moment this summer.

We are so lucky when our critical thinking converges ideas in ways previously unrealized. It transformationally reframes our thinking. Those moments enrich ourselves and arrive with the promise that our private learning should have public relevance to make others’ lives more just, joyful, and equitable.

I want to share a recent moment of reflection, even as I just begin my learning journey at the intersection of trauma-informed classroom practices and personalized learning.

I’ve been involved in thousands of conversations with educators from dozens of schools about personalized learning, but I have never before viewed those conversations through a trauma-informed lens. And, I don’t recall anyone overtly bringing those conversations to the table.

This past summer, I was fresh off a year with middle-level educators to continue evolving our school’s approaches to Personalized Learning. One of our final accomplishments of last year was a newly redesigned Personal Expression Process to engage students and faculty in a scaffolded inquiry into self-knowledge and understanding, focused on both individual and shared identities.

IG for PD

Somewhere in those following summer months, I serendipitously connected with education consultant Colleen Wilkinson by first stumbling across her “‘Back to School’ Activities that can Traumatize Students and What to do Instead” Instagram post. 

In her succinct half-dozen images, she caught my attention: full-stop; she provoked educators to be critical caretakers as they consider and construct back-to-school prompts. 


In an exchange with Wilkinson, she acknowledged that much of the missteps she notices are done unknowingly,

“Teachers are creative professionals who often desire to meet the many complex needs of their students without understanding the impact of some common activities.”

She also expanded on the post, explaining common missteps, why they might not work, and what to try instead.

Here is what she shared:

“Write about what you did this summer”

Why it might not work: For many reasons this question causes students to pause. The classroom is new, the teacher is new and the classroom sense of relationship and community is not yet established. Students may feel unwilling to share if they are concerned that the social hierarchy that is established if they share less than a “dream summer”.  Fabrications run rampant in this activity. Students may have experienced abuse, loss of family, removal, or other primary trauma, causing them to feel hyper-focused on those negative experiences. 

What to try instead: An easy substitution would be a writing assignment focused on the future, their hopes and dreams, or imaginations. Such assignments tell us a great deal about the child’s inner life without causing a fear-based reaction. 

 

“Origin/history of your name” activities  

Why it might not work: Imagine being named after your abuser. Or having been adopted or in foster care with no one to ask for an accurate history of your name. Students who have been teased for their name may also feel a particular dislike for this activity. 

What to try instead: Substitution activities would depend on the curriculum goal of the activity, but might include introducing yourself to 2 other students and telling them something about yourself or name acronyms. In addition, teachers should always work to correctly pronounce student names and avoid asking for permission to call students by nicknames or other names to make it “easier”.

 

“Family or Personal Timelines”

Why it might not work: Children’s lives may include loss of parents, foster care, multiple removals, multiple adoptions, memories of negative events. 

What to try instead: Instead, teach about timelines with more concrete options such as a timeline of a school day or year, or the timeline of a historical figure.

 

“Baby Picture Requests”

Why it might not work: Children may not have access to baby photos. Families may not have the time and money to print photos. Picture quality can contribute to negative classroom social hierarchies. 

What to try instead: Instead, draw a picture, use baby animal pictures, or reimagine the activity.  

 

“Family Trees”

Why it might not work: Children of single parents, adopted or foster families may have complex connections, and modern families may simply not look like the historical tree structure. 

What to try instead: An alternative activity could be to share “people who care about me” that could include anyone from a parent to a neighbor, or family trees of historical figures. Find other ways to highlight examples of non-traditional family structures to ensure students are seeing positive and supportive ideas.

 

Asking about students’ summers, weekends, out-of-school learning, names, family timelines, and baby pictures, are prompts that on the surface seem perfectly typical to many classrooms yet are impossible to answer for some students who may be, or have been, in foster care or adopted. Additionally, when these prompts are given without choice, they push students to be vulnerable on our terms, not theirs and can trigger recollections of traumatic events, re-traumatized students who deserve nothing but our very best care. 

Two things struck me when I read through Wilkinson’s post and still strike me now: 

  1. It made me realize just how common a practice it is for teachers to, with no intention of doing so, harm vulnerable children with common classroom activities. I have not talked to a single veteran teacher who has said they have not put one of these prompts in front of whole classes of students.
  2. I was gifted a new lens to reexamine countless conversations about learning and to be more critical about future ones.

While my learning arc has just begun, and I now engage in self-work toward deeper understanding, that eureka moment has clarified this personal, working truth:

When we invite our students to consider self-knowledge and understanding, we must do so knowing that we have an immeasurable responsibility to not further marginalize and re-traumatize our most vulnerable students.

That statement seems overly obvious, but classroom upon classroom is unknowingly attempting to connect with students only to push some of them further away, further marginalizing the very students who most need positive connections.

While a few decades old, the landmark 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACEs) brought to light “the relationship of health risk behavior and disease in adulthood to the breadth of exposure to childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and household dysfunction during childhood,” and it provided a yardstick for just how pervasive these reported experiences are for children. ACEs found that nearly 52% of adults reported an adverse childhood experience, as outlined below, and 6.2% of adults reported at least four adverse childhood experiences:

  • Abuse:
    • Emotional abuse
    • Physical abuse
    • Sexual abuse
  • Household Challenges:
    • Mother treated violently
    • Substance abuse in the household
    • Mental illness in the household
    • Parental separation or divorce
    • Incarcerated household member
  • Neglect:
    • Emotional neglect
    • Physical neglect

(“About the CDC-Kaiser Study.” CDC)

From 2016, The Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative reports that 46% of children, nationally and a similar percentage in Vermont, have experienced one or more adverse childhood experiences from the list of 9 ACEs. (CAHMI)

While it’s an imperfect correlation, we know many students are disempowered, and we need to inform our design of education with that in mind.

Applying a trauma-informed lens to personalized learning:

There are so many getting-to-know-you activities, like the ones Wilkinson shared, that educators use every year as a means for organizing student inquiry into self-knowledge and understanding. It’s an honest, yet uncritical, attempt to capture some of the “Critical Elements” of the Personal Learning Plan, such as a student’s own understanding of strengths, abilities, and skills; core principles; career assessment and/or learning styles inventory; and academic achievement.

As I reconsider potential learning opportunities to scaffold inquiry into self-knowledge, I wish to give students a choice:

  • to inspire creativity,
  • to imagine empowering hopes and dreams, and
  • to determine how and to what degree they allow themselves to be vulnerable.

Alex Shevrin, who works extensively in the field of trauma-informed education, has this to say about trauma and personalized learning:

“A great promise of PLP and personalized learning, in general, is that it offers students a chance to be in control of creating their own story, on their terms. So to me, the takeaway here is that, rather than providing limited choices for students that may dredge up traumatic memory or current traumatic situations, consider how students are truly given the choice to let themselves be known in the way that they want to be. It’s also worth noting that for some kids, it’s not safe to let adults or peers get to know you, and keeping a distance might be a survival mechanism.

“Similarly, some kids really struggle with the ‘strengths-based’ part of PLPs because they have a damaged self-concept and don’t know how to see themselves as a person with strengths. I think that the biggest thing for teachers is: don’t shy away from the complexity — there is no magical “trauma-informed getting to know you prompt,” it’s just about applying what we know about trauma to our classroom design. And challenge yourself to provide many options when it comes to students sharing personal things, while always giving the power to the student to choose the level of vulnerability.”

How do you approach trauma-informed personalized learning?

Additional Resources:

 

What does integrated studies look like at Flood Brook?

At Flood Brook School, middle level teachers believe in an integrated approach to curriculum delivery. Four years into implementing an integrated (science & social studies), multiage (grades 6-8) approach towards units of study, Charlie Herzog responded to student concerns with a focused inquiry cycle asking this important question: How might student attitudes towards integrated units of study shift with increased personalization and when projects are moved to the front of the learning experience? The following chronicle’s Charlie’s year-long experimentation with adjusting his team’s approach to increase student engagement:

“For me, personalization is about giving students as much agency in their learning as possible.”

–Susan Hennessey & Bill Rich

 

 

Flood Brook School, in Londonderry, Vermont is a K-8 school; we currently have 82 students in our grades 6-8 middle school. I teach sixth-grade language arts in the morning, and integrated science/social studies during the afternoons.Students rotate through three integrated units of study throughout the year. Integrated studies are scheduled four afternoons per week. Each class is 90-minutes long.

Six classroom teachers and a Library/Media Specialist comprise the middle school teaching team. Classroom teachers have divided into partnerships, each responsible for writing one, integrated, project-based unit of study. Each unit runs from 6-8 weeks. Students cycle among the three units over the course of the year.

This is our first year employing this “divide & conquer” approach. During the prior three years, the entire team collaboratively wrote nine, integrated units.

The typical unit plan structure looked like the following.

  • Students rotating among teachers for 3-4 weeks. Each teacher providing a particular science or social studies content focus along the way.
  • Content delivery varied from the “Sage On the State” approach to more student inquiry driven.
  • An impressive but possibly problematic amount of Cornell note-taking.
  • Student projects as the culminating experience of every unit. Typically, the following have always been a feature of the logistics involved in planning culminating projects.
    • Groups of three or larger must be multiage. Students form their own groups and partnerships.
    • Partnerships may or may not be multiage.
    • Students have been given limited choice regarding what form of a project to design.
    • Students have been given limited choice regarding the content focus for their projects.
    • A sometimes well-intentioned, but an excessive amount of graphic organizers/checklists for students to complete during and in the process of designing and constructing projects.
    • A culminating, public exhibition of learning.

What we noticed: All the prior units had the project at the back of the learning experience.

Restructuring to increase personalization

After growing greatly discouraged about attitudes towards and the effectiveness of our integrated approach, I decided to take a risk, and do something Tarrant Institute coach and friend Mrs. Rachel Mark had been gently suggesting to my middle school team for some time, put the project at the front. The project should be the “main course”, not the “dessert”. I further elaborate on my epiphany here.

My teammate Ms. Joey Blaine and I wrote an integrated unit titled Why should we care about human rights? We wrote it with the intention of increased personalization and placing the project at the front of the learning experience.

What compelled this intention was the sometimes alarming dissatisfaction students were expressing about integrated studies. We were driven by this Inquiry Question:

How might student attitudes towards integrated units of study shift with increased personalization and when projects are moved to the front of the learning experience?

Check out this video to see the unit results and how we answered this question:

Learning from and with students – teacher inquiry

All middle school students were involved in my research. They were informed of my research at the start of each unit cycle and shared their thinking via Google surveys and focus groups. Debriefs were held at the end of each unit cycle, and students, once again, shared their thinking via surveys and focus groups.

At the end of each unit cycle, I compared, reflected upon and analyzed pre & post unit student data in the following forms: blind numerical, blind written feedback and focus groups I facilitated.

Analysis and Interpretation

The data suggests students’ attitudes towards integrated studies shifted in a positive direction as a result of increased personalization and intentionally putting the project at the front of the learning experience.

Students’ blind written feedback also suggests a positive shift in attitudes. The tone of pre-unit feedback skewed heavily negative, with only a smattering of neutral or positive remarks. Post-unit feedback was far less brutal in tone and divided equally between critical and neutral/positive remarks.

Thoughts and reflections from my reflective blog posts throughout the projects echo many of the observations presented. On the whole, student attitudes appeared more positive. Students’ moaning and groaning about having integrated studies decreased noticeably after the first few class periods of our unit.

Furthermore, in each unit cycle, students took great pride in the monuments they designed and constructed, and they felt good about publicly sharing their products created during small group work.

Insights & Resources

Moving forward, my partner and I endeavor to write integrated units of study with the intention of maximizing opportunities for increased personalization and placing the project at the front of the learning experience, as the data suggests doing so increases engagement and develops a positive mindset of the content under study.

While there was less teacher talking than in past units, there was still too much. However, consider that a significant degree of teacher-led discussion was about the Holocaust. We felt this required teacher-led discussion due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Regarding the science content, that too was skewed towards teacher-led discussions. In the future, we endeavor for students to engage in science content in a more self-directed manner, whenever possible.

Launch events are more important than we realized. On the first day of each unit, we took students on a field trip of southern Vermont monuments. We observed, to differing degrees, this increased student “buy-in” for the unit. Thank you to the Tarrant Institute’s Susan Hennessey for the idea. My partner and I will continue planning engaging unit launch events.

For those interested in developing authentic project-based units of study here are some resources:

 

Jon Brown’s Learning Lab Lessons Learned

Bright Spots:

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery… I guess I’m flattered. It never ceases to amaze me how humorous middle school students are by accident, and not when they try to be. I try to tell them I’m the only funny one around. To which they reply: “Funny… looking!” It’s safe to say the students aren’t afraid of me. I’ve tried to teach them to not take themselves too seriously. I tell them if someone says something that’s funny about you, then laugh. It’s funny!

Inquiry & growth

My bright spots this year are definitely the relationships I’ve forged with my students, watching their growth in math, and helping them feel included in the process. The questions I’ve been researching are:

Will implementing projects or project based learning into my classroom lead to improved results on standardized tests? Will they actually learn the math?

This has met with mixed results, but by including the students in the decision-making process, I’ve forged relationships with them that didn’t exist before. Though the projects were fun, I’m not sure it was really about that, in the end.

 

 

Meeting with my site-based team and taking them on a school visit was a definite highlight of the year. Yes, overall, the tests scores on our standardized testing did improve. Did everyone become proficient? Hardly. But there was growth in the right direction from the beginning to the end of the year.

 

Another unexpected bright spot that I didn’t consider when I started this experience has been connecting with like minded, energized, risk taking, other middle school teachers. The network we’ve formed is powerful and has given me many resources to read and ideas to try.

Belly Flops:

I thought having a site-based team would be easy. Easy to schedule, easy to get ideas from, and easy to spark a curiosity for learning math in the students that were asked and accepted as part of the team. As we all know, theory seldom matches actual experience. One of the students couldn’t handle it. Schedule, behavior, inability to concentrate all contributed to this student only participating once in a while and even then seemed intent on trying to distract the group.

Another student was hardly ever available due to being on too many other councils, groups, or extra-curricular activities. And then there were two. I don’t want to underwhelm the importance of these two. They were very helpful and their input is extremely valuable.

I have work to do next year, both in the selection process and trying to get meetings to become habit so students, and their teacher, plan around it.

Secondly, I thought trying to personalize the experience for students would instantly achieve buy-in and increased passion in my students. Allowing them to make choices about how do get the work done on projects or other activities seemed like a win-win. I, like some of my colleagues, also found that given too many choices and free time to work did not achieve the results I was looking for. Some students seemed completely unmotivated no matter what I tried.

I have more ideas for next year, to include having a subset of students help me plan the curriculum. We’ll see how that goes.

Ottauquechee’s Diversity Detectives in:

Diversity Detectives library audit banner

The Case of The Library Diversity Audit

Whose stories are being told in your library? Whose stories are being left out?

Look around your library. It is such a beautiful space. It’s filled with vibrant colors and flexible furniture, student art and encouraging signs and posters. Maybe it has a makerspace. And it’s stocked full of books of all shapes, sizes and colors. Every book imaginable is available somewhere, from a YA-version Hamlet, to Winnie the Pooh and The Big Friendly Giant. Plus of course, Catcher in the Rye. You’ve got some new classics as well: Twilight, Hunger Games, City of Bones. Your collection is amazing. Why on earth would you need a library audit?

Except…

What’s a library audit?

Librarians audit their collections for any number of reasons. Books like to live, they like to find readers. Part of library management is curating which books to add and which to discard.

But recently, quite a few librarians have noticed that their collections represent only a minority of voices in the communities they serve. Publishing has favored a limited number of narratives. Those narratives feature a large number of protagonists who are white, who are male, who are able-bodied, who are straight. Those characteristics taken together reference a small set of the population. Therefore, many librarians are finding it useful to use lenses of diversity in conducting their audits. As you buy new books, and as you discard older ones, having lenses of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation and economic class — even a subset of those lenses — can make a collection more useful to its community.

And why did Ottauquechee need one?

“I thought about my students. Do they see themselves in the library?”

The Ottauquechee School, in Quechee VT, is home to an amazing library space. Work tables cluster under a wall of windows. Beanbags and soft, plush reading chairs beckon invitingly. Laptops sit ready atop a tech bar, and a whiteboard asks students to write questions for an upcoming discussion. And Ottauquechee School librarian Becky Whitney wanted to make sure the collection was just as welcoming as the space itself.

I was inspired from the Deeper Learning Conference we attended in 2018, and in one session we attended, called Little People have Big Ideas: Implementing a Social Justice Lens in Elementary, with Jeffrey Feitelberg, elementary students did a classroom library audit. And I always felt, because I didn’t have my own classroom, that I couldn’t make systemic change. I only see the students for 45 minutes a week  — and then sometimes there’s holidays or vacations and field trips and then it’s two weeks until I see them. And I thought, “There’s really no way to make these great PBL projects in library.” It’s just not enough time to make it meaningful.

But when I went to that session, and the presenter talked about the kid’s classroom library, I just thought “I could do that with a very small segment of the library,” and then use it as a research project.  The diversity audit, it kind of takes my responsibility and my passion and melds them.

Then I thought, there are a few students of color at our school. Where are they reflected in the library? 

Becky knew that conducting a diversity audit of the library would not just improve the range of the collection, but teach students to be more critical readers. It would teach them to think powerfully about empathy and inclusion. So she got to work.

The Diversity Detectives are on the case

#1000Blackgirlbooks

Becky began by showing this inspiring video of 11 year old Marley Dias, a Black 6th grader who wanted to see herself in more books. Marley noticed the books she was reading in school were mostly about “white boys and dogs”. She wanted more books with characters who look like her.  Her mother asked her, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” What Marley did was begin a movement demanding more racial diversity YA books. She went looking for #1000Blackgirlbooks, crowd-sourcing a collection of books with a Black female protagonist. She distributes the books to school libraries. The movement went viral, and kicked off a lot of powerful conversations for librarians around race in YA publishing.

But for Ottauquechee students, Marley’s activism provided a relatable example. Whose stories would they find in their own library? Whose stories did they want to find? Could everyone see themselves in the collection?

Dream of a Common Language

Becky introduced and unpacked the 4 Agreements of Courageous Conversations (Singleton & Linton)  to her students:

  • Stay engaged
  • Speak your truth
  • Expect discomfort
  • Expect non-closure

They would use these four guidelines as a way to move through tough topics together.

Becky also worked with a community partner in this project, John Hall, the chair of the committee for Racial Inclusion and Equality in Hartford.

And what he said was, “Just the discussion was the important and powerful piece. The research is great, buying new and diverse books for the library is great,” but I would have done that anyway. So, including the kids in the discussion, including the kids and giving them agency, and giving them a voice in what kind of library, whose story are we telling — making them realize, the lack of diversity not okay. 

Becky also defined specific lenses students could use in the audit. They could look for stories that featured diversity around race, religion, disability, and culture. Becky and her students chewed over the vocabulary together. They examined current data on the state of children’s book publishing and representation, then they moved into interest-based groups. They in effect became Diversity Detectives, studying Ottauquechee’s library collection for clues to inclusion.

Tackling the stacks…

library audit rubric

…and making the case

The Diversity Detectives studied different sets of books in Ottauquechee’s library, using their Courageous Conversations agreements and the diversity lenses. They worked on analyzing the data they collected, then they created infographics in Canva. Here is a single point rubric Becky created for assessing the infographics. Lastly, students will share the infographics with their whole school community in the hopes of continuing discussions of inclusion.

Now be the change you want to see in the world.

For librarian Becky Whitney, this wasn’t just a theoretical exercise. The Diversity Detectives’ research will directly inform the direction Ottauquechee’s library collection takes as it grows. Taking the infographics and associated research into account, she will be partnering with the Diversity Detectives on recommended new purchases and culls. She also reached out to a local bookstore, in Norwich VT. The Norwich Bookstore’s proprietor, Liza Bernard, has agreed to share with students how she purchases books and what influences those decisions. All part of making sure this exercise remains more than academic. Becky hopes to come home from Norwich Bookstore with about 20 new titles based on the students’ research. Conversations around inclusion and diversity will have real-world relevance in Ottauquechee. They will shape the library collection, and hopefully extend to other areas of students’ lives.

Teaching the library audit

Becky ponders how she has challenged herself to move beyond her own initial discomfort with addressing these issues in school:

I’ve forced myself to be uncomfortable. I’m forcing myself to be aware of the language I use. And I had never understood that as fully as I have now because of the amount of research that I did, to make sure that I knew what I was talking about. It’s kind of like the whole — white fragility thing, and the whole thing about “I’m uncomfortable talking about race, and so I’m just going to not really talk about it.”

Students are leading these conversations and growing their agency, voice and understanding of critical issues in the process. And teachers are giving them the opportunity to share power and critically analyze their library spaces.

What does your library collection look like? How do you choose whose stories are included?

Further reading:

Get started podcasting with students

What makes a podcast? A digital recording and an online sharing service

New to podcasts?  Listen to a few!

Before you jump into creating a podcast, get familiar with the format.  Here are a few that are friendly for middle school students and their teachers:

What is a podcast anyway?

Podcasting takes the best of a classic medium — radio — and puts that power in the palm of your hand. And in the palm of your neighbor’s hand. Heck, everyone’s hands. Podcasting makes great conversations, research, and storytelling available in an on-demand, on-the-go format that fits well into busy lives. All you’ve gotta do is tell a story, get it on tape, put it online, and share it with others.

https://twitter.com/innovativeEd/status/964315033533669377

Podcasting how to:

In realistic busy teaching terms, let’s look at how to get started podcasting with students by planning, recording, editing and sharing a podcast.

What makes a podcast? A digital recording and an online sharing service

 

1. Planning

First off, figure out why you and your students want a podcast. What’s the payoff? What stories are y’all trying to tell, and why is podcasting the perfect fit for them?

Different stories require different structures, and thus different ways of planning.  Here are some examples:

Podcasts in one voice:

Stories like a This I Believe essay, a book review, or a narrative require a script.  Students will want to draft and revise their story, starting with a hook to really capture their audience.  These types of podcasts often start with an introduction to the host and a conclusion thanking the audience for listening.

Interviews and Conversations:

StoryCorps is a great example of an interview or conversation style podcast.  These types of podcasts require some thought about the questions you will ask.  Students will want to draft some questions, but they’ll also want to practice follow-up questions.

Podcasts in many voices:

Podcasts like Dorothy’s List use many voices to tell a story.  These require both a lot of planning and the flexibility to incorporate the words and ideas of others.  Students will want to script portions of the podcast that introduce guests and their ideas and summarize and synthesize their words.  They will also want to have great questions and prompts for those they interview.  This format will require a lot of editing!

No matter the format, remember these questions:

NPR offers a plethora of resources for teachers and students, including the Teaching Podcasting: A Curriculum Guide for Educators.  In it, they share these questions for focusing student stories:

What is my story’s driving question?

What is the story NOT about?

How will I ensure my story is fair to the people and ideas it represents?

How will I engage my audience — and hold them?

What are my dream ingredients?

What will the audience remember when it’s over?

There is also a guide for students, perfect for self-directed learners!

Overwhelmed?  Start Small!

If this all seems like too much planning to start with.  Start with a very small class podcast like one of these:

  • Tell some jokes!  Here is your hook:
    • Voice 1: Knock, knock
    • Voice 2: Who’s there?
    • Back to Voice 1: (name)
    • Back to Voice 2: and (name) with the Knock Knock Cast where we tell three laugh, or groan, worthy knock knock jokes.
    • [Gather jokes from students and teachers]
  • The Wish Cast:
    • Hook: What would you do if you caught a fish who offered you a wish in exchange for its freedom?  This is (name) and (name) with the Wish Cast.
    • Content:  In Kate Messner’s book The Seventh Wish, Charlie Brennan is ice fishing when she catches a magic fish.  She can hardly believe it but thinks it might be worth it just to make a wish for the fun of it.  “Let Roberto Sullivan fall in love with me,” she tells the fish. The wish doesn’t work out the way she had hoped… but she gets more chances to make wishes. And what about you?  What would you wish for?  We asked some friends and this is what they said:
    • [Interview several people in the room: What would you wish for?]

2. Recording

There are a ton of ways to record your podcasts, depending on the equipment you have on hand.  Here are a few:

  • The Voice Memos app is available on all iPad, iPod, and iPhones and is an easy way to record audio. Unfortunately, this app does not allow for editing.
  • Audacity is free software for any computer that allows you to record and edit audio.
  • GarageBand is available for MAC and IOS devices and provides recording and editing capabilities.
  • Soundrap is an online audio recorder and editor, making it a great choice for Chromebooks.

While software and apps are always changing, you can find some basic step by step instructions and pros and cons of each application here.

All hail the podbox, baby

Because classrooms can be a little noisy at times, and it can be challenging to find a quiet space to record, we recommend trying out a podbox. This snazzy device is modeled on the type of mobile sound-dampening enclosures used by professional voice-over artists and designed by our very own Mark Olofson.

3. Editing and mixing

Once students have recorded their audio, they’ll find they need to edit it to make it sound great.  Here is a step by step process for producing a podcast.

  • Cut your clips: select the audio you want to use and cut out the stuff you don’t want.
  • Order your clips: put your clips in order to tell your story.
  • Check your sound: are some clips too loud?  Are others to quiet?  Adjust the volume on your clips so that they are relatively uniform and won’t be too hard to listen to.
  • Add some sound: sound effects and music can make a podcast even better.  If there is time, add these in to help tell the story.

Some students may master this process quickly, for more advanced mixing check out NPR’s Producers Handbook to Mixing Audio Stories.

4. Sharing

Once you’ve begun creating finished episodes, it’s time to release them out into this big beautiful world of ours. Which begs the age-old question: how?

Send it out online

At the most basic, a podcast is a series of audio episodes you make available online. Soundcloud allows you to upload 180 minutes of audio for free. PodBean also provides free podcast hosting.

Once you have your podcast uploaded to an online service, you can share it with the world via social media, email, QR code, or adding it to your website.  Be sure to use multiple formats so it can find an authentic audience, otherwise, what is the point?!

Send it out over the airwaves

Brattleboro, Vermont was incorporated back in 1753, a former military fort that embraced trading, commerce and the power of nearby Whetstone Falls to spur mill production. It’s been home to countless tiny, fascinating episodes of Vermont history — episodes that current residents now listen to each week on the radio, being described and re-enacted by students from Brattleboro Area Middle School.

These students partner with the Brattleboro Historical Society in researching and recording 3-4 minute long episodes. And local radio station WKVT airs those episodes weekly. The community’s response to the episodes has been astounding, and the series is closing in on its 200th episode. Partnering with a resource-rich organization like a historical society provides a rich stream of content and expert knowledge. And approaching your local community radio station with educational content actually helps stations stay on the air, by partially fulfilling the terms of their FCC licenses.

Additional resources:

Podcasts with and by Vermont students

Have you tried podcasting with students? What tips can you recommend?

Stowe students lead school change

Stowe student leadership

How student-adult partnerships can scaffold student leadership

“Did you know that the same areas in the brain light up when a person is curious as when that person is given candy or money?” Stowe Middle School students Macey Crowder and Shelby Lizotte posed this question to Stowe’s school board during a presentation to their school board. Representing their Student Engagement Committee, they shared the results of a survey given to all Stowe Middle School students to measure the level of engagement at their school.

 

A focus on leadership:

Stowe’s principal, Dan Morrison, has made it one of his top goals this 2018-19 school year to create multiple leadership roles for his middle school students.  He believes, as Betty Edwards does,

“If we want students to work in partnership with adults, we must give them the opportunities to develop leadership skills—skills that allow them to manage time, work as a team, set goals, solve problems, facilitate meetings, defend positions, and make effective presentations.”  The Power of Youth Leadership: Effective middle schools ensure all students have opportunities to lead

To that end, Morrison created and teaches a Student Leadership Course in Schoology.

 

Stowe students as well are active participants in two other opportunities for student leadership: the Scholarly Habits Redesign Committee and the Student Engagement at Stowe Committee. Both committees use the design thinking framework and collect and analyze data in order to take on challenges they’ve identified for school improvement.

Student & adult partnerships:

Leadership course

In October, Stowe student leaders presented to their community on open house night. They shared how the school was shifting from traditional parent teacher conferences to student led conferences this year. They distributed this one-page tips sheet  meant to help families prepare for the shift.

 

Scholarly habits at Stowe:

Lindsey Halman and Helen Beattie from Up For Learning help facilitate the Scholarly Habits Redesign Committee. The task: redesign and reintroduce the scholarly habits to students, teachers, and the Stowe community. The students participated in a summer retreat. Next, they led a faculty meeting to help teachers better understand the scholarly habits, which include learning strategies, perseverance, mindset and social skills. Committee member Nadia Chudzil explains:

“Many  people asked us “Why are you doing this?” There are many reasons why we are doing this. We feel that Scholarly Habits needs to be reevaluated from a student’s perspective. Many students felt that Scholarly Habits was something that our teacher made us do. We also felt that we had no voice in our Scholarly Habits experience. Now that the students are redesigning them, we can make Scholarly Habits something students are interested in and are excited for. Having students do this can help other students be more excited about it because they know that it wasn’t just the teacher telling them about something they HAD to do, but instead they will know that there was student voice in making this a norm in our school.” 

The committee has since collected data from all stakeholders (students, staff, parents, community members) through a survey and interviews. The survey and interviews focused on understanding both the level of ownership and knowledge of the Scholarly Habits. The committee met at the end of November to analyze their data. They will be meeting again mid-January to develop their action plan and begin their SH Campaign.

Student engagement at Stowe:

The task for the Student Engagement Leadership Committee is to understand the current level of engagement at the middle school and consider ways to both celebrate and find areas for growth. To that end, a group of seven students (6th, 7th, & 8th graders) convened. We co-constructed a working definition of engagement and set out to collect data about the current state of engagement at the middle school.  

 

 

Data collection:

Working with a Tarrant Institute research fellow, Steve Netcoh (nicknamed Survey Sensei), the students selected engagement indicators from three different national engagement surveys they thought best suited the context at Stowe. They received advice from him about how to build a survey that would elicit honest feedback. 

 

 

The committee decided the best way to encourage survey participants to take the survey seriously was to engage them first. They created a Kahoot meant to get players to think about why engagement is important in the learning process. All middle schoolers eagerly participated and then took the survey.

Data analysis:

Committee members discussed the results of the quantitative data looking for celebrations and areas of for growth:

 

 

Next, the committee took on the challenge of coding the qualitative responses. They looked for trends, including:

  • Student Input/Freedom (class choice)
  • Activity/Break
  • Change Environment
  • Grades/Workload
  • Change in Teaching (Hands on).

Most of the responses were about students wanting more opportunities to have freedom and their voices be important. This was also represented in the quantitative data as well.

The group once again worked with Survey Sensei Steve to look at results from each of the grade levels. The committee looked at the 20% of students whose answers showed they were disengaged in school. 

Presenting findings:

“Did you know that the same areas in the brain light up when a person is curious as when that person is given candy or money?” Stowe Middle School students Macey Crowder and Shelby Lizotte posed this question to Stowe’s school board during a presentation to their school board. Representing their Student Engagement Committee, they shared the results of a survey given to all Stowe Middle School students to measure the level of engagement at their school.

Superintendent Wrend asked the committee to go further with the data. Explore ways to build on current successes and improve the levels of student voice and engagement. And, she invited the group to return and share their work once again. A perfect next step to encourage continued leadership and student voice!

Clearly Stowe Middle School values partnering with students to effect change.

How do you partner with your students?

 

A student-led short story unit at Crossett Brook

7th and 8th graders take the initiative to share their stories with the world.

student-led short story unitMs. Cicchetti’s 7th and 8th grade language arts classes at Crossett Brook Middle School have been writing short stories for the last few weeks. Their writing experience has been a student-driven one and has been “Very enjoyable!” says Harper Haase, a 7th grader in Ms. Cicchetti’s class.

Everyone was very happy with getting to pick their own topic, do their own editing and revising, and not having teachers “guide” them along and take control.

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How do *you* mitigate heat transfer at your old elementary school?

Local connections with worldwide implications

Science Saturday, with Tarrant Institute research fellow Mark OlofsonIn our current study of heat transfer, our class decided to connect science concepts to the UN Sustainable Development Goals — specifically, Goal 13, which looks to combat climate change. The challenge was to model a place where students had experienced Urban Heat Islands, then create a sustainable mitigation plan for that place.

Starting with paper blueprints, then moving to Google Maps, students fabricated models of these urban heat islands and calculated how to measure the mitigation.

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The 8th grade consultants shaping education at Burke Town School

The power of the student consult

If you’re wondering what engages, excites and motivates students, the answer is easy: ask them.

Creating opportunities for students to give feedback on plans, projects, assessments and activities builds a collaborative learning community, and creates leadership and student voice opportunities.

Here’s how one school gave student consultants a shot.

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3 tech-rich ways to study local history

Place-based learning with real world implications

tech-rich ways to study historyFor your students, learning about the local landscape can be amazing. What’s that tree? How long has that building been here? What does that plaque, “1927 Flood Level” mean?

Here’s 3 tech-rich ways to study local history: by updating your town on Google Maps, creating a QR code-powered history walk or shooting a historical documentary. Roll tape!

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The rise of the project-based PLP

brainado and the rise of the project-based PLP

A new recipe for Personalized Learning Plans

Crossett Brook PLPsRather than trying to get students to care about existing PLPs, some schools are revamping their PLP process to start with what students care about. They are asking students to pursue their passions by crafting projects based on their personal interests and deepest curiosities.

The new recipe that is emerging: start with a cool personalized project and then build the PLP around it.

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Choose Your Own Adventure with Google Earth

The virtual reality cure for wanderlust

ways students can create VR contentDespite this gorgeous fall weather here in central Vermont, I’m suffering from a bad case of wanderlust. One antidote I’ve found to satisfy the daily craving to hit the high road is the 360Cities Tab Extension. Now that I’ve added it to my Chrome browser, every time I open a tab, it displays a new full screen photo of somewhere fabulous, curious, or surreal.

Another avenue for virtual adventure is to explore Google Earth, Choose Your Own Adventure-style. 6th grade students at Stowe Middle School, in Stowe VT, did just that, learning about latitude and longitude by creating their own Choose Your Own Adventure activities.

And your students can too.

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Courage lives on

 

#everydaycourageThis fall, we’ve been talking  about everyday courage in schools. We’ve written about the courage it takes to start a new team, using technology to open up communication with students and to open up our practice.

We’ve shared examples about how teachers are showing up, engaging in hard conversations about race, their own practice, about getting negative feedback and sharing our work and selves with others. We’ve heard about how students are leading the way when given the support at school to do so: working for acceptance, equality and identity and systems that let every voice be heard. Here are three themes we’ve seen emerge.

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The #everydaycourage of staying curious in the face of negative feedback

Feedback often feels like criticism. But what if we used it as an opportunity to grow?

#everydaycourageIn third grade, I had my own time-out chair in the principal’s office. My exuberant chattiness, combined with an 8-year-old’s lack of social filter frequently earned me a trip to that chair that sat in the corner facing the clock.

My face would burn with shame as I trudged down the long hall. As I sat and waited for the loud ticking of the clock to signal my release, I would try to figure out what I’d done wrong. Sometimes it was obvious: Nathan’s story hadn’t “gone to the dogs” as I’d loudly proclaimed. (But it had just seemed like the perfect punchline to the joke when my teacher had asked…‘Where has your story gone?…’)

Other times, many times, I was completely bewildered. I’d do my time, and then return to the flow of the classroom, as if I’d never left, edgy and bracing for my next invisible (to me) infraction.

Based upon the frequency of these visits, I doubt they were learning experiences. Instead, they were punitive, spirit-crushing time-outs; lost opportunities for growth.

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#everydaycourage and trauma-informed education

#everydaycourage is always around us if we can slow down to notice it.

#everydaycourageI spent many years working in a therapeutic school with teens who were struggling with anxiety, depression, mental health, and the impacts of trauma. If you let the pace of the year carry you forward, it was easy to lose sight of the progress we were making.

I remember going to see a production of a musical with students from a mainstream school. I remember watching it and being incredibly impressed with their talents, skills, and bravery in performance.  And I felt sad. My students in our alternative school had faced so much in their lives, and it was unlikely that many of them would be able to do something like get up in front of an audience of hundreds and sing.

Those were the thoughts I had when I was swept up in the school year. But I wasn’t noticing the #everydaycourage and growth right in front of me.

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How to start a difficult conversation

Conversations begin at home. And at the bus stop. Also the market. And–

#everydaycourageSo much of the change we need to see right now can be kicked off by starting conversations with members of your community.

It takes a certain amount of courage to address issues that affect your whole community — such as bullying, hate speech and equity — with people who you may never have spoken with before.

But it’s effective. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. Let’s look at 4 ways to start a difficult conversation in your community.

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The #everydaycourage of talking about race in Vermont schools

How will your students prepare for active engagement in democracy?

#everydaycourageLast spring Christie Nold, a 6th grade teacher at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, was at Burlington’s Jazz Fest listening to student musicians when she got some disturbing news: someone had spray-painted racist hate speech on her school’s campus.

Overwhelmed by her own emotions, Nold also knew that she had to find a way to help her students deal with their own understandings and emotions about the  graffiti. Like Christie, many teachers are wondering how to address a recent rise in racism and white supremacy.

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The #everydaycourage of sharing our work as educators

3 ways to de-privatize our practice

#everydaycourage

My first teaching job was in the library at a large, open-concept elementary school in Howard County, Maryland. The library was the hub of the school. During my classes teachers, administrators, and para-professionals walked freely in and out of the library, occasionally stopping to watch our progress.

And it was terrifying.

I felt scrutinized! But, after many months of these informal observations, I began to relax, and then having all of those eyes on my teaching was hugely helpful.

My mindset shifted from helpless vulnerability to hopeful vulnerability; this was an opportunity to learn from experts.

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What it looks like when students teach

#everydaycourage“It really is nice being able to teach others. I know that I had an effect on them.”

The Essex STEM Academy, at Essex High School, lets students pursue their passion for tech and science with support from the Vermont STEM community. They also let the students teach.

We spoke with Ian, an Essex STEM Academy student who taught arduino programming, for an episode of our podcast. Find out what it’s like when students are given the freedom, support and authority to step into a teaching role.

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#vted leads the way with #everydaycourage

School leadership in turbulent times

#everydaycourage #vted leads the wayAs schools prepare to welcome students through their doors, many educators are researching how to talk with their students about the attacks in Charlottesville or Barcelona. Or how to respond to student concerns about diversity, tolerance and equity. Or, ulp, how to address this recent article by Wired, revealing that the state with the highest percentage of online trolls is… Vermont.

Starting these conversations, and addressing our current crisis of digital citizenship takes courage and can often feel uncomfortable, but they all begin with one small step, then another, and another after that. They’re acts in which extraordinary courage soon becomes #everydaycourage, and we’re fortunate to have some leaders in the #vted ecosphere — administrators, educators and students — showing us the way.

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A Developmental Designs approach to student-directed learning

It takes a courageous village

#everydaycourageIn order for student centered learning to happen, we have to invest in explicitly teaching (and reteaching) routines, expectations, and behaviors for learning. The beginning of the year is an ideal time to first establish a culture and community for learning.

But it takes time to learn and practice these routines.

Often, we feel the pressure of time urging us to jump right into our first units, yet without this foundation in place we can find ourselves spending valuable time redirecting student behavior, rather than focusing on content-specific learning.

It takes courage to acknowledge that we need to model, teach behaviors, and establish routines before we can ask students to learn. #everydaycourage.

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Laying the groundwork for effective teaching teams

Or, What to Bring to the First Staff Potluck

#everydaycourageOpening up to fellow educators can be hard. We all know we’re doing the best we can, but many of us also feel like we could be doing better for our students. We want to do the best we can and sometimes we get terrified that it’s not enough. What if none of the other teachers feel this way?

Except: they do.

And that’s why it’s important to be brave enough to connect with the other teachers on your team, to really get to know them as people — and to let them get to know you in return. They can be some of your most important resources during the school year.

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Checking in with Stowe & PAML’s peer PLP collaboration

peer PLP collaboration

peer PLP collaborationWhen last we left the students of these two plucky Vermont middle schools, they had managed to connect students and educators via Google Hangout. They’d gotten together to make pizzas and plot the future of personalized learning plans (PLPs). And they’d paired up students as PLP peer collaborators and spent some time reviewing PLPs in pairs.

So we wanted to ask: what’s next? How’s this peer PLP collaboration thing going?

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Use a student leadership team for feedback on PLPs

Guiding Crossett Brook PLPs with student voice

The Crossett Brook PLP student leadership group presented their recommendations on PLPs to the teaching staff at the end of the school year. The educators received the students’ ideas well. It was pretty cool to see a roomful of teachers rapt on a hot afternoon during the last week of school.

And the students knocked it out of the park.

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4 examples of students as partners in school change

Let students help you transform your school

students as partners in school changeCreating sustainable systemic change is hard work. Yet there are readily available, free, renewable resources right in your classroom. Students are embedded experts, creative geniuses, ruthless truthtellers, and intrinsic futurists.

Here are four examples of students as partners in school change: partners in building a makerspace, redesigning PLPs, serving the school community and negotiating curriculum.

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Do you know where you are?

Taking stock on implementing Vermont’s Act 77

Vermont Act 77“Do you know where you are?”

Usually it’s a question medical professionals ask in emergency situations. It’s not as dramatic in the context of education, but it can be just as useful as a diagnostic criteria.

We’re going to ask you to take stock of where you are in the implementation of three pillars: Personalization (PLP’s), Proficiency, and Flexible Pathways. They’re the three pillars holding up Act 77, Vermont’s legislation to put students at the center of innovative school change.

whips out a clipboard, tucks pen behind ear

Ready?

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4 end-of-year activities for advisory

Acknowledge, share, recognize

end-of-year activities for advisoryThe end of the school year is every bit as happy and joyous as it is chaotic and stressful. Make sure that you slow down the hands on the clock to bring closure to your advisory. Acknowledge the successes and challenges of the year. Share the positive things you’ve all learned about each other, and recognize individual students and their stories.

Let’s see how it works in action.

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8 year-end reflection tools and activities

Reflect, celebrate and plan

year-end reflection tools and activitiesOh, the spring. Such a busy time for teachers.

There are all those transition meetings, already getting ready for the next year. Then there are placement meetings, figuring out who will be in what class, core or group. And of course, all those ceremonies, exhibitions, and spring events.

It’s easy to forget all of the progress you have made with your students and as a school during these times. And it’s easy to get frustrated and to focus only on what you have to do next.

Your class, your community and the progress your school has made matters. And they should be celebrated.

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Looking at ways students can create VR content

Help students become creators of this engaging new technology

ways students can create VR contentWith the astronomical rise in popularity of virtual reality in education, it’s important to make available tools for students to create virtual reality content as well as consuming it. So while you get ready to send your students off on Expeditions to amazing new worlds and experiences, have ways for them to make their own waiting when they return.

Let’s look at a couple ways students can create VR content.

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Student-centered filmmaking at Compass

Lessons learned from a film festival

"Video in the Classroom"Every year, I watch in awe as students take ownership of their films and are challenged to exercise new skills and proficiencies: self direction, creative expression, and problem-solving. I’ve seen this assignment throw some of our most academically-capable and motivated students off-balance.

I’ve also watched many diverse groups pull together to create some powerful, beautifully-shot films.

This may be the most challenging course we offer.

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4 more ways to help middle schoolers get organized

Helping students get organized

help middle schoolers get organizedMiddle schoolers’ lives are multi-faceted, dynamic and dramatic. And while we talk about how to grow self-directed, engaged and motivated students, that growth can’t take place while students are overwhelmed and anxious about managing their daily lives.

Last time, we looked at how to organize the tech itself. Now let’s look at how to use powerful tech tools (shiny!) to help make middle school manageable.

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4 ways to help middle school students organize their tech

“Where did I put that cord? My computer is dead!”

help middle school students get organized with their techHow many times have you heard this in your classroom? So much of middle school is developing systems to stay organized: “How do I get to all these classes? How do I open my locker?” And with the addition of technology: “How do I keep track of my school computer? Which Google Doc is the homework in? ”

Let’s look at 4 ways students can learn independence and grow leadership through the care and organization of technology.

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How to fight fake news in the field

A case study from one classroom

how to fight fake newsIn part one, we explored how middle grade students are struggling to recognize fake news or sponsored posts and shared many tools for teachers looking to tackle this thorny issue.

But what does it really look like We sat down for a Q & A with Christie Nold, sixth grade educator and fighter of fake news.

Here’s her mini-unit on telling real from fake news.

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Beyond the audience of one

Why digital composition matters

why digital composition mattersI’d like you to think back to your days as a student. What kinds of writing did you do? Who read it? What made it important to you? And what made it important to the world?

If you’re like most people, you’re probably drawing a blank right now. Some of today’s students, though, can clearly articulate just how and why their writing is important. And we don’t mean writing as you might imagine, but rather digital composition:  digital stories, digital portfolios, documentary films, and of course, podcasts. For each of these, there is a real audience, one beyond the more typical audience of one, the teacher.

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Digital access to library resources

A case study in a 1:1 school

Screencast-o-matic on the Macbook: a step-by-step tutorialOur small school is blessed to have an unusually large library space: nearly 3000 square feet.  Over the last eight years, there has been much refurbishment in our library, such as repainting and installing new carpet, new furnishings, ceiling, lights and window shades. Our library has become an attractive, much-used space by all ages, with an average of 600-700 materials circulating monthly.

In a perfect world, this physical library space would be in the center of our school, not on a lower level two floors away from the middle school classrooms.  But with the integration of 1:1 tablet devices for all our middle school students, the distance between the physical library and these students has shortened considerably.

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5 Google Chrome apps and extensions for learner support

Support for visual, attention & motor control challenges

Chrome apps and extensions for differentiationRemember training Dragon Dictation to recognize your student’s voice? That technology was pretty profound in 2004, but the options now to support differentiation for learners will blow your mind. What’s better is that we don’t have to offer these technologies to identified students. Any student (or adult!) can use these apps and extensions if they are helpful.

Let’s explore some FREE Google Chrome apps and extensions that support differentiation for a variety of learners.

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Why do action research?

5 benefits of doing action research in the classroom

getting started with action research

Teachers are constantly tinkering, creating, learning, and growing. Action research is a slightly formalized version of what skilled teachers do every day.

By honoring action research as systematic professional inquiry, we empower teachers to improve their practice. It’s easy to get started undertaking a small, powerful action research project in your classroom. Let’s see what it can look like.

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3 ways to use Google Forms to streamline your workflow

For exit tickets, student support & action research

use Google Forms to streamline your workflowUsing Google Forms and Google  Sheets together can streamline your process and make all your tasks feel just a little more manageable.

As an educator, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to keep all your different data streams organized, not to mention the finding the time to analyze and interpret that data! Let’s take three examples of how Google Forms can cut down on your paperwork flurries.

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Rethinking school schedules

It’s about time

rethinking the traditional school scheduleI am fascinated with master schedules! This is certainly a massive understatement. I love the challenge of putting all the pieces together, showing how everything is connected. My mind is wired to think through a systems lens. I am always asking myself, if I change this thing over here what happens over there?

However, I feel like the picture on the puzzle box, you know, the one that shows you how to put the puzzle together, isn’t the right image to be working off anymore. The way we build schedules is struggling to keep pace with the pedagogical beliefs and practices in schools.

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What work-based learning in Vermont can look like

On exploring flexible pathways to learning

equity in educationThis past August, Vermont Secretary of Education Dr Rebecca Holcombe addressed the 2016 Amplifying Student Voice & Partnership Conference on the topic of equity in education. She was also kind enough to allow us to record and share her remarks.

In the first of two installments, we hear from Secretary Holcombe as she highlights the story of one particular student from Randolph Union High School, who, along with support from his community, found a way to channel his passion for farming into work-based learning in Vermont, and from there, a world of high-level business skills.

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Onward and upward

Achieving escape velocity with students as partners

#ready2launchCongratulations for making it through the first month of school! Whether it’s your first year as an educator or your thirty-first, the launch of the school year is a special — and especially challenging — time.

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect and imagine how to build on what you’ve started.

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Power up your Advisory programs

How 30 minutes can leave a lasting impact on the day.

advisory programsAdvisory: the first 15 to 30 minutes of every middle school day, during which you’re trying to build relationships with your students and engage them in meaningful social interaction.

You also might be fighting off the administrative minutiae of the morning: Attendance. Lunch money. Permission slips. Bus notes.

Let’s look at some strategies for powering up advisory programs

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3 ways to create a student-led open house

Student leadership at a school Open House? You betcha.

#ready2launch student-led open houseYou’ve heard of student-led conferences, but how about a Student-Led Open House? An idea so strange it just might work.

When we partner with young adolescents, we give them voice and choice. We know that is one of the best practices of middle level education. In theory, schools and teachers engage in this throughout the school experience. But let’s face it, sometimes giving up control can feel a little intimidating. Let’s look at 3 easy ways to move towards a student-led open house

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4 ways to partner with students around Genius Hour

1% teacher inspiration & 99% student-led

#ready2launchGenius Hour is a leap of faith in which educators set aside their most precious resource, time, for students to pursue their passions. It doesn’t get much more student-centered than that.

But there are actually several aspects of Genius Hour where students can be involved as partners to amp up the genius quotient.

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Finding ways to encourage student leadership

Student Leadership: The time is now

#ready2launch student leadershipAugust is usually a time crammed with planning logistics for the start of the school year. It’s a time when educators’ coffee intake increases exponentially and that ever-popular 4AM anxiety dream makes you jump out of bed in a sweat. Yet somehow it all falls into place and school opens, students show up, and off we go.

Now, my question to you is how many schools embrace the student’s voice in planning for this opening?

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Climate, Community and Voice from Day 1

 Starting up with our students

ready2LAnother exciting year is upon us. It may be difficult to wrest our attention from these glorious days of Vermont summer but never have the opportunities for good teaching been more open to us. As one teacher noted upon leaving this summer’s Middle Grades Institute, “I can bring about positive change in my classroom and school. I just have to follow my heart and do what I know is best for kids: personalized, flexible and proficiency based learning!”

In the next several weeks, we’ll dive into making the most of the first weeks of school so you can follow your heart and do what’s best for kids.

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twitter etiquette

Modeling twitter interactions as an educator and parent

digital citizenship and twitter etiquetteWith twitter’s explosive growth in popularity with educators, it can get a little confusing as to what the new rules of social media look like. Hint: they’re a lot like the old rules. Kindness, empathy and listening rule the day.

Let’s look at how one educator and parent models twitter etiquette.

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Teaching copyright with video mashups

In a 1:1 Android environment

digital citizenship and students onlineCopyright.

Fair Use. Public Domain.

The meaning of these concepts as applied to creative work,  has broadened dramatically in our digital world. Students are some of the biggest consumers and creators of work created on digital platforms, but they don’t often understand:

  1. what they may legitimately use
  2. how they may use it
  3. what protection exists for their own creative work.

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Social reading tools for summer reading

Audrey’s 2016 summer reading list

Tarrant Institute tool tutoriallsI’ve been thinking a lot lately about where technology fits into reading. Not just the e-book vs print book discussion (spoiler: both choices are valid for any individual) but also how tech tools and platforms can bring readers together to talk about books. And I’m doing that by reading a lot and trying things.

So my summer reading list comes with a tool kit.

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Education reform, more education reform and David Foster Wallace

Mark’s 2016 summer reading list

reflection for educatorsThis past academic year was one of the busiest and most invigorating year I have had in my time as a student or teacher. As my role here at the Tarrant Institute has grown and focused more deeply on the research side of things, I have also been progressing towards my PhD. The summer doesn’t really provide a break, per se, but it does give me time to dive into some books I’ve been eying all year. Here’s a few things I’m making sure to get through.

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Telling the PLP story

Student reflection with Adobe Voice and Explain Everything

providing support for goal-setting in a PLPStudents at Fayston Elementary School worked hard this year with their team of teachers, not just to implement personal learning plans (PLPs), but to understand them to such a level that they could tell their stories. Using the digital tools Adobe Voice and Explain Everything, students crafted video explanations of their individual PLP projects to share with their families at student-led conferences.

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Negotiated curriculum and project-based learning

negotiated curriculum

Building a democratic classroom at The Edge

negotiated curriculumPart of the power of implementing a negotiated curriculum is that it doesn’t just center student voice, it actually moves the learning space towards a democratic classroom, a place where students can advocate for themselves and their learning interests, goals and styles. It’s an important piece of the personalized learning plan (PLP) picture.

The Edge Academy at Essex Middle School, in Essex Junction VT, has been doing project-based learning alongside negotiated curriculum for the past six years. Facilitators Lindsey Halman and Phil Young explain what makes it work and what makes it especially powerful for middle schoolers.

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Assessing tech-rich instruction

The Six Question Framework for reflection

assessing tech-rich instructionAs the end of June nears and students take their final exams, clear out their lockers, and begin sleeping in until noon, teachers are gathering their remaining energy, and administrators are giving them space, to take stock of the year, celebrate the successes and challenges, and together learn from them.

But what’s the best way to assess technology-rich instruction and the 1:1 environment?

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How to introduce robotics and coding

If you buy them, kids will code.

how to introduce robotics and codingThis statement was the driving philosophy behind our purchase of a class set of Sphero programmable robots to coincide with our school’s participation in the International Hour Of Code Day this year. During our introductory assemblies for the Hour Of Code, one Sphero was demonstrated as a teaser of what could be done with code. Then, they went into storage for a bit while we pondered how to introduce them in a class setting.

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Exploring careers in middle school

How one school tackles work-based learning

Work-based learning experiences are activities that involve actual work experience or that connect classroom learning to employment and careers. Through work-based learning experiences, educational programs become more relevant, rigorous, challenging, and rewarding for students, parents, educators, and businesses. These opportunities particularly help students make the connection between academic principles and real world applications.”

–Vermont Agency of Education

If you’re a student on the 8th grade team at Mill River Union High School in North Clarendon, Vermont, you’re leading the way in this arena: it’s tradition that every eighth grader at this school experiences a Career Exploration unit in the spring of their year.

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MakerSpace Wonderland at Crossett Brook MS

The Story of MakerSpace: A Rabbit Interrupts a Drowsy Day

the story of a makerspaceThe story of MakerSpace at Crossett Brook Middle School begins with two bunnies. The bunnies lived outside the library in a hutch built by our Sustainability students who loved the bunnies. Winter was coming… the bunnies needed to move inside. The sad turn in this story is that the bunnies were not able to stay. Being in cages in the library with many daily visitors caused them stress. So, once I found a happy home for them and they moved out… poof!

A space was now available…an empty table…no books on it…no piles…what was possible?

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Curiosity Projects: A stepping-stone to Personalized Learning

What is curiosity?

student-led inquiryIs curiosity important? What does it mean to be a curious learner? What am I curious about?

These are some of the questions Cornwall, VT students considered this winter as they embarked on inquiry-based, personalized, research projects. For six weeks, we turned learning over to our students for the (first annual!) Curiosity Projects.

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QR codes and videos at Parent Conferences

Expanding parent conference time with technology

family communication around education, social media and digital citizenshipWe’ve all been there: how do you fit 40 minutes worth of information into a 20-minute parent conference, still have time for questions AND stay on schedule?  Bulletin boards hanging in the hallway help. They serve two purposes, engaging parents while they wait and giving parents a view into the classroom. But that view is static and doesn’t always feel authentic.

Mrs. Natalie Byrne, a 1st grade teacher at Christ the King School, found herself considering these questions as conference days grew near. Her solution reminded me of the answer to a riddle: once you see it, it seems obvious, but only after you rub the grit out of your eyes.  She proposed engaging parents through their smartphones with an interactive bulletin board full of QR codes linked to videos.  

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Destination – Anywhere!

green screenWhat was once a standard in news broadcasting and video game production has now found a new home in classrooms. Students and teachers have embraced the teleporting powers of the green screen which adds addition layers of engagement and perspective for school projects. The best part, for schools budgets, is this is a very inexpensive set up and there are several programs or apps that are free! Inexpensive and or free… Intrigued yet?

When using green screen’s you can be teleported to the top of the Great Wall of China, swimming 20,000 leagues under the sea, standing inside a piece of art, or in a sophisticated news media studio.

 

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Helping your teen or tween with social media

To follow or not to follow… that is the question.

family communication around education, social media and digital citizenshipOh Hamlet, you would be so perplexed on this one!

I’m sometimes asked this question as the mother of an Instagram-using 12 year old myself. Parents of young adults often are conflicted about making this choice – at least, if your child is connected to social media – and likely, he or she is.

If your child does interact with others on social media platforms, how should you guide, monitor and support their presence on social media?

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A community-based interdisciplinary unit

A tech-rich case study from rural Vermont

VT excellence

The team from Hazen Union Middle School, in Hardwick, Vermont, conducted an action research project over the fall semester of 2015, centered around deepening students’ connection to their community. They called the unit “I Belong”.

It provided students with tech-rich opportunities to engage with the small and rural community of their town.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Smartphone

History from the Inside Out

how does professional development affect technology integration?Every two years our team does an interdisciplinary unit on the European Renaissance. I’m a big believer in learning history from the inside out, by asking students to really look at individual people. I also wanted to do something that connected things that kids were interested in to this time period. To get them to really feel as if they were some of these people, it just made sense to connect modern technology using the smartphone, since many of them are on their smartphones a lot of the time anyway.

So what would happen if you found Leonardo DaVinci’s smartphone?

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8th grade arts and citizenship

A case study in Shelburne

8th grade artsArts and citizenship is for 8th graders at Shelburne Community School. This past session, they had a digital media focus, looking at photography and Photoshop and digital manipulation.

Most recently they just had a Community Celebration, where the artwork was posted around the school and families and the community came in to admire it and meet the artists. QR codes linked each piece to the artist’s reflection — reflections that took place weekly, capturing the ongoing progression of thoughts and creativity as the piece was produced.

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Managing time in blended classrooms

Shifting the way we manage time to personalize learning in a blended space

blended classroomsIn my former professional life, I had the pleasure and the challenge of managing a large high school library media center. An irony of the job, one that made me smile and cringe, was the volume of the bell which rang every 42 minutes to signal transitions. The speaker in my library was broken and for whatever reason none of us could figure out how to turn it down, so at eight 42-minute intervals throughout each day, a jarring, disruptive, and impossible-to-ignore screech blared.

In a space meant for reflection, quiet and focused learning, deep dives into inquiry, this interrupter literally felt like chalkboard nails reminding us our schedule boxed us in. I share this story because in my quest to consider how access to technology can support personalized learning, I have been interested in how pacing and timing play a role in middle level classrooms.

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Screencasting tools for the Chromebook

As more and more school move to Chromebooks we receive lots of requests for chrome compatible programs and applications. In a time of transition to deeper personalization, Screencasting has become one of the most popular requests. There’s power having students talk through their evidence of learning and reflection all on one screen and easily exported to their personal learning plan (PLP). Let’s look at some screencasting options on the Chromebook.

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Finding joy in the classroom

Is joy in learning an innovation?

joy in the classroomRecently, I was charmed and inspired upon seeing a first grade student’s take on setting goals to improve healthy habits on the Franklin West Supervisory Union blog. I shared this student photo (at left) with a group of teachers during a goal-setting and reflection workshop. They all smiled, especially after I asked them to think about what evidence this student might gather and share to demonstrate she has met this resolution.

Wouldn’t we all love to see that collection of “demonstrated joy” from all of our students? Of course, that would require us to create “joyous” learning opportunities or at the very least honor students’ joyous learning where ever it takes place.

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How parents can model healthy tech habits

Tips for when to turn off the tech

Rachel Mark, Tarrant Institute for Innovative EducationIn addition to being an educator, I’m also a parent — of three spunky children between the ages of 5 and 12. Like many people, my husband and I bring our work home with us; more specifically, work and home are often one in the same.

Though we both enjoy and appreciate the benefits of technology in both our work and personal lives, we also recognize that it’s hard to disconnect from outside activities and connect in person with the people we love. In today’s world, we both feel how difficult it is to distinguish work time from family-time and couple-time, and the Holy Grail: personal-time.

But for the sake of our children, these healthy habits are what we have to model.

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Using Google tools to connect with other schools

Reaching beyond the walls

using Google tools to connect classroomsI’m always looking for ways for educators and students at different schools to use technology to connect in far-flung locations. One middle-level educator was kind enough to share how he used Google Hangouts, a Google+ Community, back-channeling and plain old email to enable his students to connect with students a couple of states away.

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Self-analysis and teaming

To know your team, start by knowing yourself

self-analysis and teamingA few years ago I had the opportunity to participate in the Vermont School Leadership Project  (VSLP) through the Snelling Center for Government, where I was pushed to truly examine who I was as an educator and what preferences I have in terms of decision-making.

When we overlay the Teaming lens on this activity we begin to understand how we interact and react with our teaching teams, leadership teams,  whole faculty, and even in our home lives.

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Providing support for goal-setting in a PLP

3 strategies shared by local educators

providing support for goal-setting in a PLPAt Manchester Elementary Middle School, sixth grade students speak fluently about their Personal Learning Plans (PLPs). They’ve been working on setting goals in a PLP for years; some students in this school have been doing so since third grade.

Manchester educators Seth Bonnett and Melissa Rice, share what they’ve learned about the necessary supports as teachers and students collaborate around goals.

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Personalize learning with Open Educational Resources

What they are and how to use them

collaborative digital tools for faculty meetingsIn a recent blog post, I suggested access to technology can empower teachers to be responsive to students’ needs in a blended learning environment.  I want to expand upon that notion and explore further how Open Educational Resources play an important role in how we teachers facilitate more personalized learning experiences.

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Balancing screen time and family time

When to put the device down

balancing screen time and family time
Photo by Brian Dewey, CC 2.0.

Let’s face it, it’s a challenge to balance technology in our lives; but it’s essential. 

Parents and adults need to guide their young adolescents and children towards developing this balance. Arguably, we don’t have good technology habits ourselves, but the modeling and mentoring of developing a healthy relationship with technology is a critical role for parents.

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What makes for good goal-setting in a PLP?

Life’s four guidelines for goal-setting

what makes good goal-settingIn my experience as a teacher and administrator, I noticed a pattern to goal-setting in my school and classroom. We would do some good goal-setting at the beginning of the year and then at some point during the dark depths of winter I would realize that I was too overwhelmed or embarrassed to try to resurrect them.

There were some notable instances when goals were powerful for students, though.

In those cases I saw the potential of goals to cultivate so many important things in my students: self-direction, a sense of efficacy, and a connection to schooling, to name a few.

Continue reading “What makes for good goal-setting in a PLP?”

The Lost Art of Educational Keynoting

Life Legeros, Tarrant Institute for Innovative EducationTwo weeks ago I attended the annual conference of the Association of Middle Level Educators (AMLE). I have been working in middle level education for most of my professional career, but this was my first time at the conference.

Overall, I had a fantastic AMLE experience. I was exposed to some interesting and important research. I was lucky to meet some incredible practitioners and heartened to hear about innovative practices being employed on behalf of young adolescents. I also spent some quality bonding time with my colleagues.

My generally positive experience, however, was slightly marred by what has become all-too-familiar at large education conference: disappointing keynotes.

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To lock or not to lock

School approaches to filtering internet content

school approaches to filtering internet contentAs social media,Youtube, and gaming become more educationally relevant, how do we leverage their educational potential while keeping student data safe and teaching them digital citizenship?

Lock it down! “We need to keep everyone safe.”

Open it up! “It’s how the real world operates.”

I’ve heard strong arguments for both sides of the coin and have seen successes and challenges in both cases.

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Learning as a social activity

Using Vialogues for social learning

using vialogues for social learningVialogues: visual dialogues. Video dialogues.

(Visible violet dogs? Risible eyelet hogs? Dirigible side-slit frogs?)

Vialogues are an online tool that encourages viewers to answer one specific question about a video, and the tool creates a comment thread based on the answers.

When applied in an educational capacity, this creates a space for social learning.

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What to say instead of “21st Century”

Shifting the conversation from “the future” to my future

Alex Shevrin: Is extra credit an equity issue?When “21st century skills” first emerged as an educational term, we were just on the precipice of our new century, and talking about the next one hundred years felt future-forward. Now, fifteen years in, “21st century” to me implies current more than future.

“21st century,” then, as a descriptor for a set of skills, gets confusing.

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W is for Weekly Geek Podcast

Creative ways to share learning opportunities

creative ways to share learning opportunitiesTeachers at Lamoille Union Middle/High School learn about the latest tools and resources available to them in a unique and engaging way.  Marc Gilbertson, the Integration Specialist and Meagan Towle, the librarian, carve out 20 minutes in their busy schedules to get together and crank out a short video podcast series called the Weekly Geek to share available resources.

Check out this week’s entry demonstrating three tools to encourage visual and audio engagement in learning.

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V is for Voice Recordings

Why voice recordings work for young adolescents

why voice recordings work for young adolescentsAs students use technology to explore and capture projects that show both their emerging proficiency with skills and snapshots of who they have been, are and may become, tools that allow students to add their own human voice to multimedia can be invaluable in the discovery and showcasing process.

Here’s why voice recordings work for young adolescents and 3 tools we like for creating them.

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T is for Timelines

Timeline tools for transformative learning

timeline tools for transformative learningTimeline tools can serve two important purposes: concrete help with project planning (for PLPs, 1:1 rollouts, PBL) and for displaying evidence of learning in an easily digestible format.

But the online, anytime/anywhere, collaborative nature of such tools can unlock meta-learning for students, providing them with a platform for bolstering collaboration and project-planning skills.

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R is for REAL Reflection

Getting real about student reflection

getting real about student reflectionAh, reflection. It may bring to mind an introspective moment, perhaps gazing into the still waters of a mountain lake and seeing a slightly puzzled person staring back. That’s not the kind of reflection we are talking about here.

Reflection in a 21st Century learning sense is a key component of personalized learning.

Reflection allows students to construct knowledge, make personal connections, and ultimately become self-driven learners. More like a trailside break on a wilderness trek than a lazy lakeside afternoon. Continue reading “R is for REAL Reflection”

P is for Performance Tasks

Using performance tasks as a way to measure student knowledge

using performance tasks to measure student knowledgeWhen working with a group of middle school science teachers recently whose goal was to increase the depth of knowledge in their shared common assessments, we explored using Performance Tasks as a way to measure student knowledge and skills gained, as they apply them in novel and real situations.

It’s the “do” in the KUD (know, understand, and do) that so often gets left behind, but is so important in the world of deep learning.

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Serious PD fun with Chatterpix

“Candy apps”, or how to have fun and still learn anyway

how to have fun and still learn anyway

 

During a five minute reflection, if a student is given one minute to find a picture and mark the mouth, then he or she still has four minutes to try to come up with something interesting to reflect about. So this is four minutes more than they may have spent if they were asked to just write, or required to use a tool that they weren’t that interested in.

–Life Legeros

Continue reading “Serious PD fun with Chatterpix”

N is for Nearpod

How these educators used Nearpod for professional development

nearpod for professional developmentEducators instinctively understand the engagement power of a tool that allows learners to actively participate in the learning.

For those of you new to Nearpod, this multi-platform app allows teachers to shoot out presentations — think Powerpoints or Google Slides made interactive — directly to their students’ devices.  Content slides can be interspersed with embedded polls, quizzes, and drawing tools for in-the-moment formative assessment.

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Establishing behavior expectations in a 1:1

Who decides the acceptable ways to use devices in your school?

establishing behavior expectations in a 1:1
photo: Wes Fryer

You’ve jumped through the hoops, filled out the paperwork, located the three missing chargers and managed to agree on a set of apps and a management system. But what will expectations around tech device usage look like? Will they stay in classrooms? Go home? Hop in a circle and do spoken-word?

Let’s tackle establishing behavior expectations in a 1:1 rollout.

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L is for Learning Management System (LMS)

What can you do with an LMS?

what can you do with an LMSLMS stands for Learning Management System. An LMS is an application for planning, delivering, managing, and assessing a learning process.

Likely, your school or district will choose which commercial LMS package to deploy (Canvas, Haiku, Schoology and Google Classroom are a few), but how you use it is entirely up to you.

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G is for Group Device Management

Physical management of tech

aka OMG Where Did All These Cords Come From

management of tech in a 1:1The act of simply registering, storing, charging, keeping track of and distributing apps to devices in a 1:1 environment is a full set of challenges on its own. And so, while we’ll later this week get to the other two important aspects of Group Device Management — Behavior Expectations and Communicating With Families — let’s take a few minutes to tackle the physical realities of suddenly having mumble-hundred pieces of identical technology arrive at your door.

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E is for e-books …or are they “C-books”?

The ABCs of edtech with the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education

Why create and use e-books in the classroom?

Resources like e-books are a common “first step” when we think about integrating technology into the classroom. However, simply substituting an e-book for a traditional book ignores the opportunity to shift towards more student-centered practices. In a recent article, Chronis Kynigos reported on a joint effort between teachers and programmers to develop a “C-book;” an e-book that implements elements of constructionism. 
Continue reading “E is for e-books …or are they “C-books”?”

D is for Digital Workflow

The ABCs of edtech with the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education

Digital workflow: What is it good for?

digital workflowIn its simplest form, digital workflow exchanges the paper and pencil transfer of information for a centralized digital system where information is pushed out,  synthesized, analyzed, or created and returned to the teacher.

With the increasing popularity of 1:1 programs, or readily available access to technology, the form in which learning transfers between people, adults and students, looks slightly different than when I was in school. Additionally, the availability of free programs, such as Google Classroom, help to promote the cycle of information in an effective way.

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C is for Citizenship (digital of course!)

The ABCs of edtech with the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education

Approaching student digital citizenship from many levels

Our students live in technology-rich worlds, regardless of how much technology they are using in school on a day-to-day basis. Technology has all kinds of awesome educational benefits, but Uncle Ben’s advice to Spiderman is fitting here: “With great power comes great responsibility.” As educators we’re obliged to help students use technology appropriately and safely.

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Top Ten Summer Reading Recommendations

Summer in Vermont brings on a different set of activities, a different pace of life, and an opportunity for renewal – at least for me. Last week I had a chance to connect with nature in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I finally got out on my mountain bike and did some exploring and tried to remember all the great reading recommendation from the past year. There were too many to remember, much less to read in one summer. Next time I’ll write them down! Summer also offers up the opportunity to have a little more choice in what I read. That night I did some searching and finalist my summer reading list. My goal is 10 books by the end of August. So here goes… Continue reading “Top Ten Summer Reading Recommendations”

Reading for fun and growth this summer

Howdy. I’m Rachel – new Professional Development Coordinator at the Tarrant Institute. I live in the beautiful southern part of Vermont and am thrilled to join the staff of TIIE after 16 years of teaching literacy and social studies to amusing adolescents.

Typically, I devour books during the summer. One of my favorite things to do is to ignore the demands of my children, my household, and my job, and just get lost in a book. It is summer, after all.

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The Floating Classroom

by Dayna McRoberts

lying_on_a_dockThe Community Sailing Center (CSC) in Burlington has developed a multi-age, year-round environmental curriculum that works in conjunction with local schools to teach the opportunistic, seasonal lessons provided by Burlington’s landscape. Floating Classrooms engages students with their environment through ecology, science, and a medium the CSC holds dear: sailing.

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4 ways to keep social media manageable

Be strategic with your time

4 ways to keep social media manageableSocial media gives you a number of different ways to meet great innovative educators, willing to share what they’re doing in their classroom, but it can quickly eat up your valuable free time. Plus it’s just so shiny that you only ever mean to sit down and give it a quick look, then BAM! You rub your aching eyes and it’s ten o’clock on a Sunday night again.

So how do you make the most of social media for professional development without letting it eat your life? Here’s 4 ways to keep social media manageable.

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Beyond Bling: how do we deepen Makerspace learning?

How do we move all new learners to the deep end of the pool?

how do we deepen Makerspace learning?
Photo by Cecilia Denhard. CC 2.0

As I walked through an innovation showcase at SxSw 2015 (one of the the largest convergences of creative and critical thinkers last March) I was struck by the juxtaposition of two tables that were adjacent to each other.

One offered “Creative Circuit kits provide girls with all of the materials to make 10+ arts, crafts, and fashion projects with technology” the other offered “opportunities for students to replicate experiments you perform in your classrooms using an Arduino kit and a sensor kit on a nano-satellite via Nasa’s CubeSat Launch Initiatives.”

As a long time advocate for initiatives that increase the confidence and skills of girls with technology, I appreciate that the “creative circuit kit” might provide a great opportunity to engage girls with technology, but I find myself concerned that it would be easy to gain a false sense of accomplishment if we don’t move beyond ‘bling’.

I find myself wondering what are the steps that connect the excitement from “blink blink” to the curiosity that leaves you wondering “what type of sensor do I need to create an experiment that I can test in space?”

Continue reading “Beyond Bling: how do we deepen Makerspace learning?”

Blended learning and teacher empowerment

Getting educators to a place of power with a powerful method

blended learning and teacher empowermentWhen I think about educational technology, it has never for me been divorced from pedagogy.  As soon as I encounter a new digital tool, although it might attract me at first based on its novelty, my mind immediately jumps to the connection of how can I use this with my students to __________.  I fill in that blank with all manner of things to include: uncover what they’ve learned, inspire deep thinking, provide a visual prompt or clue, create an engaging hook, etc.  So, sometimes I’m taken aback when colleagues suggest teachers who embrace technology “tool hop” without any intentionality or simply like to play with then next new, shiny toy.

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The digital native problem

Labels get in the way of fully understanding people

Innovation ANESUIn a recent Twitter chat #vted we were discussing digital citizenship and the confounded label “digital native” came up.  Labels typically get in the way of fully understanding people, and these terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant” smack of ageism and false assumptions.  Coined by Marc Prensky over 14 years ago, it was meant to prompt educators to think differently about teaching and learning.  The digital tools now available to learners allow us to go far beyond the walls of the classroom; one of my history teachers is blogging with students in Bhutan this week, for example, mutually solving problems through the lenses of their own culture.  When I was in ninth grade, we had a dusty old textbook that managed to make even Ancient Rome boring.  The world has indeed changed and teaching and learning need to change with the times.

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Professional development through Google Hangouts

Two years ago, our middle level team undertook a pilot project to begin work on personal learning plans (PLPs). Under the guidance of James Nagle, professor of education at St. Michael’s College, Team Summit teachers and students initiated the process of creating personal learning plans as mandated by Act 77 and the state of Vermont. The work progressed through several stages of development. Initially, students created their personal learning plan using a template created through Google Sites. Soon after, students began using the PLP as a record of growth and reflection, goals, personal strengths and challenges, and as a multimodal platform to demonstrate their learning.

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Digital citizenship in the real world

Learning on and off-line civics

digital citizenship in the real worldWhenever I taught civics, I repeatedly told my classes that I would measure my success as a teacher on how many of them were voting in elections in five years. Of course, I had no way to measure this, but it was one of my most concrete goals of teaching a civics course.

This was my definition of active citizenship. It was based on an earlier definition of citizenship, before I had fully integrated the lessons from Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat into my classroom. While globalization has made the world flat, it is really technology I see as having expanded the definition of active citizenship and the opportunities to engage in citizenship.

Continue reading “Digital citizenship in the real world”

Student motivation in claims, evidence and audience

What makes an argument worth making?

student motivation in claims and evidenceRecently, I was working with a colleague about getting students more jazzed to dive deep into building claims with supporting evidence.

My colleague stated:

“To be an argument, there needs to be a sense of “others” who are vying against our argument in ways that excite/worry us about our intellectual flanks. Moreover, to be an argument, one needs to have some skin in the game. Who wants to argue an argument that’s already been made/won, and that all sides know the answer to? In general, “how” questions …elicit procedures/summaries of what is known. “Why” questions generally do a lot better stoking argument.”

I took a few minutes this morning to pull together some resources that might help to create an audience of “others” or that could be used to generate engagement in the claims/evidence making process.

Continue reading “Student motivation in claims, evidence and audience”

4 Earth Day lesson ideas with iPads

Study the Earth’s ecology with deep-digging tech tools

Earth Day lesson plans with iPads
“Earth Day 2010” by v-collins, CC 3.0

Earth Day is April 22, and if you’re looking for some ideas on how to dig deep into earth sciences with tech, we’ve got 4 Earth Day lesson ideas with iPads.

Already made Earth Day plans? These ideas will keep until the weather gets better and it’s really and truly time to run around outside.

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4 ways to use an iPad1 in the classroom

Making the most of an original generation iPad

4 ways to use an iPad1 in the classroomYes, you read that right: you can definitely still use an iPad1 in your classroom. Sure, not every app out there will work on it, and the iPad1’s lack of a camera is still fairly insurmountable, but this original version of the revolutionary edtech tablet still has legs, especially if you’re not in a 1:1 situation.

Because remember: at the end of the day, it’s not about the device, but how you use it.

Continue reading “4 ways to use an iPad1 in the classroom”

Learning to parent as an educator

What’s your school song?

Meredith Swallow, Tarrant Institute for Innovative EducationA few months ago I wrote about not spending enough time on personal reflection. It is incredibly easy to be immersed in the many “Top 10” lists of education; and it’s fun spending time trying to solve tool based problems (anyone come up with a best way to insert images on the Slides app? Hit me up if you’ve got a solution). So I made it my goal to spend some time this week thinking about my practice.

I’m personally grappling with my opinions of family engagement from the educator perspective, and family engagement from the parent perspective.

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Digital Display: add Credly badges to Google Sites

100 years of Girl Scouts can’t be wrong

Add Credly badges to Google SitesDigital badges have potential to serve as both markers of achievement and as a vehicle for those of us who assess students’ learning for a living to think differently about our current practices.

Many students do the work of examining their own learning through collecting artifacts, reflecting on evidence of learning, and displaying the results of that learning on their digital portfolios.  As Act 77 in Vermont encourages us to open multiple avenues for learning opportunities, it also demands of us multiple ways for students to capture, reflect upon, and display their achievements.

Continue reading “Digital Display: add Credly badges to Google Sites”

Storing digital badges for portfolios

What are some mechanisms for keeping track of digital credentials?

storing digital badgesAs we work with schools who are piloting digital badge programs on the BadgeOS platform, we need to start thinking through what some options are for students to store, keep track of, and display the digital credentials they earn.

What does it look like to use Credly.com to create and manage a portfolio of digital badges? How does this differ from other Mozilla Backpack solutions?

Continue reading “Storing digital badges for portfolios”

Encouraging Conversations with EdPuzzle

Make active video viewing a social activity

encouraging conversations with EdPuzzle
encouraging conversations with EdPuzzle

Edpuzzle opens up the possibility for both students and teachers to encourage a two-way exchange, a conversation, if you will, during video viewing.  Any video can be uploaded into Edpuzzle including your own, and they make it convenient to do so with this comprehensive side bar access to multiple video-based resources.

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Technology in the math classroom

technology in the math classroom
technology in the classroom
A 1958 illustration of “the push-button classroom” by Radebaugh. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

When we first started our work with the Tarrant Institute I was hesitant. I am a math teacher; unless using innovative technology in the classroom means a graphing calculator I had no idea where to start. Everything was new to me, and I have to admit, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the prospect of how I could embrace technology in my room.

With the support of Tarrant and our technology specialist I took baby steps.

Continue reading “Technology in the math classroom”

Active video viewing

 Encourage critical thinking & discussion with note-taking

active video viewingI have been excited lately with the potential of using VideoNot.es in blended classrooms to support active participation in video viewing.  VideoNot.es is a web-based tool that allows users to take notes while watching a video.  Here is an example of some notes I took while watching  Robert Duke’s video “Why Students Don’t Learn What We Think We Teach

Continue reading “Active video viewing”

Celebrating Pi Day with your students

The most epic Pi Day ever: 3/14/15 9:26:53 am and pm

celebrating Pi Day with your students
Larry Shaw, the founder of Pi Day, at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Math enthusiasts of all ages are anxiously awaiting the celebration of what many are coining the most epic Pi-Day ever.

Okay, maybe that is an overstatement, but I am certainly looking forward to the fun recognition of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

3/14/15… 9:26:53. Two opportunities to celebrate, two opportunities to eat pie, so many opportunities for learning.

Continue reading “Celebrating Pi Day with your students”

Thursday Links Round Up: finding primary sources for history and art

Let Google bring the world to your students

finding primary sources for history and artPrimary sources? Yes please!

As you delve into your various teaching units, why not take your students on a visual tour of an event in history? Or to the Museum of Modern Art to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night? Or to a remote village in Japan? How about a street view virtual experience of Stonehenge? Finding primary sources for history and art can be a challenge, unless you’re using Google Cultural Institute.

Continue reading “Thursday Links Round Up: finding primary sources for history and art”

DIY: build your own podcasting booth

In 30 minutes with things you find around a hardware store.

And a fabric store.

build your own podcasting booth

You’re gonna have to do a little shopping, is what.

But since even a small amount of sound baffling can improve the quality of your audio recordings significantly, if you’re serious about putting out a podcast that gets noticed, this is a quick way to make some big improvements.

Continue reading “DIY: build your own podcasting booth”

Making time lapse videos with students

Using Lapse It for Android

making time lapse videos with studentsStudents at Saint Francis Xavier school in Winooski used Lapse It, a time lapse camera app to demonstrate the mitosis process.  Mary Ellen Varhue, the middle level science teacher at SFX explained, “in the past this would have been a poster project.  Using Lapse It gave students a much better appreciation of the dynamic nature of mitosis as a process that moves from one phase to the next smoothly.”

Here are some of her thoughts on student learning, the app, and ideas for next time.

Continue reading “Making time lapse videos with students”

Reflecting in the math classroom

Keeping your resolution to reflect

Susan Hennessey, Professional Development CoordinatorMy colleague, Meredith Swallow, recently shared a post about the importance of reflection in her professional growth, which got me thinking.  She points her readers to Reflect or Refract: Top 3 Tips for the Reflective Educator where the authors suggest “reading a wide variety of education blogs regularly exposes educators to new ideas and concepts. Transformational thinking occurs when conversations about these posts develop. New ideas that stem from blog posts provide alternate thoughts to consider.”

I couldn’t agree more. Here are a few tech-savvy math bloggers who you might want to engage with to inspire ongoing reflection.

Continue reading “Reflecting in the math classroom”

Winter break reading: on reflection as an educator

“We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” John Dewey

Meredith Swallow, Tarrant Institute for Innovative EducationGrowing up, I participated in a lot of team sports. It didn’t matter the sport, my age, or if we won or lost; after every game we talked about what went well, and what didn’t. We celebrated what we achieved, and made plans for what we needed to practice. We reflected. It seemed so natural and necessary as part of our process to improve as individual players and as a team.

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Common sense advice for tween social media use

 

Apparently, asking friends to follow HennesseyGirlsMom on Instagram would be social suicide.

Susan Hennessey, Professional Development Coordinator

My 12-year-old twins are counting the days to their 13th birthday in April, anticipating with much more urgency than past years their special day, all so they can finally triumph over the tyrant of online limitations…the dreaded Under 13 Terms of Service rule.

Continue reading “Common sense advice for tween social media use”

4 edtech podcasts you should be listening to

Besides ours, of course 🙂

4 edtech podcasts you should be listening toIn case you’re just tuning in, podcasts are having something of a renaissance. People are finding themselves on treadmills or trapped in cars on their commutes back and forth to work and soccer practice or just out for a long walk with the dog after dinner. And in this do-more-be-more-right-now world, podcasts represent a great way to make use of that time by sneaking in a little PD.

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The Problem with Genius Hour

Shouldn’t every hour be a genius hour?

the problem with genius hourAnyone paying attention to education in the US lately has seen the proliferation of the “Genius Hour.” Presumably inspired by Google’s 20% rule, through which employees of the search engine giant spend a day a week on projects of their own choosing, many schools are adopting a model described by best selling author Daniel Pink as “60 minutes to work on new ideas or master new skills.” By setting aside an hour of instructional time, schools enable students to connect, construct or create, without the constraints or distractions of business-as-usual. What could be better than that?

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Teaching with Technology: Why It’s Worth the Risk

Jonah Ibson, Harwood Union Middle School, VermontI’m not sure if others would call me a freak for saying so, but I truly enjoy a good inservice day.

There’s something about a quiet school filled with educators working together that makes me feel like anything is possible. So I can say without a trace of sarcasm that I read through the agenda for the Washington West Supervisory Union’s Inservice on October 14th with interest. When I read that the focus of the day was to “highlight technology-inspired innovative educational practices taking place in WWSU schools and beyond,” I was already sold.

But we all know what happens to the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…

Continue reading “Teaching with Technology: Why It’s Worth the Risk”

iBook Authors at Harwood Union Middle School

Be your own Hero

iBook Authors at Harwood Union Middle SchoolUsing the free iOS Shadow Puppet app, I created this brief look at an amazing unit designed by one of our partner educators, Jonah Ibson, at Harwood Union Middle School.

Ibson challenged his students to write their own “hero’s journeys” using the iBooks Author software. By taking ownership of the Hero’s Journey narrative, students are encouraged to create e-books that place them in the hero’s role. The resulting e-books will have a chance to be housed in an elementary school library, and read out by librarians to younger students.

Check out these amazing iBook Authors at Harwood Union Middle School, in Moretown Vermont.

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Making the most of twitter as an educator

Part 1: Grow your PLN and get help from those who’ve been there

Making the most of twitter as an educatorTwitter is an invaluable resource for educators looking to share their successes and challenges in an asynchronous, on-demand way. It’s a low-stress entry into social media where you only have to post a little at a time to connect with educators both around the world and on the next block — sometimes as close as the next classroom away! Here’s some tips on making the most of twitter as an educator.

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Becoming an Innovative Teacher

There’s no doubt that teachers understand best the transition to innovative, technology-rich classroom practice, or as our colleague, Joe Speers of Peoples Academy Middle Level, says, “to take students as far as they can go.” Take a listen to his interview with Pat Bradley, bureau chief at WAMC Public Radio in Albany.

 

You may remember Joe Speers from some of his earlier posts for us:

We’re currently searching for more educators like Joe Speers to partner with us as part of our new expansion. Are you up to the challenge of becoming an innovative educator?

 

Lessons learned from a 1:1 rollout

Lessons learned from a 1:1 rollout
Saint Francis French language students at work.

A 1:1 technology initiative necessitates dedication and enthusiasm from teachers, students, administrators, families, and other participants in educational communities.  Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with the Saint Francis Xavier school in Winooski, during their 1:1 planning phase, and last week they officially rolled out a 1:1 model across their middle level classrooms.

I was fortunate enough to be part of their careful planning process, and witness important and thoughtful commitments to details such as student voice, equity, family partnerships, collaboration, and teacher learning.  Although still in the early stages, I would unquestionably describe their rollout as a success.

Here are a few questions I asked the teachers, technology specialist, and administration about their 1:1 model.

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Differentiated social reading with Subtext

Make the most of Subtext’s capacity for differentiated reading

How to app-smash with SubtextA-reading we will go, A-reading we will go, hey ho the dairy-o, a reading we will go!

Ahem.

We’re going to take a look at the free iOS app Subtext, which provides a host of tools that let you empower readers in your classroom while providing them with maximal scaffolding for success. Subtext was really designed to differentiate the process of close reading, letting readers respond to stories with comments and even photos uploaded from their Camera Roll.

Two other huge benefits of the Subtext app are that you, as the educator can set up virtual reading groups within your classroom and you can also pull webpages and pdfs into Subtext, to capture the types of digital texts that a lot of 21st century learners like to read. Let’s go through how to get set up with Subtext.

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Six Google+ Communities you should be part of

Feed and grow your PLN as an educator

Six Google+ Communities you should be part ofNow that you’ve gotten started with Google+ Communities, you may be wondering how to make the most of the time you spend there.

How can you find other tech-minded educators to learn from? How can you maximize your connections and find folks who can help with your classroom questions and teach you new things about tech?

We’ve pulled together six Google+ Communities you should be part of as an educator, and be warned: that 6th one’s a game-changer.

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Painless printing from your iPad

(without calling tech support)

Despite Apple releasing AirPrint waaaay back in the heady days of iOS4, printing has long been the iPad’s Achilles heel. Wireless printing in general remains a mysterious and arcane art whose magics are passed down from tech support to tech support only in oral storytelling form, or perhaps encrypted Ogham sticks. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS FOR SURE. But here’s a way to get truly painless printing from your iPad.

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Testing unbound

Turn formative testing into a learning opportunity

Wonder what words, when using free association, are conjured from folks when they hear the word TEST? Pulled quickly from my psyche are: anxiety, study, judgment, memorize, prep, control My guess is these are some common possibilities, but the word LEARN probably wouldn’t make most peoples’ list.   Continue reading “Testing unbound”

Simplifying the search for information

A teacher with whom I work asked his 7th grade students recently for feedback:

“We did this in order to garner information on how to improve the independent learning project that we are currently creating. The big ideas that came out of that survey included the following:
They want…
  1. More time
  2. More consecutive work days (too many disruptions)
  3. More support for finding information”

 

While there were more “wants” on this list, I’m stopping at #3 for this blog post and sharing some tips & tricks that might help support their efforts at information searching.

I’ll focus at this point on search engines.  One resource worth exploring with students as they begin the information gathering stage of their research project is Instagrok
Results of users searchers appear as facts, websites, images, videos, etc. all in a visually appealing mindmap layout that can be adapted both by selecting a “difficulty” level and by pinning chosen resources to the mindmap.

Here’s how it works using the search phrase civil war:

Let’s follow what happens when a researcher searches for websites:

 

 

Notice that the site prompts researchers to explicitly decide if the source is credible.  The Evaluate the Source for Credibility form pictured above is from EasyBib.

Researchers and their teachers will like that the website search is saved along with any sticky notes generated to the main mind map:

And the map can be shared via a link, embedded in a blog or website, or shared via these other outlets.

 

From their “terms of service” page:

You do not need to register to use instaGrok: you may research topics by
making Groks on the subjects that interest you. Additional features,
such as history and journal functionality, may require registering for
an account. There is no charge for using the base features, but further
functionality, such as the educator dashboard, may require payment.”

 For a quick look at what Instagrok looks like on an iPad, take a minute to watch this tutorial:




Still curious?  Read more – Review from Edudmic:  Instagrok, the search engine made just for education.

 

Build your own iPad charging cart out of office supplies

Sixty dollars, a dremel and a dream

Build your own iPad charging cart out of office supplies

It all started with a post on the iPad Ed Google+ community.

Wait, I take that back.

It really all started with the 20+ iPads we loan out to educators. Those suckers are constantly in demand and constantly in need of charging. They’re each firmly encased in Fintie Kiddie cases, which, laugh all you want, those things can stop a bullet. And they stand up. And they recline, have carrying handles and come in neon colors, perfect for locating 20+ loaned out units during the chaos of an event, but that’s a whole other blog post.

Anyway, we’ve been loaning these iPads out in tote bags, and just tossing the chargers in higgledy-piggledy. Mainly because if you have done any shopping around for charging carts you likely have needed to be resuscitated at least twice when looking at the prices. The cheapest we could find that works with our beloved Fintie cases started at $399.00, and there was no guarantee everything would fit. We’ve borrowed another department’s iPad charging tray a couple times, but a) it cost them closer to $1,000.00, b) weighed close to 25 lbs and c) had no wheels, thus entailing that their tech guy** lug it four blocks each way.

The thing about the Fintie cases is that part of their magic durability is that they surround the iPad in thick molded foam rubber — perfect for tossing in bags and bike panniers (guilty!) but problematic for trying to buy a pre-made charging cart, as the slots in those are generally cut for slimmer, uncased iPads. Plus can we get back to the whole cost thing? Are school districts really running around with so much cash? I know I’m not.

And thus, with no more rambling, I present: How to Build Your Own iPad Charging Cart Out of Office Supplies.

Minor assembly required

Build your own iPad charging cart out of office supplies

Materials:

  • Clear plastic storage tub with lid ($10.99 from Staples)
  • Cardboard magazine storage stand ($6.99 from Staples)
  • Two surge protectors ($16.00 from Staples*)
  • Rolling luggage stand with built-in bungies ($28.00 from Amazon)

Tools: a dremel with a hole saw drill bit, a metal file, protective eyeglasses (safety first!).

 

Stand well back, we are professionals

The way the whole thing works is by using the hard-sided magazine organizer to hold your surge protectors while simultaneously keeping the iPads snugly against the sides of the tub for transport. With the Finties, we managed to get 10 iPads in, but the resulting weight was a little surprising, so I might make two smaller charging tubs for the remainder of our iPads.

Method: Really the only thing that took methoding was drilling the holes.

You need one hole in the side of the tub to let the cords extend through. It needed to be big enough to admit, in this case, two surge protector cords and the hole saw drill bit cut through that plastic like butter. File the edges of the hole down because I managed to scratch my hand up the first time I tried to pull the cords through.

Build your own iPad charging cart out of office supplies

 

You also need a hole in the top of the magazine organizer, to pull your iPad cords through, although as you can see, they’re a little frantic-looking, so I think v2.0 will have channels leading away from the hole, so each cord has its own organizing channel. There’s definitely room for refinement here.

Uh, last step: pop the lid on and strap it to the luggage cart.

Build your own iPad charging cart out of office supplies

 

The small dog shown in the above image is included for scale and cuteness.

His name is Jeffrey.

Things I might do differently in the next version

  • Did I mention it’s heavy? Because it is, and unless you’re packing some kind of luggage rack with all-terrain tires, sooner or later you’re going to have to carry it up some steps or lift it in and out of a car. So I’ll definitely be investigating the 5-iPad tub option.
  • Cut cord-management channels in the top of the magazine organizer.
  • Not reach through the hole in the side before it’s been filed down.

Anyone else have a great way to build one of these? I’m definitely open to ideas. After all, I’ve still got to find a way to sync them all…

 

 

*Yes, TIIE admin Erin and I basically ran round the store measuring things and flinging them in the cart. Loudly. If the store had had an on-site dremel, we would’ve done the whole thing there, filmed it and thrown an after-party with bad 90s electronic music.

**Thanks Adam!

 

Math, middle schoolers and real-world relevance (infographic)

I consider myself an infographic enthusiast, and as a former middle school math teacher when the infographic below was passed on to me I was of course interested:

 

An infographic showing the types of connections middle school students make about math and the real world

 

It was encouraging to see 7 out of 10 students liked math, but out of 1000 surveyed students, that means there are about 300 that don’t; and that isn’t so encouraging.  Scrolling down to Top Favorite Subjects, I was again hopeful when seeing math ranked third.

While that alone was pleasing to a former math teacher, I was also excited to see that P.E. and art ranked one and two respectively.  I’m a firm believer that exercise boosts learning, and I don’t think I need to make a case for the connections between art, creativity, and math. I wasn’t surprised to see that students enjoy learning new subjects through hands-on activities, but what the Infographic leaves out is that only 4% of surveyed students enjoy learning new subjects through video lessons.  During this revolution of flipped instruction, that 4% seems a little concerning. 

So, what is my big takeaway from this Infographic?  Relevance. 

With only 58% of students reporting that math is important for their future, we don’t seem to be doing a good job of promoting authentic relevance to students’ lives.  I don’t put much weight into the statistic that 38% of students think math is important for fashion design.  What if I don’t care about fashion design?  I’m certainly not going to care then about the necessary skills behind fashion design. 

So how is math relevant to your students?  And what can you do to support that connection?

Digital divide in the classroom


Digital divide[1], participation gap[2], cultural divide[3]: over the decades the language of equity issues in technology have shifted along with the technology.  This shifting language reflects the way we view technology and our relationships with it.  What hasn’t changed is the challenge that these terms highlight—that some individuals have greater access to technology, both inside and outside the classroom.

Two fundamental components of access to technology are a fast, consistent internet connection and an appropriate device: Who in your classroom has internet at home?  Who has a device they can use at home?  What tech is in the classroom? What controls on student use exist?

A harder to see component of access is the participation gap and cultural divide: Who is consuming digital media? Who is participating and engaging in digital experiences with others? Who is being taught how to understand and critique media?  Who has the resources (time, cultural understanding, money) to create digital work that improves their social status (both inside and outside the classroom)? [4]

These two frames demonstrate how a technology gap must be understood as occurring on multiple levels, from hardware and connectivity to our roles as consumers and producers of digital media. We can use these frameworks of access to assess technology in the classroom, specifically ones own classroom.

As the evolving construct of the issue demonstrates, the way we as educators use the technology impacts our individual students and the divide. When we become more aware of ourselves, the differences our students bring, and how we react to those differences we are more equipped to set up a meaningful learning environment.

 

How we think about technology

Technology is a tool, and like any tool, the way we think about it impacts how we use it and how we ask our students to use it.  We can use it to enhance traditional ways of learning and producing, such as word processing and memorizing.  We can use it to increase participation, both between students inside the classroom and outside the classroom, through collaborative tools and multi-media. We can also use it to develop critical cultural skills of questioning and evaluating digital media and power structures.

When we limit our view of technology to a digital pen and paper, we miss the ways students can increase their participation, build relationships, and develop cultural capital.  For those students whose primary access to technology is through the classroom, this further widens the gap. When we use technology to allow for a variety of ways to access, evaluate, and develop knowledge, we demonstrate how we value multiple avenues of knowledge.

As a classroom teacher when you become aware of the frameworks you use you can increase your choices of how to use the technology available to you.

Questions to answer:

  1. How do you use the tool of technology?
  2. Do you consume, produce, and/or participate?
  3. How does your personal use of technology shape the way you think about the tool?
  4. How do you critically think about the tool?
  5. How can this tool be used to connect people, build participation, increase critical awareness of equity issues?
  6. How do you think technology allows for various forms of knowledge to be valued?        

 

How we view others

How we think about technology shapes the way we approach planning our use of it.  How we think about our student’s use of technology shapes the way we interact with them and their use of it, much of the time when we are unaware of it.

Research looks at the technology gaps, both in hardware/connectivity as well as use in the classroom.  Holfeld, et. al. 2008, have found that schools with lower socioeconomic status have stricter student use policies and teachers who are more likely to use technology for rote learning, rather than creative engagement.[5] These schools and teachers are most likely not aware they are furthering the technological divide.

The cultural message that children and youth are more tech savvy than adults can also affect our policies and practices that increase the tech divide. This message implies it is a “natural” thing for children and youth to be good at tech. This hides the socio-economic and cultural factors of tech access. It also produces the flip side of the message that when children are not good at tech, for lack of access, they are individually flawed. For teachers who unknowingly believe this message it can result in preferential treatment to those students who have access outside of the classroom, thus furthering the divide[6].

Just as increasing our awareness of our framework is helpful in impacting our behavior and reducing the divide, increasing our awareness of how we think about other’s use of technology impacts our behavior and affects the divide.

Questions to answer:

  1. What is your first thought when a child seems to be “tech savvy”? Does it just seem “natural” to them?
  2. What is your first thought when a child doesn’t seem to be at ease with technology?
  3. How do you engage students in questioning technology, questioning the viewpoint of sites, analyzing the credibility of games? Do you engage different students differently in this critical thinking?
  4. How do you think about the reasons for the economic and social circumstances of your students (at all SES levels)?
  5. Do you think about how your SES shapes your relationship to technology?
  6. Do you try to control the content of some students more than others?
  7. What are your judgments of differing family involvement?
  8. Do you set up technology use so people with a wide range of backgrounds can use it?
  9. How open are you to learning, and incorporating, the way your students think into the way you teach and use technology?

Wrapping it up

Access to hardware and connectivity is only part of accessing technology.  Accessing the possibilities of participation and cultural knowledge is harder to see, but more within the classroom teacher’s control.  When educators see technology as a meaningful, varied means of expression for students, it invites students to participate in unique, every-evolving ways.  When students see themselves as capable of learning and using technology, they are empowered to continue accessing participation and cultural knowledge. This empowerment moves us all towards a reduction in the technology divide.

 

 

[1] http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/01/your-guide-to-the-digital-divide017

[2] http://www.exploratorium.edu/research/digitalkids/Lyman_DigitalKids.pdf

[3]http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262513623_Confronting_the_Challenges.pdf

[4] http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/27_02/27_02_vangalen.shtml

[5] Hohlfeld, T. N., Ritzhaupt, A. D., Barron, A. E., & Kemker, K. (2008). Examining the digital divide in K-12 public schools: Four-year trends for supporting ICT literacy in Florida. Computers & Education, 51(4), 1648–1663. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.04.002

[6] http://www.exploratorium.edu/research/digitalkids/Lyman_DigitalKids.pdf

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Essays on Rube Goldberg: capturing the scientific process with iPads

Rube_Goldberg_Project_HUMS_2014_-_YouTube_and_untitled__file______default_html__-
A tale of how physics can be successfully essayed on.

How one class of 8th grade scientists at Harwood Union Middle School used Google Docs, Schoology, and iPads to capture long-form essays about Rube Goldberg. Featuring everyone’s favorite tech-tastic science educator, Brian Wagner. As HUMS principal Amy Rex commented, “Exemplar teaching and learning — narrow the field and provide rapid feedback :)”

iPad management in the classroom: Did this educator do the right thing?

From our tumblr, an unusual iPad management situation with one educator who confiscated a student’s iPad during class and added a math problem before giving it back:

A maths educator confiscated a student's iPad and added a maths lesson before returning it. What would you do?

What do you think? Was this educator in the right? What do you think the student learned from this experience?

What would you have done?

Leave us an answer in the comments below to be entered into a drawing for a Hammerhead 12W Dual Port Adapter, for charging your iPad, iPhone and iPod.

Adam Provost on the need for ongoing instruction in digital citizenship

Adam Provost, Burlington High School tech integrationist and Partnership for Change Fellow, talks about how to talk to students about potentially dangerous or illegal technologies, and what use of those technologies can mean in terms of privacy and digital citizenship.


“I do teach kids what torrents are… how they are used illegally and also — as an example — how I’ve used them in a college course with students. I also show them anonymous proxies — the good the bad and the ugly — so students understand them. The advanced IT kids, anyway, have that chance.

There’s a lot of ground to cover in those discussions.

Engaging students in discussions of ethics, morality, copyright, law, etc along the way is key to success.

We test the limitations and configurations of devices, configurations, and systems. Most often technology isn’t the issue… it’s how you use it. Just like a car ; )jailbreak

I think kids need to see all that up close and not just in theory.

Seeing devices as programmable tools… and the advantages and disadvantages of those decisions therein is educational — much more so than denial of service or avoidance. If all you’d jailbreak a device for is to download illegal apps then you’re missing the point, potential and the richness of the discussion.

Of course there are limits to experimenting live… RFID as an example.

Now, I wouldn’t go the route of building a scanner (like the one in the video) with kids… but, showing them this as a security issue and exploring strategies to conduct digital commerce more safely has value; i.e. searching for credit cards with security features to check transactions (as in what cards offer what services… theft coverage etc and which strategy might be most effective), learning to monitor your bill more than once a month… it’s the new version of teaching people how to be aware of pickpockets.

All important stuff to know. Commerce is going to get a lot cooler.. and a lot more challenging.

Now building a scanner and having access to more conventional scanners and cards to test… and trying to build a card with more security features… that”d be fun to explore with students.

It’s outside the realm of most high school programs though… more likely a cool task for a collegiate (endowment funded) digital forensics program.

I get concerned with a digital_citizenshiplot ‘digital citizenship’ work in schools.

More often than not I find it’s a one and done style presentation usually with references to something like ‘don’t bully, protect your password/s, and don’t post controversial things online…’ then it’s back to teaching ‘the curriculum…’ at least until a problem / incident surfaces and then it’s discussed again.

There’s a lot more to this… and ‘Tech Courses,’ especially in high schools, could be considerably more advanced.

More students doing things than just listening is required I think. This all goes far beyond teaching kids to type, emailing, learning to build presentations, trying collaborative editing in Google Docs, and setting up a Twitter account to post in once a week during class… and watching a movie about bullying. Sarcastic, yes a bit… but true.

I think ‘Digital Citizenship’ discussions need to evolve.

I was working with a school recently in MA and discussing their tech curriculum. I asked “how many students get out of high school without learning how to make their home wi-fi secure? Is that as valuable as say… learning to type? Learning to give a presentation? How about learning to memorize all the US Presidents?” Some sat there looking blankly at me, and others nodded. I asked… “for those of you looking blankly at me… how many of you are concerned that you know nothing about your home wi-fi network?” A lot of hands went up ; )

If schools evolve their discussions on devices toward exploring the creative capacity and testing limitations, configuration and use (legal, ethical, and moral) then we’ll get further.

Insert some intensity and exploration.

There’s lots to discuss.

 


adam_provost_bioAdam Provost just signed on at Burlington High School in the Technology Integration and Partnership for Change Initiative. He recently took a seven month Rowland Sabbatical and visited seven countries to study innovative student programs and school leadership and systems that foster that culture. For over 20+ years he has served as a Computer Lab Aide, Network Administrator, Technology Coordinator, and full-time classroom teacher for eight years at Burr and Burton Academy in the innovative rLab classroom. Over this span he’s created many courses, innovative project-based learning environments, student-centered professional development, technology support, and internship programs. He currently serves as President of VITA-Learn, on the Board of Directors for the Vermont Baseball Coaches Association, and as Executive Director of the 643DP Foundation and blogs at creativeStir.blogspot.com.

Fostering global connections with Danby, Vermont

susan_gibeault

 

This morning we’re honored to be able to share a prezi by Currier Memorial School educator Susan Gibeault, on fostering students’ global awareness.

Gibeault has taught special education, speech and language and elementary education and received the  2012 BRSU Outstanding Teacher award.

This presentation is the culmination of a project she undertook with the Middle Grades Institute. Please enjoy.

 

 

What does “blended learning” really mean?

Here at the TIIE, we talk a lot about the gap between students’ in-school and out-of-school technology lives. As this gap narrows, the terms ‘blended learning’ and ‘hybrid’ have become pervasive in our edu-speak. But what is blended learning? Is it truly the disruptive force, as many claim, stimulating positive educational change? Or is it simply a matter of smattering of technology tools across lessons?

This infographic, created by Knewton and Column Five Media, provides several models of blended learning and, perhaps even more helpfully, examples of schools where we can find those models in action.

Blended Learning Infographic

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Bring on the dancing zombies: the undead teach disaster preparedness at Lamoille HS

I know, I know. But let me get a show of hands: how many of you now have that song stuck in your heads?

You’re welcome.

whitneykaulbachWhitney Kaulbach is a social studies educator at Lamoille Union High School, and over on her blog, she’s written a compelling and well thought out post on how she used the zombie apocalypse with her students in a unit on disaster preparedness.

 

 

My quick assessment of success in teaching this unit: Students have developed a habit of paying attention to news events.  The impact of disaster became very real for some of our students following news events and the typhoon in the Philippines.  The idea of disaster preparedness was no longer focused on killing zombies but saving lives.

…Preparing for a zombie apocalypse is quite similar to surviving a typhoon. Access to 2 gallons of drinking water a day, food, shelter from exposure to elements become crucial to survival.

Lamoille Union High School is going 1:1 with iPads, and, moved by one student’s in-depth and compelling project response, Kaulbach writes, ” I can’t wait until this student receives her 1:1 iPad from our schoolwide initiative.  Think how much more depth and detail could be added if she had access to her document at all times instead of the limited time I accessed for her.”

We can’t wait either, and we love it when educators are visionaries!

 

Talk Us to Your Leaders: Penny Bishop & John Downes

John Downes and Penny Bishop lead the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM.
John Downes and Penny Bishop lead the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM.

 

Welcome to our new twice-monthly column highlighting best practices for digital middle schools from a leadership perspective. Twice a month, Tarrant Institute director Penny Bishop and associate director John Downes will share their insight into what they’ve seen make a lasting and profound difference in technology integration with 21st century middle schools.

In this first installment of a 2-part column, they’ll address a critical but often under-addressed component of a successful digital middle school: the family.

wingding

As schools adapt to the digital age and integrate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs, interactive whiteboards, handheld devices, and 1:1 computing and learning management systems, classrooms have begun to look less and less like those in which most of today’s parents were educated. Generations of parents have struggled to support their child’s learning; today’s parents face even steeper challenges.

How can educators capitalize on the promise of technology and engage families in new and better ways? What does it mean to increase family engagement in the digital age?

Across the many increasingly hi-tech schools we’ve examined, teachers are answering these questions with exciting new family engagement strategies.

In this installment, we’ll look at two: creating “trans-parent” classrooms, and supplementary guides.

 

Trans-Parent Classrooms

One team we know is launching a blog to showcase technology-rich work that students post daily from the classroom. The team will ask trusted parents to seed the blog with thoughtful and supportive comments, providing students with a new and respected audience for their schoolwork and modeling constructive and civil online dialog. At the same time, the blog offers families a window into the work of a 21st century team, demystifying the novel opportunities granted by current technologies and sparking rich conversations about technology and learning.

Many tnavigateeams use Google Forms or other online survey tools to probe parents about the successes and challenges of 1:1 learning at home. Teams poll families on the relative importance of various parenting issues  — monitoring use of social media, encouraging healthy online identities, for instance — and can get instant feedback for analysis and integration into their lesson plans and classroom communities.

Much as the middle school movement has encouraged student voice to enhance the relevance of curriculum, teachers can use parent input to inform their family information nights, and the ongoing development of their online parent resources.

Teachers can guide parents toward helpful tools and strategies to navigate this digital age. Team newsletters, portal resources and parent events can all promote family conversations about current issues facing students in their complex online worlds.

 

Supplementary Guides

Some teachers link parents to ready-made resources like those hosted by Common Sense Media, such as parenting tip sheets or advice videos. But rather than flooding parents with information, skilled teams curate these resources and steer families to those that most directly address their concerns.

Some teams also provide families with templates for home media use agreements that foster parent-child conversations — and ultimately written agreements — about online safety, social media behavior and balancing media use with other acuratespects of life.

When families participate in take-home 1:1 programs, these agreements can dictate privacy settings, expectations for the “care and feeding” of their school-issued device, and shape when and how long a child can be online. Teams can require that students return a copy of their signed home-use agreement, along with a video interview with the family about their agreement, thereby ensuring these critical conversations take place. They may assign semi-annual updates to the home agreements, pushing families toward ongoing and constructive dialog about technology in family life. These practices acknowledge the powerful influence technology has in homes today, its centrality to powerful learning in and out of school, and the new challenges confronting the vital home-school connection.

Next time: making parents partners in teaching, and the crucial role of volunteering, as our look at 21st century family involvement continues.

Penny Bishop is the director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education and a professor of middle-level education in the College of Education and Social Services at UVM. John Downes is the associate director of the Tarrant Institute and a member of the Partnership for Change board.

 

New resource for 8th grade math educators

leah_lillian

Lillian Coletta and Leah Green, two pre-service teachers at UVM, have created an amazingly comprehensive Google site for middle-level math educators: https://sites.google.com/site/8thgradeccssresources/

Each resource corresponds to an 8th grade Common Core standard, and they’d love feedback on their site, especially from any teachers who incorporate some of the resources into their classroom.

A big thank-you to the two of them for being so willing to share their work!

A Google Drive lesson for iPads + iPad skill checklist

Meet Theresa White. She teaches 4th and 5th grade at Roxbury Village School, and this past summer, in preparation for her school going 1:1 with iPads, she took Susan Hennessey’s Emerging Technologies course, and as a result, shared this 5-minute lesson on getting up to speed with Google Drive on the iPad.

 

YouTube player

 

Bonus: she’s also shared her iPad skills checklist, for students (and teachers) to check off each new skill they master on the iPad. Thanks Mrs. White!

ipadchecklist

Meet Emily Howe, pre-service educator and technology fan

emily_howe

Emily Howe joined the Tarrant Institute this past summer as our first ever pre-service teacher intern. She was instrumental in pulling off Code Camp, and actively assists in our research. For her first blog post, Howe answered the question:

Describe a situation in which you feel instruction could’ve benefited from the appropriate integration of technology. Was that technology accessible?

In response, she described a watershed moment for her during her placement in a local school.

 

This semester, I’m in my first placement for the secondary education program here at UVM. I’m in a middle school right now, and last week I was able to sit in on a common planning time meeting amongst the teachers on the team that I am observing. As a part of their physics unit, the students are working on a project where they have to construct a functioning trebuchet or catapult. During this meeting, one of the topics being discussed was how the teachers would assess the final projects; one idea was to have the students create a video about their device.

The logistics of this type of assessment became an immediate concern.

How would the students film their catapult in action? What kind of camera would they use? Would an iPad suffice? What about editing? Are the students proficient enough in the use of these kinds of technology to execute a final product? Do the teachers know enough about it to offer adequate support? Would this just further (and perhaps unnecessarily) complicate an already difficult task?

My time in the classroom was up before a final conclusion was reached, but this conversation got me thinking about how education technology really looks and operates in practice.leapoffaith

While it is easy to argue for the integration of technology into the physical space of a classroom, it’s certainly harder to execute this integration into the curriculum itself.

And while I understand that it is kind of a no-brainer statement to make (I mean as with anything, it tends to be easier to talk about something than to put it into action), you could call this my lightbulb moment when it comes to education and technology.

That being said, I’d argue that my belief in the value of integrating technology at a curricular level isn’t a lofty or naive ideal.

And even if it is, I’d argue that it’s worth pursuing anyway.

In this particular classroom, laptops are frequently used to support inquiry based learning; combined with their use of a document camera and projector to display student work, it is clear that technology is an important part of how this team functions. But taking that next step towards making curricular changes that incorporate technology requires what can feel like a major leap of faith. In this specific instance, having the students make a video about their physics projects would create an opportunity for them to reflect on the learning process.

In addition to providing students with the proper technological tools, it would also be necessary to have instruction on how to film and edit videos. To do so would take time out of the classroom, require additional professional development, and necessitate access to a new set of resources, but the benefits are certainly significant.

Having this type of technology available in the classroom — and in the curriculum — would create a unique learning opportunity. Students would be able to elevate their inquiry-based learning and discover an entirely new cross-disciplinary connection between their video (the arts) and their physics projects (the sciences).

So, while it may be difficult to do, I believe this stands as an instance where the presence of technology could make a significant difference in student learning.

Emily Howe is pursuing a dual degree in Secondary Education and History with a minor in Special Education. She works with incoming first year students at UVM in the Honors College as a Peer Leader, and as a tutor in the UVM Writing Center. She’s also involved with Service TREK and Alternative Spring Break, and enjoys cooking, playing guitar, and going to Zumba classes in her spare time. You can reach Howe by email at ehowe2@uvm.edu.

 

 

How one teacher learned to let go and trust her students to lead their learning

While we’re all over here recovering from the epic spectacle that was this year’s Code Camp, please enjoy Shelly Wright’s TEDTalk, on her journey as a teacher.

 

They’re all excited and they’re telling people, and texting and I’m thinking this is gonna be awesome, you know? We’ll raise a couple thousand dollars, the kids’ll feel like they’re important, this’ll be great.

And so, the next day we come back to school and my students come back to the class and they say, “Mrs. Wright, we have decided on a goal…We have decided that we want to raise ten thousand dollars.”

Inside my head I’m thinking, “Oh. My. Gosh. Do you have any idea how much money ten thousand dollars is???”

And my outside voice said, “That’s awesome! How do you propose we do that?”

The power of student-driven learning: Shelley Wright at TEDxWestVancouverED

 

Featuring social justice work, community connections, and all the cats in
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, this 15-minute video is worth every second.

(Entirely related, Wright’s blog post on the power of student-driven learning is every bit as good.)

“When Student Published Videos Go Viral” (podcast)

In September of 2009, Sarah, the 9 year-old daughter of our keynote speaker posted a 90-second YouTube response to President Obama’s speech to US students. This video “went viral” and currently has over 190,000 views. In May 2010, a 6th grader in our keynote presenter’s hometown attracted the attention of Ellen Degeneres with his YouTube remix of a Lady Gaga song. Greyson Chance is now a household name and national star with a record contract and his own manager. Join this session to discuss the issues raised by these two situations and lessons learned including Internet safety and digital citizenship responsibilities.

Very powerful reflections from 9-year-old Sarah Fryer and her father, educator and technologist Wes Fryer, on digital citizenship for students on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. This podcast captured their presentation, When Student Videos Go Viral, at the Mid-America Association for Computers in Education (MACE) 2011.

student_videos_go_viral

Blogger of the week: Valerie Sullivan

Valerie Sullivan is the director of curriculum and instruction for the Lamoille South Supervisory Union.
Valerie Sullivan is the director of curriculum and instruction for the Lamoille South Supervisory Union.

It’s no secret that here at the Tarrant Institute, we’re a bit batty for badges. Not just because they’re shiny and fun to sew on a sash, but because in our initial experiments with badging platforms, we’re seeing increased teacher/learner engagement and motivation. But what does that really mean? Here, guest blogger Valerie Sullivan weighs in on Badgestack, the platform we’re using:

The structure itself provides for point, levels, badges, leaderboards, etc. Certain badges promote some of the other features like “phone a friend” allows for taking turns and swapping resources. The ability to click on individual members to see their badge/ quest submissions also provides for swapping resources and includes hidden elements.

I’m a bit of a skeptic and agree with the concern about badging being an extrinsic motivator instead of an intrinsic motivator. How might this impact other learning opportunities or experiences that aren’t badge centered? If all learning used badging might its novelty and even the extrinsic reward wear off?

If saying ‘great job’ or putting an “A”, check plus, or star on the top of the page is not valid, constructive feedback and as the learning theorists suggest none of these promotes learning, editing, reflection and growth than how is a badge any different or better?

We aim to find out! Stay tuned for details.

Middle grades students building a 3-D printer

3D printer students

Students at one of our partner schools, Manchester Elementary/Middle School have recently embarked on building a 3-D printer. Yep, you read that right: a 3-dimensional printer. The parts are laser cut out of wood and teach the kids about programming and design. First item off the press? A sloth coin.

Instructor Seth Bonnett explains:

3D Printer Bonnett