My Favourite Things: A December #BlogHop

Hello #peel21st & other readers!

We are writing this month to share 5 of our favourite things related to education. The list of contributors to this blog hop can be found at the bottom of this post. Here goes! (In no particular order...basically the first 5 things that came to mind tonight!):

1. For creating video lessons I choose Explain Everything

This is an app for iPad that is fairly user friendly and has had quite a few features added to it this past year (i.e. I can now add mathematical equations). You can upload your videos to a large variety of places from the storage on your iPad to YouTube to Google Drive.  It does have a cost to download, but it has been well worth it for me. I know that some schools have paid to have it put on school devices for student use as well.

2. For a LMS I will be switching to Google Classroom (either next Semester or in Sept)

A lot has been developed for this system since it was first introduced. I currently use Edmodo and while I like to be able to give parents the option to have a connected account (and while they have added Microsoft online, which is a bonus) the fact that students in my board already have google accounts means this change makes sense at this time. There are a lot of connected apps that you get immediate access to by switching to Google. Though I must admit, I do not look forward to redoing my online assessments...again. But such is life!

If you have google apps/add-ons to suggest please comment below or catch me on Twitter :)

3. For organization I live off of Evernote

I use this app on all of my devices (it is cross platform and can be accessed on their website) and use it instead of using bookmarks on my browser - mostly to save education related resources - because you can tag each item with as many tags as you would like. I also use it to go paperless at home (i.e. keeping car repair/maintenance records), save recipes, and it is where I note-take when I attend PD (this is handy when it comes time to update my resume, or I need to review something from past conference, etc).

4. For teacher-directed PD I am often found on Twitter

I participate in formal chats on twitter with groups of like-minded educators. It is usually through these times that I undergo the most professional growth. I am able to get ideas from others, ask questions, share resources, and work on discovering new things on my own time, at my own pace. I have found that in many circumstances, finding like-minded people is more valuable than finding people close by. Of course there are times when face-to-face meetings are more beneficial, but I have done most of my learning around tech and flipped learning online.

5. For reading/assessment professional learning - Rethinking Letter Grades

This has been the driving force behind a lot of my work with #AssessPeel to go back to focus on backward design (by creating overarching learning goals) and letting this inform all assessment decisions - from creating a course learning map to learning goals/success criteria, and evaluations. I have blogged about this resource and our work earlier in the year. The entry can be found here.

Please check out the other blogs below!

Jason Richea	http://beyondangrybirds.blogspot.ca/2015/12/a-few-of-my-favourite-things.html
Heather Lye	http://teachinginspirations.blogspot.com/2015/12/my-favourite-things-december-bloghop.html
Amit Mehrotra	http://mramitmehrotra.blogspot.ca/
Jason Wigmore	https://jwigmore.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/a-few-of-my-favourite-things/
Melanie Mulcaster	http://valleyslearningcommons.blogspot.ca/2015/12/five-of-my-favourite-things.html
Jonathan So	http://mrsoclassroom.blogspot.com/2015/12/5-favourite-things.html
Jim Cash	http://makelearn.org/2015/12/15/a-few-of-my-favourite-things/
Tina Zita	https://misszita.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/peel21st-blog-hop-a-few-of-my-favourite-things/
Maggie Fay	https://www.dropbox.com/s/vusno76viphg63c/My%20favourite%20things%20post%20%20for%20Peel21st.mov?dl=0
Pam Taylor	http://mindfulauthenticity.blogspot.ca/2015/12/december-peel21st-blog-hop-few-of-my.html?spref=tw
Gina Loutrianakis	https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fp2u3s801ZLXGnGOS6h2gtYkYPDaya-b1rbFjPdnn5Y/edit
Laura Smiley	https://t.co/Z5yxQU6kyU

Digital Citizenship: A #flipclass Flashblog

This week on our #flipclass chat we are discussing digital citizenship - what we teach (or don't) and what students need to learn.

I have always been a big supporter of the need to USE technology with students so that they have a change to learn about being positive digital citizen, to be safe, and to learn to cite and respect the work of others. I am sure I have blogged about some of these ideas in the past particularly when I was developing my ideas for doing formal Twitter chats with students as review. Essentially my point of view is this - if kids are usually ahead of their parents online, then if we do not teach them, who will?

Since I have stopped using those chats the need to explicitly teach the first two has dwindled. Since I am teaching science teaching the third one comes hand in hand with any research project we do. Creating research notes and reference lists are a much and is scaffolded throughout our department's program.

Our board uses a BYOD (bring your own device) model and my school often has a student run day somewhere around the topics of bullying/self-esteem, so aspects of digital citizenship often get touched on. I wish I had a photo of the poster most of us have up in our rooms to share with you. It uses the acronym THINK to help remind students to think before they post. Here is a link to a PDF of it instead. The description is also below:

True?
Hurtful?
Illegal?
Necessary?
Kind?

When instances for a teachable moment come up in class (or on our online classroom) I always cease them to discuss - sometimes with a particular student, and sometimes with the whole class. But maybe I should do more. I would love to have some kind of simulation I could run. Where students are participating in an online chat and they get spammed with inappropriate comments or something...then we could discuss what they could do, etc.

Food for thought, anyway.

Learning Moments: A #peel21st Blog Hop

The prompt: What has been your most memorable learning moment this fall?

The answer:I don't know if I can pick a single learning moment. I have seen students enjoy an inquiry/research/project based biology strand in many different ways (allowing us to focus on the overarching learning goals of the course). I have seen students completely new to a topic struggle and work until they reached an ah-ha moment; or at least declared they would keep at it until they figured it out. Maybe the only answer I can actually use is my own learning moment - although there have been many.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the mutual lessons between myself and my students are the most valuable. The one that comes to mind as I write is a lesson of mutual communication. It often takes some moments of frustration to get my class to really tell me what they need so that I can make changes or adjust a lesson, or add something to a class. When these doors are opened to communicate, a lot of things become possible.

Now they are more willing to speak up and ask for things instead of assuming I will say no. And I hope that they will also be able to listen to my suggestions more willingly.

This is a battle I fight for every semester in my senior flipped classrooms. I am trying to find a way to help it along sooner. Sometimes I wish I could be a fly on the wall in my own room to try to spot those moments that hinder what I am seeking. I am trying to work on myself first.

Here are the participant in tonight's blog hop. Hop around and join in the fun!

Jason Richea	http://beyondangrybirds.blogspot.ca/2015/11/best-moment.html
Jonathan So	http://mrsoclassroom.blogspot.ca/2015/11/the-best-learning-moment-this-fall.html
Amit Mehrotra	http://mramitmehrotra.blogspot.ca/2015/11/peel21st-november-blog-hop-my-best.html
Tina Zita	https://misszita.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/peel21st-blog-hop-my-one-best-thing/
Jim Cash	http://makelearn.org/2015/11/15/memorable-learning-moment/
Melanie Mulcaster	http://valleyslearningcommons.blogspot.ca/2015/11/my-best-moments-so-far-in-2015-happen.html
Heather Lye	http://teachinginspirations.blogspot.com/2015/11/learning-moments-peel21st-blog-hop.html
Erica Armstrong	http://msarmstrong.ca/2015/11/17/my-most-memorable-learning-moment-of-this-fall/
Matt Fletcher	https://heymrfletcher.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/peel21st-november-blog-hop-my-best-moment/
Jason Wigmore	https://jwigmore.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/peel21st-blog-hop-my-most-memorable-moment
Shivonne Lewis-Young	https://slewisyoung.wordpress.com/
Matthew Forestieri	http://www.matthewforestieri.com/2015/11/18/peel21st-

Sarah Dadgar http://instructionalpartners.blogspot.ca/2015/11/each-day-is-memorable-moment-as-i-sit.html

Pam Taylor http://mindfulauthenticity.blogspot.ca/2015/11/peel21st-blog-hop-what-has-been-your.html?spref=tw​ 

Creating Culture: A #flipclass #FlashBlog

Hello #flipclass friends & visitors!

In this week's #flipclass chat we are discussing classroom and school culture and have been asked to blog about how we create culture in our flipped classrooms and/or schools.

I have blogged about embarking on a journey to create a better culture of communication in my classroom and am attempting to use a strategy called Accountable Talk (it was proposed within our board as a numeracy strategy to get kids talking about their thinking - so I thought "two birds, one stone". I am going to try to reflect on how I think this is going and how I think it helps to create a positive culture in my classroom.

First of all I would like to acknowledge the light bulb moment I had recently - I have to change my own mind set and habits to really make this ever work. I am not there yet. It is difficult. It is a work in progress. I still struggle to stay out of it completely. But perhaps that will never stop. Sometimes a question needs to be rephrased, or an example is needed to clarify.

This strategy makes discussions take longer at first, so requires a lot of patience and a lot of direct instruction around why and how it can/should be used. I am trying really hard to interject its ideas into conversations I am "eavesdropping" on within my class and trying to speak less and less during full class discussions. My goal is to merely become the facilitator of the conversation (i.e. help them still speak one at a time and remind them when they need to rephrase to maintain a positive discussion).

I have witnessed a few groups of students putting the strategy into place more often in their own conversations (hooray!) but ultimately I hope to see it more. I am getting better at it (slowly) myself and it is starting to rub off on the students. For example, I gave my Grade 11 physics class some discussion questions at the start of class surrounding Newton's first and second laws. They were given time to discuss in their groups first and then I usually pick one or two for full class discussion (so that I can make sure we are all on the same page).

My biggest struggle at this point is how to help a conversation get started when they are not sure how to begin (without going back to my old habits that lead to student-teacher conversation). But that will have to be a bigger thought for another day. But I am seeing them getting used to my madness - one student flat out realized "she's not going to give us this answer, I need to just say something". So he did. And it helped kick off a conversation with multiple participants and all I had to say was "who agrees? why do you agree? what can you add? ...". It felt amazing. They were starting to get it - and it sounded like they were trusting each other, and pushing each other to be better without a single negative comment. It was as if the conversation was building them up, instead of threatening them to need to be right. They were no longer seeking my validation, they were seeking explanations that they could understand - that they built themselves, without needing to use my words.

The part that felt the best was talking to that student who started it all off after the fact when he added "I also get why you do this now. It is easier for us to help each other because we are learning this together." He added on to this idea by clarifying that because they were all trying to learn it they could relate to the difficulties and struggles in a way that I couldn't.

This is why I think of myself as a coach now instead of as a "teacher".

Trying Some New Things

Since meeting with my department to hash out some overarching learning goals (OLGs - which are described in this entry) for Gr 10 science I have been able to start working on something else - true student self-evaluation and reflection.

The first piece we could do overall without the OLGs (but it may be less effective without them). I have created class OneNote files so that there is one file that has all of my students in it, but do not have to worry about other students in the class looking at each others reflections. And no more paper! Hooray!

Students have three tabs in the file. The first is an ePortfolio where I am asking them to take snapshots of their learning and evidence of learning so that they can track their progress. That is the hope, anyway. Basically I got this under way last week and it took a bunch of time away from other things, but I am hoping that now that they are familiar with it they will be able to do this more effectively and with less guidance. Students can create pages within this tab and have been told they can choose how they want to organize their portfolio. For example, my Gr 10s were asked to take a photo of their formative quiz, something they were proud of, as well as at least parts of their test (minimum of one part of the test they were proud of/improved on and one part they wanted to improve on). They also had to include a photo of their self-evaluation (described below). I am hoping that this can help them see their own improvement and give me a place to go to check details when writing reports or talking to parents. I could even open the file to show a parent if needed.

The second tab is for reflection. Students have a page with their SMART goal from the start of the semester and now have a page where they did a reflection on their learning skills for the progress report. I referenced this when doing their progress report cards, taking their evaluations of themselves into consideration. This can also allow for some conversation with individual students if needed who may not be self-evaluating as accurately as I would like so we can find misconceptions about what the learning skills mean. The third tab is for notes, and students can choose to use this as a place to store notes if they would like to.

The next big thing I am trying is to use the OLGs explicitly in class. The Gr 10 OLGs are written (permanently) on the board at the front of the room and have been posted on our class site for easy access. I am trying to make reference to them in various classes in conjunction with a specific learning goal to help give the class direction and meaning. I will also reference specific ones for every project or evaluation we do so that the students know what the appropriate big ideas are.

After the first chemistry test I was inspired to create the students a checklist relating back to the OLGs and specific learning goals. When I returned they marked test to them they were given this checklist (as a met/not yet met list) and they had to use my comments, etc to help them evaluate themselves to identify what they should continue to work on. This forced students who would usually just look at the mark, or who might even recycle their work without giving it much thought, a reason to actually look at it carefully and start to self-regulate.

What I hope to do with this for future evaluations is to give them the checklist BEFORE the evaluation to do in pencil and hand in, and then I will return it to them after to go through the same process so that we can hopefully identify areas to work on more effectively. If nothing else I am hoping it will help some students put some focus into their studying, as many students do not spend study time wisely.

Would love to hear about other ideas you are trying out there with OLGs, learning goals, and self-evaluation!