Lessons Learned

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness

Category: Class Management (page 1 of 2)

Wellness Dashboard – Elementary Modular Classes – Exploratory Specials

July 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Do you, by chance, have a “Well-Being Dashboard“? One of my sons mentioned that he has a mental dashboard that he checks throughout the day. I like this self-care mental check-in and the idea of having a physical one, which makes me think of the meditation and wellness apps with check-in questionnaires and dashboards, especially around emotions. The MyLife meditation app is a good example. I also see other apps for physical health monitoring, especially for diabetics and folks using smartwatches that provide some of their vital signs and physical activity logging. 

With the wellness umbrella covering the PERMAH categories, one can have a mental and physical dashboard. This connects to the efforts of a student programmer I worked with at my school to design a wellness app for our community. It uses the Positive Psychology PERMAH framework, including Character Strengths and goal-setting through the WOOP construct. The H in PERMAH includes mental and physical health, so we will need to see if there is a way to pull in information from those who wear the smartwatches. We are designing it for daily check-ins as in status markers within each PERMAH pillar to include the Character Strengths engaged within each pillar.

_________________________

I have been teaching this summer in my elementary school as we cannot leave Vietnam and return later in the summer. This experience has been positive and fruitful on many levels. It really offers me the opportunity to step into the shoes of our teachers and students. My main takeaway is the fragmented and frenetic pacing of the day. I have heard about this over the years but have not experienced it in my non-homeroom roles in elementary schools.

Extended class periods offer more opportunities for in-depth learning and applying new skills and concepts. In discussing this with a colleague, we wondered if it might be possible to use more of a block scheduling approach from our high school teaching experiences. My colleague used the term “modular classes,” which I guess is the current term for block scheduling. As always, I am just offering an idea, wondering if there are elementary schools that have more extended class periods with fewer transitions during the day.

_________________________

With the transition to and from our elementary school’s music, drama, art, PE, Vietnamese, and library, the 45 minutes designated for teaching time drops with getting students settled and then ready to leave at the end of the period. Another idea we discussed is the fragmentation of learning by taking a smattering of specialist classes each week. I suspect the specialist teachers struggle to build on previous lessons when they only see students once or sometimes twice a week.

My colleague and I chatted about the possibility of making a more middle school exploratory approach with students possibly only taking one or two specialist classes a quarter. There are scheduling difficulties for specialists, and teachers need coverage for grade-level team planning times. But who knows, perhaps some schools found a way to give students more in-depth time each quarter to drill down into their learning in specialist classes.

On a related note, our EC/K art teacher is moving into the pod of EC/K classes this coming year which will hugely cut down on transition time and open the door to even more art integration into the units of study as well as possibly giving students more opportunity to have some control over time and place as they personalize their engagement with art. 🙂

Photo by Marek Szturc on Unsplash

VS – Building Community with Pet Introductions :)

March 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

A teacher in Arlington County Public Schools is jumping right into the importance of building community and connections. The students are doing a show and tell via their video platform to introduce either a pet or a plant to their classmates. What a fun and light way to support the social and emotional needs of students isolated in their homes.

With all of my posts so far being from the perspective of elementary school, we know that MS and HS advisory are similar to the elementary morning meeting. I hope that virtual schools around the world are hyper-focused on building community through morning meetings, advisory, or whatever mechanism they have to support students in smaller groups.

And thanks for the share, Margaret!

Photo by Don Agnello on Unsplash

Virtual School – Class Time! Engaging the R in PERMAH

February 10, 2020 / / 0 Comments

“OK, who can answer that question?”

Mr. Howe facilitates his virtual classroom helping students to connect with their learning community. Thanks, Rob for letting me observe your class!

Student-Led Class Meetings

August 15, 2018 / / 0 Comments

How does your school run class meetings? What is the philosophy behind them? What learning goals are you working towards? At Saigon South International School, Jeremy Neldon empowers his Second Graders to run their class meetings using democratic principles. Students have roles and follow procedures to experience how democracy functions authentically. They learn communication, facilitation, planning, documentation, and other skills as they manage the discussions. The following are the procedures Jeremy uses with his students.

Rules for Running Class Meetings

  1. The Moderator calls the meeting to order and asks for a timekeeper and note-taker. The note taker only records the proposal after the vote, just in case the wording changes.
  2. The Moderator calls on the first proposal. Once the exact wording of a proposal is written on the whiteboard, the Moderator says, “I now open up the floor for comments and questions” The person called on has the floor to ask questions and give feedback on the proposal. If the person who has the floor has a question, the people presenting can respond without asking. Once the questions or comments by one person end, they must say, “I yield the floor” This lets everyone know they are done.
  3. The Moderator calls on people by saying, “The moderator recognizes (name of person).” People are not allowed to call out without being recognized. If people call out, the Moderator says, “Point of Order,” then says what the person needs to stop doing. If a person constantly interrupts, the Moderator may ask them to leave the meeting. They must leave without argument.
  4. The Moderator needs to call on people reasonably. Everyone should get a chance to have the floor before someone else gets it twice. They should also have many different opinions heard.
  5. If a person wants to add or remove something from a proposal, they must ask to “amend it.” The present rules state that the person proposing it decides if it is amended.
  6. Once the time runs out, or there are no more comments and questions, the Moderator calls a vote by saying, “Seeing as there are no more comments and questions, I call the vote.” The call to vote must be seconded by at least one other person (by raising their hand). If more time is needed for a discussion, the Moderator can extend the discussion or table the discussion for the next meeting. Tabling the discussion means it is moved to a later time.
  7. Before voting, the final proposal is read one last time. Then the Moderator asks, “All in favor?” There is no noise during the vote. People need to have their hands up to be counted. Then the Moderator asks, “All opposed?” The Moderator counts the votes and records them on the board.
  8. The note taker needs to record the final proposal and the votes in the Intermediate Class Rule Book. If the vote is close (by one or two votes), a person can ask the Moderator for a recount.
  9. Once the proposal is finished, the Moderator calls on the next person to present.
  10. After all the proposals have been made, the Moderator says, “Meeting adjourned.” This ends the meeting and people can leave and return to their scheduled activities.

 

Anchor Chart

Adding Agenda Items Form

 

Teaching Assistants: The Many Hats They Wear

March 22, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Two recent events reminded me of how essential teaching assistants (TAs) are in our schools. My sister, who left education over 20 years ago, recently returned to the classroom as a teaching assistant. Even with a graduate degree in education and lots of experience tutoring in after-school programs, she did not want to be a teacher again as she understood the vast responsibilities of the job. A second event was a staff email from the principal of my new school in which he shared a slideshow on inquiry that will be in a workshop for teaching assistants.

My sister could not have predicted the responsibilities and the need for her many talents when she started her job. She is now waiting for her fourth classroom teacher of the year to arrive, as two quit, and one was just fired. She works with and teaches a group of special needs students within an elementary classroom. Her days not only involve designing lessons and teaching but, from time to time, stopping fights, finding missing students, and working with her principal to develop positive behavior support techniques. While my sister’s case is extreme in all she is called on to do, mainly with behavioral issues, I am reminded of TAs I worked with over the years and the many roles they filled. I am not in a position to list all the talents and tasks teaching assistants apply in their work, but I am aware of many, especially noting that they can be true teaching partners if so empowered as they are in my new school.

In my previous schools, I provided monthly PD workshops for TAs around technology use. The workshops would begin with my learning how lessons I had taught and teacher tech initiatives were working or not working with the students. We would then learn about an instructional strategy enhanced by an app, website, or another tool. We learned strategies from one another to apply in future lessons. What helped me become a better designer was learning how the teaching assistants would help apply the strategies in their classrooms.

Now, as I shift to counseling at my new school, I definitely will look to create a program to meet with the TAs to learn from them as we further develop our guidance program.

I can see myself starting with a few questions:

  • What are the listed roles of TAs?
  • What are the unlisted ones?
  • How do the TAs feel they are perceived? Supported? Empowered?
  • What voice do TAs have in how classrooms are managed?
  • How do they see their students as learners, especially regarding social and emotional (SEL) growth?
  • What strategies and designed experiences for SEL growth have been most effective?
  • What insights might they have for parent needs in supporting SEL initiatives at home?

 

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Phones in Schools (Counseling – IT Partnership)

November 30, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Joshua Johnson led a very informative discussion on his NPR 1A show about cell phones in schools. His panel included a 9th grader, a teacher, a principal, and a physician. They cover many topics worth your time to listen to the podcast version of the show. One interesting line from the principal dealt with two considerable efforts in most schools- expanding technology use and helping students experience deeper learning. She noted that it is challenging to do both with the tendency of technology to distract from focusing in depth on topics, thus impeding students from making lateral and deeper connections. And as the doctor noted, effective multi-tasking is a myth.

The high school teacher, Matt Miles, co-authored with Joe Clement the book Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber.

This brings me to the theme of the overlapping worlds of technology and counseling as I explore how schools guide students to be in charge of their devices instead of the devices controlling the users.

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Student Learning Support Structures and Strategies

August 10, 2017 / / 0 Comments

I recently spoke with a psychologist who works with students with ADHD to help them implement various learning strategies in their lives. She shared a couple of books by Dr. Ari Tuckman, a leader in the field of ADHD. I reviewed his strategies designed to help students be proactive, organized, focused, and better short and long-term planners. And as so often is the case, the strategies for students with special needs benefit all students.

As an instructional technologist, I work with teachers with the guiding principle of finding ways to meet our students’ full spectrum of learning needs. Technology supports this effort in so many ways, mainly when we help students find ways that technology can help improve sound learning strategies. A big part of this process is developing their Personal Learning System.

A case in point came up with the psychologist. She spoke about helping students at the outset of a new topic of study or a project assignment to have them sit down to get all their prior knowledge, current ideas, and possible ways to move forward on paper. They then move into planning mode, working backward from the completed project to line up the steps needed to get them to the finish line.

My mind immediately connected to my writings on ICL project management and using digital mind maps to do exactly what she explained. Giving students the 24/7 ability to pull up their project mind map to revise, add information, and with a click of a button, turn it into a linear listing is so helpful when compared to doing a paper version.

Our discussion also reminded me of the learning strategies list I put together during our time at the Saudi Arabian International School – in Riyadh back in the 90s. I was a counselor then, and head of our Students Support Services program. We were a dynamic middle school with collaborative teams focused on providing a united effort to help our students learn.

Now, as I am thinking more and more about returning to counseling, especially with our students needing so much support in effectively using technology and information while learning to be good citizens, it is making a lot of sense for me to think about merging my instructional tech background with guidance counseling. Can TPACK be applied to become a “GCKITK” Venn diagram acronym (Guidance Counseling Knowledge Instructional Technology Knowledge)? 🙂

As this blog is about hopefully providing classroom-tested ideas, here is the original learning strategies listing written in 1994. Many of the strategies still make a lot of sense today. They are more practices, structures, and systems than individual strategies students would use.

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Learning Support Structures and Strategies

Currently Used By SAIS-R Middle School As Part Of Student Services Support System:

Teaming: Core teachers meet weekly to discuss the needs of their students. The grade-level team comprises an administrator, a learning strategies teacher, a counselor, and the teachers. The teams meet to discuss students in need of support and to construct learning strategies that might assist students in need. Timelines are arranged, and bi-monthly check-ups on students follow the Learning Strategy session. The teams work to answer the following questions about students in need:

  • What are the struggles?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the student?
  • What are the exceptions to the problem (What works for who and why?)
  • What is each of us doing individually to meet the needs of this student? What is the student’s learning style?
  • What are the learning strategies that we are going to use?
  • When will we check up on the outcomes of these strategies?

The administrators, learning strategy teachers, and counselors are assigned to specific grade levels. They follow their respective students from one-grade level to the next. This builds a great deal of continuity and sharing of information for students as they go through middle school.

Documentation: Team meetings, student conferences, parent contacts, etc., are recorded in the Student Information System.

Mentoring: The teacher advocate works as the liaison between the teaching team and the student’s parents, checks in with the student weekly, and monitors the student’s progress and applied learning strategies. The mentor works with the counselor to review the student’s cumulative file and to contact previous teachers for historical information.

Bimonthly Check-ins with the team by mentors for respective students.

The language used to discuss students is constructive and based on empirical data instead of emotional responses.

Monthly meetings with elective teachers by teams to gather and share student information.

Quarterly Reflection and Celebration: Each team sets aside a meeting period to review each Red Flag student’s progress. This is a time for only positive comments. The team should reflect upon their goals and how they work to reach them. This is also an excellent time to review how the team works together and the procedures they follow to support students in need. Also, is the team working to reach a broader base of students than just the Red Flag students? How are other students being supported and celebrated?

Student-led Conferencing: The counselor sets up appointments with a student’s teacher so the student, counselor, and teacher can meet. The student uses this time to see what they need to do to improve to reach their goals in each teacher’s class. Students lead out as a part of the ongoing effort to empower them to be in charge of their learning. Possible questions for the teachers to ask the students now are: What are you doing to be an active participant in my class? What are the aspects of my class that help you learn in the best manner? What are the activities/assignments you need to be learning at your optimal level?, What can I do to make a difference for you in my class? What can you do to make a difference for yourself in my class?

Goal Setting: Whether with the learning strategies teacher or the counselor, arrange a conferencing time for the student to construct their goals, whether short- or long-term. Students journal to process and record their thinking and progress toward reaching their goals.

The learning strategy teacher pulls students out of a few classes to review their organizational and study skills. This is a short-term strategy.

Team Designate To Encore (Elective) Teachers: Designate a team member to check in with encore teachers concerning team news and student services. It is essential to contact encore teachers when a parent conference is scheduled.

Individualization to Differentiation: The team works to find the student’s strengths and weaknesses, building out a learner profile. The team works to develop modifications from the profile. Examples: photocopy of notes, the student using a tape recorder for notes, extended time and alternative test taking, assignments constructed on worksheets with outlines and metacognitive notes included, the student using a word processor for all work, use of a calculator, breaking down of assignments and questions into smaller pieces, using concept maps to get ideas from mind to paper to then put in outline form, concept maps at times in place of paragraph writing, nightly review of class notes to write up summaries of understanding, use of outlines to structure understanding, etc.

Parents and Student Reading Time: Parents and student set aside specific time for the family to be together to read for pleasure.

Weekly Study Guides: All teachers prepare written study guides that contain daily assignments, in-class work, and long-term projects. Give to each student at the beginning of each week.

Student Work Binders: Give all new students a binder to hold their Study Guides and homework.

Student Self-Progress Reports: Students keep charts and reflections for each class to record all graded material.

Parent Strategies: 1) Meet as a family at the beginning of each school week to review the Study Guides and construct a plan for the week. 2) Work to find where and when your child studies the best. Then set that specific time and place for daily study. 3) Follow through on assignments and record the progress of your child. Keep up-to-date on grades by working with your child to keep the binder organized and to hold on to graded materials. 4) Review student self-progress reflection and grades from the previous week.

The counselor adds an assessment of the student’s developmental status, including affective and social domains, to their profile document.

Individual Counseling: The counselor meets weekly with students with academic, emotional, or social difficulties. If the problems are beyond the scope of counseling offered through the school, refer to therapists in the greater community.

Group Counseling: Students with leadership potential can take part in the Peer Leader training program. Students with social difficulties or challenging times adjusting to SAIS-R can participate in the New Student group.

Tutoring: The counselors keep an updated list of tutors from the community who can provide additional support outside of SAIS-R. The list includes tutors who offer support in several areas, including core classes and foreign languages. The list also includes specialists who can provide learning support for students with learning difficulties. The tutors should contact the teams and possibly meet with them to gain background information.

Tutor as Structure Provider: It is often not a good idea for the parent to act as a tutor or taskmaster. A hired tutor can fill this role. The role is to prepare the student organizationally for the week and check their mastery of skills. Also, time to plan the work schedule for the completion of projects and test preparation which is incorporated into the weekly study plan. The student then writes up a checklist of daily HW with an explanation of what parents should be looking for to support long-term project status. This is a time for the student to demonstrate their mastery of skills learned during the preceding days of the week. Parent responsibility will be to enforce daily structured study time and to go through completed HW using the checklist that the student has constructed.

Parent Assessment of Student: Parents are requested to write up a summary of the student’s educational history, the strengths and weaknesses of the student, the student’s learning style, and their educational goals for the child. Parents are to send in these reports before they meet with the teams. The team reviews a copy of this report.

Weekly Self-Progress Reports: The parents and students construct a weekly progress report template containing questions they would like teachers to answer. The family is to make plentiful copies, and the student is to meet with each teacher to ask that they fill out the form and has it ready for the student to take home at the end of the week.

Slow Start Phone Calls: Teachers or educational aides make short phone calls to parents two weeks into the quarter to communicate when the student is off to a slow start.

Peer Partner: The student works with a fellow student in each class to ensure they understand all directions. The Peer Partner is also a resource to ask questions and compare notebooks to the quality of note-taking.

Study Lab: After-school study hall where the student works to complete work. It is also time to seek out teachers for additional assistance.

Behavior Modification Program: The teaching team meets with the administrators to follow through on a stated course of working with the parents and the student. The modification program clearly defines expected behavior. Give the student time to write out the sequence of events leading to their behavior infraction. The student will then write down other choices for handling the situation. 

Breakfast Club Tutoring: Some teachers have organized weekly schedules where students can make appointments to meet them before school to discuss difficulties the student may be having with course content.

Classroom Strategy: The learning strategies teachers produced a listing of Learning Strategies to assist our students in the following areas: Class Environment, Texts and Assignments, and Differentiation Techniques.

Student Preparation For Class Checklist: The teacher’s conference with students to guide them to create a checklist of prompts and guides to help them in the classroom. Ask the student to list the main preparation steps that they should take at the beginning of each class. With this information, the student creates the final list with checkboxes. The teacher then covers the list with plastic and assists the student in attaching the list to the binder. The student must have the binder on his desk after the bell rings to begin each of their classes. Before the teacher walks by, they must review the list, follow the directions, and check each as they complete them. The teacher quickly reviews the list and offers feedback if needed.

Developing Awareness: The family is to use the weekly meeting time to develop the child’s awareness. The parents ask open-ended questions about how the students see their involvement in the learning process of each class, etc. One of our main tasks is to develop active learners who feel they have the power to affect their development and growth and deal with difficulties when they arise. A primary developmental task for MS students is to become aware of their environment and place. More awareness leads to more active learning, responsibility, ownership, and maturation. 

Some possible questions are: What are you doing to participate actively in your classes, sports teams, social groups, etc.? What aspects of each class help you learn best? What are the activities/assignments where you need to be learning at your optimal level? What is important to you? What do you value? What has meaning for you? What gets you fired up? What happens when you are an active participant (learner) in and out of school? What are the short-term and long-term effects of being involved or not involved? 

Word Processor: Stress to parents the importance of supporting their children in learning keyboarding skills and using the computer to write and edit their written work for school.

Metacognition: The student is requested to either verbally or in written form explain the thinking process that they used in academic, social, or other problem-solving situations. Use a log to record this metacognition.

Myers-Briggs: When parents have difficulty understanding the differences between their personalities and their child’s, the counselor can have the entire family take the Myers-Briggs. The follow-up session should explain the codes/personality traits and how different personalities interrelate.

The parent and student construct a daily checklist of tasks that the student must complete at school and at home regarding school work. The student reviews the task list with the parents each night to verbalize how they were able or not able to check specific tasks as completed. The student checks completed tasks as they go through the day.

Each team prepares letters to parents concerning Red Flag students needing additional help during the summer and the following school year.

Parent/Teacher/Student Conference Model: Before arranging a parent conference, be sure you have a clear purpose for having the meeting, especially if all the teachers need to be present. Note that purely parent education meetings function better when one teacher and the counselor meet with the parents. Parents and teachers arrive, and the team leader outlines how the meeting will run. A team member is assigned to record the information from the meeting to go into the Student Information System eventually. The parents return the completed student profile forms before the meeting.

The meeting begins with the parents outlining the main points of the student profile they completed, which should include expectations and strategies used at home. A copy of this list of information will go to the parents. If the student is attending, request the same information from the student. The team members then share the information from the Student Profiles that they have completed. The recorder summarizes the learning strategies developed during the meeting. Set timelines for each strategy. Communicate that the mentor is the contact person for the parents. Set a date for the parents to contact the mentor to arrange for a follow-up meeting either with the team or mentor to review their efforts.

Parent Conferences: Some helpful hints-

  • Put yourself in the position of the parents, especially when the entire team meets with them.
  • Gather background information: how is the student dealing with life in SA? what has the student’s pattern of achievement, etc., been in previous schools?
  • What concerns are the parents bringing to the table? What are their academic, social, and behavioral expectations for their child?
  • What strategies have they used to assist in the growth of their child?
  • What strategies were used at the previous school?
  • What goals do they have for their child?
  • Build consensus; what goals will come from the conference? What are the tasks assigned to the student, parents, and educators? When will there be a check-up on progress?
  • Students attending the conference must be well thought out beforehand. If the student can handle the situation and does attend, look to see what they see as their goals, expectations, and strategies needed to improve.

The teams spend minimally one meeting quarterly to review the names of all the students who have yet to be discussed in the quarter. Look to document how to support these students in their personal growth. 

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Personal Teaching System (PTS)

March 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Students and teachers naturally develop their personalized collection of apps, websites, and browser extensions. In our podcasts and written here and on the Web Resources for Learning site, I have spoken about developing one’s Personal Learning System (PLS) that supports this process. It is time for me to focus on how teachers develop and curate their favorite instructional tools and systems. 🙂

I plan to develop a new page in the Web Resources for Learning site that lists several categories of ways teachers interact with students and specific instructional techniques from the WR site. The next step will be to list a few tools that support each category, just as on the Personal Learning System page. The Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) approach to instruction will be a guiding theme.

And as personalization is the driver for much of our instruction, there will be a handful of apps, websites, and extensions that teachers can draw from to give their students choice and, yes, personalization in which ones they choose to use. This needs-based approach is at the center of what we do in instructional technology. Many teachers use different tools for different needs. They might use their school system Learning Management System (LMS) for specific communication, collaboration, instructional, etc. needs, while turning to Google Classroom for others. This hybrid approach comes naturally but might need to be formalized as some might not realize other areas of digital instruction can also be constructed and implemented, especially in support of blended learning.

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Student-Centered News Shows (Lessons Learned)

October 18, 2016 / / 0 Comments

ll

I am reviewing past posts, articles, and podcasts to share my main lessons learned. Here are a few lessons learned from supporting students to create news shows.

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After graduate school in the US, my wife and I returned to international education in 2002. My plan upon arriving at the Upper Primary of the Hong Kong International School was to start a student-produced news show. An essential part of my instructional technology program focused on videography.

My plans changed when I discovered that the school had a TV production studio, a closed circuit TV system with TVs in all the classrooms, and two costly Sony 3 CCD cameras. 🙂

While the infrastructure wowed me, I learned that the school community was not watching the student news shows for the most part. Students, in many cases, were given free rein to record whatever they wished to share as a news program. Silly was the main descriptor offered by several teachers. 🙁

From this starting point, I put together a plan of action which leads me now in reflection to share the following lessons learned. Student-produced news has become mainstream in many of our schools today, so what follows might be old news for some veterans, but hopefully, it can offer some ideas about whether you want to assess your current news program or if you want to start one.

Lessons Learned:

  • Look to make a needs assessment and information-gathering effort to get buy-in and insights and to promote the value of student-produced news. There are many other tools one can use today to do this task. The screen capture below is an example of an email questionnaire I sent out to teachers.

needs-assessment

    • Build the case for student news shows as a terrific example of project-based learning that puts students in the authentic roles of news gathers, logistics coordinators, editors, designers, etc.
    • There are many ways to organize students into teams to produce the news. The one we used was by classroom with teachers looking out to the upcoming year and reserving their week to present the news each morning. Classes would spend the week before their assigned week doing all the production work so their videos could be shown the following week. This made the entire process less stressful.
    • I titled this post “Student-CENTERED” because there might be a tendency in some schools to have an adult run the production process, including doing the video editing. This raises the question of why one is doing student-created news shows. If it is really about the learning process and not as much about the final product, students should run the entire process supported with lots of scaffolding and guidance when needed. When students are given complete ownership over a creative project, especially one that involves sharing a final product, they will want to shine in front of their peers.
    • Try to get the classroom teacher to take ownership of being the adult facilitating the process. In many schools, the instructional technologist, librarian, or other specialist is seen as the “news person,” and the students are handed over to them. A part of the teacher’s ownership is their work to connect the classroom curriculum to the news project. Think of all the habits of mind and dispositions that we work with our students to experience that the experiential nature of news production brings into play. Teamwork, active listening, problem-solving, etc., are so supported by videography and news creation. Another connection for teachers is to use news programs to communicate what learning takes place in their classroom.
    • News shows are about building community while celebrating what students and teachers do. One of my favorite parts of seeing students produce their shows was after their planning meetings, students would venture out to find the news and set up appointments with adults for interviews. Talk about real-life experiences!

    To help teachers get the hang of videography and news production, plan a small project a month or two before their reserved week of news. Work with a small group of students or the whole class to produce videos. This is so much easier today, with so many schools having mobile media devices like iPads. These opportunities offer the chance to start teaching the lessons the students and teachers need before they do their news gathering and production work. Planting videography “seeds” will open the door for teachers to see student-created videos as an assessment tool. The following is a screen capture of an Inspiration mind map I used in my lessons to teach the videography production process. Today I would supplement my lessons with online tutorials, and news shows samples for students and teachers who want a more blended approach.

vid-skills

  • Taking on a news project can make some teachers uncomfortable, especially with the technology giving students so much control over the process. With this in mind, look to produce guidelines, sample news shows, and templates to scaffold the process for your teachers. The following is a screen capture of my guidelines for our “DragonNews” program. It was a part of the Teacher Toolkit website (now only at the Internet Archive), where I housed tutorials and resources for teachers. I copied the entire page of DragonNews guidelines and posted them to a Google Site if you want many more details.
    guidelines
  • Another scaffolding tool is to provide templates. Here is a screen capture of a storyboard template populated by a Fourth Grade class with their plans. We used Inspiration a lot in those days as it was beneficial for storyboarding, with students being able to move topics around as they planned each day’s show. Today I would use a web-based tool so that the production team can access it 24/7.

storyboard

  • The organization is so vital to the production process. Notice in the image above how each symbol has a number and letter. Monday was “1” for example, and the letter designated the sequence of each scene. The camera team used a small whiteboard to write the day and scene to be recorded at the start of each shot. They also kept a log of each scene recording which one the video editors should use. With multiple takes, this made a difference for the editors. Also, notice the listing of student names. These were the assigned talent for each scene.
  • Regarding editors, we have two in charge of editing for the entire week. I asked teachers to think about which students had an eye for design, solid spatial understanding, and a certain seriousness in wanting to do a good job. One of my big design lessons was to stress that the classes were producing their shows for an audience other than themselves which included adults and, obviously, their peers. We stressed the importance of content and not special effects to be recorded in a quality manner with good audio and lighting and the on-screen talent using their best communication skills.

Third Grade Class
Fifth Grade Class

Don’t Be A Tool Jumper :)

February 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

tools

Are you a tool jumper with your students? I ask this question as it came up in the Ed Tech Co-Op Episode 67: TPACK in the Elementary School. We try to bring practical and real school experiences into our shows, with Episode 67 being all about technology effectively replacing analog activities to amplify and transform learning. The show had many lessons from classroom experiences.

Mark always brings up so many terrific observations during the shows. He shared some wisdom connected to my work this past week. He spoke about the importance of giving students ongoing experience in using one tool at a time so that they move from basic literacy to becoming fluent in using the new technology. This is so important not only for the students but also for teachers. We know that sometimes the first time we use technology with students, there can be difficulties logging in (if needed), using the functions, saving files, etc.

The second and third times of use lead to students overcoming these obstacles to leverage the tools to find new creative ways and communicate their understanding. Teachers find comfort in seeing their students be independent and self-directed. They are also more apt to support technology use when they don’t have to constantly deal with the initial difficulties of trying something new.

There are better ways to infuse technology into the curriculum than jumping from one tool to another without building in the opportunity for deeper learning. A recent experience reinforced this for me. We were planning an Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) series of lessons to support a grade-level unit of inquiry. A new tool was proposed for students to share their understanding drawing from their research. Just a month ago, the students used Explain Everything for the first time. This past week they also used it to record short videos in response to questions in a pre-assessment. The number of students needing support and struggling with uploading videos to their Drives was lower.

We determined that one more time using Explain Everything would move the students toward fluency. We also realized that it was the right tool for the task as a new tool we were thinking about was better for analyzing images than sharing research findings. The teachers will be ready for the next tool when it fits their needs.

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