ReTweet!

So it's time we revisit Twitter. 

This isn't my first blog entry about it, and though I know I couldn't do my job without it, there are many teachers who are still reluctant to sign on. This week at a faculty meeting I briefly showed a few ways Twitter can be used by educators. Even if you don't use it in your classroom (though the access you have to authors, experts, unfolding world events, etc.  makes it more than classroom worthy), do take advantage of the Personal Learning Network it affords you. On Twitter you have access to thousands of teachers just like you, struggling with the same issues, willing to share everything. Talk about crowd sourcing!  Scholastic posted an article by Kim Greene on:

Why Your Teachers Should Use Twitter

Included are schedules for on-line Twitter chats where teachers meet up regularly to have moderated discussions.

To get you started Edudemic has posted a Teachers' Guide to Twitter and Twitter 101 for Teachers, and because we all learn differently here is a slideshare on Twitter for Teachers.

If you are looking for people to follow, TeachThought (follow them!) has put out this list to get you started: 10 Educators On Twitter You Should Follow (But Probably Don’t), and here's a great list from Mashable: 10 Rockstar Teachers on Twitter.

And finally, for those of you who might want to start a class Twitter, here's  Twitter support on how to have people follow you even if they don't have a Twitter account. The Shortcode you will need for Canada is 21212.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

Quizzing

So I'm driving in my car one Saturday afternoon, and I'm listening to NPR. TED Radio Hour, RadioLab, and Spark are on one after another...what luck! Even though I am driving from one listening zone to another, I use the NPR app on my phone and plug it into my car radio (now if they would only invent PVR for radio –– would that be PAR?) and I can have uninterrupted listening for as long as my phone battery lasts.
The subject is Learning and Remembering...on one of the shows, can't remember which and my favourite story is about a young science grad who wants to go to medical school. He comes from small town USA and when he gets to Big University Medical School (I don't remember where he got in) he realizes he's ill-prepared for the work load. One month in he has his first test. He studies night and day and feels there is no way he can flub this test. Wrong. As soon as he begins, he realizes his recall just isn't working. He gets a 65.
He is not willing to give up his dream of being a doctor, but he knows he can not work any harder. He studied as hard as he could. It becomes clear he has to study better. This is when he discovers Dr. Bjork's research at the Learning and Forgetting Lab at UCLA.
What he finds out is that reading notes over and over again will help you remember some of what you read, but not for very long. For the truly deeper learning, your brain has to be asked to recall the newly acquired information over and over again. The more time you ask your brain to recall the new information, the better, and the different applications (like real world connections) you use, even better.

So our young med student creates quizzes for himself...he asks fellow students to quiz him (Hello Socrates!) He also learns from Bjork's research that mixing data up or "Interleaving" works best. So rather than "blocking" information to study, mixing things up with previous learned data, or completely different subjects will result in better great recall.



All this leads to the presentations I made to both our ES and HS faculties. Quizzing. I am not talking about "testing" but maybe I'm splitting hairs.  We can test for many things...checking in for understanding, for prior knowledge, exit tickets, formative assessment –– not every quiz need generate a mark. Tests, Dr. Bjork tells us, can also provide an opportunity for learning.
One last thought, testing just to assess knowledge can create fear. We know our prefrontal cortex will shut down when threatened so we need to take the fear out of quizzes. Let's make them fun.

Here are three tools to start you on your way:

Socrative:
Hmm, great name, huh? This a an online tool that lets you shoot a quiz, exit ticket, discussion prompt and more to your students either through their website or to a mobile app. Imagine your students solving a quadratic equation on the bus/car ride home. What's great about Socrative is how spontaneous you can be. Kids don't need to create accounts, so accessing the quiz couldn't be easier. Once your students have answered, an excel spreadsheet report is made for you to download.

Google Forms:

If you've used other online survey tools, like Survey Monkey, you'll be comfortable with Google Forms. You can create questions with multiple choice, text, or paragraph answers. Images and videos can be inserted as well, so if you've been flipping your classroom, or you need to differentiate, you're all set. An option to view a summary of the results gives you graphs that help you analyze the data yourself or share with your students.

Flubaroo: 
Flubaroo is a google sheet add-on that will mark your quizzes for you. This works great with Google Forms and is not complicated to use. At a glance you can see which questions cause the most trouble, and which students are having the most difficulty.

# BestYearEver

Welcome back everyone! 

So for my first post  this school year I couldn't resist Edutopia's offering, "#BestYearEver". There are weeks of downloadable material, from redesigning your classroom to how to remember names, but my two favourites are "7 Questions to Ask Parents at the Beginning of the Year" and "53 Ways to Check for Understanding". Okay, I also like the article on " 5 Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Questioners", especially because  of our focus on visible thinking.

Wishing you all a great start and...you got it...Best Year Ever!

Visible Thinking

Visible thinking: what is it and how do we achieve it? Harvard"s Project Zero, an educational research group has put together a comprehensive site on Visible Thinking, chock full of strategies for changing the culture of your school and incorporating thinking routines into your classroom.

But what digital tools work best to promote visible thinking? Blogging stands out as one of the best tools, where thoughts, discussion, debate, minds being changed, are all evident – sometimes all in one discussion thread. AND the broad reach of online blogging only adds to to the layers and richness of the learning.

Realtime online discussion can also facilitate visible thinking. Tools like PollEverywhere, Socarative, or Padlet, help generate class participation, while also generating formative assessment.

Our friends at Te@chThought understand that formative assessment can take the form of conversation and suggest 5 Tools for Giving Students Narrative Feedback. One tool that is not on the list is Thinglink. This tool allows you to annotate images with text or sound. Look at this beautiful example: Here.

And finally you can't read about "visible thinking", without running into "visible learning".


Digital Story Telling is an effective tool for visible learning. William "Bud" Deihl from Virginia Commonwealth University(VCT) Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) has put together an excellent wikispace on "Making Learning Visible". The page "Digital Story Telling" is of particular interest. I love how Bud has laid it out with guiding questions and 7 elements of DST. My favourite line: "1st, it (digital storytelling) is not about the technology, but considers technologies or approaches as the means to achieve storytelling goals."
Check out the other tabs in the wiki, including Screencasting
UBC has put together a course for using screencasting for visible learning. The course is available free on iTunesU.  Our ES teachers have had great success using ExplainEverything, Showme, and Educreations on iPads, all included in this course.

Welcome back everyone!

Before the break I was working with the Grade 9's on creating presentations. A visit to Slideshare often gives me some great ideas to work with, good and bad. Today I came across David Theriault's, Turning Your Learning Inside Out. David is a HS English teacher (you can follow him on Twitter) and today he has made my job so much easier. In his slide show below, he gives great examples of taking the lesson out of the classroom, or rather, going beyond the 4 walls and making the learning transparent and more meaningful at the same time. Yes, of course he uses social media; it's all about connecting, right? Take a look. I love the "Novel Blackout Poems".

Thank you David!

Turn your learning inside out from David Theriault

The iPad in Education: Uses, Benefits, and Challenges

A survey of 6,057 students and 302 teachers in Quebec has produced an interesting preliminary report.* Karsenti and Fievez asked important questions, but I found myself frustrated reading the results. While questions addressed the use of iPads (or touch pads) by students and teachers, benefits were attributed using a traditional classroom setting and did not allow for the potential of such mobile technologies in a different and emerging learning environment. The questions shouldn't be, "Can we do all the same things better with an iPad?"– but rather, "How can we transform learning with these devices?"
A student may not write better on an iPad, but imagine what would happen to his/her writing after a Skype session with an actual "Lost Boy of Sudan", or a curator at the Charles Dickens Museum, or a graphic novelist. Or perhaps the student's content would improve after following a twitter discussion on a novel, gaining the perspective of readers on a global scale.
Recommendations made in the report wisely include professional development for teachers, but we must be careful to move past mere adaptation and recognize the paradigm has shifted.

* Karsenti, T., & Fievez, A. (2013). The iPad in education: uses, benefits, and challenges – A survey of 6,057 students and 302 teachers in Quebec, Canada. Montreal, QC: CRIFPE.