The buzz around my school lately has been accreditation. We are currently finishing our packet and getting ready to send it to the committee that will be visiting our school in May. Part of the process is compiling evidence that demonstrates what are students are doing in our classes. In addition we are making sure that our student work is displayed inside and outside our classrooms.
As a math teacher I have been thinking long and hard about how to display my student work. I have used Pinterest to find ideas of what other math teachers are doing so that the work just doesn't look like paper stapled to a wall. My students enjoy it when I use decorations or even simply just borders or labels to display their work. It is obvious to me that the quality of work that they produced is much better when they know someone besides myself will see it.
Since there is an evidence room for the accreditation visit, I asked my principal if we could have more than just stacks of paper and bins of work to show off our students' work. I told her that we should have a laptop with scrolling pictures of our hallways throughout the year to show the different bulletin boards. We could also have links to videos and other digital projects that our students have created. As a technology school our students have a digital portfolio of all work that they created since kindergarten. In my opinion, these portfolios would be the best evidence we could use to display our students' work.
Technology can be used to not only display student work in school, but it is also a great way to share with the world what our students do everyday. The Internet provides teachers with a "giant bulletin board" that allows them to share what is going on inside their classrooms with other classrooms around the world. I can only imagine the care and quality of work that my students would complete if they knew that the world was going to see it.
I also think it would be helpful for my students to use the Internet to see what other students around the world are doing in their classes. Through the ED 726 Global Literacy course and the readings this week, I have learned about amazing programs that are available that can connect my students on a global level. I was very impressed when reading the article: International Perspective of K-12 Online Learning. The article highlighted many countries that encourage online learning. I was not aware that many of the countries participated in particular programs. In the future, I hope to use some of the programs mentioned to encourage global learning in my classroom.
I created the following Storify that explains creative ways to display student work: Storify - Displaying Student Work. The Storify contains links to different websites and blogs that give excellent and creative ideas on how to display student work. In addition, there are links to articles that describes how to display student work online. There is also an example of a website that shows art work created by K-12 students.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Revised Distance Learning Medium Review - Engrade ED 722
Have you ever thought that you were almost done with a project or assignment online and then realize that something has changed and you have to revamp something that you thought was almost complete? Well that is exactly what happened to me when I went to make minor tweaks to my distance learning medium review. I went back to my distance learning site and found out that McGraw-Hill Education acquired Engrade. The following is the link to the press release about the acquisition: Engrade Press Release.
After reading the press release and looking into the site a little more, I realized that McGraw-Hill Education and Engrade merged to create an online platform similar to Powerschool and other resources available for not only teachers, but also entire school districts. The site still offers the free gradebook resource for teachers where they can create classes, quizzes and other tools that can enhance their students' learning through online resources. It also now provides schools an opportunity to combine curriculum, assessments, and other areas of instruction into one online platform. This option is available using the Pro account, which school districts can purchase for a price depending on the number of users.
I decided to redo my tutorial on using Engrade, since the look of the site changed and the there is a new option for school districts to purchase a Pro account. The recording of the tutorial was actually a lot easier this time around because I have used screencast-o-matic a few times since the initial tutorial recording. My new tutorial only covers how to sign in to Engrade and create a new class. The following is a link to the video tutorial:
I have also added the tutorial to my learning hub at the following link: Mrs. Ferry's Tech to Teach - Engrade Tutorial
The tutorial can also be found on the Digital Text and Tools site at the following link: Engrade - Tech Tutorial
The tutorial can also be found on the Digital Text and Tools site at the following link: Engrade - Tech Tutorial
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Micro-Talk Reflection - ED 726
I knew immediately that I wanted to complete my micro-talk on National Geographic Education. What I did not realize though was how difficult it would be for me to choose a focus on the site that I could talk about for only five minutes. It would take days to go through every piece of the National Geographic Education site and see all that it has to offer. Since I am a math teacher and teach at a magnet school focused around STEM, I decided to select the site's STEM category and see what resources would be available.
The Plan It Green game provides teachers an opportunity to introduce the topic of STEM into the classroom in a fun and interactive way. They are able to see what it takes to create a city that is energy efficient and within a budget. In addition, they can play the game with their friends and problem solve together to find the best solutions to their city's problems.
Besides learning more about the National Geographic Education site, I really loved learning from the comments left by my classmates. Initially, I thought the game could be used in a science or technology class. After reading through the comments though, I realized that it could be an after school club that students are involved with and they could use that time to create their cities. Also, there are many magnet schools that focus on not only STEM, but also have an environmental focus that could use the program in their magnet enrichment classes. The emphasis on energy efficiency and environmental concerns provides students with background knowledge that they can use to become more aware of global issues.
As I was watching my classmates' micro-talks, I realized that I need to share them with my fellow teachers at my school. As part of our teacher evaluation process we are asked to choose a professional goal for ourselves. Micro-talks would be an excellent resource that teachers could use to share information or gain information about a particular topic or resource. Although staff meetings are usually packed with tasks and presentations, a micro-talk takes less than five minutes to introduce a resource.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Assessing Student Learning Using Digital Badges
If you could hear the voices in my head, you might hear some of the following questions I ask myself about my job:
- Are my students really taking part in deeper learning activities?
- How can I as a teacher ensure they are really learning what I want them to learn?
- How will I ever be able to create an assessment that will assess deeper learning in my students?
- What can I do differently to motivate students to learn that will not involve candy! (Yes this one has actually crossed my mind since our school has done away with using food as a motivator. Such a shame since the cinnamon sugar bagels I used to bring in were so good!)
In all seriousness though, I worry as a teacher that I will not be able to create activities and assess deeper learning opportunities for my students. In addition, I have seen such a decrease in motivation in recent years with my students wanting to learn new material. I want to find ways to provide meaningful deeper learning lessons and assess their learning in a way that will determine if they truly did take part in deeper learning with a specific subject.
This week's DLMOOC and ED 722 focused on the assessing deeper learning and the use of digital badges. I have always been intrigued by badges since I took part in the ORMS MOOC earlier in our course study for IT&DML. Coming from a military background, badges and rewards are a huge motivator for myself. I like the ability to proudly demonstrate a skill by wearing a piece of ribbon or medal. When I think about my students, although they are 8th graders they still LOVE to receive stickers. This to them is a badge that they can wear around and proudly show that they accomplished something. In my opinion, digital badges are even better than stickers because you can virtually keep them forever and they won't fall off and end up on the bottom of a shoe.
As well as badges, I love the use of reflection to identify deeper learning with students. Thinking back to my undergraduate education, I cannot remember one time when I was asked to reflect on what I learned. Honestly, I think that might be a reason why I don't remember much of my undergraduate course work. That and the fact that it was over fifteen years and two careers ago! I wish I had to reflect more back then though, because I truly feel as if I have learned more with my graduate work both from University of Saint Joseph and now with University of New Haven simply because I had to reflect on what I learned. In addition, the ability to read other's reflections on their learning process has provided me with more insight on topics and course work.
I created a Storify this week on assessing deeper learning: Storify - Assessing Deeper Learning with Reflection and Badges. My focus was on the use of reflection and digital badges. Once I complete my 6th year this summer, I plan on trying to implement a digital badge program at my school. Depending on which classes I teach next year, I will either integrate it into my math class or design an after school program that involves the use of badges. I think my students would love to take part in a learning process where they can earn badges that would demonstrate what they learned in a course.
- Are my students really taking part in deeper learning activities?
- How can I as a teacher ensure they are really learning what I want them to learn?
- How will I ever be able to create an assessment that will assess deeper learning in my students?
- What can I do differently to motivate students to learn that will not involve candy! (Yes this one has actually crossed my mind since our school has done away with using food as a motivator. Such a shame since the cinnamon sugar bagels I used to bring in were so good!)
In all seriousness though, I worry as a teacher that I will not be able to create activities and assess deeper learning opportunities for my students. In addition, I have seen such a decrease in motivation in recent years with my students wanting to learn new material. I want to find ways to provide meaningful deeper learning lessons and assess their learning in a way that will determine if they truly did take part in deeper learning with a specific subject.
This week's DLMOOC and ED 722 focused on the assessing deeper learning and the use of digital badges. I have always been intrigued by badges since I took part in the ORMS MOOC earlier in our course study for IT&DML. Coming from a military background, badges and rewards are a huge motivator for myself. I like the ability to proudly demonstrate a skill by wearing a piece of ribbon or medal. When I think about my students, although they are 8th graders they still LOVE to receive stickers. This to them is a badge that they can wear around and proudly show that they accomplished something. In my opinion, digital badges are even better than stickers because you can virtually keep them forever and they won't fall off and end up on the bottom of a shoe.
As well as badges, I love the use of reflection to identify deeper learning with students. Thinking back to my undergraduate education, I cannot remember one time when I was asked to reflect on what I learned. Honestly, I think that might be a reason why I don't remember much of my undergraduate course work. That and the fact that it was over fifteen years and two careers ago! I wish I had to reflect more back then though, because I truly feel as if I have learned more with my graduate work both from University of Saint Joseph and now with University of New Haven simply because I had to reflect on what I learned. In addition, the ability to read other's reflections on their learning process has provided me with more insight on topics and course work.
I created a Storify this week on assessing deeper learning: Storify - Assessing Deeper Learning with Reflection and Badges. My focus was on the use of reflection and digital badges. Once I complete my 6th year this summer, I plan on trying to implement a digital badge program at my school. Depending on which classes I teach next year, I will either integrate it into my math class or design an after school program that involves the use of badges. I think my students would love to take part in a learning process where they can earn badges that would demonstrate what they learned in a course.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Teachers' Impact on Student Mindset
I cannot begin to count the number of times I have asked myself why some students give up when work in class is difficult. Or why they put their heads down and refuse to attempt a problem that I put on the board that is a bit challenging. Was it the way the student was raised to just give up? Or was the work really too difficult for their skill ability? No matter what I thought the reason was at the time, I always felt like there was something I was doing wrong as a teacher.
After this week's DLMOOC's focus on mindset, I realized that although students can come into to my classroom with a fixed mindset, I have the ability and power to influence a growth mindset in each and every one of them. It was not necessarily something I was initially doing in my class that made the students want to give up, but I was not doing enough to help them realize their potential. This week's readings, videos and panel discussion had me engrossed in the topic and searching for as much additional information that I possibly could find.
As I was completing the assignments this week I found myself reflecting on my students. In our school we split our students into groups based on their math abilities. There are four groups and I wonder by doing this if we are feeding the growth mindset of the high group, but feeding into the fixed mindset of the other three groups that are not the high group by this simple splitting of groups. As the teacher, it is my responsibility to ensure that all the groups' growth mindset is reached and although they are in groups based on ability, it does not demonstrate their potential.
My Storify this week focused on the mindset of students and educators. The materials that I found extended the discussion that was provided from the DLMOOC and ED 722 resources. In my opinion, this topic was one of the most meaningful to me as an educator. I see many fixed mindsets in my classroom every year, especially because I teach math. Although it is frustrating as a teacher to see this, my own growth mindset accepts the challenge and makes every attempt to tap into each and every student's academic potential.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Online High School Math Transition Course - ED 722
There is nothing more frustrating for a math teacher than teaching a lesson that involves skills that you assume your students have mastered prior to coming to your class. As an 8th grade math teacher, I used to assume that my students knew how to multiply, divide, add, and subtract whole numbers, decimals and fractions. I am sure you know what I am going to say next, but everyone knows when you assume something you make an _ _ _ out of you and me! Oh and boy did I ever when I first started teaching.
Each year there is a period of time at the beginning of the year that I must revisit basic skills that students were supposed to master prior to coming to my class. Hopefully with the implementation of the Common Core I will not have to reteach a lot of topics in the future. Until we start to see the results of the Common Core though, myself and other teachers will be faced with the issue of students coming to our classes unprepared with basic skills.
This issue is the reason why I wanted to collaborate with Amy Paskov to design an online review course for incoming high school freshman. Since I am an 8th grade math teacher and Amy is a 9th grade math teacher, we determined that we could use our expertise at both of our levels to determine the areas of concern for incoming high school freshman. In addition to our own opinion, we asked other math teachers their thoughts on topics that the students needed to master prior to entering high school.
The goal of the unit is to ensure students have the background knowledge that incoming freshman need to have in order to complete the basic level high school math courses. Of course this list could be very long, so in order to address the most vital areas of concern, we are going to focus our initial first two modules on fraction and decimals.
The student learning objectives for fractions and decimals align with the math Common Core standard: 7.NS.A.3 Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the four operations with rational numbers.
The essential questions that we need to ask are:
- What topics do our students need more review on prior to coming to high school?
- How do we teach or reteach these topics to our students differently this time around so that they master the content?
- How will we assess if the students master the material prior to entering high school?
- Will this be the most effective way to better prepare our students for high school math?
- How can we deliver this instruction to our students?
Up to this date, Amy and I have decided that the two most vital areas of focus are fractions and decimals. Once we determined this we began researching and trying to find as many resources as possible to assist with our modules. We want to make sure we are addressing different learning styles of our students and providing multiple opportunities for them to practice the skills to determine if they understand the content. In addition, we want to involve deeper learning opportunities for our students.
We have begun creating a site that will house the modules and be available for students to access during the summer break prior to their freshman year. In order to assess their understanding and gain data on their progress, we will be creating assessments for the end of each module in a Google form. Students will complete the assessment and data will be gathered to determine if they answered the questions correctly and what areas need to still be addressed in high school.
Although this process is tedious, we feel that we have a good handle on what we want to do and where we want to go with our unit. We need to finalize the list of resources for the module, determine the order in which we want the students to complete the items, and create the Google forms for each module. After we have done this, we plan to test the site out with a few volunteers from my math classes. (Extra credit will be awarded to these students!)
As I read through this week's reading on blended learning, I was actually pleased with our process that we have used when planning this unit. When looking at figures 1 and 2 in the Towards a Design Theory of Blended Learning Curriculum, I felt as if we were sort of using this process when determining how we would approach creating our unit even though this was the first week we saw this article. Of course there were areas that we never thought of such as mixing the module with teaching and task items, such as figure 2, but it helped us to see how we should set up the modules to benefit as many learners as possible.
I cannot wait to see the final product. Hopefully we can create a resource that many districts and students can use prior to entering high school. I can see it now... not only will students have to complete a summer reading list, they will be required to complete our online high school math transition course!
Each year there is a period of time at the beginning of the year that I must revisit basic skills that students were supposed to master prior to coming to my class. Hopefully with the implementation of the Common Core I will not have to reteach a lot of topics in the future. Until we start to see the results of the Common Core though, myself and other teachers will be faced with the issue of students coming to our classes unprepared with basic skills.
This issue is the reason why I wanted to collaborate with Amy Paskov to design an online review course for incoming high school freshman. Since I am an 8th grade math teacher and Amy is a 9th grade math teacher, we determined that we could use our expertise at both of our levels to determine the areas of concern for incoming high school freshman. In addition to our own opinion, we asked other math teachers their thoughts on topics that the students needed to master prior to entering high school.
The goal of the unit is to ensure students have the background knowledge that incoming freshman need to have in order to complete the basic level high school math courses. Of course this list could be very long, so in order to address the most vital areas of concern, we are going to focus our initial first two modules on fraction and decimals.
The student learning objectives for fractions and decimals align with the math Common Core standard: 7.NS.A.3 Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the four operations with rational numbers.
The essential questions that we need to ask are:
- What topics do our students need more review on prior to coming to high school?
- How do we teach or reteach these topics to our students differently this time around so that they master the content?
- How will we assess if the students master the material prior to entering high school?
- Will this be the most effective way to better prepare our students for high school math?
- How can we deliver this instruction to our students?
Up to this date, Amy and I have decided that the two most vital areas of focus are fractions and decimals. Once we determined this we began researching and trying to find as many resources as possible to assist with our modules. We want to make sure we are addressing different learning styles of our students and providing multiple opportunities for them to practice the skills to determine if they understand the content. In addition, we want to involve deeper learning opportunities for our students.
We have begun creating a site that will house the modules and be available for students to access during the summer break prior to their freshman year. In order to assess their understanding and gain data on their progress, we will be creating assessments for the end of each module in a Google form. Students will complete the assessment and data will be gathered to determine if they answered the questions correctly and what areas need to still be addressed in high school.
Although this process is tedious, we feel that we have a good handle on what we want to do and where we want to go with our unit. We need to finalize the list of resources for the module, determine the order in which we want the students to complete the items, and create the Google forms for each module. After we have done this, we plan to test the site out with a few volunteers from my math classes. (Extra credit will be awarded to these students!)
As I read through this week's reading on blended learning, I was actually pleased with our process that we have used when planning this unit. When looking at figures 1 and 2 in the Towards a Design Theory of Blended Learning Curriculum, I felt as if we were sort of using this process when determining how we would approach creating our unit even though this was the first week we saw this article. Of course there were areas that we never thought of such as mixing the module with teaching and task items, such as figure 2, but it helped us to see how we should set up the modules to benefit as many learners as possible.
I cannot wait to see the final product. Hopefully we can create a resource that many districts and students can use prior to entering high school. I can see it now... not only will students have to complete a summer reading list, they will be required to complete our online high school math transition course!
Friday, February 21, 2014
Differentiate Instruction with Technology - ED 722
There is not a day that goes by that I don't differentiate my instruction, whether I am teaching a math class or discussing a topic with my homeroom students, I differentiate. With that being said, I was very interested to read Lisa Delpit's interview through the DLMOOC resources this week: Lisa Delpit Interview. I was interested because of the title of her book, "Multiplication is for White People," it really caught my attention. I actually thought if multiplication was only for white people then I must be teaching the wrong subject at my school!
As I read through the article, I was reminded of my first year teaching in a city school. Growing up in Northeast Ohio, besides Cleveland, which was 30 miles west of where I lived, there weren't many big city school districts in the area. I took a job in Hartford, Connecticut right after I left the military to teach middle school math. I wanted to teach in the city and only in the city. Although I did not grow up in a city, I knew going in on my first day that most of my students were coming to me with more life experiences, both good and bad, that I probably never experienced at their age or even in my lifetime. I knew that I would need to differentiate my instruction to account for these experiences, whether they were social or academic. In addition, I quickly learned that every day would be and was different than any previous day in the classroom. The seven hours that my students were inside my classroom and the school walls we could control. It was the seventeen other hours in the day we as educators had no control over.
Technology was no where near where it is now when I first started teaching. My differentiation toolkit that I started with as teacher has only grown bigger and bigger as I find new and inventive ways to differentiate my instruction and use technology to assist with my efforts. As a teacher with variety of skill levels in my classroom, I am constantly looking for ways to take one topic and present it to my students in a number of ways. Technology has helped me to improve my differentiation instructional strategies by integrating interactive software programs, websites, games, and other tools that motivate and engage my students.
For this week's Storify, I complied a list of tweets, videos, and articles that demonstrate the use of technology with differentiation. Hopefully some of these resources could assist other teachers as well as they search for new and better ways to reach all of the students in their classrooms.
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