Week 5: Is there anything Google doesn’t do?

On this, the fifth and final week of our journey into educational technology we will be taking a look at Google Classroom.  This tool was released in 2014 to help streamline classroom activities and allow teachers more time to teach.  In the first year after its release it already had nearly 10 million teacher and student users.  As a non user seeing how quickly it was adopted has me very optimistic.

Without digging to deep I already see many benefits that using Google Classroom can provide.  Teachers can create worksheets digitally and keep their paperwork for all their classes organized in one dashboard. Homework can be assigned to each class roster with a few clicks.  Sharing and collaboration are simplified through toggling the editing functions for delivery to peers or students.  Quizzes can be given out and graded in real time, rather than waiting to return paper copies for review.  Websites and other content can be shared to the entire class at once.  With this also being my first time using the product I have found it simple to use and surprisingly intuitive.

The two things that have me most excited about this tool come from it being a discreet web based classroom.  I think that the ability to provide unique assignments or content to groups or individuals that may be struggling is a game changer.  Being able to give the extra learning materials without drawing attention to it can help alleviate any embarrassment a student might feel from not grasping a concept quite as quick as their classmates.  The web based nature of the tool also can be huge in keep students who miss class up to date, or ensure the class stays on task during a teacher absence.

Have you found any other hidden benefits using Google Classroom?

Bonus Blog: To Tweetfinity and beyond!

I’ve spent roughly the past month exploring the Twitterverse.  Prior to entering the realm of hashtags and retweets I was very skeptical of how it could benefit me and my growth as an educator.  Now that I have taken the time to do some exploring I believe that the possibilities are limitless.

I will admit that I have spent a majority of my time lurking.  With the overwhelming amount of content available I feel like that was my necessary starting point to find other contributors that spoke to my interests.  Now that my follow list has grown a bit and I have been more actively tweeting I am starting to get feedback of my own.  Obviously, the latter is what you work towards as the more you put in, the more you get out!

One of the great things about Twitter is that it is accessible on your computer, laptop, tablet, or phone.    For teachers, this means you have access to thousands of teachers with varied backgrounds and experiences that can contribute to your professional growth, virtually anywhere you go.  I have also experimented with Tweetdeck to help organize my feed.

Putting myself out there on social media has made me think more about personal branding and the permanence of digital communication.  These are very important areas to engage our learners in early and teach them responsible digital citizenship.  If young adults begin cultivating their brands in high school, their online reputations will grow positively and strengthen over time.
As a future Business teacher I see myself connecting this to my teaching if the school doesn’t already have a program in place.

Do you have a Twitter account?  If so who have you found that is worth following?  Do you feel like you can grow yourself professionally through its use?

Week 4: Flip or flop

Have you ever heard of a flipped classroom?  I hadn’t until this week.  With most of my traditional learning long in the rear view, and my trek to become an educator just beginning, I was pretty excited when I started to dig into this topic.  The article I read, by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams breaks it down as a change from standing and talking at a group of students for thirty to sixty minutes at a time to more of a learning coach.  By taking their lectures and turning them into viewable content online they turn classroom time into a period for answering questions, working with small groups, and helping to guide individual students.  That kind of agility in the classroom allows you to take a struggling student or students and have an impromptu tutorial of the subject matter with those that need it most.

This shift in role for the teacher also allows them more time for observation from the teacher and collaboration among the students.  I was in a military training program where the setup was similar to this with a significant amount of peer to peer learning.  While the teacher will always be the subject matter expert in the classroom, the connection that students from the same peer have can lead to alternative, but still highly effective pathways to learning.  

Jonathan and Aaron believe that much of the success of the model comes from students identifying learning as their goal, instead of the completion of assignments.  They have found the response from students to be tremendously positive, though for some it takes time, when they shift their view of class work from busywork to meaningful activities.  

Have any of you taught in a flipped classroom?  Learned in one?  Please share your experiences, the good and bad.

Week 3: This is your brain on stories, any questions?

I recently read The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains, by Leo Widrich.  Widrich wrote the article after examining how a switch from bullet point marketing to story telling caused sign-ups for his product, Buffer, to go through the roof.  I had always felt like I learned and connected better with materials presented in story form rather than a bullet point slide show, but instead of it being personal preference as I had thought, it is actually rooted in science.

Storytelling is something we all can enjoy, whether we are reading a book, watching a movie, or gossiping with a friend.  The question is, why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?  The answer to this question is actually very simple.  When listening to a powerpoint presentation we activate the language processing part of the brain, but that is it, nothing else.  That all changes when we are being told a story.  Not only does a story activate the language center but also the areas of the brain that we would use if we were experiencing the story ourselves.  A story about about how a certain food tastes will engage our sensory cortex, as a story about a physical activity will engage our motor cortex.  This can be the key to having a profound impact on learning in our classrooms.

Digital storytelling tools such as those listed at http://www.schrockguide.net/digital-storytelling.html can help us deliver these to our students.  They can also be a means to facilitate communication and knowledge transfer between classmates.

Have you ever heard a story that helped you learn a new concept or connect with the material on a more personal level?  Was it delivered through one of the linked tools?

Week 2: The struggle is real

The Chrome web browser offers a wide variety of web extensions that provide tools to help all learners.  This week we will look at some Chrome extensions designed to assist students with special needs or reading challenges.  While this is not an extensive list, I wanted to highlight some of the tools I found in my research that stood out to me.

Read Aloud is a text-to-speech extension that will read either selected text or entire pages.  It allows the user to set the speed, volume, and pitch to suit their taste.  This tool is very easy to use with simple play/pause controls and a drop down menu for voice adjustments.  The voices played well and did not seem as unsettling and robotic as some I have heard, with a wide range of options available.  I can see this tool being very useful to struggling readers as something they can read along with or even as a limited use tool on specific words.  The ease of use also leads me to believe users of all ages can benefit from its use.

Extensions like Mercury Reader can enhance the readability of any website.  When we visit any web site these days we are bombarded by so many ads and comments it is often hard to focus on the core content.  This extension strips away ads, comments, and other distractions leaving only the core text and images.  It allows the user to adjust the font size and color scheme of the new text as well.  I can see an extension like this being very useful to any reader.  Mercury reader also allows you to export articles to your kindle.

Do you have any experience with Chrome web extensions that you have found useful to assist students with special needs or struggling readers?

Week 1: What do we mean when we talk about technology in education?

What do we mean when we talk about technology in education?  My exposure to technology was very minimal throughout my K-12 experience.  If you discount writing papers in Microsoft Word it was practically nonexistent.  College involved some more tools, but nothing that I would consider game changing.  I took some online hybrid classes, that were still largely face to face but with the addition of an online drop box and some digital resources.  My experience was still predominantly limited to the Microsoft Office suite of Word, PowerPoint, and a little bit of Excel.  Even in my personal life I have never had any significant involvement with any apps or social media, though I am aware of what a powerful networking tool it can be.   Over the next 5 weeks I will endeavor to change all that.  I have started a twitter account, @JimKKirk if you’re interested, and I have begun to explore some of the technologies I may one day implement in my own classroom.  This blog will be a part of my journey.  Each week I will take a look at a topic or tool and the implications it has on the classroom.  I hope you enjoy the ride!