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Digital Learning

Parents Struggle to Balance Screen Time Rules With Digital Homework | MindShift

Original Source

Posted By Sherwen Mohan

As technology becomes a more common feature of classrooms and computer-based testing becomes the norm, even the youngest learners are being pushed to master keyboarding and computing skills. But what does it feel like for a kindergartener, whose family has faithfully followed the American Academy of Pediatric’s suggestions to limit screen time, to arrive at school and immediately be assessed on a computer?

In her PBS MediaShift essay, Jenny Shank describes the tensions emerging between parents with low-tech child rearing styles, teachers frantically trying to prepare students for computer-based tests that could determine the future of their careers, and districts following the latest trends. Shank’s essay gives voice to that “stuck in the middle” feeling when a parent supports the idea of technology integration in school generally, but isn’t sure she thinks it’s being done well. Shank writes:

“I’m all for teaching kids about technology, which will be a part of their personal and work lives forever. But shouldn’t they learn how to write software programs rather than how to scan a text and answer multiple-choice questions on a screen? Shouldn’t they learn about how to assemble computer hardware, build an object with a 3-D printer, or shoot and edit digital video footage rather than passively watch as a computer reads them a book? Many studies suggest that when people read on a screen rather than paper, they read less attentively and retain less. So why aren’t schools using computers for what these machines are actually good at instead?”

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assessment Digital Learning

Digital Exit Tickets: 6 Tools for Creating Powerful Formative Assessments

I have been using exit tickets for years! It is an assessment approach that is easy to implement and provides wonderful insights into how your students are doing and feeling about their work during class. Below, you will find 6 free tools educators can use to develop a digital exit ticket.

Written by: Ryan Schaaf

After an instructional lesson is over, educators are left with a classroom full of students looking at them. Did my students get the lesson? Are there any ideas, concepts or skills they are still unsure of? Do my students have any misconceptions about the lesson and its content? Do I have to review anything tomorrow? These are just a few of the questions reflective educators are left to contemplate after the bell has rung. 

In truth, many of these reflective questions educators are left asking themselves can be addressed if they use an exit ticket. Exit tickets are a simple, quick and oftentimes insightful formative assessment method employed close to the end of a lesson. It is a simple task that requires learners to answer a few questions or perform certain tasks explored during the learning process. 

The format of an exit ticket varies. Educators can use a variety of question/activity types. There are multiple choice, true or false, short written response, matching, cloze (fill in the blank) and survey or polls to name but a few. In terms of classroom implementation, exit tickets should be short, concise and engage learners in a review of the skills, concepts and experiences explored during the lesson. They are also ideal for continuing the learning into the next class – many educators begin with the exit tickets from the previous lesson to activate students’ previous knowledge.

In the age of digital learning, exit tickets are no longer confined to small slips of paper collected by educators as students leave their classrooms (although this method is still fine). There are numerous digital tools at the disposal of educators to collect this valuable performance data from their students.

Here are six tools to choose from:

1. Google Forms

Educators can set up exit tickets with varying question types and submit requests to participate via email or sharable link. Recent upgrades now allow questions to include images and You Tube links. All participants will have their responses populate a single spreadsheet. Educators will be able to review every single exit ticket on the same document.

2. Socrative

Socrative lets educators assess their students with educational activities on tablets, laptops or smartphones (ideal for BYOD environments). Through the use of real time questioning, educators and students alike can visualize the data to make decisions about upcoming learning.

3. Plickers

While using Plicker cards, students are able to provide answers to their teacher’s questions. The educator can use a smart phone or tablet to capture student responses and the app collects and reports the data. 

4. Twitter

Ideal for older students, educators can ask students to post a 140 character summary of today’s lesson and allow the discussion to transpire after the class has officially ended. 

5. Geddit

Another app that is ideal for a  BYOD or 1-to-1 computing classroom, Geddit gauges how students understand with the use of multiple choice or short answer responses. What makes it truly unique from the other apps and tools is Geddit allows students to provide feedback on the pace of the class – beginning, middle or during lesson closure. 

6. PollEverywhere

PollEverywhere allows educators to provide a poll for students to complete. Data can be displayed to the class in real-time in order to provide immediate feedback and clarity for students.

Of course there are hundreds of additional digital tools or strategies connected educators could use for administering an exit ticket to students that are not listed here. Please add a comment with some of the digital tools you use for your classroom exit tickets.

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Uncategorized

63 Things Every Student Should Know In A Digital World

Original Source 

Posted By Ian Jukes

Digital World

It could be argued—and probably argued well—that what a student fundamentally needs to know today isn’t much different than what Tom Sawyer or Joan of Arc or Alexander the Great needed to know.

  • Communication.
  • Resourcefulness.
  • Creativity.
  • Persistence.

How true this turns out to be depends on how macro you want to get. If we want to discuss our needs as humans in broad, sweeping themes, then food, water, shelter, connectivity, safety, and some degree of self-esteem pretty much cover it.

But in an increasingly connected and digital world, the things a student needs to know are indeed changing—fundamental human needs sometimes drastically redressed for an alien modern world. Just as salt allowed for the keeping of meats, the advent of antibiotics made deadly viruses and diseases simply inconvenient, and electricity completely altered when and where we slept and work and played, technology is again changing the kind of “stuff” a student needs to know.

Of course, these are just starters. Such a list really could go on forever.

The Changing Things They Need To Know: 13 Categories & 63 Ideas

Information Sources

1. The best way to find different kinds of information

2. How to save information so that it can be easily found and used again

3. Distinguish fact from opinion, and know the importance of each

4. How to think critically—and carefully–about information

Learning Pathways

5. How to self-direct learning

6. How to mobilize learning

7. How to identify what’s worth understanding

8. How to relate habits with performance

Human Spaces

9. The relationship between physical and digital spaces

10. The pros and cons—and subsequent sweet spots–of digital tools

11. What mobile technology requires—and makes possible

12. The nuance of communication in-person (e.g., eye contact, body language) and in digital domains (e.g., introduction, social following, etc.)

Socializing Ideas

13. The consequences of sharing an idea

14. The right stage of the creative process to share an idea

15. That everything digital is accelerated; plan accordingly. And this kind of acceleration doesn’t always happen in the brick-and-mortal world—and that’s okay.

16. The need for digital citizenship—and how to create their own rules citizenships in general–digital and otherwise

Digital Participation

17. How to remix, mash, reimagine, tweak, hack, and repurpose media in credible, compelling, and legal ways

18. How to identify what information is private and what is “social”—and how to make changes accordingly

19. What expertise they can offer the digital world

20. How to take only what you need, even when the (digital) resources seem infinite

Publishing Nuance

21. How to leverage both physical and digital media for authentic—rather than merely digital–purposes

22. The kind of information people look for on the internet

23. What to share with one person, one group, one community, and one planet. (And the difference in permanence and scale between a social message, email, threaded conversation, and text.)

24. How to take advantage of the fact digital text is fluid and endlessly updated and changing

Applying Technology 

25. What the relationship is between a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and wearable technology

26. How to use the cloud to their advantage; how to preserve bandwidth when necessary

27. How to effectively use technology in ways that might contradict their original purpose or design

28. How to use technology to perform tasks not traditionally thought of as technology-based—e.g., improving vocabulary and literacy, perform and update financial planning, eat healthier foods, etc.

The Always-On Audience

29. How to choose language, structure, tone, modalities, and other considerations based on a specific purpose and audience

30. Knowing the difference between who’s listening, who’s responding, who’s lurking, who cares, who doesn’t care, etc.

31. How to listen with curiosity when there are a million other things to do

32. Popularity and quality often fail to coincide; “traction” is as much timing and ecology as it is design

Social Rules

33. When it is socially-acceptable to check messages, update statuses, check scores, and so on. (Just because everyone at the table is doing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have significant consequences.)

34. The acceptable timing of human responses depending on social channels

35. Even in a digital world, patience still matters

36. That mobile devices are “me” devices; the real world isn’t like that

Diction

37. Tone is everything; word choice is crucial when every thought is shared

38. Vocabulary & jargon can obscure communication, but also can communicate specific ideas and can’t always be avoided

39. Structure–essay level, blog post level, paragraph level, sentence level, world level, and acronym and initialism level–changes depending on where you publish

40. The benefits of being a polyglot (speaking more than one language) are increasing (not in lieu of, but because of digital translation tools). (This includes localized figurative language in the context of global communication.)

Connecting with Experts

41. Who the experts are

42. How—and when—to reach them

43. The difference between someone knowledgeable, someone experienced, and someone adept

44. When you need a closed group of friends, a crowd full of moderately-informed people, or a professional and/or academic expert

The Self

45. How to identify and fully participate in critical familial and social citizenships

46. How to prioritizing possibilities in spaces where it all seems so endless

47. How to self-monitor and manage their own distraction

48. How to choose the proper scale for work, thinking, or publishing

49. How to recognize niches and opportunity

A Life Built Around Software

50. The consequences of using a single operating system (e.g., iOS, Android, Windows, etc.)

51. The pros and cons of using social log-ins (e.g., facebook) for apps

52. How to evaluate an app for privacy permissions

53. That apps are businesses and some close–and take your media, files, or data with them

54. Nothing is free

Other Internet Pro Tips For Students

55. Passive-aggressiveness, snark, arrogance, unjustified brazenness, cyberbullying-without-being-obvious-about-it, blocking-for-dramatic-effect, ignoring people, and other digital habits carry over into the real world

56. A 140 character comment may not fully capture the nuance of a person’s stance or understanding of a topic. Don’t assume

57. Typos and grammar errors don’t make people stupid

58. Popularity is dangerous

59. Video games can make you smarter. That doesn’t mean that they do

60. People change their minds. That post from 2012 probably feels as dated to them as it does to you

61. If you often find yourself needing to “kill time” with Candy Crush and related fare, check your life choices

62. Just because you can sing, hack, code, paint, run, jump, lead, or dance doesn’t make you any more worthwhile than the next human being, no matter what your follower count suggests

63. Log-in info, passwords, old email address, and other trappings of digital life are a pain. Use password keepers and plan accordingly

63 Things Every Student Should Know In A Digital World

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Uncategorized

Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD

Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD

Original Source 

Posted By Ian Jukes

This article by Matt Baier, for Edutopia, published on February 19, 2015 outlines a professional development program that inspires teachers to feel the emotions of creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy while learning and developing skills that promote more effective use of technology tools.

Creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development? No (except for maybe relief when it’s over).

Conquering Technology

My colleague Kathy Garcia and I decided to create a professional development program that inspired teachers to feel these emotions while learning and developing skills toward more effective use of technology tools. We created a professional development game, accessed through the iTunes U platform, called Conquering Technology. Our teachers learn skills like taking advantage of the iPad’s accessibility features, digital workflows, creating their own iBooks, using Google Apps, and authoring their own iTunes U courses.

The critical component for success was for teachers to become self-motivated in advancing their skills. For inspiration, we incorporated badges, awards, levels, gift cards, and public recognition, as everyone is uniquely motivated. Our focus has remained on positive motivation rather than a fear of negative consequences.

Conquering Technology was created for the novice-to-advanced user. Starting with basic skills, faculty members progress through challenges with support resources available any time, anywhere. While some challenges develop general iPad skills, our focus revolved around using the iPad effectively and creatively in our 1:1 iPad educational environment. We didn’t have too much difficulty creating a list of skills in which our faculty should be proficient. Our challenge was determining how faculty would demonstrate their knowledge. We called each skill-learning unit with assessment a challenge and grouped them into levels, which in turn were grouped into episodes.

Motivation and Recognition

Each level has an associated badge that is displayed within faculty profiles on the Cathedral Catholic High School website once all challenges have been completed. We wanted faculty to be publicly recognized for their hard work, so when they pass all the levels in an episode, they earn a $50 gift certificate. In addition, they receive an award that is presented to them either in front of their class or at an all-faculty meeting. Public recognition is a key component — not only do we want to publicly acknowledge our pride, but it’s also critical in motivating some people.

All faculty members are expected to complete one episode per year. As an iPad school, we find that iTunes U is the perfect tool for delivering our professional development game. iTunes U is an outstanding platform for delivering a wide variety of content to an iPad. Videos, links, apps, documents, audio — anything from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBook Store can be easily added. Even more importantly, any training content that we create ourselves can be easily delivered to our learners.

We use a private course with our faculty but have made the first two episodes public. The third episode is still in development and should be published before the 2015-2016 school year begins.

The first episode focuses on how teachers can use the iPad for themselves. The second episode focuses on how the teacher can use the iPad to manage his or her classes and engage students. The third episode will focus on how teachers can help students to use the iPad to create. The fourth will focus on helping students connect to the wider world (e.g. publish content, connect with other learners or professionals, etc.).

Accessible Resources

As technology trainers we saw several positive outcomes.First of all, there was a marked increase in teacher motivation to participate in our technology training. Even reluctant learners were willing to take part, and many of them reported that they appreciated the opportunity to have all of the necessary resources available to them on their own time. We saw much more buy-in than we expected across our whole faculty. We cannot seem to publish episodes fast enough for our most motivated teachers. This is a great problem to have.

In addition, teachers worked on the game on their own time. Even though we have professional development time set aside once a month, teachers were working on their own during prep periods, after school, and even on the weekends.

Another benefit is that more teachers would actually use the resources that we created. Kathy and I have made many tutorial videos and screencasts that unfortunately were not used as widely as we hoped. Now that they are part of Conquering Technology, they are being used more frequently by teachers.

Anyone can do this. Many of you probably already are. Let’s share and collaborate! Our courses are public and available for free in the iTunes U catalog. Use your iOS device to subscribe to Episode 1 and Episode 2. We’re proud of our work but are always eager to see what’s working in other schools as well. Please let us know about any technology-conquering PD you’ve used or created.

 

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Digital Learning

6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

For educators, there is that fine line between too much or too little help for your students. Teachers want their students do excel, but they also want their students to develop into independent thinkers and doers. Scaffolding strategies help provide support for students without taking responsibility away from them. Rebecca Alber at Edutopia provides for us an updated post of scaffolding strategies for students.

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes — no safety net, no parachute, no scaffolding — just left blowing in the wind.

Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you may give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, you might shorten the text or alter it, and you may modify the writing assignment that follows.

Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids, then for those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment and/or making accommodations for a student (for example, choose more accessible text and/or assign an alternative project).

Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common though. In order to meet students where they are and appropriately scaffold a lesson, or differentiate instruction, you have to know the individual and collective zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners. (As education researcher Eileen Raymond states, “[T]he ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.”)

So let’s get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet, or perhaps you’ve not used them in sometime and just need a gentle reminder on how awesome and helpful they can be when it comes to student learning:

1. Show and Tell

How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Modeling for students is a cornerstone of scaffolding in my experience. Have you ever interrupted someone with “just show me!” while they were in the middle of explaining to you how to do something? Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do.

  • Try the fish bowl activity, where a small group in the center are circled by the class as the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engage in an activity, modeling how it’s done for the larger group.
  • Always show students the outcome or product before they do it. If a teacher assigns a persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria chart or rubric. You can guide students through each step of the process, model in-hand of the finished product.
  • Use think alouds, which will allow you to model your thought process as you: read a text, solve a problem, or design a project. Remember that children’s cognitive abilities are still in development so opportunities for them to see developed, critical thinking are essential.

2. Tap into Prior Knowledge

Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives. Sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp it as their own.

Launching the learning in your classroom from the prior knowledge of your students, and using this as a framework for future lessons is not only a scaffolding technique, many would agree it’s just plain good teaching.

3. Give Time to Talk

All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They also need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with the community of learners who are also engaged in the same experience and journey. As we all know, structured discussions really work best with children regardless of their level of maturation. If you aren’t weaving in think-pair-share, turn-and-talk, triad teams or some other structured talking time throughout the lesson, you should begin including this crucial strategy on a regular basis.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Sometimes referred to as frontloading vocabulary, this is a strategy that we teachers don’t use enough. Many of us, myself included, are guilty of sending students all alone down the bumpy, muddy path known as Challenging Text — a road booby trapped with difficult vocabulary. We send them ill-prepared and then we are often shocked when they: a) lose interest b) create a ruckus c) fall asleep.

Pre-teaching vocabulary doesn’t mean pulling a dozen words from the chapter and having kids look up definitions and write them out (we all know how this will go. Again, see above a, b, and c). Instead, introduce the words to kids in photos, and in context to things they know and are interested in. Use analogies, metaphors and invite students to create a symbol or drawing for each word and give time for discussion of the words (small and whole groups). Not until they’ve done all this should the dictionaries come out. And the dictionaries will be used only to compare with those definitions they’ve already discovered on their own.

With the dozen or so words “frontloaded,” students are ready, you as their guide, to tackle that challenging text.

5. Use Visual Aids

Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.

A graphic organizer shouldn’t be The Product, but rather it’s a scaffolding tool that helps guide and shape the student’s thinking so that they can apply it. Some students can dive right into the discussion, or writing an essay, or synthesizing several different hypotheses without using a graphic organizer of some sort, but many of our students benefit from using them with a difficult reading or challenging new information. Think of graphic organizers as training wheels; they are temporary and meant to be removed.

6. Pause, Ask Questions, Pause, Review

This is a wonderful way to check for understanding while students read a chunk of difficult text or learn a new concept or content. Here’s how this strategy works: a new idea from discussion or the reading is shared, then pause (providing think time), then ask a strategic question, pausing again. By strategic, you need to design them ahead of time, make sure they are specific, guiding and open-ended questions. (Great questions fail without giving think time for responses so hold out during that Uncomfortable Silence.) Keep kids engaged as active listeners by calling on someone to “give the gist” of what was just discussed / discovered / questioned. If the class seems stuck by the questions, provide an opportunity for students to discuss it with a neighbor.

Trying Something New

With all the diverse learners in our classrooms, there is a strong need for teachers to learn and experiment with new scaffolding strategies. I often say to teachers I support, you have slow down in order to go quickly. Scaffolding a lesson may, in fact, take longer to teach, but the end product is of far greater quality and the experience much more rewarding for all involved.

Please share with us scaffolding strategies that work well for your students.

REBECCA ALBER’S PROFILE