For the second module in my course this quarter at school we are focusing on the ISTE Educator Standards 1 and 2. These standards focus on how teachers and educators can take the plethora of digital technology tools and resources … Continue reading
ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education, wrote a set of standards specifically for educators to help them achieve academic and technological empowerment. The last quarter of my Digital Education Leadership program had us focusing on the ISTE standards for students. This quarter the shift is from focusing on the student standards to focusing on the standards that educators should meet. The fourth educator standard is titled “collaborator”. ISTE Educator #4: Collaborator What a time to be focusing on collaboration and specifically concerning digital education! The model for our day to day schooling has been flipped on its head, and is forcing educators around the world to become more technologically savvy on a whim. This “remote learning” can be quite challenging without the tools for student and teacher collaboration. When my class was shifted from in-person learning to teaching a group of 24-5th grade students through a screen, I needed to up my tech game… not only did I need to collaborate with my team on a more efficient basis, but I also needed to find safe and effective means of collaboration for my students. When researching teacher collaboration, I found myself reading articles on schoology.com. Lauren Davis wrote an article titled “Teacher Collaboration: How to Approach It In 2020”. Davis writes about the importance of teacher collaboration leading to the sharing of student learning responsibility. Where one teacher can make some change, a group of teachers can make a world of change! One important effect of teacher collaboration is more creative lesson plans. This piece drew me in – especially during this “remote learning” era. Not only do I want to have more creative lesson plans, I am now being called to work more creatively just to create those plans! Another vital part of teacher collaboration is less isolation. Which also, is crucial to address in these times. If you’d like to read more, you can find the article here. This piece led me to the realization that I needed to look at the ways I was already collaborating, and how I could improve my collaborative methods. What I was already using: Teacher collaboration – For most of our teaming we used the apps in Google Drive. It has a range of applications that are all available through the internet! You can create documents (Google Docs), spreadsheets (Google Sheets), presentations (Google Slides/Jamboard), and many more. All of these are available to collaborate with others instantaneously! Find all the G Suite apps for education here: link. While Google Drive has some amazing programs that are easily accessible to many at once (or on their own time), it is still challenging to collaborate in a quick way – the way that you could if your team was in person working together on their docs. Once schools were closed, we needed to find a way to talk to one another while working. Like many other school districts, this led us to Zoom. Zoom is a video conferencing tool. Most of the features are available with the free version, however as an educator. It enables my team to connect to one another remotely. I immediately fell in love with the idea of video conferencing – it is an effective and efficient way to collaborate with my teammates remotely! Interested in Zoom? Here’s the link. While Zoom is a great way to meet with people – others have to be available at the same time to talk to each other. With many families having to work around one anothers schedules, not all students are able (or willing) to all meet at one time to sit and watch a lesson be taught through a video conference. Teacher and student collaboration – Zoom is still working in my class as a check in strategy, but to teach my students, I needed to find another tool. This led me to Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a website that allows you to create video responses to topics, other videos, or questions. All of the videos are saved within a “grid” that is created by an educator. This website provides a safe way to create, edit, and post videos of their classmates and teachers! My favorite part; a preloaded topic that supports students in making an introductory video! How I am going to use it: Post instructional math videos for students to watch and have students create a reaction video solving math problems Post read alouds with accompanying comprehension strategy lessons and have students represent their learning with comp. strategy practices through a video Have students create check in videos (virtual show and tell, teach your teacher a skill, student storytelling, etc) Have students create videos with their own ideas of collaboration methods using Flipgrid! Want to learn about all the awesome ways to use Flipgrid for remote learning? Here’s the website. While one app won’t solve our remote learning shortfalls, researching and taking the chance on new educational technology can help us work towards bettering our collaboration. References: Bristol, J. (2019, June 24). Google Drive Review for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/google-drive ISTE Standards for Educators. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators Powers, M. (2020, April 13). Flipgrid Review for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/flipgrid Schoology. (n.d.). Teacher Collaboration: How to Approach It In 2020. Retrieved from https://www.schoology.com/blog/teacher-collaboration Tewalt, A. (2020, March 13). Remote Learning with Flipgrid. Retrieved from https://blog.flipgrid.com/news/remotelearning
Learning Standards for Teachers? One of the more unique aspects of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards is the creation of not just teaching standards, but instructional standards that apply to teachers themselves. My initial reaction when I first heard this was probably similar to many educators: why? I have enough on …
Continue reading “Technology Standards and Tools for Teachers”
Inquiry Question: How can educators collaborate with students and leverage their expertise to improve their instructional practices to benefit future learners? ISTE Educator Standard 4’s second indicator, focuses on the ideas of collaboration and co-learning with students. In researching my inquiry question for this module, I began exploring how educators can cultivate collaboration with their…
As I sit here on this gorgeous spring day I have been thinking about and exploring the ISTE Educator standards. As part of the Seattle Pacific University, Digital Education Leadership program this quarters class has us looking at and learning … Continue reading
For my last few blog posts I have been reflecting on ISTE standards for students. As I continue to move through my graduate program, the […]
A collaborative tool that gives students authentic, real-world learning experiences.
Our world is smaller than ever. No longer are we limited by geography, our social-economic status, or level of education. With the advancement of technology we now…
“Students who understand the innovation process and develop traits that successful innovators possess will have a distinct advantage when they enter the workforce.” The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces Last year, a wonderful member of my 5th grade team planned a career fair for our students. One of the volunteers was a recruiter for Worksource. In his presentation he told us that 65% of our students will be working in a job that doesn’t exist right now. I remember being so shocked at that number! And while my students were amazed at the possibilities, I have to admit it made me a little nervous. How do we get our students to possess the traits that will have them be successful with their future jobs, when we don’t even know what those jobs will be? Well, ISTE Student Standard 4 is focused on the Innovative Designer and gives us some guidance for how we can help prepare our students: My search led me to an incredibly insightful piece of writing, Here’s how you teach innovative thinking. Team ISTE writes about the shift from the information-age into the innovation-age and how students will need to have traits that will help them fit into this age. “Many innovative companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Instagram did not exist when their current employees were in grade school.” They go on to talk about the key concepts of teaching innovation: Students will need the ability to collaborate with “collective intelligence” Students will need to be lifelong learners to keep up with the ever changing available answers Students will need to develop a sense of metacognition to evaluate the way they think They also note the need for 5 specific job types: makers, coders, inventors, entrepreneurs and authors. This led me to the idea of maker space… so the research continues! Thankfully, there is an abundance of resources about makerspaces and specifically how you can use them in the classroom! Quite a few articles mentioned that the idea of makerspaces help students to learn through constructionism. This is a term I wasn’t extremely familiar with it, but I found out that it a term that is synonymous with the term “constructivism”. In Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning, the authors defines Constructivism as, “an approach to learning that holds that people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by the experiences of the learner”. Learning about constructivism helped me to relate the concept to the more basic idea of having students learn through play! What a fun idea. My next stop was an article titled The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces. I learned that makerspace for education is meant to challenge students to look at the same problem, and while they may have different approaches to solve the problem, they will come to similar conclusions. Makerspaces enable students to work through the problem in their own way, while also having the ability to work collaboratively. I also came to see that a main goal of makerspaces is for students to bounce ideas off of one another, in a hope that some may rise to be the teacher and lead the others to one conclusion. Now that I understood what the concept of makerspace is, how do you create one? Well, Kurti, Kurti, and Fleming gave us a great breakdown of how educators can get started! I understand why makerspaces are gathering such popularity in schools! I’d love to hear your thoughts and makerspace success and trials! Comment below to share. References Elliott, S.N., Kratochwill, T.R., Littlefield Cook, J. & Travers, J. (2000). Educational psychology: Effective teaching, effective learning (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College. ISTE Connects. (2016, January 19). Here’s how you teach innovative thinking. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=651 Kurti, R. S., Kurti, D. L., & Fleming, L. (2014). The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41(5), 8-11.
This week I have had the ‘opportunity’ to experience the professional development through digital learning in ways I never thought I would ever experience. Taylor & Maruneau (2016) share theory-based research around experiential learning of the adult learners that is timely and applicable to my (indeed, OUR) current reality as an educator. “An essential premise … Continue reading Professional Development and Experiential Learning Opportunities in a COVID 19 Reality →
The Plan Last year my school decided to adopt the Code.org curriculum K-5 to help equip our students with basic coding skills. This year, our technology teacher has teamed up with classroom teachers to teach the plugged and unplugged lessons in this awesome and free curriculum. To support them in this endeavor as the digital learning coach on campus, I worked with staff to develop curriculum that incorporates more Computer Science (CS) skills. Therefore, I had the fun idea to plan and lead a school-wide STEM challenge that focused on coding. I thought it would provide support to staff as they learn more about CS themselves, and give the students a fun way to demonstrate what they are learning through Code.org. The STEM challenge reminds me of the traditional school-wide science fair, but the main differences would be that the projects would all happen at school and in teams. However, we’d showcase student projects at a school STEM night which we’d invite parents and community members to attend. I have brainstormed different design challenges for the various age groups, but they are all themed around coding and “de-bugging” an algorithm. Here are the essential questions we will be focusing on throughout grades K-8: What do good problem solvers do when they get stuck? What are the fundamentals of computer programming? How are algorithms used in coding? How can you use computer programming to complete a task? Students will understand… We can learn from our failures (aka “fail forward”) Success requires perseverance We can use an algorithm to solve a problem or achieve a goal Students will know… Basic coding skills Computer science vocabulary (algorithm, sequence, events, loops, conditionals, etc. based on grade level) The design process (Plan, Test, Reflect, Revise) What it means to “de-bug” an algorithm Students will be able to… Create an algorithm to solve a problem or achieve a goal Proofread and edit an algorithm to “de-bug” The project will be centered around several ISTE student standards in both the Digital Citizen section along with two Computational Thinker standards. Digital Citizens 2b: Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices. Computational Thinker: 5a. Students formulate problem definitions suited for technology-assisted methods such as data analysis, abstract models and algorithmic thinking in exploring and finding solutions. 5d. The student understands how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions. The Process We have yet to do the actual STEM Challenge at school, but here is a sample “De-Bugging” challenge the 2nd and 3rd graders will be given. The OZOBOT Maze Challenge: The students will be told that they are a renowned computer programmer and have been asked to complete a maze by programming an algorithm for their Ozobot robot to get from start to finish. They will be graded with a rubric that will assess the success and complexity of the algorithm. Also, a video of the child explaining the steps of the algorithm and how it works. Other pieces of evidence teachers will use to determine student understanding and growth: Student “Fail Forward” journal that documents the process of designing the algorithm and steps taken to “de-bug” Student self-reflection at the end of the project Student self-assessment on 4 C rubric that measures critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativeness. Class discussions If you’d like to see the day to day lessons for this challenge check them out here. And if you’ve never heard of Ozobots and would like to learn more, check out the following promo video from Ozobot. The Products Here are the following products from the various grade levels: Kindergarten and 1st Grade: Students will write a creative story and then program an algorithm to bring the story to life in Scratch Jr. 2nd and 3rd Grade: Students will design a maze and then write an algorithm for their Ozobot robot to be able to successfully complete it. 4th and 5th Grade: Students will create a Math review app for other students to use in review for a chapter test. Middle School: Students will use an inquiry design model where they will identify a problem they are interested in and then seek to solve it with an algorithm. Other Items to Note If you are interested in recreating a school-wide STEM challenge for your school here are some other items to consider. School Unity: Since the grade levels have different coding challenges, I knew we would have to be intentional in casting a shared vision for both teachers and students in order to unite the school in this school-wide STEM Challenge. Therefore, we will take several steps to ensure everyone is on board and feels confident and equipped. One bonus in using Code.org’s lessons as our curriculum K-5 is it gives us a common language when discussing coding and CS skills. Therefore, siblings in different grades or teachers can have a discussion about CS and be on the same page. The plan is to introduce the STEM Challenge to the staff at a PLC meeting ahead of time and ask for teachers to give input on their grade level’s challenge. They will be encouraged to change or tweak the lessons if needed since they are the experts when it comes to their students. Hopefully, this will increase staff buy in to the process and help them take ownership. Teachers will also be supported by the technology teacher, along with myself throughout the whole process. We can team-teach or model a lesson for them if they’d like. I have created a STEM ppt that teachers can refer to in class and save individual slides as background images to their various monitor screens around their classrooms. That way students will have a visual reminder of our essential questions and can start to transfer those questions to other academic areas such as ELA, Math, Science, etc. (for example, asking the question “What do good problem solvers do when they get stuck in math?”) This ppt will give teachers the same starting point and help provide a common foundation for STEM across the school campus. In addition, I hope to create a giant bulletin board in the school cafeteria and update it with different pictures of students working on their grade level’s STEM challenge. This will help unite the school because students will see what other grades are doing and hopefully will get them excited and curious. I also think students will feel empowered and will love seeing pictures of themselves working on their projects. Finally, we will celebrate our students’ growth at our school-wide STEM night. I believe this piece is essential in bringing our school together. Students will have the opportunity to present their projects to an authentic audience and share how they grew in their knowledge of coding. However, I would also love to give parents, siblings, and community members a chance to try out the various challenges after seeing student work. This would change the feel of the night because the role of the audience is not just looking and listening, but also about doing. I think by allowing them to tinker and play we can help cultivate more curiosity in STEM and provide a fun opportunity for students and parents to connect. How do we intentionally include digital citizenship? I think this is a very important question we must consider. This was one area that I think I could improve on in my lesson plans. I am hoping that the teachers can help brainstorm ways to have thoughtful conversations with their students on their responsibilities to “engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.” (ISTE Standard 2b). One idea that was suggested was to have students co-author a list of digital citizenship reminders that they could refer to before using their devices. For example, “I will not share personal information when online” or “I will use kind words when pair-programming or collaborating with others either in person or online.” These goals can be personalized to each classroom since they will be doing different challenges and using various types of technology. Conclusion I am hoping that our STEM Challenge will become a beloved annual event at our school, with different themes each year. This year it was coding, specifically focused on de-bugging an algorithm, but what will next year bring? I believe these challenges will 1. support our teachers in trying out more STEM-related content in their classrooms, 2. expose our students to STEM and cultivate a curiosity to pursue STEM studies and careers. and 3. unite our school and showcase the cool things we are doing with the technology we have been given. These annual challenges will provide our students with the opportunity to tinker, design, collaborate, create, evaluate, and use critical thinking to achieve a goal. Resources Code.org. (n.d.). https://code.org/ Gabri Joy Studios. (n.d). Home [Facebook page]. FaceBook. Custom Artwork, 2019, from https://www.facebook.com/gabrijoystudios/ ISTE Standards for Students. (n.d.). https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students Ozobot. (2015, March 31). Ozobot- It’s Your Move [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_H8HXWFZ4
