SMORE Awesomeness!

Just found an incredible new resource!  smore.com.  It is a site that allows you to quickly create a beautiful online flyer/announcement/ad/webpage.....It is incredible simple too.  When you finish, you can get the embed code or a link to your page.

I can imagine digital book reports, visual timelines, awesome parent announcements, teacher-created lessons, and tons more!

At the end of 8th grade before graduation every student in my district gives a short speech in front of their peers and families.  In the past, they have displayed a picture of the student on the screen behind them, but I think this would be better!  Each student could create a page unique to them (perhaps with a 6-word memoir) that would include their accomplishments, goals, memories, etc.

Here is an example of what I was thinking....

Changes in The Workplace

Yesterday I helped to host a tour for two architects of two the schools in our district. We spent the day viewing classrooms and discussing "space."  They were specifically interested in how our libraries/learning resource centers are being used (or not used!) and how the way spaces are arranged can impact that.  The discussion brought up points about community, collaboration, parents, student work, flexible groupings, performance space, furniture, and endless other factors. 

They invited us to tour a school they worked with in Hammond, IN soon to see how they have transformed the learning spaces there.

Today I stumbled upon this article, Be Prepared as Digital Native Demand the 4 Hour Work Week Lifestyle.  It brings up some really great points.....and makes me sure that we are preparing our students to be self-sufficient, self-directed learners and workers who know how to communicate and collaborate.

ThingLink

www.thinglink.com  - Touch and Discover
Probably the coolest tool I have found in a long time!  It allows you to add text, links, videos, sounds, etc to any picture.  Imagine creating an interactive image using a map, to tell a story, to engage your students, or just for fun!

This is a fantastic tool for both teachers and students.   Students can create a thinglink to show their understanding of content in a visual manner.

Here are a few links to other teacher-created resources:

• http://www.thinglink.com/education
• http://thinglinktoolkit.wikispaces.com/Starry+Night
• http://thinglinktoolkit.wikispaces.com/Social+Justice+-+Civil+Rights+Movement

Here is an example of a ThingLink about the Wright Brothers first flight.

Bivariate Data Day 3

Today was another exciting day in Meagan's class!  Now that students have been introduced to the unit, they began their self-guided/flipped classroom journey.  Meagan showed them how to access, open, and navigate the Numbers file....how to follow the steps on their own and how to check in with the teacher.  Then it was their turn to start!  Class was very quiet today, but this allowed Meagan to move around and check on student note-taking and answer any questions.

*Note:  Some students had a difficult time watching the video because they did not bring their headphones....

Meagan explaining how to navigate through the Numbers file.

The form Meagan and I created to keep track of student progress throughout the self-guided unit.

A student watching the first video and taking notes.

A student taking notes on the video.

Bivariate Data Day 2

This is what teaching should be like everyday!

I arrived at Freedom early today to make sure Meagan and Colleen had enough hawaiian leis for their students.  They both have so much energy and are excited to start this unit!  Who knew math could be so much fun :)

Class began with the Limbo Song was playing loudly and teachers giving leis to each student as they walked in....students were immediately engaged when walking into class!

Meagan handing out leis

A few quotes from students...."Ooh, I feel like I'm in Hawaii!".... "I love this class right now"...."Are we having a party?"....

Some of the more surprising were, "Are we doing math?" and "Why are we doing this?".....students were surprised we could learn AND have fun.....we need to change this mentality!

Meagan told her students that "although we are going to play a game today, this is still Math class, so you need to keep track of one number: the number of times you can successfully make it under the Limbo bar.  She told them to record this on the chart that was up on the SMARTBoard screen.  I then demonstrated how to Limbo and then students lined up and began to Limbo.  After lots of giggles and smiles, students were encouraging their classmates who still hadn't gotten out.  EVERY SINGLE STUDENT WAS ENGAGED.

Students began to understand the concept immediately.....shouts of "The short people have it easier!", "This isn't fair cuz I'm so tall," and "You are lucky you are short, girl!" were quite common.

Once all students had limboed, Meagan asked "Why do you think some students did better than others?"  Immediately students said because some were shorter or more flexible.  Meagan led the discussion of which of these two things we could measure today....and students then proceeded to measure their heights and enter in their data on the data table.

Meagan had students predict what a graph of their information would look like, and then revealed the actual graph.  Students spent the next 10 minutes analyzing the graph and learning how to read a trendline.

They made predictions, identified outliers, and concluded that their hypothesis was correct.  Homework was to come up with an idea of two other things that could be measured and compared to see if a relationship existed and to post this idea on the eChalk discussion.

This all happened in 45 minutes, by the way.

A very insightful observation from one student...."WAIT!  So each of those dots on the graph is a person?  Ohh!  I would have done so much better on the pre-test if I knew that!"  Learning has already taken place....and in a very meaningful an memorable way.

Best part of the day was watching Meagan be such a leader.....so confident and excited to allow her classroom to be a bit chaotic for the sake of learning.  Not many teachers are willing to do this!

Click here to read Meagan's own post about this day in her blog.



Here are some more pictures from the day....including this one of the principal testing his limbo skills in Colleen's class!

Students entering in their data

Institute/Election Day

Today was crazy!  Institute day was done "in-house" at each school, with the iCoaches traveling to different buildings to support teachers.  I spent the morning at Hiawatha working on some eChalk basics with a few teachers, then made my way over to Heritage.

I spent an hour working and planning with all of the middle school PE and Health teachers for the Fitness Gram application.  THEY ARE FANTASTIC!  They cannot wait to have some data to help support their student's health and wellness.....knowing full well that they will held accountable for these scores in the coming years.  They want to jump right in and get this program implemented district-wide.  They have so many great ideas!  John has been a great leader of this group.  He is really pushing to make this happen and make it happen soon. Cannot wait to see where this goes!

I then spent some time training Piper teachers to use eChalk Lesson Planner and wrapped up the day at Emerson helping some teachers with some ideas for how to implement iPads more efficiently.  I showed them one of my favorite apps, Sight Words (FREE!).  It has sets of sight words that included recordings of the words so kids can listen to the words.  They can also create their own lists and add their own recordings.  It now has a new feature that allows you to share lists across a Dropbox account.  This will make it easy for teachers to create their own custom sets of words for a class!

Bivariate Data Day 1

So excited to help Meagan and Colleen start today!  They are excited as well.  We have been working on this unit for at least a month and they are finally ready to start.

Today they are giving the pre-test (as a discovery ed probe).   We still have some things to finalize and they are working on getting all of the lessons into eChalk tomorrow.  They already posted the intro activity in eChalk and you can see from the picture below that it has students curious for math class Wednesday!

Picture of the eChalk Class Page

Student taking the Discovery Education Pre-Test

Site Visit

Today I helped host a site visit for 2 districts - one from Oak Park and one from Iowa.  I had the privilege of escorting a group to visit classes at Heritage.  They were incredibly impressed with Charlie, of course!

Charlie speaking with visitors

It was exciting to listen to their comments about our district....here are a few

• "Surprised to see how engaged students are"
• "Technology is being use to amplify teaching" (from Charlie)
• "Engagement allows for differentiation"
• "Students are learning tech skills at the same time as content"
• "Students want to share their learning"
• "Learning is continual when kids take device home"

Some teachers came to answer questions as well.....Al spoke about giving kids choices in projects (and that he didn't need to be an expert in using the applications!), Kerry spoke about finding the instructional balance as a new teacher, and Megan spoke about how technology has given some kids a "voice" that they didn't have before.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology

Thanks to one of the other Instructional Coachers for sharing this post.  THIS is what I have to instill into the teachers in my district!  7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology

I will now be following this blog - I have already gone and read many of their past posts - fantastic stuff!

Getting closer!

Last night Meagan emailed me with the "finalized" versions of the bivariate data unit we have been working on.  She spent most of the day Sunday finalizing things and adjusting things.  Everything is looking good!  I stopped by her classroom today and basically walked through the guided/flipped lesson to see how it went.  All the links work and tings look good.  I made some suggestions on clarifying directions for students and using common vocabulary.  She is going to look at things tonight. The next thing to do is to add more questions to the Think Link probe (the pre-test).  We may have to write some of our own questions for this.  

I am continually impressed with Meagan's knowledge of her content - she is fantastic!

We are both excited to start the unit Friday!

I also spent a little time helping our Literacy Director figure out how to post reading resources for the whole district on eChalk.  His literacy team is doing good things.....it will be great to get them shared district-wide!

Independent Reading Blog @ Heritage

On Friday I met with 2 middle school teachers to discuss blogging.  They are looking for a way for students to blog about books the read independently.  We discussed various ways to go about this including the eChalk blog, Goodreads and Blogger.  They want students to be able to see this and read about each others' books.  They would like to start using this in their Lit Studies classes but eventually have the whole school participate - which is AWESOME!  I can just imagine teachers and students sharing all about what they are reading!  The possibilites are endless....

I spent some time Friday and today researching how to make this efficient and effective.  I think Blogger will work best because it is easy to use, secure, and all kids already have accounts.   One thing they were looking for is a way to separate posts by class period.  There is no way to have multiple pages in a blog all be "blog" pages.  The only way to separate posts in any way is to create a page that links to a label.  So, I created a page in the blog called "4th Period" and had it point to the url http://practiceblog87654.blogspot.com/search/label/4th, (name of the blog, label).  This is a way to sort posts by certain labels.  You can also separate them by clicking on the little label link on the sidebar.

I did some test posts and spent a little time customizing the look.  Here is the result so far....

I emailed Kerry and Christine and am waiting to hear back on their thoughts :)

Gotta know when to hold 'em....

Today I spent the first 2 morning periods at one of the middle schools  continuing to work with a teacher and his 8th grade students on their climate change challenge based learning project.  Today the students were working to refine their project ideas as well as to work on their Cacoo diagram.  Some groups are doing well, but others really need guidance on what specifically they will DO.  I spoke with one group and it reminded me of my trip to Waste Management in Stickney this summer with a teacher and his summer school students.  This group really wants to help Berwyn recycle more.  The teacher has his work cut out helping each group identify a project and make it happen!

I also attended the principals' meeting.  It is always refreshing to hear all of the good things going on in the district!  I also got some great leadership advice on decision making....based on this song! "Gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run."

In the afternoon I met with the teachers regarding blogging.....I need to do some work on this...

Timelines

Just this week, three separate teachers contacted me or the iCoaches about a good timeline creation tool.  Here is the list we came up with for useful sites:

http://timeline-3d.en.softonic.com/mac

http://timeglider.com/

https://cacoo.com/

http://www.dipity.com/

We are looking into purchasing https://www.tomsnyder.com/timelinerxe/

Fitness Tracking and Common Core

Because of a rescheduling, I spent most of today in the office :(  It was good to have the time to do some necessary research though.  I researched different options for PE teachers to have students track their fitness data over time.  Discovered that the best option is http://www.fitnessgram.net/home/. It allows teachers to track student fitness data long term, can be used district-wide, and has reporting tools to share information with families so students can set goals.  The only challenge now is find the money to pay for it!  Spoke to our superintendent about it briefly - next is to contact the district wellness coordinator.

I also spent some time working with Sue to do some research to help one of the middle school teams boost their Common Core implementation.  Common Core is so new to everyone and has been a challenge to figure out just how to transition.....Sue and I still have more to do!

I met with the PE teachers at one of the middle schools this afternoon to find out what their goals for the fitness tracking are.  They are excited about having access to the program - they know this is the direction PE education is going and want to start soon!

Call

I called Meagan today to let her know that I will be available to her from this point on for whatever it is she wants to work on.  I made sure to tell her that she is a great investment of my time and that I will do anything I can to support her.  She was a little surprised but also very pleased.

I am looking forward to what we can do!

eChalk Site Manager Training

I spent the entire day with the 8 site managers and our trainer from eChalk.  Although it was not ideal to pull secretaries out of their places or teachers out of their classrooms, there was no other way to get us all together.  The day was very productive and we learned so much that can help us communicate more effectively with teachers, parents, and the community.

We completely re-organized all 8 school websites and the district site too.  We decided on common tabs so families will have an easier time navigating sites and finding information.  We learned how to post announcements internally and externally as well as how to keep calendars up to date.  

We all still have a lot of work to do to get everything just right and in place, but the time was spent well.  Another next step is to decide who is responsible for what as we move forward.

My next big goal is to get all of the resources our district as (the Intranet, employee documents and forms, Web 2.0 resources, etc)  all in one place to teachers and staff.  We have been relying on everyone attempting to save important emails and links, but with no way to keep them organized. 

I am amazed at how much I have learned about website infrastructure from both this training as well as from just trial and error myself.  Although I don't want to spend my time behind a computer screen, I think it really helps for me to understand how everything works so that I can make it work better!

Rollout Support....

Spent the last few days helping schools rollout their 1:1 devices....everything from labeling laptops, to counting iPads in cards, to threading charger cords into carts.  There is still so much to do, but the iCoaches have provided great support to schools and teachers to make sure everything is in place.

Looking back on this, everything is relatively organized considering there are 4,000 devices!  The whole process is complicated by the fact that the devices were purchased at so many different times and in so many different ways.  Some schools have a simple system while other schools have different devices in each grade level, complicating things.  Some schools have a lot of spare devices, but others don't even have enough for their current student population, let alone ones to use in cases of repairs.

While there really isn't a good way to go about making it all work perfectly at this point, I think the system we have in place is pretty good!  Ideally it would be perfect, but for now, as long as the devices are in the hands of students, everything will work out okay!

My Replacement

Today after school I met with Scott, the teacher who replaced me as 8th grade science teacher at Freedom.  I went over some basics of the class with him, and how I ran things.  I gave him some resources for the safety and metric system units as well....suggesting some new and fun ideas to make the lessons more engaging and to integrate more technology.  Sometimes I still surprise myself with how natural many of these ideas are for me.

Scott is going to do great!  He has so much energy and is excited to be a Freedom Patriot!

A little bittersweet to be in my old classroom and to see it so different....but I am still excited about my new role.

First Day of the Year!

What an exciting day!  We are kicking off our first year as a 100% 1:1 district.  So much work has gone into making this day a reality.  Between our administration, our tech department, and the iCoaches, we somehow pulled it off.

Next step - do my best to support these teachers so the can be the best they can be.

New Teacher Training

Had a great week so far working with all of the new teachers in our district.  They are a great group!  We have given them so much information, yet they are asking for more and going above and beyond already.   Many of them are brand new Mac users!  It is amazing to think back to my own new teacher training week just 4 years ago.....so much has changed!

Good things in store for D100 with this group :)

iCoach Job Description

This is the job description we all wrote back in April......good things to keep in mind as I move into this new position.

Instructional Coach

Job Description

Goal
To provide essential support for the district by facilitating a creative and collaborative environment through coaching, training, and leadership.

Qualifications

• ISBE State Certificate with appropriate endorsement(s)
• Experience in leadership roles such as: providing and attending professional development (in-district and out-of district), Team Leader position, school committee membership and leadership, integrating technology into curriculum, etc.
• Superior communication and interpersonal skills

Responsibilities

• Facilitate implementation of learning standards, district instructional models, and technology in all district schools.
• Work with teachers in the development of integrating technology into instruction.
• Model best instructional practices through actual classroom demonstrations.
• Introduce teachers to new methods, materials, and instructional strategies that, through research, have proven to increase student achievement.
• Meet with teachers individually, in collaborative teams, and/or with departments, providing practical support on a full range of instructional strategies to integrate technology into curriculum, instruction and student work.
• Assist teachers in differentiating instruction through the use of various technologies.
• Engage in reflective practices to identify successes and challenges.

• Participate in professional development, research,  reading, and inquiry sessions to stay abreast of developments in best classroom practices, technology, and assessment.
• Work collaboratively and communicate effectively with administrators, teachers, and other school staff to strengthen all aspects of the instructional program.
• Advise administrators, teachers, and other school staff regarding professional development sessions based on staff input and assessment of what students in various grade levels and content areas need to work on to meet district and/or school goals.
• Consult on district and school level technology budgets and purchases of hardware, software, and related resources as well as district technology plan.

It is official...

My new position was approved!  Next school year I will begin my new role as an Instructional Coach (iCoach for short) in my school district.  All together there are 5 of us.  I am looking forward to the incredible impact I KNOW we will make on teaching and learning in our school district!