Here in Ohio, we're seeing a dramatic and quick rise in the number of universities opting to forgo face-to-face learning due to coronavirus concerns. (My Ohio State sophomore, currently on Spring Break, will be engaging in distance learning until the end of the month.) I suspect it won't be long before our K-12 schools follow suit. No matter where you live in this country, COVID-19 s affecting all of us. Personally, I think it's smart to work towards containment measures, and I'm grateful we live in a time where technology makes working or learning from home manageable. Of course, I'm a digital learning coach, so technology is second nature to me. I realize that not everyone is like me (and the world is grateful for that!).
With that said, I acknowledge that taking kids out the classroom poses some real challenges: What about those kiddos who don't have home wifi access? What about our schools who can't provide a device for every students? What about our educators who are new-ish to the idea of remote teaching?
As we anticipate the rush to find solutions, I've created what I hope to be a very helpful guide in navigating new and unknown territory. While it won't solve the intricate problems of attempting to get our schools online in a hurry, I do believe it will help assist us in making informed decisions. Please feel free to share with your colleagues and staff, and as always, don't hesitate to reach out with any questions--and especially with ideas and updates that could be added to this live document.
You've got this!
I keep a list of all the #edtech tools available for digital learning: apps for assessment, platforms for instructional delivery, tools for collaboration + creativity.
That list is currently at 212. (That is not a typo.)
And those are the tools about which I know. It can get overwhelming, this having to be constantly on top of the ever-evolving, never-stalling educational technology universe. Sort of like this:
image courtesy of YouTube
I'm a fan of simplicity and of having my options limited. Too many choices and I get paralyzed. With that said, when I'm asked to make recommendations by teachers for the must-have tools for their edtech toolbox, here are my go-tos in no particular order:
Want to really know if your students learned something? This is IT. If you don't believe me about this social learning platform in which the teacher poses a question and students provide video responses, then believe the millions of other users who swear by it. This is a very simplistic explanation for an edtech tool that has more uses than a Swiss Army Knife (especially with its most recent updates of camera features and AR), so I suggest you get in there and play around with it yourself. Here's a great guide to get started.
It was a giddy day when the teacher would roll out the giant TV and popped a clunky tape into the VCR. But to be honest, I'd have liked Edpuzzle way more. And you will, too. It's more than a simple show-a-video-to-students tool. Edpuzzle gathers valuable and informative data about student comprehension. In the age of on-demand, pausing, and rewatching, this tool will resonate with your class. Click here if you're a newbie to Edpuzzle.
I have the attention span of a goldfish, so if it takes me a long time to learn something, I'm out. Book Creator's got your back with its 10-minute tutorial. Turn your lesson into your own textbook. Better yet, allow your students to create their own ebooks, comic books, photo books, and journals.
There's a reason YouTube is popular with your students. Watching a video is more powerful than reading text. This screencast recorder allows students to truly show what they know by narrating what's on their screen. Create tutorials for your kiddos for days when you've got a sub, or replace the time-consuming oral presentations with screencasts.
Why not make learning a game? I can't tell who has more fun with this--the kids or me. This collaborative learning classroom game makes your job easier. Do yourself a favor and take the lecturing out of learning with the Live version of Quizlet.
I hope you find this list useful if you're just getting started with 1:1, or even if you've been doing it for a while. What are your faves?
Back in the day, before the dawn of the Internet, we looked to our teachers for the answers. We learned via a repeating cycle of lecturing, note-taking, and testing.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
With the Internet, however, everyone has the potential to become a content expert--to access the knowledge that was previously "kept" by our teachers.
With that said, it's time to shift our instructional delivery from "I give, you get" to "I ask, you explore, discover, try, fail, try again, and succeed. Inquiry-Based Learning helps us educators reach learners in the Digital Age.
Next time you feel like telling, try asking instead.
The following is a true story.
As I drove him from school yesterday, my 16 year-old sheepishly announced, "I got a 40% on my test in _______." [Course name deleted to protect the innocent.]
After I corrected my almost-swerve into oncoming traffic, I regained my composure and inquired in a calm voice that masked my inner panic, "How did that happen?"
He responded, "Don't be mad. I got the highest grade in the class!"
I corrected yet another swerve.
I gritted my teeth: "There's nothing average about an entire class of students underachieving."
He attempted to assuage me: "Mom, it's okay. No one ever gets an A. Or a B."
I explained, "Maybe it's just me, kiddo, but I don't think that's okay. How is is okay for an entire class of students to be failing? How does the teacher know you're all learning? Because the test would indicate that very few of you can show what you know."
He sighed, "Mom, please don't start with the teacher talk."
So I stopped. And not only because my sons get bored with all my educational reform proselytizing. It's because I think it's totally uncool for me to call out my kids' teachers in front of them. I don't like being all Judge Judy on other educators.
While my son put in his earbuds and tuned me out, I couldn't tune out my brain.
I'm not calling out my son's teacher here; he's not the only one.
I was that teacher. I was renowned for being the toughest grader in the high school English department, and I wore it like a badge of honor. An A was earned in my class--not granted. I believed I was preparing my students for the rigor of college by putting these obstacles in their way.
Doesn't that almost sound like I was setting them up to fail? Wasn't I establishing almost insurmountable odds? How was I doing my job? What were they learning?
We have to meet our learners where they are.
What would happen if a doctor prescribed all of his patients the exact same drug for completely different illnesses? Maybe a minority of the patients will improve--but the majority of them will never, ever recover. Their sickness will continue. And the doctor would be guilty of medical malpractice.
We have to meet our learners where they are. We really have to. And that means making sure we're doing our very, very best to reach the needs of each learner. We can do this when we give daily ungraded formatives (exit tickets in Google Forms, reflections in Flipgrid, or 3-2-1 checks in Edpuzzle). We can do this when we differentiate assignments in Google Classroom based on student needs. We can do this when we offer choice menus. Like good doctors, we should diagnose what each of our patients need--instead of writing them all the same prescription.
Teaching does not equal learning. Let's not be guilty of educational malpractice.
I didn't comment, as I have a semi-serious case of notification-itis. (I get itchy and inflamed from seeing my notification count exceed single digits.) But that didn't stop me from being totally amused waiting on the comment thread. As you can imagine, comments ran the gamut from disgust with "these kids today," to the "give him a break" pleas that could only originate from a mom.
Had I commented, I would have asked,
In my work, I get a fair amount of complaints from Boomers and Gen Xers about Millennials and Generation Z--who are unfairly characterized as screen-obsessed zombies with zero discernible life skills. But I love GenZ, and how bravely they navigate the digital universe. And frankly, how much longer is snail mail going to be a thing, anyway?
image courtesy of Picture Quotes
I've been using QR codes in the classroom for years. They make learning visible and three-dimensional. More importantly, when used properly, they provide a voice for students--something we really need more of in digital learning.
Did you know that with Flipgrid, you can add QR codes to student videos?
I don't have a clue how I acquired this image.
But it's powerful, isn't it? It's reminiscent of Bloom's Taxonomy--but unlike Bloom's--this visual allows us to focus on learning from a student perspective as opposed to focusing on instruction from a teacher's perspective.
And what also astounds me is how clearly this image delineates how traditional forms of instruction don't do a whole lot in terms of being effective for our students. I wonder, are they even effective for us any longer?
In any case, John Hattie's research on feedback is more convincing than anything I could write here. But if you're looking to up your feedback game, I fully recommend you start here.
(Thanks to Rod Stewart for the inspiring title to this post. )
I've been lately embedded with a 4th grade math class, observing and looking for opportunities to integrate technology into daily instruction as this school makes plans to be 1:1 next year.
Today, a true teachable moment presented itself. As students collaborated in the number corner, discussing the concept of time, one kiddo piped up, "What does a.m. & p.m. mean?"
Pausing, the teacher asked, "What do you think it means? Does anyone have a guess?"
"Does it mean 'after midnight' and 'pre-midnight?" another student offered. (Not a bad guess, right?)
At that point the teacher encouraged the kids to look it up when they got home and to share the answer with the class the following day for a bonus buck. There was content to cover, after all, and only so much time to cover it.
I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't my place to jump in and say, "Let's figure it out now!" I was a guest, after all. Still, I knew we were missing a valuable opportunity to model learning in the moment--instead of putting it off until later. I'd bet a paycheck that none of those kids were going to go home and search for the answer. The moment was gone.
Or was it?
I know what a.m. and p.m. mean, and so does my high school senior--who's in his fourth year of Latin. (By choice. I swear.) I didn't want to lose the moment, so I immediately texted my son:
This isn't the first time I've dragged my kids into teaching others. When he was in sixth grade, I coerced Tyler to create an instructional ShowMe to demonstrate to teachers how the app works. My younger son, Robbie, and some of his buddies were "gently guided" into making a collaborative learning website in 7th grade so that I could share with teachers that students could create their own learning materials. And just last month, Tyler co-presented with me at a local edtech conference--and not only wound up leading the session, but stealing the show, too.
I don't bring kids into teaching because I can't teach. I bring them into teaching to prove a point: in the digital age, learners are teachers and teachers are learners. Knowledge acquisition is fluid.
So, knowing that a question left unanswered and unexplored is a lost learning opportunity, and hindered by the fact that Tyler's AP Physics class was more important than my need for him to Facetime the 4th graders, that afternoon we devised an alternative solution and created a short video to share with the kiddos the next day.
And here it is:
Not necessarily professional, and not necessarily polished...but definitely real. And, as it turns out, our audience of fourth-graders enjoyed the heck out of it...and I'll bet a paycheck they'll remember the meanings behind ante meridian and post meridian for a long time to come.
This generation of learners craves digital interaction: they're Facetiming, Snapchatting, Instagramming, Tweeting, and devouring YouTube videos. Why? Not because they're passive recipients, but because they seek to connect in exciting, engaging, and authentic ways.
Let's try to recognize and take advantage of more opportunities for learning to happen in real-time--outside of both our carefully-arranged lesson plans and the four walls of our classrooms.
I posted the following question to those assembled: “In one word, how would you describe #GenZ?” Here are some of those responses:
As these results appeared on the screen in front of us, lots of laughs and a few smirks followed. I asked my audience why these answers may (or may not) have amused them:
They’re always staring at screens. I used to go out all day and play until it was dark.
They’re always taking selfies and posting them; they’re so self-obsessed.
They think they’re so tech-savvy, but they really don’t know how to use technology.
Totally soft. They wouldn’t be able to change a tire if they got stuck on the side of the road.
Pretty negative, right? I had hoped that the person who labeled GenZ as “teachable” would have spoken up, but (s)he didn't, so I’ll take on that task.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of GenZ. Like an oversized-foam-finger-fan of them.
I love their boldness, their creativity, their intuitive ability to interface with devices placed in front of them, their willingness to connect and interact, their total lack of reluctant self-consciousness. This is a generation who creates their own YouTube channels, who uploads their original music to SoundCloud, who publishes their own ebooks to Amazon Kindle.
They are fearless in their belief that the world is accessible to them. And I admire it.
I think that’s why we as educators are so reluctant (or so resistant) to embrace Generation Z’s “different-ness.” I think we’re the ones with the fear; maybe we’re a teeny bit afraid of them. Perhaps they represent to us what was once a distant future but what is now clearly a very present, well...present. Generation Z doesn't necessarily need us to teach them anymore--at least not in the traditional way. They can find answers without us. They can learn things without us. They can create things without us.
Do we fear our irrelevance? Or do we fear our loss of total control?
If we fear the former, don’t panic. We just need to modify our role. If we fear the latter, well, Buttercup, we’re gonna have to get over that in a major way.
If we’re ready to modify our role, then let’s create teacher-bordered classrooms where the kiddos are allowed to discover learning instead of having it handed to them. If we’re gonna get over it, we’re going to have to get uncomfortable with not completely understanding technology and learning it together with our students.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Generation Z is historically unlike other. In a word, that’s amazeballs. But are they really so different? My generation (Generation X) triggered our parents with MTV and Walkmans. (Wasn’t that in itself a form of self-involvement and distraction?)
My advice? Embrace the revolution. Let the selfie generation see themselves in their learning.