Writing a Student Multimedia Science Book

My students have been using multimedia science journals for the last year and I wanted to push the work into a student written book about a science topic.  I have created iBooks in the past, but I wanted students to create a multimedia book with text, pictures, and video.  We started building the book over the last few days using Google Docs to start writing the text.

We started by discussing the features of a nonfiction book and then highlighting the content we learned over the last few science labs about magnets.  Students then accessed Google Docs for the first time with their group of five.  There were some successes and challenges with students sharing a document and composing.  Here is what we learned:

• Writing is produced faster because each student can see the writing and add to it easily.
• Everyone can see the ideas and add on or make changes. 
• Students can work on different "parts" of the writing at the same time and move and combine in the same document.
• It's confusing when everyone is trying writing at the same time, at first, taking turns is important so everyone can see what is being composed.
• When you edit others work its important to ask first.

My students were able to make it work, but the ideas they shared after about the successes and challenges are important to remember when asking kids to work in collaborative documents.  Our biggest take away around the challenges is that communication and common courtesy go along way when working together whether in a document, on a project or just in life.  We need to remember when we ask kids to collaborate with technology we are still asking them to work together and that requires a lot of teamwork, compromise and patience. Here are some of the ideas they presented to make collaborative writing easier:

• When you want to change or add on to someone else's writing ask, "Are you finished, I had an idea to add on." or, "I wanted to change your idea to say this, do you agree?" 
• If you want to move an idea from one spot to another ask the group if they agree with your revision.
• If you want to delete an idea explain to your group what you want to delete and why.   

As adults, these ideas may seem obvious, but to nine year olds they need discussion and stating.  In those ideas above about working together it comes back to the key principles of respecting others ideas and work and using communication of ideas to make the group's work stronger.  That can only happen when ideas and work are respected.  

I am writing about this, because we often look at the technology tool because of the ease it brings, or the ability to allow kids to collaborate easier, or it allows our students the ability to do work that was not possible before, but we often leave out the culture that is needed in our space to allow those tools to be used effectively.  Students want to have their ideas shared, valued and respected.  Our classrooms have to provide the culture for collaboration before we provide our students the tools. 

Here is a sample of some of my students' writing.  These were composed in a group and revised and edited with me and the rest of the class.  

Capturing Field Trip Learning with Mobile Devices

Mobile devices have changed the way education is happening in my classroom and my school. But,  there has always been a step back when we take students out of the classroom to do learning on a field trip.  We don't have the same tools, the same space or the same learning experiences.  But this was the case even with early technology, teachers and students often didn't like taking pencils and notebooks either.  Taking the devices has been an area of concern on a few levels; losing devices, lack of internet connections in museums or outdoor spaces and how to connect students' learning on the field trip and stay within the device capabilities and the teacher's objectives.

A few years ago, Jennie Magiera and Anita Huffman created Keynote slide decks for students that were used as a template for students to filled in information.  Anita used these with science experiments and Jennie and I used them on a field trip.   I decided to create a mashup of the Museum of Science and Industry's m.stories  and Keynote features to create a slide deck for my students as they explored the museum last week.

I used slides with pictures and bullet points and used some sentence starters from the m.stories like, "This reminds me of..." or "I never knew that..." and placed those in the Keynote bullet points.  I titled the slide for the area I wanted the students to record the information and a space for a picture from that area as well as the prompt for the group's ideas and thinking.  Students had two exhibits I required, but then I created generic slides titled, "Museum Location" for them to change if they were exploring another areas.  I also included the prompts: connections, wonderings and interesting thoughts.

This Keynote creation was one they had to collaborate with the other members of their group, share ideas and thinking and capture learning through words and images.  Viewing the work allowed me to  experience what the students did in their group, even though I was only with 10 of the 60 students I teach for science and math.  They were able to view each others and make connections and have conversations after we returned because they were able to capture their learning using the devices.

The most improved part of the experience for me was the workflow.  I was able to create the Keynote template slides on my Mac and place them into my courses on Schoology.  My students were easily able to access the slides, open on their iPad Keynote and then submit the finished Keynote back as an assignment on Schoology.  (The students had to access and open in keynote and upload to Schoology AT school, the museum is still not wi-fi friendly.)  The final step is for me to share the files through Schoology as an course update with the file attached for students to view other group's work!

Here are some samples of the students' keynotes:

Connected Educator = Connected Students

Did you know October is "Connected Educator" month?  The Department of Education and some educators have gotten together to promote a month about being connected.  I normally am not a person who is big on promoted and labeled events, but this month I have been thinking about connected educators, and I thought, so what?

What I have found is it MATTERS if it impacts the learning of students.  Do you as a connected educator bring something to the learning of students?  If the answer is yes, then it should be renamed Connected Student month, because educators should be using who and what they are connected to for students!

I have had two experiences as a connected educator this month that will impact my students.  Yesterday a teacher I follow on twitter, Beth @mssandersTHS, was tweeting from her classroom hashtag and a #whatif hashtag her students were using to ask questions.  I was really interested to see their ideas and hear what they imagined if things were different in our world.  I knew that my students would be on twitter for Twitter Tuesday and liked the #whatif prompt.  Beth quickly accepting my ask to join her students conversation and I couldn't wait to share the news with my students.  Beth and her students live in Birmingham, Alabama and are also high schoolers.  Imagine what that felt like for my fourth graders?  Not only tweeting with people in another state, but high schoolers?  Amazing.   To start, I took some of the tweets from the THS students and put them in a Storify for my students to read easily and were also topics and ideas they could relate and connect to, then we started our Today's Meet back channel.  Some of the ideas, #whatif, and thoughts were intriguing, interesting, and thought provoking.

Here are some of my personal favorites:

"What if people was 70 when they was a baby and when they look like baby they was 70"

"What if Martin Luther King jr. Never said nothing about our freedom rights"

"What if there were no rules"

"What if there was no Internet"

"What if it was just peaceful"


#Whatif I wasn't a "connected educator?"  I probably wouldn't have used this prompt, wouldn't have found some high schoolers willing to engage with my kids and these what ifs may have never happened.  My students knowing that high schoolers were interested to hear what they had to say and were responding was powerful.  Student voice needs an ear, beyond the ears in the physical room when possible.
Another exciting thing is happening due to Connected Educator month as well.  I tweeted a picture of Jennie Magiera teaching a math lesson in my room, and used the term Guest Teacher Wednesday.  Jennie just happened to be stopping in and I knew she would want to teach a bit.  But this prompted some tweeting with others, including Jason Markey, a principal at a nearby high school.   He replied back how cool it was to have a guest teacher, and I invited him to guest teach too.  And he wants too!  And he wants to bring some high schoolers who are interested in teaching as a career.  So how does this benefit my students?  In a few weeks, they will have some high schoolers come in, learn with them, teaching them some new things, have conversations and make their own CONNECTIONS.  
So that leaves me with my #whatif....What if all connected educators used their connections to impact students' learning?  

Math and Learning from Students

I have been struggling this year as a math and science teacher to implement technology as much as possible.  I decided to reevaluate the technology use and find ways to use technology WELL instead of using technology OFTEN.  The reason I say this is I can find a lot of ways to substitute the technology into my instruction for both math and science, but I want create opportunities that lets me learn more about students' understanding, thinking and learning.

Jennie Magiera and Anita Huffman are both guiding forces in my implementation and I look to them often, especially since they both have used technology in the math classroom.  I have followed their sage advice and have set my courses up in Schoology for easy workflow with students.  I have also used Doceri app for students to screencast their thinking with problem solving.  This week, I had students show how to use the partial sums and column addition algorithms.  I LOVE being able to see my students work and solve problems, as well as having the feature of "comments" on the video they upload to give them quick feedback.  In the video below you can see the students makes a mistake but then corrects it!

One area of focus a team of math teachers at my school has been working around is CCSS Standards of Mathematical Practice 1.  The big idea of "does this make sense" and did I explain the "why" problem solving is missing from a majority of students work currently.  I create a rubric to help assess what students are submitting.  But I believe I need to model more explicitly for them these two big ideas.

I am hoping that with modeling, the rubric and more practice my students will continue to grow with their problem solving skills. As I work in each unit of the math curriculum I am finding new ways to implement technology tools in a thoughtful way.

Learning Spaces: DreamLab Becoming a Reality

My students and I are blessed to be starting a new and exciting journey together in our learning space.  Don Orth, Tim Springer, Anita Orozco-Huffman,  and Jennie Magiera have been dreaming this dream with me for a while, our exploration is around how an agile learning space can impact learning and learners.  My students starting exploring space concepts on Friday.  We asked the questions: Where can you be your true self?  Who is there with you?  What do you feel when you are there?   What things are there?  What can you do there?  They came up with wonderful ideas and emotions about their special space!

We then asked them to take those ideas and imagine a space.  The students worked in their own way to design and then explain their ideal spaces.  As you can imagine many of them were filled with fun activities, candy and favorite foods, people they loved and the freedom to do whatever they choose in this space.  But maybe the most interesting part of this activity was how they chose to work on it in the classroom.

After they created a visual and voice recorded their dream space on Doceri, the students talked about what they liked best about the day's activities.

In the end, students want to have choice and want their ideas and voices heard.  I am so excited to see how those two aspects grow and change when students can create learning spaces with the new mobile furniture.  We will continue to ask the questions to our students: What type of space do you need for this work?  How did you feel working in the space you created?  What changes will you make next time?

Special thanks to Tim Springer for the great images!

It's in the Way that You use It: ClassDojo

Eric Clapton's song, "It's in the way that you use it" always makes me think of technology use. Although I am sure it wasn't written with that intent, creative interpretation here, I guess. Yet, when I thought of ClassDojo I only saw the negative ways it was shared in classroom and I viewed it as an excuse to not build relationships, to assign points, openly share the "winners and losers" in the classroom.  Which is not the way I work or want my classroom to work.  But I never allowed myself to imagine it being used in other ways.  My teaching partner, Sherly Chavarria, asked me my opinion in which I shared similar to what you read above.  But she had already started to see the tool in a new and different way.  She agreed that she didn't want to use it as a public board of behavior, but valued other areas of the tool and highlighted some of those to me.

I'll admit I was reluctant, but I trust Sherly's judgement and I gave ClassDojo a second look.  What I found is ClassDojo is a system like any other, it can be used for good or for evil, its in the way that you use it.  Jennie Magiera and I have often shared with others how tools considered evil can be used for good ranging from social media to Jennie's instructional videos.  What it comes down to is people see a tool as one thing, but it can be re-imagined into a variety of tools and uses.  I can now see ways ClassDojo can work for me.

Here are some aspects I am excited about:

• Data: The system shows me by class, by student and offers daily or a variety of over time looks at student positive and negative points.  I can see the value of this with students, parents and administrators in conversation as well as data for Special Education services around behaviors.
• Access: Students and parents can log in and see a private view of student information.
  
• Download reports: Download any of the individual or class reports and now they can be shared easily through email.
• Add and delete indicators: I wanted a way to track "behaviors" but also wanted to personalize the items for transitions in hallways, homework completion and other school specific things like our schools Eagle Coins to recognize students.  All easy to add.  If there were indicators I disagree with or don't want they were just as easy to delete.
• Import feature: I see two classrooms of students, I can easily import all my new indicators across classes, great for teachers wanting the same standard but assigned to multiple class lists of students. 
• Mobile: ClassDojo can now be used on a mobile device and you do not need an internet connection to use it.

As always nothing is perfect! As I start to use it this list my grow, but now there is one feature I would love to see added to the ClassDojo features.

What I would ask to be added:

• Multiple Teacher Access: I share my classroom with Special Education co-teachers, I have student teachers in the past, having access for all teachers to one class would be amazing.

Like any tool, its all in the way that you use it. 

Developing Student Activists

It's been a while since I last blogged! The end of the year is always a busy time and exciting time at my school. We embark on a unit of study that has a social justice slant and immerse our students in the topic. This year we decided to focus on nonviolent solutions to the problems in our school, community and city. My students first learned about the violence neighborhood by neighborhood. They then studied the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King JR. and Mahatma Gahndi to find ways to share solutions to violence through nonviolent means. They also learned about nonviolent approaches used in the past and bullying from our good friends at Burley School on our shared blog space soschicago2013.blogspot.com.

After all the learning it was time for some action. Our students decided to create posters using the app, Phoster. They also created slides on keynote about the neighborhood data they studied.

They also created a music video. As you can see below each student offered their personal solution to the violence issues facing our city. In the end we all want to be a part of solving the violence that plagues our city. I am incredibly proud of their work, their message and their commitment to find solutions. This is the final work I will share from my students this year and in my opinion it is their most powerful.

SOS Chicago from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.