Collaborative Projects Using Google Docs and Skype

Skype in the classroom

7th grade classes in Colorado, USA and El Salvador were working on collaborative presentations in Google Docs related to what a day looked like for kids in their respective countries.  Early in the project as students were editing their google docs excitement erupted. The other class was also online and working on the presentations.  Immediately Google Apps group chat windows began popping up and student exclamations could be heard all around the room. These students were no longer separated by thousands of miles.

We very quickly shifted the entire class into the center of the room and our partners in El Salvador did the same.  We got Skype up and running at both ends and within minutes were video conferencing with our partner school, and the excitement began to crescendo. We had not prepared in advance for this. It was a bit of a surprise, so there was no script, just kids engaging in discussions about each other, face to face with their partners in another country using Skype. Hobbies, favorite books, musicians and the weather were the main topics of discussion.

This impromptu skype lesson developed further as we began to prepare for our final conference with the schools, sharing our projects and asking questions of each others' culture etc...  Skype allowed us to bridge the distance gap and students soon realized that kids in other countries aren't so different from one another.  They enjoyed similar experiences in all avenues of life.

My collaborative partner is this project was Jennifer Garcia the Learning Resources Centre Coordinator from Academia Britanica Custaleca in El Salvador.  Together we coordinated this learning experience for our students and used skype to iron out the details.

Check out the student presentations on the ABC wiki.

Online Learning Environments - Today's Meet

Just yesterday I was listening to someone state their child uses Facebook to do their homework.  "What do you mean?" another parent asked.  The person responded, "The teacher assigns a worksheet and everyone gets together to post the answers on Facebook.  No need to copy papers in the morning anymore."

Students love collaboration.  It's easy to take the good from the above events and incorporate them into a meaningful learning experience using Today's Meet.  Today's Meet is a backchannel, a room created by someone wanting to encourage conversation about a particular topic.  Anyone with the link can join in on the discussion.  The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, provide feedback, and as in the case above, exchange answers.  Tapping into Backchannels lets presenters of any kind tap into the needs of the audience and engage them at the same time.


I used Today's Meet in class the other day as a sounding board for a lesson related to image manipulation related to iPhoto.  Students in the class enjoyed this means of asking and answering questions.  When I first introduced them to the concept of a backchannel silly, unrelated posts began appearing.  I encouraged this experimentation until the class had a handle on how the backchannel worked.  Students need play time with new tools.  The experimentation period provided an excellent opportunity for a quick lesson in digital citizenship, the need to be appropriate, and a reminder that everything written is visible to all.  There is no delete button.  I am convinced if we increase the opportunities for students to engage in appropriate, online conversations at school these behaviors will transfer to their personal life, especially when they understand the risks of poor choices.

 Students quickly became comfortable with the format of Today's Meet and we focused the conversation on the topic - iPhoto editing of images.  Some students actively participated in the backchannel while some checked in every so often to view the dialogue.   Overall, I was very pleased with the way students helped each other solve problems from across the room.  The backchannel gave everyone an equal voice in the classroom.



Mark Barnes at Learn It In 5 has created an excellent how-to video showing you how to use Today's Meet.




There are all sorts of ways to use Today's Meet in an educational setting.
First, create a room, then have students go to it, either in teams or individually.

Then:
Write a backwards story and then use the transcript mode to display the entire dialogue in reverse order (beginning to end.)
Mark Homework 
Check understanding during a lesson
Review game - students post answers
Write supporting sentences to an introductory sentence of a paragraph
Write key points of a particular topic
Brainstorming a particular topic
Warmup - Post open-ended questions to get students thinking on a subject
Editing Exercise - post a sentence that needs correcting

Just be cautious about the room name when you create the room and don't leave the room online for longer than two hours unless you plan on monitoring the room.  

7 Guidelines For Marketing Schools

Don Tapscott offers a Consumers 2.0 list at the end of chapter 7 in his book Grown Up Digital.   I started thinking about the school itself being a company and the students and parent community being the consumers.  The checklist at the end of the chapter is fitting if you change the last wording from Consumers 2.0:  Seven Guidelines For Marketing Professionals to Seven Guidelines for Marketing Schools.  As teachers I think we can, and should, apply these guidelines to our classrooms.  But it doesn't stop there.  These guidelines need to infuse all aspects of the school setting from the front office to the lunchroom to the recreation areas.  I'll post them for further discussion.

1.  Don't focus on your customers - engage them.  Turn them into prosumers of your goods and services.  Young people want to coinnovate with you.  Let them customize your value.  Open up your products and services.
Some teachers are already doing this with Web 2.0 tools and this is just the beginning.  If parents and students want to make the services better, let them.
2.  Don't create products and services - create consumer experiences.  Add value to your offerings to make them richer experiences and use the Web to help deliver your new value.
Richer experiences lead to greater investment.
3.  Radically reduce advertising in broadcast media.  Shift your "Marketing Communications Spending" to digital media.
And...encourage students and parents to have a hand in the creation of these communications.
4.  Develop a strategy to plug into N-Fluence networks.  The three keys to Net Gen marketing are word of mouth, word of mouth, and....you get the idea.
It's time schools had a presence on social media.  We're missing a great opportunity to connect with customers.
5.  Rethink your brand.  The brand is no longer just a promise, image, or gadget- for many companies it should become a relationship.
We've been promising educations and many believe schools are falling short.  When schools build relationships with their students and parents, learning and good education are easier to achieve.  Students are willing to go the extra mile for a teacher they trust and have a relationship with.
6.  Bake integrity into your corporate DNA and marketing campaigns.  Honesty, consideration, accountability, and transparency are the foundation of trust for this generation.  Be authentic in everything you do.
Share everything worth sharing via social media, newsletters.  Explanation and keeping students and parents informed on events and decisions helps build trust.
7.  Move the Net Generation into the center of your marketing campaigns.  They are important.  They influence all generations like never before.  The Four Ps - product, place, price, and promotion - are an inadequate framework to deal with the consumer of the future.  Replace them with the ABCDE of marketing:  anyplace, brand, communication, discovery, and experience.
We need to move towards bringing the ABCDE of marketing to our lessons so that students will walk away with incredible learning experiences.

It's time to start talking about how we can make these transitions in public education.

Emphasizing Reading and Non-Fiction Writing in Every Assessment

Part of our weekly PLC sessions in our district are spent discussing what needs to occur in our classrooms as we promote and increase rigor and opportunity.  Today I discuss point # 2.  

Effective teachers emphasize reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment.

I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not a big fan of scripted writing, specifically when students follow scripts to paragraph writing.  At the end of the day a teacher faces reading 20+ paragraphs, each having five sentences which includes a topic sentence, a red, a green, and a blue or what ever the color coding for these approaches may be.  The topics may be different but the structure is the same. I don't think they promote good writing though some might argue they promote standard writing. And though there is a great deal of pressure in schools for students to perform well on state assessments we can still promote a love for or an interest in writing by providing opportunity for writing in everything they do, including assessment.

But I'm off task.... already.

Many of my thoughts on writing come from Laura Robb's book Non-fiction Writing from the Inside Out

What is important to me about writing is this:

• Redefining non-fiction writing in a way that encourages creativity and relevance to both the reader and the writer.
• Encouraging understanding so that students understand that the "league of writers" is not exclusive but open to everyone
• Providing student examples as models of writing-in-process to encourage risk taking and exploration of unconventional approaches to writing. 

But, aside from my beliefs, the first question for me is:  What makes including reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment effective teaching?  

If I assume the answer - it does - to the above question is correct, that there is research to back the statement up, and I'm left to document how I do include reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment - well that's an easy task.  And though I do this because it jives with my beliefs and because it makes good pedagogical sense (incorporates critical thinking, etc...,) it leaves my curiosity to wonder how doing so makes me more or less effective?  

So I tried doing some research and have come up empty handed.  

If I am given the charge of incorporating reading and non-fiction writing into my teaching than I want to be sure what I am doing is being done well.

If you have resources to the question above, please forward them my way.

I Love Teaching

Nathan Russell

I love being a part of another's learning and for that I am truly grateful I am an educator.  There is something very special about being an instrumental part of someone reaching their potential, discovering something new, or seeing something in a different light for the first time.  Lucky for me I get to do this on a daily basis and though sometimes obstacles arise when I least expect them, they provide a challenge that sweetens the reward for the learner, and ultimately me, the teacher.

All this sentimental hogwash arises from my just spending an hour reading over the most recent blog posts of my students.  I had asked them to reflect on their learning related to a specific essential learning and to comment on what they had learned and what they were most proud of in their work.  I was astounded at their comments but mostly, they were astounded at their posts.  Some of those students were literally stunned when they hit the publish button and visited their site to view their work.  Stunned because never before had they written so much in such little time and had it published for others to view. Stunned because after taking the time to summarize a project they realized how much they had learned.  Stunned because they all saw ways to improve and when they had a free moment were returning to their work to add in those improvements.  Stunned because they were beginning to realize that perhaps learning and sharing that process wasn't so bad after all.  How could I not love being a part of that process?

Kids, teenagers, adults... I feel so fortunate to have the time to spend with them, to encourage them to craft their methods, to introduce new tools, to model learning in the 21st century, to share and be a part of the lifelong learning in each and everyone of their lives.  Lucky me.

PLC Discussion - In Pursuit of Academic Excellence

Part of our weekly PLC sessions in our district are spent discussing what needs to occur in our classrooms as we promote and increase rigor and opportunity.  Today we discussed point # 1.  

(This post is co-authored with Toni Olivieri-Barton)

Effective teachers know that they can influence student learning by a relentless pursuit of  academic excellence.
Researchers agree that the following are examples of what we can do in our classrooms in pursuit of academic excellence.

• Expectations are clear for students and parents.
• Prior to students beginning an assignment, teachers supply students with exemplars of high quality work that meet the performance standard or level.
• Students know what high-quality work should be like.
• Students revise their work based on meaningful feedback until they meet or exceed the performance standard or level.

So how are we doing?  This was the focus of today's discussion.

Expectations are clear for students and parents:  

• Both the MS and HS Tech teachers keep a wiki open to the public.  This wiki contains a link to parent information which includes Essential Learnings (ELs) and Indicators of Success (ISs) and the syllabus.
• Students are familiar with these ELs and ISs per discussions in class as well as classroom activities.  Students are asked to reflect on assignments related to these EL's and IS's.

Prior to students beginning an assignment, teachers supply students with exemplars of high quality work that meet the performance standard level.

• We are trying to include an exemplar and a grading checklist for all assignments.  This checklist is posted as a link on the wiki assignment page and provides students with a clear set of expectations and requirements for each assignment.  Individual assignments are to be reviewed first by the student prior to submitting on their blog for grading.  

Students know what high quality work looks like.

• Teacher/Student interaction provides direction toward achieving high quality work.  By continual monitoring of student progress we can transition them to high quality work.
• By providing and revisiting exemplars and comparing them to their work, students will begin to identify characteristics of high quality work and incorporate these into their own work.

Students revise their work based on meaningful feedback until they meet or exceed the performance standard or level.

• Because of the way we have changed our teaching (more emphasis on student centered learning) this opens up the opportunities to work one on one with students on a daily basis.  These interactions allow for personal, meaningful, feedback related to student work.

Curriculum is aligned with high standards

• Our curriculum is aligned with the most recent National Educational Technology Standards (NETS Standards.)  During our evaluation of standards our department crafted essential learnings and indicators of success that target the high standards of NETS.  These ELs and ISs provide a vision for what students know and are able to do.
• We are working to actively link every project or assessment we use back to our ELs.

Next week:  Effective teachers emphasize reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment.

More discussion to come.  We welcome any comments.

Letting Go of Being In Charge

I keep waiting for the dam to break on my latest venture in public education - allowing students to design their own learning.  Over the past few years I've read article after article about classrooms where kids choose and design their learning targets and goals in a subject they are interested in studying at a more advanced level.  And, I've always dismissed the idea because, frankly, the idea freaked me out.  I could envision a classroom of chaos, with students wandering aimlessly and essential learning targets being all but forgotten.

I've now made a 180 degree shift in my thinking and the results are incredible!

When my class roster included over 30 students who had already taken the grade level Tech classes previously offered I was forced to come up with something different to accommodate these students and provide them with meaningful learning experiences.  Enter a student designed independent study program.

To prepare for this journey a few tracks of independent studies were developed to serve as models for students.  Students could either design a course from these tracks or develop their own track built upon interest.  A set of guidelines and a schedule of events were written to provide daily and weekly structure. And then, I did what I never thought I would do in a classroom - I turned the students loose.

You can hear a pin drop on the side of the room where the independent study students are busy learning, thinking, and problem solving.  They tell me 90 minutes isn't enough time and that they can't wait to return.  7th and 8th grade students are reading non-fiction purposefully.  When an article isn't good enough they move on to find one that meets their needs.  Students write up and evaluate their projects upon completion based on the essential learnings that are met and then publish these write-ups on their blogs for teacher assessment.  They comment on each other's work, share resources, keep a daily "schedule of events" and encourage success in each other.  And then, they learn.

I know there's some tweaking that needs to happen on the Independent Study design and tracks and I'm open to suggestions.  I'm also thankful my coworker decided to venture into this area of learning with me and is offering Independent Study at the high school level.  Together, we brainstorm, offer each other support, and marvel at the intensity of student work.

I keep wondering, had I the guts to do this while teaching Physical Science, would I have seen the same results without a 1:1 computer setting that I am so fortunate to have now.  The bottom line is student designed learning is positive.  And, so far, the dam is holding.