TXSTEMLAB  VISITS JACK C BINION ELEMENTARY

One of the best things you can do or be is an advocate for all children. Recently, I got the opportunity to do this by signing my school up for a mobile STEM LAB visit.  I'm not an administrator or a lead teacher, but I am an educator with a heart for all students. Opportunities are what our students sometimes lack when enrolled in a Title I school.  How can you position yourself to be an advocate?  

Here is what I did to make this happen.  First, go to the TEA website and signup for Texas Education Agency updates. https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/TXTEA/subscriber/new 

Simply put in your email and subscribe to your choice of education topics.  There are about 60 different topic-specific subscriptions available. For example, my subscriptions include Science, Math, and Bilingual education.  It was one of these science subscription updates that brought me the opportunity to sign up for the TXSTEMLAB. I signed up and the rest is history. 

So what are you waiting for? Go signup right now, if opportunity doesn't knock, build a door! 

 "Finish This Comic!" Comics

https://jarrettlerner.com/activities/ A video explaining the resource and how I use it in my classroom. Need variety in how you assess? Do you wish to have student-to-content, student-to-student, and student to teacher connections?

Flipgrid Example from video

PBWorks

I started my PBWorks adventure by creating an education account since I had never participated in a Wiki before. http://arainey.pbworks.com/. I will say that at first, I did not understand what I was looking at or how I could use this in my classroom. Especially in a blended learning environment or remote instruction. Then I found Wikis in Education: How Wikis are Being Used in the Classroom.

The answer that I have been looking for on how to create a collaborative learning environment during this time of social distancing and remote learning fell into my lap. At first, I thought I would give my students a google doc, google slide or even google sites to collaborate in. Do you know what the greatest affordance of a Wiki like PBWorks is? Anyone with the link can add, delete, or modify the content (collaborate). It doesn’t matter where you are or your device, no email is needed or district portal for login. Simply the link can get you into a space where you can create and contribute. Often times our students consume and are not given opportunities to create. 

There have been missed opportunities in my math and science classes because of time constraints. I would love to close every single lesson with an opportunity for my students to write and share their learning. PBWorks affords this opportunity. If you really want to know that a student understood the lesson objective get them to write a how-to, why, or compare and contrast prompt. For example, say the lesson objective is 4.4(A)add and subtract whole numbers and decimals to the hundredths place using the standard algorithm. The activities in the classroom would include a mini-lesson, group practice - agreeing or disagreeing on a word problem’s answer, partner practice - selecting items from a menu and tallying the cost, and finally independent practice. - a google form multiple-choice assessment.  Outside of the classroom students would enter the PBWorks workspace and contribute to a collaborative assignment. A writing activity where they could explain,  How do you add or subtract whole numbers and decimals to the hundredths place using the standard algorithm? The forum is set up so that not everyone repeats the same thing, but adds to that question. They could add their own example or their own connection from the activities in the classroom. All students contribute collectively to answering the question. One cohesive answer. This collaborative and constructivist method could fill in that final learning gap for anyone who was still struggling to answer the question.  I would at the end of everyone’s contribution add my thoughts as well. It would remain in that space for review and parents to see. Being able to contribute your thoughts and connections to a subject is a much-needed skill if you are going to be part of any team in the real world. 

Khan Academy

Are you a math teacher? Will you be delivering instruction online for the 2020-2021 school year? Were you dissatisfied with your online instructional delivery or student engagement in that delivery during the Spring of 2020? If you answered yes to any of the above Khan Academy needs to be part of your repertoire. 

With a quick search on any math topic, you can find instructional videos. They range from 2 to 10 minutes, depending on whether the content is an introduction or demonstration. You can search by grade level or specific content. For example, I searched “decimals” and immediately received more than 50 videos. The beauty of the Khan Academy website is that you can also be very specific with the search parameters. I searched “adding decimals” and similarly received just as many search results. Khan Academy offers videos, articles, exercises, and programs on many subjects and grade levels.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel if you can find an already made instructional video to offer your students. For the coming school year 2020-2021, the affordance would be in offering educators time to create dynamic flipped lessons or all online lessons. With an instructional video already available, educators can then concentrate on collaborative projects to create for students. One of the learning problems of the Spring of 2020 that I and many of my colleagues experienced was students not watching the videos then engaging with the activities and not being successful. Khan Academy offers fantastic videos, but how can we make sure on an online platform that elementary students are actually engaging with them? This year I am combining my online math instruction with Edpuzzle.

 For example, a lesson on adding and subtracting decimals would begin with a Khan Academy decimal video made interactive with Edpuzzle, a web 2.0 tool.  I can take the Khan Academy adding and subtracting video and create certain stops within it asking students to answer questions. The questions can be open-ended or multiple-choice. Khan Academy/Edpuzzle Adding Decimals VideoAssigning the video in this way would solve the problem of students skipping through or not fully focusing on the mini-lesson video assigned. Then, the students could complete an activity where they order from a menu and add up the total check. This could be collaborative with an assigned google document for 2 to 4 students who could pretend to go to lunch and order. Going Out To Eat Activity Online learning can be a different experience for both educators and students thanks to Khan Academy and Edpuzzle. 

 

Edmodo vs Canvas

Edmodo

In a world of Course Management Systems or Learning Management Systems, what platform is the best for your students? Now isn’t that the question to answer in this pandemic of 2020? My experience with Edmodo and Canvas is very minimal. In fact, Edmodo is a CMS my children used in High School and Canvas is the LMS that I will be using extensively this coming school year. As I have researched between the two many similar features can be highlighted. For example, Teacher communities are rich in both. These are excellent resources for ready-made lessons shared by other members in different content areas. These can be adapted as is or tweaked to meet your specific needs. This is a key affordance that supports teaching. Although you may not know the teacher that created the lesson or idea, they were willing to collaborate with you. This is a great way to keep your ideas fresh and to contribute any projects that may have worked great in your classroom too. Both provide the organization of materials for both students and teachers. Teachers can upload anchor charts, videos, or announcements in a specific location to be accessed at any point in time in the future. However, Canvas is neater in appearance while Edmodo can get clustered if not planned correctly. This is a key affordance to remember in learning. A place where students can return for materials helps those less organized to continue to be successful. Another similarity is that they both offer auto-grade within the system. With Canvas, there is an additional cost to have it connect to your district’s grading system. Additionally, within Canvas rubrics can be created for assignments. The rubrics are affordances to both teachers and learners in setting expectations. Grading that has to be done for every student becomes easier and students have a guide in completing assignments. Edmodo doesn’t offer this benefit but it does offer snapshot an easy way to assign quizzes that help drive differentiated instruction per student. Polls are also offered in Edmodo which could be easily used to manage attendance or even lunch count. Although Edmodo has a social media look that students may be attracted to(if they think Facebook is cool, most students over 3rd grade may not) it does lack in the area of ease of upload. The main landing page has everything on it and it takes quite a while to load especially with slow internet bandwidths. This is one of the ways Canvas is superior.

In terms of the TPACK model, Canvas is the technology that will allow a constructivist pedagogical approach to learning in all content areas.  The most important way that Canvas usurps Edmodo is in the area of integration of apps. The affordance of not having to send students outside of the LMS is time-saving. Whenever you can prevent additionally clicks it keeps students focused on the current task. It keeps activities interactive and on-demand. Several integrative applications like FlipGrid and Pear Deck can be embedded directly into a page via HTML allowing students to create authentic responses. YouTube videos embedded in safe mode to prevent ads keep learning learner-centered. Hyperdocs from google drive provides the ability for learner-constructed choice learning. Additionally, Canvas allows students to record audio and video directly within the LMS as a way to respond to any activity. This is a great benefit to students working on language objectives. Immersive Reader is also automatically available on all pages, affording students to increase reading comprehension with text-to-speech read to them. They are able to change the language as needed. Not having to translate directions saves teacher time in lesson planning and empowers students.

I can easily see as a math teacher how I could review a lesson in place value in 4th grade. I would create my mini-lesson explaining vocabulary such as add, subtract, decimal point, whole numbers, expanded notation, word form, and the standard algorithm. Within Canvas, I can create an audio file saying the words and asking students as part of the assignment to record themselves doing the same. In the videos, I could use Total Physical response movements to teach the terms as well as pictures. I could see screencasting the flow of the vocabulary and how it all fits into the puzzle of Place Value. I can then assign them to create the same and also include an additional recording of them explaining the academic words with their drawings. Additionally, an app such as Edpuzzle can be used to assure students are interacting with the videos and not just clicking and letting it play into thin air. Accountability in virtual learning as well as my voice and or face present every day. Scaffolding the learning as Vygotsky's theory suggests and then creating a symbolic representation for terms as Bruner advocated, especially for the 4th grade age of 7 & 8. I like this because it helps with the aligned curriculum we have throughout our districts.

Try Canvas for yourself.

Touring Google Apps- Google Classroom, Google Tour Builder, Google Sites

Ms. Rainey's Google Classroom

Google Classroom

is a fantastic course management system. Although I have been using it now in a blended learning format for 4 years, it was spring 2020 that I was able to see exactly what it could do as it was my selected choice for providing online math and science instruction to my 5th-grade bilingual students. GC easily afforded a cognitive and constructivist learning theory to be applied as well as the ability to incorporate several technology applications. For example, A science lesson involving vocabulary words such as organism, population, community, ecosystem, and biome was introduced by Bandura’s theory of modeling of each word through a Screencastify video and an anchor chart I created for them. Using Blooms Taxonomy they showed an understanding of the words by completing interactive tasks in Stemscopes. Finally, they were able to analyze images and synthesize the meaning of the words by creating an AdobeSpark multimedia presentation. Example of Adobe spark video

Feasibility & potential unintended effects I use Vygotsky’s theory of the MKO in the classroom a lot, but I was not able to make it come alive in online learning.  I do see GC as a hindrance to that because of its limitations within the management system. Too often any technology app that I needed to incorporate had to be logged on to separately outside of the system. That is just one too many clicks for a student to have to make in learning. It should be much more streamlined and compatible or there is a danger of students running into upload and download issues if their wifi isn’t strong enough to handle multiple tabs and constant logging into other platforms. Grading is easy if you use google forms but if you are a reading teacher it could be tedious. One thing that GC could add within the system is rubrics to help with grading. 

Overall, GC can deliver interactive, real-time, on-demand, learner-centered, authentic, and learner-constructed moments. GC founders have also been great listeners to educators and have already made changes that incorporate even more interactive options such as audio capabilities, google meet synchronous abilities, and they are working on the hindrance of making other applications more compatible.

Google Tour Builder I have used many of the google apps but this one piqued my interest and I was not disappointed in taking a tour to learn more. I have been looking for ways to make my classroom more culturally responsive as well as a way to incorporate some social-emotional learning and this app is perfect for both. It was initially created for military service members so they could plot out all the locations they had served. Within the presentation, it would show the location on a map and the soldier could add a paragraph with personal memories and insights. Pictures can be uploaded as well as web links to articles, more images or websites that tell more of the story. It is a virtual historical tour on steroids. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs explains the need for students to feel accepted and Erickson’s stages of psychological development say that 5th graders at ages 9 to 11 start to compare themselves to their classmates. In a 5th grade bilingual classroom in matters where you were born but also where your parents were born. 

A Google Tour Builder presentation would be a great way to show where we all come from to see our differences and similarities. I created my own Google Tour Builder presentation for the 1st day of school with several objectives in mind. My tour is simply to introduce my self and my culture. Meet Your Teacher  I want them to create one too. I want to use Gagne’s 9 levels of learning because I can see this app being used in future science and reading research presentations. In science, they can research ecosystems and their populations. Their paragraph presentations can come to life by them using Google Tour to drop markers and show these places on our planet in 2d or 3d format or even street or walking view. The same with an analysis or summary of a book. They can plot the settings at different chapters of the book as they talk about the main characters, problem, and solution. Research on the locations a book takes place can give them insight into the author’s purpose. More Integration Ideas

Google Tour Builder is interactive, learner-centered, and authentic. As I completed my tour I called my parents and asked about their childhood homes and any special memories they had. It was great to research pictures, websites, and articles about those places to include in the tour. It created a closer connection for me to my heritage and culture and I want this to be the case for my bilingual students as we share and learn who we are with each other.

Google Sites affords a very simple platform in which to build a website.  I would compare it to Wix or Weebly. Designing the website is made easy by adding “gadgets” like photos, texts, or charts. The themes you can choose from makes it an easy way to make it look like you spent days coding HTML except you don’t have to know anything about that.  This is a great technology tool that can support collaboration in the classroom. Vygotsky’s theory of learning calls for the more knowledgeable other as well as scaffolding and that would be great pedagogy to support language objectives of writing, speaking, and reading in my bilingual classroom. The assignment could be culturally responsive as well and it could start on the first day of school. Students grouped by four initially by something they have in common then partnered by high strength to low strength in the English language would interview each other and be tasked with keeping a classroom website. The website would be a digital “This Is Us” or “Nuestra Familia”. A page would be dedicated to each student where someone else would be in charge of writing in the details after conducting an interview. The students could come up with questions that help us know about them and their heritage. Here students would support each other in their Spanish/English speaking and writing skills. This is a fun get to know you activity and throughout the year we can continue to add more to each students page. Example of Class Website

Reflection on Web 2.0 Tools

If this class has taught me anything it is the type of affordances I will look for before integrating new technologies into my instruction. 

Accessibility, Usability, Creativity, Transformation, Pedagogical Relevance

If it isn’t accessible to all then I must keep looking. Some circumstances that may cause this are cost and device availability. Another is how easy it is to use. It is always great when Web 2.0 tools integrate well together and they have the safety of the users in mind. Also, it is good to remember that free doesn’t always mean you won’t pay in some way. For example, a lot of free technologies gather data on its users and sell it. Students should be empowered to create and transform tasks into a visual of their learning. Finally, does it support educators in designing experiences for students? Content and objectives should be engineered in such a way that it adds to the love of learning and meets student’s needs promptly. 

Web 2.0 Tools 

Because your students deserve to create, think and analyze!