EdTech & Innovation

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 21, 2016

How to Streamline Assignments for Teachers and Students

Educators – what is your system for assigning, grading, and giving feedback on work done in class and at home? Most contemporary educators have at least some digital elements involved in the process, whether they use an online planning application or just type up their notes on the computer.

How much time does your system actually take you to use? An hour per week? Two? More?

Teachers may not even realize how much time is poured into the logistics of planning, delivering, and grading assignments since it happens a little bit at a time. Those hours not only take away from free time but can impede what is actually dedicated to instruction in the classroom.

Technology is evolving with the power to change all of that, though. I recently had a chance to learn more about the Canary Learning system, a cloud service that allows teachers and students the ability to log in from any internet-connected device to see upcoming lessons, assignments, and due dates. Launched in early 2015, Canary Learning allows teachers to have all of their assignment details in one centralized spot – and allows them to grant access to students.

There are also native iOS and Chrome apps that allow educators and students to access a mobile-friendly version of the software. The best part? The individual teacher and student version are completely free. All of the synced changes are also available offline – which lends an equity of resources aspect for at-risk students who may not have the same internet access as peers.

So how does Canary Learning work exactly? First, it has two different experiences based on who is using it. A teacher, for example, has many more tools available for planning and grading while a student can only access his or her own classes and assignment details. The mobile versions of the software automatically sync anytime they are connected to Wi-Fi and the view is the same no matter what device is in use (mobile or PC). A teacher could create a lesson on his or her classroom desktop computer and then access it at home on a tablet and move items around. All of those changes save to the cloud and are visible on all devices immediately.

Teachers are shown a homework overview, like what you see below. Immediately they can see what homework they need to hand out, what homework they need to grade and what is overdue from students.

‘What we didn’t want was to make anything harder for kids or teachers,” Desiree Vogt, marketing communications for Canary Learning, said. “You don’t need to learn more than one version of this resource. It looks the same wherever you access it.”

For educators, the benefits of the Canary Learning cloud-based system go beyond the streamlining. There are collaborative elements that eliminate some steps when implemented among teachers. Teachers can share assignments with each other by granting access to each other. Each teacher can then tweak their own version of the assignment or exam without messing up the original. Those lesson materials are then saved in the system and can be tapped again the following year. Educators always have the option to edit the materials in their own profile meaning they never need to rewrite a class again.

“It’s sort of like reordering the scenes in a movie. Teachers can change the scenes individually, and move them around, without having to start over on the entire storyline,” Vogt said.

To sign up, visit Canarylearning.com to set up a free account. You can also use your Google sign-in to set it up more quickly. For questions about the system or on implementation for schools and districts, contact Desiree Vogt at [email protected]. Follow @CanaryLearning on Twitter.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch April 21, 2016

Virtual Laboratories – All Good?

It seems that there is nothing that cannot be done online anymore. On a personal level, we do everything from paying bills to scheduling entire vacations in a matter of minutes because of online access. Think about it for a moment: What daily online activities do you do today that were not an option 10 years ago? Five years ago? Last year?

Now consider classroom technology and how it is also evolving rapidly. Implementation of technology in the classroom goes beyond Google searches and reading apps. It stretches into every area of learning, including the sciences. Virtual laboratories are popping up in school districts and online learning curriculum across the country and making it easier and less expensive for students to do experiments remotely. Here are some of the benefits of virtual labs:

Flexible access. Perhaps the most often cited benefit of any online learning is that it can be done at the student’s convenience and when he or she learns best. The same is true of virtual laboratories if the experiments are on the student’s own time. In some cases, a virtual lab may be used during regular class time which narrows this benefit but still allows flexibility for the teacher who is not limited by using resources within a strict timeframe.

Instant feedback. Students can redo experiments on the spot while they are still in a critical thinking mode. All the results are recorded, making communication between teachers and students more efficient too. Experiments no longer have a “one chance” option and students can analyze what went wrong immediately and give it another shot.

Top-notch equipment. Schools and students that use virtual labs have access to cutting-edge technology when it comes to experimentation. Companies that build and maintain virtual labs must compete with each other to stay ahead of technology progression and that raises the quality of options for students. With a virtual lab, students do not have to settle on outdated, yet expensive, equipment because a school cannot afford to replace it consistently.

Lower costs. There is a fee associated with using virtual labs but the capital and maintenance costs are drastically reduced. Instead of one school footing the bill for resources, the cost is split among the clients of the particular virtual lab. This allows school to provide a better learning experience for students at a fraction of the cost.

Higher efficiency, lower costs, better equipment – is there a downside to virtual labs? I’d say it is too early to really see the effects, positive or negative, of science through virtual experimentation, but a few red flags pop into my own mind. I remember many of my in-class science experiments vividly. The sights, smells and sounds of biology and chemistry reactions at my own hand cemented the lessons into memory. It was real for me because it was right in front of my face and I was the one controlling the outcomes (or so I thought).

I wonder how much of that wonder is lost in a digital format? I can’t imagine the next generation of scientists will fall in love with their fields from watching experiments on a computer screen but I could be wrong. Even with the in-person science experimentation I did in school, I had no desire to enter those fields. So perhaps those with a predisposition for the true sciences will not be deterred by virtual experimentation. Perhaps even more students will find a love for those fields because digital lessons allow for more repetition and instant feedback.

Like all classroom technology, virtual labs need to be scrutinized to ensure that behind the flashy capabilities, their true purpose is being met. That will take some time and testing, of course, but I think it is possible with the right combination of in-person and remote lessons.

Do you use a virtual lab in your classroom? What do you think about its potential for learning?

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation April 21, 2016

Learning vs. Testing: Can Tech Bridge the Gap?

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest column by Edgar Wilson

Somewhere over the last few decades, teaching and testing developed an adversarial relationship in America’s classrooms.

Public policy debates swarm like bees over sticky questions on the issue of assessment:

How much is too much?

How can we evaluate teachers without standardized measures of outcomes?

Are students under too much pressure from high-stakes testing?

Are teachers “teaching to the test” at the expense of more comprehensive instruction?

The conflict and controversy is damaging to everyone involved in education—students, teachers, administrators, employers; everyone has an interest in seeing America’s schools be the best they can possibly be, but there is a lot of opinion and disagreement over what “best” actually looks like. In part, this is because we can’t even agree on how to measure quality.

Taking Advantage of the Digital Future

This may be another area where the field of education can learn something from the healthcare world.

In a presentation on the future of healthcare, Northeastern University professor Carl Nelson drew parallels between the field of management, and the evolution occurring in healthcare.

“We have the Big Data movement and data analytics not only providing appropriate diagnoses, but also guiding us all,” explained Nelson. “It can be used appropriately to guide decision-making, to make judgements.”

In essence, this means best practices growing naturally from more robust data.

Data acquisition in business, as well as in medicine, is occurring right at the point of implementation: wearable sensors, product-trackers, and communication systems all connected through the growing Internet of Things (IoT) enable data scientists to watch, live, as people and organizations operate. By aggregating social media statistics, watching how customers (and potential customers) interact with a brand, and what life events, interests, and behaviors correlate with consumer activities, businesses learn both about their customers, and themselves.

Examining all the data—passively generated and actively gathered—allows analysts to then identify shortcomings, inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and missed opportunities.

“We have moved greatly in the field of management from management based on intuition certainly, over a long period of time, to a management based on evidence (evidence-based management),” Nelson said. “The same thing is happening and has been happening in the field of medicine—so-called ‘evidence-based medicine’.”

In education, the challenge has been—and in many respects, continues to be—reliable sources of “evidence” on which to base changes to best practices. As in management and medicine, intuition and expertise has an important role in education: teachers often remark at the rewards in witnessing “Ah-ha” moments in the classroom. It isn’t something measured or captured in a discrete assessment; it is an organic thing, the look on a student’s face when the elements of a lesson all click into place, that whirring of mental machinery once the fuel of understanding is suddenly injected.

Where’s the Evidence?

The trappings of business and healthcare have been upgraded to support Big Data’s newly prominent role. Analysts review measures of existing behaviors, collected and recorded on the spot, and use them to develop new, evidence-based best practices.

Tablets, laptops, mobile devices and other digital tools and toys are destined for a prominent role in America’s classrooms; that much seems safe to assume given current trends.

And just as the Internet of Things, applied in clinical settings and connected to individual patients, doctors, and institutions is providing new troves of real-time data feeds and outcomes patterns, so too can applications be deployed in classrooms and attached to individual students to give instructors a new, closer, quantifiable look into what drives learning outcomes.

Mark Oronzio, CEO of Ideaphora, is one of the innovators working to bring formative assessment—measuring the learning process as it happens—to a place of greater prominence in the classroom.

“What we’re looking to do is provide a more automatic assessment of a knowledge map,” says Oronzio.

His company’s product is based on an existing concept, knowledge maps, as a way to graphically represent and record the learning process.

When learning is captured as it happens—rather than by a summative assessment, which is aimed at determine outcomes following instruction—real-time data can be provided to both students, teachers, and even data scientists looking to correlate instructional methods with on-the-ground results.

“Aside from it being what we call an Authentic Assessment—it’s not a multiple choice quiz, where I got tricked, or because I’m not a good writer I didn’t do well on the essay—this is making connections and defining connections,” Oronzio explains. “We think it would be a more accurate assessment; it is actually a picture of what’s going on, and the connections going on in the learner’s mind. The other cool thing about it is, it is not a discrete test, it wouldn’t have to be administered necessarily.”

This is the essence of competency-based education (CBE), an ongoing method of assessment that, at best, might help displace some of the emphasis on standardized testing and high-stakes tests.

Snapshots of Learning

Abundant data makes a compelling argument.

Adding the capability to watch, measure, and analyze instruction leaves less room for politics and opinion to dictate changes to curriculum and assessment standards. By combining the principles of CBE with a method of visualizing and recording the associated data, education has an opportunity to launch into the Big Data playground.

Just as in business and healthcare, the educational revolution comes not just from the devices themselves gaining widespread adoption, but from the programs and applications whose use they make possible. It is far from a nail in the coffin of standardized testing, but it does demonstrate how technology can combine with traditional instruction to provide new windows into the academic environment.

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Edgar Wilson is an Oregon native with a passion for cooking, trivia, and politics. He studied conflict resolution and international relations and has worked in industries ranging from international marketing to broadcast journalism. He is currently working as an independent analytical consultant. He can be reached via email here or on Twitter @EdgarTwilson.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 21, 2016

Without teacher guidance, all the tech in the world will be quite useless

Kentaro Toyama, University of Michigan

A couple of years ago, I taught an afterschool class at a Seattle nonprofit, the Technology Access Foundation (TAF), which provides STEM education (science, technology, engineering, math) to children from less-privileged backgrounds. My students were 8-11 years old, and it was the first time that I had taught elementary school students.

The curriculum devised by TAF’s staff involves hands-on interaction with laptops to explore programming, robotics and audio editing. With a PhD in computer science and a range of experience teaching older students, I thought it would be easy.

It was anything but.

To allow students a lot of interaction with their devices, I avoided lectures and instead had the students work on their own while I went from table to table to help them individually. My hope was to give the children a chance to learn at their own pace.

The students, however, had other ideas. The minute I turned my attention to one, the others started playing video games. However nutritious the syllabus, they were drawn to the cognitive candy of flashy graphics and sound effects.

The problem I faced at TAF was a small version of the conundrum that confronts parents and schools everywhere: how do we prepare children for a technological world while avoiding the distractions of technology?

Diversions in India

I first encountered this problem about a decade ago in India. At the time, I was the head of a research team at Microsoft Research in Bangalore. My group explored ways in which computing technology could support poor communities. Education was one of our focuses.

Many Indian government schools boasted computer labs, but given limited funds, they often had no more than five or six PCs. With class sizes of 40 or more, this inevitably meant that crowds of children would huddle around each machine, with most of them unable to access the mouse or keyboard.

We tried an innovation in which a single PC was outfitted with multiple mice, each with an attendant cursor on screen. This customized educational software, called MultiPoint, allowed several students to interact simultaneously.

MultiPoint was a hit with students. A controlled trial showed that for some exercises, students could learn as much when they were sitting five to a PC as when they had a PC all to themselves.

A Technology Access Foundation student sneaking in a video game during an afterschool programming class. Kentaro Toyama, CC BY

However, when we tried to take the idea to other schools, we were stymied.

One problem we often encountered was that teachers would be overwhelmed with the mechanics of the technology. Without a dedicated IT staff or significant training themselves, they’d spend the first 15-20 minutes of a 50-minute class fiddling with the PCs to set them up.

Whatever the technology’s potential, in actuality, time was diverted from learning.

Technology’s law of amplification

Similar things happened in dozens of other projects we ran in education, agriculture, healthcare and so on. Despite our best efforts at good design, computing technology did not, in and of itself, lower costs, improve pedagogy, or make organizations more efficient.

Teachers didn’t improve just by using digital content; administrators didn’t become better managers through clever gadgets; and budgets didn’t grow with the use of supposedly cost-saving machines.

Anurag Behar, CEO of a nonprofit we worked with, put it succinctly:

“At its best, the fascination with [digital technology] as a solution distracts from the real issues.”

Contrary to Silicon Valley hype, machines don’t add a fixed benefit wherever they’re used. Instead, technology amplifies underlying human forces – the unproductive ones as much as the beneficial ones. My book, Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology, explains in detail why technology by itself doesn’t solve deep social problems.

Other researchers have found a similar pattern. University of California, Irvine, researcher, Mark Warschauer, along with colleagues Michele Knobel and Leeann Stone, sums up this challenge in his paper:

Placing computers and internet connections in [low-income] schools, in and of itself, does little to address the serious educational challenges faced by these schools. To the extent that an emphasis on provision of equipment draws attention away from other important resources and interventions, such an emphasis can in fact be counterproductive.

In other words, while digital tools can augment the efforts of a well-run learning environment, they harm dysfunctional schools by distracting them from their goals.

The amplification principle also applies at the individual level.

Children have both a drive to learn and an affinity for quick rewards – digital aids amplify both. Few people would imagine that children left in a room with an encyclopedia and enticing toys (even educational ones) could, on their own, summit the intellectual mountain that is a K-12 education.

Handing students a computing device and expecting them to teach themselves is the virtual equivalent of being left in such a room. Rigorous research by economists Robert Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson finds that laptops provided free to students result in no educational gains of any kind.

In other words, while technology can amplify good pedagogy, there is no way around quality adult guidance for real learning.

People first, technology second

At TAF, I was lucky to have a good manager and several terrific teachers as role models. They recommended that I set some rules. For example, I asked students to close their screens any time I was doing a demonstration. I prohibited free time with the laptops if they came early, so that they wouldn’t start off with games. And anyone caught playing video games during class was sent to my manager for a few words of discipline.

Implementing these rules was a challenge at first, but young children are mercifully responsive to firm adult direction. Within a couple of classes, the students got used to the new class culture, and they started focusing on the learning activities.

What I learned was that even in a class about computers, maximizing screen time wasn’t the goal. The first requirement is the proper mindset – focused motivation in students and capable adult supervision.

If technology amplifies human forces, then a good outcome with technology requires that the right human forces be in place first.

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Kentaro Toyama is Associate Professor, Technology and Global Development at University of Michigan.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch April 19, 2016

Smart Seating Charts: The Key to Better Student Performance?

Teachers have long known that not every student is perfectly suited to traditional classroom setups, but with budgets tight, doling out individual attention is not always a reality. What if there was a way to make the traditional classroom setting work better for everyone though?

Research has found that classroom seating arrangements have a great impact on student performance and behavior. A study done by Angela Hammang at Montana State University found that when carefully crafted seating charts were in effect, teachers were twice as successful reaching students and that the attainment of lower ability students was doubled. In her research, Hammang experimented by moving students around in different seating charts to help them find their optimal place, in this case it was a biology classroom, based on learning styles and personalities. She also looked at groupings by gender and past grade performances. In all cases, the students performed at a higher level when the teacher assigned seating in a calculated manner. Students on the underachieving end of the spectrum showed the most improvement when classroom seating was developed with thought, and not simply assigned based on the alphabet or another random manner.

It’s clear that finding the right classroom seating assignment benefits students and educators, but how can it be accomplished without asking too much of the teacher’s time? How can the guesswork be removed?

A Simple Solution to Classroom Seating

Duncan Wilson has 16 years’ experience as a teacher who was looking for a way to streamline classroom practices to make the most of the time he spent with his students. He met software engineer Gintautas Sasnauskas a few years ago, and together they formed Edukey Education Ltd in 2011 to put the technology behind some of Wilson’s ideas. His first project? Software that guides educators through the process of assigning classroom seating based on reasonable conclusions about the students. ClassCharts is available to all teachers for free and allows for collaboration between classrooms and among teachers. It gives students the best chance at success, no matter what classroom they are in. Since the software became available in 2013, more than 70,000 teachers have signed up and more than 2.5 million students are in the system.

The software was developed based on the following truths that Wilson experienced in front of the blackboard:

Positive student behavior is necessary for an optimal classroom experience for the children in it.
Students’ personalities and how they interact with each other impacts their learning potential. Grouping students with complementary personalities leads to higher levels of achievement.
Tracking student behavior, and sharing that information with other educators and administrators, allows for better resources and intervention.
Teachers who are familiar with the names of all their students improve the self-esteem of those children and can better assign praise when it is due.

Aside from the “warm and fuzzy” feelings between teachers and students, and students and their peers, that intuitive seating charts provide, there are some practical implications too. There is more data than ever available on students and provided to educators – so much so that it can all be overwhelming and useless without the right implementation.

ClassCharts uses data rich information to present teachers with the key data that they need to make informed seating decisions and to tackle behavior issues. When integrated between classrooms, teachers can see how the behavior of their students ranks other places and together educators can create plans to guide students toward higher achievement. Schools that upgrade from the free version to the whole-school option give administrators and other school leaders the opportunity to see which students may need the help of extra learning resources. There are even options for informing parents of behavior issues, negative or positive, to keep them abreast to how their children are performing at school.

A New-Fashioned Approach

Most teachers have probably implemented seating charts at one point or another, and perhaps have put some of the ClassCharts concepts into play. It quickly becomes clear to a teacher when two particular students will not be productive near each other or when a certain student would fare better at the front of the classroom. The technology behind ClassCharts goes far beyond the seating basics though, and even calculates factors like students who receive free lunch, or have special education needs. The priorities of an individual school are also taken into consideration when ClassCharts creates a seating chart. All of the variables that a teacher would normally have to weigh are simply input and processed. Simple. And effective.

It’s interesting how something that seems as simple as a seating chart has such complicated implications for student achievement. With smart seating chart implementation, though, students can perform at a higher level and teachers can enjoy the good behavior that accompanies it.

Do you feel like seating charts positively or negatively impact your classrooms?

Take time to look at www.classcharts.com. I promise that you will not be disappointed.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch April 19, 2016

Early Learning, Environmental Lessons and STEM Prioritization: Trends in K-12 Education for 2014, Part III

This week I’ve been talking about the trends I foresee making a big impact in K-12 classrooms in 2014. Already I’ve looked at the BYOD movement, cloud technology, personalized learning, school branding and online learning as they relate to the coming year in K-12 education. Today I’m going to wrap up the series with three more trends on the 2014 horizon in classrooms across the country. I invite you to add in your thoughts and any other trends you feel should be on my list in the comment section.

My final three trends in K-12 education for 2014 are:

Early education emphasis: Optional preschool is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Research shows that students who start the formal education experience, even one year earlier than Kindergarten, fare better long term in their academic careers. Thirty eight states offer free, voluntary preschool learning programs and nearly 1.6 million low-income families receive assistance from the federal Child Care Development Fund to pursue early childhood education. That fund is just one portion of President Obama’s $75 billion plan to expand early childhood learning in order to give American student a stronger foundation going into Kindergarten. I expect that in the next decade, our terminology will change from K-12 to PK-12 when we talk about student benchmarks. This year, more states will lobby for pre-K funding and more families, from low- to high-income, will seek out early learning options to set their kids up for academic success.

Outdoor/environmental learning: In short, more schools are looking for ways to get students and teachers outside. We are in an era of experiential learning, so environmental education fits the bill for many students. Lessons in this field teach children an appreciation of the earth and of its resources that the human population is quickly depleting. A better, hands-on understanding of nature also helps with science comprehension and gives students practical learning experiences.
Research has also found that teaching outside, even for short stints, improves student attitudes, attendance and overall health. In many schools teachers have always had the freedom to take students outside if they deemed it lesson-appropriate. Look for more official outdoor-teaching policies in the coming year, though, that encourage teachers to incorporate outdoor and environmental learning in all subjects.

Strengthening STEM education: A greater focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning has been a “trend” for at least the better part of a decade. Still, there are so many areas for improvement of STEM learning processes in K-12 classrooms and 2014 will see strides toward better delivery of these subjects to all students. This is another area where President Obama has weighed in, calling for more emphasis on STEM learning that is reflected in federal education spending.

Specifically, teachers are looking for innovative ways to deliver STEM material (mobile technology is just one way, virtual science labs are another) and more stringent benchmarks are being created at the local, state and federal level. It is no longer enough for American students to just get by in comparison to each other in STEM subjects; global competition is proving that students in the U.S. need more focus in these subjects to lead the worldwide marketplace as adults. This year, expect teachers as early as pre-K to start putting as much emphasis on STEM learning as reading and letter formation.

There is so much to look forward to in the 2014 calendar year when it comes to K-12 classrooms. These trends are just a sampling of what educators will seek out to better prepare students for the rest of their academic careers and for lifelong success.

What trends for 2014 in K-12 education would you add to my list?

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Higher Education, Teachers April 15, 2016

Getting the most out of student blogging assignments

Guest Post by Elaine Hirsch

Examining Instructional Blogging Efforts and Lessons Learned.

As instructional blogging made its way into classrooms, student feedback has helped teachers structure methods to use blogs effectively, from elementary classrooms to online PhD programs. A mix of positive and negative feedback has helped illustrate how blogs are useful and how instructors can identify and improve upon challenges that might arise with their usage.

In his article, “Instructional Blogging: Promoting Interactivity, Student-Centered Learning, and Peer Input,” Stuart Glogoff relays student feedback after the use of instructional blogs in one of his classes. One student reported that reading about new subjects via the blogging format was enjoyable; she found that researching the topics to post on the class blog was helpful to her overall learning experience. The student, however, complained that, “the posts were few and far between.” She expressed further disappointment over the fact that none of her posts received comments, a complaint echoed amongst other students who took the survey

In order to make instructional blogging more effective, Glogoff gave blogging assignments that required each student to post entries and comment a certain number of times on the work of others. Afterward, students reported general increases in their sense of community. They also reported greater satisfaction with the overall blogging experience. Others said the entire blogging and peer-reviewing process not only helped them understand the course material but also provided a better avenue for helping each other learn through conversation.

Dr. John Freed, a professor at Brandman University, assigned students in his Communications 372 class the task of creating individual blogs accessible to all other participating students. Along with Dr. Freed, each student in the class subscribed to his or her classmates’ blogs. The class shared its ideas and participated in online discussions via the individual blogs. Students learned how to document and present their accomplishments, work electronically, and instantly place their achievements within a global context. In their end-of-term evaluations students reported the blogs did help them accomplish their course objectives.

According to Dr. Freed, many of his students expressed appreciation that the blogs not only helped them learn the class materials in a new way, but also they liked that the blogs made class materials more readily accessible. Some reported the blogs facilitated learning from one another, and helped them learn new electronic media skills that could be applied in other settings. The only negative feedback he received was from students previously inexperienced with blogging and who therefore had problems learning to navigate the interface, causing them to fall behind on their work.

In a study conducted by Michele D. Dickey of Miami University students who had participated in instructional blogging assignments reported a lessening sense of social isolation and an increase in social camaraderie. One student reported her interactions via blogging with other students in the class instilled the idea that she was part of a community composed of her classmates.

In the same study, one student revealed mixed feelings about assigned blogging. She reported feeling that the friendliness that took place during blog discussions wasn’t genuine. She also reported a sense of cronyism: other members of the blogging group had become exclusive friends and ignored her posts. As a result, she didn’t feel her attempts to start conversations were successful. She also expressed that the sense of community often expressed in the postings didn’t fairly represent the actual class, but instead represented the group dynamics of the online community.

Using blogging as an online educational workspace can expand the realm of learning beyond the physical constraints of the classroom. For many students, it provides a whole new method of learning. The crucial element for instructors is to listen carefully to how students express their experiences and to draw on this information to improve instructional blog use for future classes.

This post originally appeared on the Emerging EdTech page, and was republished with permission.

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Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 14, 2016

How to create a collaborative learning environment with technology

A guest post by Meghan Zigmund

After two years of having iPads in our first grade classroom, I’ve found a few strategies that work to set up a successful and collaborative learning environment. We use our set of iPads to connect, create, share, and much more. However, without a few expectations and procedures our room would be chaos! So here are a few strategies for successful collaboration that can be applied to just about any technology in your classroom.

1 – Visual Expectations

We use Popplet to set up expectations for iPad procedures. Students generate the expectations, with some teacher guidance to make sure a few key issues are included. Students usually end up thinking of things that I haven’t even considered! Next, we take pictures to represent each expectation, and add them to a web in Popplet. This is usually done on one iPad, displayed through an Apple TV so everyone can see what we’re creating. Then, we print it out and post it around the room. The student’s love seeing themselves, and the visual reminders are really effective. Having these expectations makes creating and collaborating together much smoother.

2 – Time to Explore

Our students arrive with all different types of experiences and ability levels for all subjects, including technology. However, there is no need to “teach” students the ins and outs of every app you want them to use all year. Don’t be afraid to just let them discover and explore, especially together. Demonstrate and app or two, show them something you think they’ll be excited about, or better yet, let a student demonstrate what they know. Then give them some time on their own to just play. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount of time, but you’d be amazed at what they discover. You don’t even have to have a device for each student. Let them share and learn from each other.

Students are naturally going to take some time to explore anyway, why not give them some time upfront? They’ll end up being more productive and creative in the end. Time to explore is one of the most powerful strategies I use all year. Be sure you also include time to share their experiences after exploration. It’s well worth it!

3 – Community of Experts

Teachers can’t be the only expert anymore. We must foster a community of experts in our classrooms. Doing this helps students to feel empowered, and encourages ownership in learning. Who doesn’t want to feel like an expert at something? As students explore and discover we add their name and skill to our “Expert List”. If you’re looking for someone to help you record in ChatterPix, edit your photo, or find just the right image in Haiku Deck, then we have an expert for you! No need to ask the teacher, just check out who can help.

We do, however, enforce the rule above. Even though a student might be getting some help, I still want them experiencing the process and learning.

4 – Tweets

Oh, the amazing power of Twitter. If you don’t have a class account yet, get one A.S.A.P. Besides the amazing power to connect, learn and collaborate with others around the globe, Twitter encourages our class to work together. When we post class Tweets, everyone works together to decide what to post, helps edit, and feels ownership in what we’ve shared. There is almost always a discussion about what we want to share, and why.

To help my young learners become ready to Tweet their projects and thinking, we”ll start our year off having a “Tweeter of the Day” so that students gain experience and guide each other on what it means to Tweet and be a responsible, respectful citizen. We’ll collaborate on a set of visual rules to help, and learn to work together as a community in the process.

I’m so excited to begin building a new collaborative community of learners in just a few short weeks. What steps will you take to foster a collaborative learning environment this year?

This post originally appeared on Fractus Learning and zigzagstech, and was republished here with permission.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

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Meghan is a first grade teacher with a passion for inspiring student creativity and deepening their thinking through technology. She loves learning and creating with her students and hopes to inspire others to do the same.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 14, 2016

It’s ok to date new technology, you don’t have to marry it!

@GwynethJones – The Daring Librarian

Education Trends-A-Go-Go

It’s SO easy to get overwhelmed with all the new education tech and trends going on in the world.
1:1
Flipping
Makerspace
Genius Hour
Common Core
Mobile Learning
Design Thinking
Google Classroom
Brain Based Learning
Project Based Learning
Learning Management Systems
Transformative Brain Based Learning Spaces

Sheesh….I could go on! It’s EXHAUSTING!

Ed Tech Relationship Anxiety

Then….there’s all the new technology that you have to get, use, and master! Don’t have an unlimited budget or a super generous PTA? OK, now you have to get funding from a place like Donor’s Choose. (Which is totally, doable! But does take a wee bit of effort) Once it was Smart Boards now it’s Tablets and 3D printers.

Then what? What happens when you run out of money to buy the supplies? OMGosh, again. Exhausting!

Take a Deep Breath, It’s OK!

But I’m here to tell you…It’s OK. You don’t have to try to be the expert at everything. You don’t have to totally flip your classroom making videos yourself to take the place of daily instruction. You can start by sourcing some great videos already created and add them to your lesson plan. From places like YouTube, Schooltube, & Flocabulary you can add that rich Remix Mash-Up without hours of video editing. I call it the partial flip – having augmented information available for tutorial or reinforcement and to spark student engagement. My Lesson Path (formerly Mentor Mob) on Big Rich Mt. Olympus is an example of this. Curated rather than created content.

Baby Stepping to Change OR Alternative Ideas to Transformation

Instead of pitching out all of your furniture to create a brain based & friendly learning classroom why not just buy a few bean bag chairs for $39.99 on Amazon to create a comfy reading nook or discussion circle!

Instead of building a whole lego wall or a Makerspace center spending thousands of dollars with expensive equipment. Why not start small and create a Makerspace cart that can roll around the school with bins of Legos, patterned duck tape rolls for crafting, and a couple Makey Makey kits? See below for more ideas & resources.

And if it doesn’t catch on, you lose funding, replacement materials gets to be too much, or it just flops? You haven’t invested all that much! But most likely you will love it, your kiddos will go crazy over it, the parents and admin will be impressed and you will want to expand it. Either way – you win! But it’s OK to start small & grow!

Instead of stressing about not having tablets to utilize mobile media in the classroom, use your own iPad or smart phone and film Vine video stop action animation book trailers, science experiments, art talks, or social studies history snippets!

Or spark the engagement of Twitter and the ease of Google forms to have the kiddos write a #StoryIn140, do Twitter style book reviews or QR Code Scavenger Hunts!

OR use QR Codes around the school with Loo Reviews & Pocket videos or 10 Things to do with QR Codes at Back to School Night! It’s not the tool it’s how you use it!

It’s OK to date new technology (or teaching inovation) you don’t have to marry it!

That’s right, the coolest ed tech trends you’ve heard about at conferences, on Twitter, or during a webinar, you know, the ones that may have also been leaving you awake at night feeling stressed out or inadequate for not jumping in with both feet? Yeah, those. They don’t have to be all done at once! You don’t have to overhaul your life, you can just adapt! You can simply “pilot” and “beta test” new technologies and new teaching ideas on a small scale. Then, when you find one you like – you can go steady. Date a while. See how it goes.
When you’re ready to commit, you’ll know it!

New Tool Trauma
You also don’t have to get each and every new tech tool that comes out. Remember the Laser Disc? Buy one for yourself maybe and get good at it. Bring it to school and try it with small groups. My school isn’t a 1:1 or total BYOD school or iPad school. Some of the coolest things I did with QR codes and mobile media in the early days (5 years ago) was with 2 iPod Touch Gen 4’s, my own smart phone, & my first iPad. It’s NOT what you have, it’s the creativity of how you use it. It’s the innovation of teaching and not the tool. Tools come and go, the daring spirit to try new things keeps moving on!

Social Media Stress?

Twitter
Flickr
Vine
YouTube
Blogger
Edublogs
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook
SnapChat
There’s a LOT of Social Media outlets that are out there – which ones should you join? Which ones should you just be registered to and which should you be actively involved with? Sure, I’ve blogged about Transparency is the New Black and one of my missions is for all educators to model and create a positive web presence so that they become more visible (and less vulnerable) in their schools and in the communities. But gee whiz, there are only so many hours in the day, right?

If you’re a long time reader or follower then you may know that Twitter and Scoopit are my preferred social media tools, that I broke up with Facebook years ago, and that I’m committed to this blog that you’re reading now. So, what’s your outlet of choice? Years ago (2008) I created a couple graphics to illustrate that life...err Social Media is less like a fancy Table d’hôte menu and more like a Dim Sum experience…or Tapas!

You can just just try small plate here and there – like it? Get another! Not to your taste? Push it aside and move on.

Funny how the plates have changed over the years! Second Life and Nings are out and Instagram and Vine are in!

Here’s what social media outlets & tools I am active on, followed by those that I have a presence but not a penchant.

The first list means that I’m here at least once a week – if not more. As a commitment to my profession, I have foregone a personal social media and just maintain a professional one.
That was my choice. I have a formula.
Listed in order of my preference, time, & devotion. Like, we’re in love and dating steady, OK?

Twitter
Wikispaces (Ex: 1, 2, 3, 4)
Flickr
————–Just starting out? Stop here!————–
Ready for more? Consider Adding these!

Blogger – Professional blog
Edublog – School / Professional blog
Scoopit – Curation Tool
Vine (Instant street cred w/ kiddos – Lesson Idea)
Instagram (Why? Read more!)
Slideshare
YouTube
Skype

I’m sorta here, I filled out a profile, but I don’t visit very often. It’s more to point you to where I really am. Like, we’re friends, nothing too serious.

LinkedIn – (Whatever you do, fill out the profile & add a picture! Be where your parents are, because you’re a professional, too!)
Google+
Pinterest

I tried it, I don’t like it, You can’t make me do it! Don’t poke me!

Facebook
Snapchat

Now it’s YOUR turn! What social media outlets can’t you live without? What did I miss? Disagree? Bring it on! Agree? I’d LOVE to hear it! What new trends do you love, hate, & want to marry?

This post originally appeared on The Daring Librarian blog, and was republished with permission.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

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Gwyneth A. Jones, aka The Daring Librarian, is a blogger, a Tweeter, an international Ed Tech speaker, trope and meme archivist, creator of content, a citizen of advocacy, and a resident of social media. Gwyneth is a Google Certified Teacher (#GTAWA11), and the author of the award winning The Daring Librarian blog. In recognition of being a change agent in her field, Ms. Jones was named an Innovator and a Mover & Shaker by Library Journal Magazine in 2011, a Gale/Cengage New Leader 2010, and the Best of the Best and a Visionary Leader by Teacher Librarian Magazine in 2012. She was honored to have served on the 2011-2014 ISTE Board of Directors representing all PK-12 educators and school librarians. Her work & writings have been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers April 13, 2016

Enriching history lessons with visualizations

A guest post by Patrick R. Potyondy

Let’s face it: Harry Potter is awesome. But my major sticking point, the thing that just nettles me each and every time I revisit the books (and I revisit them more often than I’d like to admit), is when Hermione and the gang visit “History of Magic.” Their “teacher” (scare quotes intentional) is so boring, he’s actually dead. He didn’t even notice he died! And he just continues to drone on and on and on and, well, you get the idea.

He represents, for better or worse, the lecture method of instruction. The students are vessels; his job is to fill them up with “knowledge.” Perhaps J.K. Rowling had such a teacher in her primary school days. Perhaps she just thought he was a fun character to write. In any case, we must continue to move beyond the lecture method of teaching history. We must embrace not just digital tools but visualizations to make students engaged.

There is little doubt that writing still dominates academic history. Graduate students must write theses and dissertations primarily presented in text format. Pictures, maps, and other visualizations can certainly be part of the whole, but these are peripheral characters to the star of the play—an original amount of text. Text is great as far as it goes. And as far as it goes is too often a miniscule number of other academic specialists.

But the visual is a different medium from text. And it’s one we’re increasingly working with. David Staley points out as much in Computers, Visualization, and History. Digital visualization, he writes, can be a “main carrier of the meaningful information.”

Visualizations, like maps, communicate information differently—and often more effectively—than text, as seen in this classic example: Harry Beck’s 1933 London Underground map.]

The public—and here I include students in this group—seem to wish to find that meaning and information through historical visualizations as much as, even more so, than text alone. Twitter accounts featuring “history in pictures” amass millions of followers. Slate’s popular “Vault” blog features visuals of archival finds that are a mix of the visual and textual. While scholarly historians might decry such fads, is it useful to simply lambast them, or is it more constructive to meet the public halfway, to help provide meaning and context?

A skilled teacher can make her or his lecture on the cruelties of enslavement riveting, but what would a narrative look like that presented itself primarily through pictures, maps, and graphs look like? It is one thing to stoically describe a whipping or lynching, quite another to view photographs of these events. If one aim of studying history is to better understand humanity, we’re only providing a partial view without engaging visualizations to their fullest and expanding extent.

Luckily for teachers, public digital historians have produced (and continue to) a number of excellent visual tools that students can engage with. One of my all-time favorite projects is “Hollow: An Interactive Documentary” found at http://hollowdocumentary.com/. While the phrase can be used too often, this truly is a tour de force. It is interactive and utilizes not only visuals but audio, too. It is heartbreaking yet hopeful. Through it, we connect with the people and their stories. We empathize. We understand. It presents a large amount of factual information, but in an engaging and thoughtful way.

An image from the Hollow: An Interactive Documentary

Another project I love—a book in fact—that illustrates the power of visual history is Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s Cartographies of Time. Asking “What does history look like?” the authors trace graphic representations of history from the 15^th century forward. They remind us that only recently have academics made history into a primarily textual discipline.

Visuals have long incorporated circles and tress (and text) to depict time and space as seen here in Girolamo’s Andrea Martignoni’s “Historical map of Italy” (Spiegazione della carta istorica dell’Italia), 1721. As seen in Cartographies of Time.

Students can get in on the act, too, as active participants and not only as more passive viewers. The research paper has long been a staple of high school and college history courses. It teaches skills worth knowing. But why not add in an assignment around presenting a narrative and argument principally through visual materials? Students could craft their own projects using primary and secondary sources, and thus develop visual, organizational, research, and argumentative skills all at once.

First, an example of the type of PowerPoint slide seen all too often in teaching. Can it capture the visual reality of enslavement—the effects of whipping or the gendered violence as seen in 12 Years a Slave?

The iMovie app is only one application of many that can be used by history classes to produce projects (WeVideo and Meograph are just two others). As part of a research project (not just a paper), students can utilize a number of online archival sources and libraries for primary source material as they craft historical narratives that utilize textual, audio, and visual elements. For an example of what iMovie can do, just check out some awesome projects which were produced by an undergraduate U.S. history course at Ohio State University as taught by Professor Lilia Fernandez.

Hopefully it’s been apparent that I’m not saying visuals should replace text. Books remain magical things in and of themselves, often without incorporating hardly any visuals at all. I only suggest that maybe it’s time we nudge text a little further to one side, to share the stage with pictures, graphs, maps, film, graphic novels, and any other number of visualizations.

And after all, there’s no reason that Rowling couldn’t have had her history professor spice things up a bit for those poor Hogwarts students. Just think of the visualizations one could do with magic!

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

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Patrick R. Potyondy is a history PhD candidate and graduate associate at The Ohio State University with interests in Public and Digital Visual History, Modern US History, the History and Foundations of Education, Early American History, and the intersections of race, ethnicity, and nation. He has also published the book chapter “Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, Educational Parks, and the Limits of Reform.”

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