Growth Plan

Access my EDU614 Growth Plan here.

WAP 8 - Classroom Management: Online Stopwatch

At first, I thought exploring “classroom management” in a technology course meant we would be investigating apps to track and reward good behavior or apps to make and use behavior charts. This does not sit well with me, because I am not convinced of the value of overtly rewarding good behavior. I feel it undermines intrinsic motivation to do the right thing.

But as a whole, classroom management includes the domains of space, time, routines, attention, momentum and discipline. Discipline only one small piece of that puzzle, so I chose to look at apps that would help me with the other areas, thinking that better routines and use of time would increase attention and hold on to momentum, especially with this year’s class that is particularly full of energy.

They all work at different paces, so I often lose students when they finish at different times. By making them more aware of how much time is allotted for a task and how much time is left to complete that task, hopefully they can learn to adjust their pace accordingly.

We have tried using a kitchen timer for this purpose by announcing how long they have to work on a project, and telling them they have until the timer rings to finish. However, no one can see the timer once it is set, and when the alarm sounds it sets off a chorus of screaming - totally breaking up our momentum.

I’ve known for a while that a large visual timer would help, but have never taken the time to investigate them until now. In this course, I have heard much about Children’s Countdown Timer from my colleagues and it looks perfect, but it is for android or ipad/iphone devices and I want a PC or web-based solution that I can easily project on my smartboard. After trying out a few, I found Online Stopwatch which is easy to set up, very customizable, and has a wide variety of visual representations for the passage of time.

To start, though, I will use the simple clock shape because I like how the sweeping hand shows how much time has elapsed, and students can easily see what percentage of the time is left.  A five-minute timer looks like this after 4 minutes have gone by:

The other representations, though fun, are much more subtle in their illustration of time passing, so I will stick with the clock or the egg-timer for now.  The others might be too fun to watch, and I certainly don't need any more possible distractions.

An added bonus I found with this application is the random name picker capability. This is a help I didn't even know I needed, but when I saw it I immediately thought of all the times multiple children asked me to do something and I am put in the position of choosing.  This never feels fair to anyone.  I entered my list of students, bookmarked the page, and next time this happens, I will spin the virtual wheel to choose.

I think the addition of Online Stopwatch capabilities to my classroom routines will be very beneficial to our classroom management strategies.

WAP 7 - Assistive Technology: Boardmaker

In our classroom this year, we do not really have any children with special needs that would require specialized assistive technology. What we do have, though, are a number of dual language learners, and also young children for whom social skills are not intuitive. They all need to be taught. As I have discovered in the field of education, many things that were developed for children with special needs are often very helpful for all children in general. Since I have heard a lot over the years about the power of Boardmaker, I decided to use this Weekly App Practical to see if I could employ Boardmaker to address these concerns in my classroom.

I signed up for the 30 day free trial, downloaded the Boardmaker Studio software, and was immediately amazed and overwhelmed at the same time.  It was very apparent that I could not just poke around and adequately figure out all this application had to offer, so I took advantage of their comprehensive training opportunities and spent an hour with the Boardmaker Studio Basics webinar.

            

I learned that Boardmaker Studio was an installed piece of software that allows you to create print or play activities on computer or smartboard using Picture Communication Symbols. You can create offline in Boardmaker Studio, and then manage online via BoardmakerOnline.com. You can create from scratch or use one of many (over 600!) templates already available that you can customize to your purposes. In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful features of the product.

In very short order, following the clear instructions in the webinar, I was able to create from scratch a visual aid for my not-quite-English-speaking children to make their requests for help known at lunch time. 

But I also discovered that Boardmaker is not just for printing. There are robust capabilities to create all manner of interactive projects that involve sequencing, making choices, checking off completed tasks and the like.  I searched the templates for a suitable one to accomplish my second goal, and found this sample for the sequence of events involved in washing hands.

Using something like this template as a starting point, it would be quick and easy to create numbered steps for many preschool skills we teach - like joining a group, interrupting, asking for help, etc, with help from the book Skillstreaming in Early Childhood that was introduced in our Classroom Management course.  That would be a great addition to our toolbox for social/emotional training.

At $100 to $200 a year, though, (depending on whether I want a personal or professional license), Boardmaker is a commitment!  I had better complete these projects quickly before my trial runs out, or convince my higher-ups that we need Boardmaker going forward.  

Final Presentation

Check out my final presentation here.  Thanks for your feedback!

WAP 6 - Parental Communications: ClassDojo

I see communication with parents falling into three different categories. The first, I would call “official communications,” and at my school, those all have to be handled by our RenWeb system. Anything that we send to a parent about a student’s progress or behavior or concerns we might have, are required to be sent using that system so a record of the correspondence is kept at the school. If a parent reaches out to us via email about such matters, we are encouraged to respond through RenWeb rather than just reply to their email, so that at least half the conversation is documented. So I have no choice in the matter here.

The second form of parental communication I would call “classroom happenings.” Currently, we send home a newsletter every other week with updates about we have been doing, and any important dates coming up or notices we have to pass on. That letter takes the form of a Google Document with view only permission and the link is sent to parents via RenWeb.

The third form of parental communication I would call “informal day-to-day updates,” where a parent gets a glimpse into their child’s day, and this is the piece I think we are missing out on. We are fortunate that children have to be dropped off and picked up in the classroom by a parent/guardian, so we do have the opportunity to quickly make a personal connection with most parents on most days. But there are some children who take part in our before or after school programs, or are transported by grandparents, and those parents we rarely see. I welcomed the opportunity to investigate ways to include parents in our day-to-day operations.

My initial thought was that we should create a class blog, which would be great, but not really an avenue for more personal individual updates. I looked at a number of lists of top parent messaging apps and saw ClassDojo listed on most of them.  It looked very comprehensive, so I decided to check it out and compare it to SeeSaw which I had investigated for an earlier WAP. 

In ClassDojo there is space for recording individual portfolios, a class story (class blog), and instant messaging options to connect with parents, who can also be invited to view the other areas.

My Demo Class

When I signed up for an account on my laptop, ClassDojo asked for my school and I was surprised to be connected to the “Mentor for my School,” a second grade teacher whom I did not realize used the program. I thought this was a great idea!  Since I was encouraged to go to her with any questions, I did just that to see what she thought of the program. She loves it!  But why?

When I asked that question she raved about the fact that she could use it on all platforms, she could post items to her class story (which is like a classroom blog), her students could post to their portfolios, and she could use it to instant message parents individually. In fact, she had just celebrated a birthday of one of her students that day and showed me the video she sent his parents of the class singing to him.

Screenshot of parent messaging page for my Demo Class

The thing she spoke most excitedly about though, were the behavior management tools that came with ClassDojo and how they helped manage her classroom. She could award or take away points based on behavior and invite parents to view their child’s progress.  The skills were editable, also.  She felt that inviting parents into this process helped them help her with classroom management.

Feedback area - positive points that can be awarded to students

ClassDojo makes daily informal parental communication quite easy, but not perfect.  The thing I am always wary about is the consistency launching such a program would require.  And the “plus” my mentor mentioned of being able to do it all real-time on her phone seems like it could be a “minus.”  I really don’t want my preschoolers to see me on my phone, because I feel it sends the wrong message. They don’t know what I am using my phone for - it all looks like “ignoring” to them.  In all, though, ClassDojo seems like a great solution for inviting parents into our day-to-day activities.

WAP 5 - Global Citizenship: Google Earth and Touchable Earth

I really enjoyed the opportunity to plan a lesson around the theme of global citizenship. At the preschool level I feel like that is all about noticing the ways we are all the same, even though we may be different. We can lay the foundation for this understanding and begin to build in our students the empathy that Alan November reported is a highly desired skill in the workplace.  I started my lesson by reading one of my favorite books, “We Are All Alike… We Are All Different,” by the Cheltenham Elementary School Kindergarteners. 

Then we talked about ways the children in our classroom are the same and different.  I eventually steered the discussion to how we live in different towns but go to the same school.  To demonstrate, I plugged my laptop into the smartboard, and we looked up Google Earth. We used the search and flyover features of Google Earth to compare where children lived in relation to our school. The children loved flying in and out of the towns they live in and ending up at Mount Hope. 

We noticed that their towns were all next to each other.  That’s why they can all come to the same school.  But what about kids in different parts of the world?  What schools to they go to?  Are their schooldays the same or different from ours?  How are they the same and different from us?

We explored the Touchable Earth website to answer these questions. Touchable Earth is an interesting website (and a mobile app available on ipad and iphone) by kids for kids that shows how children live in different parts of the world. There are short videos of children introducing and explaining  different aspects of their lives, organized around the topics of culture, facts, family, friends, play and school. There are many faraway places represented, and we investigated the school and play information of children in South Africa - after first flying there via Google Earth to show just how far away it was from Burlington.

My students were very engaged as we met, via video, as an assortment of South African school children telling about their daily lives.  We focused on the videos about their school and the games they play, and they loved noticing what was similar and what was not.  

Afterwards, I had my preschoolers document what they learned by drawing a picture of what they noticed was the same and what they noticed was different between them and the children of South Africa.  I was so pleased with the results!  Not only were many of my students successful using the higher order thinking skill of compare and contrast, but they were also very interested in the assignment.   

(Check out more student work here.)                                  

I hope to investigate many more places in the same way and maybe even ultimately make our own videos to introduce the world to the children of the Orange Room!

WAP 4 - Students as Researchers

                                                     

 “Just because you know how to operate a hammer,
doesn’t mean you know how to build a house.”

So true...

After talking about research in terms of building web literacy, vetting information, and asking good questions, I wondered how I would design a lesson to begin exploring these topics with my preschoolers.  I knew I wanted to check out the Google Custom Search Engine, and began creating a lesson around that, when another opportunity organically presented itself.

So much more relevant...

The other day at lunch, two of my students were very excited to discover that they both had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sandwich keepers.   And, they remembered that the day before one of their classmates wore a T-shirt with a Ninja Turtle on it.

Which turtle is which?  I wondered out loud.  When nobody had an answer, I offered that I knew from when my nephew was a big fan, that there were four turtles and they were named Michelangelo, Rafael, Leonardo and Donatello.   But I could never remember which one wore which color.  Kids started to guess, but admitted they didn’t really know.

So how could we find out?  And then how would we know if we got the right answer?  Thus began a great opportunity to start using some of what we had talked about in tech class.

We could Google it or ask Alexa or Siri.  We could ask a grown up.  We could ask a kid.  We could watch one of the TMNT movies.  We could watch one of their tv shows.  We could read one of their books.  All good suggestions for gathering information.

But how would we know we got the right answer?  If we tried to ask another person, would it be better to ask a kid or a grown up?  What age group would have the best chance of being able to give us a correct answer?   If we googled it, would it be better to look at a web site that carries the show on its channel (like nick.com) or would it be better to look at a web site that was just regular people answering what they think (like quora.com)?

In the end, we found this great picture by googling images for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and then trying to check the veracity of the names at Nick.com.  Interestingly, the US site had only episodes to stream and games to play, while the UK site had a section to Meet the Characters, so that was much more useful.  Information there matched our picture, and we were confident we had our answer.

Hopefully this home-grown example got them thinking about how we go about finding answers to our questions, and how to determine the usefulness of what we find, and how to ask good questions to refine our results.

Addendum:
After embracing the Ninja Turtle diversion, I did go back and look at creating a custom search engine to find kid-friendly info about different animals.  My work in progress is here.

WAP 3 - Students as Scribes: SeeSaw

When I read the chapter for this week about having a class scribe, I thought it was a great idea. I got excited about all the possibilities this job afforded students for a deeper engagement in their learning by providing purpose and longevity to their efforts, and I loved reading about the success stories.

But, I wondered, how would we ever adapt the concept of class scribe to a preschool classroom with one quarter English-language learners, and some who could barely hold a pencil?  During our discussion online, however, when the idea was reframed as “anything that saves or collects information that we can go back to and use again” it made much more sense.  I decided to explore technology that would allow for journaling or log-keeping in a preschool-friendly way.

I investigated SeeSaw which is used by public elementary schools in my district and looked like a great platform to collect student learning in my environment. I signed up for a free teacher account and set up my class.  There were cute icons to choose from to represent each student, or I could  upload their photo.

Screenshot of Class List from my Android phone

We made a class video journal by asking each student one by one what they learned about how and why the leaves on trees change color in the fall.  It was very easy to add student work to a journal.  The big green Add button brings up a screen with all the choices for recording student work.

Ways to post student work

Adding to a journal from the ipad:  The student records his/her work, and adds it to his account.

I think some of my students could be self-sufficient with this technology, but certainly not all of them, and we only have an ipad or two to use in the classroom anyway.  I chose to invite them one at a time to sit with me for a minute during rest time and I helped them record their answers. They are collected in a class journal which the teacher can view in aggregate, and in each individual child’s journal, which they can access themselves.  Parents can be invited to view what their children have done and their contributions to class works, but I haven't tested that feature yet.

I will definitely keep playing around with SeeSaw to see what else I can do with it!

Methods of School

It was interesting to investigate the different approaches to schooling that were assigned reading this week. While there are aspects of each philosophy that I agree with, each has some cautions to be aware of in implementation. But as I read and thought through the pros and cons of each approach, I kept coming back to the same idea. The key to the efficacy of any of these philosophies is a dedicated teacher committed to the success of his or her students who is willing to meet each student where they are and give each student what he or she needs to be a successful learner. This is a tall order no matter which pedagogical umbrella you teach under.

A few thoughts on what we read...

Democratic School

Of all the things we read about this week, this school set-up gives me the most pause. As I think about the premise of a “one person, one vote” governing process in any of the contexts that I have been in involving students, I can envision nothing but anarchy. However, I am willing to imagine that in the hands of the right "staff members" (to use their terminology) who can subtly guide discussion and ask good questions and command respect, I see how the experience might be a valuable one for students who are not thriving in more traditional settings. We read “it’s the democratic meeting that allows the school to run: it takes a potentially lawless and chaotic setup and gives it structure.” But, I have to ask, who enforces that structure?

Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom is an idea that I find very intriguing. So much of traditional class time can be spent making sure everyone is on the same page that those who come in ahead of the game are soon bored and their time is wasted and those who need extra help often don’t get it. That’s why it makes sense to me to assign prep work ahead of time to bring all students into class at relatively the same place. Then classwork during classtime can be more engaging and productive for all.

Teacher preparation is critical to the success of this approach. as well as the ability to differentiate instruction in response to different levels of success with the pre-work. Each classtime endeavor has to be able to go where it needs to depending on the level of preparation of the students.  This requires flexibility and discernment as to what concepts are being grasped and what ideas need to be revisited, which may be different for each student.

My daughter shared with me her experience with a flipped classroom in a computer science course she took in college. Students were assigned articles to read to become familiar with different computer programming languages, and then class time was spent watching the professor demo. My daughter liked the idea of having a known fixed quantity of outside-of-class work, but found the in-class portion frustrating, mostly because the professor’s demos did not really match up with the assigned readings. (In fact, she wondered if he had even actually read some of them.) Also, there were 150 students in her class, so differentiation was difficult in that context. Furthermore, this particular professor was not primarily an educator, but an IT professional with a side gig - more evidence for my premise that the ability of the teacher is what makes the philosophy work and that good preparation is crucial.

Montessori

I've always found the Montessori philosophy a bit paradoxical.  There is the freedom of choice children have in exploring activities, but then only using certain materials and supplies in pre-prescribed ways, which seems less free.  But I feel in the hands of a gifted teacher, the hands-on approaches that are the hallmark of a Montessori education are very effective. We read that “a teacher’s role within a Montessori classroom is to guide and consult students individually by letting each child create their own learning pathway.” Again, the teacher is key.

The drawback I have seen in many children who come to us from a Montessori background is a lack of tolerance for any kind of structure.  While I believe children should be able to learn through play and have the ability to pursue what interests them to construct their own learning, they should also learn to abide by some constraints and not bristle against every imposition of an authority figure.  There is structure in society at large and children should have a level of comfort with that.

WAP 2 - Students as Tutorial Designers: VoiceThread

Looking at technology available to help students create tutorials to teach each other turned out to be a very timely investigation that I could immediately put to use.

We had just done an activity in the classroom where we went on a “Shape Scavenger Hunt.” We reviewed what we knew about shapes, and then I paired the children (strategically, of course) and sent them off to find real life examples of their assigned shapes in the classroom. Each team was to put items they found made of their shape into a paper bag and then we would regroup and each team could share their findings with the class. The results were interesting…

Some of my teams did exactly what I asked and were very excited to share their bags. But some of the teams just took the opportunity to run around the room and scoop large quantities of items (think Legos, plastic food, and pattern blocks) willy-nilly into their bag, totally missing the point. How could I reframe the activity to engage everyone?

Thinking on what we have been learning about autonomy, mastery and purpose, I realized that perhaps the purpose of this activity may have not been compelling enough for some of my students. If they perceived that the purpose of the activity was merely to put stuff in a bag to make the teacher happy, I can see why misbehaving was a more exciting choice. But if the purpose of the activity was to ultimately make a tutorial and be the expert and teach other children what they know about shapes, we might have had a different outcome.

Enter VoiceThread.   Of the applications we looked at in class, I thought that VoiceThread might provide a way to achieve that goal. I asked one of the students who embraced the shape hunt activity if she would be willing to tell what she knew about ovals so we could make a lesson for the class. Of course she was!

I took a picture of ovals found in the classroom, uploaded it to the application and prepared her to narrate. To format her tutorial, I asked her to introduce herself and her shape, and then describe her shape, and tell what examples she found in the classroom. We recorded her voice and I outlined the shapes she found (using the color of her choice). Interestingly, when she listed the ovals found in the classroom, she only said the names of the four items she had actually found herself and put in the bag.  She did not name the ones I added later to flesh out the picture. Talk about ownership!

VoiceThread was very straightforward to use, and I can easily add slides and comments to this presentation to cover more shapes. I don’t think my students would be able to create content yet on their own, but they can certainly do the prep work and have me push the buttons to record their learning.

For this project I used only the audio comments, since I was publishing to a blog and was worried about confidentiality.  For classroom-only use, I might try using the video comments, but expect the kids would then be more interested in looking at the speaker rather than the picture being discussed, so for this project, video would probably be a big distraction. The only annoying thing so far is that the box that introduces the current comment blocks the picture for while before it fades.  Next time I'll lead into the commentary with some dead air to give it time to disappear.

I am excited to show this tutorial to the class and have the rest of the children add to it.

[Transcript: Hello. My name is Nessa. I’m going to tell you about ovals. It has a big bump and a line. I found them at school. I found a leaf, scissors, a fish and a grape.]

WAP 1 - Teacher Admin: Todoist

The problem I am excited to be solving with this week’s Weekly App Practical is the problem of organizing the many compartments of my life for greater productivity! Now that school has started, I have many activities to juggle - work, school, ministry, family demands, household management, etc. Each comes with its own set of ToDo’s, some recurring and some one-time only, and some overlapping. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I sit down and make ToDo lists hoping to capture all that is swirling around in my head, and then to check things off when I finish.

Sometimes it makes sense for me to make a list of things to do for a certain project, but sometimes it makes sense to make a list of things to accomplish on a particular day. As a result, I have lots of lists in lots of places. I have had some success in streamlining the process by making lists in Google Keep, but that just felt like the “million dollar pencil” solution - a nice place to keep everything but really still just a bunch of lists. I also have tried to put everything in Google Calendar, but that just seemed like a chronology of unconnected deadlines (though color-coding did help sort them). And what about the things you have to do that don’t have a date associated with them. I am hoping to find an app that will cross reference these two approaches for me so I can make lists in the compartments of my life and have them show up on calendars - pulling out ToDo list for any given day.

Turns out, many in our class are looking for similar solutions, so last week I gathered some apps to check out. I investigated Remember the Milk (which looked promising), and Chipper (which seemed more specific to students). I also had some experience using Trello for project management, and wondered if that was a tool that could be applied to my problem. I also knew my son (a software engineering student) used Todoist. Comparing those two, I thought Trello might be more suited to large projects with many collaborators, and Todoist would be better suited to one person with lots of ToDo’s. A conversation with my son confirmed this notion, since he has used both extensively. Easy access to his experience made Todoist a more appealing option than Remember the Milk, since they looked similar to me. My choice was made!

I installed Todoist, and found it might be just what I’m looking for. I was able to set up “projects” for different areas of my life, and for short term projects as well. Within each project I can add tasks and assign one-time or recurring due dates.

I really like the inbox feature where you can quickly capture a task you need to remember in a holding area, and then later on assign it to a project or give it a due date.

Todoist can also set up tasks with sub-tasks within a project, a feature that allowed me to capture my grocery needs real-time and sort the items by where I shop for them!

You can view your tasks either by project or by what’s due today or within the next 7 days.

And you can set it up to send you email reminders.
The clincher was when I was able to set up 2-way integration with my Google Calendar.
I look forward to using Todoist this fall to keep me organized!

My Model Classroom

The classroom I will be working in for this course is a preschool room of 4 year-olds, most of whom will turn 5 beginning in January through May. There are 24 total children on our class list, though only 20 are there on any given day, and it is a different mix of children every day of the week, due to flexible scheduling.

Most stay all day (8:30-2:45), but a handful are picked up at noon. Of those that stay all day, about a third to a half will sleep during our required rest-time, if they are given a quiet space, free of distraction (meaning away from the non-resting children). Those that don’t sleep are encouraged to look quietly at books while their friends fall asleep, and then halfway through rest-time we may engage them in quiet activities.

This years class is a diverse group with many ethnicities represented (Albanian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Asian Indian and Central American), and many different corresponding languages spoken at home. Some of our children have great English mastery, but many are dual language learners.

As far as classroom layout, we have a large rug in front of our SmartBoard where we gather for circle time and where most instruction takes place. We also have three hexagonal tables with six chairs each (that are really two trapezoids pushed together, so we have some options if we want to mix it up), and a writing table that seats four. In addition, we have a book corner, house corner, Lego table, train table and sand table at our disposal.

We are part of a Christian school that houses 7 preschool rooms, a toddler room, two Kindergartens and elementary classes up through grade 5, in a relatively affluent suburban community.

Our school is committed to providing technological tools for our students and teachers. We have SmartBoards in all the classrooms, and a cart of iPads that I suppose we can use, provided we don’t interfere with scheduled elementary computer classes. I have a school-issued laptop, too, but it is a dinosaur and I really hope I am next on the upgrade list!