Engage Students in Learning with Video: EdPuzzle

What is EdPuzzle, you ask?

EdPuzzle is a site that allows users to select a video and easily customize it by editing, cropping, recording audio and adding questions to make an engaging presentation or learning experience. It is also a great formative assessment tool; a unique way for students to demonstrate their understanding.

Kirsten Fletcher has found EdPuzzle to be a great tool to engage her students in learning and she facilitated a workshop to share with her colleagues for our October 2017 Institute Day.

We have heard from several teachers who attended her session about how Kirsten's examples have inspired them to use EdPuzzle in their own classes.

The notes from the session serve as a great resource for those that missed it and due to popular demand, Kirsten has offered to repeat the session for our Teaming on Tuesday Learning Lab on October 24th.

We hope you'll join us! Not at EG? You can join us remotely! Just send us a direct message to the Collab Lab Twitter, and we'll send you a calendar invite and link to join us via Zoom!

Construction Zone: Drafting Blueprints for Learning: EGHS Teacher Led Institute Day

October 16th was a great day of collaboration and learning for our 6th Annual Teacher-Led Institute Day.  24 different workshops were offered in the morning. The workshops were planned and facilitated by 38 staff, 10 students, and 3 community professionals! The topics for the workshops were determined in response to a survey shared with staff weeks before, and from feedback from shared from previous professional learning experiences. In the afternoon, staff had time to work in their PLCs to share and apply their learning from the morning sessions, and to prepare for a great start the the 2nd Quarter!

The following photos and links will give you an idea of what the day looked like.

The Schedule:

Here is the link to the complete Doc with the schedule for the day.

The Blueprints (Shared notes)

Each session had a "Blueprint" Google Doc for shared notes.  These notes will serve as an important an important resource for staff future reference and learning, and to connect to the content of sessions they might not have been able to attend.

Sharing our Story

In addition to curating resources in the shared "Blueprints" for each session, we shared our learning via Twitter using our professional learning hashtag #214Learns. 

Check out this Storify of tweets from the day to see more! 

The feedback from the day was overwhelmingly positive, and there were great suggestions, too. In addition to conversations with staff, we will be guided by the responses on the Institute Day Survey. Nearly 100 staff completed the survey and the feedback will guide us in planning future professional learning experiences. We have already begun using the feedback to plan our 2nd Quarter Teaming on Tuesday sessions to keep the conversations going. We see the Institute Day as a great springboard for ongoing conversations and learning.

Spring Brings New Collaborations

Written by Linda Ashida

In all of the professional learning that the Collab Lab facilitates, we always look for opportunities to expand our collaboration across schools, both in person and virtually, using Periscope, Facetime or Skype, and Google Hangout.

We have written about some of these collaborations in previous posts:

• Persicoping our way into classrooms in D214 and Beyond
• 2 Schools Collaborate in Professional Learning with Periscope and Google Hangout 

In this post we'll highlight new collaborations we are enjoying this Spring.

April 2017 In-Service Day

Our April In-Service Day gave us the chance to connect with our colleagues at The Academy at Forest View.

The Collab Lab team planned a kind of hybrid EdCamp, giving all staff the opportunity to offer input on their needs and interest several weeks beforehand.  We used the feedback from staff to pre-plan some of the session offerings, and we also gave staff the opportunity to suggest workshops the morning of the In-service day.

Prior to the In-Service day, we got to thinking about the possibility of inviting some of our colleagues from the Academy at Forest View to join us, since, from prior collaborations, we knew that our staff had a shared interest in learning about, and/or sharing our practice, regarding social emotional learning and instructional technologies.

We weren't sure if the logistics would work to bring teachers together from two buildings, but we figured it didn't hurt to try! We thought it would be great, even if just a few of the teachers could join us, and if not in person, via Google Hangout or Periscope.

So, we presented our idea to Kara Kendrick, the Director of The Academy.  Not only was she open to the idea, but after sharing the idea with some of her teacher leaders involved in planning their day, we were able to work out a plan that would allow for the entire staff from the Academy to join us at Elk Grove for the morning EdCamp!

Staff from both schools facilitated sessions, and even student teachers and students joined in and presented too! As always, we documented our learning in each session using Google Docs so that we would all be able to access the notes for future reference, including for sessions we were interested in, but unable to attend.

Feedback from the day was very positive, with some great suggestions for future In-service days.  Almost all of the EG staff who completed our feedback form indicated how great it was to have this opportunity to get to know our colleagues from The Academy, and to learn with and from each other.  We have already discussed plans to continue our collaboration with them during the coming school year!

The visual below gives you a glimpse of some of the sessions.  Check out this link for more details.

 




Collab Lab Book Chat Series in May

A literacy research project done by our colleague, Katie Winstead, as part of her year-two Mentor Program project, inspired the Collab Lab to partner with Katie to host a book chat series.

We will meet on Tuesday mornings in May from 7:40-8:05 in the Collab Lab and we will read and discuss the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.

Each week we will share our key takeaways and questions. We will also reflect on our practice and, looking ahead to the coming school year, plan specific strategies that we can embed in our lessons to improve student literacy.

All EG staff are welcomed to join us, and we have extended the invitation to our colleagues across District 214 as well who will be able to join us via Google Hangout.

Look for future Collab Blog posts with updates on our Book chat series to see what we learn!

Planning a Clear Vision

Sixth post in a series from our staff-led Institute Day.

Joe Bush presented an Institute Day session encouraging teachers determine the vision of their courses.  He emphasized the importance of both defining your vision for yourself as a teacher, as well as defining what you would like your students to take away from your course.  You can read more about this in his blog post.  

In his session, Joe began with the essential question of "Does Vision Setting Work?"

Then, he used the example of Bruce Lee to demonstrate the impact of planning a clear vision.

Joe stressed the importance of breaking down your vision into steps that will help you achieve your goals.  Here is a document that he developed to aid in this creation:

The biggest teacher take-away was the idea of asking yourself "Why?" five times.  This theory is a way to get to the root cause of an issue you are facing.  Here is an example that Joe provided:

I want to lose 20 lbs.

Why? So I feel better

Why? So I can move better

Why? So I can play with my kids

Why? Because I want to spend time with them

Why? Because i love them and want to be with them forever.

So the root cause is that you want to live for your kids rather than just losing 20 lbs.

Collaborate to Learn! Engaging Students with Google Docs

Fifth post in a series from our  staff-led Institute Day.

 

Student engagement and collaboration were the focus of the Interdisciplinary session facilitated by Chris Cirricione (World Language and Social Science), Dan Davisson (Social Science), Krista Glosson (Science) and Sandra Lee (English):




  

 Get Students Collaborating with Google Docs! 

A jackpot of inter-disciplinary examples

From crowd-sourcing key info for a study guide, to team-building and friendly competition in Greek Game simulation, to collaborating on data collection, and peer editing, the strategies shared will inspire you with new ideas for your own courses to engage your students in their learning and collaborate with classmates.

Some highlights: 

Chris Cirrincione shared an example of how students "crowd-source" key info on Ancient Civilizations using a Google doc with color codes to distinguish groups' participation. To ensure engagement on the Doc, Chris scaffolds a prior step. He has all of the students do pre-work on a printed version of the doc so they come prepared to collaborate with their groups on the Google Doc. Once they begin collaborating on the doc, the colors serve as a formative assessment tool. For example, a quick glance at the doc (see below) reveals little participation by the orange group, so Chris made sure to check in with that group to help them get back on track.

Chris also uses Google Slides for collaboration with his Spanish classes. Working in groups, and on the same slide deck, students demonstrate their understanding of vocabulary by making slides with visuals and using the words in original sentences to demonstrate their understanding.  Students can peer-edit slides, and Chris can formatively assess and give feedback as they work. The final product serves as a wonderful study resource for all of the students in the class.

Dan Davisson also uses Google Docs and Google slides to have his student collaborate, and even compete, to show evidence of their learning. Working in groups, students collaborate on a specific section of the doc, trying to finish before other groups. At the same time they can "overtake" a group by closely attending to their work and adding missing information.  Once students complete their section of the doc or slides, their work serves as a resource for all of their classmates for future study.  You will notice that Dan reinforces key vocabulary by including a list of key terms in the instructions (in blue) that students are encouraged to use in their writing.  Dan even includes a gaming element to encourage quality work. Dan follows their work as they write (more formative assessment!) and he awards them badges as they work, real-time for deep thought, critical analysis, making connectings, using vocabulary, etc.  You can see the badges in the narrow column of the doc.

These kind of activities also allow for peer-editing. As students complete their own sections they are continually checking each other's work to add missing information. The combination of collaboration and competition and gaming elements really works well to get all students engaged! And they have fun too!

Krista Glosson shared examples of how students collaborate on Google Sheets to gather data for experiments, for example in this Potato Molarity Lab:

                  

Instead of having each student, or every group collect all of the data, Krista assigns certain data sets to each group. Students work more efficiently by collaborating on the data entry and compilation. This activity also builds in authentic accountability, as students depend on the information entered by their classmates to be able to analzye the data as a whole to reach accurate conclusions.  And, like the previous examples, the doc serves as a formative assessment tool. Krista can easily view the data students while students are working to provide real-time feedback.

Sandra Lee shared examples of how her students use Google Docs to do peer edit writing. Students work in pairs and use colors to identify, in their partner's piece, evidence of quality writing on the rubric. Like Chris, Sandra uses this as a formative assessment tool. She circulates during the activity to check the students' work.  At a glance, due to the colored annotations, Sandra can confirm understanding of the writing process and provide support as needed, and even diagnose common challenges that she can address with the entire class. So, students have multiple opportunities to reflect on and then revise their work, using feedback from both their peers and the teacher.

 

As a follow-up to their Institute Day session, Chris, Dan, Sandra and Krista hosted a Teaming on Tuesday demonstration in the Collab Lab and/or a Peer Observation invitation to see these strategies in action in their classrooms!  A huge shout out to them for sharing their practice with us with great examples from their students!

Do you want to learn more?  Do you have student-engagement strategies to share?

Come see us in the Collab Lab! . . . or leave a comment below.

 

Collaborate to Learn! Engaging Students with Google Docs

 

Fifth post in a series from our  staff-led Institute Day.

Student engagement and collaboration were the focus of the Interdisciplinary session facilitated by Chris Cirricione (World Language and Social Science), Dan Davisson (Social Science), Krista Glosson (Science) and Sandra Lee (English):

Get Students Collaborating with Google Docs! A jackpot of inter-disciplinary examples

From crowd-sourcing key info for a study guide, to team-building and friendly competition in Greek Game simulation, to collaborating on data collection, and peer editing, the strategies shared will inspire you with new ideas for your own courses to engage your students in their learning and collaborate with classmates.

Some highlights: 

Chris Cirrincione shared an example of how students "crowd-source" key info on Ancient civilizations using a Google doc with color codes to distinguish groups' participation. To ensure engagement on the Doc, Chris scaffolds a prior step. He has all of the students do pre-work on a printed version of the doc so they come prepared to collaborate with their groups on the Google Doc. Once they begin collaborating on the doc, the colors serve as a formative assessment tool. For example, a quick glance at the doc (see below) reveals little participation by the orange group, so Chris made sure to check in with that group to help them get back on track.

Chris also uses Google Slides for collaboration with his Spanish classes. Working in groups, and on the same slide deck, students demonstrate their understanding of vocabulary by making slides with visuals and using the words in a sentence to demonstrate their understanding.  Students can peer-edit slides, Chris can formatively assess and give feedback as they work, and the final product serves as a wonderful study resource for all of the students in the class.

Sandra Lee shared examples of how her students use Google Docs to peer edit writing. Students work in pairs and use colors to identify evidence of quality writing on the rubric. Like Chris, Sandra uses this as a formative assessment tool. She circulates during the activity to check the students work.  At a glance, due to the colored annotations, Sandra can confirm understanding of the writing process and provide support as needed, and even diagnose common challenges that she can address with the entire class.

Dan Davisson also uses Google Docs and Google slides to have his student collaborate, and even compete, to demonstrate their understanding. Working in groups, students collaborate on a specific secction of the doc, trying to finish before other groups. At they same time they can "overtake" a group by closely attending to their work and adding missing information.  Once students complete their section of the doc or slides, their work serves as a resource for all of their classmates for future study.  You will notice that Dan reinforces key vocabulary by including a list of key terms in the instructions (in blue) that students are encouraged to use in their writing.  Dan even includes a gaming element to encourage quality work. Dan follows their work as they write (more formative assessment!) and students are awarded badges depending on how well they complete their sections (in depth work/analysis, making connections, using vocabulary etc).

 These kind of activities serve as a variation of peer editing that Sandra does. As students complete their own sections they are continually checking each other's work to add missing information. The combination of collaboration and competition and gaming elements really works well to get all students engaged! And they have fun too!

Krista Glosson shared examples of how students collaborate on Google docs to gather data for experiments.  This activity builds in authentic accountability, as students depend on the data entered by their classmates to analzye their hypothesis.  Students work more efficiently as well, by collaborating on the data entry and compilation.

As a follow-up to their Institute Day session, Chris, Dan, Sandra and Krista hosted a Teaming on Tuesday demonstration in the Collab Lab and/or a Peer Observation invitation to see these strategies in action in their classrooms!  A huge shout out to them for sharing their practice with us with great examples from their students!

Do you want to learn more?  Do you have student-engagement/collaboration strategies to share?

Come see us in the Collab Lab! . . . or leave a comment below.

 

How Restorative Practices Can Improve Behaviors

Third post in a series from our staff-led Institute Day.

In his presentation, Justin Penio explained current practices and policies of EGHS and provided teachers with tools to build relationships, manage classrooms, and respond to behavior issues.

Restorative practices changes the mindset of trying to control things to an environment of providing support and encouragement. When we try to maintain control, discipline becomes the focus, which can be limit-setting. Students improve behaviors more often when they are nurtured and given support.

Anticipated Outcomes:

• Prioritize relationships, community and repairing harm instead of the need to assign blame and dispense punishment  
• Encourages responsibility and accountability
• Create positive school culture, respectful relationships, effective teaching and learning

Examples of Questioning:

• What happened?
• What where you thinking at the time?
• What have you thought about since?
• Who do you think has been affected by what you did?
• What do you need to do to make things right?
• How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again? 

Goals of Restorative Practices:

• Change the behavior
• Fits with new legislation
Incorporates best practices in a school community
Aimed to reduce referrals, suspensions, and expulsions

How This Looks At EG:

• Expanded use of in-school suspension
• MORE COMMUNICATION
• Removal of certain privileges such as:
• Open lunch
• Parking
• Intramurals
• Participation in assemblies
• Computer Labs
• Homecoming events
• Outreach program activities

Teacher Take-Aways:

- Try to avoid power struggles and conflict. These won't help students find motivation to learn.

- It helped to hear/see the Dean perspective on issues that we have with kids. Explaining the methods of support, and the reasons behind them, make the issue come full circle, so the kid can come back to class in a positive manner.

Travel the World Without Leaving the Classroom!

Second in a series of our staff-led Institute Day blog posts.

Imagine feeling like you are REALLY climbing a mountain, or REALLY riding a scooter in Rome, but you are just in your classroom using nothing more that a carboard "box" and a cell phone.  Thanks to virtual reality, and Dawn Ferencz's Institute Day session, we learned how to connect to the world outside our classrooms with Google Cardboard viewers. 

Bruce Janu was inspired and decided to try them out with his classes. (Thank you, Bruce, for sharing your example via Twitter!) Check it out: 

How they work:
- Prepare your phone for use by removing the case to allow the google cardboard viewer to close completely.
- Select an app to download or a video to view.  See the suggestions below.
- If you are watching a video, make sure to choose the cardboard option before watching the video.  This will split the screen in two.

Here is a handy classroom handout to use with your students!

Key Teacher Take-Aways:
- English: using these viewers in small groups in class to share information about South Africa for teaching Power of One.
- Foreign Language: Students can check out cities,museums, etc.
- Human Geography: displaced children, exploring cities, food shortages, etc.

Suggested Apps:
- New York Times VR - Sponsored by The New York Times, this provides current event features as well as historical perspectives and opportunities to take virtual tours. Some content is also provided in Spanish. Additionally, there are print articles.
- Google Cardboard - This is the "official" app for Google Cardboard and provides demo for users to practice standard VR options.
- Within - Uses the VR format to tell stories in various genres
- Expeditions - Created for classroom use, students can take virtual field trips to almost anywhere.
- Street View - This also provides for virtual field trips but also includes user content.

Additional links to resources can be found here.

If EG teachers are interested in seeing these in action, please contact the Collab Lab!

Learning from our Peers! The tradition continues.

by Linda Ashida

There are so many ways we collaborate and learn from our peers. Our October 2016 Institute Day is one great example. But Professional Learning at Elk Grove High School isn't just a one-day-and-it's-over kind of experience. Professional Learning here is ongoing and responsive to the needs and interests of staff.

One example is our tradition of Peer Observation Groups, first started at in 2011. Since the original groups started, we have developed such a culture of ongoing and collaborative professional learning that on any given day staff has the opportunity to visit classrooms of their peers.

Some Peer Observations happen spontaneously, when a teacher drops by the Collab Lab and invites us to stop by her class to see a strategy in action or ask for feedback. Other times a teacher will contact the Collab Lab to ask if we might help arrange a class visit. This happened recently.  A colleague expressed interest in visiting classes to see varied learning strategies, so we arranged the first in a series of class visits. Our first was to Mark Heintz' Human Geography class. Several teachers joined in. As a follow-up we will meet with Mark later in the week to discuss some of the strategies we observed related to classroom management, workflow with Schoology, student collaboration, and more.

Other Peer Observation experiences are planned in advance by the Collab Lab, like our Teaming on Tuesdays, in response to feedback from staff related to their needs, interests and learning goals for their students. You can read about some of our Teaming on Tuesdays in previous blog posts.  Stay tuned for upcoming Teaming on Tuesday's we will be announcing soon.

In the meantime . . .

• Do you have successful strategies we might see in your classroom? 
• Would you like to visit a colleague's classroom to be inspired by student learning in action?
• Do you have feedback related to your own peer observation experiences?  

We'd love to hear from you!  Leave us a comment or stop by the Collab Lab!

Tech Tips & Tricks

Over the next couple weeks, we will be sharing with you what the EGHS staff presented and learned at our staff-led Institute Day.  This is the first in a series of posts.

One of those sessions was presented by Mark Heintz, where he discussed numerous time-saving tips and tricks related to both the MacBook and iPad.

Here is an overview of Mark's tech tips:

1.  Extended Desktop

Allows you to work on your laptop while displaying something else.

2.  Spacebar on the Mac

          This feature allows you to preview a document in Finder, instead of having to load it.

3.  Gestures
 

1. Two fingers - right click & Three Fingers - drag an item on the desktop
2. Four fingers up - see all apps that you have open
3. Four fingers over - switch through multiple "desktops"
   
   
   
   
   

4.  Two Different Types of Mirroring

5.  Screen shots

1. ⌘ + ⇧ + 3 Capture entire screen + save
2. ⌘ + ctrl + ⇧ + 3 Capture entire screen + copy to the clipboard
3. ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 Capture dragged area + save (the one I use the most)
4. ⌘ + ctrl + ⇧ + 4 Capture dragged area + copy to the clipboard
5. ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 then Space Capture a window +save
6. ⌘ + ctrl + ⇧ + 4 then Space Capture a window + copy to the clipboard

6.  Spaces

1. Different classes-different uses

7.  Online quizzes & what I have learned

1. Review quizzes are the best-hard-time limit

8.  Google docs & Calendars with Links


9.  Screen Recordings with Quicktime
          Each D214 laptop has Quicktime.  It is a quick way to record your screen, voice, or both!

10.  OneTab
          Save and re-open all tabs from day to day.

11. Apple Tab and Apple Tilda

1. Command + tab - opens all apps that you have open & Command + q - closes all

Professional Learning by Teachers for Teachers: The October 2016 Institute Day

by Linda Ashida

How often do school administrators completely "let go" and completely trust in their staff to take the lead in planning professional learning experiences? At Elk Grove High School it is a common occurrence, and was notable most recently in our October Institute Day.

Guided by school and district Redefining Ready goals, as well as input solicited from the entire staff, a team of 20 certified staff began collaborating in the planning from the first weeks of the school year. You can read more about the planning for the day in this previous post.  

That planning culminated, on October 31st, in a day of varied professional learning experiences, led by teachers and student services staff, that included:

• An introductory presentation connecting our practice to Redefining Ready and building goals.
• Department Google Docs to crowd-source notes and resources and multiply learning long after Institute Day is over.
• 19 workshops facilitated by 33 EG staff members and one guest presenter from Amita Health.
• Team-building activities including an all-staff Trivia contest.
• Learning Labs to collaborate in PLCs and interdisciplinary groups to apply learning from the morning workshops.

For more details of the schedule of the day, check out the Collab Lab Website. 

 

To get an idea of what the day "looked like," check out this Storify.