What does personalized blended learning PD look like?

 

(Originally posted on Jun 17, 2014 on The Learning Accelerator’s Blog, BlendED Update)

Teacher Andrew Boan describes the customized training he created for colleagues in Reynoldsburg City Schools.

I am a teacher and technology integration coach at Waggoner Road Middle School in Reynoldsburg, OH, and schools in our district are increasingly transitioning to a blended learning environment. Earlier this year, I had an opportunity to be part of a great Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) facilitated by Brian Greenberg from Silicon Schools Fundand Michael Horn from the Christensen Institute and sponsored in part by The Learning Accelerator. This free online course, which focused on blended learning in a K-12
setting, was a great experience and helped me develop a better sense of the strategies, models, and benefits of blended learning.

After the course ended, I was eager to find out when the next offering would be so I could share it with my colleagues at Waggoner Road Middle School. As the Technology Integration Coach of the school, I felt that the MOOC would be a great way to introduce blended learning to our staff members. When I found out that there wasn’t going to be an offering of the course any time in the near future, I decided to create my own course (using some of the materials from the MOOC) to help engage our teachers and administrators in a customized introduction to blended learning.

I decided to use Canvas (a flexible, open-source LMS developed by Instructure) to host the course. The original MOOC that I was a part of was facilitated through Coursera, and Canvas offered a similar interface as well as multiple other features that allowed me to make this a unique blended learning experience. Just as students in a blended learning environment should have control over the time, place, path or pace of their learning, participants in the course I developed would have control over each of these as well. As teachers learned more about blended learning, they were also experiencing a blended learning experience – from the perspective of the learner – firsthand.

The main topics of the course were divided into modules, which were composed of videos, quizzes, readings, discussions, and assignments revolving around a specific area of blended learning. As I was developing these modules on Canvas, the original lecture videos from the MOOC were published to Khan Academy, which simplified the process of including that content into my course. These videos provided much of the foundation of the course, and their public availability on Khan Academy made the process of integrating them into the course very successful. The videos that included experiences from different protagonist schools (Summit Public Schools, Navigator Schools, and KIPP LA) helped give concrete examples of different blended learning models to participants in the course to refer back to as needed.

Although some of the articles from the original MOOC were included in the course, I also integrated other content and readings that were more specific to our local professional community. I highlighted specific topics that were of greater interest to participants (student motivation, badging, instilling grit, etc.) in the course to make the experience more personalized for our staff. Also, I chose to include discussions and assignments that were much different than the ones in the original MOOC. Since I had the opportunity to meet with and assist the participants of the course on a daily basis, I felt as though I could adapt the course based on their feedback (both online and face-to-face).

I posted each module as the course progressed, and l gave loose deadlines for assignments to help participants stay on-track. This gave each participant some control over the path, place, time, or pace of completing each module. Those taking the course had to show mastery over the content of each topic (scoring 80% or above correct on each quiz) before they could move on in the course. Additionally, participants received badges after completing all of the activities in each module.

The final assignment for the course was a Blended Learning Implementation Plan. Each participant developed his/her own personalized plan for implementing blended learning into their teaching for the following school year. This included the chosen blended learning model, the selected instructional software and hardware that their students would be using, and how their roles as teachers (and the experiences of the students) would change as blended learning was implemented. Including this implementation plan into the curriculum for the course was another example of personalization for my colleagues, as we are transitioning to a more fully blended learning environment for the next school year with 1:1 Chromebooks for our students.

Overall, the blended learning course was a great example of how high-quality professional development can be created and facilitated within a professional learning community. Participants in the course not only gained a better understanding of the concept of blended learning, but also had a chance to experience learning in a blended setting themselves. We will be using Canvas this coming year as a platform to develop courses for our middle school students, and having the experience with the system from a student perspective will help make the implementation even more successful.

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Instant Blended Learning with Lesson Paths and Blendspace

While some teachers may be struggling with integrating blended learning (any combination of learning on-site in a classroom with learning online), two web-based tools are making it much easier for teachers to accomplish this merger:  Blendspace and Lesson Paths.

Blendspace allows for teachers to load content, websites, articles, videos (and a whole lot more) into an embedded, interactive grid that previews each step of a lesson. Each content type is numbered to suggest an order in which students can progress, but they may also explore in whichever order they choose.

Here is a Blendspace lesson that I created using Google Drive tutorial videos:

Lesson Paths is more linear in it’s design.  When content is uploaded or links are inserted, they are added in a list that hovers on the left side of the screen.  The first item on the list (in my case, the introductory video to my lesson) is loaded first, and the learner can navigate between content using the arrow at the top of the screen of by clicking on the item in the list.

While Lesson Paths does not support as wide a variety of embedded content, it does allow the creator to insert challenge questions, pop quizzes, or short articles of text on the spot.

Here’s the same Google Drive lesson created on Lesson Paths instead.

Both of these tools make the task of creating a blended learning environment very streamlined and simple for educators of any level.  Try each of them to see exactly how you could use them in your teaching and learning environments, as they both offer strengths and weaknesses.

LMS Showdown – Which Is The Best Fit?

Teachers, schools, districts, and higher ed institutions have a wide range of platforms to use as their online “home base” for their students.  Companies like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Edmodo, Schoology, and more recently Canvas by Instructure are all vying for the chance to become your Learning Management System (LMS) of choice.

With all of these options (along with dozens more) available, how do teachers, administrators, and tech coordinators decide which platform is best for their students?  As a middle school educator and instructional coach, Here are some of the areas that need to be considered when evaluating which LMS is right for you:

1.  Straightforward Set-up and Maintainance

In order for any LMS to be successful, it needs to be fairly simple for teachers to set-up and maintain their classes/courses in the online environment.

While additional training and professional development is almost certainly required for any new system, the administrative interface of the LMS needs to be intuitive.  Teachers will not buy-in to the system if it is not user-friendly, and will be less likely to implement the system to its full potential if roadblocks are continuously encountered.

Additionally, maintaining class rosters and posting updated content for units and lessons needs to be as streamlined as possible.

2.  Simple Student Access and Navigation

Although the learning-curve for a teacher to learn any new LMS is integral to its adoption, the ability for a student to pick it up easily is exponentially more important.

Students need to be able to join groups/classes, access content, and submit assignments with as little interference as possible.  You will also want to keep in mind how content is presented from the student’s point of view (is it presented linearly in a “playlist,” as a page of multiple entry-points, etc.) and if it allows for students to easily explore related content on their own.

With this in mind, even the LMS with the most intuitive user interface may be challenging for students who are not as tech-savvy.  Whatever LMS you end up deciding to use, a system of support for students (and parents) needs to be set up.

Whether this is by a help-center or FAQ section developed by the LMS company or a series of lessons/screencasts that you develop yourself, students and parents need somewhere to turn when they have questions about the learning system.

3.  Ability to Embed Various Content 

Most learning management systems can easily embed video and images, but any other content (interactives, ebooks, etc.) need to be tested to make sure that they can be embedded into the system easily.

I have been using Edmodo this year with middle schoolers, and for the most part embedding content has been successful.  Some more complicated content did not successfully embed, and I had to post it as a link instead.  While this worked out for me, I had to preface this to students and remind them to read the post and follow the link accordingly.

4.  Connectivity to Student Information/Grading Systems

The biggest selling point of many learning systems and applications today is complete, back-end integration with student information databases and grading systems (such as Power School or Progress Book in the K-12 realm).

Having information about student enrollment, scheduling, and grades continuously connected and updated makes any learning application or program that much more effective.  It allows for almost instant feedback and communication between the instructor and the student/parent, and aids in the analysis of data to make important instructional decisions.

What is even more rare to find among web-based learning platforms is the ability to link all student performance and assessment data into one central hub.  While many companies are working toward this goal, finding a perfect combination of LMS with compatible learning tools and programs is somewhat challenging.

5.  Universal Hardware Compatibility

Depending on the hardware that you school or organization has adopted, this is crucial to successfully implementing an LMS.  While most of the popular systems tout cross-compatibility, there are some major differences in the user experiences of, say, the iPad app versus using the LMS on a desktop.

It is important that you know what features of your selected LMS will function of each hardware device that your learners may be using, and having foreknowledge of this before signing on to using one for a specified period of time will be very important.  Testing out the experience of the LMS on all possible devices – from the administrative and student perspective – is extremely important.

Next Steps – Further Investigation

Over the next few weeks, I will be spending time researching some of the best Learning Management Systems available to educators and blogging about them as  go.  I will be looking at the feature-sets of many LMS platforms and evaluating them in the mentioned categories, and will note any major features that set each apart from the rest.

If anyone would like to share their own thoughts or experiences about a specific LMS, I invite you to comment to this or any of the future posts.  Knowing exactly what you get from each system is very important, and getting a more complete picture of each available system will help educators and administrators make more informed choices for their students.

Also, any representatives from LMS companies are welcome to comment and leave their own feedback or add more information about the features that I may overlook.  You can also follow me @EdTechToolkit on twitter to let me know what you think and keep up to date on my venture through different learning management systems in the coming weeks.

OETC Day Two – Recap

Day two of the conference for me had an eerily similar beginning:  Brisk drive into the city, application of scarf/gloves in preparation to walk from the garage, followed by a never-ending screaming of “Holy hashtag it’s cold!” in my mind as I walk to the Convention Center.

My first session was all about blended learning, which was presented by Marcia Kish of DSD Professional Development (@dsdPD).  The workshop-style session featured a lot of useful tools that either I could use in my classes or, more importantly, share with other teachers in my district.  Here’s a link to the applications and websites that were focused on.

It surprised me how many web 2.0 tools are still unknown to many people in education.  Socrative, Padlet (formerly wallwisher), Today’s Meet, and Voki avatars were all things that I was introduced to years ago (and some of which I have phased out of implementation).

Other more recent offerings were welcome (BlendSpace, ShowMe, ThingLink), and Marcia did a nice job of implementing these tools into her workshop session materials.

 

After meeting up with a former colleague during the keynote, I headed to the session that I was most excited for today:  The LMS Smackdown!

This was a participant-driven session with volunteers promoting their Learning Management System of choice in successive rounds answering the “What, When, Where, Why, and Wish” of their selected LMS.  Blackboard, Schoology, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Edmodo, Google Apps, and (at the last minute) Canvas were all represented.

The session was upbeat and fun, and led to some great discussions with the LMS advocates afterwards.  In my classroom, I have been trying a combination of Edmodo and Google Apps for a one-two punch of communication and collaboration, and wanted to know what other options could work just as well or better.

Christopher Deis (@christopherdeis), who represented Google Apps during the Smackdown, shared with me that he was using Schoology and Google Apps very successfully.  Guess what I researched a bit more after that…

I finished my day with a session titled “Beyond 21st Century Skills,” which was presented by Edward Hill from the Ohio Resource Center.  Expecting to find a session locked and loaded with more tech firepower, I was pleasantly surprised when this was a more “fundamental question” discussion.

Although technology may be a part of what we do, Mr. Hill encouraged us as educators to “be brave enough to fail” when trying new things.  Focusing heavily on incorporating the design process into lesson planning and having students help develop the ways in which they learn, a lot of the undertones were reminiscent of Kevin Honeycutt’s (@kevinhoneycutt) keynote and sessions from Monday.  Mentioning the likes of Sal Khan and Sugata Mitra really drove the student-driven aspect home, and was an uplifting end to my time at EOTC on Tuesday.

There were many other sessions that I would have loved to attend on Tuesday, but it’s just not physically possible to get to them all.  If anyone would like to share their experiences (or presenters, any of your resources and handouts) tweet them @EdTechToolkit and I’ll share some of those in a future post.  Thanks to everyone who made day 2 of EOTC great!

OETC Day One – Afternoon

My first day at the 2014 OETC is coming to a close, and it’s been an overall motivational and uplifting experience.

I can’t praise Kevin Honeycutt enough for his keynote (and his afternoon session that was a continuation of it).  I think his tagline on his website (kevinhoneycutt.org) explains his overall theme the best:

He celebrates the natural curiosity and entrepreneurship of kids, and how we as teachers and/or parents should celebrate these things.  We should encourage students to develop skills and talents that they do well, but also teach them things that may not come as naturally to them.

More specifically, he repeatedly iterated the idea that students need to be aware of the “digital legacies” they continuously are adding to and modifying as they interact online.   Along with digital literacy and netiquette skills, Kevin offered multiple free resources that are available to teachers and students to develop 21st century skills.  (Link available here to his list of tools and resources)

He is a great advocate for students and their development, and believes that students should be able to utilize their strengths to develop their own creative ideas that they can use to create their own businesses.  While I’m sure his background in art and music may influence this a great deal, it is a mindset that is fresh in the K-12 education realm and is somewhat rare.

Thank you Mr. Honeycutt for encouraging me to continue doing things that challenge students and motivate them to be creative, innovative, and responsible in today’s digital world.

Ohio’s Educational Technology Conference – Day One Preview

OTEC is the third largest state educational technology conference in the country.

Despite the cold and snowy conditions, many people in the education industry will be attending the Ohio Educational Technology Conference this week.  The three-day event will be filled with a plethora of innovative individuals, groups, and companies who are looking to leave their marks on the EdTech industry, and on education in general.  

For those of us who have the opportunity to meet up at OETC, the choice of sessions, workshops, and participant-driven meetups (OETCx) is impressive.  I have a feeling that after registering and going to my first 8:00 session I’ll adjust my plan for the day.

I’ll be attending Monday and Tuesday, and look forward to seeing what other teachers are currently implementing in their classrooms successfully to being back and share with my colleagues.  Hopefully I’ll have a lot to share tomorrow after day one.

A Teacher’s Guide to Social Media

A Teacher’s Guide to Social Media

A great overview of the “dos and don’ts” of social networking for teachers to follow.  While most of this article pertains to things to avoid doing yourself on social networks, points number 5 and 6 are geared towards ways to use social networking in positive ways to encourage, motivate, and communicate with your students.

Edmodo is one of many social networks that are intended primarily for student and teacher communication in an online space.  Edmodo has adopted a visual style very similar to that of facebook, which would allow students who are familiar with its layout to be more comfortable and engaged in communication and collaboration.  Schoology, a hybrid social network/LMS for students and teachers, also has a facebook-esque feel that most users are accustomed to.

As I read through this article, TED Ed was a service that I was not currently familiar with, but extremely excited about upon discovering.  I have tried using other services to easily create content for students to access on their own (Learnist, Khan Academy, other services that I have forgotten the names of) but TED-Ed shows great promise.

Like Khan Academy, TED-Ed allows teachers to assign students videos to watch to teach/reinforce concepts and then answer questions demonstrating mastery.  However, TED-Ed breaks the mold by allowing teachers to create context specific to what they are teaching, and customize the lesson as they see fit (not to mention that Khan Academy primarily focused on Math concepts).

After reading the article, check both of these services out to see how you could implement them in your own classroom.

Freerice.com – Feeding the Hungry, One Question at a Time

Teaching basic vocabulary and math skills to today’s students can be challenging at times, and remediation for students who are struggling can be overwhelming.  One extremely valuable tool available for teachers and students is Freerice.com, a non-profit website that supports the World Food Program.

Answer a question right, and rice is donated to hungry people. It’s a win-win.

Freerice is a web-based trivia game that has two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Many different subjects of questions are available, most of which being leveled to accommodate any level of learner.

While this charitable idea on its own is ingenious, it creates an intrinsic reward to those who participate that is very addictive – students always are wanting to answer more questions to keep donating more rice.  Additionally, teachers can create accounts for their students and have them join class groups, where goals can be set and class tallies of rice can be made to see how much rice the entire class has donated over time.

Many different subjects are available to answer questions on, including English vocabulary, basic math skills, geography skills, and foreign languages, with more subjects being added continuously.  What’s more, many of the subjects have the option to change the level of difficulty as you are answering questions, which allows you to individualize this for each student based on his/her needs.

If the content is too easy for the student, the site will gradually increase their level as they answer questions.  If the questions prove to be more challenging, it will alter the difficulty as well.  This is a godsend for teachers who instruct groups of students at varying learning levels, tailoring the activity to meet the needs of all students.

Become a Sensai of Classroom Management with Class Dojo

Use any device (now even Android compatible!) to manage classroom behavior.

Move over, Mr. Miyagi – Behavior management in the classroom just got an upgrade.  Actually, Class Dojo has been around for a while now, but a recent upgrade has made this easy-to-use app available to Android users as well as iOS.

Class Dojo is a tool that teachers can use to manage both positive and negative behaviors of their students within the classroom.  A teacher sets up his/her classes, decides what positive behaviors will be rewarded, and can begin using the program immediately in the classroom.

Wax on, wax off

Class Dojo works using a point system, where positive behavior exhibited by students is is awarded with a point.  Negative behaviors, on the other hand, result in a student losing a point.  At any given time, a student’s overall behavior breakdown can be accessed and reviewed to summarize how he/she has behaved in class in a given time frame.

When students are awarded points, the teacher can select one or more students (all of which can be done from a tablet, PC, Mac, or smart phone (Android or iOS), and what behavior is being awarded.  If the Class Dojo class screen is projected, the student(s) receiving the reward are instantly recognized in a pop-up on the screen, along with a satisfying chime to let the class know what behavior has been noticed by the teacher.  Alternatively, a teacher could review the points at increments during class, or at the end of each class to recognize students for their positive behaviors.  Additionally, Class Dojo automatically sends out reports to parents each Friday, given that you have entered email addresses for your students beforehand.

In my own experience with 5th graders, I have noticed that Class Dojo does a great job of focusing on the positive behaviors of students, even when negative behaviors are occurring at the same time.  With many reward/punishment systems, the positive and negative consequences are not connected, and many students receive more attention and recognition for doing things “wrong,” although they may be doing many more things “right.”  Class Dojo summarizes both together, and students can receive more attention for the positive decisions they make in the classroom.

Google Apps for Education – The Basics

As part of a training unit that I’ve been developing for some co-workers, I’ve put together this series of short short how-to screencasts to help even the least tech-savvy teacher breeze through Google Apps like a pro.

The first video gives an overview of how cloud-based storage works with Google Drive, walking through the basics of uploading files and sharing them with others. The following three videos demonstrates the basic functions of Google Docs, Google Presentations, and Google Forms.

Although these videos were created to show teachers how useful Google’s free web-based applications can be, anyone can benefit from these invaluable resources that Google has been so kind to offer us.

Enjoy! (and be sure to share these with others who you think would benefit from a little basic Google know-how)