MACUL: A gathering place for educators to dialogue about technology

"Are you using it for purpose or for pleasure?"

Andy Schoenborn, a Michigan high school ELA teacher and presenter at this year's MACUL conference in Grand Rapids, poses this question to his students about their in-class cell phone use. It's a question that returned to me throughout the day and on the drive home. How do I plan for technology usage in the classsroom: Purpose or pleasure?

The MACUL conference was an event on my road to certification that I was excited to attend. Looking through the program alone, I realized that we had a unique opportunity to attend sessions and speak with master teachers who have researched, experimented and refined their use of technology in the classroom to drive student learning. Andy Schoenborn was one such educator among hundreds who had decided to leave their classrooms for a couple of days to engage members of their profession about technology. With this in mind, the most powerful part of the day was that the presenters and other educators viewed technology as tools to serve a particular purpose: engaging students in a dialogue around core content both to engage them and to give them feedback on their work.

I intentionally attended sessions led by teachers. I wanted to hear from teachers who have researched, experimented and refined different uses for technology to promote student learning. The first session that I attended addressed how to give students effective feedback on their writing via Google Docs and forums. I believe that I was one of the few non-ELA teachers in the room. This was not a surprise, but an area of the chemistry curriculum that I would like to see be revised. The question that comes up so often is, "How am I supposed to grade lab reports as well as plan, run labs and grade other assessments?" The presenter of this session probed at this instructional need and proposed that technology could offer a solution. Did it actually cut down on the amount of time required for grading? That wasn't cut to me, but I realized that the feedback given in an hours time via Google Docs was richer in comparison with hand scribbled notes on students' work. Another advantage that the speaker presented was that students would respond to the feedback with questions and clarifying statements, such that their work becomes a central hub for discussion of student progress.

Another session that I attended was given by a passionate math teacher who has made use of pictures and videos (in the spirit of Dan Meyer) to engage students with the content. This teacher took a different approach than I had expected at a "ed tech conference" by having us become his students. We went through a lesson that made use of a photo to engage students in mathematical thinking and dialogue. The educators in the room were so excited by the possible ways that Geometry that a good many minutes were taken up by educators arguing different perspectives with which they approached the problem! While I had expected to be dazzled by different tech tools that this educator has reshaped his classroom around, I found instead that his simple tool was lost in the engagement of the participants with his question prompt and others' ideas. Coming out of that session, I realized that that should be my goal for any instructional tool that I implement. It should disappear from view and allow student learning to take center stage.

Returning to my own students and chemistry curriculum, I want to consider how to take these ideas and make them my own. Additionally, I want to integrate myself into the vast networks of science and math teachers who have committed to sharing materials, to asking for critic and to discussing best practice with other professional teachers, such as getting involved with the NSTA and Twitter STEM feed. These practices will allow me to become increasingly purposeful about using technology to promote student learning.

TED talk about motivation

...Student motivation on my mind...

Learning is Messy: Thinking about literacy and equity

Recently, I discovered Brian Crosby's blog Learning is Messy. Take a moment and get to know him too:

Brian Crosby, an upper elementary teacher for over  30 years, now facilitates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education for teachers and administrators in six counties in northern Nevada. Coming from a background in outdoor education and educational technology, Brian fused his “at risk” students use of technology with field trips, art, hands-on activities and a problem-based approach, to build their schema of the world while at once connecting them to it.

Brian believes strongly that providing exciting and motivating hands-on, minds-on experiences, although crucial, is not good enough for our students. They require the time to “Go Deep” and leverage their learning through all aspects of the curriculum including integrated, rigorous language arts, math, art and social studies work. (Retrieved from: http://learningismessy.com/blog/?page_id=2).

He writes a lot about the importance of connecting students with real world experiences in the classroom in order to establish the relevance of learning STEM concepts. This question of "So what? Why do I have to learn this?" has been looming large in my mind as my MT's classes move into topics which require higher mathematics and become more abstract. Why does a student need to know about rate laws and how to calculate them? State and National standards drive these instructional decisions- yes, students need to know about rate laws and how to calculate them. Okay. Got it. But... I think the big question becomes, "How do we make this concept relevant to their daily lives and help them to become stronger problem solvers and communicators in the process?"

This is where the 8 Practices of Scientists and Engineers (well, one in particular) and Brian Crosby come in. The Next Generation Science Standards were built on 8 practices that the experts of the National Research Council (NRC) have researched and identified as important practices/skills that scientists and engineers. One of these practices is called, "Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information." In the sciences, this practice introduces students to the complex and varied ways by which scientists and engineers communicate within the discipline and also with the society in which they design and implement their investigative work. Of the eight NGSS practices, this one seems to more strongly connect the science classroom discourse and learning objectives with the “real world” and is important for students to engage in because it makes student critical analysts and helps them to develop a language and means for communicating with a community. So, one way to make things more relevant for students is to frame the concept in the context of their community and interests! Rate laws become more relevant when students are asked to run a lab in response to a "business letter" which asks them, these budding chemists, to determine the optimal procedure for a creating a new product and then to write back to the company  their findings in a professional manner. This idea can be further extended by asking the students to write a pamphlet, infographic or webpage alerting their community to the consequences of.... [fill in the blank].

Along with strengthening the "So what" element of learning, teaching students to obtain, evaluate and communicate information empowers them with better tools for academic independence, literacy and social equality. This is a big claim, I know!  However, as I researched this practice for my Science Methods course, I found it interesting that the practice of obtaining, evaluating and communicating information can be leveraged for social justice. Not only does this skill strengthen students' abilities to engage in scientific practices, but it strengthens them as citizens! When considering how I can address equity in my classroom, I have limited my considerations to strategies for helping women and minorities have a stronger voice and identity as a scientific thinker. Extending this thinking, the implementation of this practice in my classroom can enable students to build connections with others outside of the classroom as well as have strategies for engaging with scientific texts, whether encountered in the workplace or in the newspaper. As students become more literate and more able to evaluate and communicate knowledge, they are better prepared to translate these skills outside of the classroom into daily life, in which they will encounter text and/or data in which they must be able to critically engage with it and make decisions about the consequences of that information.

According to Brian Crosby,

Even having ubiquitous family access and proficiency in using the internet is a game-changer. I remember as a child, conversations with some of my parents’ friends and acquaintances often led me to want to know more about something or helped me see why or how I might want to try a different strategy to do something. How do we create that experience for our students who haven’t experienced these kinds of conversations?

Learning in connected classrooms (supported by connected teachers) helps provide or expand connections that some families may not have or know how to utilize in helping their children learn. Our role as teachers is to facilitate as students build their own personal learning networks, showing them how to utilize those networks in meaningful, courteous ways. 

(Retrieved from: http://plpnetwork.com/2013/10/24/connected-students-share-real-world-projects-sharpen-literacy-skills/)

I am beginning to appreciate how many layers of student learning can be developed when putting together a lesson or unit! Brian's challenge of providing students' with opportunities also presents itself as an asset to student learning. Want students to be engaged? Want them to become increasingly independent learners and empowered citizens? Maybe these are layers that can be addressed through the intentional design of classroom discourse, student work and assessment. Scaffold them in learning to articulate their understanding of rate laws, make their words have meaning outside of your classroom walls and let them experiment with different modes of communication!

To begin developing this practice in my own teaching, I would like to develop a lab write-up which requires the students to synthesize their gathered information and analysis and communicate to an audience, such as having them write a business letter or letter of inquiry to a chemical company. I would also like to have students present their knowledge in various forms, such as through the design of a model or a storyboard of the phenomenon that they observed and tested, as well as a verbal presentation of their conclusions in front of the class. Each of these are important methods for communication and would give students experience with the multimodal communication present in the scientific community.

So, engagement and empowerment. Is it feasible to bring this kind of "real-world communication" into every lesson, into every lab report? Is it necessary to do this? I would love to hear others' thoughts on this!

Engaging Presentations: What's important?

This is another demo that I hope to enact some day soon! (I'll have to work on polishing up the ol' British accent though!) If you don't want the preamble of this Professor's retirement party, start the video at 0:49 and sit back and enjoy the wonders of acid-base chemistry!!

This is an example of taking concepts that are dense and seemingly irrelevant to 15-year olds  and making them a source of curiosity and wonder. I would want to follow up this demonstration with a class discussion about what happened and why. I think a lot of times demonstrations stop at the curiosity stage, but don't let students in on the secrets of science. This can lead to students saying, "Yeah, it was cool, but so what?" which might lead to student disengagement in the long run, even if you continue to dazzle them with magical demos such as this one.

Voice Thread

Looking back over the Tech Tools in Use presentations of this semester (it's hard to believe that we're already well into November!!), I would like to thank all of my fellow members of the Blue Cohort for the time and energy you put into your presentations! One thing about our program that I have appreciated from the beginning is that we get to learn from each other's learning experiences! These Tech Tools presentations are a good example of this! I didn't have to spend the time finding, researching and tackling a variety of tools- my classmates shared their knowledge and effort with me and I with them! Awesome!

 I think that the tool I could most readily make use of is Voice Thread. This Web 2.0 tool allows for easy creation of slideshows, which can be edited, annotated and scribbled all over... I love doodling...

More to the point, however, I like that Voice Thread is so adaptable for many different content areas! I can see it having utility in a chemistry classroom as well as a math classroom if my future placement asks me to take on courses in their math department. For chemistry, students could annotate and comment on the strength of a lab report's abstract. Students could also design a presentation on a particularly challenging topic, which could be archived on the class' website. The student presenters would (hopefully) gain deeper insight into the concept as they work to articulate it to others. Additionally, their classmates and future chemistry enthusiasts would have access to their work and be able to learn about the concept from their peers in addition to their teacher!

   Another important feature of VT that I really appreciate is that it's EASY to use. It's an accessible tool for teachers, as well as for students. Want to record an explanation of a concept or introduce your presentation? You can just press a button and have it record your voice in conjunction with an uploaded video or picture. Don't like how that recording went? Just trash it and begin another recording. Another nice feature is that people, who want to respond to a presentation slide, can also easily record their voice or post a comment and/or picture. 

  Drawbacks come into play when you look at VT's free version file limit. Being allowed only a few presentations at a time is a definite con. This limit inhibits students and teachers' access to enduring files, which would decrease the possibility of future students benefiting from your students' work. If this tool becomes a regular part of my teaching, then I would seriously consider paying the costs to get more storage. For now, it will be fun to play with this tool in my MT's classroom and to gauge how well student learning is supported by this visual and interactive tool. 

Thanks again to everyone who presented tech tools this term!

Happy (belated) Mole Day!!!

(pretend it's Oct 23rd... I know. I'm really behind on this one!)

Demonstrations and cell phones

   I recently had the opportunity to perform this demonstration in my mentor teacher's AP Chemistry classes. It was performed as a "flipped demo" in which the students were asked to predict the amount of heat being given off in a combustion reaction of 20mL of a volatile alcohol. Believe it or not, this reaction went on its merry way with the simple prompting of a smoldering match! (By the 3rd time around, the wood splint, which was taped to the end of my meter stick and was used in the demo to introduce the flame source, was in sorry shape, but the reaction worked wonderfully even then!)

Sample video of the Whoosh Bottle Demonstration
(repeated again and again for your viewing pleasure)

   Turns out the chemistry behind this reaction can be unpacked for a long time and can be approached from a number of different foundational stones of chemistry, such as stoichiometry and thermochemistry, but man, the demo itself is fast!

   It's in situations such as these that the school's BYOD policy really comes in handy! While none of my students (as far as I know) captured my demonstration with their phones, why not invite them to do so the next time? Having a record of the event would give them an opportunity to access the event, as well as the related content, in the future. Even if the student went back even once to re-watch the demo, wouldn't allowing them to whip their phones out in class be worth it? Or even better, what if they went home, showed their little sibling the video of the demo and tried to explain their understanding of the phenomenon to said sibling? How many more learning opportunities could this 5 second demo provide if captured on video?
    So, my question becomes... what online tools or apps could students access on their phones? In particular, which of these tools would provide support for students without being cumbersome or difficult to manage. Some interesting tools that I have come across personally in the last few days and am interesting in exploring more include:

1. Zydeco (Science to go)- Data collection and Claim/Evidence/Reasoning portal
2. TodaysMeet- The "backchannel"- not sure what that means yet!
3. Padlet- Create a website wall quickly!
4. Common Craft- building videos?
5. inClass- app for class notes and collaborative work.

Has anyone tried any of these or found other tools that make good use of cell phones in the classroom?