What is it?
Why is it important? There were an estimated 570,000 open computer science jobs last year and only about 50,000 computer science students graduated into the workforce last year. The average computer science job has a starting pay of $65,900 with a mid career salary of $110,000, making it one of the highest paid fields. In addition to the income benefits and availability of jobs in the field, the ability to program is quickly becoming an essential skill. With the rise of automation, many manufacturing and other blue collar jobs will become white collar jobs that require computer programming. This shift won't happen all at once so we need to be preparing our students for a world that may ask for coding skills, rather than or in addition to word processing and spreadsheet skills as it stands today. Even if students don't end up needing to be able to code for their careers, coding requires an abundance of critical thinking and creative thinking and, if students are working together, collaboration and communication skills. All of which are vital skills for a successful person to have in today's ever-changing world. How will we participate?This week is a time to focus on computer science through class discussion and special projects. See if there is a way to integrate coding into your content area or lesson you are teaching that week. Robots that I have are Spheros and Dash and Dot and are a great special activity for this week. There are many videos online you may use to introduce and reflect on the experience. The media specialists at the middle and high school will also be coordinating this at their respective schools through science or math classes. Below is a link to a guide for where to start in grades K-5. Hour of Code Guide Continue the excitementAn hour of code is a great start to introducing your students to computer science, but much like a foreign language, the earlier and more often it is practiced, the easier it is to make it "stick." Use the following tools to help our students become literate in computer science after they have had a tasted during "Hour of Code."
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Wow, the year has started off with a flurry of activity. There are so many amazing and innovative things happening in Buhler every single day. I finally have some time to share a few awesome things that keep coming up! Two big things that have been rolling around in my mind are student creativity and publishing their work for an authentic audience. So often our kids work on these big, amazing things and only their teacher, and possibly classmates, get to see it. Consider ways for your students to find an authentic audience. Below are a few ways they can publish their work for the world to see. CreativityFirst, read this blog post from Alice Keeler. She sums up a lot of the concern with how we tend to use technology to continue doing the things we have always done. When we think of having our kids use technology we need to be thinking of student creativity early and often. As jobs become more and more automated, creativity will endure. She mentions a lot of great ideas. Remember, with our iPads and Macs we have FREE access to iMovie and Clips for creating movies, and Garage Band and Voice Recorder for creating audio. There are also many more tools out there that I would be happy to explore with you. Also remember, you DO NOT have to know how to use a website or app to have kids use it. They will teach you in no time! Apple's Homework Commercial The commercial for Apple's most recent iPad embodies SO MUCH of what technology can do for us. Learning can be play, and creativity communicates that learning so well. Please check it out!
Design Thinking Design thinking is currently one of my favorite creativity and critical thinking techniques in education. The idea essentially boils down to designing something, anything from clothing to vehicles to gadgets to buildings, that solves a problem for someone. For example, you may ask your students to design a solution for Brian's shelter in "Hatchet" using only materials that would have been available to him. Another example would be to design a uniform for soldiers in the Civil War. In all cases students must empathize with the person, understand the context of the problem, create a solution, and revise. Often students will simply draw and present their ideas, rather than actually building a prototype. Consider this idea if you are trying to add creativity, critical thinking, and communication to your classroom. See the graphic below for a design thinking framework. Publishing for an Authentic AudiencePodcastingYes, I am aware podcasting tried to have its "moment" back when the iPod first came out when I was in high school, but it seems that podcasting has finally made it to the big time. There are podcasts for entertainment, learning, Bible Study, news, and everything in between. The content available is exploding and it is easier than ever to create your own. Below are a couple of tools to help you and your students do just that!
Story Corps Story Corps is another site where students may record and publish podcasts. Their focus is on telling stories worth telling so they vet uploaded podcasts before publishing. One benefit of Story Corps is that they have question prompts for users to ask, which helps create a strong story. This is also a great site for students to listen to podcasts that go with a project or topic they are working on. BloggingBlogging continues to be the world's most popular way to get ideas out there. Tools to create blogs are getting easier and more powerful to use, and social media makes it easy to share, add relevant hashtags, and get noticed. Students should be publishing their writing and learning how to craft a blog with images, videos, and links that are valuable to the reader. There is no more authentic way to share what you know than with a blog published for the world to see. Three tools to do so with your students are listed below. I may have ADD. I probably do. My wife diagnosed me.
Thus, I have trouble sticking with one ed tech tool long enough to allow students to become proficient in it, let alone myself. What this boiled down to in my classroom was limiting student creativity by hopping from new app to new app. Sometimes the best app to bring out student creativity and critical thinking is the one they enjoyed two weeks before. So here is a list of apps and websites you should allow your students use more, even if you use them a lot already. 1. iMovie (Or WeVideo) iMovie is still the most accessible video editor out there. It’s free on all Apple devices, and relatively easy to learn. We, myself included, need to allow students enough time to learn this well enough to move on from the trailers feature. I am a self professing trailers junkie. 2. Flipgrid I literally cannot imagine a scenario where a teacher uses Flipgrid too much. It is FREE now, it allows students to use their voice through video, connects your students to each other and the world, builds community, showcases learning, provides space to reflect and share passions, and so much more. 3. Clips Clips is an even easier video creation app than iMovie. Its showcase feature is live titles that captions your video while you talk. Pan and zoom while recording, animate text and emojis of all different styles, and add music from your library or from free soundtracks. Don’t miss the boat on this one. 4. Adobe Spark Adobe Spark is actually a suite of three apps/sites that are incredibly easy to use. Spark Post makes it easy to design amazing graphics, Spark Video helps students create beautiful narrated slideshow videos, and Spark Page is the easiest way to create a simple web page to showcase learning. Graphics, video, and the web, all three are essential design skills for modern life. 5. Garage Band Let’s be honest, we abandoned Garage Band a long time ago. We need to bring it back! I give a presentation on podcasting and I am constantly on the search for FREE audio editors to share that work in Chrome or Windows. Quality options don’t exist! Soundtrap is the next best thing but it costs $$$. Music and podcasting are hallmarks of the creativity coming from this generation. Our students need to be able to hone their skills in our classrooms. Apple has made it much easier to get started with Loops, which give you pre-recorded bits of music you can combine to create an original song without much musical talent. 6. Scratch With the impending arrival of Scratch 3.0, it deserves a fresh look. The new Scratch will allow students to code completely random and incredible projects from any modern device, iPads and Chromebooks included. Coding CANNOT be isolated to one hour in December. Our students need time and freedom to stretch their critical thinking and creative muscle while coding something they thought up in their own heads. 7. CAMERA AND PHOTOS All caps was necessary. The world in 2018 is visual, our brains are visual and increasingly so. Our students should be taking a plethora of pictures every day. Doing something cool in science? Take a pic. Have a friend explaining a confusing math problem? Video it. Reading an epic passage in your book? BookSnap it. Find a great source for your writing project? Screenshot it. Finally, don’t forget you can save any image you find, as long as you follow copyright laws, by long tapping on an iPad or right clicking on a computer. Pictures are the absolute best way to document learning. Sometimes we feel guilty when our students aren’t using the newest app. This is driven by social media, just like consumerism is. By all means give your students access to the new stuff, but let’s not abandon the free and easy to use tools that allow our students to become the content creators they need to be. What does it do?![]() Clips allows your students, using an iOS device, to easily create high quality videos on the fly. Add text, or emoji, to images and have it animate in, pinch and zoom on photos to create a Ken Burns Effect, and perhaps best of all, it will add live captions to video as you record! Once all of your clips are put together they create a seamless video, theme music is built in and free. This app is so easy and slick to create video for anything! What should I use it for in my class?A few ideas:
What will change in my class if I use this well?Creativity is the name of the game here. Students are creating while they are learning or after to demonstrate learning. In the modern classroom creativity is king. It is at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy, lives in Depth of Knowledge 4, and is one of the 4 Cs of 21st Century Learning. Students need to be creative every day. We also know that students, and people really, are visual learners. This app makes it easy to connect to that part of our brains and much easier to learn and remember.
“ Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Tonight I made a parallel between a national issue and a public schools issue. If you live or work somewhere you take pride in then your desire should be for all to join you there.
If our country is the greatest country in the world, then we should swell with pride that others want to join us. If we work in a school that parents and students want to join, we should swell with pride that they want to be there. Let’s work to make our schools, offices, restaurants, and country a place people want to be, and swell with pride when they choose to join us. Teaching tends to be a rather solitary profession. Which is strange, because we are surrounded by people all the time. Who we are not surrounded by all the time, though, are other teachers. We get, maybe, 30 minutes a day at lunch to meet with colleagues and possibly some collaboration time here and there. When you stop and think about it, most professions spend all day working with a large group on the same project or at least on the same type of project. Teachers often have only one or two colleagues in the building who are working on the same thing with their students at the same time. In order to stay on the forefront of the current pace of growth in education, teachers should regularly spend time seeking out new concepts and ideas relevant to their classroom. The pace our world is changing is remarkable, and education is not immune. In the past it has been enough to take a college course every few years and read a new professional book every year or so. We cannot expect that to be enough any longer. Just as a business cannot expect to be successful without engaging with its customers on social media, we cannot expect to stay on the forefront of our profession without becoming connected educators. I fear that last statement is alarming and presumptuous to some. Lofty ideas are thrown around for what a connected educator actually is. I believe many assume that you must post pictures of your students working regularly and that it has to be something flashy or new to have any value. Others believe that you have to participate in Twitter chats weekly. Still others believe they will seem braggadocious by posting all of the good things happening in their classrooms. These are not true, but I understand how teachers could think any one of them. This summer I asked Paul Erickson, Samantha Neill, and Jason Kohls, an exceptional elementary principal and two exceptional high school ELA teachers, if they would speak to Buhler's new teachers about Twitter and how we use it to share our story. We were discussing many of the same assumptions that I listed above about connected educators and how we could address them in order to remove inhibitions and help colleagues find the same value in connectivity that we have. Paul mentioned that he wished there was a SAMR model for connected educators and I could not get the idea out of my head. Frameworks like Bloom's Taxonomy, Maslow's Hierarchy, Depth of Knowledge, and the SAMR model help us define concepts so well. Here is what I came up with for connected educators. The ICT ContinuumInstead of using the word model I chose the word continuum. Continuum is defined as: a coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees The ICT Continuum as a whole describes connected educators. If you would place yourself on it anywhere, then you are a connected educator. Each step down the continuum varies slightly from the one before, identifying different elements that connected educators use to learn, collaborate, and share with the world of education. Notice that no specific tool is listed, so you do not HAVE to have a Twitter or Instagram account to be a connected educator, but you will be limited to a couple of steps if you do not. Also, it should be noted that you may flow from one step to another day to day. On the weekends I am often an incidental connected educator, and am a contributor a few times a week. Below I will describe each step down the continuum and list some tools that can help you with each. I would venture a guess that 75% (a total guess but I think a good one) of teachers are incidental connected educators. Essentially, incidental connectivity means that you are on various social media, like Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook, but you are there for your social life or other interest areas like sports or popular culture. When something comes across your feed, you read it and engage with it. You learn from it and, if it strikes a chord, you will share it with others either on social media or in real life. Funnily enough, this step does require you to have a social media account where education content can find its way to you. So the tools to use are all social media. Intentional connected educators choose to use social media and the internet to grow and develop regularly. They have developed a list of educators who post valuable blogs, ideas, and resources and want to continue learning from them. Besides simply following these teachers on social media, these connected educators may have a list of blogs or websites they go to regularly to learn and grow. These teachers may also simply be intentional about using Google to find ideas and resources. This step does not require a social media account, although it helps, as anyone is free to search hashtags on Twitter like #growthmindset, and Google is obviously free to use without an account. Curators have realized the power of connectivity in their professional growth and curate the content that matters to them. These educators use bookmarking tools like Pocket, Diigo, or Pinterest to save intriguing or impactful articles, blogs, or resources for later. They curate their social media, if they have one, by controlling their feed for the attitudes and ideas they care about. Using RSS readers like Feedly, they have found the blogs that help them grow the most and have that content brought to them automatically. You can curate content without social media simply by using an RSS reader and bookmarking tool. I use Feedly and Pocket and highly recommend both. Contributors are educators who are not just engaging in the content they have come across by hitting the "like" button, they share as well. A simple retweet or click of the share button is a contribution to the education world by continuing the spread of ideas that are worthwhile. Some contributors take it a step further and offer their own comment when sharing to further the idea or add a point of debate. Others share student work exemplars, pictures of their class on a field trip or engaged in a project, or even blog to contribute their viewpoint. A contributor helps to tell the story of education that so often is misrepresented or misinterpreted, something my district's leadership is passionate about. This step obviously does require an account on social media. If you are a tribe member, you will just know. One definition of the word tribe says, "a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest." Tribe members often meet on social media regularly, such as during weekly Twitter chats, and usually are passionate about a similar facet of education. For example, I participate in #edtechafterdark chat often and would consider the educators that meet there to be a group I trust with the similar interest of integrating technology into our schools. Another group I meet with that I consider my tribe is #leadupchat. This group consists of educators passionate about leadership, growth, culture, and shifts. Other tribes I see often are grade and content specific tribes like #3rdchat and #ELAchat, or fans of a particular book, for example #tlap is popular for lovers of the book Teach Like a Pirate. There is a tribe out there for every educator and you will feel so at home when you find yours. A pleaConnected educators, especially tribe members tend to be incredibly passionate about what Twitter and social media have done for their professional growth, and rightfully so. My plea for all of us is that we would stop saying things like, "Oh my gosh, you're not on Twitter?! You HAVE to be on Twitter! The most amazing teachers are on there!" Imagine how that might feel if they are not one of the amazing teachers just referenced. Instead, we must make a concerted effort to create the narrative that being a connected educator is about consistent, relevant, and valuable professional growth. We have all been given the gift of endless learning, resources, and collaboration and cannot continue to make it feel like a club to outsiders.
Now, contributors and tribe members, share this with your followers and tribes so that we can have a common language when we share about our experiences as connected educators. *Click here to download a pdf copy of the ICT Continuum. Let me know how you are using it with your fellow educators and any feedback you have for it. The iPad has always been a fantastic content creation device. Mostly thanks to developers love for the App Store. When Apple released iOS 11 it finally became an efficient platform. Lots of additions come together to make iPad a much more pleasant platform to work on. Drag and Drop The most significant improvement is probably drag and drop. You can literally drag and drop text, photos, urls, files, etc.. to any app that supports it. Developers have jumped on this ability so most quality apps already do. With this change I have been turned onto a new category of app called a “shelf” app. Shelf apps like Gladys allow you to drop content to be held until later to drag them into a new app. Watch the video below to see how this works to drop pictures onto Gladys and then drag them back out and into Pages. Floating Dock A feature you probably noticed in the previous video is the floating dock. The dock can now be brought up with a small flick from the bottom of the screen. You may also notice that it can hold over twice as many apps, including the three most recently opened on the far right. The video below shows dragging a link, pulling up the dock and dropping that link through and into the notes app. Screenshot Markup An improvement that I didn’t realize was needed was the workflow to markup and send screenshots. In iOS 11 when a screenshot is taken it will float to the bottom left of your screen. A swipe left will dismiss it, while a tap on it will open the markup screen. From here, mark up your photo and hit the “sharrow,” a name I heard for the share sheet that I can’t get out of my head, and send it to whichever app you need to. Tapping on done gives the option to either delete the screenshot after having sent it, or save it to your photos. The video below shows this workflow. Built-in QR Reader This next one is big time for teachers. Raise your hand if you have become so frustrated with QR code readers and their confusing user interfaces that you’ve given up on your students using them. (Raises hand) Good news! There is now a QR reader built into the camera app. Simply open the camera, point it at a QR code, and a notification pops down. Tap the notification to open whatever content is contained in the QR code. Watch below for the magic. Screen Recording Finally, the feature I have been waiting for the longest. In my job, I NEED the ability to make tutorial videos quickly and easily. That has always been cumbersome on iOS. I have used workarounds like Air Server in the past but those videos saved to the computer rather than the iPad or iPhone. FINALLY, screen recording is built into iOS. This option must be enabled from your control center customization settings in the settings app, but once it is all it takes is a long swipe up to see the control center, and a tap on the record button. Watch below! Those are just a few of the features that have turned iOS into a powerhouse productivity machine. It takes some getting used to to master the new gestures, but once you have them down your iPad will feel like a whole new device.
Teachers talk, a lot. Often times, we do all of the talking in our classrooms. This is not conducive to learning. The more opportunities we give our students to participate in discussion, the more likely they are to truly engage in the learning. There are many learning structures that attempt to engage the whole class in the discussion, but my favorite is student podcasting.
Podcasting is often looked at as an end of unit project, but with the tools and devices we have at our disposal, daily podcasting to document learning is an easy task. In my classroom, we used podcasts as our discussion during literature circles. You've probably seen or facilitated literature circles before, but a short description of how mine looked and why podcasting was the solution may help. Students were placed in groups of four to read a high quality novel. Often times there would be three or four different books being read across varying reading levels. Students had two responsibilities every day. They were expected to read the assigned section and complete a job. These were the possible jobs:
Not all jobs would be chosen, but discussion director had to be taken each day. During the next class period, groups got together and shared their jobs. The goal was for true, engaging, deep, and meaningful discussion to happen. And it did! But only occasionally. I found that my classroom management skills, while serviceable, could not maintain consistently high expectations for six different groups at once. I couldn't focus on the group I was with and the kids only wanted to finish the discussion so they could read the next section in the book. Which I was happy about, but still wanted that rich discussion to happen. I struggled through literature circles like this for three years before finally giving podcasting a shot. I found an iPad app called Opinion that made it easy for students to record a podcast and share it with me. So I pitched it to my students that fourth year of teaching. I laid out literature circles as in past years, but added the twist that they would be CREATING something during this discussion, rather than just going through the motions of a discussion they know their teacher can't hear just to check it off the list. Some observations about the difference it made:
A year removed from the classroom and I'm still reflecting back on the impact this made in my classroom. Here are a few more notes for implementing this in your room:
Tools to use for this:
It's really not about the tool, it is about the learning that happens when students are allowed to design the questions, lead the discussion, and create something they're proud of together. ![]() Leadership is inherently about change. CEOs won’t last long if there is no push for new or better, no politician runs on a platform of the status quo, and school leaders don’t keep master binders of the lesson plans used each year. Leaders who fail to seek positive change are, simply, not leaders, they are managers. We must all be change agents; for our students, our staff, and each other. My position as district technology integration specialist holds no real leadership capacity. Quite literally, there are no branches below my name on our organizational chart, and I have no students to guide through the year. Thankfully, my efforts to push the status quo are supported by excellent district administrators, who support our teacher leaders in doing the same. Last year, my first year on the job, I planned to affect positive change as an instructional partner, technology coach, and trusted colleague. While this was effective to some extent, I came to realize that I was tossing ideas into the wind, hoping that they would stick to a teacher who would bring the idea to fruition. I needed to “raise the heat” in order to create positive change. “Raise the heat” is a concept I learned at the Kansas Leadership Center last spring with fellow administrators and teacher leaders. It means to apply pressure that causes a desire to change. In high school the “heat” I needed to train for cross country was an upcoming race, in college I needed a too-soon deadline to create that “heat.” Many adults need the “heat” of a demanding boss to motivate them to complete work. It takes a very different type of heat to create a “need to change” mindset in teachers who are already excellent at what they do. Relationships Come First We had a celebration of new staff to close out the year and we were asked to tell what helped the most throughout the year. One by one, every teacher mentioned how positive relationships with students impacted their ability to do their job for the better. The same is true of working with teachers. Each opportunity to visit with teachers is an opportunity to build a relationship that helps me do my job better. This cannot be stated enough. Relationships must be the foundation of everything we do. Visibility Matters A big part of developing the relationships needed to create positive change is visibility. I have an office in our central office building, but the relationship that is needed in order to trust a colleague cannot be forged through email. Teachers need to see their leaders often, or human nature takes over and they wonder what leaders are doing in their offices all day. It is not only about being seen in schools, but about being seen and respected as a high quality educator. I worked last year to develop lessons to co-teach with my colleagues. Because I have no students and directly lead no staff, to demonstrate my trustworthiness as a quality educator, I need to be in the classroom in order to be “seen.” How to Raise the Heat Jimmy Casas speaks about the “Fall to Average.” It is natural human tendency to trend toward the status quo, rather than pushing ourselves to work harder to change our lesson plans, call just one more parent, or spend extra time with that one student we know could really use it. This is a constant battle, as one minute we will be committed to excellence, and the next we are exhausted and just trying to get through the day. So how can we raise the heat to create lasting, intrinsically motivated change without using any leadership authority to speak of? Below are three ideas.
2. Postive Peer Pressure The thing about teachers, and humans really, is we want to be good at what we do. Often if a teacher is trying something new, teachers around them will see the impact and want to jump on board. Peer pressure can be an excellent heat raising tool to spark ideas and change in whole groups of teachers. Watch the positive change spread like wildfire. 3. Observation Seeing is believing and modeling is an excellent way to show rather than tell. Fill in for teachers so they can observe a colleague that models the change you would like to see. Once the teacher sees and believes it, the heat comes from within because they want to be better for their students. Better yet, plan and co-teach a lesson with that teacher so she sees you as an instructional partner as well! Those are just a few of many ways to raise the heat. Creating positive change requires no title, deadline, or evaluations. People want to be great at what they do, but sometimes need help to get there. Raising the heat allows us to become inspired from within and creates a shift in mindset that leads to lasting change. How will you raise the heat to push your colleagues toward positive change this year? Samantha Neill, a colleague from Buhler, USD 313 (#313teach) challenged us to list our top five teaching non-negtoiables. I put this off because I hadn't gotten the inspiration I thought I needed. So I finally just started typing on my iPhone in bed. Originally I thought I would have to take some time sorting through possibilities, but it turns out these were all on the tip of my tongue already.
It is truly insane to see where I have come from in six years of being an educator. My top five my first year probably would have been:
Ok so number five is still one that I care about. Especially the part about winning. Obviously those aren't exactly the most impactful things to focus on as a teacher. I am glad I have grown! Here are my current top five non-negotiables.
Let me know what you think. Is there anything I left out? Thank you, Samantha Neill for challenging us to do this. We should probably all look at this each year so we know what we're about. *Seriously, teaching competitions should be a thing. Pick a standard to teach and a panel of judges scores each lesson. There could be categories for co-teaching, blended, small group, etc.. Think about it |
AuthorKyle McClure is an Integration Specialist in Buhler, KS. He specializes in iPads and GSuite for education. Archives
November 2018
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