What an adventure this semester has been! I have learned so much about blended learning, about tools for my courses, about learning management systems, and about what the future of education could look like with blended learning at the forefront. Thank you all for the support and the knowledge I have learnt from each one of you.
For our Summary of Learning, Brad and I decided to work together and create this video! We wanted to focus on the whole journey because that is the most important part and after all, if you don’t enjoy the journey, what’s the point? I hope you all enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it. Also, thank you to some colleagues that helped us out with production! To say we had fun is an understatement! I hope to see you all in the future, whether it is via twitter, or in more courses! Best of luck to you all! 🙂
Well, another course in the books – almost anyways! To say that I have learned a lot this semester is an understatement. I think the most important thing I can take away from this course though is my mindset towards blended learning in the classroom. I have changed the way I view myself as an educator and I am constantly questioning and considering how I can make my courses more accessible for students as well as more manageable. How can I help my students become better learners in this ever-changing world? And how can I help them “re-find” their creativity and allow them to challenge what education looks like?
As I stated in my previous blog, I did not consider myself a “blended” educator before starting this course, even though most of my material has been accessible to students through Google Classroom for the past year. I didn’t think this made me a “blended” educator until other teachers in my school and even my admin mentioned to me what a great idea this was.
I also ran into the curious problem of students not attending class due to some health related issues, BUT completing all work and communicating with me via Google Classroom and Remind. This happened for the first time last semester and I was immediately frustrated by it. I discussed it with my admin who asked the simple question: “are they meeting the outcomes?” I thought about it and while the student was missing out on what I thought as valuable instruction, conversation and socialization in my classroom, they were completing the required assignments, and therefore meeting the outcomes. It wasn’t as enriched as I wanted it to be, and I was left with a feeling of disappointment for the student. I wanted them to do better, because I knew they could have excelled in the course if they had only come to class, but this was their choice, and this was how they met the criteria to ultimately graduate.
I have the same issue occurring this semester with the exact same circumstances. This student just doesn’t want to be here (at school) because they would rather do the work in their own space. This semester, I had a conversation with the student right away because I understood where this was probably going to end up going. There are some extenuating circumstances to the reasoning of this student not coming to class, and I cannot help but admire them for the tenacity to complete a core class (ELA B30) completely on their own. I should also mention that their knowledge on the subject matter we discuss in class exceeds some of the other students without even being there for the conversations, as well as they have yet to miss a deadline and remain in contact if there are ever any questions. This whole circumstance leaves me stumped and in a predicament about blended learning as well as how to control attendance. Do I cut off their access to Google Classroom? Stop posting all the material and subject matter so they have to attend? Do I introduce the idea of “flexible attendance” to all my students? Any opinions are welcome!
This example touches on a lot of the questions from this week’s class and really has me pondering the future of education. What is it going to look like? The way I am viewing it, mostly due to this course and the ideologies we have learned, is that education should
be flexible and there are a variety of ways for students to meet the outcomes necessary to graduate into a world that is filled with other types of technology and opportunities. My AP Calculus class is working their butts off to write an exam in May, but I cannot get some of them to invest their own time into the course. I want this course to be blended and I want them to be able to learn on their own. These students, after all, are the ones bound for university and need to learn these skills like time management and independent study. I then look at my ELA courses, where I want to focus more on what we do in class, and the opposite is occurring. I think it might be time to focus more on what my students need and directing it that way instead of where I want them to go. We all know letting go of control as a teacher can be a scary idea! This is one way this course has helped me. It is helping me find where I need to direct my attention and knowledge when it comes to blended learning. Helping me recognize opportunities to incorporate it more seamlessly instead of forcing it.
Another important concept from last week’s discussion is the idea of teaching empathy and citizenship. I don’t think schools will ever be replaced completely by technology for these reasons. Our world would not be a good place is everyone was stuck indoors, on their computers, learning by themselves. Students need discussion, they need socialization, and they need to learn important concepts like citizenship to be successful in our world. I think it is really important to teach digital citizenship, and 21st century competencies, but those things don’t mean much if we don’t teach people how to be good humans first.
After reading Amy’s blog post this week, I reflected on why I became a teacher, and it was to build relationships and connections with students so that I can help them figure out their teenage years and beyond. If students don’t come to class, don’t socialize with each other, learn how to have important and appropriate conversations with others besides their best friends and families, I think our world will look very different. Students learn coping skills, how to interact with people they don’t get along with, how to deal with controversy and conflict, and figure out things about themselves they never would unless they were placed in an environment like a school from a young age. These discussions and conversations with students are the reason I became a teacher! I love watching the “ah-ha” moments, and the impromptu life lessons that appear in the middle of the lesson, and the laughter that comes with some of these discussions. I would miss these so much if education became purely online, and those are the reasons I think it never will be. Those moments are lessons are too important to miss out on.
To close, I have really learned a lot through this course. I’ve picked up some tips and tricks to enhance my blended classrooms and figured out how to incorporate it more seamlessly into my everyday teaching using things like Flipgrid, goFormative and Socrative. I have also learned to make adjustments to my classrooms to accommodate more types of learners that before a blended platform would have simply been written off. I’m excited to see where these new ideas I have learned this semester take my future classes and where education will go in general. The most important thing though, will always be making connections and figuring out how to reach more students, creating more opportunities to showcase how they learn and what they need to learn.
This semester we were tasked with creating an online course prototype and I am pretty proud of what I accomplished. When I began this course I didn’t necessarily think I taught in a “blended” classroom, but with my use of Google Classroom increasing every semester, I realized quickly that I actually do use forms of blended learning in my classrooms all the time, mostly for simple things like posting extra videos, notes, or assignments so students have the opportunity to access information when they are absent from class. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to take a course I am already teaching and make it even more blended. This is why I decided to create a prototype for my AP Calculus course. I also knew I wanted to use Google Classroom since my students are so familiar with it and our division encourages its use. You can check out my course profile here for more details on how I laid it out for the semester. I thought this course would be perfect because I see my students every day for a total of 60 classes before they write the big exam in May. This gives me an opportunity to use the LMS of Google Classroom to enhance our time together and create more opportunities for learning online. This will also help my students become more independent learners, which is incredibly important for their next years in university because they will all be headed in that direction.
Screenshot of my course!
I began my course with the idea in mind of using a flipped model of instruction. My students actually quite enjoy this model, but others do struggle to commit to the video lessons in their downtime. It’s been a balancing act so far but I have used them as my guinea pigs for a couple of different assignments. I wanted to use a flipped model because I knew it would open up more time for questions and for working through problems together in class which is really what my students need. One of the suggestions on my peer review was to create a place for students to communicate with each other, so I introduced a question and answer Padlet in hopes that students would freely contribute to questions and supply answers to each other instead of relying only on me as their source of information. If you want to see more about how my classmates’ reviews influenced my prototype, check out this blog post.
For the modules I created for this class, I wanted to focus more on simpler concepts (things my students would be able to learn from a video as well as hopefully not be too overwhelming for my peers in this course)! I think I selected the right material and I have to say I learned a lot about myself as a teacher through this process as well. Last year, I was made to focus solely on content. Teach myself, teach the students, move on to the next idea. This year, I am much more relaxed and have been able to play around a lot more with my lessons and build new connections with the material as well as preparing my students even more for the exam. I can look more into Khan Academy, create more formative assessments, and know better what my students need. Both my modules run the same way with an intro video as the notes using Screencastify and SMART Notebook. I knew I wanted to create short videos and have students follow along with notes where they could record the information. This also allows them to go back, pause the instruction, and re-watch if they need to. Then there is practice, which is a handout assignment with an answer key. Finally there is the formative assessments which I varied from each module. I think I gave ample practice and I even tried to implement some different formative assessments in Socrative and GoFormative. If you feel like testing your math skills, try them out on my course! The Google Classroom code is wnn06j and you need to log in using a Gmail account. Feel free to check out the rest of my prototype as well including videos, assignments, and practice problems. Also, feel free to check out my course walkthrough if you would rather a quick feel for my course prototype.
Overall, I’m really happy with how my prototype turned out. For my second module, I focused on an entirely different unit and created an opportunity using Flipgrid for my students to actually show how they work through a problem. I want them to explain their reasoning and their answer since that is such an important concept on the AP exam. Another idea I had was to create a Padlet where they could discuss ideas on how to solve a couple of problems we would look at in class anyways to act as a starting block on how to solve it. Some of these problems can be really complicated so I want to create the easiest environment that I can to teach them in that it’s okay to be wrong and this is the best way we can learn. One of the hardest things for my students to learn is that to get a “4 or 5” on the AP exam is to really achieve a pass. Many of the practice problem average score is between 3 or 4 out of 9. Teaching them the process and wording of these problems is crucial to their success on exam day and understanding that they only need to try every part of a question to succeed. I included a section for practice exams as well as problems for them to work through on the prototype. We also spend time in class working on these but the ability to access them outside of class time will be incredibly beneficial to my students. The most important thing I am taking away from this assignment is that I am actually capable of creating a blended learning environment and it isn’t as intimidating as I thought it would be. I would like to eventually blend all my courses in this manner because I think that is where education is heading. Dean V. mentioned this quote on Twitter this week and I think it sums up exactly what we and this course are working towards:
When I think of student-student interactions, I have flashbacks to my undergrad. Not necessarily a good flashback either. I had a few courses with the “required discussion forum” where we needed to complete a reading or two or three, and then make comments or ask questions to our assigned groups. We HAD to post at least three times a week, and it HAD to be connected to the reading and material we were learning in class. Looking back, besides remembering that I HAD to do this type of assignment, I do not recall one single discussion topic we discussed. Is it because it’s been a few years? Probably, but I bet if someone asked me two weeks after the course was over if I remembered any of the discussions, I bet I still wouldn’t be able to remember anything about them. The Bates reading from this week made me realize, as well as aspects of this online course we are all taking, is that this form of discussion is completely inauthentic, and students do not care about things they don’t care about! If you asked me what I wrote about on my EC&I 831 blog, I could tell you about most of the topics and I think that’s because I cared about the subject matter, it was connected to me, and I got to discover what I wanted to know more about! The Bates article from this week’s reading stated that,
“Textbooks, readings and other resources are chosen to support the discussion, not the other way round. This is a key design principle, and explains why often instructors or tutors complain, in more ‘traditional’ online courses, that students don’t participate in discussions. Often this is because where online discussions are secondary to more didactic teaching, or are not deliberately designed and managed to lead to knowledge construction, students see the discussions as optional or extra work, because they have no direct impact on grades or assessment.”
I think the reason I don’t remember a single topic in those classes is because the discussion forum was always extra. It was additional work, instead of the discussion centering around ideas and questions, and FINDING the answers through readings and textbooks, we read first, and then added points about what we found. I agree that it should be the other way around. Fuel the discussion with ideas and supplement with resources!
This brings me to my point for the week. My course is a blended course and I do see my students daily. I’ll be honest; I didn’t think it was very important to include student-student interaction in my course, but after some feedback from my peers, and our class last week, my mind has been changed. Harasim (2012) states that “[Online Collaborative Learning] theory provides a model of learning in which students are encouraged and supported to work together to create knowledge: to invent, to explore ways to innovate, and, by so doing, to seek the conceptual knowledge needed to solve problems rather than recite what they think is the right answer.” The moment I read this statement, I thought “This is what my class is!” I am teaching AP Calculus to a bunch of students who need to work together to solve problems and develop an understanding of the material so they can apply it to the exam, and NOT just recite the right answer! (Insert Happy Dance for making the class meaningful for my students!)
So I began thinking of ways I could encourage more student-student interaction online. They collaborate daily on problems and assignments so it would be nice to extend it onto Google Classroom. I think I will start with encouraging them to post their questions on the class stream and allow other students to reply with their ideas for answers. To get this started, I might even post a couple of questions for them to work through online and to post their ideas on how to solve the problem, and not necessarily post the answer.
I also really like the idea of using Padlet for students to work through a problem together or even start a community where they can ask each other questions about the assignments and problems so that they do not have to ask me first. The beauty of Padlet is that they can post descriptions, write something, take a picture or even insert a video or audio for an explanation or question. What do you think? Will it work? I really think it would be a good example of the three phases: idea generating, idea organizing, and intellectual convergence that Alec discussed with us last week. Hopefully I can get my students to go through all three phases with this idea!
A screenshot of my new addition!
Another idea I might try since explanation and justification is a huge part of the AP exam is Flipgrid. I might try getting students to answer a problem verbally and explain how they arrived at their answer, as well as justify how they know a certain answer is correct as many questions give the answer, and the student needs to justify why it is correct. I think this would be a great opportunity of students to discuss their reasoning and ideas of problem solving and for me to evaluate their reasoning skills for the exam! This could also work as an assignment to show me how they walk through problems. It might help me figure out their thinking and understanding more, as well as help them discover the important concepts in the problem at an individual level.
I know that student-student interaction is incredibly important, and I am hoping I can get my students to buy into the online discussion ideas. If not this year, hopefully next year. In the meantime, I will continue to try, and keep up with my ever-present student-teacher interactions via Remind 101, and the comment section on Google Classroom! As the Bates article stated clearly, “with online collaborative learning, the aim is not to replace the teacher, but to use the technology primarily to increase and improve communication between teacher and learners, with a particular approach to the development of learning based on knowledge construction assisted and developed through social discourse.” This is what I aim to do, and hopefully make more connections between my students, and help them become stronger advocates for themselves, and better learners.
This week, we were tasked with reflecting on the feedback from our peers and I was looking forward to hearing some ideas and opinions on how to improve my course. As I am actually teaching this course right now, I have a very specific set of students in mind which may have prompted some of the inefficiencies in my course profile and my course shell. There is also the email login conundrum that has caused some frustration among us all while attempting to “become the student” and evaluate each other’s courses. In order to really take the feedback from my peers: Dean, Sapna and Michael (thank you by the way for the awesome and positive feedback!), I feel like it is appropriate to address some their questions here, as well as provide more insight into how I am running this course. We all do that thing where we think we include information or it is completely obvious to us, and think it, but do not disclose the information that others are wondering about, so without further ado, here is a little more information about my blended learning course, AP Calculus!
My Vision
I started teaching this course at the beginning of Semester 2 this year. I taught the same students in the first semester, teaching them Calculus 30. I have built relationships, trust, and communication with all of them and I currently have a class of 14 students. We establish on the first day of semester two, the expectations for the course and what THEY will have to do in order to be successful. We talk about the exam date (May 14th, 2019), and decide on practice exam dates as well, which this year will take place on April 17th and May 7th. We also discuss that we have 61 hours of class time until the exam which of course, terrifies them and myself!
One of the comments I received for feedback was: The “timelines of the course (for all AP courses) would be a concern – there is a lot of topics to cover in a short period of time.” You are not wrong! And this is why I decided that a blended learning atmosphere would be the best idea for my students to be successful. I see them every day, for one hour and it does lighten the load that half of the material has already been covered in Calculus. I now, go back through concepts they have already learned and add more insight, clarification, and more complex theorems and ideas to the units we have already looked at. It is a lot of material to cover, and a lot of the work, assessments, and practice needs to take place outside of my classroom hours. For example, both practice exams are written after school hours and much of the homework assigned needs to be done on their own. This is why I thought the blended learning model would work so well; if I could flip it and give them lessons to watch and focus on the questions the need answered in class, they would be more successful than my first bunch! I already see a difference!! It’s working and my students are less overwhelmed by homework and material they need to study.
Another great question from my peers was: “Are there ways students can connect with each online to review content?” I never thought of this! Students can post questions and ideas on the stream on google classroom, and I am thinking of including a Padlet on the stream where students would be able to post their questions, pictures of work, as well as communicate with one another about the topics. Does anyone have any other suggestions for student communication for outside of the classroom? Again, a reason I never considered this need was because I do see these students in class every day, and because it is so implicit for me, my students also communicate with me through Remind 101. I have many that will ask me questions after hours, and I can send out reminders for quizzes and homework problems I want completed. We also frequently break into groups in class to discuss problem areas with questions which allows them to solve each other’s problems and they have come to expect this, so they do not frequently ask questions outside of class because they understand this routine.
I think it is also important to note that this course is not asynchronous, and so the online platform is there to support student learning, and provide more insight, but it is not a substitution for being in class. This is very different than other courses I evaluated last week, because many ran like an online course. There were no gaps, and everything was accessible through the online shell. This is not what I wanted for my course, and I think this is the difference between some of the feedback I received compared to other courses. There will be gaps in my model and not everything will be available online because I see my students every day in class, and I want it to be blended in this manner. I do not want my students to be able to complete everything online and have no need to come to class anymore. Certain pieces need to be done face-to-face. I am actually struggling with this concept in my ELA B30 courses, where I have an established blended learning environment with Google Classroom. Everything can be done and handed in online, so sometimes, students don’t feel the need to attend class, which can be both a blessing for them and a frustration for me. I see it as a double-edged sword, and I do not want this to happen in my AP course so the gaps will remain for now!
Another consideration from my peer-assessors was that “there doesn’t appear to be any consideration for student access and accessibility for this course.” I also did not address “common concerns like low bandwidth, student access to devices, EAL learners, cultural considerations, socioeconomic status” in my course profile. I did address these issues in my profile to some extent, but it is not explicit for those who do not know my students. That is my fault and I plan on changing some of the wording in my course profile as a result. I know my 14 students very well, and I created this course profile with these students in mind. Of course, I will have to make adaptations from year to year but I am very lucky with the group of intelligent, talented, young adults I have this year. This experience so far as been nothing short of incredible and I absolutely love teaching all of them. My 14 students all have cellphones and internet access at home. Of course, we have devices at school students could use if this was an issue, as well as support for low bandwidth. My students have spares and can access these devices before/after school, in spares, during class, and at lunch. Due to the rigor and level of the course, EAL learners will have a strong English language background in order to get to this point so this is not technically an issue I need to address in my classroom currently. Again, if I needed to, I would adjust my material, offer extra support, and allow Google Read and Write to be used. However, because all these students will write the same exam in May (in English), with the same expectations and little to no support during the exam, I try to mimic these expectations during classroom assessments. I am not even allowed in the exam room or to talk to my students about it for 24 hours after they finish the exam! Every student will write version 1 or 2 of the same exam, all over the world and my students need to be prepared for this assessment adequately. I have a variety of cultural backgrounds in my class and I love the diversity of it which allows for some great conversations and different perspectives in my course, but at the end of the day, the only assessment that matters will be the same for everyone around the world and I try to prepare my students for that.
I really appreciate the feedback I received from my peers this week and it gave me some great ideas for continuing to develop my course! I’m going to look at creating more time in my videos for pauses, create more effective assessments on Formative, and construct some way for students to communicate when they are not in the classroom. Overall, I am happy with how my course is developing this semester and look forward to working hard to make it more polished in the coming weeks!
Hello fellow EC&I 834ers! It’s been awhile! Time to shake off the cobwebs on the keyboards and get back into the blogging spirit! This week, Alec’s prompt stumped me at first: “Take this week to read about/explore an aspect of online/blended learning that you are interested in, and then blog about it. This might include your thoughts/reactions to a particularly interesting article that you find, your own exploration of a mode/format/strategy for online/blended learning that we haven’t touched on, or your further research into a course topic that interests you.” What do you mean I have to explore and think about something that I am interested in learning more about? What do you mean there is no direction to this week’s blog post? I had to stop and think. I had to spend some time exploring the world wide web. I had to figure out a direction and go with it!
Now, for those of you that have ever done the “team-building” personality test where your personality becomes a shape, I’m a square. I don’t do well when there is no direction. I like consistency, I like having a prompt, and I will complete the task, most likely in one shot because “chunking” and “working slowly on an assignment” has never been my cup of tea. I procrastinate, and then I panic, and then I produce something pretty great that would have been a lot less stressful if I had started ahead of time, but it had to be the perfect idea before I began. I digress.This personality of mine led to some colleagues of mine, namely Brad Raes and Logan Petlak, and we discussed some ideas for directions in this blog post. From there, I hit the internet and decided I should watch at least one TED Talk because they are my favourite things to learn from so I found this one! I liked it.
Monique Markoff discusses a lot about what we have already learned about blended learning and what it is versus what it is not. She discusses the success rates of online courses versus blended environment courses, and her conclusion is that students learn more in a face-to-face environment and the technology should be used as a tool to the ideas, not the solution. She also discusses some different versions of blended learning I had never heard of before, like the rotational model, and others I had, like the laboratory model, the open-classroom model, and the flipped classroom model. A couple of these ideas were pretty familiar, notably the laboratory and the flipped classroom models. What wasn’t familiar was the idea of a rotational model and all of a sudden, I had my idea for this week’s blog. As soon as Markoff described it as “stations” I was interested and thought, “This is something I could use in my classrooms!”
She asks four questions for those who are serious about beginning blended learning in their school:
Are you flexible?
Are you committed?
What is your mindset and the mindset of your students?
What is the role of the teacher?
I think these questions are an excellent starting point, because they make you think about what your purpose of using blended learning is and if you are truly looking to change your perspective and teaching theory in the classroom or just looking for a quick fix. Markoff goes into detail explaining what these questions entail, and how difficult, time-consuming, and complicated it really is to integrate these ideas into a classroom. It takes hard work, it takes trial and error and most of all, it takes time. She mentions that many classrooms and schools tend to fear this idea, and do not want to fail with a model and so when it needs adjustments, it is simply thrown out and the old model comes back in.
It made me think that this blended learning idea might be more complicated that I originally thought. It’s not something that is going to be perfect the first time around, and it is going to take a lot more research and development to work out just right.
After I finished the video, I continued with my question on what exactly the rotational model of blended learning is and was led to this article: Find The Model That Works For You: 12 Types Of Blended Learning. My first thought was TWELVE! THERE ARE TWELVE TYPES OF BLENDED LEARNING!!! There were types I heard of and types I hadn’t. To see the full capacity of each type, check out the article yourself, but for now these were the main types listed in the article:
Station Rotation
Lab Rotation
Remote
Flex
Flipped Classroom
Individual Rotation
Project-Based
Self-Directed
Inside-Outside
Outside-Inside
Supplemental
Mastery-Based
Now what I noticed as I read the article is that overall, every type had the same thing in common. They are blended learning ideas and they involve technology as a way to support student learning. It seemed intimidating but was far from it as I continued.
The rotational models have my interest peaked mostly because I feel that this would be a fantastic goal for my AP Calculus students. I would love to do sections of direct instruction, sections of a flipped model, group work and individual assessments online. Students could work at their own pace, and work more on the concepts THEY struggle with because at that level, what my students need is practice and motivation. I believe this model would provide some of that! TeachThought defined “Station-Rotation blended learning is a: “…model (that) allows students to rotate through stations on a fixed schedule, where at least one of the stations is an online learning station.”” This is commonly used in elementary schools, but why couldn’t it be successful in a grade twelve classroom too! I already do certain aspects of it, and students learn more from experiencing the skills themselves than from me explaining a complex theorem to them directly. Once I read more about this idea, I knew it was familiar from the elementary idea of “stations” but this is more complex, using a variety of strategies and tools to teach concepts and ideas to students, on a fixed schedule, which I already have, but in their own way.
A second source from Reading Horizons defined the station rotation to be that “students move through modalities within a classroom.” The following is how Reading Horizons defined it:
“Students learn using software or other online-based coursework on classroom computers. Students can do a variety of activities, including but not limited to previewing, completing, or reviewing skill lessons, reading stories, or taking computer-administered assessments. Through these kinds of tech-based activities, students have opportunities to work independently and privately, free from concerns about how they will perform in front of their peers.
For the offline part of their learning, students receive direct instruction from a teacher, followed up by a variety of activities, which could include modeled and independent reading, workbook pages or other pencil-and-paper tasks, one-on-one tutoring, small-group work, projects, games, flash cards—the list of possibilities is nearly endless.”
I see endless possibilities, not only in my math courses but also my English courses for this type of learning. I never thought of using stations as a strategy in a high school classroom but I think it could work and very well! Does anyone else have any experiences using this type of strategy in their classrooms? Does it work with older students like it does with younger students? I am open to suggestions and will keep you updated on my progress with the implementation of my newfound blended learning technique!
I decided to play around with a video recording tool called Educreations. I had never even heard of this tool before so I was excited to try it out and see what potentials it had in store for me. I am currently looking for a solid video recording tool to use for my own modules in this course and for my flipped lessons in my AP Calc course. This tool was not it. So, without further ado, here is my official review of Educreations!
Overview
The tool is a screen recording tool, much like Screencastify but more focused to a small area of the screen. You essentially have a white board which you can pull up pictures on and draw all over the screen and them. You can record your voice while you draw or type as well, which I thought was pretty cool. It also allowed me to connect to my google account which is very slick! I love when apps and websites do that! There are different coloured markers, and an eraser as well. You can even switch screens and load more pictures and diagrams while the recorder just pauses, waiting for you to continue with your lesson. In theory, I think this is a great tool for quick little lessons, for student projects, or for digital storytelling. I managed to find very few examples of quick lessons from students on Youtube.
Here is one example a student created:
Most of what I found were tutorials on how to use the website but I figured it would be better to make my own shorter one to give you an idea!
Strengths
It is very easy to use! Within a matter of minutes of creating an account, I had access to the whiteboard and tools needed to create some simple videos. You can also share the videos with students and upload items to the elusive “Cloud.” There is the option to share videos on Facebook and Twitter but you cannot export them, which is probably why there are almost none on Youtube. This would be a very easy tool for students to use and show their understanding of information in a creative way. It works with iPads as well, giving more control and diversity to the writing technique. I loved how easy it was to record, pause, and continue with your lesson, but there are also some things that just wouldn’t really work for me.
Weaknesses
I found there were more weaknesses in this tool than strengths. For example, there is a fee for more tools. In order to upload documents (which I need for my lessons), there is a monthly fee for a classroom, and then a higher fee for a school subscription. I was limited to drawing on pictures that I had uploaded instead of writing or even scrolling through documents on the whiteboard. Price is of course, another downfall, as not many of us would be able to access the full potential of this tool without paying for it, and not many of us would have the funding to access this tool.
Screenshot of the Pricing for Educreations
There is also a limited storage space of 50 MB which would be small if you wanted to create a lot of videos. As I was playing with it, some of the pictures I uploaded were too large for the whiteboard and wouldn’t allow an upload. There was also not a plethora of examples to look at online, as I only found tutorials on youtube as I mentioned before. There wasn’t a dashboard on the website and you cannot share videos with other teachers on the website or app. I thought this was a mistake, and I think the app would be a lot more successful with this application added. It would be awesome to view other teachers videos and lessons, and have some examples to look at and share with others. I’m curious what it would be like to record longer videos, say 15 minutes on it. Would I run out of space before I get to the end of my lesson?
Potential
Overall, I think this is a very neat tool. I’m just not sure it would work for my needs with a needing more academic writing and explaining, and more time for videos. I think this tool has a lot of potential to be very useful for teachers of younger aged students. It would be especially useful for me to explain quick examples to students that are having difficulty, but again I need pictures of everything in order to actually use it. I would love to try and use it with my English classes and see if they can use it to showcase some of their learning on it but some of them may feel it is more elementary. I think my math students would find tremendous benefits of using this to help each other with problems and questions they have, I’m just not sure how it would work with daily creations and lessons. If some of the features for the “Pro Classroom” were available, I would be all for using this program. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Well, here goes nothing! Last year was my very first year teaching AP Calculus. There were a lot of ups and downs, and I mean a lot! Trying to learn the content myself, teaching myself how to teach the content, helping students understand things that I was still trying to master myself, prepping them for an exam I had never seen, and nervously awaiting the test results in July. It was a roller coaster!
I know a lot more now, but do I have more to learn? ABSOLUTELY! It was near the end of the course last year that I discovered the beauty of Khan Academy and I knew my life this year would be easier, which leads into my course outline for this project! The timing couldn’t be more perfect and I am excited to really try out my ideas with different types of blended learning, using flipped lessons which my calculus students already showed an interest in last semester! I’m looking forward to documenting everything that works and doesn’t work and really giving this course another shot, being a little more confident, and a lot more knowledgeable than last year! I know lots of you are not going to understand one lick of this, but I’m hoping you can bear with me and my journey through my project.
When I think of blended learning, I think of a teacher that has successfully blended the ideas of online teaching with that of a face-to-face environment. I wouldn’t say I am quite there yet, but since beginning my Master’s journey, I have definitely taken a couple of leaps in the department of blended classrooms. As I learn more and more about the benefits of blended learning, as well as the idea of setting up students for success in the future, the more I want to create this type of learning environment. Many of my students go on to university, and will likely be faced with some sort of online class, where they will be responsible for their own learning. And, even if my students are not continuing their formal education, in this digital age, what person could not benefit from learning how to navigate the online world and learn on their own in their future?
Currently, like Amy, I rely on Google Classroom as a management tool to keep my classes organized and accountable. As I teach for English and Math courses, I have found tremendous benefits for both groups of students. In my ELA courses, I post links to videos we watch, and any notes or assignments are posted for them to access at any time. They have to options of handing any work online, and it has made editing much easier as I can open their assignments on Google Docs and edit away, even leaving comments if I need. It has also made my students more accountable. They know where the work is, they know where the guidelines are, and they can hand anything in at anytime!! No more “well, I wasn’t here” excuses! It’s also freed up my time in my classes, as students are not needing me to get them missing handouts. They have access and can print them at any time.
My math courses are equally accountable as I post their daily lessons and assignments online. Along with that, I post the answer keys. As homework does not count for anything in our school system, I have found giving students full answer keys has freed up my teaching time to go more in-depth with lessons or review what they really struggled with. It puts the learning in their hands, and they become more responsible for asking questions and clarifying misunderstandings. I have also linked my Google Classroom to Khan Academy for my AP Calculus students and it is amazing! For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is basically a website that has modules and online formatted courses for all math and science curriculum! I can assign problem sets, and videos through Google Classroom and it logs my students progress on Khan Academy so I can go back and see who completed what, as well as how they did on problem sets.
Although my use of technology is not what I would call full blended learning, it has enhanced my classroom. As Tony Bates said, “blended learning can mean minimal rethinking or redesign of classroom teaching, such as the use of classroom aids, or complete redesign as in flexibly designed courses, which aim to identify the unique pedagogical characteristics of face-to-face teaching, with online learning providing flexible access for the rest of the learning.” What Google Classroom has provided me, is simplicity, and aids for my classroom environment.
This is of course, not without its challenges. I really wish I could have parents access this information in its full format, instead of just by weekly emails. The problem is that I set all my daily lessons as “assignments” which then show up as “incomplete” even though students have done the work on paper. It can be frustrating for students as well, as they end up with notifications saying they are missing assignments they handed in, or completed simply as a class discussion. Any ideas Google Classroom pros??
I also tried to get my classes to complete class discussions via Flipgrid, and they hated it!
They felt vulnerable to their peers, which I do understand, and hated the interaction, and having to comment and like each other’s videos. I really like the platform, especially for an English classroom, but it is difficult to have students buy into it. I’m looking for suggestions for improvements on this!
Overall, I am working towards a more blended classroom environment and although I don’t think I am where I want to be, I am slowly progressing in the right direction where technology enhances my daily teaching and more importantly, my students’ learning.
Hi everyone! I am so excited for another semester and become one step closer to completing my Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction! This is my fifth course overall, and I can start to see the end! This is my third class with Alec, and I’m looking forward to learning even more tools to test out in my courses. I’m also looking for recommended courses to take next year so let me know if any of you have taken any gems lately!
Emerald Lake, BC
I teach at Central Collegiate in Moose Jaw, and am in my sixth year of teaching. Over my short career, I’ve taught a lot of different courses, and have finally settled into my chosen path of senior English, and Calculus. I know, total opposites! But I have loved teaching such different courses and challenging myself to teach in these completely different mediums. Along with teaching these courses, I coach basketball and track and field at the school, and somehow find time to take a course every semester! In my free time, I love reading and exploring this beautiful country of ours with my boyfriend.
As I said before, I’m looking forward to learning all about online learning in this course. My top three goals for the course are:
Since I teach AP Calculus, I am hoping to be able to apply some of the learnings in this class to my own course as I would like to make it more of a blended course! Giving my students the best opportunities to prepare for the big exam is my main priority this year, as well as giving them as many resources as possible.
I’m looking forward to learning about different mediums for creating/using online courses to further my students’ learning and my own. Looking at different platforms will allow me to figure out what I like and don’t like about online learning as well as develop my own.
I also want to further expand my Personal Learning Network by working with each of you, and exploring Twitter more in-depth. I have a great network already, but I am always looking to expand it because, as I have learned since I started my master’s, that it is incredibly valuable for resources, support, and enhancing professional development.
I’m looking forward to the learning journey ahead and connecting with you all more as the semester goes on! If you want to connect on Twitter my handle is @mackeyshelby21.
The Secret Life Of a High School Teacher 