Friday, August 27, 2021

From Minnetonka Schools to Minnehaha Academy

For a long time, I thought I'd send a message like the one below to staff when I retired from Minnetonka Public Schools… instead, today is my last day at Tonka and retirement is still years away:


Thanks to all of you for making the past 26 years I’ve worked in Minnetonka awesome! From my time teaching in the classroom to working with instructional technology and media districtwide, plus coaching middle school sports, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here. I have learned so much from you. I’ve had the privilege to see the work you do every day for students and for our own children—my wife and I feel so blessed to have our kids in Tonka (two graduated, two to go). I hope you have a great start to the school year and look forward to seeing you sometime in the future! 


My new job begins on Monday when I start work as the Director of Technology for Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis. I'm excited about this new role and looking forward to the challenges ahead!

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

EdPuzzle: Engaging Students in Effective Learning Through Video


Over the past few years prior to the pandemic, a few of our teachers tried out various tools which allowed them to assign students video content to watch and assess what they understood. After some researching and testing at the start of this current school year we added a paid subscription to one such tool: the pro version of EdPuzzle. We figured teachers would want to do this more often during distance learning. As this year draws to a close the numbers show we were correct. Our teachers have created more than 4,300 EdPuzzle video assignments. Over 100 of our teachers have used it more than ten times this year, averaging thirty or more videos uploaded, and almost ten of those teachers have created more than 100 video assignments with EdPuzzle. Recently I met with five teachers to learn more about how they use it to enhance their instruction:

English

High school English teacher David Adams uses EdPuzzle regularly with both his online eleventh grade English students as well as his in person journalism and English classes. David records a 1-5 minute unit overview video, providing students with a framework of the learning ahead—what they will learn and what the assignments will be. He also creates a video for each week’s lesson. With EdPuzzle, David can prevent students from skipping ahead in a video and he adds a question at the end of each video overview to test whether or not they have watched it. 

David says that these video overviews are nice because students can get to know him and see his face more, especially the online students. Since starting the regular use of video, he has experienced more online students whom he hadn’t met in person coming up to him and talking with him when they are at school for other in-person classes. He likes the fact that he doesn’t have to re-explain things for absent students—instead they just watch the video and stay caught up versus waiting to talk with him at the next class. This saves both David and his students time. Students can also go back and rewatch videos as needed, which greatly helps support the students’ individual learning needs and prevents them from having to wait to meet to get many of their questions answered. Sometimes he will replay a video on the screen during class (such as a grammar lesson) so students who need to can rewatch it, which frees him up to meet with students.

Math

Fifth grade math e-Learning teacher Grace Mevissen “loves EdPuzzle.” She uses it regularly with her online students. It has allowed her to do more flipped learning this year, posting math mini-lessons for students. Grace can see from the EdPuzzle stats that some students watch the video a day prior, and sometimes encourages them to watch the videos multiple times. She can also see when students haven’t watched a video and/or when they only watch part of it. Grace has found it very beneficial for students to be able to watch the video of a lesson if they missed the live instruction session, which like David mentioned, saves time and keeps students caught up.  

Grace likes the library feature in EdPuzzle with premade videos with questions which she can quickly edit as needed rather than having to “reinvent the wheel.” For example, she has found Mr. J’s math videos to be well done and uses this content frequently. Grace’s colleagues Jennifer Hahn and Lisa Lund use EdPuzzle as well to augment their social studies and health curriculum. Sometimes the EdPuzzle quizzes are used as “exit tickets” to formatively assess how well the students understood the lesson. Grace mentioned that in addition to EdPuzzle, she uses a lot of other tools such as Classkick to watch kids’ work in live time and send messages to correct misconceptions. She also has noticed how much more tech savvy students are now, easily able to jump between apps on their iPads.

World Languages

High school Spanish teacher Briana Wilson uses EdPuzzle with both her immersion and regular language classes. It provides a great way for students to hear authentic audio and be able to process at their own speed as they answer questions about what was said. Briana has students listen to a wide variety of topics and asks them questions to keep them engaged, which “automatically increases the active role they have to play as a learner.” EdPuzzle is a great tool to select specific portions of a video, such as one minute of a 15-minute clip. Briana explained that a one minute video with questions will take the students five minutes to watch and re-watch and then answer the questions.

Briana likes being able to import anything from YouTube into EdPuzzle, shorten it to what you really want the students to listen to, and add questions. She and her colleagues use the library to share and edit one another’s video assignments. To accompany a long 450 page novel her Spanish Humanities students are reading, she took clips from specific scenes in the movie so students could compare it with the book. She finds that the students are more motivated to read the next section, as reading a book in a second language can be very tedious. Briana also sets EdPuzzle up so students can see the correct answers, and explains that using it this way is “rewarding for kids to have the validation that they are understanding the content and language”. 

Spanish teacher Fred Moreno-Parra also finds the video library in EdPuzzle to be a time saver. He finds videos where students can see and learn the language in context, such as when traveling or learning about holiday traditions. Fred says EdPuzzle is great because he can find, edit, crop and insert questions into YouTube videos and it removes ads. He says this saves him “tons of time” when using a pre-made two minute video rather than having to spend time making his own, and often the videos available look more professional with graphics and animations than what he feels he could produce. Fred finds that the videos are more engaging for students when learning about important and complex but less exciting topics like verb tenses. He has found the EdPuzzle video format helps his students better learn the material.

Related Posts:

Friday, April 16, 2021

Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance Webinar Recording (60 minutes)


On April 27 I joined Mathew Meyers once again to discuss parenting in the digital age.  Mathew and I have held three previous talks over the past four years (recordings linked below). He is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist at Traverse Counseling & Consulting, GBC. I have great respect for Matt and always learn a lot from our conversations about parenting and maintaining a healthy balance with technology. The hour webinar recording is above. This was the advertised description:
 
TikTok, Snapchat, Fortnite, YouTube and more ... Technology is a big part of our kids’ world! Keeping up can be challenging, but a positive and well-informed approach can have a big impact on a child’s future and habits. Learn how to help kids develop a balanced and healthy use of technology from an early age and keep this up through the secondary school years and beyond.

Get tips and ideas for parenting and understand the significant role you play in helping your kids be responsible and safe in today’s high-tech world. Numerous ideas and free resources will be shared, and time for Q & A will be provided. 

Related Posts: 

Friday, April 9, 2021

Classkick: A Great Tool for Formative Assessment & Feedback



One of the new technology programs we purchased this year during the pandemic to help our students and teachers is Classkick. Classkick allows our teachers to see each of their students' work from their iPads and provide them with feedback. Teachers can upload or create content, lessons and questions which the students work through on their own devices and at their own pace. Teachers can track students's progress in live time and give them instant feedback. Classkick has a free and paid version.

Classkick in Kindergarten

Deephaven Elementary Spanish Immersion Kindergarten teacher Jessica Rojas explained that Classkick allows her students to do activities by themselves. Instead of using small boards to show their thinking, she can  show it on the screen and have students explain their answer and thoughts with the whole class. She can give them digital stickers (such as stars or happy faces) while they are writing. She can see if someone has raised a hand to help or check their work. She uses both the self-paced mode and the teacher directed mode. Her Kindergartners can easily log in by entering the class code. Jessica can review it in live time or if necessary, at any time later--having a digital record of students’ work is more convenient than having it on paper. 

Jessica did say that she uses a balance of digital and paper based activities. She said the students do really like using technology and are motivated to work when they can use their iPads. She also uses PearDeck, Seesaw and other digital tools. Jessica explained that the advantage of Classkick for the lesson I observed is that she can see all the students’ work at once. 

Classkick in PreAlgebra

Sarah Gutierrez, middle school e-Learning math teacher, uses Classkick regularly. Recently when I joined her virtual class students were practicing working on a percent unit. She began class with all 26 students in a Google Meet. The students took notes while watching two videos--one on comparisons and one about percentages/proportions. Then Sarah had students join a Classkick session with eight practice problems. Sarah and the students used the highlighter and digital ink in Classkick to identify the parts of each math problem they needed to work on. Sarah set up each slide to autocorrect so students immediately knew when something was correct/incorrect, as the problem pictured with a red error box. When they had questions, students simply signaled the teacher that they needed help by raising a digital hand, and Sarah would individually look at their problem and work and give them hints and feedback.  

One of the things that struck me as I observed Sarah teaching remotely is how much better this method is than the alternative--if students were using paper for this, Sarah wouldn’t be able to see it in live time of course. Students would have to answer a specific question or submit a picture of their work. Through Classkick, the teacher can interact with the students’ work in real time and give immediate and clear feedback. 

Sarah called Classkick a “Gamechanger. It gives me an opportunity to see what students are doing live. I know what they actually learned and whether they are participating.” As I was able to see, Classkick made it possible for Sarah to basically remove the barrier of having everyone in separate locations. It was almost as if the class was all together sitting in the same room. Sarah said Classkick is great for teacher collaboration and often shares/receives slide decks such as this one with colleagues. 

Classkick in Chemistry

High School Chemistry teacher and Technology Coach Patricia Price uses Classkick regularly with her students, often for formative assessment. Patricia explained that Classkick is better than a paper exit ticket, because she can know how students are doing at the moment versus taking home a stack of paper after school to score and return to students the next day. Additionally, the immediate feedback allows Patricia to determine what content she may need to revisit with the whole class before moving on to other topics, as well as which individual students she may need to connect with for additional support. Patricia uses her iPad to see each student’s screens and can bring up any problem to project to the whole class and discuss. 

One time saving trick Patrica showed me was how she can quickly visually scan a row of student Classkick slides to look for the same answer patterns and quickly spot students who got something wrong--for example, if students had to circle answers on one slide, she quickly scans the row to see if everyone’s circles are in the same spot (see picture). Another example is when glancing at a slide with four matching problems, she scans to see if the same four line pattern is drawn. Talk about a great way to give students immediate feedback! Patricia had pre-labeled some digital sticker responses for students to let them know if they had the correct answers or needed to recheck something, which also accelerated the feedback loop.

The students in Patricia’s class echoed their appreciation of Classkick’s immediate feedback. They, too, value the quick response possible and took comfort in knowing immediately how well they are understanding concepts. They liked the fact they could ask questions based on this feedback, too, rather than waiting until the next day. Although they didn’t state it, this quiet, private method for a shy student to ask a question likely results in more comfort doing so than having to raise their hand and ask in front of everyone.

Related Posts:

Monday, February 22, 2021

Maximizing Hybrid Learning to Increase Engagement & Relationships

Minnetonka High School Orchestra Students in Hybrid Class.
Note half the class is participating remotely.

A year ago this week our superintendent asked me to begin investigating learning models for at home learning, such as some schools do on snow days. At the time, of course, it was hard to conceptualize how that could even work for an extended period and many of us thought it might be for a few weeks at most... The rest is, of course, history: three weeks later the Minnesota governor shut down all schools in the state and a few weeks later we began fully online learning through June 2020. As positive COVID cases rose and fell we adjusted our learning models--from entirely online to hybrid for K-8 in September 2020, back to fully online K-12 in November, then back to hybrid K-5 in January 2021 to where we are today--K-5 students are fully back in classrooms five days per week. Secondary are in hybrid for three more weeks and then return fully back four days per week on March 15. Throughout this 2020-21 school year we are offering a completely online e-learning option as well. Read more on our models here.


It's pretty amazing to reflect back on all the we have done over the past year to make the most of each situation and adjust to each iteration to make sure that learning continues. As I’ve posted before, teachers and students have shown tremendous growth and learning in how to better use technology.


One of the things we have done to make the most of hybrid learning is to stream daily, live instruction from school to home, so that regardless of whether students are in person with the teacher or remote, they are actively involved and participating. This is an important distinction to note: our students aren’t passively watching instruction, they are actively engaged. They ask and answer questions, teachers call on them, and remote students partner and participate in discussions with classmates in school as if everyone is together in one place. 


One basic guideline in place is an expectation that students' cameras are always on during each and every class all day, raising the level of accountability, participation, and rigor. Students must not only be present but be seen and engage. Teachers daily visually greet each student in every class. To make this all we work we provided teachers with a lot of training on the variety of tools in each classroom configuration and teacher's situation. All students have an iPad and we use Google Meet to stream classes. To stream instruction from school, teachers can use their iPad, a WebCam or a laptop. Many actually use multiple devices, such as a webcam for video and teach from/annotate on their iPad which is mirrored to the classroom projector and the Google Meet simultaneously for students not in person. Students attending virtually are also often projected on the screen in the classroom.


Teachers use a sound field microphone that helps to ensure audio can be heard from remote students regardless of where the teacher is in the classroom. This audio system also enables students in class to hear remote classmates--their voices come through each classroom's sound field ceiling speakers (we use Lightspeed's Flexmike system). Teachers and students are used to hearing the voice of a student from home coming through the ceiling speakers as if they were seated in the same space together.


This streaming classroom environment with two way audio and video allows students and teachers to maximize hybrid learning. An important part of education is the relationship between each teacher and student as well as student to student interaction as a community of learners, and technology has helped to keep people connected in robust, meaningful relationships. This leads to deeper learning.


Earlier this school year we started with this hybrid streaming model four days per week with our K-5 elementary students, but rather than half of the students staying home, all were in school but spread out in classrooms with only 50% capacity in attendance. To make that work, we moved our grade 4-5 students to the high school classrooms for first semester. Teachers had two or more "pods" of learners spread among two or more classrooms, teaching from one and streaming to the other(s). So both students and teachers in all levels have experienced some form of hybrid streaming this year. Besides streaming as described here, there are a myriad of other technology tools we are using this year that each warrant a separate (future) post.


In order to make this possible, we are fortunate to have a great team of instructional technology coaches who have tirelessly worked this past year to train and support our teachers in their use of technology. Numerous other staff- media specialists, principals, teacher instructional coaches, the technology department and countless other administrators have worked so hard this past year as well to help teachers and students make the most of this pandemic situation!  We are well situated to deal with the future iterations in these models which the pandemic may create. 

Related posts:

Monday, February 1, 2021

Setting Seesaw Expectations: Raising the Bar for In-Person and e-Learning

We are now in our second year using Seesaw as our as our Learning Management System (LMS) for grade PreK-3 students. We use Schoology as our Learning LMS for grade 4-12 students, and until moving to Seesaw, had used Schoology for grades PreK-3, too. In September 2019 when we introduced Seesaw, adoption took off quickly. I am so thankful we made the change when we did, as just seven months later in March 2020 we were in a great place to more fully utilize Seesaw when all students shifted to e-Learning. The pandemic was a catalyst for technology integration in education, and our use of Seesaw exponentially increased as seen in the stats comparison below from this past fall and a year previous for one of our elementary schools. 

Fall 2020 Seesaw Stats for Items Posted Clear Springs Elementary

Fall 2019 Seesaw Stats for Items Posted Clear Springs Elementary


This past fall as school resumed, K-3 students were either in hybrid learning pods at 50% capacity five days a week or at home in 100% e-Learning. In both cases, Seesaw was heavily used. Prior to students returning in the fall in August 2020, we created and introduced Seesaw Expectations for teachers to help bring consistency between classes. We want students (and parents) to easily find content and communication regardless of the teacher. So to do this, we identified the subject color for tags/folders and naming conventions to provide further clarity in structure. We set the expectation for the frequency of announcements. We also encouraged 
active student engagement and minimum student use of Seesaw as well as set a teacher expectation for providing student feedback.

Setting the bar, so to speak, on Seesaw by identifying these expectations of use helps drive both consistency as well and increase the level of use across the board. It provides administrators and our technology coaches with a guide to follow and goal to encourage teachers. We have found this true as well with our Schoology Expectations introduced five years ago. The expectations are altered as more features in each tool are introduced and teachers, students (and parents) gain more experience using the platform. Other districts have created Seesaw Expectations as well, and we built off of their ideas when creating ours for Minnetonka.

(Open Seesaw Expectations in separate window)


Related posts:

Friday, January 1, 2021

2021: Five Easy New Year's Resolutions to (Re)Gain a Healthy Balance with Technology

Free image from Pixbay

2020 was…a lot! I think it’s generally understood by just about everyone that the past year has been a challenging one. So for this year’s first post, it seems fitting to (re)start with five easy New Year’s Resolutions for 2021 to (re)gain a healthy balance with Technology in your life. The first two are new ones for me and the others are continuations of past resolutions:
  1. Spend less time checking the news. The past year’s political elections and pandemic news among other things has provided for plenty of headlines and stories. I realized I was getting mentally burned out from spending too much time scrolling, scanning, refreshing and re-scanning news headlines throughout the day. I’ve tried a break from news in the past on a vacation, but now I want to limit it in my day to day living. One tip to help: Use Apple Screen Time to limit your own time in on Apple News and other apps.

  2. Have a community discussion around the the Social Dilemma, a great documentary produced by the Center for Humane Technology, similar to the LIKE documentary which we have shown in Minnetonka four times. If you haven't seen it yet, make the time to watch it with your family and discuss it, then get others to join in the conversation.

  3. Start a Facebook/Insta/Twitter/TikTok social media fast or at least reduce your daily time on each--I'm now finishing year five on a social media fast, with only a check of Twitter a couple times per week. Do this to gain another 40+ days of time in 2021.

  4. Take control of your phone by keeping off as many notifications as possible--I've done this for six years and counting. 

  5. Have Device Free Dinners as a family and recording daily gratitudes--I'm now in my fourth year and so glad I started this.
I also resolve to resume more regular blog posts. This is post #275. While I’ve been fortunate to remain healthy, dealing with COVID in the education world has been the biggest challenge we’ve faced in my past 26 years working in education. As evidence to this, my previous six+ years of weekly blog posts dropped to only 14 posts in 2020—and only six of those were since March 2020 when in-person school was shut down by our governor. 

Looking for more tech-related resolutions to help you (re)gain a healthy balance?  Watch My 20 Minute Ed Talk: Screen Time & Student Well-being and read related posts:

Related posts: