The Next Tech Thing: use of technology

Showing posts with label use of technology. Show all posts

Monday, November 19, 2018

Two Years Focusing on Gratitude

A picture I took this fall on a run, thankful for the gorgeous fall colors.

For over two years I have recorded three things a day for which I'm thankful. I first started this habit after attending a workshop that stressed the importance on focusing on the good things in our lives. This was emphasized as a way to not let negative events dictate our mood, our outlook and affect our interactions with others. The highlights and gratitudes I record are often events of the day, highlights, interactions with my family and others, or sometimes just something memorable I don't want to forget. I'm finding that the older I get, the more important it is to record these things! Research has found that we tend to remember negative things more than positive, which is yet another reason to record these.

Two years ago when I first wrote about this my wife and four kids participated by recording their own gratitudes daily for three weeks. We incorporated this as part of our time with one another at dinner. We found this to be a great conversation starter and way to get everyone to reflect upon their day, share highlights, and appreciate the good things that happen in our lives. It's also a great way to help our kids practice listening, taking turns, being polite, and builds relationship with one another as we learn more about each person. We did all of this without technology in use during our meal and believe in being where our feet are, something we still strive to do not just at the dinner table but also at other times, too, such as in the car and when hanging out with one another.

With Thanksgiving this week in the United States, many of us will have a day off to spend time with our family and friends and reflect on things for which we are grateful. I encourage you to extend this practice beyond the day and incorporate gratitude as part of your daily routine. I believe I'm a better person after two years of this practice. On a related note, as educators it can be helpful to remind ourselves of the good things happening around us so we don't burn out focusing on the negatives--thanks to my colleague and Tech Coach Rachel Studnicka for pointing out this article about that.

Many other posts I've made related to having a healthy balance in our lives around our use of technology can help you spend more time in gratitude and relationship with family and friends. Check them out:

Monday, August 27, 2018

Make Learning So Motivating & Fun, Students Won't Realize it is Homework!

A few months ago Apple released the iPad commercial above showing students completing a homework assignment on iPads. In the background of the video, the narrator recites a fun Jack Prelutsky poem originally entitled, "Homework! Oh, Homework!" If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look and does a nice job highlighting some of the many ways that an iPad is a great tool for learning beyond the traditional mediums of textbook and keyboards.

The beginning of the video starts with a Hollywood stereotypical classroom teacher unable to control his class of disinterested and sleeping students. He barely has their attention while trying to explain an upcoming project about gravity. After naming off a few students tasked to work in a group he is naturally interrupted by the bell. What then follows is anything but a stereotypical assignment--the rest of the video shows students' experiences as they go about their neighborhood filming and documenting the many ways they experience gravity, from dropping a watermelons off a bridge to bike jumps to swinging from trees. They use their iPad to edit, annotate, and illustrate their learning in many of the ways our students have been able to use their iPads over the past eight years of our 1:1 iPad program. (See related posts below.)

Over the past week our instructional technology coaches showed this video to teachers who were attending our summer training classes, either in person or online. They discussed ways that the iPad can continue to support our Framework for Teaching and Learning by using technology to foster creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and make learning more authentic and real-world for deeper learning.

This year, our district has goal to increase the experiential and inquiry based learning opportunities for our students. We hope to create more opportunities like the one shown in this video where all students can be immersed in memorable events and experiences. Technology can enhance and facilitate these experiences, and the iPad is an excellent tool to harness the power of technology for experiential and inquiry based learning.

Related Posts:

Monday, June 11, 2018

Beyond SAMR Ladders & Pools: A Framework for Teaching & Learning-- ISTE June 26, 2018

At ISTE in Chicago on Tuesday, June 26 from 4:15-5:15pm I'll be presenting Beyond SAMR Ladders & Pools: A Framework for Teaching & Learning with our Director of Teacher Development, Sara White. The day before I'll also be presenting a short teaser at ISTE Bytes, on Monday, June 25 from 8:30-9:30am. Here's more info:

You'd be hard pressed to find an educational technology leader unfamiliar with the SAMR scale. The concept of differing levels of technology integration with stages of use in education is not new. Over the past few decades, we've had various acronyms like ACOT, RAT, TPACK and more. With SAMR, we've seen analogies like ladders, coffee, pools, and wheels. One of the limitations with each of these is they really just focus on technology, sometimes pigeon holing a technology tool or app into a specific level, when instead the focus needs to be much more broad. For example, even though a green screen end product might look great, students might simply be at the basic level of learning. And looking beyond technology, what about the four C’s, authentic real world learning or global learning?

Four years ago in Minnetonka Public Schools we stopped referencing technology scales and acronyms and developed our own framework for teaching and learning. We found great benefit from reflecting on all areas of teaching and learning, too. Now conversations about technology not only include the levels of complexity, but also to what extent students are thinking critically, communicating, what they are creating, if their experiences were authentic, personalized, collaborative, and global. It all fits together as part of the conversation and bigger picture of instructional best practices.

The Minnetonka Framework for Teaching & Learning

Each of these other areas of instruction and learning have their own levels and stages, too. For example, you can say that your students are collaborating, but is it at the basic level of talking with a neighbor about their answer to a problem or a higher level of collaborative skills involved in negotiating and resolving decisions about what information is most important for a group presentation? Because of this, we developed a larger framework for instruction overall. There are eight dimensions on our framework, and each has its own levels of complexity (similar to SAMR levels).

The Framework shows "how often modest adjustments to lesson design and learning environments can significantly elevate students’ opportunities to learn. It provides educators with a launching point for planning meaningful, engaging instruction for learners who already live in a complex information society in which the nature of work is rapidly changing. Teachers can create places of learning that engage students at high levels and lead to deeper understandings by intentionally planning learning experiences with these strands in mind." Framework Overview document

To develop this comprehensive framework Sara coordinated the work and efforts of teacher and administrator teams who worked to identify and compose the definitions and levels for each level of complexity on the Framework, as well as write an overview document and create guides of about 10-15 pages that detail each of the Framework's eight dimensions. (View the draft guide for Authentic & Real World Learning). Sara also scripted an overview video that we showed our staff during back to school workshops a few years ago:

Our Framework now guides our curriculum writing with dimensions and levels being identified in our UbD units. It also is the focus of our staff development, including technology. Our instructional technology coaches meet with teachers and do trainings focusing on strands of the Framework. Teachers meet in roundtables to discuss how they are designing instruction around different dimensions of the Framework and how technology integrates with these other areas. They also discuss the progress they are making on their technology goal for the year which is tied in with another Framework dimension. These goals are shared with the instructional technology coaches and their building principals.

The Minnetonka Framework for Teaching and Learning has helped us move beyond SAMR ladders and pools to designing student experiences for meaning, engagement, and deeper learning. In fact, our teachers haven’t even heard of SAMR. Come discover a way to design and implement a roadmap for teaching and learning alignment and move beyond simply focusing on technology implementation toward successfully creating more meaningful, deeper and engaging learning experiences for students. If you'll be at ISTE in a few weeks, please join me on Tuesday, June 26 from 4:15-5:15pm.

Learn more about Minnetonka Schools and Technology Integration:

Monday, January 30, 2017

Minnetonka Linear Algebra 8th Graders Use Bootstrap to Code

Recently eighth grade students in Sarah Beron’s Linear Algebra class at Minnetonka Middle School West showcased their Bootstrap projects. Bootstrap is a coding curriculum that uses a “video game development programming pedagogy” while reinforcing algebra concepts for middle school students, integrating it with math curriculum rather than making it an add on, elective, or after school club. In Bootstrap, students need to think through problems, troubleshoot their code, come up with solutions, and understand programming behind the scenes. Because of its emphasis on the close ties with mathematics, Bootstrap helps students who may traditionally struggle with math see connections between their learning and something in real life with which they are familiar: video games. (Bootstrap Overview Video)

Last summer along with other Minnetonka teachers, Sarah attended a Bootstrap training to learn more about the program and plan to use it with her math students this year. The curriculum is free, and Sarah used the lessons for Bootstrap 1 with her math support class for a 24 day unit. In Bootstrap 1, students “create a simple, 3-character game involving a player, a target and a danger. They design what each character looks like, and use algebraic concepts to detect collisions, handle keystrokes, and determine how they move and interact.”

The students I spoke with found the program fun and enjoyed applying their math skills to a real-life situation in order to make the video game that they were designing. One thing Sarah really liked about Bootstrap was the fact that it required students to pay careful attention to details. When their program wouldn’t work if they missed a single character, number, or symbol they would have to debug it in order to figure out what went wrong. She wants her math students to use the same skills in algebra, such as paying attention to whether or not a number in an equation is a positive or negative and appreciating the importance of these details, too.

The students completed numerous exercises in a workbook to learn that basics of coding and then used the WeScheme program to write their code. It was a lot of work for the students but they benefited from it. They were able to see and experience the importance and value of math skills and see computer coding as a possible future area of study and career. Math students taught by Rhonda Lundgren at our other middle school will begin their Bootstrap unit later this week. Bootstrap is one of many tools used in Minnetonka Schools to teach computer programming and computer science. More on the Tonka Codes Program:

More Than an Hour of Code: Tonka Coding & Computer Science Programs Now in Year Three

Video Game Design and Computer Coding at High School

7,843 Hours of Coding this Week @TonkaSchools

Computer Coding Starting in Kindergarten

Minnetonka Elementary Coding

Details about the Curriculum and Program

What's Cool in Our School

Minnetonka Summer Coding Camp

Monday, January 16, 2017

One Year Later, Green Screens Are Everywhere in Minnetonka Schools

High School Students filming with green screens.

One year ago this month, we added the Green Screen app by Do Ink to our students' iPads. Since then, we have seen tremendous use of the tool. As you walk around each of our schools, you will see green fabric, green paper, and green plastic table cloths hanging on walls in hallways, classrooms, and media centers. Students are making green screen videos for all sorts of creative projects across grade levels and subject areas in our 1:1 iPad program for grades 5-12.

(Do Ink is an application that allows students to easily record, edit, and produce green screen video. Green screening itself is the technique of filming in front of a green background and then using a program with a chroma key filter to replace anything green in the image with another photo or video. Think of a weather forecaster on television standing in front of a map. Do Ink's Green Screen app is a wonderful program that makes this process easy.)

Student storyboard

In the video above, you can see grade five students in Mike Borgendale's classroom at Deephaven Elementary using green screens as a culminating project in a English language arts lesson. The students wrote a speech about one of their favorite vacations. They used Notablity to complete a storyboard template (pictured to the right) that the teacher provided to outline and script their speech. Then they selected images from their personal trip or ones they found online. After recording and editing their speeches in Do Ink, they shared their final projects with the class using Reflector to mirror their iPads and watched everyone's speeches together.

Students using a green screen for an ESPN set.

At the upper grades, students are using green screens for a variety of projects, too. Students in world language classes are using green screens to make videos practicing their speaking skills in all sorts of situations. High school Spanish teacher Sarah Strauss recently had students making videos of TV shows such as Iron Chef, Dr. Phil, ESPN Sports Center, and more. She explained to me that the students work together to plan and write out their script, then hang green fabric on the walls around their classroom or in the halls to film their video footage on their iPads, edit their video, and turn it in to their online Schoology course. She said students are very motivated to create these scenes and write and speak the dialog completely in Spanish, and it's great practice for them.

Students using a green screen for a Dr. Phil set.

Within our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework, these projects are great examples of using technology for learning, creativity, communication, authentic and real world learning, and collaboration. The iPad itself is a great tool in all subject areas, and its mobility, dual cameras, powerful video recording and editing abilities make projects like these so easy to produce that the time and focus is spent on the learning with very thought at all to the technology involved.