Google Presentation, PowerPoint and Prezi, Oh My!

If you have been to a conference or workshop in the past year you have probably experience the next generation of electronic presentations.   Gone are the generic slides with bullet points.  An animated, PowerPoint slideshow, once considered high tech, has now been replaced by Prezi.  Prezi is cloud based presentation software that allows the presenter to zoom in and out of content, making presentations more three-dimensional.

This past week my students were asked to use choose some form of electronic visual for their college research presentations.  They could choose the familiar PowerPoint, the easy to share Google Presentation or the cutting edge Prezi.  All three were chosen with varying levels of success.

 Notes on Chromebooks

Most students chose to create a Google Presentation.  Since we have been using Google Docs all semester, most seemed eager to use this application.  There is a learning curve to presentations, but it really mimics PowerPoint and so most students were able to create a presentation without issue.  The greatest feature with using Google presentations is that all the shared presentations were housed in the “home” of my Google Docs, so it moving from one presentation to the next was efficient and smooth.

The next most popular choice was PowerPoint.  Students would agree formatting, animation, and transitions are easier to set up in PowerPoint.  This may be because it has been around long enough to perfect the presentation software or because students have the most experience using it.  Whichever the case, I was surprised that most students still choose to do a very basic presentation and don’t take advantage of the more visual features.

My New Favorite Gadget

Only a few students were daring enough to attempt a Prezi.  One of the rookie mistakes of making a Prezi is zooming too quickly and overturning the audiences’ stomachs.  My students used restrain with the zoom, but also didn’t really maximize the movement.  It confirmed the conclusions from my own experience with Prezi- this presentation software takes practice to finesse.

Surprisingly, the technology that impacted the effectiveness of the presentations was my new presentation remote.   I purchased this Logitech remote for only $40 and was giddy with delight at how it freed my students from being tethered to the board.  It single handedly improved every presentation.

In the end, it wasn’t the type of media they used but how they used it.  Communication is an essential 21^st century skill.  And while Prezi may enhance a presentation, it doesn’t replace public speaking skills.  Students need multiple opportunities to speak in front of a group.  They need teachers to model theses skills and they need feedback to improve these skills.  This is a lesson that I continue to learn on my 21^st century journey - software must be supported by skill.

Conversation: The Original 1-to-1 Program

Around the country, school districts are exploring, piloting and implementing 1-to-1 programs.  These programs engage students, allow for differentiations and provide a stronger connection to content.  In my classroom, every spare moment for the past three weeks has been dedicated to facilitating a 1-to-1 program with my students.

My 1-to-1 initiative doesn’t involve iPads, laptops or Chromebooks.  It simply involves sitting down one to one for a meeting with each student from my class.  I started this project last year as a part of my College Study Skills course.   This class is designed to prepare students to be successful post-secondary learners and covers topics such as time management, note-taking, test taking, study techniques, and goal setting.  During the course, students select a goal to work on for 6-7 weeks.  One component of this project is to set up a meeting with me to discuss their goal and their progress on the project. 

The concept is fairly simple.  I post my office hours and students email me requesting a meeting date and time.  I post all my meetings on a calendar, so students know what times and dates are available.  They must meet me outside of class, but I provide times during the school day and after school to accommodate their schedules.  During the meeting students and I talk for 5-10 minutes about their project. I pose questions, offer suggestions and give them an opportunity to sort through any confusion they may have.

In theory, the project is straightforward.  In practice, it is a pain.  For three weeks, I constantly answer and return appointment emails, my lunch and prep are usurped by meeting and students who forget their meeting time are consistently stand me up.  It is exhausting.  And yet, it is one of the most valuable assignments I give all year.

This assignment teaches students to initiate communication, to manage their time, to make and keep an appointment, to develop their interpersonal communication skills and to articulate their ideas.  It is filled with opportunities to hone real world skills, especially when they miss an appointment and have face me for the apology.

And despite all of these skills, this assignment is most beneficial to me. In five minutes, I learn more about my students as learners and as people than any number of assessments could ever reveal.  I get to see what is important to them through the goal they chose.  I give them time.  Time to ask questions.  Time to sit with me face to face, to have all my attention and to simply talk.

As a high school teacher, the sheer number of students who come in and out of my room each day leaves little time for true 1-to-1 communications.  But that shouldn't be an excuse not to have these kinds of interactions.  And while integration of technology into our classrooms and schools is rapidly approaching a near equal ratio of technology to kids, it should never replace the original 1-to-1: conversation. 

Online Assessment: A Teacher’s Wish Come True?

Whenever I see a job posting for a new teacher, I think one of the most important and time-consuming elements of the job is mysteriously absent.  “Must spend hours of personal time correcting homework.”  Grading tests, essays and daily work never entered my dreams of becoming a teacher, but it is a constant presence in my day-to-day reality as an educator. 

And like the laundry, grading is never done.  This creates a love-hate relationship with my job.  Many a night I have wished for a homework fairy to swoop in and magically correct all my homework.  Some believe this fantasy is becoming a reality with the emergence of online assessments.  So over the past semester, I have tried out a few different online assessments hoping to find the miracle cure to my inbox problems.  After several months, my feelings on online assessments are mixed.

The first assessment I tried was the quiz feature on our school website host, School Fusion.  I liked the idea of trying to host all assignments and assessments in one location.  In addition, School Fusion has some great features.  It allows me to track students’ progress, it controls the amount of time students have on each questions and it gives students immediate feedback allowing them to review their responses.  However, the site counts down the time on each question, which was a huge distraction to the students.  Also I found it cumbersome to edit questions and quizzes.  In the end, I think I spent as much time creating the assessment and looking up the results as I would with a paper test.

Since my classes have been working in Google Apps, my next online assessment trial was Google Forms.  Creating quizzes was very easy in forms and I love the look of the different template themes.  I also like that I am able to see a graphic break down of how students answer questions, which is essential data for test analysis.  The second bonus of forms is a script called Flubaroo, which grades the assessment automatically.   That’s right auto “magically!”  Suddenly, I felt like I was one step closer to my dream.  Unfortunately, I still had to transfer this data into Skyward, our online grading program.  And the students did not get any feedback on the assessment.

The final online assessment I tried was to create an assessment in Skyward.   Creating this template was fairly easy with the directions provided by our integrationist.  The assessments are graded immediately without the extra step that Forms requires with Flubaroo and students can see their scores immediately in the grade book.  I can also set when students can take the assessment and when they can review their answers.  From a grading standpoint this is pretty fabulous.

And yet none of these assessments is perfect.  All require a lot of time on the front end, since I was unable to upload any current tests or questions.   Also the only type of assessments that can be graded automatically are multiple-choice, true/false or one-word answers.  I have found that open-ended or constructed response questions are still essential to assessing student learning.  So far online assessments are not the stuff of fairytales, but they are a great resource for both students and teachers.  And while they won’t replace all my assessments, I will continue to infuse them into my lessons to enhance my traditional assessments.

Testing Season: A Blessing or a Curse?

It’s springtime!   In most schools, this means the s-word starts flying through the halls, in the classrooms and especially in the office.   “Standardized” has become profanity in education especially when with paired with test. Whether it’s the ACT, MCA, NWEA, or AP tests, the countless hours of preparation, instruction and anxiety that accompany these assessments is vulgar. 

This week I prepped, proctored and pep talked my way through three different standardized tests.  And while my own disdain for this testing could fill volumes, I would like to reflect instead on some of the positives I think we can glean from standardized tests.

1. Standardized tests unify the student body.   Preparing students for a standardized test feels like preparing soldiers for war.  The test becomes a common enemy, one that all students must face, regardless of their social status, athletic or academic ability.  It is rare to find this kind of common experience among today’s students, so it is something to be cherished.

2. Standardized tests give us data.  A lot has been made about data driven decision-making and SMART goals in education.  As an English teacher, who operates in holistic assessments and a cyclical curriculum, I often balk at the emphasis placed on numbers.  And yet, using data and doing test analysis does provide another type of information to my department and helps us to modify our curriculum.  A recent study of ACT data confirmed our qualitative observations regarding a weakness in sentence structure.   While I am not sure data should drive all decisions, it should have a seat on the bus.

3. Standardized tests allow us to be more focused.  In the past nine weeks, I have had the luxury of spending a great deal of focused time and energy on my students’ writing skills.  The State Writing Test was the catalyst for this unit, and it gives me permission to be narrow in focus.  As a result, I am able to delve deeper into my student’s ability and talent.

4. Standardized tests push students to be their best.   Before the writing test, I had more than a few vocal students grumble about having to pre-write, draft and write all in one sitting.  The state suggests three hours for the test and our school requires students to write for at least 90 minutes.  And yet during the test, when all the rest of life’s distractions had been stripped away, these student rose to the occasion.   I was inspired watching my students commit to the task.  And seeing those students who struggle with writing exceed expectations was a great lesson in the power of time.  When students are given a task and permission to take their time and to do their best, most will rise to the challenge.

5. Standardized tests are a gateway to other skills.  Students in my ACT prep course attach a lot of meaning to their scores.  Often students feel their score validates their intelligence and carves the path toward success.   When their scores don’t match their expectations (and even when they do), it is important for educators and students to develop their other skills: skills that cannot be measured by standardization. They may need to pass a standardized test to graduate high school or get into college, but the rest of life will not be multiple-choice. In the 21^st century students will need to be creative, critical thinkers who problem solve collaboratively and communicate using multimedia.  A standardized test should not be seen as the end, but rather the beginning.

My experience this week has not made me an advocate for standardized tests.  I still think the number of tests given and the amount of time, energy and resources poured into testing fail to make sense in the big picture of teaching and learning.  And yet here we are immersed in testing season, so instead of cursing its presence I am going focus on the blessings it brings.

Chromeroom: A Midterm Report

The end of the quarter is a chance to assess students’ academic progress and formulate a plan for future success.  So as my students and I end the first nine weeks of our Chromebook pilot, it seems a logical time to grade their progress and mine.  Since I haven’t created a rubric, I will use traditional letter grades.

Integration: B-

One of the reasons for starting this pilot was to use technology to transform learning rather than just enhance teaching.  The struggle for me has not been to take my curriculum and place it online.  It is fairly easy to do the same lessons on the Chromebook.  The challenge is using technology to individualize learning, to maximize efficiency and to capitalize on authentic experiences.  This is new territory for me and quite honestly for my students.  They are used to using technology in their personal lives, but using it professionally comes with a whole new set of norms and expectations.   Consequently, I gave myself extra credit points in this for using the Chromebooks almost everyday, because I believe this is a key step toward my goal of complete integration.

Paperless: C+

Before and After Chromebooks

This has been the greatest challenge for both my students and me.  I started out the semester strong. When I handed out “The Chromebook Guidelines and User Contract,” I believed it would one of the last occasions when I would distribute paper to the class.  I had a great plan.  I uploaded assignment into a shared documents folder for each class, made templates for assignments and created online assessments.  Going paperless seemed a seamless transition until I hit my first roadblock: standardized testing. 

It is my responsibility to prepare my 9^th graders for the state writing test.  This test is a paper and pencil assessment.  After years of prepping students, I know those who practice this type of writing in a “mock” test are more likely to succeed.   So I begrudgingly made my first compromise with paper.   I was surprised to find that my next compromise came at the request of a group of student who missed paper.  They found handwriting easier than typing.  In addition, some had sporadic access to technology at home.  So I began offering paper copies of assignments to those who wanted them.  Of course using paper is like eating potato chips.  Even so, I think I have cut my paper 

consumption in half and I hope to continue to reduce the pile even further in the next nine weeks.

Collaboration: C

The best feature of Google Apps is the ability to share and collaborate with others.  In fact, the first assignment of the quarter was a descriptive paragraph my students wrote and edited with three other classmates.  But I have found that having the tools to share does not automatically make you good at collaborating.  Students need more practice working together.  They need me to go beyond just creating an assignment.  This quarter I will focus more on coaching them, so they go from working in a group to working with a group.  

Our collaboration has also been fairly limited in scope.  I set out with aspirations of collaborating with students around the country and the world, and yet the logistics of this work has paralyzed my progress.   On the flipside, I have nearly tripled the efficiency and frequency of my collaboration with other teachers by using Google Apps.  My proudest collaborative moment was a Sunday afternoon when I created a shared presentation and document with three other colleagues from the comfort of my couch.

Problem Solving: A

One of the skills my school has deemed essential for the 21^st Century is problem solving.  There is a strategic effort to provide problem-solving opportunities and assess them using a common rubric.   I knew from the day I helped set up the Chromebook Cart that this pilot would be a great test of my ability to problem solve, but I had no idea how proficient I would become in all kinds of problem solving.  The greatest skill I have gained is technological confidence.  I am not afraid to try something new.  This allows me to be creative and approach a problem from several angles without frustration.  I hope to continue to model this skill for my classes.

Proficiency: B

After 9 weeks, I have gone from little knowledge of Google Apps to strong proficiency in Documents, Forms and Presentations.  I am relatively proficient in Sites, Mail and Spreadsheet.  In fact, my grade should have been higher until this morning when I wrote and administered a comprehensive assessment using Google Forms.  This was A+ work until I went to grade the test using Flubaroo, an automatic grading script.  It was then I realized I forgot to have my students sign-in to the form, so I had 60 exams without names.  So like parallel parking on my driver’s test, I was proficient in the process, but not the product.   In addition, my students’ work has been limited to primarily documents.  My goal this next quarter is to have students creating their own sites to showcase their course work.   I want to continue to enhance my understanding of apps and introduce more Chrome extensions and applications to my students.

My Chromeroom

This is an overview of the Chromeroom and my performance during the first nine weeks.  As I look ahead to the rest of the quarter, my goal is to continue to reduce paper, increase both proficiency and integration of different Google Apps and work through the logistics of authentic collaboration.   Maybe next quarter, I can even  make the Google Honor Roll. 

Don't fight nature-Nurture it!

I have many blessings in my life.  At the top of the list are two healthy, kind and creative kids.  As I have mentioned before, raising my children has taught me more about how to be an effective teacher than any educational in-service, class or book.  Recently, one lesson the universe seems be trying to teach me is the importance of nurturing my kids' (and students) natural differences.

 

As babies my kids were alike in almost every way.  Both were big, bald babies who were great eaters and terrible sleepers.  Of course, I knew with a girl and a boy some differences were bound to emerge as they grew up.  What I didn’t anticipate was how the differences would manifest in every part of their lives.

Mackenzie leaps before she looks, Will examines something from every angle before making a move.  Mackenzie is social.  Will is competitive.  Mackenzie likes to plan and create.  Will likes to follow and sort.  Will is anxious about change and anything new.  Mackenzie is nearly fearless and will try almost anything once. Both of them have traits that are assets in some situations, but cause challenges in others.

School has cast a spotlight on to the difference in my kids.  I see it in the way they approach homework, in their handwriting and even in lunch choices.  It has been surprising to see how school (homework logs, timed tests and planners) seem to directly contradict their natural dispositions.  I realize the same is true with my own students.  They are all motivated in different ways and they all learn and process differently, but too often my assignments and procedures are one size fits all.

Recently, both kids brought home spelling tests with a few errors.  I decided to address the test because I knew these were words they should know.  My daughter laughed about her mistake and decided she needed to pay closer attention during her test.  My son burst into tears berating him self for the mistake.  Clearly, I must also take a different approach with each as a parent.

As a teacher/parent, I tend to focus on “fixing” my kids’ challenges.  I push them to adopt my version of organized, social or successful.  I am now learning that the energy I pour into changing their natural dispositions could be better spent nurturing these qualities and helping them to showcase their best traits.

I am starting to recognize this more in the classroom as well.  I have a few students who are constantly standing up and moving around.  The energy I spend telling these students to sit down exhausts me, but I am starting to see these students have energy they need to expel.  The structure of the classroom doesn’t fit with their natural traits.   Instead of always trying to change the student, maybe it is the structure of the class that needs to change.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t try to teach the disorganized kid to be organized or we should stop encouraging the shy kid to speak in front of class.  In fact, I think it is important to challenge our natural traits and learn to stretch beyond what comes easily.  And yet, I think it equally important to see that there is more than one “right” way to teach, to learn or to be. 

Make-up, Catch-up, Absolutely Nothing-New Day

Last Friday, I declared it was make-up, catch-up, absolutely nothing-new day.   My students rejoiced.  You would have thought I declared a snow day.  It wasn’t the first time I had taken a step back and given my students some time to get caught up with the learning, but there was something about naming the day that made  an impact.  I think it was my acknowledgement that my students are stressed and stretched sometimes to, and often beyond, capacity.

As a teacher, I sometimes get too focused on my plan: finish a lesson in 48 minutes, finish an essay in a week, or finish a novel by the end of the quarter.  I am so focused on the end goal that I rush the learning.  But it is important to stop along the way and assess where my students are at and how they fit with the plan.  This is sometimes difficult to do when the pressure of state standards, standardized tests, and district initiatives are constantly being touted as high stakes.

In the 21^st century, education is at a crossroads.  We are making changes from content to skills, we are flipping classrooms, we are going paperless, and we are asking students to be more responsible for their own learning.  This kind of change is hard work and it takes both time and energy from students and teachers.  But it is important to acknowledge that it is hard, acknowledge that we need to stop along the way and allow both teachers and students to catch-up.

I would love to see my administrators adopt the make-up, catch-up, absolutely nothing-new day at our next workshop.  When I began teaching in the mid-nineties, workshop days were a chance to slow down, to connect to staff, and to work quietly in our rooms.  Today, most workshops are booked from morning to afternoon with meetings where we develop SMART goals, write critical thinking rubrics, learn how to use 2.0 technology and review data.  It is rare to find slow or quiet moment.

The time to reflect, to question, and to evaluate is essential.  If we continue moving toward the future at a 100 miles an hour without allowing people time to process, the result will be an increase in both burnout and dropout.

So I am going to start a new tradition in my class.  The make-up, catch-up, absolutely nothing-new day will be a celebration of the quiet that is needed when you are immersed in the radical change to move education into the future.