"Legit" Learning with Zoom

As teachers, we are often more excited about our ideas for our projects than our students will ever be.  We spend hours scavenging Pinterest and scrolling through Twitter in search of the next great lesson.  With the best of intentions, we craft the "perfect" lesson and then prepare to pitch it to our students.  We go before the class and share our "exciting" idea only to be met with whining, complaining, and often times blank stares.  At the heart of it, we all know students learn best when they are engaged and they have buy in.  So the million-dollar question becomes.... How can we make that happen? 

Engagement has been heavy on my mind this year.  As I plan units, I have tried to integrate high interest projects students will actually be excited to complete.  While there is no secret ingredient to engagement, I do think I have discovered one essential attribute.  This realization came only recently while I was doing my typical project pitch and a student raised his hand and responded, "So wait, this project is actually legit?"  You can imagine my surprise by his statement!  The project required students to identify a rule or guideline in our school or community that needed to be changed and then write a policy speech proposing a solution.  Now this assignment alone isn’t noteworthy, however when you add in the final step, the project becomes “legit.”  In the final task, students were matched with the appropriate audience, school administrator or community leader, based on their topic.  Students then used Zoom to deliver their policy speech.  Zoom allowed students to have a real time conversation with someone they viewed as important. 

When students were placed before an authentic audience, they suddenly felt like their project had a purpose.  The assignment took them beyond the walls of our classroom and gave them a purpose much greater than a grade.  What Zach was trying to tell me when he said this project was ‘legit,” was that it had meaning to him.  Through this assignment, many of my students discovered that they do have a voice and their opinion does matter. 

Lessons this teacher learned today...

1. Providing students with authentic audiences will increase engagement and create a purpose for learning.
2. Students MUST be able to see how what we learn in class connects to the world outside our classroom.

If you haven't tried Zoom, I highly encourage you to check it out!  With budget constraints it can be challenging to take students on a field trip, this free conferencing tool allows teachers to bring the expert into their classroom in an interactive way.  The application even allows participants to share their screen with the audience and take notes.  Sessions can be recorded and saved.  I can not say enough good things about Zoom!  Be sure to leave a comment about how you plan to use Zoom with your students.

#iTeach Digital Seminar

This week I was able to attend the iTeach Digital Seminar with eTech Campus.  Our presenter, Bridget McKnight, was knowledgeable and very in-touch with what the classroom is really like. I left the training excited to implement some new tools in my classroom.  While I haven't had the chance to try these on my own, I wanted to go ahead and share the resources.  If you have a chance to try it in your classroom, please leave a comment about how it worked for your students.

Zaption 
Highlights: Turn online videos into interactive lessons. Videos can be taken from an online source, such as YouTube, or uploaded from your own device.  The tool allows you to add images, text, and questions to the video.  Students are then able to interact with the video through the content you add.  Students can work through the lesson individually or you can use the projector to work through it with students as they interact on their own device. 
Possible Ideas for Integration:

• Flipped Lesson. Students could watch the video and interact with the content from home
• Sub Plans.  Great for students to work through on days you have to be out of the classroom
• Allow students to use Zaption as a way for them to teach the class about a concept
• Staff Development.  Coordinators, Coaches, and other school support staff could create training videos for teachers to work through

Formative

Highlights: Take your classroom paperless by uploading any content and adding opportunities for online response.  While I was playing around with this tool, I uploaded a test I had created as a Word document and transformed it into an open-ended response form.  Students would complete the assignment and then I would be able to receive their responses digitally in a spreadsheet.  I have been waiting for this forever!
Possible Ideas for Integration:

•  Upload tests, quizzes, and worksheets you already have created for a quick formative assessment
• Allow students to create assessments to tests one another or use at the end of a presentation

tackk
Highlights: A great platform for teachers and students to create and explore content.  This tool is similar to Smore, however it allows for more customization.  Students can work together to create and collaborate on projects using this tool. 
Possible Ideas for Integration:

• Introduction to a unit
• End of unit projects
• Teacher created resource to house information for a new concept

Quizizz
Highlights: This is a game based students response system.  I already love this new tool!  You can create quizzes on your own from scratch, or pull questions from a bank of public quizzes other teachers have already created. 
Possible Ideas for Integration:

• Pre Assessment of a new topic
• Quick formative during a lesson
• Exit Ticket
• Review before a test

Are you "letting" your student write or "making" them write?

Well I guess it's time to practice what I preach! This thing called a job has gotten in the way of my blogging lately. We are in the 12th week of school and today was the best yet. I introduced blogging to my students and they each had the opportunity to create a blog. Some of my students have been asked to blog in class before, however most of them have never been given so much choice. Students were allowed to select their own focus for their blog based on his or her personal interests. I have kids blogging on everything from gaming to fashion to food. I made two promises to my kids today: 1. I will never grade your blog. 2. I will never tell you what to write about. Students felt liberated to be free from assignments and grades. The authenticity of creating a real audience through blogging comes from the lack of guidelines. For the first time all year, and I hate to admit this, every single student was engaged hanging on to my every word. They participated, asked questions, and showed genuine interest. This is a teacher'a dream! I saw the excitement on their faces as they felt empowered to write and I felt a sense of great satisfaction. Why can't everyday be like this? Their engagement came from their buy in. With all the freedom to choose they took ownership in their work. One student actually asked me if I could wrap it up so they could just get started. . . Absolutely!

Lessons this teacher learned today. . . 

1. Choice is crucial for engagement 

2. Students need opportunities to work without the fear of grades - they will push themselves and take risks when it's not impacting their GPA.

I will leave you with this thought. . . 

Are you "letting" your students write or "making" them write. I want my students to say with enthusiasm, "Mrs.Brown lets us write on our own blogs! That's so cool!" My best work comes when I'm working on a project I want to work on, not a project I'm forced to do. Our students feel the same way. What changes can you make to your lessons so students will feel lucky to be able to complete the assignment? 

Happy teaching! Perfecting my craft one class at a time.