My Voice - National Student Mock Election

In collaboration with the Pearson Foundation two initiatives are being supported to involve students.  The National Student Mock Election is a website dedicated to providing teachers and students the opportunity to get involved in the election process and have a voice. 

In order to participate, teachers need to register their students.  It is completely free to do so.  You register as a school, district, or organization.  You can decide on the number of classrooms and number of students that are going to be participating.  You also choose the grade level as well.  Voting begins on October 25th and then on November 1st, it is Mock Election Day.  For more information on the Voting procedures, click here. 

There are also several other resources of interest.  You can visit the Hall of Fame which has handbooks, reports, and information Tool Kits and "How To" Guides.  Also available is curriculum and lesson plans for all grade levels; as well as resources that encourage deeper learning to motivate students about the election.  One more feature are polls that students and visitors to the site can participate in.  Results from previous polls are also available.  

With the Election just over a month away, it is important that we educate students on the importance of voting and providing them an opportunity to voice their opinion on a national scale. 

Tuesday Teaching Strategy - Brainwriting

Brainwriting

Brainwriting is an alternative to brainstorming that involves having group members interact via reading and writing rather than speaking and listening.  Brainwriting typically involves the following steps:

1.)  Identify a topic or subject that students will be studying (One time that I used this strategy was completing a review for a test and final exam).

2.)  Assign students to a group of no more than four members.

3.)  On that topic, have students write/answer what they know or think they know about a topic or subject for a given period (five minutes is a good starting point)

4.)  When time is up, have students pass their writings or responses to a set of questions to another group.

a.   When I did this strategy with a review, I gave each group a master copy and then divided the questions up.  As we passed around the activity students would work at answering the questions missed by the previous group.   At the conclusion, the review should be filled out and as a teacher you know which ones no students were comfortable with.

5.)  Assign a little bit of time for students to review the previous group’s work and groups should add in what they know about the writing or questions being asked.

6.)  Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all students in a group have reviewed each other’s work.  Each group should then review all the ideas and answers generated through this process.

-     You could easily do this activity with any book work or worksheet that you are assigning to your students and divide up the problems based on the number of groups.

-     If you are having students read primary documents or short stories, the students could write their responses to questions or prompts and help other students with comprehending what the readings are about.  This activity could be done with Reading ACT test preps

-    Science teachers could use this to share hypothesis and experiment results so that they can compare any differences or similarities. 

RealtimeBoard

Realtime Board is another option for collaborating together online to discuss and develop ideas.  On a board users can add visuals, mark-up, and leave comments in mini-chats.  Users can also add sticky notes as well.  Realtime Board allows users to also Create simple sketches or complex infographics using shapes, texts and mark-up tools.  Each addition to a board can be edited and removed and used to collaborate better.  Users can add Google Docs and PDF-presentations, as well as create mind maps in real time.

So the next question, is what separates Realtime Board from some of its predecessors and counterparts?  When you have completed a board, you can turn the board into a presentation.  You decide the order and how to develop the presentation parts based upon what is included on the board.  You organize the presentation by slides.  You create slides by taking a "screenshot" of the area of the board you want to focus on.  This process reminds of the "Frames" and "Path" features of Prezi.  There are various ways to view the presentation, AND only the owner of the board has the ability to create a presentation.

When students are collaborating on a board, they appear as avatars (if logged in with Facebook or Google and one is available) icons and the work that is being done is shown in real time.  We are encouraging students to collaborate and this provides a way for students to do that and then easily create a presentation.  Often times we assign task to groups of kids on a project and Realtime Board provides an easy way to do that.

You can create an account using an email and password or using Facebook  or Google.   I recommend viewing the Tour to learn even more and seeing some examples for ideas as well.  Visiting the Realtime Board Blog will also be helpful in learning some tips and tricks for how to use the site. 

One thing I am liking about Realtime Board is it is not just a collaboration tool.  As a teacher, it could be used to create presentations in the classroom and provide annotated pictures, graphs, charts, etc.  This one is worth checking out.  It has combined some of the greatest features of Whitebaord Collaboration software with Presentation software.

For more information on Realtime Board, which is in Beta, see the video below. 

Thursday Thoughts on Curriculum - Personalized Learning

Curriculum is changing...at least the methodology that is expected for teachers to teach it.  Differentiated Instruction, Multiple Intelligences, and other theories have been around for years, and won't be going anywhere, just taking on new meanings.  My first few months as a curriculum coordinator has truly opened my eyes to the thought processes and physical processes that go into running a district, school, and often times a state education system.  While researching curriculum for various reasons, I keep coming across "personalized learning."

Just in the past week, I have seen the idea of personalized learning come through my Twitter feed and my email.  I do have to hand it to the Kentucky Commissioner of Education; Dr. Terry Holliday.  He is very forward thinking and working towards great things in our state.  Our Accountability has changed, opportunities for schools are increasing, and he has been very visible in schools based upon his Twitter Feed and the Kentucky Department of Education's Twitter Feed.

Monthly, the Commissioner holds a Twitter Town Hall where teachers across the state, or even the country can ask questions related to education and get answers directly from the Commissioner.  I recently participated in one and asked about a program Kentucky will be implementing called "CIITS" (Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System).  This program will be instrumental in the movement towards personalized learning.  It will provide opportunities for teachers to have access to everything a teacher needs to develop lessons and assess those lessons.

Through this Twitter town hall I not only got my questioned answered, I also saw the following exchange between the commissioner and a fellow educator:

It appears that Dr. Holliday understands this era towards Personalized Learning, while at the same time he is aware of the barriers that keep it from becoming a reality...at this time.  This was my first interaction with Personalized Learning.  My next came in the form of an email from Kelly Tenkely; someone who I communicated with on Twitter regularly when I was working on technology. 

In the email, Kelly has started a movement called The Learning Genome Project.  The idea behind this project is to make personalized learning a reality for all students.  In order for this project to move forward, it needs funding.  You can learn more about this project and help fund this project by visiting the campaign website on Indiegogo.  Sometimes it helps to know the back-story on how something develops.  You can read about Kelly's epiphany here.

How do we personalize education?  It is certainly a daunting task, especially for high school teachers that can go through a school year with 100's of students to try and personalize education for.  

The question I have for you, is in the current state of education, how you are personalizing education in your classrooms?

Tuesday Teaching Strategy: Team-Pair-Solo

Not that I will completely move away from Educational Technology on this blog, I do want to start including some of what I am doing now as a Curriculum Coordinator to it.  One way I hope to do that is to provide a weekly Teaching Strategy that I think can be implemented across the curriculum and throughout all grade levels...at least I hope to do that the majority of the time.  

To start this off, I will start off with a fairly common one that some people might have heard of.  It is probably a strategy that several teachers are doing in their classrooms but were not aware that it had an official title or name.

Team-Pair-Solo

Most of us have heard of “Think-Pair-Share” and have probably used it in our classrooms.  Have you ever thought about doing it in reverse?

“Team-Pair-Solo” is intended to help students learn problem-solving skills.  Working first in teams or in whole class, students will work on an area of content in your lesson (In math it might mean working on a single problem).  During this time students are discussing work and solution strategies, and helping others when they struggle.

After completion of the team/whole class section, students will be divided into pairs where they will continue to work on the area of content, or work on a new area of content that continues the progression within the content area.  Here it will be important to continue the pattern of discussion and mutual assistance.

Finally, applying the understanding and confidence acquired from the first two steps, each student works alone to complete a final aspect of the lesson.  By the time students work independently they should be able to assess for themselves how well they have mastered the new skill or concept.  During this final stage it will be important for the teacher to continue to monitor and check student progress.

In conclusion, students work on a small (1-3 problems/questions/prompts) section of your content to introduce them to what they should understand, then split into pairs providing further opportunities to expand their understanding, before finally working independently to complete their understanding.