A student's ability to speak in front of their peers has always been an important real world skill to develop in the school setting. With the evolution of technology, in particular mobile devices, students now have the ability to share their thoughts globally with a few taps of the screen. Being that we now in the year 2016, it's imperative that educators support students efforts to communicate clearly and effectively on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. For the most part, most devices in today's world come equipped with microphones and cameras. It's so easy for students to show what they know or learn more about the world around them by way of a Google Hangout, YouTube video clip, or podcast to name a few. Students must be put in digital situations where they can practice looking into the computer camera, speaking off of digital notes, communicating clearly, social cues during an online group discussion, and making their point with images and text on various presentation platforms. In fact, the same can be said for educators that are leading or participating in a webinar, Skype call, etc. The more teachers provide students with the autonomy to leverage the power of this particular technology, the more opportunities there will be to improve their digital speaking skills. Here are eight tools that can help students communicate in the digital world...
FlipGrid ~ Post a topic or question and have participants respond via recorded video. Blab ~ Watch, record, and participate in live virtual conversations. Google Hangout ~ Conduct live and recorded conversations. SoundCloud ~ Upload, record, share, and promote voice recordings. Voxer ~ Tap to talk web application with image, text, and video capabilities. Skype ~ Video call an individual or groups of people. YouTube ~ Create a maintain your very own online media channel. As you can see there are so many options for kids to show what they know in the digital world through video and voice. Click here to access rubrics aimed at helping understand expectations when put in these types of learning experiences. There are other ways for students to work on their digital speaking skills through apps they already utilize such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook. It's important to note that students should have options available to them when they are tasked with having to use this sort of technology. Looking for ideas on how to connect students on a global scale? Check out Connecting Your Students With The World by Blumengarten, Naugle, and Krakower. A one size fits all approach will back fire and limit creativity. The time is now to take a risk and put students in a position to succeed as they communicate and collaborate in the virtual world. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and the newly released Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He is a Google Certified Trainer and speaks nationally about tech integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
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Ever wonder what it would be like to have your classroom or school turned into a movie set? Back in June that's exactly what happened at Black River Middle School in Chester, New Jersey. Google sent in a production crew to film our students and staff for a Google Classroom promotional campaign. Literally for almost an entire week our building was turned into a make shift filming site. An 8th grade language arts classroom was turned into a makeup/wardrobe room. Down the hall a 6th grade social studies classroom would serve as a backdrop for the commercial shoot which you can watch at the beginning of this blog post. Half of our gymnasium was transformed into a classroom for a still photo shoot (see screen shot below). The entire experience was, in a word, spectacular. Our entire student body and staff were so gracious with the patience and flexibility they exhibited during the filming process. So what were the takeaways from all of this? Our students realized that their education is really important. So much so, that Google was willing to send a production team to our school to film a commercial. Our teachers, in particular Diane Basanese who is featured in the commercial, and Kathy Werner, who is featured in the photo shoot, were finally recognized in a big way for all of the awesome things they bring to the table as educators. Our entire school community is now recognized on a global scale as being a staunch supporter of an innovative and child-centered learning environment aimed at preparing students for a future that currently does not exist. At our teacher in-service last week, we were able to show the commercial to our entire district staff. At it's conclusion, a standing ovation was given and tears were shed. People in the room realized that the important work they do everyday matters and the right infusion of technology can be very powerful in addressing the needs of diverse learners. Whether it's assigning and submitting on Google Classroom or peers providing authentic feedback in real time on a Google Doc or students collaborating on a Google Slide project from home on a snow day, Google Apps for Education is a game-changer in the way that students can enhance their own learning. There are great things going in our schools each day and it's important to celebrate this fact as much as possible. The Google Classroom Movie experience is something that most of us directly involved will never forget and is a small way that we can pay homage to the incredible work that teachers, students, and administrators exert on a consistent basis. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and the newly released Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He is a Google Certified Trainer and speaks nationally about tech integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
Over the past year Google Classroom has taken the educational world by storm. Teachers and students are now able to thrive in a paperless world. School leaders must support this new way of life while respecting the transition from traditional methods. So how can a school leader leverage the power of Google Classroom to promote student and staff success? Let's take a look... 1. Flip the faculty meeting and create a Google Classroom for staff members. Instead of wasting teacher's time with boring agenda items, post this information on a Google Doc or Google Slide in Classroom. Then actually utilize this additional time for meaningful professional growth opportunities. 2. Promote sharing of best practices with a Blog of the Week PLC. Send out a Google Form that provides staff members with an opportunity to nominate their favorite blog post. Once the blog posts are submitted, send out an another Google Form for nomination purposes. Once the blog post with the most votes is selected, begin a conversation utilizing the new question feature in Classroom. 3. Move your school forward with a Student Roundtable. Once a month a select group of students meets with administration to be informed of school happenings, but more importantly share insight on how to make the learning environment better. The Google Doc agenda leading up to the meeting can be shared out to students and crowd sourced in Classroom. Additional conversations and resources can be posted within the Student Roundtable Google Classroom throughout the school year. 4. Create a Google Classroom for best practices in technology integration. In particular, Google Apps for Education. Each week have staff members share different ways they are utilizing different apps and extensions to promote student success. Often teachers who are in the same hallway, let alone the same building, have no idea what great things are going on in their colleagues' classroom. This sort of sharing will be a game-changer. As you can see their are countless ways that administrators can utilize Google Classroom. It's a great way to mode technology integrationl for students and staff. Make it a goal this schoo lyear, if you are working in a GAFE school district, to find one consistent way to utilize Google Classroom. It will make a world of difference. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities and the newly released Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. Brad currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. He is a Google Certified Trainer and speaks nationally about tech integration. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net. Innovation. To me, innovation means: change, risk-taking, new, and maybe even most importantly, fun.
My name is Sylwia Denko and I just completed my first year of teaching. I teach third grade and work in an incredible district with unbelievably supportive and dedicated administration and colleagues. My first year was absolutely wonderful. Part of the reason why it was so great was because of an important word: innovation. As a first year teacher, I was told by several people: “Play it safe, stay quiet, do what everyone else does, don’t feel pressured to get involved or take risks yet.” I understood where they were coming from, but that is simply just not me. I believe that the reason why I am who I am is because I am different and I take risks. I was offered a job three days before my graduation date last year partially because I am different, because I take risks. Just because I secured a job through many risks taken, does not mean that I will stop taking risks now. Risk-taking can be, well of course, risky. However, the way I think about it is “What’s the worst that could happen? I fail and then have to fix it, no big deal.” Without failure, we cannot learn and grow as people. That is what I encourage my students to do, take risks and get back up if they do not succeed. There is no judgement, only support. I was lucky to have talked to my friend Brad Currie at EdCamp in November who told me to be different, be true to myself, and to showcase my skills without feelings of judgement or fear; and that’s what I did. I love learning. I love talking to people, reading, and researching. I enjoy having a plethora of knowledge, strategies, and resources to choose from and to make my own; so I talk to people, colleagues that I work with and my professional learning network online. I take so many different ideas and incorporate them into my teaching. As a first year teacher (well, now, second year teacher), I do not have a lot of experience to help me. Instead, I have people with experience to help me. In addition, I have my mind that is always spinning with ideas, thinking about ways to make my teaching even better. My mind enjoys the idea and thought of incorporating technology in the classroom. If you think back to my definition of innovation, technology is exactly that: change, risky, new and fun. I love technology and students love technology. I decided that I wanted to change the way I taught and incorporate more and more technology. The first thing I did, which no one had done yet, was create a classroom Twitter in the beginning of the year. I wanted to be a transparent educator for many reasons. As a new teacher, I wanted to alleviate any feelings of discomfort of the parents in my classroom. In addition, I wanted my administration to see what I was doing in the classroom in case they were not there in person to see it. My students were always doing wonderful things and I wanted to showcase that. Eventually, I wanted my students to become more reflective in our classroom and more involved in sharing what they do. I had a “tweeter of the week” that would compose tweets about our day and those tweets would be posted on our classroom Twitter. I have had very positive reactions from parents, administration, and colleagues. Parents enjoyed seeing what was happening to avoid the conversation of: parent: “What did you do in school today?” student: “Nothing.” (however, I would hope that students had more to say about our day together than just nothing!!). Now, in order to further the conversation (just in case they did respond with “nothing”, parents could say “Well, on twitter I saw…”. I even had a parent tell me “A classroom Twitter is the best thing to have happened in school.” After seeing my classroom Twitter and my professional Twitter, my administration asked me (a first year teacher!!) to develop two professional development sessions to my district about Twitter in the classroom and a professional Twitter. I was so excited about this opportunity and of course, I agreed. Through this, many of my colleagues have joined Twitter and we have developed our own personal hashtag for our district. Our district is a growing district in terms of population and technology. The number of students are growing as well as our resources. This year, there were three classrooms in our school piloting a Google Chromebook program. I was hoping to someday have the opportunity to teach in a 1:1 classroom like them, but just because I wasn’t at the time, did not stop me from incorporating technology in my classroom. I used technology daily by incorporating videos and digital manipulatives, and eventually the google platform, into my teaching. Although we did not have Chromebooks, I taught my students how to use google drive and create documents for them to work on at home and documents that were worked on collaboratively in class. I took my students to the computer lab as often as I could when they were working on collaborative projects so groups could be working on the same document at the same time. When we were not able to go to the computer lab, we developed a system together that allowed one group at a time to work on our classroom computers while everyone else worked on hard copies. As time went on, students took the initiative to use the google platform on their own. I even created “office hours” for my students while they were working at home so I could confer with them outside of our time in class together. Not only did students benefit from this, they enjoyed it. One of my student said “Miss Denko, THIS IS SO FUN!” In May, we found out that the Chromebook Initiative would be growing in our district and I would be one of the lucky teachers who will be teaching in a 1:1 Google Chromebook classroom next year. I am so excited that my administration is confident in me to take on such an exciting and innovative initiative. Now that the school year is over, I am excited to reflect on a successful and innovative year. My year was also filled with smiles, laughs, loving, and learning within the walls of our classroom. I am so happy to look back on my year and know that I have successfully made it through, what people say, would be my toughest year as a teacher. It may have been challenging at times, but people are strengthened through challenge. The best part is that next year, I can do it all over again, but better. I cannot end my post without thanking my unbelievably amazing administration, colleagues, PLN members, family and friends who supported me the whole way through. Thank you more than you know. During a presentation or while conversing, people will often ask me how being on a tool like Twitter or LinkedIn can help educators improve their craft. Providing concrete examples to people will help them see the power of being a connected educator. I also emphasize the importance of differentiating the way people obtain and share best practice resources. In the end, the more educators share ideas and information, the more student success will be impacted. Here is an example of the sharing process.... I follow Derek McCoy, school leader from North Carolina, on LinkedIn. Early one morning before getting ready for work I scrolled through my LinkedIn feed and came across a great resource that Derek shared. It was a blog post written by John Spencer titled 8 Ways to Keep Informational Text Engaging. I was so impressed with its content that I decided to tweet it to my followers. I then proceeded to put it in my weekly email blast to staff called the Bulldog Bulletin that is chock full of best practice resources. The hope here is that my PLN and fellow colleagues will continue to share out this wonderful blog post by John Spencer. As I said earlier in this post, sharing is contagious and will ultimately impact the success of students. Another example relates to our district's transition to Google Classroom. Alice Keeler, an adjunct, author, and edtech guru from California, consistently puts out great content related to GAFE on her blog titled Teacher Tech. I use a service called Feedly that stores all my blog subscriptions which can be accessed through an app I have on my iPhone. On a weekly basis I will got to Alice's blog through Feedly knowing that she will have timely and relevant content related to GAFE. I can then share her content on my various social media feeds and with my colleagues. In the long run it helps everyone stay current and helps integrate the various tools students use in the most efficient way possible. So what do you say? Take a few moments each day to consume and share best practice resources. It will make all of us better educators in the long run and push our students to places once thought inimaginable. As the old adage says: Connect Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Google Certified Trainer. He currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Dean of Students for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
Sometimes I wish educators had a little more time to engage in true professional growth opportunities during the work day. All it would take is 100 minutes a week or 20 minutes each day to just close the classroom or office door and simply learn.
Monday
Weekend (Bonus Points!)
Obviously there are a plethora of other ways to stay sharp professionally. As this school year winds down and we gear up for the next, time should be put aside in the master schedule that allows for educators to grow on a daily basis. Modeling what it is to be a lead learner becomes contagious and will ultimately impact the success of all students. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Bammy Award Finalist. He currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Middle School Vice Principal for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net. Does your school or district have a Pinterest Plan? If not, you might want to consider leveraging the power of this very popular social media tool. So many educators use this virtual pin board to stay on top of best practices. Taking it a step further and using it to tell your school's story will do wonders for all involved. Below you will find a Pinerest Plan of sorts that can help your school or district move the educational conversation forward.
Creating and maintaining a school or district Pinterest board will help with informing school stakeholders and promoting student and staff achievements. It can also be used to highlight alumni and how they are still making your school or district proud with what they are accomplishing. The content on your school or district's Pinterest board does not have to solely focus on what is happening with your staff and student's in school. Putting focus on the great things that happen outside of the school day goes a long way in strengthening community pride. Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is an ASCD Emerging Leader, Bammy Award Finalist, ClassDojo Thought Leader and Google Certified Educator. He currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Middle School Vice Principal for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
This past week we welcomed back students and staff from their well deserved summer break. The organized chaos that comes along with starting a new school year is unexplainable. All in all the first two days of the 2014-2015 school year were a huge success. Here are some things that I was apart of to help ensure a tremendous opening......
Brad Currie is the author of All Hands on Deck: Tools for Connecting Educators, Parents, and Communities. He is one of the founding partners of Evolving Educators LLC. Brad is a 2014 ASCD Emerging Leader and Bammy Award Finalist. He currently serves as a K-8 Supervisor of Instruction and Middle School Vice Principal for the Chester School District in Chester, NJ. Learn more about Brad by following him on Twitter @bradmcurrie or visiting his website at www.bradcurrie.net.
Looking for a simple yet effective way to reach a group of students, parents, athletes, or key stakeholders in a safe manner via text messaging? Try Remind 101. Recently, I have been playing around with this wonderful communication tool to see just how effective it is with reaching groups of people. In particular, I have used it while coaching our middle school softball team. That's right, I have returned to the coaching world and love every minute of it. At the beginning of the season I had our players and parents voluntarily sign up for the free service. Basically, they visited the Remind 101 website, registered, and then joined our private softball group. Anytime there is a schedule change, important reminder, or a positive message that needs to be shared I simply open up the Remind 101 app on my Smartphone, type in the message, and press send. Parents and players will then receive this message from an anonymous number via text message or email. They can not send a message back nor can I send a message to one individual person. Recently they have added a feature that allows a user to send files which is just outstanding.
Many educators throughout the country use this tool in their classroom to communicate with students and parents. Take for example Melissa Tonnessen at Dickerson Elementary School in Chester, NJ. She heard about Remind101 from a fellow colleague before the school year began and decided to include information regarding the service in a back to school packet that parents take home after the September visitation. That information told the parents what the service provided and gave instructions for signing up. So far Melissa has 13 out of 19 families sign up for it, and has used it for a variety of reminders, ranging from "Don't forget that your Reading Bingo is due by Friday" to "No snack is needed tomorrow due to our class celebration." She even used it on the first day of school, letting parents know that it was going well and that I had a class of happy second graders. As you can see there are so many uses for Remind 101 in the school setting. From athletics to academics, school stakeholders are taking advantage of this very powerful and safe communication tool. It's important that schools meet students and parents where they are in the communication world. At the present time, people want information at their fingertips on a cellular device. Remind 101 makes this possibility a reality. So what do you say? Take the plunge and try it out with one of your classes, teams, or clubs. You never know, they might like it. Often educators deal with some tough stuff in and outside of the classroom setting. It's incredibly easy to get caught up in the negative and forget about the positive. Those of you who know me personally or on Twitter understand my committment to telling your story and constantly celebrating what's right with education. Today I was fortunate enough to visit a bunch of classrooms in my own building as well as some in one of our elementary schools. The learning and teaching that was taking place was tremendous. So here are a few snippets on why my day was so good.......
As you can see the day was filled with wonderful experiences that promote the success of all students. I am very fortunate to work with tremendous educators who exhaust all options to meet the needs of diverse learners. |
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