Me Think Big Thoughts

     My Chrome app of the day is Socrative.  It's an interactive questioning app that you can use for immediate feedback that can be used for formative assessment or to activate student schema.   Students can enter their responses via any device. Question formats include T/F, multiple choice, and short answer.  You can use quizzes, exit slips, or quick questions.   For my artifact, I created a survey for students to complete before beginning the novel The Outsiders.  Students can prepare for our class discussion that centers on our unit's essential question: "What is the relationship between money and happiness?"  I have linked you to a pdf file, but the actual application allows students to answer the questions anonymously and then graphs an entire classroom's response.  This link may or may not work:  Money and Happiness Survey

***** This Week's Reflection ******

     Please tell me you all laughed out loud when you read this week's question.  We have gone from the basic"tell me about how social bookmarking worked for you" to the esoteric "reflect on how the concept of Open Source content is compatible with educational philosophies such as the concept of the democratization of knowledge and development of an educated population."  Did I just travel through time to Educational Philosophy 101?  Is the crux of this question WWJDD? (What would John Dewey Do?)  Or is this a merely a preview of the PARCC question that my ELL 8th-grade students will have to answer this year?

Of course Open Source content is compatible with the democratization of knowledge. If you believe in equal access to a quality education, then you believe in the accessibility of open, distributed, quality Open Source content.  However, any  ideal can crash and burn when it hits reality.  The powerful like to keep a tight rein on power, and equal access make some shudder with elite fear.  Further, any venture that can shift from being lucrative to being freely-accessed will certainly rally the troops to brandish "Open+Source=Communism" signs and pitchforks. Honestly, this is not a question I struggle with on a daily basis, although the heart of the question is probably why we all try to be our best each day for the students in our classrooms.  So sayeth John Dewey:

   

Hey, Google Classroom - I've Got a Blank Space, Baby, and I'll Write Your Name

     Google Classroom, are you my new Romeo? And if I embrace you, will that mean I am cheating on my teacher website? Are you going to make my classroom blog feel like a frivolous fling?  Or - alas - will next week's class assignment introduce me to some other young, hot tech teaching tool that will make me feel like our new-found love was but a momentary infatuation?

Not sure where we're headed, Google Classroom, but I've got a crush on you, for sure. oxo

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An Ode to Google Classroom

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.

You keep track of which dear students have turned in their work on time. 

You monitor which students might, perhaps, possibly be slacking.

You organize all student work in one easily-accessible location.

You do not make me guess what student submitted an assignment  which he randomly named "JOOOOYYYYYNNNNER."

... my teacher website does not show me all that love.

You have a clean format. (although truth be told, I  would not be averse to more font choices)

You allow me to easily attach sample exemplars via Google docs.

You can transform my classroom into a more student-centered learning environment by allowing me to differentiate work for individual students through the audience feature.

You allow me to easily modify assignments per classroom period.

You streamline organization with a one-stop learning spot for students (and parents) (and the inevitable "My family is taking a week off in the middle of the year to go to Cancun" students)

You promise increased student engagement and opportunities for online collaboration. See this case study.

You eliminate minutes of instructional time lost in class in the giving and repeating of directions.  

You provide a quick way for me to check for student understanding by creating a question.

You provide opportunities for a flipped classroom by giving students questions to research and to ponder as individuals or in collaboration 

You have a calendar.

You allow me to host a discussion with my students.

You (allegedly) give me THE POWER to read student comments, even deleted ones. (that seems a little creepy and Big Brother, though.  C'mon, Google.)

You let me grade essays anytime and anywhere.  (Okay, so I might secretly hate this about you Google Classroom (and Google Docs).  Sometimes a girl just wants to "forget" a stack of essays on her desk for the weekend. )

You promise to afford even more advantages to my students if I buy this book: 50 Things You Can Do with Google Classroom.  Which still seems funny to me that the book is an actual book.  Made of paper.

Oh, Google Classroom.  Are you too good to be true?

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Bookmark This, my PLC Posse

As someone who has been a companion of chaos for most of my days, I chaff a bit at the multitude of organizational structures marketed to us in our virtual world.  Ironically, I sometimes feel more disorganized by the variety of tools that promise to keep my cyberworld more organized than my physical surroundings. Social bookmarking is the tool of the week.

My big commitment to social bookmarking is Pinterest.  Many moons ago, I did some browsing on del.icio.us but never committed to creating my own stacks.  Similarly, I initially only stalked others' Pinterest boards, but later grew to love organizing my pins and following others.  I enjoy having friends and colleagues - and my young daughters - share a pin to one of my boards.  Also, the visual beauty of Pinterest boards simply make me happy.  

By comparison, Diijo pages are not so pretty, and I am less motivated to start the process of bookmarking over again.  Can I transfer content to Diijo from Pinterest? Is there some benefit it doing that?  I will have to play around with the features of it to weigh how this tool would benefit my students more than providing links via another medium. I do like the ability to highlight text and annotate.  Also, its simpler visual format may keep me more focused on the task at hand. :)

In other geeky tech news, I have been playing around with another app/site called instagrok.com that I culled from a list of resources from a session at the Illinois Reading Conference last week.  Teaching friends - check it out.  You enter a topic, and it creates a concept map of facts, websites, images, and videos that you can customize and share with your students.  You can even modify the difficulty level of the reading.  How does this magic take place?  It's crazy.  And free.

I'd love to know your success stories with Diijo.  Meanwhile, I've got to pause from organizing from my keyboard and start dealing with the immediate chaos of laundry, dishes, daughters, and schoolwork.  Unless, of course, there's a great app for that. 

P.S.  added late:  Clearly I need a PLC whose sole purpose is to make sure that I understand all of the reflections that I am supposed to complete each week for this class.   I created a Google+ community for Young Adult Book Reviews.  I can "leverage" this community in my classroom by providing an authentic interactive audience for my students' written reflections about books.  Building this community will empower my students to communicate more freely among the three sections of my class.  Further, students who are verbally reticent will have equal access to have their voice be heard.  Finally, while I l-o-v-e recommending books to my students, they will benefit from hearing other titles shared by other 8th-grade readers who were born in the same century as they were.  I'm still concerned that I do not understand all of the privacy settings, though, and I want to make sure my students are protected. (I'm also concerned that the icon for a PLC looks like a dad reading the paper during his daily constitutional.)

In the Cloud

The first text we explore in 8th-grade is the novel Chopsticks, a story with a frustratingly ambiguous ending, told in photographs, screen shots, and letters.  The minimal text gives my readers equal footing when using evidence in the book to support their ideas about what happens to Glory and Frank.

Using Google Slides, groups of students are collaborating to create their own stories using photos that they took with their smart phones.  They are working to visually establish setting, plot, mood, characters, and conflict in the spirit of Chopsticks.  Here is one group's rough draft: Group M rough draft.

Students could also use Google Hangouts to consult on this assignment.  Perhaps their experience would be amusing as my first experience with  Hangouts with Sara and Gregg.