Using Technology to Engage Your Audience

As I'm revising some of my classroom materials for the PA Writing and Literature Project course that I am teaching this summer titled Writing with 2.0 Technologies, I thought I would share one of the presentations I put together for my students. Students in my 10th grade English class have a number of opportunities to teach the class, whether they were sharing what they have learned about a specific literary criticism approach or teaching us about motifs found in The Kite Runner, and in preparing their presentation materials they were required to find ways to engage their audience, other members of our class. Audience participation is a requirement. And to help them think about ways to engage their audience, I put together this Prezi of tech tools. So, take a peek.

From the Mgmt.

A friend and fellow teacher recently asked if he could ask me a few questions about my classroom management style for a graduate course in education he is currently taking.  And with the school year all wrapped up, this is a perfect time to reflect on not just what I do in the classroom but why I do what I do.  So I thought I would share a little bit of how I responded to my friend's request:

My Management Style - 

So two guiding ideas that have shaped how I establish my classroom community have to do with transparency and flipped instruction.  In terms of transparency, I believe that students and parents should be able to access and interact with whatever it is that we are working on in the classroom even when they are not physically in my class.  This is why I feel it is important to use my web presence not just as a place to post my assignments, but to get students interacting.  We blog our writing pieces, we use online discussion tools, take our tests/quizzes online and review class responses after everyone has finished, all so that student work is not done in isolation.  Students are writing online and posting for an audience other than just their teacher.  I've seen that this can help students in terms of how they construct their written pieces.  When writing for an audience other than just their teacher, students understand that there is a real purpose and audience for what they are writing.  Also in an effort to make what we do in the classroom transparent, students are given all their assignments for a particular unit at the beginning of the unit along with the rubrics for all assignments.  My goal is that students can see from the very beginning of a unit our objectives for learning and where we are headed.  To do this, I rely on ideas of backward design as proposed by Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design. Last, I live video stream out every class every day.  I use the webcam on my laptop to stream out every class. The camera points to the front of the room so that students are not captured but viewers can hear what is happening in the class.  The first week of class and at our Back to School Night for parents, I give out the link and password to access our live video web channel.  Only those with the password can watch the class live or watch the recorded videos of our class.  I have found that students mainly access these recordings the days we do quiz/test reviews as a way to review once they get home.  Parents (and even some grandparents) access the stream on presentation days to watch all their student's preparation come together. By striving toward transparency, my hope is that students and their parents feel more engaged in the work of our classroom, but more importantly that we come to understand the classroom as a community.  It is not just "my" classroom but "ours".

The other guiding idea that I try to incorporate stems from the flipped classroom movement and the idea that class time is better used as a place for the teacher to act as a mentor/coach while students use time to practice and refine their work on writing pieces and projects.  A few years ago, I was sitting in a session at the annual NCTE conference and a presenter asked the audience if we spent more time planning our instruction or giving instructions.  This struck home with me as I noticed that my handouts were incredibly wordy.  I spent a lot of time giving instructions.  So, this year in particular, I moved all my didactic materials and instructions to video. Instead of asking students to complete writing assignments and group projects as homework, we did them in class so I could work with them, acting as a coach.  As homework, students watched videos that introduced assignments, vocabulary and literary terms, and gave directions. Most of the time, their homework was either to watch a video or complete reading homework. This meant that we could use class time to draft and revise. Flipping my instruction freed up class time for more discussions, practice, and presentations. It also meant that I did not spend as much time standing in front of the class (because I stood in front of a camera instead), so the physical set up of my classroom changed as well .  Desks were organized in pods if we were working on group work or in the shape of a U to better facilitate class discussions. Flipping my instruction also flipped a great deal of my organization and management style.  Not only that, it flipped how students thought about our classroom.

My classes are not quiet.  You will not often see students sitting in rows listening to a teacher at the front of the room.  In fact, walk into my classroom on any given day, and it might look a bit chaotic. There might be a group of students, laptops open, working on a Prezi for an upcoming presentation while another student sits on the counter reading quietly to herself, three students might be in the hallway video-taping a re-enactment of a scene from the book they are reading while four others are in the class on their smartphones doing research. But this is not chaos.  This is learning. Over the course of one semester, most of my students will post between 4-5 blog posts, teach the class 3-4 times, present research to an audience outside our classroom, submit at least one piece of writing for publication, use Skype to talk with multiple authors and publishers, and use a variety of tools to create, connect, and collaborate with others inside our classroom and those halfway across the world.  This is teaching and learning 2.0.

Introduction to Google+

Yesterday at EdCamp Philly, I participated in a session about using Google+ Hangouts to virtually connect classrooms and speakers.  This past year I have used Skype to bring publishers, authors, a psychologist, and presenters from Japan into my classroom through video, but because Skype does not have a recording option connected to the program nor is it easy to connect with multiple speakers at the same time, I am interested in moving over to Google's Hangouts.  And it turns out a lot of teachers are making that switch.

So for those of you not familiar to Google+ or Hangouts, here are a couple of tutorials to help you get started. This first series of videos comes from Google Certified Teacher Jay Atwood and is a fantastic introduction to Google+ for educators:

For teachers just getting started with Google+, you will want to take a look at the Google Help page.

So now you are ready to Hangout.  Here's a good introduction to Hangouts:



For more specifics on setting up a Hangout, the Google Help Page and  this tutorial give not only a great overview but step-by-step directions. Once you are ready to jump in, be sure to join the Google Hangouts in Education community and follow the Google in Education page.

So, how will you use Hangouts in your classroom?

EdCampPhilly

Okay, I'll admit it. I got a bit distracted over the last couple of years - had a couple kids, started my own craft business, went back to teaching full-time - but I cannot believe that it has been nearly two years since I've posted. Shame on me! So after attending my first EdCamp today, I was inspired to share more of what I learn, whether those reflections are polished or not. My hope is to get back into a more regular practice of posting and that begins today. So here it is, just a few of my random thoughts and links to goodies that I learned about while at EdCampPhilly:

• Culture of Innovation: itunes.apple.com/us/course/creating-culture-innovation/id580285828
• An interesting app: www.vizify.com
• Teachers as Technology Trailblazers: www.kristenswanson.org
• iTunes course for creating an iTunes course: itunes.apple.com/us/course/itunes-u-course-creation-guide/id644450313
• stumpteacher.blogspot.com
• Professional Development for Teachers - 8 Steps To Make It Better: smartblogs.com/education/2013/02/06/a-plea-professional-development-reform-8-steps-make-happen-tom-murray/

Tech Tools Teacher Should Know About:

• A must for teachers: www.cybraryman.com
• Gobstopper - annotated public domain with questions/quizzes
• Tellagami - create talking avatar characters to tell a story (for the iPad only)
• PlaySpent - A game to simulate what it’s like to live on minimum wage
• Professor Word - it allows you to look up the definition of any word in your browser
• Zac Browser - Browser for children with autism and autism spectrum disorders
• 121Writing - You can respond to Google Drive docs with highlighting and voice; give student writers feedback that they listen to, leaving the grade until the very end
• Lino - Stickies; more robust than Wallwishr/Padlet
• Apps Gone Free - Daily free apps
• Video Notes - Lets you annotate videos that you are watching
• And the big take-away: Choose2Matter But more on this one soon

Time for a Change

In the coming days, you'll see some changes taking place. I'm tired of the tree design as it no longer fits as a metaphor for my online spaces. So I'm trying out some new, cleaner designs for this blog, my class Ning and wiki sites, as well as for my Twitter site. If you have ideas, I'd love to hear them. And stay tuned for changes.

You'll See More Soon...No, Really, You Will!

So all my plans for my maternity leave this past school year are still just that...plans. I wanted to update my resume. Update my blog. Update my websites. I didn't. I haven't. But I definitely haven't simply let the year slip by. I became a fellow in the National Writing Project. I'm working on a grant through the National Writing Project. I'm teaching my first graduate class to teachers. I started a business. And I've been writing (sorry, that it hasn't been here). So instead of planning, I've been doing.

But you'll see me returning more in the next few weeks as I plan and teach my first graduate course with the PA Writing and Literature Project on Reading and Writing in Digital Spaces. I'm currently trying to narrow down the tons and tons of videos and articles and books and blogs that I could use in this type of course. I certainly have way more than what I need. And in the process of narrowing down my resources I ran across this TED Talk video from Will Richardson. I think this might be an interesting place for me to start our study. What do you think?

Inspiring

Said so much better than I ever could, Sarah Kay expresses why I am passionate about teaching high school writers. We all have stories to tell.