Effective Integration of G Suite and Related Tools for Learning

Last month I presented at the MACUL conference about using G Suite apps and Chromebooks effectively according to the Triple E Framework. It was a culmination of many ideas I've used in trainings over the past two years. I was very pleased with the reception.

The main resource I shared in the session is this Google Docs table. In it, I list the nine key questions from the Triple E Framework and point out several ways in which apps like Docs, Slides and other tools can excel in each. I also list a few possible weak areas to watch for.

I hope to present on the same topic a few more times this year, so I'll be glad to hear suggestions for additions or ways I can improve it.

I also have the complete list of resources from that session here, though you will find many of those other resources on other pages in this blog.

Update on our MACUL project

A couple months ago I announced our project funded by a grant from MACUL. We have been working on it steadily, but we have progressed more slowly than we hoped! 

Brenda June and I have learned a lot as we've been creating video tutorials for and with students. I make a lot of videos, so this isn't new to me. But from choosing the scope of the tutorial to finding the best tools and workflow, it's been more challenging than I expected. 

We added a few more videos over the past weeks and now that we have a routine down I expect to have a few more from students before we go on break next week. Here is a summary of what we've done.

First, you might want to start at our Room 10 Learning Chats site. Besides the videos listed below, we also ask pre-questions for many videos and some of them have additional resources.

Our most popular video so far has been The Learning Journey, which I created with Brenda. We are still working on the follow-up video, Identifying Your Next Step.

These are the other tutorials Mrs. June and I created:

• Finding the Measure of an Interior Angle of a Triangle
• Thinking About Positive and Negative Numbers Part 1 and Part 2

And these are the ones featuring students:

• Identifying Types of Angles
• Order of Operations - We include some growth mindset ideas in this one.
• Multiplying Fractions - This shows a way to visualize fraction multiplication.

Keep in mind we are all still learning how to best churn out videos at a good rate. All of these videos have plenty of room for improvement. Many of the things we don't say in the video or the slight mistakes we left in can provide an opportunity for discussion in the classroom. 

Mrs. June, the students and I are very open to feedback. Please comment here or send me an email if you would like to suggest improvements or if you have any other thoughts to share.

Three Presentations at miGoogle 2017

I'll be leading three sessions this year at the miGoogle conference. This is the Michigan Google Education Summit and it will be held at Fenton High School in Fenton, Michigan on November 8th and 9th. Be sure to check it out at this link if you are interested in attending.

As of this posting, they don't have the schedule complete. Here are the links to the sessions I'll be leading. (I'll add some previews and session resources to these documents as we get closer to the date.)

• Show Off the Learning with Google Drawings
• Show Off the Learning with Google Sites
• Recording and Publishing Google Slides Presentations

Hope to see you there!

Presenting at miGoogle and Michigan State

We will presenting The Way of the Google Drive: Thoughts and Tools to Inspire Change at two conferences the first week of November.

• miGoogle 2015 in Brighton, Michigan
• Michigan State University College of Education Technology Conference

It will be a fast paced combination of motivational thoughts and practical examples of how we've seen the ideas work.

To prepare, I've been posting articles here or on my other blog every day of October. Here are some popular ones from this week:

• The outline of our session
• Always Striving to Improve - My interview with Jake Gentry, who will be presenting with me at both conferences
• Lifelong learning, PBL and a passion for encouraging others - My interview with Clark Rodeffer, who will join us for miGoogle

Click here to see all posts from Teaching Like an Artist with the tag "The Way of the Google Drive".

And if I haven't promoted it enough yet, don't miss our EPIC session trailer!

Learning and Creating Like Never Before

Here's another wrap-up of some posts from my Teaching Like an Artist blog. I'm in the middle of the series of daily posts leading up to my conference session The Way of the Google Drive.

My most popular post from the last week is Art and Risk. Uncertainty adds to the excitement. What does that say about the routine of school?

The shortest post - a list of five things that help me know I'm on the right track with teaching.

I also finished up this video trailer for our conference session. Jake and I were trying to be epic. If nothing else, it answers the question of where I got the title for the conference. It has a few of my favorite one-liners.

I hope to finish one more video in the next week that is more down to earth and that includes contributions from our other co-presenter.

_________________

I'm doing a challenge this month to post on one of my blogs every day. It's in preparation for my conference session, The Way of the Google Drive. Be sure to follow me on Twitter or on either blog to keep up with the "thoughts and tools to inspire". 

Click here to see all the posts from Teaching Like an Artist with the tag The Way of the Google Drive.

Teachers and Students Discover the Power of Technology for Learning

This is a combination of two posts from my Teaching Like an Artist blog. I'm doing a series there about topics related to our upcoming presentation at miGoogle 2015.

The first part is an interview between me and Jake. The second part shows the encouraging responses we received from a student survey. Both highlight how encouraging this activity was for us and the students.

The Interview
In preparation for our conference presentation, Jake Gentry, a Geometry teacher at the high school where I work, decided to try an inquiry based learning activity in his classes. We have worked together on a couple project-based learning activities in the past, but we both felt we weren't being "hands-off" enough in letting the students explore the concepts.

To see if inquiry-, discovery-based learning could really work, Jake went all in and had students explore and discover using technology instead of using any direct instruction.

In this recording (around 10 minutes long) I asked him some questions about what he did, what he learned and how effective he thought it was. They're still working through the project, so these are his thoughts so far.

The general outline of the talk is:

• Why we did it
• What the activity was like
• What has he seen so far - is it working?
• The level of thinking that was going on during the activity
• What tech did the students use for learning?
• What tech did he use to run the activity?
• What effects has he seen on the students?
• Was there support from the principal?
• How the focus shifted from "Is this right?" to the learning goals

_________________________

The Survey
Next we gave the students a short survey to see what they thought about the experience. We received 86 responses and a few significant findings are reported below.

Overall, Jake and I were again encouraged by what we learned. This makes it even more likely he will continue exploring these teaching strategies in future lessons.

We first asked students to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement:

I prefer to learn by exploring on my own instead of just having the teacher explain material to us.

Here are the results, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree:

I was surprised to see only about 15% of the students disagreeing. This was a great sign that the students were with us in this endeavor. I thanked them for trying this out and being such great sports about learning with us.

For many the seven class periods spent exploring a guiding question without much direction from the teacher was the first experience with such "hands off" learning in math. It was wonderful to see the students were this open to it.

After reading some comments from the students, I made it clear that our intent is not to replace teachers with computers. Obviously it helps to have an expert in education designing the learning experience, even if he or she is not delivering the material to the class in a traditional manner.

________

Results of this second question were most significant to me. Again, they were asked to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement:

I can learn a tremendous amount on my own by exploring online tools such as search engines, videos and interactive websites.

Note first of all that this statement is not limited to Geometry or even math. It is simply a statement about being able to learn with online resources. 

Also, it's interesting to me that Jake and I debated about using the word "tremendous". I pushed to leave it, even though we knew it could make some students less likely to agree.

This is how they responded.

Jake gave me a high-five when we saw the graph after the first period. When the upper ratings remained high class after class, I was excited. I get chills when I talk about this stuff! To me, 4's and 5's on this graph (submitted by a full 73% of the students) means students are aware of the possibility before them to learn in amazing ways. 

Doors of opportunity opened to students who realized this through our lesson. In whatever areas they choose, they inched a step closer to success this past week.

We had a couple open ended questions on the survey and many students did say that through this activity they realized they could learn by exploring online resources. Some admitted they didn't think they could, but now they know otherwise. Some referred to gaining confidence by working through the lesson.

Jake and I know there's a lot we can do to improve the activity. Realistically students might be giving themselves way too much credit for what they actually learned. Still, this is the kind of thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. I love encouraging students to use the power of technology for learning. I look forward to seeing where it takes them.

_________________________

This is a combination of posts from a series on my conference session, The Way of the Google Drive. Be sure to follow me on Twitter or on either blog to keep up with the "thoughts and tools to inspire". 

Click here to see all the posts from that blog with the tag The Way of the Google Drive.

Conference Session Update - The Way of the Google Drive

I'm really excited about this conference session! Here are some updates:

I already posted about the miGoogle conference in Brighton, MI on November 3, but we were also accepted to present that weekend at the Michigan State University College of Education Technology Conference!

I will be presenting with two friends who will enhance the conversation tremendously. My friend and colleague, Jake Gentry (@jacobgentry1026), will be at both conferences. We also confirmed this week that Clark Rodeffer (@CDRodeffer), will be joining us at miGoogle. A little background on them:

• Jake is the youngster in the group. He is responsible for bringing that young teacher idealism. He also comes with (possibly too much) energy! The two of us work in the same school district and we've been incorporating a lot of innovative practices into his class in preparation for our session. Stay tuned for a short podcast or two about those.
• I met Clark years ago at a game design convention. He had an unexpected career change a few years ago and he ended up in education with a job similar to mine. His background in engineering and unique experiences in a New Tech high school in Michigan has given us much to talk about when it comes to innovation and change in education. It's an amazing opportunity to have him join us.

The full title of our session is The Way of the Google Drive: Thoughts and Tools for Inspiring Change.

Among other things, I'll be providing the big picture backdrop for the session. We will have plenty of practical examples, but with a title like The Way of the Google Drive, we'll get deep at times.

To hone in on those big, fundamental ideas, I challenged myself to write something (at least vaguely) related to the conference session and post it every day in October. Most of those posts are over on my Teaching Like an Artist blog. Here are some key links:

• Why I always start my training and conference sessions with the big picture
• A short three-part series on the inspiration of art and the power of tech
• The third post in that series is particularly important because it explains what this "way of the Google Drive" is all about.
• To easily access all posts on that blog that I tagged with The Way of the Google Drive, click here.

If any of that seems too abstract, don't worry! Most of the session will highlight classroom examples we've been a part of and I will address some of those over the next week.

If you want more information about the session, our page for the miGoogle conference can be found at this link.

Creativity, Passion and Meaningful Contribution in School

Last week I had the privilege of presenting as part of the Education On Air conference. Jake Gentry and I did a session on my process of creating comics with Google tools. I was glad to see Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook highlighted both of my classroom activities from the presentation.

Before I got into all that, though, I gave a short, big picture overview of why I believe some teachers are wearing themselves out to make learning happen. I presented some thoughts on the importance of creativity, passion and meaningful contribution in learning. In about four minutes I talk about things such as:

• How I breathe life into a classroom.
• Why teachers need to dream more.
• Why Google tools make this easier.

That part of the session is in the video below.

If you're interested in seeing the entire session, you can find it at this link.

Join me May 9 for Creating Comics with Google Tools

I'll be presenting in a free Google for Education conference, Education on Air, at noon (EST) on May 9.

I'll show some very creative and practical tools for creating comics in projects for any class or subject. It's an often overlooked, flexible presentation tool students love. We'll also take some time to talk about creativity in school and I'll share how to use the comic tools in fun creativity games for the classroom.

You can join my event here.

More information about the Education on Air conference (with tons of presentations from people more talented than me) is here.

Follow me on Twitter to keep up with more information as the date approaches.

MACUL 2012

This week I attended both days of the MACUL conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have a lot of notes to sift through and a ton to ponder about the leadership topics that I encountered, but I also am supposed to be finishing the district technology plan this weekend. I shouldn't even be typing this short blog post at the moment!

I will just mention these two things:

• I started the convention in Jim Peterson's session on Creating a Culture of Learning.  I decided I didn't care about tech tools.  I wanted to hear about leadership and professional development.  Jim's talk was a good start and it is worth clicking through the presentation posted at the link.
• I was looking forward to Kevin Honeycutt's keynote presentation all week.  Somehow I missed it that he was speaking two hours after that as well.  So my entire conference experience for the day was spent in his sessions.  He is inspiring and that's what I needed.  Last year when I heard him, he had some repetition from session to session, but this year each one was mostly new.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, you absolutely must check out his site.  He's doing almost everything I hope to accomplish as an educator.

Because I only listened to Kevin on Friday I missed some interesting topics, at least based on the information in the conference booklet.  I will be going through the speaker handouts posted to the site this week to catch up on those and others.