A Teacher's Journal #7: Action Research

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness" online. Below is my seventh entry. 

The Master's of Education program I am attending has a Capstone requirement that will be center around an action research project. While trying to wrap my thoughts around this, I kept visualizing the components as a combination of classroom and science laboratory. I decided to help myself digest this in an infographic. 

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A Teacher's Journal #6: Global Connections

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness" online. Below is my sixth entry. 

One of the best parts about being a connected teacher today is making connections with classrooms and teachers from around the planet. I have found a few ways to do this and feel that it has benefited my classroom greatly.

Twitter: Chats and Teachers to Follow

The first way that I started making global connections was through Twitter. A former administrator had encouraged us to make teacher professional accounts and to find Twitter chats to participate in. Using the "Education Chats" calendar made it easy to find hundreds of potential teacher chats. The Google calendar used can be sorted by topic, day of the week, and even time zone. Clicking on the links gives more details and sometimes links to question lists. Here are a couple of international examples:

• Wondering what educators in Manitoba are talking about? Check out #mbedchat on Mondays at 7pm (PST):

• What about teachers in Africa? An #AfricaEd Slow Chat continues over the course of the whole day.

• What about in Germany? #EdChatDE at 11am on Tuesdays will let you participate. No need to speak German--Twitter will help translate!

• Want to find more international teachers to follow on Twitter? Check out the embedded post below.

Playing around a bit this morning and managed to create this map of my Int'l Educators Twitter list. Check it out and find some new awesome educators to follow! #AfricaEd #internationaleducators #AISQ8 #isedcoach #bfc530 https://t.co/ARVrWS6Ahb

— Ryan Harwood (@rharwood17) June 5, 2018

GridPals

A new opportunity for teachers and students to connect across the globe is called GridPals. Using
GridPals, teachers can sign up to be matched up with another classroom or two from other places. A real teacher uses a Google form to help matchmake between classrooms. 

Once matched, teachers coordinate via email as to topics and timing. We participated this year and were matched up with an Australian teacher currently teaching at an international school in China as well as a teacher in Texas. Students shared three Flipgrid sessions getting to know each other, talking about government, and showing/telling their favorite parts of each school. It was a fantastic way to connect! The other teachers and I are planning on reconnecting with a new batch of students this fall. Here's FlipGrid's blog on GridPals with all you need to know to sign up. Teachers can also use Twitter to search for #GridPals and #FlipGridFever for more ways to connect using this fun, new tool.

A Teacher's Journal #5: Open Educational Resources

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness" online. Below is my fifth entry. 

Image: Created in Canva,
marked for public use.

Open Educational Resources or OERs have been around since the dawn of teaching. We, teachers, love to both share and steal, uh utilize great classroom ideas and resources. However, with the Internet, this has become something truly amazing. We can now share ideas, lessons, and even whole units with teachers all over the world. Some are capitalizing on this using sites such as Teachers Pay Teachers to supplement income (and who can blame them). 

Others are taking a different route and openly sharing what they create, some using Creative Commons licensing. According to the NMC Horizon Report (2014), "The goal is that OER materials are freely copiable, freely remixable, and free of barriers to access, cultural sensitivities, sharing, and educational use" (p. 10). Working at a charter school with much flexibility and freedom in my curriculum planning, I have greatly benefitted from these resources. 

Here are just a few out there that are all FREE:

Language Arts

ReadWriteThink: Amazing lessons all supporting language arts. Many are creative and fun. This is an excellent source for teachers K-12.

Social Science

Big History Project: This is a whole curriculum set up with rich activities, videos from specialists, etc. Use it from start to finish for a high level, deep thinking course or pick and choose resources to use. It is well put together and allows you to enroll a whole class. 

Science

NOAA: Climate resources include lessons and tons of data. 

Null Earth: Global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions. Really cool animation that is in almost real time. It helps students understand currents and is beautiful to boot!

NASA Education: Lessons, videos from space stations, inspiration. . . This site has it all for STEM fields!

Technology

Code.org: Free, fun coding lessons that are put together with kids in mind and some serious backers (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.). 

Common Sense Education: Digital Citizenship lesson plans from Common Sense Media. This is a fantastic resource along with their game, Digital Compass (also free). These resources help teachers with everything from cyberbullying to properly using resources online.

Multiple Subjects

Teachers Pay Teacher: Free area. There are hundreds of resources here that altruistic teachers have posted for free use. Check it out!

Teachers Give Teachers: Set up by teachers including Lisa Highfill (who is amazing to hear speak, by the way). This is set up to share hyperdocs (lessons set up in a series of links in one document). They are excellent!

A Teacher Journal #4: Goals for Connecting

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness" online. Below is my fourth entry. 

I have been forming connections online for many years now as an educator. However, I am not sure that I ever stopped to actually reflect on what my goals were while online. Usually, online I will have one specific question that I am looking into: How are other teachers using Genius Hour? What are some good ideas for using Spheros with middle schoolers? How can I better organize my classroom materials? Is anyone else out there having trouble with "community supplies"? So, my goals are more immediate, not long-term. There are many great ideas online, and often I find myself going from one query to the next seamlessly. Ultimately though, I should think of what my primary goals are. I believe there are three for this year:

• GOAL 1: To stay culturally literate in education

• This takes constant peeking around especially when technology changes so quickly. This can also benefit my students as I read more about teaching the whole child and organizing projects through blogs such as Cult of Pedagogy and Catlin Tucker.

• GOAL 2: Find more hands-on and "real science" learning experiences to support my NGSS science classroom

• Facebook Groups such as California Middle School Teachers and Kesler Science have vibrant, active members. They offer a place to share ideas with teachers around the state and nation.

•  GOAL 3: Inspiration

• Teaching can be hard and isolating. Sometimes it helps to see others who are doing it well or even others who share the same struggles. Twitter #whatisschool and EduMatch have been excellent places to find teachers who are striving for innovation and excellence. Through these resources, I have "met" teachers working in the International School in Singapore and learned about ways to connect my classroom to others using tools like Flipgrid. 

"Connect Ideas" by Luigi Mengato licensed under CC-BY 2.0

This is not an end-all list. Just where I am at for the moment. So, what about you? What are your goals for connecting online? What are the best places you have seen online for connecting with other educators?

A Teacher Journal #3: Copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness" online. Below is my third entry. 

According to Common Sense Education (using Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike copyright), here are the definitions of these terms:

COPYRIGHT: A law that protects your control over the creative work you make so that people must get your permission before they copy, share, or perform your work.

CREATIVE COMMONS: A kind of copyright that makes it easier for people to copy, share, and build on your creative work, as long as they give you credit for it.

FAIR USE: The ability to use a small amount of copyrighted work without permission, but only in certain ways and in specific situations (schoolwork and education, news reporting, criticizing or commenting on something, and comedy/parody).

We live in a time when images are all around us and almost effortless to obtain. Almost any look online at social media will bring up dubiously acquired images. Do we know that the artist who created that image has given permission to it being attached to someone else's tweet? No. The tweeter or Facebook poster most likely did not create it themselves, but there is no credit attributed. Most of these images are not copyrighted. We have to assume that they are not trying to steal. We also know that they are not really benefitting from posting the image. Often they have adapted it to use for their purpose of sharing. If we are concerned, we can gently ask, "Did you take that photo? It is beautiful!" to make them aware of what they are using. Plus, sometimes you can't tell--maybe they did take the photo!

In the classroom, we can teach our students to add the appropriate copyrights to their own work when posting online. We can also teach them to search more carefully, pay attention to copyrights, and make sure to follow the rules of fair use. We can make sure that they give credit to their sources properly and not plagiarise.

Here's a fun Kahoot that I made to share with my classes on the topic. Feel free to use it (or adapt it for your needs)!

A Teacher Journal #2: Sifting Through Resources

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness." Below is my second entry. 

Connecting to educators and resources online is very important today as a teacher. I get the most out of connections made with those that are innovators and like to share their passion for education. I also enjoy finding useful lessons and ideas to bring into my classroom. However, using multiple social networks quickly can become overwhelming. Looking through my Pinterest account home page there is everything from ads for posters (ugh) to science project ideas (fun) to a strange plethora of cute cat photos (probably thanks to my daughter using my computer). There is just so much out there! It can quickly become overwhelming.

Additionally, each platform is set up for different purposes and in varying styles. Take Pinterest again. To sift through what is important to me, I look first at the images and titles. I click on those that seem most relevant and read/skim through. If it is indeed useful, I pin it to a certain board. Having boards is critical.

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter allow for "likes" or "hearts". Using likes to tag useful posts helps one find them later and reference them. On Instagram and Twitter, you can easily access these again through your profile. Instagram also has a bookmarking button to select resources to return to later. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter allow one to re-post. This makes the most meaningful resources show on your own profile page. It's easy to access plus sharing it out to others who might also find it useful. However, if the original poster deletes the post, it is gone.

If something is super important to me and I don't have the time to read it then, I tend to email it to myself. I've also gone into my digital lesson plan notes and hyperlinked the resource so that it is available when most relevant.


As Jennifer Gonzalez (2018) points out there is a big difference between curating information and dumping information. As educators, we can teach our students the difference and practice this ourselves. I've decided to start curating for myself using Symbaloo tool. It'll make my social networks easy to get to while I explore getting more connected. It also allows for separate pages so that resources can be grouped by type or need.

Have any tips for keeping connected as an educator? Do you have Connected Educator resources that I should add to my Symbaloo board? Let me know in the comments below!

A Teacher Journal #1: Connectedness

After many years of saying "someday," I'm finally enrolled in an Educational Technology Master's Program. My current course requires me to keep a journal to document "connectedness." Below is my first entry. 

We've been challenged this week to expand our online connections. Already an avid Twitter teacher, I've chosen to focus on three other social networks. I have joined these three in the past, but I feel I have underutilized as opportunities for connection.

1. Instagram

I joined Instagram awhile back and have heard great things from teachers about using it. However, I never really used it much. I've started by looking through teachers I already follow and seeing teachers who they follow. One that I especially admire is Brittney Root (aka @miss5th). Here's an example of a heart-warming idea that she posted that would work well in my classroom.

A post shared by Brittney Root (@miss5th) on Apr 20, 2018 at 3:52pm PDT

2. Facebook: California Middle School Science Teachers Group

I joined this group awhile back but have not really been much into following what is posted. I grew a little tired of Facebook in general and don't use it much. Looking through their discussions, there's really great ideas and support on it. I think following it more closely will be a benefit. For example, looking through recent posts I saw one about USD Oakland and their stellar NGSS resources. I'd attended some of their workshops a couple of years ago at CSTA conference. Great discussions going on here about NGSS and best practices. There's so much to learn in this group!

3. Pinterest

Jennifer Gonzalez (aka Cult of Pedagogy), Lisa Highfill, and Maria Popova (aka Brain Pickings) are all people I follow in other ways online and find inspirational. I dug around on Pinterest and found them all to be very active on this social network. I also found organizations that I love such as KQED, Edutopia, and Common Sense Education on here. I'm finding it a little hard to view them all. Pinterest is definitely made for hopping around.

Searching through these three networks, I'm reminded of just how much information is out there online. What a great time to be a teacher! Any ideas for people or organizations I should follow? Please let me know in the comments below!

21st Century Learning: Collaboration is Key

Much has been written about 21st Century learning and what tools students will need as they head into the future. Most sources, such as Tony Wagner in Creating Innovators, agree that collaboration is a key skill needed for success. How do we harness technology to help students hone their cooperative skills? Here's an infographic I created to help explain some ideas.

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