A few years ago, I posted a blog about “5 Apps Your Students Are Using When You Aren’t Looking” and as I expected, I learned a lot from my students about how they independently mine the web for the tools they need when they need them without the assistance of teachers or parents.

I return to this subject with app reviews by two ninth grade students, Danielle Garten and Zoe Osgood, who researched apps for their “Digital Thinking: Apps to Ethics” class at Garrison Forest School in Owings Mills, Maryland, under the direction of their teacher, Renee Hawkins.

As you’ll read below, Danielle has used Duolingo not only to support her academic courses but to pursue her love of learning new languages just for fun, and Zoe has stepped up to create online study groups in Quizlet and then share them with her entire class.

I don’t think these girls are unusual. Like most of us, they depend on word of mouth to discover new tools that can help them learn. If they are like my former students, they are often shocked when teachers suggest online tools or apps. Even now, too few educators work with their students to vet the tools that might accelerate their students’ learning–or at least make it more efficient. So the question that haunts me still is this: Why aren’t more educators involved in guiding their students towards the helpful tools online that will help their students succeed?

If you are a teacher, I have a challenge for you: ask your students which apps they’ve claimed for educational purposes. In fact, I hope you will also take on the challenge of collaborating with your students to curate the best tools for learning in your classroom, whatever your curriculum may be. I’d love to hear from you if you do!

Ooh-la-la-ing with Duolingo

By Danielle Garten

For many of us, learning new languages can be an extremely daunting task, while others of us spend just a small fraction of a day brushing up on a language learned in elementary school. While everyone has a different reason for the new exploration–immigrating to another country, taking a semester abroad, wanting to speak to a distant relative or even a need to support family members–we can all benefit from the popular language learning app, Duolingo, which was created so that everyone can explore a passion for learning a new language without the cost.

Designed for non-native English speakers learning English to apply for jobs, Duolingo benefits any students who want to learn a new language’s grammar or vocabulary. The app and website focus on listening, reading, writing and speaking skills, emphasizing the importance of being able to do all four tasks accurately and confidently. It is hard for someone with even the highest level of language skill to not have a new challenge with twenty-two languages to choose from and hundreds of lessons within each topic. Duolingo presents a type of “game-based learning” which takes keeping streaks, losing lives and leveling up to a whole new standard as it creates an environment where it is exciting and interesting to learn.

However, I believe that it may be incredibly difficult to learn a new language without any accompanying class unless the learner has enormous willpower and determination to stick with the app. Duolingo has thought of having a “Coach” and setting daily goal limits to keep you engaged in learning so much you end up staying up late to try and learn the most you can with the highest scores. After your enthusiasm and energy die down, you may not go on the website for another few months. I know that the time I invested in learning the material was incredibly helpful for re-learning some of the basic words in French that I had forgotten from lower school.

Additionally, a new feature of Duolingo for Schools brings the app into the classroom to create an even more effective environment. At my high school, I do not know any teachers who are using this specific program, but I have been assigned as homework to complete specific sets of problems. I believe that this feature is not as well known, but soon it will become as popular as other learning websites such as Khan Academy or Kahoot.

Teachers can use Duolingo for competitions in class as students can “friend” each other to compete for the most experience points (XP) in a lively and competitive activity. It feels rewarding to receive prizes or bragging rights for your efforts, which makes you even more keen on playing. Students also benefit when studying for tests on the website because they can find levels for exactly what they need to study.

Making the Grade with Quizlet

By Zoe Osgood

As younger generations become more and more exposed to technology, paper resources are becoming exceedingly outdated. When students are asked to create physical flashcards of the material they’ve learned in class, more often than not they lose some or all of the flashcards, leave them at home or end up accidentally recycling them. Studying using online methods wasn’t routine for us, though, until just a few years ago when the idea for Quizlet was developed by a teenager who was having trouble studying on his laptop at home.

Quizlet, an online learning website and app founded in 2005, is one of the most widely used study platforms among students today. Created by Andrew Sutherland, Quizlet makes learning fun and accessible for my generation. After creating an account, members can create personalized study sets, access sets other users have created and play several memory-based learning games. Users also have the option to upgrade to Quizlet Plus and study without ads, upload their own voice recordings and images into flash cards and gain unlimited access to classes.

Regardless of whether or not you have the upgrade, Quizlet makes it easy to collaborate with classmates and teachers through online classes, which anyone can request to join. The class administrator, usually a student or teacher, then has the ability to grant students access to all of the study sets that have been added to the class by its members. Simply said, classes are a great way for students to organize their study materials.

Along with this, Quizlet’s game features give students a break from generic study methods, forcing you to submit the correct information to prevent an asteroid from crashing into a planet or daring you to beat your classmates in a timed matching challenge. Personally, other than the occasional false information put in a study set by a classmate, I can’t find much fault with this website.

At my high school, I only know of one teacher (my English teacher) who frequently uses Quizlet. My teacher uses the website to create study sets of all the words we have to memorize. The rest of my teachers don’t really care what method of study we use, as long as we actually learn the material. When I was in middle school, my Latin teacher would always insist that we make physical flashcards for each set of vocabulary words. In his eyes, this enforced our memorization of the words. It was always a huge pain to make every single flashcard, complete with a complementing image representing the word and one or two English derivatives. The work was tedious and usually took me about an hour to complete. There was rarely an occasion on which the entirety of my class had their flashcards in hand when the bell rang. Since I have always been plagued with misplacing my flashcards, Quizlet has been a lifesaver.

For those who still believe that writing out material helps students to learn better, I’m going to have to contradict your beliefs. The “learn” feature on the Quizlet app is a phenomenal way to study very similarly to using pencil and paper. If you type in an answer wrong, the program gives you the right answer, but then won’t go to the next slide until you type it up word-for-word. It’ll then take out all of the cards you answered correctly, allowing you to study only the material that you answered incorrectly. It forces you to remember the material in order to finish learning the set. Although this can be frustrating (I often find myself scowling at my computer screen while studying), I’ve discovered that it’s a much more time-efficient and effective way to study.

Using both the website and the mobile app, I can study anytime, anywhere. I never have to worry about losing my flashcards, because the website automatically saves them every few seconds as I create them.

With more than 40 million users each month and 125 million user-generated study sets, Quizlet sets no limit to how much students and educators all around the world can learn.

For more, see:

• 5 Apps Your Students Are Using When You Aren’t Looking
• 4 Apps that Bring Daily Classroom Activities into the 21st Century
• 7 Apps for Working with Special Needs Students

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The post Making Their Own Learning: Students Review Two Helpful Apps appeared first on Getting Smart.

“My department/administrators/parents wouldn’t approve.”

The Skinny on Differentiation

Chandler structures her book around her own journey towards deeper differentiation in her classes. The first step: listening to students and giving them options and choice to “have a say in their own learning.” She describes how choice boards and menus in any discipline can allow students to express their understanding in ways that capture their interest or work best for them. Once you’ve gotten your toes wet and start to see the positive impact of giving students agency, you can apply these strategies more broadly by employing choice for action research projects or menus for independent reading–in any subject!
Chandler describes how to teach students how to choose for themselves and the importance of giving them practice in a safe space, and she provides guidance for grouping students into teams for ongoing support, following a passion and probing deeply. She provides thoughtful strategies for vocabulary study, helpful for any teacher who has grappled with the best ways to tackle language acquisition, and uses the confidence students gain from word mastery on their own terms to lead into more challenging independent or group projects.
Chandler ends with a thorough discussion of assessment, a sticking point for many, and some great advice for building family partnerships to help teachers get to know each student individually and thus help them grow as in a culture of learners.
My only suggestions are that Chandler might push her assessments to be even more authentic by suggesting projects that have a real-life or global context outside the classroom, along with including more examples that are not so gender-based (ie., about gaming and directed at boys, or about fashion and directed at girls).

Assessing the Sticking Point of Assessment

Chandler returns to the point, again and again, that teachers should build their assessments around the skills or content that they wish their students to learn. Traditional essays assigned to everyone may be a useful and “fair” way to assess particular essay writing skills, for instance, but they may not be the best or only way to assess a student’s understanding of a literary encounter or theoretical concept.
Chandler also believes that students need to learn a variety of ways to express their learning, including the usual tests and papers that they will continue to encounter in high school and college, along with the digital communications and media they will be immersed in for the rest of their lives.

Yes, This Applies to You

Don’t assume that The Flexible ELA Classroom is not for you just because it is rooted in Chandler’s practice as a middle school teacher of language arts. Her personable and practical approach can be applied to older or younger students, inform a range of disciplines outside language arts, serve the needs of public or private schools and really help anyone who deals in discipline-specific vocabulary, reading, presentations or projects.
Likewise, it gives valuable advice for even the most experienced teacher who understands the need to empower his or her students and to partner with their parents–all in the service of learning. And not only does she give you the detailed scaffolding and planning advice anyone tackling differentiation might need, but she makes additional eResources available to you via the publishers, Middle Web and Routledge, as well as the book’s website.
I feel I have found a kindred spirit in Amber Chandler, and I know I will use her book to improve my practice. It may even become one of those worn resources that I lend again and again to colleagues who are stuck in the maze of “yeah, buts….”
For more, see:

• 8 Tech Tips for Differentiating in an Inclusion Classroom
• Smart Review: The Power of Keeping it Simple
• 3 Best Practices for Teaching English Language Learners

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The post Smart Review | The Flexible ELA Classroom appeared first on Getting Smart.

The Great Global Project Challenge

Right after the Olympics feel-good warmth and right at the beginning of the year, the Great Global Project Challenge (deadline, September 11, 2016) asks teachers to design projects to allow them to connect globally with another school sometime during the year.
Selected projects will be part of an online event for Global Collaboration Day on September 15, 2016, providing a great venue for reaching out and inviting new participants to join your venture. This gives those projects a leg up for one of the greatest difficulties of global project planning — that is, finding partner schools. Don’t worry, if you miss the deadline in September — you can still be part of the Great Global Project Challenge directory if you submit by October 1, 2016.

Two Ideas on the Table

One project might be something along the lines of Poetry with Passion and Performance, now being offered by Christine Trimnell on the Global Education Conference bulletin board. Similarly, Ann Michelson, who teaches in Norway, has proposed a global discussion group based on a number of TED Talks on international issues.

What If…? Three More Ideas for the Taking

Though I don’t have my own classroom at present, I couldn’t help daydreaming a bit about the projects I might do if I had a sandbox full of kids to work with. Please feel free to use them — and I’d love to help and at the very least hear how it goes!

Poetic Voices from Afar

I recently heard Jacqueline Woodson, the “young people’s poet laureate,” talking about her desire to introduce children to “poetic voices from ‘far-off’ places.” What if a teacher reached out to Woodson to create a forum for reading poetry from around the world with kids from all sorts of far-off places? A start could be Woodson’s own poems or her monthly book suggestions at the Poetry Foundation. The students could share their own poems as well via a monthly poetry challenge.

Instagramming for the Global Good

I’ve recently been exploring Instagram, the social media of choice for most of my middle-schoolers (though technically, they are not supposed to join the community until they are 13, many hang out there at a much younger age). Mostly I’ve seen them share silly photos of themselves and their friends, though sometimes there is a darker side to their activity online. What if we inspired and empowered kids to use the social medium they like to make a positive social impact?
I propose the Instagram hashtag #globalkidz4good to empower young Instagrammers to share their voices in ways that can make a positive impact. How can they use photography to celebrate what is good about their world and to share what they want to change to make it better?
Or what if students made and shared digital posters transforming a favorite work of art (and learning more about fair use) to promote a positive change they would like to see in the world? They could add a favorite inspirational quotation and translate it into several languages. And if they are too young for sharing online, they could have their teachers or parents share for them.
Teachers could also create challenges on Instagram (shared through blogs and on Twitter, as I am learning through the inspiring readers of the #bookstagram world). For example, celebrate “my favorite things” and change the theme each week: my favorite food, my favorite quiet place, my favorite game or sport, my favorite song, my favorite part of the day, my favorite teacher or coach or mentor. #Kidzshare might work nicely for that purpose! What about it?

Will Tweet for Food

Food is often a starting place for kids to understand other cultures — or even their own. Martha Payne tapped into this when she started her website about school lunches, Never Seconds. Payne made a name for herself by creating a scale for rating her school lunches based on taste, serving size and nutrition. Inspired, kids from around the world started sharing their school lunches with Martha — and contributing to stopping hunger in Malawi while they were at it.
There’s even more we can explore about how food affects our environment and our lives. What about creating a way for kids to dig deeper to understand the social and humane issues related to food, the impact on sustainability or how to grow a healthy garden in an urban community? My recent colleagues and I used Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma (Young Reader’s edition) to explore sustainable local meal menus, write poetry in celebration of tomatoes and become food detectives to educate their parents and friends.
What if we harnessed Twitter (for example, https://twitter.com/OmnivoresD) to build on this kind of work and share with others worldwide? What if we partnered with groups like Real School Gardens or even the scouting organizations to make our learning real by getting our hands dirty as well?

Global Learning Together

Not ready to jump into global education on your own? Feeling the need for support even as you do? Don’t overlook the opportunity to connect with educators who care as passionately about global education as you do.
There’s the Global Education Forum — their conference is on October 13-15 and held in Philadelphia this year. Can’t work this into your schedule? Don’t forget about the Global Education Conference in November — a totally free online opportunity to connect with educators from around the world and build the kinds of projects that can make a difference globally.
The important thing is that we all need to harness that feel-good Olympics buzz and do something about it before it wears off for the next two to four years!
For more, see:

• GlobalEd Connectivity in the Kindergarten Classroom
• Taking Global Education Beyond the Classroom
• Faça Você Mesmo: A Global Perspective on Learning

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The post Olympic Dreaming: 5 Ways to Connect Kids Globally appeared first on Getting Smart.

Walk Your Own Walk

We’ve gotten pretty good at saying the right things about engaging students through projects and provocative questions, forming relationships through empathy and making time for reflection. So why do we start each new year with endless “sit and git” sessions that numb both our minds (just like our students, our attention spans die in eight minutes) and our behinds (we all need more physical movement to spark our learning).
If we want to emphasize design thinking, inquiry and individualized learning, why do we resort to the disseminating too much boring information and passive intake on Day 1?

Avoid The Same Old Thing

Here are some ways to avoid the same-old same-old pattern and rethink the opening of school.

• What can your teachers or your students build or make by the end of the first day?

• One of my best experiences for opening the year involved designing a “genius” professional development day for faculty to learn and create something new to share with colleagues by mid-afternoon. The projects were both inventive and inspiring — and the led to deeper thinking about the creative experience we hoped to design for our students.

• Students sitting in pods can begin to design and build a receptacle for a collection of shared tools.

• How can your teachers or your students collaborate to solve an authentic problem by walking through a series of “beautiful questions” together? For example, what if the students could set up the classroom learning space? How might teachers work together to create and put into practice actionable goals to support one another throughout the year? (Or use this list.)

• What about all that information that needs to be disseminated? Why not divide and conquer by having teachers or students take ownership of the information to create videos, podcasts or websites to serve your community more effectively?

• If you want to encourage reflection, start on day one with the practice of creating a reflection journal. Use an app like Penzu or 5-minute Journal, or use plain old index cards as exit tickets for questions that matter: How do you learn? What is your greatest hope for the year? What is your strongest fear or worry? Who can help you grow? (Be sure to give enough time for this! Don’t just cram it in the last few minutes before lunch!)

What Is Your Digital Handshake?

But wait! You’ve already had a “first day” with your audience, and it was probably online. You sent out emails full of instructions and “to do” or supply lists. You established a summer reading program and warned about the accountability that would be assessed at the end of the summer. You’ve started that numbing process before you even realized it.
If you could back up and do it again, how might you engage your audience more effectively?

• Whether you are an administrator or a teacher, take the time to update your web page as an inspiring and personal “handshake” with your digital audience. This is probably your first point of contact, so set the tone you wish to establish with your readers and invite the kind of interactive and sharing environment you hope to nurture throughout the year.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you create an original website that would engage you — not a dumping ground for all of the information you need to share (a digital version of your “sit and git” or your syllabus). At least not on the first page. Instead, think of what will give a fresh introduction to your readers. Take a risk. Be real. Relate what’s on your mind. Share something fun.
In particular, create a “landing page” that is personable; organize what you have to share into folders or sections rather than piling it onto one page; move the practical stuff to separate pages for easy reference or come up with a FAQs section. (And remember to schedule time in your calendar to update your website on a regular basis.)

• I used to write a physical “open letter” to each member of my advisory before the beginning of school. What if you did this in the form of a video about how you learn that could be shared on your website? What if you invited feedback or asked questions to start a conversation about learning? What if you invited your viewers to submit their own videos in response — as many online courses do to begin? (The “My Story” feature of Snapchat or Instagram Story is an easy tool to use for this — just remember to download your “story” video before 24 hours is up.

• Why not create a blogging community about summer reading and other learning to create a greater sense of immediacy and empathy? To make room for voice and choice? (Here are a number of online tools for creating an interactive learning space.) Have students make a 60-second book talk or an infographic to share something about their reading?

Build In Time to Play

If you’ve taken this advice to heart, now you need to build in time (more time than you think you need) to mess around — with ideas, with a new digital tool, with one another. Too often, in our rush to move forward, we forget that we just need time to play. By making some mandatory fun part of your program or lesson, you are also sending a message that play is important — to our relationships, to our creative process, to our learning. And, by the way, play is important for adults too.
I’m not talking about the highly structured “play” that is often disguised as team-building or ice-breaker lessons. You know, the group activities to build something out of marshmallows and pasta. Sorry, I always hated those. The point about play is that it’s less structured and more individualized. It may involve several clearly defined options, but should always include choice. I’m a word-nerd, so give me a word game and I’m hooked. Others may happily go build something with marshmallows and pasta.
Here are some ideas:

• Start with do-overs. What are you inspired to change or do-over based on your day’s learning or earlier experiences? Spend some time on this while your creativity and motivation are high!

• Brainstorm a list of games that you could play only using what is at your disposal in your classroom or presentation space. Have half your group choose a game and connect with at least one partner who is a newbie. (Model brainstorming here for a bonus!)

• Ask your constituents to bring board games for a game-hacking activity.

• Have an app smackdown and create ad hoc groups to play with how to use the app for learning.

• Use someone else’s crazy idea list for education (or create your own) and choose one idea from the list to apply to your first day’s particular focus.

• Debrief and report back about what you learn from play, whichever approach you use.

Follow-Through

Most importantly, let the things you value most about learning be at the heart of everything you do. Don’t let yourself get sucked back into the old patterns that don’t work. Let these first lessons and encounters be the beginning of the change you want to see in the classroom and in your profession. Every day. All the way to the end.
For more, see:

• 4 Projects for Building Global Connections
• Are You Ready to Be a Change-Agent for Agency?
• 5 Practices for Tomorrow Every Teacher Should Adopt Today

Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update. 

The post Beginnings Matter: Start The School Year Off Right appeared first on Getting Smart.

I was grateful to share at the free mini-conference some of my in-the-weeds experiences in a presentation on building global connections. I invited my fellow educators to explore ways to connect students with other learners around the globe: responding to a book, sharing stories, presenting an idea, and saving the world. We can begin a practice of global education first by leaning in, then making friends, sharing passions, and collaborating to take action about what matters.

Lean in

Adopting a global mindset is the first step, says Stacie Berdan. But even when we know in our hearts as teachers that connecting globally is essential for our students’ futures, we must tap our courage to reach beyond our classroom walls. Leaning in to join with global projects that already exist is an easy way to begin.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Literally add your class to the map of those who take time to honor those who have been killed in the holocaust. Share your activities with the community or the world by publicizing your event and creating a digital space for interaction.

International Dot Day (Sept. 15-ish, ongoing)
It’s not too late to take part in International Dot Day! You can join educators and students from around the world in celebration creativity and self-expression — inspired by Peter H. Reynolds’s picture book The Dot. Classes connect online, read Reynolds’s book, and design a project to share with one another. A handbook provides a good starting place for ideas. (Make connections on your own and share on the website gallery page.)

More information can be found at:

• Dot Club Connect on Facebook
• IDD Skype in the Classroom
• IDD Partners with Pages 4 Progress

Make friends

Making friends means building relationships over time. If we make friends around the globe, we are establishing the lasting ties that can make a difference for our future. Reading and writing together allows us to make connections and learn to respect diversity.

Global Read Aloud (Oct. 5-Nov. 15, 2015)
Connect with readers worldwide by reading the same book aloud in real at time. Books are selected by participants in the spring, and teachers sign up to read books aloud with their classes or do an author study based on their grade level. Teachers can connect through a form or find partners via Facebook or Edmodo. Or they can join communities on WriteAbout or Sway. There’s also a “slow chat” on Twitter. Teachers and students decide on the format for sharing while they are reading.

Quadblogging (Flexible)
Students comment on each other’s writing in quads, connected classes from around the world. This is a great way to extend your students’ blogging to an authentic audience beyond the classroom.  Writing prompts start you off each week with each classroom taking a turn as the “focus” for comments and interaction.

Share passions

Adults aren’t the only ones captivated by TED. Students watch and learn from TED Talks too. Imagine the result of empowering students to give TED-style talks at school or to watch and discuss talks in TED Ed Clubs. Take this to the next level by livestreaming a TEDx event or, even better, collaborating with “sister” schools across the globe to share passions and dreams with one another. Although this kind of project requires a significant commitment of time and resources, the results can be transformative for students.

TEDxYouth (November 20 and year-long)
For the past several years, TEDxYouthDay has promoted real-time TED programs for kids in conjunction with Universal Children’s Day in November. Schools can apply to host a TEDxYouth program any time of the year, but can generate connections by joining the Universal Children’s Day celebrations across the globe. Students can create powerful TED-style presentations to stream live and post for later viewing. Sharing through TED promotes connections beyond your event.

For more information, see:

• TEDxYouth Day 2014
• TEDxYouth Toolkit
• TEDxYouth on Twitter
• TEDxYouth on Facebook
• International Youth Day

Save the World

Students and teachers can find a deeper sense of purpose by finding ways to connect with like-minded learners to solve real-world problems. Using Pernille Ripp’s Global Read Aloud as a model, what can you think of to build global connections and make a difference?

I’ve tried drawing upon my experience using J.F. Rischard’s High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them as a starting place to employ a design thinking model with teams of students to study real-world problems. They connect with empathetically with individuals around the globe to solve them.  “Genius Hour” time allows students to dive deep into a project. You can read about my initial experiences with Design Teams in a previous post at Getting Smart, “Creating Authentic Jobs for Student Learning Teams.”

Here are some additional resources:

• How to Use Design Thinking in Your Next Project
• Design Thinking at the Nueva School
• Design Thinking for Educators

Global Education Conference Network (free online conference: November 16-19, 2015)
Finally, it’s essential for teachers to reach out to make the kinds of connections that will provide the foundation for the work their students can do. My go-to source for making those kinds of connections has been the Global Education Conference Network. They’ve just held their first Global Collaboration Day. I’ve attended a number of their Global Education Summits, conveniently held the morning before the start of ISTE’s annual conference. (It has become so popular, I had to get on a waiting list to attend this year!) I’ve also taken part in their free online Global Education Conference offered each year in November. My connections to this group have kept my global commitment alive even when I’ve felt overwhelmed by the here and now of my teaching.

One of the key points I took away from the last Global Ed Summit I attended was the need to make global education a priority, top to bottom, in schools. Maybe the kind of event I attended this past weekend can be the start for moving schools into our globally connected world.

For more blogs by Susan, check out:

• Are You Ready to Be a Change-Agent for Agency?
• Blogging Now, Communicating for the Future
• 5 Practices for Tomorrow Every Teacher Should Adopt Today

The post 4 Projects for Building Global Connections appeared first on Getting Smart.

What is agency? Essentially it means taking charge of one’s own learning. Acting on one’s own passions. Assuming responsibility for filling one’s own cup of knowledge to serve purposes we have defined for ourselves. If we are agents of learning, we are actors in our own stories of investigation, creation, and sharing. This applies to every level of education, students and teachers alike.

If you think about it, the education world is full of agents. We chose the profession of teaching because we love learning and we wanted to make an impact on the future our students will inhabit. We wanted to be change-agents. Yet we snatch agency from our students even as agency is snatched from us by over-emphasis on assessments, by rigid curricula, and by well-meaning school leaders.

It’s time that we let go and gave back our students’ agency to learn. It’s time that we assumed agency in our own professional development. It’s time that we adopted the role of experienced co-learner with students to help them grow as they confront obstacles to their learning. It’s time that we stopped clearing away all the bumps and stepped aside to let kids do the tricky stuff, the fun stuff, the hard stuff, the menial stuff — because that’s where the learning happens. It’s time that we gave up the controls, so that our students can learn how to drive their own learning lives, time that we took control of our own learning to help our kids.

What’s stopping us? Whether we are afraid, out of practice, or overwhelmed by the minutiae of the everyday demands of our professional lives, we need reawaken change-agents we once were and give our students and ourselves time and space to learn.

Inspiration x 3

Pernille Ripp delivered a rousing “Ignite” speech at ISTE that cuts to heart of our work with students. She asks us to quit stalling and “break the rules,” if we have to, to give our classrooms “back to our students,” to give them the agency that was once theirs for learning. She asks us to step up and change education from within by adjusting our own thinking and doing the “little things” that can make a huge impact. The keys are “choice, voice, and the power to explore” for all of us!

Josh Stumpenhorst echoed Ripp’s statements as he exhorted teachers to start “Pushing the Limits” in his closing keynote speech at ISTE. Yes, we will be uncomfortable, we will feel constrained, but we need to imagine the possibilities of change within those constraints even as we test their boundaries. We can do this by learning from others, like Ripp (with the Global Read Aloud), who have taken simple ideas and put them into play. We need to push the boundaries of our students’ perspectives — by giving them means to connect with the world, to receive real feedback (as with William Chamberlain’s Comments4Kids), by making solutions for real problems that have purpose (for example, Dr. Chris Craft’s hand-a-thon). Yet, even as we test the boundaries for our kids, we need to expect that our good work will be challenged by others, and we need to take risks, persevere, and encourage others around us to push their limits, whatever they may be, as well. Only then will we change the nature of learning in schools.

Will Richardson, a fixture at ISTE who has been teaching us about teaching for more than a decade, has championed teacher and student agency for at least that long. In his new book, From Master Teacher to Master Learner, he reminds us that we have dallied too long, hemming and hawing over the obstacles in our way. He too calls on teachers to change education by sharing their own expertise as master learners with students, by becoming co-learners with them, and by allowing students the freedom to design their own curricula and assessments. Richardson sees teachers as playing a critical role as models of learning for students and in helping students develop the skills they need for agency-driven modern learning.

The How of Letting Go

We know how to do this, and we know we must. Really, if we think about it, we just need to remind ourselves that we assume agency when we tackle anything new — whether in the summer when we are designing a garden space or on a weeknight when we are gathering materials for class. Now we need to grant that freedom to learn to our students.

• First, we must grant ourselves permission to do what is right for kids and make ways for them to learn authentically.
• We need to trust students to learn the same ways we learn now, rather than ask them to conform to a way of learning that is no longer relevant in their (or our) world.
• We need to open up a dialogue with our students — and really listen to what they have to say about what they want to learn and why.
• We need to work on framing the kinds of questions that will prompt students to move beyond an initial insight into deeper inquiry.
• We need to let students tell their stories about learning and help them shape these into more positive narratives.
• We need to model learning along with our students, using our experience as learners to show them how.
• We (or our districts or departments) can design a landscape to be explored, a challenge to be overcome, or a structure to be filled in. But we need to give choice to students for filling in the empty spaces.
• We must teach ourselves how to ask our struggling students, “How are you going to solve that problem?”
• We must hold our students — and ourselves — to a standard of authenticity. As Richardson reminds us, students can spot a fraud of authenticity a mile away.
• We should always remember, then things get rough, that true learning inspires more learning.
• We need to watch and wait for the learning to happen, and then help students document the process and reflect on their progress.

Then we can celebrate our learning and begin again, because the learning feeds itself in a never-ending cycle of growth.

For more blogs by Susan, check out:

• 9 Ways to Get Your Grammar Game On: A Playlist
• Blogging Now, Communicating for the Future
• 5 Practices for Tomorrow Every Teacher Should Adopt Today

The post Are You Ready to Be a Change-Agent for Agency? appeared first on Getting Smart.

Still, like many schools, we give a heavy dose of grammar in the seventh grade. As some parents — and their children — experience a wake-up call about buckling down and learning the basics of English grammar as they realize how essential it is for communication and future success.

Yet, I feel for my students. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine anything less enticing to do in the summer than reviewing grammar. So I’ve tried to think of what might help my students learn in a more palatable way. My seventh-grade classes this year enjoyed our gamified review of parts of speech at the year’s end using two apps, Zombie Grammar Force ($.99) and the Grammar Pop from Grammar Girl Mignon Fogerty. So with the help of my colleague, Sarah Cauthen, I created a grammar review playlist with my students in mind.

Grammar Rock

Some of us may have a nostalgic soft spot for Grammar Rock, a series of animated songs about grammar. My students still drop their jaws when I start singing “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?…” But these classic cartoons hold up over time and, if I’m any measure of success, really stick, thanks to the snappy ditties of Bob Dorough and friends.

• “A Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing”
  “Unpack Your Adjectives”
  “Busy Prepositions”
  “Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!”
  “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?”

Grammar Bytes (Youtube Channel)

Parents may wonder if their children are really studying grammar as they hear what’s coming from their children’s devices with this series. The funky beat and the silly slides make Grammar Bytes are as resistible as the lessons are thorough. Updated images and examples don’t hurt either.

• “Get Your Verb On”
• “Yo! Interjections in the House!”

Grammaropolis (Youtube Channel)

These clever animations use storytelling to personify parts of speech and make concepts clear. The use of humor and a range of musical parodies make it even more engaging. Beyond its Youtube channel, which students can access freely, the Grammaropolis website and its companion app provide a range of tools for student review, including games, videos, quizzes, and books. Memberships can be purchased by individuals, classes, or schools.

• “Noun Town”
• “Lights! Camera!! Action Verb!!!”
• “Paint the Way” (Adjectives)
• “Do You Qualify” (Adverbs)
• “A Merit Badge Is Just Like a Cat” (Prepositions)

TED-Ed

Not surprisingly, TED-Ed provides a more esoteric look at some of the meanderings of English grammar for the nerdy grammarians among us. Teachers, parents, or enterprising students can create an account and add discussion questions and quizzes to the videos to test one another for fun.

• Zombie Nouns (Nominalizations)
• A Brief History of Plural Words
• English Grammar — Learn Prepositions
• Comma Story
• The Oxford Comma Debate

It’s Academic: Grammarly and Vocabulary.com

Grammarly is perhaps best known as an add-on tool to Chrome that allows users to check documents or even review possible grammar problems as they are composed online. This tool may first attract students for its immediate utility, but once they are drawn in, students can poke around in the more academic Grammarly Handbook, which also covers punctuation, mechanics, and sentence style and clarity. Similarly, Vocabulary.com is a great place for building vocabulary (see “The Challenge”), but it also includes some blog posts on proper language usage that are worth a read.

Celebrity Status: Grammar Girl

The more advanced students who grow truly enamored of grammar will want to check out Grammar Girl’s podcasts and blog. These go into quite astounding detail in their analysis of grammar and usage.

An Old Stand-by: The Elements of Style

The temple where I and many others my age really learned the rules of grammar is Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (downloadable for free). Its examples are clear and often amusing. The simplicity of the rules and their application make logical sense of what often seems arbitrary to the uninitiated. Many writers refer to this book as their bible for writing and style. It’s mine too.

Visualizations and Infographics

We shouldn’t overlook the power of graphics and design to drive home a tricky grammar rule. By way of example, Aleksandra Todorova offers 11 Infographics that Will Help You Improve Your Grammar and Spelling. A quick search on Pinterest can yield some equally impressive visualizations of English Language concepts — so I’ve gathered a few fun-looking ones nto my own Pinterest board on Grammar. (By the way, Grammar Girl and Grammarly also have boards on Pinterest.)

DIY

Why not have students use Easel.ly or Google Drawings or a host of other apps to create their own infographics or posters to illuminate their new understanding of grammar? They could create their own Youtube channels on grammar or design their own games for learning the rules of punctuation. Who knows, such enterprising students might share these things with their teachers; they might even have some fun and earn their teachers’ undying respect and adoration in the process.

For more blogs by Susan, check out:

• Blogging Now, Communicating for the Future
• 5 Practices for Tomorrow Every Teacher Should Adopt Today
• Tomorrow Isn’t Tomorrow, It’s Today

The post 9 Ways to Get Your Grammar Game On: A Playlist appeared first on Getting Smart.

As educators, we see ourselves as preparing children of today for their own tomorrows. Thus, we must face an urgent obligation to stare down that future and figure out what it means for our current practice. We must ask ourselves, “What can teachers do in the more immediate, literal tomorrow of their classrooms to meet the future head on?”

How did tomorrow get here so soon?

We learned that “the world was flat” from Thomas Friedman in 2005 and recognized the need for adopting an increasingly global perspective in education. We learned how “information is ubiquitous” from Michael Wesch in 2008. Thus, we realized that our relationship to the content we teach must change to account for the facts so easily accessible at our students’ fingertips. We learned about our “cognitive surplus” from Clay Shirky in 2010, who helped us see the potential for creative collaboration in a connected world, and we began to envision ways to aggregate our imaginations for the common good.

In the last decade, even as we might question some changes wrought by the digital age, we have had to face the hard facts of our changed and changing world. Change, whatever form it takes, doesn’t proceed backwards, as Wesch tells us. Fellow educators, it’s time we mourned our losses, accepted our present, and moved on. If we do not, we risk leaving our students to figure out the world for themselves at a time when they may need us the most.

Getting started by letting go…

Old habits of mind die hard — especially for veteran teachers who have spent entire careers honing their craft. In my own practice, I have struggled with letting go. Marc Prensky told us a decade ago that our students, as digital natives, have leapt to doing new things in new ways. Yet we teachers sometimes work ourselves into crazy contortions over the old things we think we can’t live without. This year, as I adopted Google Classroom, for instance, I could finally envision a nearly paperless learning space. Now I ask myself why I have spent so much precious time on printing, collecting, and returning paper copies of essays (and asking students to spend time on this as well). As a result, I’ve begun to question holy ground: the writing process approach to teaching English. Horrors, I’ve even questioned why we ask students to double space.

Alan November is fond of telling teachers that they are working way too hard, running in place to keep up with the latest research in order to spoonfeed an education to their students rather than teaching their students the skills needed to mold their own learning. Yet, it has only been in the past few years that I have learned to provide a structural narrative for my students, supplemented by practice in the skills required for independent learning, and let the students begin to construct their learning for themselves.

And, lest we become too smug about the shifts we think we’ve made, Alfie Kohn challenges the progressive educators who frequent his blog to question their practice and think again. He wrote:

There are few barriers to change as intractable as the belief that one doesn’t need to change. When some teachers hear about a nontraditional curriculum or pedagogical approach, they instantly respond, ‘Oh, I’m already doing that.’ And sometimes they are…sort of, but not entirely.

Because the changes we need to adopt don’t come naturally to those of us trained in another era, we must constantly remind ourselves to shift and shift again.

Look ahead now!

Tony Wagner tells us, “The world doesn’t care about what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know” (quoted in Forbes, 2012). As educators, we must shift from a focus on content to a focus on curation, from disseminating a previous century’s idea of knowledge to cultivating the skills of searching, synthesizing, discerning, and making. We must translate the classroom into a laboratory, garden, or playground — pick your metaphor — of innovation.

What are the practical applications we can take back to our students and colleagues?  In my next post, I plan to share new ways of teaching and learning for the future that every teacher can take back to the classroom tomorrow.

For more blogs by Susan Lucille Davis, check out:

• Raising Student Bloggers: An Open Letter to Parents
• A Blogging as Writing Curriculum
• 6th-Graders Have Their Say: Why Students Value Blogging

The post Tomorrow Isn’t Tomorrow, It’s Today appeared first on Getting Smart.

Your student has learned how to find a focus and a voice, to shape thoughts into meaningful statements made up of carefully chosen words, well-crafted sentences, organized paragraphs, insightful images, practical links, and helpful tags. Your student has written to invite commentary and interaction from others and to document the evolution of their thinking. He or she has learned how to extend the conversations raised by blogging peers through thoughtful questioning and commentary. Your student has developed essential skills in modern-day communication.

And we’ve just begun. Now it’s time for you to become more involved in your student’s growth as a learner who actively shares his or her best (and evolving) self with the world.

Talk about Blogs and Blogging

What is your understanding of blogs and blogging? Show your student what it means to be an active participant in the blogosphere by reading blogs together, talking about what goes into them, considering their challenges, and learning more about the way blogs permeate and affect our culture.

If you already read blogs on subjects that interest you and your student, share them. Explain why you read them and what you learn; describe how you achieve balance by looking at multiple viewpoints. Show how you interact with the blog, how you question what is said, how you spin off into new ideas of your own. Explore the ways a blogger makes choices to get an idea across or to make a particular impact on a reader.

Discuss your comfort level with the privacy and professionalism (or lack of it) adopted by the blogs you follow, and show how you might handle similar circumstances. Have a conversation about what it means to be kind and respectful in an online space, why it matters that we should be good digital citizens online (Cyberwise, started by parents of digital-age students, is a great source of information). Remind your student, when necessary, to follow basic practices for online safety (not revealing last names or sharing personal data such as phone numbers, addresses, or when you might be away from home).

If you are not yet a reader of blogs, ask your student about blogging and spend some time seeking out blogs that are related to the activities you enjoy sharing together. Learn from the breadth of writing online how much a blog can do.

Reinforce Learning

Ask how it feels to blog. Talk about a blog’s inherent transparency — what does this mean exactly? Talk about the impact of writing authentically for a real audience who may talk back. How was this different from other kinds of writing your student may do? Discuss your student’s response to taking ownership of their own learning through blogging.

Help your student reflect on what he or she does and how they learn through blogging. How do they make meaning and take risks, and go beyond a mere recitation of content? What results from sharing their passions and interests with others? How do they grow in a personal as well as academic sense? What does your child think about possibly connecting with experts who can further his or her learning? How does a blog allow your student to document their growth or thinking over time?

Now that your student has begun to think of him or herself as a practicing writer, how is he or she improving as a writer? It’s important here to ask for reflections rather than step in and offer your own critique. What does he think he’s doing better? What does she recognize that she needs to work on in order to make her blogs stand out and have the impact on a reader she wants to have? How do they want to experiment in their writing?

Become a Fan

Every writer needs readers, so now it’s time for you to become your blogger’s first fan. Read your student-blogger’s posts and interact in person as well as online. In addition, share their blog with other trusted, nurturing adults. Greg Nadeau offers insights about how parents can support their children’s learning in his 2013 TEDxBeaconStreet Talk, “Blogs and Badges: The Future of Learning.” I like his idea of extending Sugata Mitra’s “Granny Cloud” concept by suggesting that parents select four other adults important in each student-blogger’s life to become loyal readers and responders.

Adult readers should offer essential positive reinforcement for hard work, original ideas, perseverance. It’s important to realize, however, that the child is the one who must put forth the effort, make mistakes, and reap the benefits of learning from experience. Adult readers can also encourage experimentation and engage the student-blogger in conversations about the topic at hand by asking sincere questions that nudge the blogger towards deeper thinking.

Imagine the Bigger Picture

By interacting honestly, responsibly, and supportively with student-bloggers, trusted adults can help student-bloggers grow as writers and thinkers, as communicators who have something of value to add to today’s world. Interacting on a global scale will be a large part of their lives. Helping them understand how to engage productively and creatively with readers beyond the boundaries of their daily experience is a huge gift for today’s students.

By conversing with student bloggers, in person and online, adult readers can learn along with them as they celebrate successes and improve upon mistakes, as they take chances with what they do not know and demonstrate how their learning happens. What better way to stay in touch with them as they grow up? And once they’ve come this far, we can then open up their blogs to the world!

In the long run, an authentic, worldwide audience for blogging can also help students see their work as something worthy of sharing with others — and raise the bar for their online presence overall. Ultimately, those same students can use their blogs as seeds for a digital portfolios that give them room to curate and display the evidence of their learning throughout their lives. What a powerful way for guiding students into the online experts and learners they will become!

For more on student blogging, check out:

• Blogging Basics: This Is How We Roll
• Blogging as Writing Curriculum
• 6th-Graders Have Their Say: Why Students Value Blogging

The post Raising Student Bloggers: An Open Letter to Parents appeared first on Getting Smart.

Preparation/Set-up

Set your classroom blogging space in Kidblog or platform of your choice. We chose Kidblog because of its ease of use, opting for the “pro” account so our students would be able to personalize their blogs.
To start out, make your settings “tight” (ie., the teacher reviews all posts and comments at first), so students will be motivated earn their way towards more public sharing and that parents will have time to become comfortable with the transition to this new way of learning.
Send home a letter and permission form to inform parents and solicit their support (especially needed for students under the age of 13).
Write an “about me” post for your teacher blog, part of your shared “classroom” space.  Your blog will be a great place to post assignments, share resources, or highlight “featured” blogs.
In the Kidblog classroom (and most other venues), students can join in two ways: you can provide each student with a username and password you have created (recommended; they can change the password once they are in), OR you can have students log in with a “class code.” If your students are using iPads, as mine will be, you will need to have them download the app for the blogging platform you have chosen. Option number one also seems to work better with iPads.

Blogging as Writing: A Curriculum

Quarter 1

Take time to introduce students to blogging as a platform for quality writing. Many students (and adults) still think of blogs as rambling, self-indulgent journal posts rather than a legitimate way to inform, reflect, or comment thoughtfully online. I stress how the blog is really a way to share, usually in essay form, with an authentic audience topics that interest you. All the standards of good writing apply!
Share blogs you like, especially ones by young people. Some of my recent favorites include Never Seconds, Animation Chefs, and Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show. You can also browse for good examples at the Edublog Awards for “Best Student Blog of 2013.” I stress how blogs are a way of communicating with the world — and possible making a difference.
Required Writing Assignment: Personal Narrative (“About Me” post)
Traditionally, a first blog post is about the writer of the blog. Students can write a short, introductory essay about themselves; I have them include a photo with this essay.  (If students or parents are uncomfortable with sharing personal photos, they can compose a photograph that represents their topic.)  
These topic choices can help students over the hump of getting started:
“My Life as a Writer”: Students look back on their development as writers and chronicle the important steps along the way to where they are now.
“Doing What You Love”: Students focus on the one activity that captivates them so much that they keep going back to it, overcoming failures and exploring new possibilities (a great way to have students discover their blogging focus).
Skills/Lessons

• What is a blog?
• Writing strategies (show don’t tell, word choice, scene setting, dialogue, organization and paragraphing, focus and unity, editing and proofreading, understanding audience)
• Using images to extend writing
• Tech stuff: Setting up a blog, adding tags, digital safety and digital citizenship, uploading images

Free Post 1
When students feel ownership for their writing, they care more about what they produce. Students should be encouraged to choose a topic about something that they are interested in or passionate about, something they feel enthusiastic about sharing with their readers.
Some students will jump right in; others will feel stymied. Struggling to find a topic that will interest readers and figuring out how to write about that topic are important parts of the learning process. Teachers will need to trust that students will want to discover writing forms, structures, and conventions related to whatever it is they choose to write about.
Give students some parameters: a length to shoot for (I suggest 300 to 500 words; some say the ideal length of a blog post  is about 1,600 words), a challenge to try a new writing technique, accountability for editing and proofreading. Then get out of their way (of course, provide help in class as they write).
I usually ask students to include at least one image (if not original, they should include a photo credit), appropriate tags and one link to an internet source for further information.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: brainstorming topics, locating a focus, revising, writing/adding comments
• Tech stuff: Basic searching tips, adding links

Comments
Students write at least two comments on two different students’ blog posts, once they have been reviewed and released by the teacher. Commenting is important to blogging — it makes the writer’s sense of audience real! It also adds the sense of a public conversation, connection, and interactivity. Transparency and choosing one’s words carefully become equally important. Students learn how to extend the conversation rather than just “hit and run” with a quick jab or “like.” I stress that students should not assume the role of the teacher when writing comments; they should understand that a public blog is not the place for peer review or personal commentary.

Quarter 2

All posts and comments continue to be reviewed by the teacher before posting. They are getting better, but they’re not there yet!
Required Writing Assignment: Reading Response: Students write an extended response to a chapter or passage, a character study, a reaction to a poem, or other assigned focus. Students continue to use tags, links, and images.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: responding to literature; using details as support; more grammar, editing, and proofreading; citing resources (includes image/photo credits)
• Tech stuff: embedding video, maps, etc.; finding and using copyright-free images

Free Post 2
Students use another’s students blog post as a jumping off place for their own writing. This can be a response to structure or format, subject matter, point of view or any other choice made by the writer. This encourages more active reading of blog posts and reinforces the idea the they are all writers who can learn from each other. Students acknowledge and link to the other student’s post, which broadens its audience. Students should continue to include at images, links, and tags.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: responding to writer’s choices (word choice, tone/mood, structure, content), referencing other writers, acknowledging others’ work
• Tech stuff: creating a pull-out quote (optional), referring and linking to other blog posts

Comments:
Students continue to write at least two comments for full credit. They are encouraged, for extra credit, to do more.

Quarter 3

Students have a trial quarter of posting blogs and comments before teacher review. Parents are invited to view and comment. Depending on the focus of your class, you may want to bring your students’ creative writing into the blogging medium at this point. Our more academic focus is reflected below.
Required Writing Assignment: Thesis/Argument
Students continue to develop their formal responses to literature in the public venue of blogging. Students might post a tentative thesis and overview of a proposed argument. Peers could be instructed to ask questions for clarification and respond to the argument’s viability — these would count as comments. Students continue to include tags, links, and images (with photo/image credit if needed).
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: crafting a thesis, finding evidence and using quotations, analysis

Free Post 3
Ask students to try something new — a new topic or a new approach to an old topic, a different format, a different way of interacting with readers. Have them review their earlier brainstorming of topics and ideas. Students could also do some browsing and reading of blogs or other sites of interest to make recommendations for further reading. Some time spent reviving creative juices may help students who are starting to become formulaic in their writing. Students continue to include tags, images, and links.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: creativity boosts

Comments: Students post two comments as usual. They should be improving significantly in their comment writing by this point.

Quarter 4

Student work is posted prior to teacher review — and is now open to comments outside the class (the world). Students are encouraged to share their blogs with five adults whose support they value and invite comments, the farther away the better.
Required Writing Assignment: Thesis/Argument with Quotations
This is the logical follow-up to the previous quarter’s assignment. Students can continue to post thesis and argument ideas, but also include possible quotations as support, before they shape their fully developed essay. Readers can be encouraged to comment with additional suggestions for quotations that might support the argument given. Students continue to use images, links, and tags for this post; this encouraging them to think figuratively and metaphorically with images, rather than just literally. I also like this emphasis on writing as a process.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: how to make “academic” writing more interesting and readable

Optional Writing Assignment: Final Reflection
Students should give some thought to how their writing and thinking have developed over the course of the year through their blogs.  How they go about this should be up to them, so that this is still considered a free post. Some discussion of how to reflect honestly and openly may be in order. Students continue to use tags, links (perhaps to their own former posts), and images.
Skills/Lessons

• Writing strategies: reflection, questioning, and self-evaluation; evaluating others’ writing

Comments: Students use their comments during this round of blogging to nominate two peers’ posts, one each for “Best Required Post” and “Best Free Post.” The comment should say specifically why the nomination is being given (reinforcing the idea of using support and evidence for points).  This is a powerful motivator and confidence boost; it encourages students to acknowledge the achievements of others and to learn from their successes.
Other Post Ideas: sharing poetry and other creative writing, housing videos projects,
researching and using vocabulary, posting about independent reading.
 
This is just the beginning for us! Please share your ideas for how you integrate blogging into a writing curriculum.
 
Photo Credits
Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Compfight cc

The post A Blogging as Writing Curriculum appeared first on Getting Smart.