De-Grading Your Classroom

Work Smarter, Not Harder

In today’s digital age, there are literally thousands of tools to make life easier. In my experience working with teachers, many of them are working harder, not smarter when it comes to the use of technology to make their life, and teaching, easier. I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite tools to not only use with students, but to use as a teacher to organize thinking and be able to easily share documents and resources with others.

Here are a few of my favorites:
➢ Dropbox (www.dropbox.com): Dropbox is a cloud computing service that saves all your documents in the “cloud.” This means that you can access all of your documents anywhere, including your smartphone or tablet, and gives you up to 18 GB of free storage for all your documents with the option to purchase more space. You can also share folders with others and work collaboratively. In addition, Dropbox will create a link for each document so that you can easily share a specific document with others through social media, email, etc.

 ➢ Evernote (www.evernote.com): There’s no need to carry around a notebook with Evernote. Evernote is an amazing tool for saving all of your notes to the “cloud.” It works similarly to Dropbox in that you can download Evernote to all of your devices and access your notes from anywhere. You can also “clip” webpages and share notes collaboratively. I even put my grocery list in Evernote and pull it up once I get the store.

➢ Delicious (www.delicious.com): Teachers come across many websites they want to save and access at a later point. I see many teachers, however, bookmarking websites by using the bookmarking feature on their computer. This is fine, however, you can’t access these bookmarks on other computers. In addition, if your computer crashes, you’ve lost all your bookmarks. Delicious allows you to save and access your bookmarks from anywhere. In addition, you can annotate and highlight whatever you bookmark.

➢ Google Apps (http://docs.google.com): Google apps offer endless possibilities. You can create and work on documents collaboratively. You can save work in Google Drive and access and share documents at anytime. Google apps also allow you to create presentations, surveys, spreadsheets, etc. All of these apps are free and easy to use.

 ➢ Twitter (www.twitter.com): This might sound like a strange tool to include on this list, but Twitter is an amazing tool for collaboration. There are literally hundreds of chats and hashtags related to education. For example, every Monday night there is a social studies chat at 6 p.m. using #sschat. By participating in this chat I learn from my other educators and share my resources with others participating in the chat. I can also ask Bob Marzano a question and he will actually respond. My PLN (personal learning network) connects me to other educators around the United States and across the world.

Guide to Google Drive and Docs

Google Drive and Docs for Teachers 2012 by richardbyrne

Reading Like a Historian

Check out this hour-long special from the Teaching Channel about the Reading Like a Historian curriculum from Stanford. 

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Making Teaching and Learning Visible

In the advent of the new Common Core standards and the soon to be released standards in science and social studies, we are beginning to have a more clear picture of the learning outcomes expected of students nationwide.  However, these standards are often only as good as the paper they are written on if we can’t see how they come alive in the classroom.  For example, this is one of the Common Core Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies:

“Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.”

What does this standard really mean?  If we polled ten teachers, would they all have the same interpretation?  Many might see the words primary and secondary sources and immediately think they are meeting this standard because they use these sources in their classroom.  Some might think that because they use various texts and ask students to cite evidence from the text that they are meeting the standard.  This opaqueness is one of the issues facing educators, and therefore student learning outcomes, today. 

How can we really see standards in action and therefore know not only what should be taught, but if students learned? First, have conversations.  One of the biggest problems we have is that we rarely talk about the specifics of teaching and learning.  What does it look like?  How do we know when we see it?  Second, visit other classrooms.  Teaching is very isolating and rarely gives us the opportunity to see what everyone else does.  The past three years, I managed a Teaching American History Grant.  This gave me tremendous opportunity to see other classrooms and made me a better teacher because of it.  Third, use technology tools such as Twitter to connect with other educators around the world to have these conversations.  Finally, use tools such as the Teaching Channel (www.teachingchannel.org) and Eduvision (https://aea111.eduvision.tv/default.aspx) to see teaching, and learning, in action. 

In order for us to move out of the industrial age of teaching and into the 21^st century, the opaqueness of teaching must become more transparent.  It is only through a clear lens that teaching, and learning, will become visible. 

Blue Harvest Feedback

I just stumbled across this resource, but I think it has tremendous potential.  It’s called Blue Harvest Feedback (www.blueharvestfeedback.com).  The basic premise behind this site is to provide teachers with an easy way to give feedback to students.  The cool thing about this website is that it allows teachers to leave feedback in written, audio, or video format.  In addition, teachers can upload the standards their class is connected to and give students specific feedback about the standard(s) the assessment addressed. In addition, both teachers and students can upload and share files easily and communicate through text message and email features.  Finally, the site allows 24/7 student and parent access.  The only downside to this resource is that while free for the first year, there is a $36 fee per year after that. 

The Myth of the Digital Native?

A few years ago I attended a professional development session hosted by a prominent technology integration expert. As a self-identified technology geek, I listened intently as the speaker focused on the then relatively new terminology of digital natives and immigrants. These terms made sense and I really thought the speaker was on to something. The speaker made the distinction between the two groups and I saw immediately that I “qualified” for the digital native group. I was born in the last thirty years and grew up using all sorts of technology. In fact, I had a cell phone when they were so big they could barely fit into a purse, let alone someone’s pocket. The speaker also pointed out that all of our students today are digital natives and the “older” adults are, by default, digital immigrants.

Although there were many facets of digital natives and immigrants presented, the emphasis was on the fact that digital natives just got “it” when it came to the use of technology. In turn, digital immigrants were technology illiterate. As a teacher, I initially bought into this idea. My students were usually very comfortable with the use of technology and many so-called digital immigrants I worked with often seemed uncomfortable with technology. However, once I dug deeper I discovered this was not really the case. I began to believe that the idea of digital natives and immigrants was a myth. Sure, my students were definitely comfortable with technology; they definitely got “it.” I could give them almost any piece of technology and they could easily figure it out. They preferred texting to writing and could speak in the language of technology without a problem. When it came to using technology effectively and for academic purposes, however, my students struggled.

Because of my assumption that my students just “got” technology, I used to do very little to explicitly teach the use of academic technology. I assumed that if I asked students to create a blog or use other Web 2.0 tools that they would just get “it.” This was rarely the case and my thinking began to change regarding the need for more explicit instruction about not only the integration of technology, but also the proper use of it.

 In the years since I first heard about digital natives and immigrants, I have developed some of my own thoughts about how to approach the myth of the digital native. I use the following “guidelines” when thinking about my own approach to technology integration in my own classroom:

1. Don’t make assumptions about how much students know (or don’t know) about technology.
2. Assess where students are before you do anything else.
3. Embrace technology even if you don’t “get” it.
4. Capitalize on what students know about technology and let them teach each other. This goes for the adults too!
5. Use social media tools such as Twitter as professional development so that you can connect with other educators about technology integration.