Day 3 at ISTE
Day 3 at ISTE had a tough act to follow after an epic Day 2 experience, but it held its own. Walking into the keynote address area, I was greeted with some amazing singers from a group named Musicality. I was inspired by Luis Perez who recounted how assistive technology helped him overcome his physical disabilities. And finally, Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Artemis, was interviewed about his myriad failures as a part-time writer before finally experiencing success. Here are some things he said during the interview that struck me:
Software engineering was his occupation, but writing was his passion.
For 20 years, he worked in software engineering but never gave up on his passion for writing. He maintained a blog for 10 years in which he wrote short stories and books one chapter at a time for an audience he accrued through online newsletter subscriptions. This made me think about how many people defer or deny their passions in order to make a living. Of course, it’s important to sustain oneself. But can we all find some time in the day to pursue a passion that makes us happy and fulfills that urge? More importantly, can schools help students find and pursue their passions before they have the pressures and responsibilities of adulthood?
His second novel took 3 years to write and he couldn’t get it published.
Andy was very candid about his failures as a writer. He bluntly admitted that his early books didn’t get published because they were terrible! But he couldn’t have written his bestselling books if he hadn’t written unpublishable books first. We all know that failure is a prerequisite for success, but how many times do we let students redo something on which they’ve failed? The next time a student woefully underperforms on a project, perhaps we should hand it back and tell him or her to try again and keep trying until the project has vastly improved. Who knows how much better their work will become.
When I realized the poor quality of feedback my 10th grade students were giving each other on their presentations, I showed them this video about an elementary school student revising his butterfly drawing multiple times. The video dramatically illustrates the power of specific, timely, constructive feedback as well as the potential to improve one’s work when given the chance. I know this takes more time and effort by teachers to give students this opportunity but the results and the cultivation of a growth mindset could be a life-changing experience. In short, it’s worth it.
He said, “You should write a book that you would like to read.”
As a teacher, you should teach a lesson that you would like to experience as a student. If you are bored or frustrated with a lesson, change it. I must admit that I would preface certain topics with my students by telling them how difficult or dry the content was (it was math of course) but that we would get through it quickly. I should’ve found more creative ways to present the topic or ask the students to brainstorm ideas to bring more relevance to the content. By proclaiming the content lacked relevance or excitement, I was really just admitting to my own failure as a teacher to make it better.
Genius Hour: “They’re not in the compliance mode, they are in the ‘I want to’ mode” – Don Wettrick
About 6 months ago, I discovered the StartEdUp Podcast by Don Wettrick (@DonWettrick) in which he discusses his experiences leading a class that focuses on student passion projects and entrepreneurship. He and his colleagues talked about the philosophies, logistics, and results of implementing a genius hour at various grade levels. Stories of students constructing schools in Africa, raising thousands of dollars for Chromebooks, and even creating currency for use at a farmer’s market inspired me to think about how I could implement a genius hour at my school. We have 40 minute “study halls” each day for students to complete work or attend remediation. I wonder if I could recruit some students to participate in a genius hour “class” during this time in which I could facilitate and support their passion projects. Don employs the “Rule of Thirds” to decide whether or not a student’s proposed project is worth pursuing.
Here are the questions he requires his students to answer about their project:
- Are you passionate or excited about it?
- What skills are you acquiring?
- Who is it benefiting other than you?
Amanda Lanicek (@TheEdsaneT) added the 6 Ps of Genius Hour:
- Passion – What are you passionate about?
- Plan – Prioritize and organize the process.
- Pitch – Pitch your ideas to the class.
- Project – Work on it. Collaborate. Solve problems.
- Product – Develop a product.
- Presentation – Present your product to the class and perhaps to others in the community or online.
One problem a lot of teachers expressed about genius hour is that students don’t really know their passions or what problems to solve. Don shared a strategy called “Collect, Connect” to address this concern. He asserted that it has NEVER failed.
Here’s how it works:
- Collect session – collect ideas on a whiteboard. These ideas relate to problems students see in their community or school that they want to solve or something they are passionate about. Once students are done, challenge them to come up with double the number of ideas on the board.
- Pair 2 ideas together – task students with creatively pairing 2 ideas together to open up opportunities for collaboration.
- Pair 3 ideas together – task students with creatively pairing 3 ideas together in order to create even more opportunities for students to work together.
Such a great session with passionate educators getting into the weeds of starting a genius hour by offering solutions to the most common obstacles.
D-Different, I-Innovative, T-Tech-laden, C-Creative, H-Hands-on — The #DITCHpanel
My next stop was something I was definitely looking forward to. Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) of Ditch That Textbook fame put together an amazing panel with teachers, administrators, and technology coaches to discuss their experiences with the DITCH philosophy. Matt prepared some questions and moderated a discussion with his panel about some of the most important conversations we all have around reinventing how we teach and expanding the opportunities we give students to learn. Panelists described a lesson that fits the DITCH ethos and how it was impactful. They talked about lessons that “blew up” in their face and how they deal with pushback from fellow teachers, administrators, and parents concerning their new methods of teaching.
One idea included parents learning how to log into Google Classroom using their child’s credentials during Back-to-School Night. Parents would access the teacher’s presentation for the night via Google Classroom and also view a Flipgrid made by their child describing their hopes and dreams. The parents would be tasked with producing a video response to share their hopes and dreams for their child. What a powerful demonstration for how parents can be exposed to the power of technology in our classrooms. The teacher continued using Flipgrid to communicate with parents throughout the year.
My big takeaway from this session was that we are all trying to figure out how to reinvent our lessons in this new era of education. We are all trying to leverage what we know about learning and technology to enhance our lessons. We all have doubts about our chosen path. We all fail, reflect, revise, redo, and succeed. In other words, traditional models of education have been disrupted by technology and we are all trying to discover best practices for teaching and learning that can only be gleaned from massive trial-and-error and sharing experiences.
The Expo
It’s easy to get lost in the expo for a few hours, and that’s what happened to me today. I wanted to revisit the Google for Education booth since I didn’t get to see everything in Day 2. A nice representative was passionately talking about her experience using Classcraft which I had heard about but never really explored. It looked like ClassDojo on steroids and game-ified. You give points (and take them away) based on student behaviors both as an individual and as a group or class. The more points students accrue, the more they can customize and augment their avatar in the game. You can also have parents add or subtract points for what their child does at home. I asked the rep if students improve their behavior just to earn points rather than because it’s the right thing to do. “Do they leave class and act poorly when there is no expectation of points?” I asked. The rep said that this is not a problem unless you use the game too frequently. It’s not meant to be used for every activity every day.
Next stop was the EdTechTeam booth in which Chad Kafka (@chadkafka) talked about the uses of Google Photos (see presentation) to share pictures across devices, search for pictures with certain people in them, and how to use the new Google Lens to grab text from a sign and search its contents within Google Photos such as a restaurant sign. Finally, he shared a very cool app called PhotoScan which allows you to scan any analog photo to make it digital which is different than taking a picture of it. The photo automatically saves to the camera roll which then syncs to Google Photos.
Finally, I stopped by Follett for a lecture on project-based learning and Pear Deck to hear about the Google Slides add-on. I picked up some swag along the way in the form of shirts, bags, pens, etc… And, I also got a 3-month trial of Pear Deck’s premium features. 🙂
Badges to motivate and recognize professional learning
My final session had to do with using digital badges as pathways to professional learning. The concept was that teachers are more likely to do PD on their own time and they want to be recognized for their PD. Although I agree that badges can be motivating, the approach described by the presenters was quite complicated and hard to replicate on a school level. I still intend to institute some kind of badging program at my school, but not exactly the way they did it.
Overall it was a great day with a lot of new tools and techniques to play with later. For the sessions I didn’t get to attend, I downloaded the digital presentations so that I can review them later. Self-imposed homework is the best homework. My brain was certainly feeling a little overcooked after today’s events. Time to get some food and some rest. FYI, the bag of almonds I toted around definitely helped alleviate those midday cravings without spending $10 for a hot dog and drink.
On to Day 4.
All posts in this ISTE series
Day 1 at ISTE
Day 2 at ISTE
Day 3 at ISTE
Day 4 at ISTE
Top 5 Lessons Learned from Attending ISTE 2018