Day 4 at ISTE

The crowds and lines thinned out dramatically on this final day of ISTE 2018.  And the people walking the mostly empty halls of McCormick Place West looked worse for wear.  As a two-time marathon finisher, I know firsthand that the last 3 miles are usually the hardest but also the most rewarding because not everyone gets there.

How to be a better coach

Rather than focusing on new tools and techniques for the classroom, I turned my attention to coaching teachers.  I was seduced into my first session by its catchy title and it started off well with free water, t-shirts, and pens.  The presenters asked us to discuss with a neighbor why PD has such a bad connotation.  “Think of your worst PD experience and discuss why it was so bad”.  And even though we all agreed that PD was bad because it was too general, mostly sit-and-get, and irrelevant to teacher needs, guess what the presenters went on to do?  You guessed it, didn’t you.  The session devolved into a model of bad PD, unfortunately, so I had to go along with about 5-7 other people.

But it wasn’t all a waste of time.  One of the presenters mentioned that one obstacle to effective PD was a lack of self-awareness by teachers as to their skill level with technology.  I have certainly witnessed this myself, and it got me thinking about how I could gently but bluntly illustrate to teachers their deficits, not in tech know-how, but in their mindset toward learning.  I furiously typed out my ideas before I forgot.

1. Make a Padlet (or maybe a word cloud using mentimeter) in which teachers share their characteristics of an ideal student.
2. Ask teachers if they believe modeling behaviors that they want to see from their students is important.  Maybe use the Pear Deck add-on to Google Slides in which teachers move dots to either thumbs up or thumbs down.  I know this question seems rhetorical, but the visual of all those thumbs up votes is affirming.
3. Ask teachers to reflect on their own approach to learning.  How many of the characteristics of an ideal student do you model as learner?  Have them share with a shoulder partner a few strengths and a few ways they could improve as a learner.  Perhaps they won’t really admit to all their faults.  We all tend to get defensive when faced with criticism. But then again, most people realize that they aren’t perfect either.  It’s a start.

Even one sentence in an otherwise subpar session can spark creativity.  Also, I know it sounds harsh to leave in the middle of a session, but I came to this conference to get high quality, practical knowledge and skills to bring back to my colleagues — not to sit down, be polite, and learn nothing.  In my opinion, you should never feel bad about getting up and leaving a session the minute you know that you won’t get anything out of it.

Personalized PD . . . for real

I walked a few yards down the hall and into a session about personalized learning for teachers.  Even though I was a couple minutes late, I still got a seat because it was the last day. Lucky! Presenter Michele Eaton (@Micheeaton) explained how teachers should evaluate themselves either on paper or digitally using this simple template shown below.  She went on to say that every teacher should have an Individualized Learning Plan (ILP) in which they set their own goals and track them with the help of the instructional coach.  I’ve always tried to personalize PD by listening to teachers discuss with me their needs and then giving them ideas, but I guess I haven’t systematized this practice.  So here is the plan:

1. Have teachers complete a simple Google Form with their 2-4 goals for the quarter.  These goals will focus on what they want to learn or improve on regarding transformational learning.  They’ll also decide whether or not to collaborate with a colleague or me on achieving their goals. Next, I’ll ask the best time(s) to meet with them.  And finally, I will ask if they feel comfortable learning from online video tutorials and perhaps an explanation for their answer.
2. Add columns to the Google Sheet created from the form responses to track progress, add notes, and add any mentor information.
3. Use the data to truly personalize teachers’ PD and perhaps group teachers with similar goals.
4. After a couple of weeks, teacher goals will be evaluated and progress updated.  Teachers who aren’t making progress can get additional assistance to get them back on track.  Teachers who are ahead of their goals can write new goals.  In any event, everyone will write new goals for the second quarter.

Hopefully, this will increase participation in PD and buy-in because we all know that voluntary PD centered around a tool or even a skill like building better assessments doesn’t work.  Or at least it hasn’t worked for me and most of my colleagues.

As with student goal-setting, I think teacher’s who make their own goals will be more motivated to achieve them because THEY wrote the goals.  This isn’t yet another mandate pushed on them by an administrator or specialist.  Of course, they may make their goals overly ambitious or too simplistic but either way, they will take more ownership of the process of completing their goals when they are the authors.

Perhaps I can even incentivize teachers by giving them a reward for completing their goals.

After the first semester, I will ask teachers to reflect on their goal writing and the process of completing them.  What did they like/dislike?  This way, I can make adjustments to the process to make it more effective.

 

 

G Suite tool superstar smackdown

I’m usually not excited about what I like to call the “Tech Tool Tsunami” or “Triple T” type session in which 60 tools are discussed, 80% of which you have heard of, another 10% that seem irrelevant or too niche, and another 10% that are cool but hard to imagine specific applications to learning.  But I made an exception this time because whenever you get Eric Curts (@ericcurts), Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher), Kasey Bell (@ShakeUpLearning), and Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) on a stage, they are bound to give you some gems.  I settled into the large Skyline ballroom and took some notes.  They presented 50 tools in an hour!  It was pretty impressive.  Here is the presentation so you can check it out.

And yes, most of the tools I already knew about, but even for those, the presenters often gave me novel ways to use the tools.  Here are some takeaways

• Noisli Extension – add white noise, wind, trees, beach sounds to the background of your class to make your environment more calm and dynamic.  Students will feel more comfortable with background sounds and it also fosters better communication.  With no lyrics to distract them, this is a good option.
• Virtual Manipulatives in Google Slides – build drag-and-drop activities into Google Slides using images, text boxes, shapes, and columns for students to organize/categorize the elements.  Do this by making the columns or areas in Google Drawings (like the Teacher Self-Evaluation above) and save it as a png file.  Next, make that image the background of your Google Slide so students can’t move it around.
• Talk To Books – Uses AI to display passages from books about themes like leadership.  Students can search for these passages to pull ideas and quotes.
• Google Science Fair – Challenge students to enter the competition and create something amazing.
• Digital Citizenship Hyperdoc – A resource by Vicki Davis.  Scroll down a little to see it.
• Physics Sensors – Read Matt Miller’s blog post about how to use an app to get your smartphone sensors to give you data to analyze.  Also, read Eric Curts’ blog post (scroll down to see it) about the Science Journal Mobile App which is similar.
• Language Tool Add-on for Google Docs – Read Eric Curts’ blog post about how to use this powerful tool to free ELA teachers from the drudgery of finding mistakes in grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling. WriQ is another Goolgle Docs add-on that will do the trick.  Read Kasey Bell’s blog post about it.
• Google Slides Instagram Stories – Use Matt Miller’s template to help students create an Instagram story within Google Slides.  When the presentation is played, it acts just like a story on one of the most popular social media platforms for many of our students.
• Google Translate Instant Search – Read Eric Curts’ blog post about how to quickly assess students speech in a foreign language.  Simply google the word “Translate” to bring up the translation boxes. Type or speak in the foreign language in order to prompt a translation.

The energy and enthusiasm of the whole group made this long list of tools and tips entertaining.  I think I heard Matt and Kasey use the phrase “Super excited” about 10 times!  Overall, this session was well worth the hour spent.

Tell me about yourself

If you are talking about podcasting in the education space, you have to talk about Jeff Bradbury (@TeacherCast) of TeacherCast.net. Check out the presentation here.  He and the Tech Rabbi, Michael Cohen (@TheTechRabbi) discussed the power and flexibility of podcasting.  Of course, Jeff talked about the tools for podcasting like snowball mics, headphones, webcams, Screencastify (because video may also be part of a podcast), and free podcasting publishing applications like Anchor.fm, but he also talked about schooling in general.

He said that after 13 years of schooling, students need to be able to answer one critical prompt, “Tell me about yourself.”  “This is the first question in every interview,” he said.  But beyond that, it is a statement about who you are and what you are passionate about.  Jeff admitted that in his first 60 podcasts, he didn’t even say his name.  Now, he starts every podcast with “Hi, my name is Jeff Bradbury and . . . .”  He showed a video of WWE Master of Ceremonies, Paul Heyman, as an example of how to introduce yourself and your purpose when making a podcast or meeting people in general.  Next, he had audience members volunteer to answer this question in front of the group to highlight the importance of this question and the difficulty that most people have when providing a response.

Michael Cohen talked about some of his students podcast experiences including one starting this Fall in which the student reached out to industry leaders to talk about diversity and the purpose of schooling “Beyond the Test”.

Both presenters discussed how podcasting is a student-centered, collaborative, engaging, and fun way to learn.  Students can easily produce, promote, and share their podcast with a global audience.  And with the rise of audio content (podcasts, audiobooks) and audio-driven devices (Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri), every student should learn about creating audio content.  They can learn how to edit their audio, add intro and outro music, sound effects, graphics, animations, and more.

Personally, I didn’t start seriously listening to podcasts or audiobooks until I got a new car with Bluetooth capabilities allowing me to play my phone audio through my car.  Now, I am definitely a audio content enthusiast.  Listening during my commute makes me feel more productive because I’m learning as I drive.

I am definitely going to try to get some basic podcasting equipment and offer my middle school students an opportunity to start a podcast.  Students can tell their story or share their expertise and experiences about anything they are passionate about.

How to flip PD

Nancye Blair Black (@NancyeBlackEdu) talked about her experience flipping PD.  She identified 4 types of flipped professional development: Informational, How-to tutorials, Exemplars, and Hooks/inspirational.  She shared some tools to flip PD, including Moovly which looked like a very user-friendly platform to make animated videos.  I had not heard of that one.  She also highlighted an important statistic that after 4 minutes, 50% of an adult viewer of an online video will lose interest.  However, if the video is interactive, that time limit goes up to 22 minutes before 50% of viewers disengage.  This made me think about ways to make flipped PD more interactive through platforms like Playposit which integrates questions and feedback into videos or by integrating viewer participation through applications like Padlet, shared Google Slides, or Flipgrid.  Not only will this make the flipped PD videos more engaging for the viewer, but the feedback will show what they are actually learning (or not learning) from the videos.  This information will help me develop better videos in the future.

It’s over?

Although the flipped PD session was my last of the conference, the learning never stops.  Many of the compelling sessions that I couldn’t attend shared their handouts and presentations which I added to my “digital tote” via the awesome ISTE app that I used throughout the conference.  Now I have to go into that tote and check out all of those amazing resources. I can’t wait but I think I’ll give my brain some time to recover before diving into those resources.

Overall, it was a great conference with a ton of fantastic experiences that I will be thinking about for a while.  I’m inspired by all the innovators and trailblazers with whom I got to interact and I highly recommend to anyone interested in educational technology (or education in general) to be one of the 18,000+ attendees in Philadelphia, PA in 2019.  It is worth the time and expense.

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