Summer 2019 PD: IFL, Tech Teach Learn, KET Multimedia

Starting this summer, I made a personal pledge to stretch my professional development horizons and present and/or attend conferences I have never attended before.  Two of the three Kentucky conferences discussed in this entry fit that definition!   I left all three with some great takeaways.

Innovations for Learning

Plenty of Google Chrome Developer Mode #SurpriseAndDelight with @watsonedtech at #IFLLEX this rainy afternoon. pic.twitter.com/QXXPjwJGGl

— Kelli Reno (@FDHSBookJockey) June 7, 2019

I have been attending IFL for several years now.  This free annual PD is organized by Fayette County Public Schools (Lexington) and happens every June.   IFL has some of the best presenters from around the state, and the educators that attend also come from all corners of Kentucky.  For the last few years, Frederick Douglass High School has hosted the event, and walking around the innovative building is almost worth the trip in itself.  I presented "Google Tools: The New, the Overlooked, and the Quirky."

Here are some highlights:

• David Kitchen shared his experiences from the first year of flipping his classroom.  Kitchen's accountability structure is to have students watch a video at home (often with EdPuzzle, which provides tracking and assessment analytics) and do Cornell Notes (powerful reflection, and hard to "cheat").  His process of gradual release sounds very useful to emulate.  Kitchen first models what the flipped work will be like at home by showing a video while doing Cornell Notes in front of the class.   Next, he has students do Cornell Notes on a video while in class, providing feedback.  The last stage is having students do Cornell Notes on a video at home.
• Kelli Reno and Louise Begley shared stories from the libraries and how they are addressing the new AASL standards.  Reno mentioned how FDHS clubs and organizations periodically "sponsor" a shelf in the library and provide book suggestions.  I love the way this gives the school community both ownership and voice!
• Kelly Fischer introduced me to a free edtech tool for student content acquisition and assessment: Deck Toys.  Teachers can create an interactive lesson using an easy drag and drop interface, which creates a game-like "board" with activities and dashed line pathways.  For differentiation and personalization opportunities, you may give students multiple paths to choose from.  One activity can be a slide deck, either independently viewed or synched and controlled by a teacher's pacing (much like Nearpod); other activities include puzzles, crosswords, "Lock" (think mini-Breakouts), match, sequencing, and more.

Tech Teach Learn

Quite a productive first session! #KCDTTL pic.twitter.com/PhKmpe350O

— Hallie Hunt Rock (@HallieHuntRock) June 12, 2019

TTL is hosted by Kentucky Country Day school in Louisville every June.  Anyone can attend for a nominal fee.  Not only was this the first time I have attended and presented at TTL, but it was the first time I have been on the KCD campus.  It's beautiful!  I have to give a shoutout to Sarah Shartzer, a teacher at KCD who is not only a leader of edtech for her own school (and TTL!) but presents far and wide.  This year was the first time that registration for TTL was sold out in advance of the event, and I can easily see that happening again as more people hear of this useful and impactful conference.  I led a workshop titled "From Bland to Blended: Best Practices for a Transformative Classroom."

Here are some highlights:

• Ms. Shartzer shared edtech tools for accommodation and differentiation.  Several were new to me, including a particular standout: Visuwords.  It's a interactive way to not only see a definition of a word and its part of speech, but a webbed relationship to other words and concepts.
• Jerry Broyles taught us about Google's geo-related tools such as My Maps, Google Earth, and Tour Builder.  Tour Builder in particular has a lot of potential for being a different way for students to share and present information that is location- or travel-based.

KET Multimedia

Thanks to all of the #ketmpd19 participants in my digital citizenship workshop today! Please let me know the awesome things YOU are doing in your district or school. pic.twitter.com/0GlF4lKl0O

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) July 17, 2019

KET Multimedia PD Day happens annually in July, at the KET studios in Lexington.   Registration requires a small fee.  I have never attended before, and was flattered to be asked to lead a workshop on digital citizenship with the purpose of attendees revising and creating their own school/district DigCit curriculum.  The KET building is a fun, state-of-the-art facility to present and participate in a PD day. Special thanks to Brian Spellman for the invite!

Here are some highlights:

• Emily Northcutt (our newest Shelby County librarian!) talked about the usefulness of KYVL, a valuable repository of tools and databases.  Like most districts in Kentucky, we pay an annual fee for staff and student access both at school and at home.  As a classroom teacher years ago, I was ashamedly ignorant of how helpful KYVL can be, and I need to do better to publicize its wealth of resources with our Shelby staff.
• Vanessa Hutchison (a teacher at Louisville Central High School) shared her website full of resources and lesson plan ideas for students to create film projects on a limited or zero budget. 
• Whitney York and Mechelle Morgan enthusiastically discussed makerspace materials and tools used by teachers and students in Murray Independent Schools.   One new find I'm excited to try out: Sphero Specdrums, which combine music making, programming, and possible accommodative assistance (for example, helping students who struggle with learning colors).

I look forward to applying and sharing some of my new knowledge and edtech, and hope to attend all three of these conferences again in the future!

Full disclosure: KET paid me an honorarium to present at their KET Multimedia PD, which I attended on a non-contract day.

Read Aloud: Text to Speech Extension

Recently, a teacher asked for a recommended text to speech tool for Chromebooks.  Of course, a Chromebook means it has to be a Chrome extension and can't be a program to install.  While there are many to be found, most text to speech extensions fall into one of two categories.  The first: they are very useful but cost for their full capability (a popular example is Read & Write for Chrome).  The second: they are free but offer limited usability and/or functionality.

I hadn't looked in a while, so I was glad to take a peek at the Chrome Store to see what was available now.   After playing with several and reading Chrome Store reviews, I found one that I can easily recommend: Read Aloud.  It is free with no hidden charges.

Note the bullhorn extension icon for Read Aloud in the upper right.

While some text to speech (TTS) tools may excel in an area or two, Read Aloud ranks highly across multiple aspects:

• It is easy to use!

• It grabs text from the website, simplifies the font/formatting, and puts it in an easy to read “box”; it then highlights text as it reads (although in settings, you can turn highlighting off).

• Multiple male and female voices are available in a fairly normal “American” accent.  These are included at no charge.  (Many TTS tools have only one voice with an English affect, or additional voices cost additional money.)

• It works on Google Docs.  (Many do not!)

• You can adjust speed and pitch.  (Many only have this option for a premium/paid version.)

• It is one of the few TTS tools that can read a PDF that is opened inside a tab of your Chrome browser. 

• It is important to note that while typical websites should be fine, Read Aloud will NOT work inside a learning management system (LMS) such as Schoology or Edmodo.  However, this is true of nearly all TTS extensions (such as Read & Write), paid or free.

You can get to the settings (gear icon) by hitting the bullhorn icon, then hitting stop to end reading the text aloud. Here you can change the voice with dropdown choices, use the sliding bars to adjust speed and pitch, and turn text highlighting on or off.  You can also test what this sounds and looks like without using an actual website page.

Do you recommend a different text to speech Chrome extension that is free?  Share in the Comments below.

Legends of Learning

Greetings, all!  Sorry for the hiatus, as this fall as been busy.  As I prepare to go to my first regional ECET2 conference in Hebron, Kentucky this weekend, I thought I would take the time to blog.

The focus of this entry,  Legends of Learning, is something I've been excited about since I first heard of it several months ago.  I have talked about it in interviews, and shared it in professional development sessions.  In short, Legends of Learning (hereby shortened to LoL) takes two of my passions in learning -- personalization and games -- and combines them in a unique and compelling way.

While the content is currently limited to middle school science, LoL has stated they will expand their offerings to other contents as well as to elementary and high school levels.

How does it work?  As a teacher,you first need to register with an email and a password, along with your school information.  (Students simply need their teacher's code to join his/her "class," give their first and last name, and create a username.  Conversely, teachers can also create student accounts and rosters/groups when at the "playlist" dashboard.)

Once in as a teacher, you can explore and play any of the games offered.  First, you can browse by three science topics: earth, life, and physical.  You'll then see learning objectives listed (by standards).   Finally, you can look at individual games.  Once you find ones you like, you can begin creating "playlists" by dragging and dropping them onto the playlist bar in the order you like.  (Bonus: an indicator gives you a feel for how long it might take to complete all of the playlist games.)  When you are ready, you can launch the playlist.  With some built-in assessment questions (unfortunately, you cannot customize or add to them), you can get a feel on how well students are comprehending the material as well as how far and fast they are proceeding in the games, all in a real time teacher dashboard in a very easy to follow user interface.

It should be noted that teachers begin with so many free "coins."  Each time one student plays one game, it costs one coin.  While there are ways to get more coins without spending money (see "Downsides?" below), at some point you will likely have to consider a one year license purchase (available for quote request but not listed on the LoL site).

There are several useful, even innovative, features built into Legends of Learning:

Managing Students, Freeplay, and Pause/Stop

The dots representing the students march across the playlist as they complete their games and assessments.  You can click on any of them to see which student they are, and how accurately they are answering multiple choice questions in real time.

If any student dot turns red, that means they have opened up a new tab and are no longer interacting with a game.  This is by far one of my most favorite aspects of Legends of Learning!  What an easy way to manage students to stay on task!

If a student completes all of their assigned games and there is still time remaining, a student can do "freeplay" -- that is, play any of the games available in the assigned science objective.   An instant answer to the student who asks, "What do I do when I'm done?"

Last but not least, you can pause a playlist at any time to do a "catch and release," or stop it entirely.


Quick Comprehension Overviews

As assessment questions are answered by at least one student, the question "opens up" in a growing column on the right side of the dashboard.  With the green and red indicators, you can quickly determine if certain questions are not going well (like the "male peacocks" and"bird mating calls" questions in the above image).  Might be time to pause the playlist and do a catch and release!

Post-play Data Reporting

Once the playlist is over, you can click on the orange "Question Data" button in the bottom right to see how students performed.  You can view this inside the LoL dashboard, but you can also export this data as a CSV file.


One final positive about LoL is the depth of its onsite resources and research information around game based education.  If one is looking for why and how gaming improves learning, or looking for other educational games to use, LoL's site is a solid place to start.

How could you use it?  Since you are not limited in how many playlists you create, you could make them for differentiating to a group of students or even down to personalizing for one student.  It could be a different way of "flipped learning" by delivering content or building schema as games for homework, then use classtime to apply student knowledge.  And what better way to slip in direct instruction of content during project based learning science units at the student's choice of time, place and pace?


Downsides?   You always hope for free tools, so the inevitable cost of students playing the games is a bit of a bummer.   However, you can share a referral code to colleagues which, if it results in a sign up, will get more coins for you!  You can also earn coins by giving critical feedback on the games themselves. However, your opportunity to try it at no charge should give you enough evaluation time to see if it makes a difference for instruction and learning before paying anything.  As already mentioned at the beginning, the current limitation of only middle school science content hinders larger amounts of classrooms being able to use the material, but I believe patience will pay off in expanded offerings in the future.


Have you tried Legends of Learning?  If not, what are some other educational game websites you feel make an impact on student learning?   Respond in the Comments below.

TweenTribune

Note 7/13/24:  TweenTribune is no longer an active platform (you cannot assign articles to students or differentiate text), but the Smithsonian still archives the old TweenTribune articles here.

In my high school English classroom teachers years, true differentiation was always an elusive goal.  I never disagreed with its need, but always found it difficult to do with consistency, depth, and fidelity.  This was especially true with reading materials.  Like most, I faced students who ranged a huge range of low to high reading levels.   However, I highly valued having students be able to have discourse over the same text.  Often, especially with non-fiction text, I would be lucky to find a "on grade," "above grade," and "high grade" version of the same topic without making it obvious the disparity between the "kiddie version" and the others.

But now we have tech tools that can narrow the gap.  What if students could all read the exact same article, yet the Lexile level be automatically shifted up or down?   Newsela was the first and only site I knew that did this well, but another online resource has recently surfaced: TweenTribune, backed by the Smithsonian.

How does it work?   You can browse and search non-fiction articles in various subjects, or click on a band of reading levels determined by grade level (K-4, 5-6, etc.; this is one advantage over Newsela, which doesn't have grade level bands of articles).  Once you click on an article of interest, you can quickly adjust the Lexile reading level of the article by clicking on a higher or lower number.  Each Lexile version of an article has an unique URL, which makes copying and sharing the URL at a certain reading level very easy.

Note under the title that the current Lexile reading level number is in gold. Some options, such as taking a quiz or leaving a comment, are available if you are logged into your account.  Registration is free, and student usernames and passwords must be generated by a teacher who creates a class.

Another positive compared to Newsela:  while Newsela only lets you see five articles before making you register (for free), you can access all the articles of TweenTribune and share their multi-level URLs without teachers or students ever creating an account.

One thing that is interesting as you click across the grade levels is that the name of the site actually changes even as the URL still starts "TweenTribune.com."   K-4 is TT Junior, and 9-12 is TeenTribune.

There are a collection of separate Spanish articles under its own category, but the Lexile level cannot be adjusted, nor do the English articles have a "Spanish button" to convert them.

If you are interested in taking a comprehension quiz or leaving a comment on the article, you have to be logged in.  Teachers can register for free, create classes and student usernames/passwords, and assign certain articles to their classes.  (Note that a student cannot create their own sign in -- they have to get that from a teacher.)  If students take a quiz, teachers can access those results.

The teacher interface to create classrooms and student accounts is straight forward and simple.

How could you use it?   You can create authentic and engaging pair, group, or whole class discussions by having students read the same article differentiated to their needs.   In discussion, it would be nearly impossible for one student to know what Lexile level the other student read, making the equity seamless and invisible.  With an LMS, sharing URLs to specific reading levels of an article would be easy; for example, in Schoology, you could even create differentiated Assignments to different student groups, each with a different TweenTribune Lexile reading level of the same text.

Downsides?  I would like a way that you could have the various Lexile levels of a specific article be translated to Spanish with one button push.  That would make differentiation extend easily to ELL student needs.

I'm thankful that the Smithsonian is helping educators differentiate with ease...and for free!

Do you use Newsela or TweenTribune?  Discuss it in the Comments below.

TUIT: Melissa Young, Wright Elementary

One more full week at Painted Stone Elementary!  Time truly does fly after spring break.  As I near the end of my embedded tours -- my last three week stint will be at Simpsonville Elementary starting on May 4 -- I realize that the hardest thing is often finding time to loop back and check how things are going at schools I have previously visited.

It had been several weeks since I had visited Wright Elementary, so I recently emailed out to Wright staff to see how edtech integration is going.  One of the responses led to the Q & A below, and a well-deserved #ShelbyTUITshoutout for Melissa Young, a fourth grade teacher who specializes in math and word work.  In particular, her discussion of using edtech to differentiate led to some interesting anecdotes and insights.

Melissa, introduce yourself to our readers.  How long have you taught at Wright? Where did your learning of integrating edtech begin?

I have taught at Wright since 1998 after graduating from the University of Kentucky. I think my initial integration of edtech began when I applied for the Intelligent Classroom. I do recall not having to order Vis a Vis Markers and transparencies and being elated that I could show student thinking and work under the document camera. I was one of the first recipients or first group of teachers to receive the equipment and really just began to implement and use whatever I could get my hands on from additional PDs, blogs, and peers. I am also following your blog!

Tell us about some of the ways you are integrating technology this year.

One of the things that I have done is create the “Menu” of Activities to differentiate instruction from your training on ELL and Differentiation.  To be more specific, I created a Fraction/Decimal Centers Menu based upon students who had and had not mastered the standards from our fraction unit. There were several students who needed to work towards mastery of three different fraction standards. As well, we were in the middle of our decimal unit. Therefore, the centers that I created focused on the following by trying to incorporate the usage of the MacBook Airs, iPads, and digital cameras. Students were given the opportunity to play two games focused on comparing decimals and fraction/decimal equivalencies. Since I didn’t have enough iPads, I recorded the instructions and modeled how to play the game on my RCA SmallWonder cameras. Then, when or if students had questions or needed to see the game modeled, they could watch the short video clip. I wanted to put the video clips on the iPads but I couldn’t guarantee that I would have the same iPads checked out each day.

For two additional  centers, using the MacBooks, I created a template in which students watched video clips on the standards. One standard focused on students being able to multiply fractions, and I had them watch a short “music” video on the procedures for multiplying fractions. It had a very catchy melody that several were singing. (I was trying to hit those auditory and kinesthetic learners.) There were several links and websites that the students could access like mathplayground.com to complete the paper practice in their notebook, type in the answer, and receive immediate feedback. I used several different websites like Khan Academy to help provide the additional instruction and practice. The students enjoyed the centers and having the option to go to a variety of different stations based upon their needs. 

I had one student that went to one of the centers who had met mastery so I was a bit confused on why she was there. However, after conferring with her (mastery was set as 8 out of 10 questions correct) she stated that she felt that because she only met mastery by answering 8/10 instead of 9/10 or 10/10, she needed to practice that standard some more to make sure she had it. It was eye opening to me because had I assigned students to go to particular centers based on simply meeting mastery, I wouldn’t have had her rotate to that station. It was an “aha” moment for me that if I give the responsibility of learning to the students (and don’t carry all of the workload) that they will make those decisions to ensure that they understand the content. 

Glad to hear how edtech is making differentiation easier!  In what ways did you try differentiation before technology?

To differentiate before integrating technology, I still used the workshop model and attempted to address as many multiple intelligences and trying to accommodate every subgroup or population in my classroom. However, I would go through and explain each center or activity in depth and model which took a great deal of time when not all students would rotate to that station. However, I think when that aha moment hit was when I could use just one device for a group to view or browse websites such as Math Playground or Khan Academy that would provide students with sample problems that they could work out in their notebook that I could check when monitoring. The students liked the immediate feedback of the websites and the “hint” buttons to get them started. In addition, when introducing games focused on helping students develop their understanding of the content or to practice in a “fun” way, I would have to review the instructions or intervene and model again. However, by creating videos, students could watch the game being modeled without me being pulled to that group. You really hooked me in with the endless possibilities of how I can incorporate the few devices we have without having that desired one to one ratio of each student having a device. Therefore, when you focused on "these are the things that you can do with just one device," you encouraged me to think outside the box of how I could use one device per group or center/station activity. I really felt like there were several of "me” in the room and that students were engaged in learning. 

I'm flattered and happy that I could help. What edtech tools are you looking forward to using in the near future?

I am really looking forward to those edtech tools that are going to allow me to formatively assess students, collect data, and make those instructional decisions during instruction instead of assessing at the end of the lesson, etc. I use a great deal of student self-assessments during the lesson; however, my students and I don’t always agree on whether or not they “have mastered the standard." I think something like using Plickers embedded into the lesson is going to help improve instruction and monitor student understanding. 

Thank you, Melissa, and congratulations!