YoTeach!

While there are certainly very effective ways to have classroom discussion the analog way -- look no further than a well done Socratic circle -- digital discourse can be uniquely powerful.  It has always been a particular specialized edtech interest of mine, going back to my U of L graduate classes in the early 2000's.  As one of my action research projects, I gathered data on college students who raised hands in class to answer questions versus their participation in online forums.  Perhaps not surprisingly, while nearly all students interacted digitally, "real" discussion in class was limited to roughly half the classroom, and only a handful of students tended to dominate the conversation.  Sound familiar?

Besides making the simple amount of participation more equitable, other advantages of digital discourse became readily apparent:

• Because students could think and even revise their questions and observations before hitting send, the responses can be a bit more thoughtful.  However, responders can also be "trigger-happy" and the quality can be just the opposite, so culture and expectations are key here.
• Digital opportunities opened up asynchronous as well as "real-time" opportunities to talk, expanding discussion beyond the four walls of the classroom.
• Dominating personalities in real life become more flattened -- quiet students could sound as "loud" as their more outgoing peers.
• Students more naturally talk directly to each other, rather than through the teacher.
• In a real time online discussion, everyone can "talk at once," something not possible without shouting and chaos in real life.
• Digital discourses can often be easily archived or exported.
• Since a digital discourse creates a physical artifact, it can be formatively assessed, whether with informal feedback or with rubrics that indicate how students are meeting mastery of speaking and listening standards.

One of my favorite and free digital discourse tools was TodaysMeet.  It was around long enough (ten years!) that I actually used it as a classroom teacher for one of my videotaped National Boards lessons.   Alas, it finally closed down several months ago.  Since then, I've searched for alternatives and finally found one that is as simple (and free!) as TodaysMeet -- YoTeach!, a project of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  (More about their "Pedagogic & Active Learning Mobile Solutions" here.) 

How does it work?  Once you go to the site, you can make a chat room in seconds.  Type your room's name and hit the "Make Room" button.  Share the room's URL, and people can join the chat instantly -- no log in or user account required, they just pick a nickname.  While technically users are anonymous, two tips: explain to students that the only way they will get credit for their contributions is if they use their real names, and advise them to use common sense digital citizenship protocol (never say anything you wouldn't in a public space with Grandma listening).

YoTeach! does offer some very helpful features.

• By checkmarking "Avoid Search," the room will not show up in public searches, and gives you a bit more privacy.  I highly recommend this!
• "Enable Admin Features" is also highly recommended.  By creating a password for you (unique to the room you are about to create), you will be able to do some moderation features such as mute or remove a student, get student participation statistics, switch from a chat to a voting mode (perhaps as part of a reflection at the end of the day, where students indicate the most insightful or important contributions), and more.   The only way you can make sure a room can be deleted is if you enable admin features from the beginning; otherwise, the room and its history will linger indefinitely.
• "Room Entry Password" is another security feature to protect your students. Without a password, anyone with the chat room's URL can join. 
• In the chat room itself, participants can do more than just text responses. You can also share pictures with annotations, or use a mini-whiteboard feature to "draw." 
• You can export a transcript of the chat as a PDF.

Richard Byrne, edtech extraordinaire behind Free Technology For Teachers and Practical Edtech, did a great screencast video overview of YoTeach! (5:15):

How could you use it?   Here are three ideas:

1. Create a backchannel chat while watching a video.  The opportunities for students to post questions and insights, as well as the teacher probing and clarifying, can create a rich, engaging experience beyond just passive viewing.
2. Create a virtual after-hours office, where you help students during a scheduled time slot.  Even better would be student leaders running the chatroom doing the same function.
3. Conduct the equivalent of a "Twitter Chat" at a certain time after class on a particular topic. This could be a remediation opportunity, enrichment, or even a flipped learning experience of content that will directly lead to work in class the next day.

Downsides?  Without the teacher having a login account, there is no way to easily save all of your created chatrooms.   (This was true of the earliest version of TodaysMeet as well.) If you close the browser without somehow saving the chatroom URL, you may have to start all over.  I'm also not sure if the ability to search "public" random chatrooms is helpful from a student perspective, since it may lead to more distractions than anything useful for a classroom setting.  In fairness, however, once a student joins a specific chat room the search is not readily apparent.  Lastly,  I wish rooms were "yoteach.com/name" (more like how TodaysMeet worked) instead of the current unusual URL address configuration.  

I wish for digital and analog discourse to happen frequently in your classroom!

Note: special thanks to Noel Gnadinger, my old South Oldham High School colleague and librarian par excellence who led me to YoTeach! in one of her Facebook posts.

Revision 9/26/19:  The YoTeach site is now at https://yoteachapp.com/.  I revised the links above to reflect this.

Post-ASCD Houston Wrapup

With just over 24 hours before our inaugural Edtech Share Fair, I am busy coordinating last minute details. But I wanted to take time to reflect on the ASCD annual conference last weekend. First, a picture:

Downtown Houston, from the second floor balcony of the convention center. #ascd15 pic.twitter.com/HMTo1SHUYS
— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 23, 2015

I went to Houston with our district deputy superintendent Lisa Smith and several of our best and brightest secondary level teacher-leaders: Katrina Boone, Melissa Chesterfield, Adam Hicks, Amanda Hum, Christi Mishio, Elyse Overton, Lindsay Ricke, and James Wampler.  This year's focus was on "Disruptive Innovation," and it certainly gave us plenty to consider.

I participated in so many great sessions that it is nearly impossible to summarize or choose which ones to share without feeling guilty of ones I will omit.  With that in mind, I'll still plunge ahead and share highlights from three of my favorite presentations:

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I was excited to see Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams in the flesh.  Bergmann and Sams are pioneers in flipped classrooms (I mentioned them in a previous entry, and their Edutopia toolkit on flipped is here).   Some of their excellent points:

• Don't let equity stop you from flipping!  Bergmann and Sams mentioned a recent Pew survey that stated student home Internet access is as high as 95%.   A few years ago, they had started with DVDs and thumb drives to supplement those that didn't have Internet in some form.
• Start teachers with the question, "What is the best use of your in-class face to face time?"  With this in mind, see how flipped can help.  As always, it's not the tool, but how it is integrated.
• "The ideal flipped classroom has choice."  It doesn't have to always be videos; it could be games or something else interactive. Try to differentiate videos or other options for students.  In addition, if you use videos, keep them SHORT.  They recommend 1 to 1 1/2 minutes long per grade level, so an average senior video would be around 15 minutes.
• Don't assume students know how to actively watch videos at home.  Model in class how students should take notes or use whatever reflection tool you desire.
• Consider the four hurdles to flipped and blended learning: thinking (it's a different teaching model and both teachers and students need to process through it), technology (what tools will you use?), training (don't just flip videos and expect mastery; teachers need good models), and time (give time for teachers and student to learn; consider what teachers will do with "extra" in class time).
• Last but not least, don't just stop with flipping videos. Go deeper!  Flipping and blending can be combined with many other pedagogies:

From yesterday: going deeper than simple flipping to new levels of mastery. #ASCD15 @chemicalsams @jonbergmann pic.twitter.com/JEYGvFQIoE
— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 22, 2015

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I had the privilege to see Superintendent of BCPS (Baltimore County, MD) S. Dallas Dance speak about his district's S.T.A.T initiative, which began in 2013-2014.  Dance strives to bring equity and equality to the students of his district.  Two key components of BCPS's Theory of Action are:

1. All students will have equitable access to device....not just for each student, but equality across schools. Students will graduate with a positive digital footprint.
2. All will have opportunity to learn second language, which begins in 4th grade!

Personalized learner-center environments are keys to success in BCPS:


S.T.A.T. – Learner-Centered Environments from Baltimore County Public Schools on Vimeo.

This involves everything from technology to flexible furniture arrangements to even the language teachers use to reflect the students owning the learning.   Technology integration began in elementary pilot schools and over the next several years will work its way up to high school; Dance spoke often of "going slow in order to go fast."  Language acquisition is facilitated by an ELL teacher who spends one day per school (ratio: one teacher per five schools) combined with daily lessons in an online platform.

I want to spend some more time fully exploring the S.T.A.T website and following BCPS's journey.

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The last session I will share was presented by Beth Holland.   She pointed out the difference between technology simply being used, and tech being used (I would say "integrated") effectively.  Holland pointed out the five key questions when evaluating edtech integration effectiveness:

1. Are students engaged?  (Engagement does not equal learning, but without engagement, they cannot learn.)
2. Are students constructing their own understanding?
3. Are students creating artifacts as evidence of their own understanding?
4. Are students reflecting on their learning?
5. Are students sharing their learning? (Not the same as publishing!  Is there true interaction between two or more people?)

 Her presentation was rich with teacher and student examples.   To take one example: Mark Engstrom had students integrate a "collaborate and curate" strategy for taking notes during his lectures.  He creates groups of students to work together in a method that fits their learning style (visual, interpersonal, logical/linear, etc.) making each student have a role in the classroom's "digital learning farm."


Collaborate & Curate from langwitches on Vimeo.

One group Googled facts and sites that supported and added to the lecture information; another found images that corresponded with what was said; a third group did Cornell style notes; a fourth did a TodaysMeet where they posted questions verbally asked during the lecture as well as questions of their own, along with any connections to the material.  (The first three did their collaborative work via Google Docs.)  Halfway through, Engstrom did a check-in with all the digital spaces to see how the groups were doing, correcting and praising as necessary.  At the end of the lecture, each individual student had access to the multiple digital spaces and was responsible for curating their own notes, checked by Engstrom.   And you thought lectures couldn't be powerful learning opportunities!

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We left Houston invigorated and excited not only to apply what we learned, but to share it with others.  So whether you are down the hall or an email away, seek the teachers out and ask them to describe some of their favorite sessions.

Post-KySTE 2015 Wrapup

It's a week of transitions and reflections here at Edtech Elixirs.  Yesterday, Shelby County kicked off its Thinking Strategies Institute, being held at our brand new Learning Center (the same site where our March 26 Edtech Share Fair will be held . . . hint hint, plug plug).  Today marks my last day at Wright Elementary, and I begin my embedded stay at Heritage Elementary tomorrow.   And last but not least, I have a chance to catch my breath and reflect on last week's KySTE 2015 conference.

As always, the conference was full of affirmation, inspiration, and new edtech tools, and I'd like to share some of it with you.  The following is not meant to cover every beat of every session I attended, but simply a highlight of memorable moments and tools.

Wednesday, March 4
Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting Thomas Nelson High School and learning about their fantastic school culture and staff-wide deep use of Google Drive from Wes Bradley (principal) and Heather Warrell.  (It tells you a lot about Heather and TNHS when you find out her title is "Vice Principal of School Culture and Instruction.")   On KySTE's opening day, Heather had a session about the various innovations of her school. Although I already knew many of the technical ways TNHS is excelling and impacting learning, I still learned new facets at Heather's session.  For example, when the school opened three years ago, they decided not to buy any filing cabinets for teacher classrooms.  The reason was twofold: to encourage teachers to start fresh and not use the same lesson plans from years ago, and to embrace Google Drive as a digital repository, sharing and creation space.  (The integrated use of Google Drive at TNHS is remarkably dense; to take just one example, teachers create lesson plans in Google Slides saved in department shared folders, which can be commented on and viewed in real time by administrators, and are actually presented by the teachers to classes of students for "Scholar Starters," share agendas, and a guide through the day's activities.)   Heather and Wes encourage their staff to #flycloser to the sun -- to dare to dream and not be afraid of lofty goals.  Their academic performance reflects their passion; their composite ACT average has grown from 18.6 to 20.9 in just three years. But their culture is more than scores.  Every Friday they take time at a faculty meeting to celebrate staff accomplishments for the week; college acceptance letters adorn hallways; astronaut pictures (often with teachers' faces Photoshopped in) and aircraft carrier murals make the launching of learning obvious and inevitable.  In short, Thomas Nelson is a fantastic place and worth a visit if you can make it.  If you do, say hi to their purple cow!

Leslie Fisher shared new Web 2.0 tools.  I learned of a few sites I had not heard about before. Quizizz is a formative assessment tool that is similar in flashy style to Kahoot but with one important distinction: the question and answer choices are pushed directly to the device, so a projector is not necessary.   Publicly shared quizzes are available or you can create your own, and reports of student results can be exported.  Screenleap allows you to easily share your screen with others for free; students would only need your "share code" to see your broadcast. Educators can get up to 2 hours a day at no charge, but the free account is limited to sharing with 8 students at once.  (For $15 a month, you can broadcast up to 8 hours and share with 30 students.)

Another @lesliefisher tool is Screenleap. 2 hours a day per device free! #kyste15 pic.twitter.com/rp66Jg6jot
— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 4, 2015

Leslie also pointed out that TodaysMeet now has "Teacher Tools" for $5 a month that puts teacher's posts in a chat room at the top (easier for students to see and follow), and allows password protected chats.

Bret Foster is the CIO of Anderson County, and he discussed the recent upgrades of the school libraries of his district.   (Read the Kentucky Teacher article about the county's renovations.) His goal is to make the library used by students all of the time.  Bret shared a tip to make more space: run a report on checkouts, and donate any books that have not been checked out in five years.  After one of his libraries did this report, they gave away 65% of their books!  Many of the upgrades were inexpensive, like making the tops of some tables dry erase boards by installing shower wall, and adding casters to table legs to make them easy to move for collaboration. In the future, the libraries plan to house their own Minecraft servers for students to locally and privately build their own virtual worlds.   Bret's session really made me think on how we use (and misuse) learning space.

Per @bretfoster directions, here are my thoughts on how school space can be misused. #kyste15 #cocktailnapkinthinking pic.twitter.com/KHxxLNJDf6
— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 4, 2015

Thursday, March 5
Well, there was this little snowstorm that happened.  Maybe you saw something about it on the news.  I was desperate not to miss sessions as well as scheduled to present one of my own, so I dug out the driveway and backed out into the street . . . where I immediately got stuck and needed neighbors just to push my car back into the garage.

So I tried to temper my disappointment by participating in the marathon 24 hours of #KyEdChat, a side event to the KySTE conference.  After being a participant, I was the moderator later that night on the topic of augmented reality tools, and I was very grateful for the co-moderation help of Jennifer Cox.  It was exhilarating, exhausting, and fun!  We were also extremely thankful that a separate group of Indiana educators joined us who usually use the hashtag #INeLearn.  The party responsible for reaching out across the river is Michelle Green, who was fantastic enough to archive our chat as a Storify here.

Friday, March 6
Half of my final day of KySTE was spent being a presenter.  First, I was able to host my augmented reality tools presentation after all, thanks to someone else having to cancel their session.  Secondly, I took part with a group (Tommy Hurt and Susie Burkhardt) to discuss Shelby County's tech initiative and how the construction of Southside Elementary fits our 21st century goals.

I also sat in on a session by KDE's Marty Park, who shared some of the basics of how to set up Google Apps for Education (GAFE) / Google Classroom with our network sign-in structures.  (For the slides and other resources from his sessions, Marty created a special page for KySTE 2015 on his website.)

Last but not least, what visit to KySTE would be complete without going to at least one session of Donnie Piercey, the Google certified educator and eminent Eminence educator?  He focused on tips and tricks of Google (a well as other useful sites) that were geared toward the K-5 crowd.  I encourage you to check out Donnie's Google doc with more, but here are my top five of his shares:

• If you type an equation into Google's search box, you can not only get the answer, but an interactive calculator will appear.  (You can just Google "google calculator" as well.) Google can even recognize order of operations and do higher math functions like an area of a rectangle or plotting a line graph.
• Do you have a class economy with cash, salaries, and jobs...but hate keeping up with the paperwork and the photocopied currency?  Mykidsbank.org can create a virtual economy for free for up to 50 students.
• In a Google document, you can Insert > Image > Take a Snapshot and use your webcam to take a picture.  Donnie gave an example of students answering a math problem in a shared doc, but if you want them to "show their work," have them take a snapshot of their pencil-and-paper computations.
• Peanut Gallery Films uses your spoken text and incorporates it as titles in a silent movie.  The final short film can be shared via URL.  Perhaps you can use it for teacher reminders (they would have more fun hearing about a project deadline if a movie is telling them), or for students to do short captures of their understanding ("What did you learn today?" "What was the key facts from today's content?").
• I knew that Google was archiving thousands of newspapers for accessing online.  (Reminds me of my student days in high school when I went to the library to look at microfiche.)  However, I didn't know this trick: after you find an article, click on "Link to Article" on the right.  Next, click on a headline, and you will get a URL you can share that will take students straight to that newspaper article.

I look forward to KySTE 2016.  Except this time, there better be no snow.

If you attended KySTE this year, share your thoughts below in Comments!  What were some of your favorite sessions?  What new tool are you excited to try out?

Odds and Ends: TUIT, TodaysMeet, Outlook Popups, Bulb Life, AppleTV Snoozing

I'm nearly at the end of my embedded initial stay here at Southside Elementary.  As the time whittles down at this wonderful school, here are some odds and ends.

Let's start out today with a #ShelbyTUITshoutout to Southside's Sarah Gregory!  During a drop-in yesterday, Ms. Gregory had her third graders posting questions via iPads in a TodaysMeet room.   Great way to integrate discussion strategies with technology!

Sarah Gregory from @tigernewsSCPS using @TodaysMeet on iPads with 3rd graders! @shelbycountysch #ShelbyTUITshoutout pic.twitter.com/XZPaiOqlPL
— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) September 2, 2014

TodaysMeet is a popular and free "backchanneling" tool. Teachers can create a chat room for just an hour or have it open up to a year.  Students enter the room, give their name, and can begin replying to each other and the teacher.  Once finished, you can print out a transcript of the entire session.  It can be a useful way of making discussion more equitable and getting participation from all members, particularly if paired with a rubric and stated expectations of quantity and quality.  I particularly loved using it while watching videos; students were much more engaged, practiced their visual literacy skills in a way I could observe and assess, and I could quickly answer questions and probe students to think deeper without ever hitting pause.  Over the summer, TodaysMeet did a major upgrade.  Now teachers can create an account where their created rooms are "saved" under their profile.  Among other new features are moderation tools, such as the ability to delete specific posts. I highly recommend TodaysMeet, and for some different ways you could use it in a classroom, read this article.

Moving on!  I have three quick edtech tips today:

• By default in Outlook, new emails and alerts will pop up on your screen.  However, when using a computer that is projecting to a screen, you are unintentionally sharing that parent's email,  child's medical information, IEP meeting requests, etc. with other students.  For MacBook Airs, turn off the popups by opening Outlook program, go to Outlook (next to Apple icon at top left of screen), Preferences, Notifications & Sounds, and uncheck mark the box for "Display an Alert on my Desktop."
• Nothing taxes a projector bulb more than leaving it on a blue screen for hours, or worse, overnight.  Bulb replacement is a major expense for a technology budget. If you are going to not be projecting for a long period of time, please turn the projectors off.  At Southside Elementary, we have two projectors in each room (SMARTBoard and secondary ceiling) that unfortunately work by the same remote.  If both come on but you only want to use one, use your body as a shield: turn your back to the projector you want to keep on, point the clicker to the projector you want off (I hold the remote clutched to my chest, like I have T-Rex arms), and turn it off.
• Some teachers have reported problems with their AppleTV, but it's just asleep.  Look for a small white light that indicates it's awake, if you can see it (sometimes the SCPS sticker is over it). If not (or you're not sure), press any button on the AppleTV remote to wake it up.  If your AppleTV is on but you don't see your room number come up for AirPlay, try resetting the device: go to Settings, General, Restart.

I'll be posting an interview with SSE's Teacher of the Year by the end of the week!

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome, and thank you for checking out my blog!  I have been involved in education since 2005, but never seriously tried to blog before.  My "About Me" profile sums up my educational background succinctly, but I will add that becoming the first District Technology Integration Coach of Shelby County is definitely the motivation to begin blogging now. Therefore, I am committed to making meaningful and ongoing posts, but most importantly, making my blog a useful resource for others.

One of the hardest things you have to do when creating a blog is naming it.  So I ruminated and brainstormed for quite a while before coming up with Edtech Elixirs.  It represents several things:

• My love of Joseph Campbell.  I am fascinated with many ideas of Campbell's, and one of his most famous is his belief of the "monomyth" -- a pattern that cuts across cultures thousands of miles and years apart, the Hero's Journey that many mythical characters have been through, and a wonderful metaphor for our own journey through life.  The goal of the Hero's Journey is some kind of "saving experience" or "gift," often called the Elixir.  While it may not actually be a magic potion in the story, the key point is that it has transformative qualities that changes the hero.  So here, I'm making a metaphorical comparison to the heroic journey of a teacher in a classroom, looking for a transformative experience in the form of our present day magic -- technology!  Through my blog posts, I hope to address: What are edtech tools that can transform my teaching and enable me to do things in ways I could not do before?  What are ways that technology can make my classroom more engaging and effective? And last but certainly not least, how will technology positively impact the learning of my students?
• There is no one magic tool.  I used the plural "elixirs" very intentionally.  Firstly, I obviously hope to introduce and discuss many different apps, devices, and Web 2.0 sites throughout my future blog posts.  Secondly, elixirs can sometimes be elusive, and we must be wary of any device, site, app, etc. that overpromises a "one size fits all" solution.  There are (and should be) many different ways to incorporate technology in your classroom, and in fact, technology is but one tool you should use to further the learning of students. Indeed, speaking of tools, always remember...
• Technology is only a tool.  There is a deeper truth about the Hero's Journey.  While the hero may think the Elixir (Excalibur, the Holy Grail, Odysseus's return to Ithaca) is the true purpose of the trip, it is not.  As often said to the point of cliche, the journey itself is more important.  The discoveries you make, the change you become (or the "becoming" of the students you empower around you!) during your educational journey is much more enduring than the fact that you used, say, TodaysMeet in a lesson. Teachers should focus on certain tools to enact certain effects -- intentionality is always key in successful teaching -- but never lose sight of the greater academic goals and the "why?" of your unit and lesson.  Using edtech only for edtech's sake will not win points or facilitate critical thinking.  You are not a "techer" but a teacher.

As I wrap up my introductory blog post, let me say specifically to the Shelby County educators whose rank I have now joined -- I'm humbled to become part of your district, excited to be part of your edtech journey, and thankful in advance for how much your suggestions and expertise will enrich my journey as well.