Product vs TED Talk

20 Time has been a new endeavor in biology this year.  While my Anatomy and Physiology students had no problem understanding the idea of the project, I've realized that this is a bit more challenging for biology. From the beginning I have said again and again that they need to produce or accomplish something (A&P can be any topic, but bio needs to be science related).  The TED talk is then for them to showcase in a 5-10min presentation what they DID, and what they LEARNED from the process.

Walking around today in one period I realized 5 different individuals were working on a Google Slides Presentation that was essentially their TED talk.  This was frustrating for me because they were basically spending their entire 20 Time researching and making a presentation.

After reiterating my vision to them again (I think they got it this time), my advice to a couple groups was actually to make an infographic showing all of their research in a unique graphical way.  We did infographics last semester, so this would not be a major stretch for them to accomplish.  Then during their TED talk they can show that infographic, and talk about what they learned about the topic that's worth sharing, as well as what they've learned about the process.

So, my advice to you if you're starting 20 Time, make this VERY CLEAR, and if possible give them some really specific examples.  Again, my juniors and seniors have had no problem with this, but freshman need a bit more hand holding.

Just a quick realization I had today that I needed to document :)

About a month to go before TED talks!

Picture credit: TED

CUE Conference 2016

I just wrapped up my first CUE conference. It was a whirlwind experience bouncing from one session to the next.  The topics I attended varied from NGSS to chrome extensions to even blogging.  It's been an interesting mix of really simple practical tools, to broad pedagogical brush strokes.  Some sessions were so highly sought after that people would be sitting on the floor. I got kicked out by the fire marshal for sitting on the floor in a chrome extension session.  It was a bummer because I wanted to learn from that one.

Going to a conference can be really exciting and there are a million different things that you decide you want to do, and then you go home do little to none of it.  I've gone to enough conferences now that I've learned to try and boil it down to a couple key takeaways.  This time I have this blog as a platform to recap my learning and share my big takeaways.  

I didn't really have any major pedagogical epiphanies from this conference, but really more of an affirmation of what I already do, with some cool little tools I can take and apply in my class.  Below are 3 sessions I thought were useful to my practice. I've shared the links to their original presentations in the titles, and reflected it back to my practice.

 Fair Use- Can I use it?

Nearly all of the tools and practices people are discussing brings up issues of "Can I use it?"  Students, and teachers, often think that just because it's on the internet is free to use, but that's not the case.  Creators of content inherently own copyright to their work, and there are laws about how, why, and when you can use it.  What matters, is if the work you are using is "transformative."  They gave the following quote to help determine this:



Basically it all comes down to how much? How many? How long? If you are using someone's else's content it matters that you are using it in a novel way that will not compromise their actual or potential profit from said work. If you are using the work appropriately, it falls into fair use.

Transformativeness

“When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context.” 

-Joyce Valenza

“Fair use is an argument, not a right”
Again if you can justify that you are transforming the work, you can use it. Use the questions above to verify it. Check out their slides for some interesting stories that emphasized how this has played out in court such as the work of Grateful Dead posters, or Shepard Fairey's colorization of the AP photo of Obama.

Transformative use. Source: Wikipedia

My major take aways:

• I'm not going to get a cease and desist letter for using copyrighted material in my vodcasts so long as I keep them within our Learning Management System, and because I'm using them for educational purposes.

• My students creating their blogs MUST be sure to use copyright free material and learn to give proper attribution (at least a link) to their source. They also need to think of transformative use if they do want to use copyrighted material. As soon as a student publishes work online (which we want them to do, for many reasons), they fall into the spotlight of copyright. I've already been driving this home with my students and we spend a lot of time in the Rookie Module going over this, but I think all of this was really driven home with this presentation.

Next Generation Science Standards- From Know to Do

While the content is still being fine tuned for NGSS, what is known is that there are clear established process type skills. The presenter, Holly Steele, had some nice cards she made to illustrate this.

Credit: Holly Steele From Know to Do Presentation

One topic she discussed was graphing.  Look at those cards and you'll see that graphing is a big component of all of those.  The standards generally don't specify that students should be able to graph, but rather should be able to analyze, interpret, or otherwise construct meaning from a graph.  Any teacher who's ever done graphing knows that students will end up spending most of a class period doing the actual graph. This is not where we want to spend our time. I recently experienced this in my Hunger Games Lab.  I experience two of my classes struggle with how to construct the graphs in the first place, and then another class "got it" right away, but because they were so detail oriented and wanted their graphs to be perfect, they spent an inordinate amount of time on them.  Both are frustrating.

Ms. Steele discussed a tool called Tuva Labs where students can quickly create graphs using various data sets.  What I really like is that it allows them to drag data into x and y axis, choose different types of graphs, explore a variety of possible comparisons.  This really lends itself to questioning, analysis and interpretation, and even corroboration with other data.  While graphing clearly is an important skill, this tool can allow teachers to spend more time on analysis, and less on graphing. 

https://tuvalabs.com

Here's a screenshot of a simple data set.  The attributes on the left can be dragged over.

Once data attributes are added, titles can be added.

 This was a neat tool and I encourage you to check it out.  There are free data sets and then of course they have a paid service that will get you in touch with much more data and lessons that go with it.

Add Diagrams to Background Images

From: Beyond the Presentation: Creative and Innovative Uses for Slides

by Mellissa Oliver

This was a great workshop because it wasn't overly complicated.  It was just some cool specific tools you can do with Google Slides.  Her approach was that you can use just single slide in Google Slides for some simple powerful approaches.  She also talked about more complicated things like creating animations with Slides.  Check out her presentation in the link above for all of the different ideas. I'm going to talk about one of my favorite features.

Ever have kids label a diagram?  Why not have them do it digitally?  She gave the example of labeling the United States.  The basic idea is to insert an image as part of the background so any labeling or adding on the slide won't interfere with template image.    Below are some screenshots of the slide and what I did after playing with it.

Here's a screenshot of the example she gave.  Start by selecting the "background" tab highlighted above.

From here, you can google image search what you're looking for or upload a picture of your choice.

Here's one I created. Once completed, share this slide with students, have them make a copy, edit however you like, and then they turn it in or save it as an image.

Here's one she created with pre made text boxes that students only need to drag and drop.

My Takeaways:

This is great for diagram labeling, graphic organizers, or really any kind of worksheet you normally use.  Once the labeling is completed, students can save or export as an image.  These images could be collected using a Google Form, integrated into a larger project, or any other kind of collaborative effort.  For my class I would probably have them put it on their blogs to showcase their work.

Hopefully these are useful to you too. There's much more I can talk about from the conference, but it's helpful just to focus on three for now. If you try any of these or have ideas of your own, share in the comments!

20 Time Update

This blog originated as my documentation of implementing 20 Time in my Anatomy and Physiology class.  It's become pretty difficult for me to maintain this blog in any kind of regular interval with everything I have going on in my life, but I wanted to give a quick update about 20 time so far this year.

The highlights:
I am doing 20 Time in all of my classes: Biology (9th and 10th graders) and Anatomy and Physiology (11th and 12th graders).  I introduced it in December to all of my classes, let them contemplate their ideas over the break and a few weeks in January.  Then they gave their elevator pitches the beginning of February where they explained the idea and rough plan, and now they're off and running with their projects, blogging every other week on what they're doing.  Like last year, while A&P can do theirs on any topic, Biology must do their project on something science related.


"Elevator Pitch" instead of "Shark Tank"
Last year I had my students pitch their ideas to the class similar to that of the show Shark Tank, and then had the class ask questions and give feedback.  It was good, but it took a while.  This year they had to do an elevator pitch. I explained the idea as if they were suddenly in an elevator with a potential investor and only had a minute to get across their idea, general plan, and what they need from that person.

We have an online discussion feature in our learning management system, Canvas, that allows students to record and upload videos.  I had them record their elevator pitch this way and then post it in the discussion. Then the class was assigned for homework the task of watching the video, and commenting with constructive feedback to help the author refine their ideas.  Then when they came to class, I actually had the students give their elevator pitches again, in small group settings.  This gave additional support and refinement for each student.  The down side for me was that it was hard for me to listen to all of them, and it's taken me a long while to watch the pitches on my own to give them my feedback.   I've had to do this more through individual conversations and comments on their first blog posts.

Using Google Forms to get all blogs in one place
This is kind of a no brainer. I should have done this last year but didn't and it made a lot of work for me to get everyone's blogs in one place.  This year with over 100 different projects, I needed a concise way to get blog urls.  I created this form to quickly capture the information I needed.

Check out the list of topics and urls from the form.  Even better check out some of the student blogs and give them some comments.  They've all just done one blog post, and will be doing their second.  Some students are utilizing their class blogs, so you can even see some of their work too.

Extreme Ownership in the Classroom

I've decided to start doing some occasional posts on books I read or listen to on my commute to work.  Recently I finished listening to Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.  Willink and Babin are former Navy SEALS who have created a consulting firm (see Echelon Front) and accompanying book to apply the leadership skills they've learned and taught as leaders in their unit, Task Unit Bruiser, to leadership roles in the business world and beyond.  

The book follows a 3 part format of first telling a story from their tours in Iraq or training as SEALS, then teaching a principle learned from the experience, and third an application to the business world where through their consulting business they applied the principle to help their clients improve in their desired needs.

The books is great.  I highly recommend it.  First and foremost, I have an even greater appreciation and respect for our Navy SEALS.  It's common for us civilians to say thank you for the commitment and sacrifice our men and women in the armed forces give for our country, but the stories the authors tell and the passion you hear in their voices, make me feel we should be doing even more to thank them for their service.  I am in awe of not just the sacrifices, but the passion they have to be the absolute best they possibly can for their teams, their country, and their families.  I've always known SEALS were bad ass, but they're not just great at dominating the battlefield, they embody what it means to be the absolute best you can possibly be, and because of this they are superior on so many levels.  We have a lot to learn from them.

So why am I writing on this blog, about education?
 Their book is mostly about leadership principles, and the application is exclusively tailored to the business world, but I think there is a lot of overlap with leadership hierarchies at the school level as well as the application of teaching leadership practices.  After all, our students will undoubtedly grow up to be leaders.  We should help them become the best leaders they can me.   Below are some of the topics they teach in the book, and I'll discuss the connections I've made to education and some the ideas I have for my class.

Extreme Ownership.

The title of their book, and the foundation of it all,  extreme ownership is a practice that means as a leader you have to take ownership of everything in your world.  If you have a problem with your boss, it's not their fault.  It's because you haven't made it clear to them what you need.  If your team fails at something, it's because you didn't create the systems and plans to guarantee success.   Don't make excuses.  Take ownership of everything. And if you do this well, your subordinates will take on the attribute themselves. Good leaders who exhibit extreme ownership, breed a culture of extreme ownership.

Teacher vs. Administrator
I think this is a huge lesson for me as a teacher.  I have totally blamed administrators before for not supporting me, or other teachers, in one thing or another.  Did I ever go to them and explain the problem from my perspective? Was I assertive and made my case known? No.  And I think a lot of us do this.  It's very easy to play the blame game, but administrators are detached from the classroom and because of the nature of their job, are going to miss things.  It's up to us as the educators with firsthand knowledge of the situation to make our needs known up the chain of command.

Group Projects
I just finished a big group project in my bio class.  Students were working in groups of 4 and were tasked with making a 5 minute video about an ecosystem of their choice and corresponding threats to it.  I tend to make my group work very egalitarian and this year I really scaffolded the group work so that they would plan out daily tasks for each person and set benchmarks for their team. I tried to create a team contract that would force them to work equally.  For many this helped, and it was a big improvement from past years, but inevitably you get group work that ends up like this:

I had a student come talk to me on the day it was due who was basically the guy on the left.  She tried so hard to collaborate with her team.  They had agreed on an equal share, yet some didn't do their job completely.  As an instinctive leader she tried to help to take up the slack and do more, but in the end she just burned herself out, felt taken advantage of, and the group still didn't do all they were supposed to do.  

Her and I had a good conversation, and I had to explain to her the key thing about leadership and one that the SEALS know all to well, being a leader, and taking Extreme Ownership, does not mean doing all the work.  It means that a leader must be assertive.  They must communicate exceptionally well with their team and let their needs be known.  Letting group-mates walk all over you is your fault, not theirs.   As I said, she was an instinctive leader, but she has not yet learned this key understanding.

Take away: Create leadership opportunities in the classroom.
The book and the discussion (which I feel like I have repeatedly every year) has really made me wonder about creating more leadership opportunities in my class.  I do believe students need to learn to work in groups with equal stature as these are often the kinds of groups kids will collaborate in as adults in the workplace. Yet, I think they should also have opportunities to be a leader as well as work in a group with a leader.  They should be given opportunities to have autonomy and take ownership for a group.  But if we do give these opportunities, they should be done incrementally in environments were they feel challenged and pushed, but allowed to fail and learn from their mistakes.  The SEALS spend months training and creating scenarios that will help their leaders learn these lessons before they go on to the battlefield.  I feel like we should be doing the same.

Student Roles/Decentralized Power
The authors also talk about the importance of decentralized power.  A key point: Leaders can't really control more than 6 people effectively.  This underscores the importance of spreading leadership roles out so that a leader isn't spread so thin trying to manage too many people.  Man isn't this truth?  Think about how hard it is to control a big class and ensure everyone is learning.  It's not possible. Kids fall through the cracks.  What if kids had the opportunities to really help each other and complete the mission together (which I determine as the leader)?

In a way I have been headed in this direction for the last year.  At the start of this year I created several roles for the class in my effort to have a more collaborative, student-centered, classroom that was less dependent on me as their source of learning.  Despite my best efforts, some of the roles have just not worked.  I think it's because those roles were not really leadership roles, and kids didn't really have autonomy or the opportunity to take extreme ownership.   Next year I want to rework these roles.  Since I have groups of 4, perhaps each time I do a new seating chart a group will be assigned a group leader, and every student will have the opportunity over the course of the year to be a leader.  The trick will be to think about the tasks they'll be responsible for, and the scaffolding I will need to provide throughout the year to teach leadership attributes, so that person doesn't just become a dictator who delegates and becomes overbearing, but exhibits extreme ownership and communicates well with their peers.  

Imagine, if I could just teach the practice of extreme ownership in groups of four, what kind of a culture of extreme ownership I could cultivate in the class?  Talk about collaborative, student-centered, classroom.  Kind of exciting.



Immediate Next Steps:
We're on break next week, but when we return I plan to talk to students about different types of conflict styles (i.e. passive, passive aggressive, aggressive, and assertive) as this is a key piece of communication either as a leader or otherwise. I have a self assessment I found that I'll have them take to figure out what their dominant style is.  Then I'm going to have them watch the video below about how to be more assertive. From there, when they do their written reflection for the unit they'll be asked to comment on their collaboration during the group project and how they can be more assertive in future group work.

Man this turned into a long post. There's so much more I want to talk about, so maybe I'll revisit some of the others later. I know I've taken some really valuable lessons from the book to take into my practice as a leader in the classroom, and a leader among colleagues through my role on tech committees and social emotional learning.  It's also really made me think about ways I can build leadership opportunities in the classroom for students.  It's a skill like so many others we have to teach.

Teachers, what opportunities do you give in the classroom to help students develop as leaders? 

Blogging Biology Lab Conclusions

One of the big experiments this year has been pushing most writing for my biology and anatomy classes on to student curated blogs.  It has been a really great experience and something that I think has enhanced the classroom learning experience.

I still give copies of labs, and students write on them in class, but when the lab is done they get out the chromebooks, and type up their conclusions on the their blog.  What's even better, students are excited during lab time and take pictures of their experiments and embed those into their blog.

Here's a student example from a recent DNA extraction lab.  http://ronitsbioblog.blogspot.com

When students are finished, they submit the url of their link to our learning management system, Canvas, where I can see and grade all of their submissions.  This has allowed me to utilize rubrics and peer evaluation, grade assignments quicker, and students get to keep copies of the labs as tools for studying.  The one draw back I've found is that some students are slow keyboarders, so it takes these students longer to type the conclusion than handwrite them.

Here's what I see in the speed grader view of Canvas of a student submission.

The blog is really becoming a digital portfolio of work completed.  Scrolling through nearly a semester's worth of work, you can really appreciate the hard work they've put in and they get to showcase to the world their learning journey in my class.

I'll showcase more of our blogging on future posts.

The Rookie Module

Every year of my teaching I always start too fast.  I love biology, and always can't wait to dive right into content.  Then, about 2/3 of the year I realize my shortcomings as students forget basic class routines, and I feel like they're not working as cooperatively as I'd like.  A couple years ago, I decided to implement "rookie mistakes" as part of my beginning of the year routine building.  I wrote down all those rookie things mid year that students forget, but should still remember.  Then at the start of the next year, I taught them these rookie items with the explanation that it's ok to be a rookie now, but you need to know these things the rest of the year.  When those rookie questions came up, I just told them that was rookie question, and made them ask someone who's not a rookie.  It really helped a lot with class routines and procedures because nobody wants to be a rookie.  Accountability went up.

But last year I still got that feeling like more needed to be done.  I wasn't getting as many rookie questions, but I was still not experiencing the collaborative class I was hoping for.  

This year I set out to really front load.  The year is made in the first month of school.  The classroom climate, efficiency, efficacy, and overall experience is built on the foundation of the first weeks of school as we establish those routines, expectations, and student connections.

Here's what I did in Week 1: 

"The Rookie Module"

We've moved to the learning management system Canvas. I really like it, and have moved everything onto it.  I created a unit with all the stuff I wanted my students to know before I teach them a bit of biology.  Below are several screenshots of my Rookie Module.

Everything in one place a new student needs to know.

The first page featured several screencasts showing where things are on Canvas, how to manage their settings, where things can be found, and how to turn in assignments.

The Class Overview page basically had the syllabus (which we went over in class on the first day) and a vodcast introducing them to my flipped classroom.  Here's the video they watched, which I had them do as homework.

Your Flipped Classroom

Building on what I really took away from Tom Solarz's book Learning Like a Pirate, we're creating even more of a student centered classroom.  We had students on day 3 sign up for student roles.  Class-sourcing many of things I used to do, or want to do, but don't have time or energy to do myself.

Students set up their Google Accounts and shared it with me on a spreadsheet.

We're doing a lot of things online and I feel very strongly about teaching digital citizenship, so they watched a video about digital citizenship, read some about it (we also discussed it in class as part of our rules), and then they participated in an online discussion about what it means to them and how they will practice good digital citizenship.

I used to spend a bunch of time setting up the notebook on day 3.  Now I just put a video tutorial of it on Canvas, and let students set it up at home or in class, depending on where they were in their module.  I included the documents they should paste in as well.

From here they then went on to set up their biology blog (I'll post about this in another post), which they then turned-in via Canvas (a skill they need to know).

When they were all done, they had to take a rookie quiz (also on Canvas).  This assessed them on each of different parts of the rookie module to see if they have moved beyond rookie status.  I required a 90% for them to move on Unit 1 with the ability to retake as much as they needed.  Really, I should have made it 85%, because some spent too much time re-taking the quiz.

How I implemented it

 We spent day 2 of class getting Canvas set up and starting the module, that night for homework they watched the "Your flipped classroom" vodcast, and then the next day they continued on the module.  Whatever wasn't finished, was homework.  

Reflection

I would say the Rookie Module was a great success. It really gave a nice orientation for the start of the year. It taught them how to use Canvas, front loaded everything I wanted them to know that was on the digital side of the class (and some in class things too), and created a nice foundation for what we're going to do the rest of the year.  What's more, it's a great resource that students can go back to throughout the year.  

Today, the start of week 4, I had a new student.  I simply told her what tonight's homework was and where to find it, and then showed her the rookie module.  She now has the next week to work through it at her own pace, and won't feel nearly as lost as most new students would.

Some Highlights of Week 2 and 3:

• Students completed a Rookie Scavenger Hunt to find where things are in the class and review lab safety expectations.
• Reviewed the Rookie Module.
• We dove into our first unit on the scientific method, did a lab, posted the results of the lab to their blog, and then used the peer-grading function of Canvas to grade their lab reports.
• Took their first test on the scientific method module. 

It's been a while

It's been a while since I last posted.  Let's just say the end of the year got pretty crazy and then I went on summer mode.  It was hard for me to get motivated to update this blog.  But now the school year has started, and I'm back to trying to update this blog more regularly.

Since I never did follow up with the conclusion of 20 Time in my Anatomy and Physiology class last year, I'll have to do one at some point soon. Suffice to say it was great experience.  It definitely wasn't perfect, and I have some things I will tweak, but it was meaningful experience for most students and rewarding for me to see how they grew through the experience.  I will be doing it again this year, and to some extent with my biology classes too.

This school year is going to be great year.  I'm really trying to take my biology class to the next level. For the last 6 years I've taught a flipped class, which has been a great experience.  But now I see it becoming much more than that as I try make it truly blended and student centered.  Below is a list of new things I'm doing in my class.

1. Pilot a BYOD program for the district.
2.  Use student blogging for documenting student learning, increasing communication and collaboration, and reflecting on what they've learned.
3. Student Centered Classroom: Increased student responsibility so I become more of the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.
4. Class Twitter Page (@OrreBiology) to showcase what we're doing in class and network with parents and others outside of our city.
5. Mindfulness and Social Emotional Learning.  This is something I've been doing since last year, but I'm really looking to increase this more.
6. Genius Hour/20 Time. For bio, we're calling this "inquiry hour."  I'm going to try and squeeze this into the year.


It's a lot of new stuff, but professionally I'm just not happy unless I'm really trying new things.  I feel like I can always make the class more interactive, fun, and a better learning experience for all.  My goal for this blog this year is to document my progress with each of these and reflect on my experience.

Here's to a great year.