The Power of Video

What's the best app or tool you have on your iPad? Surprisingly, it is one of the simplest, and yet most versatile options you have - the camera. This feature gives students the ability to share their learning and their work with others in an incredibly user friendly way.  Students are also motivated when know their work is going to be on camera and shared with others.

So what are some ways you could incorporate the use of the camera tool in your classroom? One option to try would be to use the camera for students to share their learning and explain their thinking behind a problem or standard.  Not only does this cement that information for the student, but it gives the teacher an insight on the thought process of that specific student.  The teacher can use that information to further personalize the learning of the student to meet his or her needs. In this specific example, students were able to upload and share their videos on Seesaw to share with others. Imagine the pride a student has after sharing his or her video with the entire class!

Another great way to incorporate the camera into a classroom would be to use iMovie to create a movie of the students’ writing.  This example is from a first grade classroom where the students learned about all the features of fairy tales and were able to use Legos to help inspire their own stories.  Once they had written their fairy tales, the students were able to take pictures of each scene of their fairy tale and record their voice reading their fairy tale.  Once they were done with their movie, they were able to share it with their class. Each student had such self satisfaction when sharing their video with others in seeing their video start from a written story and turn into a masterpiece!

This year has been the year of the green screen! Teachers from many grade levels have given students the opportunity to create green screen videos explaining a topic or a story using historical characters. Students use the app DoInk to put together their video with a background of their choosing that helps to support their topic of learning.  In the example below, students were given the opportunity to explain a math topic of their choice and share it with the rest of their class.  In a flipped math classroom, this is a great feature for the teacher to use in upcoming years since the students love hearing from fellow students on how to work out a problem.

How much do you use video in your classroom? How could it enhance the learning of your students? How could it give you more information about each of your students? I challenge you to try one of these or just the camera in general in your classroom and see what an impact it can make!

3 Hashtags for Authentic Learning: Thank You Twitter

Confession:

Four years ago I didn’t own a smart phone and I wasn’t on social media. Fast forward to 2017 and not only do I own a smartphone, but I’ve fully embraced Twitter for professional development and as a way to connect with educators and their classrooms globally.  

Social Media on the Rise:

PEW Research began tracking social media use in 2005, when just 5% of adults were connected; today 69% of the public uses some type of social media.  Social Media is here to stay. Check out how powerful social media is by going to the Internet in Real Time which actively documents a variety of social media platforms.

Authentic Learning Via Twitter:

Eden Prairie Schools ties Authentic Learning to the following four tenants: task, purpose, resource and audience.  Utilizing Twitter I have found what seems like a limitless number of possibilities in implementing the tenants. What follows below are three authentic learning opportunities (thank you Twitter) that are currently resonating with me:  

#MysterySkype

Invented by teachers, Mystery Skype is an educational thinking challenge played by two classrooms using a video conferencing software/app such as Skype or Google Hangout.  The aim of the challenge is to determine the location of the other classroom by asking each other yes/no questions and completing research. Mystery Skype is engaging and inspires learning through the use of authenticity, the 4C's, speaking and listening, technology, research, geography standards and more!

A few resources to explore in order to start your own #MysterySkype journey:

• Paul Solarz’s Website for Mystery Skype by Paul Solarz's @paulsolarz
• Roles for a MysterySkype and Questions to Get You Started in MysterySkype by Pernille Ripp @pernilleripp
• Mystery Skype - Microsoft in Education

#QuadBlogging

Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano @langwitches in an blog post title Blogging is NOT Analog Writing in Digital Spaces, shares the following:

“Blogging in education is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience, while observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as on documents, reflects, organizes and makes one’s learning and thinking visible and searchable!

Blogging is not analog writing in digital spaces.

Blogging is not an activity, but a process. The process includes reading, writing, commenting and connecting. It is about reciprocating and an emphasis on quality, not just publishing.”

With #QuadBlogging your class is collaborating with three other classrooms over the course of a month. Each week a different classroom’s writing is in the spotlight and the other classes are leaving quality comments. Quality (thoughtful) comments include the following:

• Make a personal connection, i.e. what resonated with you and why?
• What question(s) do you have about what was shared?
• What can you add-on that is relevant to what has already been written.
• Provide a sincere compliment.

A few resources to explore in order to start your own #QuadBlogging journey:

• Quadblogging:  offers the why and how to quadblogging, support, free registration for your class, and more
• 10 + 1 Steps to Meaningful Blogging and How to do Student Blogging by Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension by Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp)
• 10 Ways that Social Media (aka blogging) can Improve Writing in Your Classroom: the Innovative Educator, by Lisa Nielsen, guest post by Vicki Davis

#GRA17

Looking towards the 2017-18 school year?!?  Global Read Aloud 2017 #GRA17 is currently signing up classrooms.  This opportunity runs for six weeks from early October to mid November of 2017 and the idea is quite straightforward.  Classrooms all read the same book and then connect with other classrooms around the world to share learning.  The Global Read Aloud has been taking place since 2010 and has reached more than 2 million students.

Call to Action:

Make a commitment to authentic learning via twitter in your classroom!  The three suggestions above are only the tip of the iceberg for options using twitter to connect. Share your favorite authentic learning experiences using twitter or other types of social media in the comment section below.

Laurie

@ljcallies

Instructional Excellence Coordinator

Department of Personalized Learning and Instruction

Instructional Strategies for Differentiation

"Differentiation is not really one entity, but rather synthesizes a number of educational theories and practices. Bringing those theories and practices together helps teachers address their classroom activity in a manner that is more holistic than fragmented...In the end, classrooms are complex and messy places. Research that tells the full story about any classroom, school, district, or approach to teaching is also predictably messy, complex, difficult to come by, and nearly always equivocal. Such is the nature of the teaching-learning enterprise." 

Carol Ann Tomlinson and Susan Demirsky Allan, Leadership for Differentiating Schools & Classrooms, 2000.

The terms "differentiation", "rigor", "depth", complexity" and even "personalized learning" are used so often in educational literature that a few things can happen:

1. The definition of the terms and how to apply the concepts to the classroom can feel overwhelming and complicated 
2. The definition of the terms and how to apply the concepts to the classroom are made to be too simplistic.  How many times have we heard, "Differentiation is just good teaching." So... now if I am not sure how to carry out some differentiation I am embarrassed to ask for help because I have just been told "it is just good teaching".
3. The terms become minimized due to overuse and lack of definition that teachers ignore the concepts and/or hope the terms are just a fad that will just go away with time.

With this in mind, the Eden Prairie gifted specialists reviewed numerous articles/research on differentiation and rigor. We spent time synthesizing the work from various authors and leaders in the field. We developed common definitions and rubric for our use.  Our hope is that these would be common definitions for all teachers in the district to use with all students, not just gifted learners.  

• A Definition of Differentiation
• Differentiation IS and IS NOT
• A Definition of Rigor
• Rigor IS and IS NOT

"DI is mostly about what we do ahead of time, not how we interact or conduct the lesson at the time. There are some good aspects going on in the classroom, but that facilitation can only occur with purposeful and thoughtful planning. I can make flexible decisions because I've already prepared the resources or other avenues in anticipation of student needs. Am I always prepared for everything? No way. I get better with time, however." 

Rick Wormeli, MiddleWeb List Serve Response, "Getting Started with Differentiation", 2003.

Differentiation and adding rigor can feel daunting...so many methods...what to choose...how to do it. Quality differentiated instruction is rooted in meaningful curriculum. It is very hard to differentiate or add rigor if the content is very basic - not every piece of content could be or should be differentiated. Does the content have concepts worth exploring at a deeper level? If no, then make sure the students know the basic elements and move on. If yes, then this is where you will have fun with differentiated instruction and rigor.

Ask yourself:

• What is the essential learning? What do I want the students to be able to know, understand, and do as a result of interacting with the curriculum? Quality differentiation “teaches up” and ensures “respectful tasks” (based on essential understandings, equally engaging, requiring high level thought for all students).
• If you use a pre-assessment what is it showing you about each learner and what do you do next with that information? How does this information inform your instruction? Flexible grouping strategies are heavily used in a differentiated classroom.
• If you do not have a pre-assessment - why not and can you develop one? Not using a pre-assessment or not using the information from the pre-assessment can be one of the biggest barriers to being able to differentiate the content. When we don't find out what the students already know how can we ever expect to bring forward meaningful content they can learn.
• Are there other resources - text or online - that might enhance the content you use? It is hard to differentiate if you "run out of content"; if you have limited content and some students show you in the pre-assessment they already know it ...now what? With online resources (for you and the students) this should be less of an issue as it has been in the past but you still need to think this through as you are planning the lesson/unit. Again, not having enough sources of content or knowing how to expand the content you have is a barrier to rigor and differentiation. Being prepared ahead of time with your content options saves scrambling in the middle of a unit or lesson for "more stuff" to support the struggling learner or the advanced learner...or worse ignoring that some students need the content in a different way altogether.
• What strategies/tools can you use that will push you to use your content in a deeper way? These resources include many familiar strategies used in EPS: Low Prep and High Prep Differentiation Strategies and Differentiated Instruction Strategies for Teachers
• Assessments both formative and summative must always connect to the goals and objectives of the student learning. "Differentiated assessment is an ongoing process of evaluation where the teacher gathers information and data before, during, and after instruction to better facilitate the learning. This process ensures success for all students in the differentiated class with data provided from a variety of sources assisting in giving an overall view of student achievement. It is essential that when assessing students in the differentiated class, assessment is authentic meaning it offers students a variety of tasks demonstration real-life skills, tells the educator if the student has acquired the skills or concepts, is based on standard criteria to achieve validity, and guides students for roles in adult life (Chapman & King, 2012).”  Differentiated Strategies Wikispaces. http://differentiatedstrategies.wikispaces.com/Differentiated+Strategies+for+Assessment

“Differentiation is making sure that the right students get the right learning tasks at the right time.  Once you have a sense of what each student holds as “given” or “known” and what he or she needs in order to learn, differentiation is no longer an option; it is an obvious response.”

Lorna M. Earl, Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning, 2003

Sue Feigal-Hitch

Resources:

Depth & Complexity on Byrdseed.com

Myth-Busting Differentiated Instruction: 3 Myths and 3 Truths

Differentiated Instruction Resource Roundup

Examples of How to Differentiate in the Classroom

Differentiated Strategies for Instruction

Edutopia video on differentiation

ASCD video on differentiated instruction