The Power of Forms

One of the tools that got recommended over and over again at the CLS Tech conference was Google Forms, one of the many types of Google Docs you can make.  I think almost everyone on our team went to at least one session about using forms.  The talk Mary and I went to specifically about this was "Google Forms for Interventions, Assessments, and Classroom Walkthroughs" by Jody Oliver.  (presentation and sample forms here)

One of the great uses she shared with us for these was as a short formative assessment at the beginning or end of class (for our program, I thought we could even send them as homework).  You set up 3-5 questions to check for understanding and embed the form in your class web page or email it to students.  Students answer the questions and submit the form.  All the data goes to a spreadsheet where you can quickly look to see what problems were missed.  For even better analysis of the data, you can use a tool called Flubaroo which works with Google Docs.  Hints: Make all the questions required in order to submit the form.  Have a space for students to put their name.

In another talk, an English teacher described how she had a generic form on her web page which included a space for a name and then an open space for a typed answer.  She used this same form over and over again when she wanted to do a quick check for understanding and then emptied the resulting spreadsheet before asking the next question.

Jody also talked about using forms to do classroom walkthroughs when administrators are evaluating teachers and to share student concerns among staff.  For our small school where we don't see students every day, the latter use seems like a great idea.  Deb, who also went to a talk about Google Docs, even developed a form like that for us during the conference.

The Backchannel

On Saturday at the CLS Tech conference, I went to a talk entitled, "Using the Backchannel to Empower Students" by John Miller.  (Notes from this talk available as a Google Doc here.)  This was a great talk by a practicing teacher about using the concept of the backchannel in class.  We'd been introduced to the idea at the keynote the day before, but at this workshop I was able to use my Android phone to actually participate in the backchannel.

The basic idea is that you use an online service that allows you and the rest of the audience to send short notes in real time while you are listening to a presentation or a speaker.  You can use Twitter and mark all your comments with a hash agreed on beforehand or you can use one of several online services (TodaysMeet and Chatzy were two that he suggested) or Edmodo or you can create a Google Doc that is shared with everybody.  At the beginning of the presentation, you announce the address and then the audience (or class) can ask questions, make comments, disagree, or whatever.  Think of it as the substitute for talking behind your hand or passing notes.

It was pretty exciting to participate in the backchannel during the presentation.  Audience members threw out additional ideas, their opinions about the tools, and even asked a few questions.  In the presentations at the conferences that used backchannels, some put it on the group screen for a short time, and others never looked at it during the presentation.

John described how he used the backchannel in class as a way of checking for understanding by asking a question aloud but then the responses are sent on the backchannel.  He also used it while Skyping in guest speakers by having six or so students using the backchannel to summarize what was said.  For some other ideas about how to use this tool in the classroom, check out this blog post.

Because we work mostly with small groups at our school, I'm not sure how useful a backchannel would be for our work with kids.  It also requires 1:1 computing, which we don't have in a large group.  I'm thinking it would be interesting when I do presentations for adults and could give me a lot of useful feedback about the work I do in curriculum consulting.

Beginning at the End- Personal Learning Networks

On the last day of the CA League of Schools K-12 Technology and RTI Conference, I decided I wouldn't go to any workshops that were wildly different from what I'd done so far.  I went looking for workshops that would reinforce what I already had learned.  It had been emphasized over and over that people were using their Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) to help them expand their use of technology in schools.   So I went to Mark Wagner's workshop called "Personal Learning Networks for Educators: Now with Google+". (notes and slides from that workshop here)
Now, I already had a Google+ account through which I've connected with a few friends and I belong to some email lists where I sometimes connect to some good resources... but I didn't have a Twitter account, I rarely used my Google Reader to plug into the blogs I like, and I honestly knew the the keynote speaker, Will Richardson, only through books.
 Mark suggested that there were four reasons to get started on creating a networks.  They were:

• Make Connections
• Make Contributions
• Make Conversation
• Make Requests

Here were his basic steps to getting started:
1. Join a few blogs and start writing one when you are ready.   To that end, I dusted off Google Reader, installed Feedly on my iPad to make it easier to read, and subscribed to a couple of the packaged feeds in Google Reader (Edtech, Education, and eLearning) to round out the blogs I already had.  I also helped get this blog started so I could start adding to the stream.
2. Join Classroom 2.0.  Haven't done this one yet.
3. Join Twitter and follow others.  Done.  I was encouraged by the suggestion of several speakers that you don't have to read EVERY tweet that goes past.  I mainly picked people that had tweeted using the #clstech hash.
4. Join Google+ and follow a shared circle.  I slurped Mark's Edtech Circle with almost 500 people into my existing Google+ account.  I think I'm going to watch that for a while and winnow it down to people that interest me and to whom I feel like I have things to say.  I'm planning to make my own Edtech circle and adding people to it until I have a group that seems to work for me.
Throughout all of this, I keep remembering Will Richardson saying he probably only reads 5% of the tweets he gets.  I decided comparing the stream of information to a real stream was an apt analogy.  When I go for a hike and I watch the water tumble over the rocks in a stream, I don't get caught up in seeing ALL the water go past.  I watch until my mind is full and then I keep hiking.  So I need to think of this networking the same way.
Oh, yes, so you can find me on Twitter @HeddiCraft and on Google+ as Heddi Craft.

Deb's Introduction

My brother was the one who sneaked off from Junior High during the school day to program punch cards at the University computer lab with his equally nerdy friends. I was the wordsmith who wrote for the paper and hovered a bit forlornly on the outskirts of theater nerd-dom. Worse, I wanted to work with kids. I had little hope of being "techie," nor of breaking into the burgeoning tech industry that might have made me into the soon-to-be generation of smart, rich nerds. Alas.

But I was considered at the forefront of technology as a beginning teacher, and in fact, had two pre-service jobs running computer labs at schools (one in Davenport and one in Chinatown in San Francisco) teaching LOGO, how to make simple pictures in Basic, and writing with Bank Street Writer on Apple IIe's.

Now I'm the "technology liaison" for my small alternative program which really just means I'm one of the technology geeks on the staff who's on a steep learning curve, willing to tinker, tinker, tinker with technology (alone, alongside kids, with my colleagues...) despite being "way behind" many of my students, not to mention my own teenage sons. I now have three iPods, but nothing with the moniker "touch," and my phone is not smart. I use what I have hard, even when it's hard, and when I make the jump to something new I'm stoked and a pretty good learner. Technology is about excitement, frustration, and resilience. It's about learning, unlearning, and relearning. It's about access, creation, and equity.

The technology (and the conversation, teaching, and connection) we got to tinker with at the California League of Schools tech conference in Monterey last weekend makes my fingers itch and my brain sizzle. It's getting easier and easier to use, to connect, to transform, and technology fits the way I want to be as an educator.

One small grant, in combination with a small, dedicated staff, and we are all off and running together, even when we run in different directions or at different speeds. I've done loads of professional growth, but this grant means that for the first time in my career I am doing it with my staff in a way that meets our unique needs. Not to mention we found a matching grant of a sort: Two of us won door prizes comping us another tech conference! I'm off to the CUE conference in Palm Springs in March. If we can each win something else, we can keep leveraging one grant into more and more. And this is only year one of a three year grant. Yippee!

Heddi's Introduction

When I was a kid, my parents were early adopters of technology, though they always seemed to get it wrong.  (anyone remember the Betamax VCR, the Commodore 64, and the Timex Sinclair?)  I grew up to be an early adopter, too, and was the first person in my school to have an internet connection in class in 1995.  We used it for access to AOL through which we connected to some other classrooms and teachers and participated in the GLOBE project.

Since then I've been working in education as a teacher, a curriculum consultant, a director of a resource lending library, a tutor, a classroom volunteer, a parent, and a homeschool teacher.  Most recently I joined the staff at Ocean Alternative Education Center and I'm excited to pursue my continued interest in educational technology with the amazing teachers who work there.