Skip to main content

Thank You for 20 Years.

By
After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many yay me moments. But after 20 years, I think I'll soak this one in.
Post a Comment

Virtual Learning Days

Image
By

My school district will be out next week to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Over these days students will be assigned virtual learning assignments to be completed at home with the assistance of their Chromebooks. I'm designing a series of daily activities for my students using a number of resources. I just wanted to do a quick share and provide some 1 minute videos just in case you were interested in trying these tools out.

Pear Deck

I will be providing guided content instruction and videos through the use of student paced Pear Decks. These are Google Slide decks with added interactivity via the Pear Deck for Slides add-on. Some slides have videos embedded and others have the ability for students to respond to prompts. In student paced mode, students join the deck via a link and progress at their own pace. The teacher is then able to view their progress and responses to prompts in real time.

To learn more about using Pear Deck for virtual learning, check out this post by Stacey Roshan.

Gimkit

Gimkit is an online quizzing platform that my students love. It lets students answer questions at their own pace and shop for upgrades and powerups. Gimkits are usually run with everyone playing at the same time. But Gimkit has the option for students to join a game and attempt to reach an goal asynchronously. To do this, first a teacher must make a class and have students join it via a link. The teacher then validates those students. Finally, teachers create an assignment with a Kit and push out the link to students.


Flipgrid

I have traditionally used the video response tool Flipgrid for students to record reflection on their learning. But I plan to deploy it differently over the next week. I'm asking students to work as a class to create a key to the problems I will be assigning them. Each student will record a video working out a problem I specifically assign them. The host of new tools available in the Flipgrid camera will be a big help. These include whiteboard background, text, drawing, and importing pictures. I'll create a topic for each problem set.


I plan on using Pear Decks as the primary mode of instruction with links to simulations from PhET to help with the learning and possibly building labs around these simulations. Then students will practice their understanding with possibly a Gimkit or a set of problems in our learning management system Canvas.  Flipgrid will be great for creating those student generated answer keys in AP.  But if we are away longer than a week, it would be a great place for students to create or upload presentations demonstrating their understanding of the concepts they are studying. 

I'm sure I'll be having a little time to blog while we are out so I look forward to updating and maybe sharing some of the specific work we are doing. As alwyas, would love to hear what you are doing.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

By
So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot ...
14 comments
Read more

Personalized Learning Tasks and Roles

By
Yesterday, I read a great post by Jim Rickabaugh dealing with the roles of learner and teacher in a personalized learning environment by looking at tasks . The roles were set up on a continuum. This article timed perfectly with a reflection on part of Students at the Center by Allison Zmuda and Bena Kallick on idea generation and task development I had in mind. These two works are the focus of my reflection here. I think a key misunderstand teachers have when it comes to digging into personalizing learning is that for planning purposes, we no longer begin with standards but with student desires.  I believe like all good instruction, we need to start with the standards.  Think about it, standards are what we want all learners to know and be able to do as a result of passing through our educational system. That is why it is essential that we make sure that standards are representative of what we believe is important for learners to be informed and productive in th...
1 comment
Read more

Pear Deck 101 + Q&A

By
  Last week, I presented as a part of Pear Deck’s Pear Fair 2020. My presentation was Pear Deck 101 for Google Slides. During the presentation, there was a live chat. Many people said it went too fast for a 101 Session. Luckily, it was recorded so it can be rewatched.  Also, many said that they wanted to know how to build a Pear Deck first. I structured the presentation to show what Pear Deck was before showing how to make one. Perhaps that wasn’t the best structure. But, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of showing what something is before showing how to make it. The presentation, which can be watched below, was structured in several different sections What is Pear Deck? Providing an overview of the experience from the Teacher and Student perspectives. How do you build a Pear Deck in Google Slides? How do you start a Pear Deck presentation? How do you end a Pear Deck presentation? Here is the Slideshow I shared during the session bit.ly/pearfair101 Time really flew in...
2 comments
Read more