Mo Physics Mo Problems

Student Voice is a major buzzword in educational circles. A primary use of educational tools is to amplify student voice in the classroom and broadcast it to the world. As educators, I feel we need to not forget the importance of our voice. We all have stories and lessons we have learned. Just like a classroom can benefit from hearing the voice of every student, the educational community can benefit from hearing the voice of all educators and their experiences. I have been publishing this blog for 4 years now. It has been great for reflection. Although it doesn’t reach a very large audience, it has allowed my voice and story to reach others across the globe. This year, I have been extremely lucky to have my voice further amplified. But, it has not simply been due to technology. It has been due to a number of wonderful people who thought what I had to say could be of some benefit to a larger audience. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those individuals. It has probably

This week a team of teachers from my school presented at the Convening on Personalized Learning. Our presentation was on UDL (Universal Design for Learning) strategies and tools we use in the classroom. The format of our presentation was inspired by something we saw at ISTE 18 called Get Goog-Smacked: An Epic Smackdown of G Suite Tools and Teaching Tips which was presented by Kasey Bell, Eric Curtis, Matt Miller, and Vicky Davis. The Smackdown structure was high energy and introduced a lot of different resources in a limited amount of time. So, we appropriated the Smackdown structure for our presentation All Means All: An Epic Smackdown of Tools to Increase Equity for All Learners. The team included Special Education teacher and department head Andelee Espinosa , english teacher Shannon Maki , special education teacher Stephanie Radomski, special education teacher Ryan Milbrath, associate principal Matt Schroeder , and myself. In organizing our presentation we categorized our t

An article I read on Edutopia motivated me to take the first step into something I’d been considering for a year now.  That is organizing an edcamp at my school in the Elmbrook School District.  This blog post is basically an attempt to ask others in my district (or anyone else in my area) if they would be interested in being a part of this effort in some way shape or form. First off, if you are not sure what an edcamp is it is a free one day conference.  It is organized and run by educators for educators. I say educators but they’re usually open to any stakeholder who wants to register.  There is no set agenda before the day of simply a schedule divided into hour blocks for sessions to take place. At the start of the day, attendees pitch ideas for sessions which create the agenda for the day.   The idea is there are a number of sessions going on at any one time and participants are free to move to a session of their choice without any sort of pre registration. In the simpl

I had the opportunity to read a wonderful and super rich book about grading practices by Cathy Vatterott called Rethinking Grading : Meaningful Assessment for Standards-Based Learning . The book is not only for those thinking bout implementing standards based grading.  It has important, research based strategies that we should all be using in our classroom from crafting learning objectives, forms of assessment, and the power of feedback. I put together some of my takeaways from the book in a single diagram.  This image can't do justice to the depth of the book. My highlights covered over 10 pages in a Google Doc.  So, search it out and dig in. If you find errors in the doc, I'm always looking for help proofreading! Thank you

Over the weekend, I read Teaching Students to Self-Assess by Starr Sackstein .  It was a fantastic read.  The book focuses on the importance of reflection in the learning progress. This post only provides a few highlights. Her book has great student examples of reflections and discusses tracking progress over time using reflection.  I highly recommend reading and reflecting on what her book sets out. Why is reflection so important? If we want students to become more independent, life-long learners, they need to understand how they learn. Reflection involves analysis and evaluation which are higher order skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy. The results of reflection will help students make informed choices about how they personalize learning. The results of student reflections will help instructors modify their instruction to reach all learners. How does reflection fit into the learning cycle? The graphic below is one I made last month after reading John Hattie's L

I took the exam for and gained my Google Level 2 Certification today. The training made me realize that I knew the basics of Drive, Docs, and Sildes really well.  But I extended my knowledge of Sheets and Forms.  In addition, I learned about a whole world of Google apps that I either had barely scratched the surface of (like YouTube) or was clueless about (like Expeditions).  The training was so worth it! Google Certification may not be something you're interested in.  But, I recommend you at least find out more about the Google tools that are out there to help personalize the way students access information, engage with information, and express understanding.  Just learning about one more tool, could help empower more students. Here are some of the great things I leaned about. My Maps in the Classroom Users create personal maps and add media to locations to tell a story. Google Earth Tour Builder: Virtual field trips created by educators or STUDENT

If all assessments were this highly performance based, we'd have a better sense of our students competencies. If Google can do it and get results back to me in 5 minutes, our standardized testing system needs to be revamped.

Well, I was planning on just dealing with 2 stages of the LAUNCH Cycle in this post, but I burned through the rest of the book yesterday.  The book itself is a very engaging read.  My post may reflect the nuts and bolts of the cycle, but the book is filled with practical applications and stories from the authors lives that show what the LAUNCH Cycle looks like.  That is the power of their work. It is based on experience and data. Step 4: Navigating Ideas So, this is a step that I have always shortchanged. When I initially looked at the cycle without knowing about it, I figured I knew what it was about.  I thought it would just be a stage of organizing information.  I was wrong. Much like generating questions is a bridge between awareness and research, navigating ideas is a bridge between research and creation.  It is the a step for creating a plan for creation.  Juliani and Spencer call this process ideating . Ideating is not simply planning the creation process.  An ess