Mo Physics Mo Problems

What's a Honeycomb kid? It's more than just this... Today, some of my students from last school year took the reigns and presented at the Institute for Personalized Learning's National Convening . The focus of this presentation was sharing the elements of the honeycomb that benefitted their learning the most. In addition, they explained what these elements looked in practice. A year ago, I never imagined that a group of my former students would be presenting.  So how did we get here? Well we ... The first step in this process was realizing how strong my students were in reflecting on their learning in our classroom.  Reading their end of unit reflections made me realize that the learners were thinking deeply about what was helping them learn, not helping them learn, and ideas they proposed for the next unit. I then decided to introduce them to the Teaching & Learning elements from the honeycomb and rate how instruction in our course met those ele

Two years ago, I published my first blog post. To celebrate 2 years and 144 posts, I thought I'd share 10 insights linked to my blogging. Pirates Publish Great PD Over the last two years, I have had the privilege to read some great books published by Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc . These include Teach Like a Pirate , Ditch that Textbook , The Innovator’s Mindset , Explore Like a Pirate , LAUNCH , and I just started Pure Genius .  These books are great because they are accessible and practical.  The collection of books are like the Marvel Movie Universe in that they are all connected and have a unified vision.  But, they each have their own focus.  Let’s hope there is no Civil War in the Pirate Universe anytime soon. I’ve loved using my blog to reflect on the books I’ve read as I read them. PLN I have a significant level of social anxiety with my peers.  So, I’m not one who seeks out conversations with fellow staff members.  My blog has allowed me to share what I d

I am part of our building's personalized learning leadership team.  One of our goals has been to support staff in the implementation of PL elements in their classroom.  To this end, we hope to go beyond explaining what they elements are and to delve into how they can be achieved in a classroom. Today, we had the opportunity to do just that.   Our team approached several teacher who we knew were having success with PL elements in addition to those who grants for PL proposals they submitted in the spring.  We ended up with a wide range of options that spanned almost all content areas.   NAME DESCRIPTION Chris Demos (Biology) Standards Guided Learning, Assessment AS Learning, Progressions Towards Deeper Learning : Learn how Chris has implemented a structure in which students are held accountable for demonstrating how they have met course standards by providing evidence and defending that evidence. John Wilkinson (Physics) Personal Learning Goals, Progressio

Over the past couple of months it has been my pleasure to be a part of the Innovator's Mindset MOOC (massive online open course).  I was able to participate in the last episode of the live MOOC hangout which will be turned into a podcast. Below are blog posts on takeaways from the book when I read it this summer: Part 1: What Is an Innovator's Mindset? Part 2: Create a Culture of Innovation Part 3: Release the Kraken Part 4: Putting Mindset Into Action I just wanted to share some of my brief takeaways for the online community experience. There are so many talented people out there. I was amazed to read all of the brilliant blog reflections of my fellow #IMMOOC members. It was great to see all the different perspectives and paths people took from a similar prompt. Those posts shed new light on my own reading of the book. There are so many risk takers out there . To hear what others were trying out for the first time was awesome. It really serv

I took my first dip into  WeVideo today.  WeVideo is a video editing solution for those working with Chromebooks.  I have been using iMovie for video editing since I first started editing on a computer (before that it was to VCRs).  But iMovie on iOS devices is frustratingly limited and YouTube Video Editing is not quite user friendly yet.  WeVideo could be a great solution for those who have videoclips and photos in Google Drive and want to be able to create video using ChromeOS. Like I said, this is a first dip.  Down the road I hope to have a more in depth post about it.  but wanted to highlight a few basics with some GIFs. From the WeVideo top menu you can choose Media and upload files directly from Google Drive to your WeVideo Media Library. When creating a new project, it is easy to simply drop in videos and photos from your media, rearrange and trim. Once you've got a video or photo inserted, you can do a deep edit of the clip or image including adding

As a part of the Innovator's Mindset MOOC, we've been challenged to implement a change with the goal of innovation. A couple of weeks ago, I had an idea that I want to put in place for my classroom. It's not huge, but it will require a significant step from me to implement and make it meaningful for students. Over the past years, I have been developing proficiency scales for each of the major unit objectives in my Physics courses.  I've modeled these scales I first learned about from Marzano Research. Find a great bank here and access with a free account. I try to have students look at the scale when we complete a formative quiz and rate themselves on that scale.  But, it's not until we approach the summative assessment where we really take the time to break down what each level looks like in depth.  They then create their own piece of media to demonstrate mastery. I'm looking to change up the way I present the proficiency scale a bit. I've decided