Bon Voyage to a Great Leader

I am taking time out from my usual #edchat to recognize the incredible contribution superintendent Dr. Debbie Blow has made to our district and to me personally. Dr. Blow is moving to a new district where she can be closer to her family. I will miss her inspiration, influence and energy.  For each of the three years since I was laid off from my tenured position in my previous district, I have been invited back to an open position. Once again this year I explained to them that until they could offer me the environment and opportunities that Cambrian has offered me, ....thanks but no thanks, I'm staying in Cambrian, even without tenure. Cambrian is that special of a place.

http://www.electricdatasystems.com/

As a "founding" member of the iPad academy, I am part of a team of 6 passionate and courageous teachers, all of us learning as we went along side by side with +Kirby Fell and Dr. Blow.  She showed extraordinary vision, leadership and enthusiasm as she gave us the tools we needed to proceed and then took her seat along side us while we flew the plane while building it.  As a great leader does, she trusted her team, and gave us the freedom to discover and develop best practices. We created a successful iPad Academy model that now includes 41 classroom teachers with 1:1 iPads. Our Home and School Clubs have purchased an additional 300 or so devices for teacher and classroom use.  For the upcoming 5th iPad academy cohort, there were 23 applications for an available 12 slots.

Having the iPads has truly revolutionized and reenergized my practice and my classroom. After 2.5 years I cannot imagine teaching without them now. Using this tool, our students are reading, writing, explaining their thinking in math and science, going on virtual field trips and even coding in meaningful, authentic and thus engaging ways.  Yes, they could have done much of it without the iPad, but the iPad is more captivating, genuine and helps prepare our students for their futures.  Our first cohort of "iPaddians" paved the way, researching, documenting and sharing best practices. We created a wiki to share what we've learned with our colleagues.  This was all under Dr. Blow's leadership.

+Tanya Prive writes in Forbes that there are top 10 qualities that make a good leader: 

• Honesty
• Ability to delegate
• Communication
• Sense of humor     
• Confidence               
• Commitment
• Positive attitude    
• Creativity               
• Intuition 
• The ability to inspire 

Having a background in executive management, I can tell you how critical Dr. Blow's leadership has been in the successful implementation of our 21st century strategies.  As our board moves forward with their selection of a new superintendent, I hope they will seek someone with at least some of her leadership qualities, so that we don't lose the momentum we have all worked so hard to gain. Developing global citizens with 21st century skills is one of the pillars of our strategic plan and it is my hope that the school board and new superintendent will continue support of our academies and professional development in Educational technology to help sustain this effort.

Dr. Debbie Blow possesses all of the Forbes 10 qualities and although she is one of a kind and amazing, the board would do well to find someone who can continue to provide the kind of leadership, vision and commitment that Dr. Blow seems to provide so effortlessly.  I hope they do not lose sight of her vision. She has been, and even in her decision to leave, continues to be, an inspiration to me.  

Dr. Blow, You will be missed.

Kindness Matters - Writing with the ipad and Edmodo

(This was originally posted on my teacher blog, http://mrsmcconnellsblog.blogspot.com/ )

I partner teach 36 fifth graders with +sheila monger , our inclusive education teacher (some would call her an SDC teacher, she would not). We encompass rooms 7 & 8 so we call ourselves Team Seight. If you were to come in when we are all in the same room, you would not know who was officially assigned to each teacher.  +Edmodo has been a great tool for connecting our students in authentic ways, and preparing them for the world of social media in a safe and controlled environment. This year a theme at our school has been kindness, so using StoryLines Pages, an app in Edmodo, we created a Kindness Matters Book for each student.  

StoryLines Pages is a collaborative classroom activity where students learn the power of compliments and encouragement. Inspired by the story "All Good Things", by Sister Helen Mrosla, StoryLines Pages has each student in your class creating a page for each other student, expressing something he appreciates about his classmate.With this app, each student writes a “page” (one sentence) about every other student in our class. We read the short, true (verified by Snopes) story by Sister Helen and then the kids got to work. Some of my findings as we worked on this project:

• Students were able to use their 1:1 iPads, but sometimes had trouble with the app so generally used Edmodo via Safari.

• All students participated, and I had a quick snapshot of who was or wasn’t working on their pages, using the overall status page

• As I went through and reviewed students’ pages, I was able to see common mistakes, trends and areas of need. For example, this student consistently used capital letters incorrectly. Many of my students are still misusing the contraction of you are, spelling it Y-O-U-R.  Several of my students had difficulty writing in the first person, present tense.

• It was extremely rewarding for me to read the comments that my students made about all of their classmates. Never once was a comment checked “It is not nice” because it was mean. Some of our ED kids did have challenges differentiating between a statement (You play with me at recess. vs I like when you play with me at recess.) However, overwhelmingly, the students really had surprisingly nice things to say about each other.

• One of my students on a 504 has significant challenges starting work.  He will sit and stare into space. I was very worried about what other students would say about him, there just doesn't seem to be much 'there-there' from a 10 year old’s perspective, or so I thought.  I was delighted to see pages such as “You respect others, You are smart and funny (he is, when he speaks), You are a good listener, You are good at sitting still when others are talking. You are polite, respectful to others and very quiet in class.”  None of these things are untrue and I just loved seeing how they took a behavior that can be difficult and saw the positive in it! I learned a lesson myself from these kids (well,honestly they teach me something every day)

• The app was incredibly easy for me to use, and even easier for the kids.  Because often the same child would make the same errors repeatedly, I could cut and paste my review comment, and they got practice correcting these problem areas.

• I did have a few students think they could just cut and paste and make the same comment to multiple classmates. Because I would review all of the pages by a given student at one time, it was pretty easy to catch this and comment back to them to be original and be specific.

• Once most of the Storylines Pages ages are done, we will go ahead and publish the book. Students will receive a link that they can choose to share outside of Edmodo.

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The students were so excited to read their books and using Edmodo, thanked each other for the kind words. The students then shared books at Open House.  As a teacher of students with a wide range of abilities, it was great to find an activity that all students could participate in equally. This activity also served as a great formative assessment and gave me insights into student needs. Finally, it was just sweet and this time of year, in fifth grade, we can all use a little sweet!

21st Century Learners: Retiring the Book Report

Fellow blogger  +Kathy Kimpel  writes in her latest post, 21st Century Learners: Retiring the Book Report: "We need to retire the "Book Report" Common Core will ask student to "Analyze" not summarize."

Growing up in the 60's, my sisters and I wrote book reports every year, year after year, on the same book, The Pink Motel.  So much so that in our house, 'pink motel' became a euphemism for being a slacker.   We certainly did little more than DOK1.  

Kathy provides some great ideas for moving beyond the book report into more critical thinking with depth and complexity.  She addresses both digital and non-digital ideas for our students to demonstrate a meaningful interpretation of their reading.  With an iPad students can create podcasts, make trailers with iMovie, and use a variety of "show me" apps to create models of real comprehension, analysis and synthesis.

Our First Mystery Skype - by Guest Blogger CaLa

 

written by student blogger, CaLa:

Our classroom had our first mystery skype with Mr. Salsich's class! If you're not sure what a "Mystery Skype" is, I'd be happy to tell you. A mystery skype is when two classes from a different place in the world, skype each other and ask yes or no questions to try and guess where the other class is. Our mystery skype was extremly noisy yet amazingly fun! 

Recorders documented the call.

Our class asked lots of great questions along with Mr. Salsich's class. It went pretty great and we new they were on the edge of finding out where we were. Soon after a really great question from them... they had guessed what state we were in! They were so happy! We asked away again.... We definetly got a lot closer to their state too. We got closer and closer and closer! Then, they got us! They found out we lived in San Jose!! Congrats fellow skypers! You were awesome! We absolutley loved skyping with you!

We all worked hard to figure out where they were. We each had a specific job and we learned a lot. We learned about geography, how to work together and how to solve problems. We learned that each job is important. Where in the world will we #mysteryskype next?

We used our iPads to look up information.

Getting good questions and answers!

They got us! We live in California. The were are questioners and answers... asking and answering questions from Mr. Salsich's class. But there is still more to go! More questions! :)

Hmm... What's the answer to this one? :l

ScoSch was a supervisor, helping to keep us on track.

Our First Mystery Skype

Mystery Skype

Recently, my students participated in our first Mystery Skype.  According to the Skype education group, "Mystery Skype is an educational game, invented by teachers, played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions. It's suitable for all age groups and can be used to teach subjects like geography, history, languages, mathematics and science."

I had heard the term from my twitter PLC but hadn't really looked into it until one of my fellow Global Read Aloud participants, +Jonah Salsich , suggested Mystery Skype as a way to introduce our classes to each other.

We started by introducing the idea to our students.  We talked about the different roles and how important each job was to successfully guessing the location of our mystery Skype school.  We practiced with me secretly choosing a town I knew a little bit about, Duluth, MN, my mother's birthplace.  (It turns out I didn't know as much as I though, but google and Wikipedia were my coaches) my students, each in their assigned job, had to guess where I "was".  They had a lot of fun and learned what sort of questions were helpful. They also learned what sort of things they would have to know about our own location!

So we proceeded to refine our process, mapping out the workflow using Kidspiration, an app by Inspiration Software. 

Then we had our first mystery Skype!  The kids were so excited! Our greeters welcomes each class o the call without giving away details about our location.  My kids even wanted to keep the blinds drawn so the other class wouldn't see how sunny it was!  The questioners could only ask "yes/no" questions.  The filterer sent the answer back to the think tank through a runner.  The think tank decided what the next question should be based on the answer.  In our debrief, we decided that it would be helpful to have questions planned out like a flow chart...if yes, then.. If no then....

Our mappers were key to our guessing strategy.  They were really great at eliminating whole parts of the world based on answers.  They used the wall map, our Big Blue Nat Geo Atlas (complete with magnifier), and Google Earth & maps.

Our answerers had to prepared to answer yes/no questions about our location.  When they didn't know answers, the filters decided if they knew the answer or needed to send it via a runner to the think tank.  The think tank would use mappers and their own resources to research the answers.  We are lucky to have 1:1 iPads so our mappers and think tank could use the devices for their research.  Our note takers and recorders used Notes on the iPads and our tweeters tweeted with a teacher looking on while photographers used iPads to take pictures and movies. Could we have done it without the iPads? Of course.  Was it more authentic to use them? Absolutely.

Our Skype partners also posted about our Mystery Skype at http://salsich5.edublogs.org/2013/09/24/mystery-skype-call-san-jose-ca/ 

Some of our lessons learned included. 

What Qs were helpful? ●  Are you north or south of some landmark, airport ●  Does your state start with A ●  Major water locations ●  Time zone ●  Longitude or latitude	Which ?? were not helpful? ●  Are you near ____ - be more specific ●  Guessing before we had enough information
What worked ●  Greetings ○  Memorizing greeting ○  Script helped ●  Cooperated well ●  Runners and filtered worked well together ●  Liked having assigned stations ●  Using sticky notes and sticking with assigned locations ●  Think tank stayed put which helped them work together ●  Used a “battleship strategy”, narrow down area based on clues ●  Paper mappers used landmarks well, magnifying glass worked well ●  More practice helped, two cameras were good ●  Reporter/notetaker located close to each other ●  Note takers working well, mostly did our own jobs, ●  At front table all did their jobs, runners did great ●  It was noisy but people were working really hard	What suggestions for next time            ● Greetings           ○ Louder voices for skypers, if memorized, still have script            ●  One more runner for each Q and A ●  Have questions prepared for both yes and no response ●  Do more research about our own city, state, etc. ●  Better way to call runners so we can get answers faster ●  Answering in complete sentences ●  Filters need a set of questions ready, that they can determine if appropriate ●  Test technology ahead of time ●  Video tape next time ●  Reporters feed info to tweeters ●  Suggestion to keep quieter so everyone could hear what was being asked ●  one more supervisor – one for front table, one for TT and one for maps
Have a back up plan for people being absent TT = think tank, Q or ?? = questions	What didn’t work? ●  We broke the first rule, ●  Sometimes did not follow jobs ●  Sometimes we didn’t know what ??s were being asked/answered ●  TT and runners were arguing about Qs, Qs were not always prepared , hard to come up with Q when it was so loud and rushed

Oops on an iPad

I did not even notice this! Great to know!

There is an undo button when typing on an iPad!

Thanks Ben!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Why I love teaching #9 - Out of My Mind

Honestly, I don't know where it fits in the ranking, but this one is pretty high up there.  A little background is helpful.  My sister +Sharon Buehler is a school librarian in Oregon. She often gives me book recommendations and she knew of my inclusive education practices, so she suggested I read Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper (OOMM). I bought it over a year ago but didn't get around to reading it, so I brought it to school to add to my classroom library.  Last year, one of my most reflective and deep readers asked what she should read, so I suggested OOMM. She came in the following Monday and said, "Oh Mrs. McConnell, you HAVE to read this book, and read it to the class, too!"  I dutifully took it home and added it to my summer reading stack.

Fast forward a bit to this past summer, and I read the book. In a day.  It was, to say the least, compelling. OOMM is an incredible story of inclusion and acceptance told from the eyes of a child.  I knew I would start my year reading it aloud to our kids.  About a week later, I stumbled across a tweet by +Pernille Ripp about something called The Global Read aloud (GRA), which she started a few years back. This year, the one book to connect the world, at least for my grade level, is OOMM! I knew we had to participate.  It is an incredible opportunity to share and discuss this powerful book with a wider group of students. Since I am super lucky to be a part of our 1:1 iPad program, I knew the kids would be able to easily collaborate and communicate with their 'colleagues' in other parts of the world using technologies such as +Edmodo , +Skype, +Kidblog  and even Twitter (with a teacher, of course).

I set about acquiring enough copies of the book for all 35 of our inclusive ed. kids to read. I co-teach +sheila monger who provides services to students with special needs.  Our kids are together every day for at least part of each day.

I ordered 5 copies with a B&N gift card I'd received at the end of the last school year. Then I went to my trusted fundraiser, Adopt-a-Classroom, and raised money to buy more books there. I put the word out via Facebook and my class web page.  One of my friends shipped me 12 books, just because she cares about public education and inclusion.  One of the parents of a student bought her daughter a copy and 2 extra copies for our classroom.  Gratefully, I should have enough books for each child to read their own copy.

Since we are participating in GRA13, I asked my kids not to read the book ahead of time (if they hadn't already) since we'd be making predictions with our global classmates.  Today, the child of the parent who bought the books for us came in and slipped this note on my desk.

 And this, my friends, is on of the many reasons I love teaching.