Tag Archives: technology

This is What Awesome Looks Like

ISTE, Uncategorized, , ,

 

Anyone who knows me at all knows that my most precious resource is not my money. It is my time. Given time I can make more money. But I cannot make more time.

That’s why it’s critically important that things are streamlined for me as a teacher. I want to spend my time focusing on kids – on their strengths and on their areas that need work. I don’t want to spend my time trying to figure out how to take attendance or how to put in grades or how to make assignments available to them.  I want to spend my time working with kids.

At my current school, my technology situation is doable; it would be great if it were streamlined. I have one HarriedEmployeeprogram  I use for grades. I have a learning management system that’s completely separate from my grade program.  I have a class website using a third system.  When I post an assignment, I have to post it on my class website, upload the document in two separate places on a daily basis. There’s my learning management system. It’s great and I love it! But it’s one more thing for me to do. I have to make sure I upload the assignments and any resources as well as any links. I seem to spend more time posting assignments than I spend reviewing them.
This summer I went to the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference in Denver. And I searched for gold. And I searched and I searched and I search. And I actually found it a few times.

20160902_100343I’m a sucker for tee shirts. Especially cool ones with cool sayings. I was walking around the exhibition hall and I noticed a tee shirt that said, “This is what awesome looks like.” I had to have it.  Of course to get the shirt I was going to have to listen to what they had to say. But I’d do it!  Anything to get my hands on one of those tee shirts. But there was another treat. If you got caught wearing the tee shirt, you could randomly select a gift card.  If I’m a sucker for tee shirts, I’m an even bigger one for gifts cards! Especially Amazon gift cards!

20160627_151736

I walked into the booth, just to get the shirt. I was skeptical but I listened attentively to their demo. I wasn’t sure that I was the right demographic, thinking that they needed more district level people. I am a classroom teacher. What I heard absolutely blew me away. One place where I could have my grade book, my learning management system, my class calendar, the class website. All. In. One. Place. I began to imagine the time savings that it would give me. I started thinking about the ease of use for students and their parents. I was so excited I could hardly stand it.

That’s what eChalk ( www.echalk.com )  is about. It’s the one-stop shop for everything that you need for your class. Want to post homework? Use eChalk. Need to put something on your class calendar? Use eChalk. Grades? eChalk. Tests, quizzes? eChalk.  Have a place to host PLC discussions? eChalk.

I’ve often said if you want to give me a gift, give me the gift of time. eChalk does that and more. It’s hard to believe that it can do all this but it can. I’m eager to give it a try. And I will let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, if you want to know what awesome looks like, take a look at eChalk. They do.

What’s in a Name?

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

Want to strike fear, disgust and dismay into the heart of any middle school students?  Tell them that in class today they are going to “do a worksheet” or that you have a packet for them.  Eyes will roll, groans will erupt, and kids will shut down.  According to students, worksheets are boring busywork that teachers assign when they have something else they want to do.  They are useless time wasters.

Except when they aren’t.  Because sometimes they’re not.  Practice is important. It’s not reasonable to expect that a student who has been exposed to an idea only once can sudden apply that idea appropriately in a problem based setting.  It’s not always feasible to have concept application be problem based, although it would be nice if it was feasible.  Sometimes I need my kids to practice.  Not  practice  in a drill-and-kill kind of way, but practice in a simulation, word-problem, answer the question kind of way.  Practice is a – dare I say it? – worksheet kind of way.no more worksheets theunintentionalgeek.com

But to call it a worksheet is a kiss of death.  So I began to reflect.  Part of this is my National Board Certification mindset, part of it is my natural geekiness for data and rationale, part of it is my how-can-I -get-the-kids-to-eat-their-vegetables mindset.  Why do I need them to complete this practice/application?  What will they get out of it?  If I can justify to myself that it is a valuable use of time (which, by the way, is my most valuable resource), I’ll assign it.  If not, it gets discarded.

I needed to find a way to spin the work – to but a label on it other than worksheet.  The label needed todescribe why the assignment was made and what I wanted to achieve.  I tried changing “homework” to “home fun” for a year.  It did not work for me.  I was not eager to repeat that mistake and I knew I wouldn’t.  Changing homework to home fun only changed the label and not the content.  The stuff was the same.  The difference was what I called it.  (It reminded me of Andrew Clement’s book Frindle.  Nick starts called a pen a frindle, and his friends do too.  It’s still a pen, it just has a different name.)

I decided to call it a “Learning Opportunity” or LO for short.  That’s what it is.  It is an opportunity for a student to learn.  The emphasis is on the LEARNING, not on the working or the keeping busy.  It’s all about learning.

It’s working really well for me.  Students don’t fight LOs.  They don’t roll their eyes.  They don’t moan and complain.  They get right down to work because, after all, they have been given an opportunity to LEARN.

Conference workshop time – AATM 2014

Conferences, , , , ,

It was great to meet new friends and see old friends at AATM on Saturday.  As promised, here’s a copy of my presentation.  Also, I referred to the following websites:

www.plickers.com – Terrific, FREE formative assessment tool

www.naeir.org – Overstock materials available to teachers for a nominal fee

www.dryerase.com – The Markerboard People

www.YouTube.com/nancyfootehigley – My YouTube channel

https://vimeo.com/nancyfootehigley/videos – Vimeo is the safer place I host my videos.

What I wouldn’t do for math presentation:

 Hi Tech, Low Tech, No Tech presentation:

Questions? Comments?  Email me at nancyfootehigley@gmail.com.