Articles
Preparing Students for Online Classrooms
Using an online learning platform is sometimes intimidating for teachers but we often assume that students are ready for technology. We hear that students of today are the technological generation and excel at the use of technology. But, the reality is that the extent of technology use by many students may be social media, texting friends and online gaming. They may have more apps installed than teachers but when it comes to the skills needed in an educational setting many students are lacking and do not understand the use of educational apps. Surprisingly, they are also not very good at multitasking when texting and do not necessarily stay engaged or get what is happening around them while texting. Finally, students do not know how to use and evaluate the content they find on the internet. In this article, I take a look at some things we need to do to prepare our students to correctly use the technology available to them while maintaining a student-centered environment that we all desire in our classroom.
Build Your Own Educational Website with WordPress
Are you ready to take your online presence to a new level? Then it may be time to build your own educational website with WordPress as your platform. Creating your own website gives you the flexibility to organize your content in a way that you want and in a way that will make the most sense to your users. Your website can start simple with basic content and expand to become as complex with as many features as you would like when and if you are ready. Is a website something that anyone with minimal computer skills can create themselves without programming skills? With the ease of use of WordPress and the thousands of available plugins–absolutely! Let’s take a look at the process required to create your own website.
Using Technology in the Classroom to Facilitate Student Learning
The use of technology is everywhere in society today and yet there is often a resistance to using technology in the classroom on a day to day basis. Research shows that technology used correctly is an effective way to increase student learning and that students tend to be more engaged when technology is included as part of a classroom lesson. Students are more interested in lessons when they are able to use technology to personalize learning and are far more likely to retain information. So why are we so reluctant to include technology in our classrooms or even switch to a technology based classroom? The answer usually lies in a misunderstanding of how it is best used and a reluctance to give up control of the classroom to technology. In this article, I will look at some ways that we can begin to include technology in our classroom and help teachers realize that it can make them more effective as well as facilitate student learning.
Creating Effective Online Lessons
Moving to an online learning platform can be intimidating and disconcerting but by applying a few simple guidelines, can be made much less unsettling. We have spent many years in classrooms and have developed a certain comfort level. We are not comfortable or experienced with online platforms. Good online lessons and delivery are not necessarily controlled by the platform used for delivery but by the quality of the lessons themselves. Many of the things that make a good online lesson are the same things that make a lesson in the classroom effective. Just like all learning, online learning must remain student centered. Let’s take a look at some of the things that can make moving to an online platform less daunting while continuing to center on effective student learning.
Ten Tips Used by Effective Educators
As an educator of 30+ years, I have found that there are certain tips and techniques that most effective teachers have in common. Educators who do most of the things in this list tend to reach more students, have better results on standardized tests, have better knowledge retention among former students and tend to be those teachers that former students rate as most effective. While the list is not comprehensive and is not a “cure all” for first-time teachers, it is an effective starting place in seeking to better educate today’s students…
Why Norms Matter
As an educator you are most likely a part of collaborative teams. As a part of those teams you probably created and followed norms. Furthermore, even teams who are not asked to create norms should do so. Why is this important? Why do norms matter? Let’s take a look at norms and why they are such a big deal.
Better Student Learning? Take Small Steps
Teachers are encouraged to experiment and try new things to achieve better student learning. As a result, the task of implementing new strategies sometimes becomes daunting. Yet, we know that implementing a particular classroom management or instructional strategy is researched based. And, these have a record of proven success. Therefore, to implement new strategies effectively, we need to break them into smaller tasks that are more easily managed.
Collaborative Team Model
Collaborative teams are a part of any school that embraces the professional learning community model. These teams of teachers, teaching the same grade or course, work together to plan, instruct, assess and take actions based on student results. The efficient and targeted conduct of these collaborative team meetings is essential to effectively performing these tasks and achieving the ultimate goal of student learning. What should a collaborative team meeting look like? Let’s look at a basic model of an effective and efficient team meeting. This model works by itself or could be modified as needed, but the final product should become part of the norm for conducting each meeting.
Student Centered Planning
Obviously, as teachers a great deal of time and thought goes into lesson planning, content creation, and student assessment, but what does planning and collaboration look like when it is student centered? In order to keep the focus on students, there are certain things that need to be done during planning and team collaboration time to ensure student-centered instruction during lesson delivery time.
Discussion Prompts
One of the best ways to increase student engagement in the classroom is to use discussion prompts to encourage student collaboration and interactive learning. Discussion prompts are anything that an educator uses to engage the student’s senses to create thoughts or questions. Examples of discussion prompts could be: video clips, audio clips, photographs, quotes, statements, graphics, problems, newspaper articles, advertisements or even words. These prompts are usually displayed without comment and after giving students time to think about them, are used for group or class discussion. Let’s take a look at the process for using discussion prompts.
Just Questions
The process that teachers use to question students happens in classrooms every day but the way questioning is done can have a huge effect on the correct determination of student understanding of the current topic of study. Good application of questioning style and type in the hands of an effective educator can demonstrate student knowledge to the teacher that can help them determine when and how to proceed as well as when additional intervention may be necessary. Effective questions, whether written or oral, can supply formative student learning data that will become much more than just questions.
Be Your Best
“Be Your Best,” is a statement I’ve heard pretty much all of my life but as an educator it takes on new meaning. For a teacher, trying to be your best takes effort and understanding of exactly what those three words encompass. Being your best not only takes time but also a willingness to embrace the mentality that is necessary to constantly strive to be your best. Being your best is hard work. It requires you to seek out others, to embrace change, to look for new things, to try new ideas, and to sometimes accept failure. Being our best does not mean that we are perfect but that we are giving it our all in seeking to be.
Why the Name?
Since starting the Educationtech21 website, I’ve been asked by a number of people, “Why the name?” I think some have come to the site looking for ways to use technology in the classroom and been surprised by what may seem to be the emphasis on classroom instruction and student learning. So, this article will be a little different (and shorter!). I would like to explain the story behind the name and talk a little about what you will find on the site both now and in the future.
A 21st Century Lesson Cycle
If we are to work toward a truly flexible classroom that meets the needs of all of our students, we not only need to find the correct ways to incorporate technology in our classrooms (see, A Vision for Technological Classrooms for the 21st Century), but we must work toward a focused plan for a 21st century lesson cycle. This lesson cycle will focus not on the material covered, but on the desired student learning outcomes. It must be driven by student success and not by the clock or calendar. Without this well-designed lesson cycle, any attempt to incorporate meaningful use of technology will likely fail.
Excellent Collaboration
With collective teacher efficacy scoring at the top of the Hattie’s scale of effect sizes at 1.57 [Hattie, The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education, 2015] and areas like teacher estimates of achievement, response to intervention, strategies to integrate prior knowledge and classroom discussion also ranking near the top; the way we conduct our collaborations with other educators becomes extremely important in addressing these areas. What makes collaboration time effective and efficient? Let’s take a look at some strategies that we can use for collaboration that will help us to make better use of our time together.
Using Student Data
We talk about student data. We encourage the use of student data in planning effective lessons. We seek to center our conversations and collaborations with other educators around student data; but,, what do we really mean when we use the words “student data”? Is the context in which we use these words really what we intend and is our understanding of student data really what it should be? Let’s talk about data and what effective student data is and is not.
Intervention Centered Instruction
It is important that as teachers our focus is not on how much material we cover but on the quality of learning that takes place in our classroom. If we are to maintain this focus on student learning, we must know when to move forward and when to clarify or provide additional instruction. One way this can be accomplished is by looking at the level and type of intervention required for most students to master a concept.
We Don’t Fix Teachers
How many times do we say to ourselves or our colleagues, “I’ll fix that”? When something is not going the way we want, the desire is to “fix” it. Sometimes we allow the “fix it” mentality to begin to apply to ourselves or co-workers. We start to think that it is the teacher that needs fixing. The truth is that we don’t need to fix teachers because they are not broken! In fact, nothing is “broken”. It only needs adjusting and refining.
The Best Laid Plans
As teachers, we plan, we assess, we adjust and we do it all again; but sometimes even our best lesson plans, that seem to work so well on paper, just don’t work with students. What do we do when we create a great lesson but students don’t become engaged and don’t participate in a meaningful way? What do we do when an entire class doesn’t seem to be involved in our lesson? I believe this is the time we go back to the basics.
Assessment with Purpose
Student assessment takes on many forms in the classroom but no matter what type of assessment we use, it is important that the results be examined and studied to determine what student learning has occurred and what actions should take place next. Effective examination of results is made possible through the design of the assessment and careful correlation to standards, intentional evaluation of results and pre-determined actions based on levels of mastery.
Sharing with Google Docs
This article is a little different from my usual articles in that I’m going to share an effective teaching strategy, using technology, that I often share with teachers in coaching cycles and often employ myself in team collaboration meetings–shared Google Docs.
Grades and Mastery
As educators we are constantly told that it’s not about the students’ grades; it’s about whether students master the standard being taught and whether they can demonstrate that they have the necessary knowledge and skills. The problem is that we are still required by schools, our communities and even employers to assign grades and rank students. What can we do to close the gap between testing, assessment and grading, and the idea of true student mastery?
The Way We Think
In order for us to teach the thinking skills that are necessary for solving math problems or understanding any concept in any area of study, we must first discover how we think and learn. Specifically, how do we gain real understanding, as opposed to memorizing a “trick” or set of steps long enough to pass a test with no ability to apply this knowledge to anything different or even recognize a similar situation a short time later? It’s all part of the way we think.
Doing This Together
As I was researching the Hattie’s effect size for teacher clarity (.75 by the way) for another article that I was writing, I couldn’t help but notice the top of the chart. There at the top of the bar graph that was being used to display the effect sizes in a comparative format was the longest bar with the effect size number of 1.57 [J. Hattie, visiblelearningplus.com, December 2017]! It just jumped out there as one of only seven effect sizes that exceeded 1.0 but easily outdistanced its closest competitor, self-reported grades, which stood at only 1.33. With an effect size of 1.57, collective teacher efficacy showed an effect size so big that one year of effort could produce almost four years of growth, but what exactly is collective teacher efficacy? Is you campus embracing it?
Questioning…What We Do
We talk at length about student learning, what we want students to learn, how we will approach delivering instruction and how we will know whether students have learned, but in the end it all comes back to whether students have acquired the knowledge and skills that we intended. How do we know and how do we get them there? I believe the answer lies in effective questioning. There are multiple ways to deliver instruction, but the key to all of them is using questioning techniques that guide students’ thinking in the direction we intend and ultimately show us the students’ grasp of the subject matter. Questioning is what we do!
Are We Clear on That?
One very important piece of an effective classroom is teacher clarity. John Hattie’s research in The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education [Hattie 2015] assigns teacher clarity an effect size of .75 which is well above the threshold of .40 which represents one year’s growth for one year’s effort. This effect size makes it clear that teacher clarity is very important as we consider strategies for reaching our students, but what is teacher clarity? How do we make sure we have “clarity” in our classrooms?
Just Another Fad?
In today’s world of education, we talk a lot about things like collaboration, collective teacher efficacy, student self-assessment, feedback and much more as a part of effective educational practice, but when you have been in education for many years, as I have, many “effective educational practices” have proven not to be as effective as we once thought. How do we know that what we are doing today is not just another “fad” that will go away only to be replaced by the next one? How can we be confident that the things we are doing today will last and that schools where these ideas are implemented will truly grow and produce better prepared learners? I believe it is the quality of today’s research that proves that these practices will remain with us!
Using Technology the Right Way
Laptops and other tools of technology can provide an excellent way to deliver instruction to students, but with an almost unlimited base of information available through the internet, how do we make sure students are getting the things that we want them to get? Student engagement almost always increaases when students use technology to frame answers to the big questions we give them but that engagement must be productive and lead to the learning objectives that we want them to know. So, how can we direct learning in a way that will make use of the tools of technology and at the same time accomplish our learning goals?
Wait for It!
As teachers, we ask a lot of questions, but do we question effectively? Do we often direct questions to the entire group with responses coming from everywhere? Do we solicit answers from all of our students randomly or do we select students we think are likely to know the answers? Are our questions carefully selected to match the standards we are teaching and do our questions lead to deeper thought processes from our students? Most importantly, do we wait, really wait, for students to answer? The way we do questioning as well as how we handle students’ answers are an essential part of our daily classroom instruction and assessment.
Practical Applications of Guiding Questions
We have divided our course into units and have created guiding questions after carefully unpacking standards that our students need to know. We have collaborated with our colleagues to refine our guiding questions and have posted them for our students to see. Now what do we do with them? Guiding questions not only drive excellent instruction but assist in lesson planning as well as student assessment. Guiding questions are central to daily, focused instruction and evaluation.
Technology for Technology's Sake
When questions arise in schools today about instruction, accommodation, differentiation or intervention, the first solution often proposed is “let’s use the computer.” Unfortunately, the most important question, “How will it be used?’ is not addressed. The use of technology without teacher planning, direction, input and feedback can easily make a problem worse instead of better. The proper guidance of a teacher is usually more important than any piece of technological hardware or software and will ultimately determine the success or failure of student learning as a result.
Listening for Real
In my current position in secondary education, I spend a great deal of time in classrooms with teachers attempting to understand their instructional needs and partnering with them to help and support them in fulfilling those needs. I have found that one of the most important skills that I have to constantly work to develop is the skill of focused, real listening.
The Mini-flip
In my article, Teaching Students to Talk, I addressed the need for teachers to teach students how to effectively talk to each other through the intentional use of partners and small groups incorporated into classroom practices to get students talking to the teacher and each other. In this article, I would like to focus on the another often misused part of classroom instruction, the use of visual tools and technology…
Teaching Students to Talk
As I have conversations with the teachers, one of the most common topics involves communication: verbal responses to the teacher, student to student discussion, collaborative group work and classroom discussion. Teachers often have expressed their desire for students to communicate better in class so it should come as no surprise that communication is also often addressed in teacher evaluation documents…
Using Guiding Questions
Sometimes as educators it is difficult to separate the terms curriculum and instruction when it comes to their use in our everyday teaching assignments. Put quite simply, curriculum is what we teach while instruction is how we present it. As teachers, we have a great deal of flexibility in how we deliver a lesson but curriculum is important in making sure every student is taught all that is needed and in keeping our courses vertically aligned from year to year and course to course. In this article, I want to focus on curriculum and particularly on the idea of guiding questions…
Quick Assessment
It seems that assessment is one of the “hot topics” in education today and yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. We hear the words: formative assessment, common assessment, summative assessment and so forth but what really is an assessment? Simply put, an assessment is anything that we use to determine if our students have “learned” what we want them know. We often think of this as a test
but most often an assessment is not a “test” at all. It is a quick check of student learning that may be written but might be oral as well. Effective assessments are anything that allows us to quickly and easily find out what a student knows and adjust instruction accordingly…
Partnership Principles
In my experience as instructional coach, one of the major ideas that comes up in every training session or in any book on coaching is the idea of partnership. To be effective as a coach, one must partner with those with whom he or she is working.
This is an idea that fits just as well with teachers working with each other, with collaborative teams working together and with administrators working with teachers or teams…
A Vision for Technological Classrooms for the 21st Century
As we consider the needs of the twenty-first century classroom and the changes needed to meet the needs of all students, the proper use of technology must be addressed if we are to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. We must carefully weigh the use of technology as an instructional delivery tool versus the very important element of teacher/student interaction and feedback. Twenty-first Century technology is a powerful tool and when combined with the instruction and feedback provided by research-based instructional techniques can provide an answer to the flexibility needed to teach to the many levels of today’s students….