Totally Worth It!..

So as I've started to utilize Twitter more this year in my own learning, something wonderful happened as a result of my Twitter obsession. I saw tons of tweets about Edcamp and had no clue what it was all about. My instructional technology coach told me more about it so we registered to go. All we knew was that it an "unconference." We didn't know what to expect. We were so intrigued that we found  one that was happening the soonest and registered. It was in Missouri and we thought "oh, 2 hours away is perfect." Yeah, total geography fail. It was actually in Springfield, MO which happens to be 6 hours away but we didn't let that stop us.

So Saturday morning after a long drive on Friday night, we headed to Willard High School for our first Edcamp experience.When we arrived, we made name tags with our name and twitter handle. We then received tickets. The tickets were used to enter into drawings for prizes. What I really liked about this was the choice aspect. Chrissie (follow her @techiechrissie) and I saw that one of the prizes was a Nearpod Gold Membership. We were stoked! Our teachers use Nearpod and we have been toying with the idea of purchasing a membership. I put every ticket into Nearpod with no hopes of winning because I never win anything. We then had breakfast (Panera, my fav). We heard announcements encouraging people to facilitate a session on a topic. Chrissie and I decided to #bebrave and facilitate a discussion about 1:1 development and implementation focusing on instruction and technology. After all of the sign-ups we were all able to choose sessions we were interested in attending. My first session was awesome with @kdgteach_123. It was about using Google Drive to track progress monitoring data in the primary grades. It was just what I needed and an answer to a teacher need at my school. The next session was facilitated by Chrissie and I. It was a great discussion. It really provided the opportunity to connect with other schools on the 1:1 journey and see the difference in PD, procedures, tech, etc. We attended lunch, an app shootout, one last session, and a Super Session.

They always say save the best for last. Well the best was prize time. Not only did I win the Nearpod Membership I wanted so badly, but I won the biggest prize, a Samsung Chromebook! Not only was #edcampsgf one of the best professional development opportunities I experienced, it was totally worth the 6 hour drive to come back with awesome prizes. Everyone was so welcoming and I made tons of new twitter friends.

I encourage everyone to attend one of if you can. Google it to find more info. We are already looking into how can we use this and where's the next (closest) edcamp. Maybe we will head on over to #edcampstl.

6 hour drive....new twitter friends...wonderful experience...new ideas..tons of learning...great prizes

It was totally worth it!

Going Digital with Grandparents

This past week I headed a "Going Digital with Grandparents" event to celebrate Grandparents Day at school. I really wanted to find a way to better include our parents, grandparents, and families in our 1:1 quest. The kids read a book with their grandparents to start things off. That was the easy part. Once I gave the task of making a Book Commercial on the iPads, some of the grandparents got a little nervous. I heard a lot of "I can't even work my cell phone; how does this thing work." I had many giggles in our 2 hours together. An awesome moment occurred, I was able to say with great confidence, "Grandpa and Grandpas, if the iPads make you nervous and you aren't sure what to do, have no fear. The kids know exactly what to do." They were amazed that the little ones knew exactly what to do. By the end of their time together, some students created iMovies with their grandparents, showed them their projects and some of the apps that they use in their classroom, and many pictures were taken of grandmas and grandpas for students to see everyday on their iPads.

It's great to use the technology every day with the students. The magical moments occur when they are able to teach others and are excited to share what they do with the technology. Nothing's
better than combining family involvement, technology, literacy, fun, and snacks. It was wonderful!

How do you involve your family in your 1:1 environment or technology transformation?

"Ms. Ellis, It's Just Like the Show Catfish!"

This week has been so busy! I just hate 4-day weeks because there's so much to do with so little time. Well one of our poor teachers was sick this week. I felt so bad, but she's back to feeling better. She had a sub and I was asked to help the sub at the end of the day. I tried to think of an activity that would keep the students engaged for the rest of the day (2 hours!). I had been looking into the 1:1 digital citizenship lessons from www.commonsensemedia.org.  The first lesson for 6th grade was taking a look at the Acceptable Use Policy. So I hurried downstairs to grab some copies and headed into a 6th grade class that looked like they were ready to eat me alive with a paper full of small words with major meaning. I explained to them the purpose of the lesson and the desired outcome. The desired outcome was that each student or group of students would create a kid friendly iMovie explaining the guidelines of our district's AUP.

I expected to get through the AUP in 30 minutes. OMG! The students were so engaged and couldn't believe the guidelines that were in the AUP. They were in shock. They were making some major connections. Then we reached the rule of not falsely representing yourself. The students talked about being able to "hide" behind a screen on Facebook which leads to internet bullying and fights, pretending to be a different age, and one student took it to that unexpected high in any lesson. "Ms. Ellis, it's just like the show catfish on MTV." That's when I knew they understood! She talked about how that show can ruin peoples lives and they told me to watch it that night. Ummm, weird show and it's kind of scary!

Their ability to make connections to those guidelines and see all of the expectations of them even though they have their own iPad really opened their eyes to their connection to the world right at their fingertips. What really hit home is when they truly understood that they have no privacy. Once you put it out there on the internet, blog, Edmodo for people to see, you can't always take it back. They were blow away that even I, as a district employee, have to follow the guidelines just like them.

I can't wait to keep working with this class on digital citizenship. One student told me "Ms. Ellis, you should send our iMovies somewhere." So my district's Director of IT has no idea, but I will soon be blowing up his email with AUP iMovies (guess, I will warn him by sending him this blog post ha!).

We have to take a different approach then telling students what they shouldn't do on their iPad and they have no idea why it important or for their safety. That only makes them want to "test the waters."  I really think that one lesson went a long way with those 6th graders. Many people think that digital citizenship shouldn't be taught and that you address is as it comes up but sometimes when it comes up, it's too late and being too late can bring you to a bad episode of Catfish! Check out an episode below.

http://bit.ly/MTVsCatfish

Making Time with Educreations!

A teacher's number one phrase = "There's never enough time." When I was in the classroom, I always felt there was never enough time. As a coach, I KNOW there is never enough time, but I sympathize with teacher's in my building as they try to get through everything and time gets in the way.

Two weeks ago, I had a teacher come to me with a math concern. Her students needed to get started with double-digit multiplication, but after giving the pre-test, she realized that they didn't even know how to add double-digit numbers. The concern was not only the fact that her students weren't where they should be, but the time crunch of getting everything in that needs to be done by the end of the first quarter.

There's so much to get through in one day! If only we could add a few more hours. So after some brainstorming, we decided that maybe we could "flip" math. Out of about 20 students, only 4-5 had an understanding of double-digit addition with regrouping. I think this caused the "time crunch" panic of "I have so much to get to and its going to take forever to get to where we need to be." So I made a goal that it would take no more than a week for the students to gain mastery and I started to plan.

Because its the beginning of the year, I did consider the "summer loss." So I decided to use Educreations to create a re-teaching instructional video to use as morning work. It was my first experience of actually creating a video myself. Tip: make sure your kids are asleep! I definitely had to stop numerous times because of my son talking. Thank goodness for Educreations' updates and the undo button. I tried to make the video personal and talk to the students. I started with a good morning and shared our objectives.  Check out my video here.  The students also had a quick check sheet to work out their problems along with me. We did the sample together in the video and then they tried 2 problems on their own as a pre-test for me. I wanted to analyze the common mistakes and misunderstandings.

Common mistakes and misunderstanding: place value understanding, what to do when the answer in the tens column is more than 9, regrouping in general, lining up of numbers

I entered the class first thing in the morning. I gave a short intro to what we would be doing and why. My video was about 7 minutes long. Let me tell you....that was the most quiet 7  minutes I've ever experienced. The students were engaged in the video. The end of the video told them what to do next so I never had to personally tell the students what to do next. I could just see them going through the steps and it was awesome. I thought of how beneficial that would be to overall time as a teacher. I thought about how it could allow a teacher to pull intervention groups as students worked. I was never interrupted while that instructional video was playing. It was just plain awesome!

If you would like to see how the lesson played out and next steps (small group instruction involving QR codes), feel free to make a comment! I also made my goal of mastery within a week. It only took 3 days and ended with the students making their own instructional videos on Educreations to show double- digit addition with regrouping. They even created a success criteria list for themselves to assess their own Educreations instructional video. It created time during the math block for small group instruction to meet the needs of all students. The re-teaching and pretesting was already done as morning work so we were able to use that data to guide small group time during the math block.

Here are some tips on creating instructional videos that I think helped with the success of mine with students:

1. Be personal
2. Encourage the students
3. Have them complete tasks along with you on the video (it helps with engagement)
4. Share objectives, expectations, and goals
5. Be clear in your explanations
6. Leave time for students to practice and self check during the video (the students loved hearing whether they got the answer right and were allowed to give themselves a smiley face)
7. Talk clearly with good volume
8. Let the students explore Educreations themselves
9. Have fun and be creative!

My video was very simple and the kids watched my video over and over when they were creating their own. Beginning of the year success story #1.

Educreations = Just Plain Awesome!

P.S. Because we are a 1:1 iPad school, we used the app. Educreations is also a web-based tool. It can work in any classroom.

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Why I Started Blogging

In December of last year I was in desperate search of winter break. I was exhausted and had no clue what I had done from August up to that point. I knew I did some good things but I was so busy that it was hard to remember EVERYTHING. To get back in the groove of things after winter break, I began letting teachers make goals for the second half of the year that I could support them with. Then I thought, I need to make a goal for myself to keep pushing myself as a coach and learner. I knew that I needed some kind of outlet to track my thoughts, things that I had done, and the awesome things that teachers had let me work with them on.

I decided to make my goal to start my own blog. I had no intentions of making my blog public domain (ha). Then one day my tech coach tweeted one of my posts for the world to see! Let's just say I went from 12 views to 412 overnight! If that wasn't motivation to keep posting, I don't know what is!

So here I am some months later with a back to school goal of blogging at least once a week. I've been able to keep up with it so far (only by putting it on my calendar). Many times before I make a new post, I read through what I wrote in the past.

It has been a wonderful experience. Of course I will make another goal in regards to my blog during Christmas break. I'm so excited to see where my blog goes over the next few months.

Working in a tech school, blogging is taking off. We have students who are beginning to blog. Their voices can be shared around the world. That is so inspirational. I'm not quite sure if they know how big that is quite yet, but I can't wait to see where they go with their blogs and share them with the world.

It all started with a need to release my thoughts, a computer, a tech coach who loves Twitter and here I am, an official blogger!

Students as School Leaders #leadershipday13

      Happy Leadership Day! Leadership is so important. Often we look to the teachers and administrators, but there are other leaders in the school that make a huge difference. These other leaders can come in big or small sizes….they are OUR STUDENTS.  So many times WE as educators talk about how wonderful our schools are, but what if our students could take our “talk” away and represent our “talk” daily?  I work in a 1:1 environment at a technology magnet school as an instructional coach. Often times, my work is way bigger than me. Let me share an experience that was way bigger than me.

       Last February, I hosted some of our fifth grade students at a technology conference for students and by students. The teacher and I practiced with them but they made their own handouts, samples, and instructions for their attendees. I had no idea what to expect and neither did the students. We were all extremely nervous. We hopped on a bus on a Saturday and headed to the S.I.T. (Student in Technology) Conference in Bloomington-Normal, IL. The kids got all set up and in walked educators, students, and parents ready to see what our students had to say about creating with iPADS. I so wanted to walk around and give these people background information on our school and these students, but then the unthinkable happened! The students “spoke” for the school. They answered all questions and taught people who had never touched an iPad before how to create a quality iMovie. The teacher, principal, and I didn’t have to say a word. We all looked at each other, smiled, and started snapping as many pictures as possible.

      The moment that I will never forget is when a technology coordinator from another district said, “These kids are wonderful. You need to take them out more. To the school board, to your community, everywhere! They are such good representatives of your school. I can’t believe they are 5^th graders!” That moment gave me chills. I couldn’t be more proud. This wasn’t about taking kids to present at some technology conference; it was much bigger than that. It was about letting students shine as leaders of the school.  Allowing them to show their greatness.

      Those 5^th grade students have presented to their classmates and other classrooms and to our district coordinators and instructional coaches. Every time the message is very clear, students CAN BE and ARE leaders in our schools. We have to let them be. We are growing as our district’s premier technology school. As we grow, we can never forget to grow our students with us. It’s all about them. Let them be the voice of our schools. Let them lead.

Are your students leaders? 

Back to School Goal Making

Today is the big day! It's the first day of school. Today was extra hard for me because my son started Kindergarten. So excited for my little guy's educational journey. I have set goals for him such as bedtime, homework, and dinner time. As I think of him and all of the goals that I have set for him to have a successful school year, I have taken the time to make some goals for myself. I need to do more with my blog, so my goal is to blog at least once a week. I need to keep up with my professional learning, so my goal is to block out some time during the week (we will see how long this one lasts). The BIGGEST goal I have for myself is to be respectful of my OWN time. This year made me really reflect on last year, my first year as an instructional coach. I find it very odd that I really don't remember anything that I did before Christmas break. It was probably because I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to keep up and figure out the world of coaching. So here I am making a goal for better time management. I want to be an effective coach but overworking is just not healthy. Many nights I would crash at 8pm and then wake up 3am to work until it was time to get ready for the day. That was ridiculous! So on the first night before school, I went to bed before 11pm and I didn't wake up!  I know more goals will come along, but for now I'm just shooting for hard work, better blogging, great time management, memories, more time with  my little guy

, success stories, and 8 hours of sleep! What's your goal?