April 2023 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

The Modern Classrooms Project

Over the past few weeks I have taken some time to explore and learn more about the Modern Classrooms Project (MCP). The MCP is a pedagogical approach to classroom teaching that better and more precisely differentiates instruction for each student in the classroom. The MCP accomplishes this goal by making clear distinctions between what teachers and students should be doing during and outside of class time. 

The primary distinction for teachers is using time outside the classroom to make short instructional videos that students will be using in the coming days. The MCP even includes resources letting teachers know how best to approach their video making. During class time the teacher's primary goal is to facilitate learning among students on a more individualized basis. This often includes assisting students who will be at various levels of mastery with the content due to any number of circumstances (i.e. the students are advanced, the student was absent, etc.)

For students, the primary distinction is taking more control over their day-to-day learning activities. In the MCP style, students have learned routines for the classroom and know what to do on their own when class time begins. Working on their own or with partners (when allowed), students accomplish as much as they can without the teacher's assistance but can always seek out the teacher's help when they get stuck. 

A MCP classroom would look quite different than what you may be accustomed to. In a MCP classroom, students generally work at their own pace, and may be ahead or behind other students. Once they have completed a sufficient amount of practice, students can take a mastery assessment to see if they are ready to move on. If they do well, they move on to the next skill. If not, they continue working on more practice.

If you are a teacher and you are interested in learning more about MCP and their approach, they offer a free training course to introduce teachers to this style of teaching.

Google Classroom Practice Sets

If you have been posting assignments in Google Classroom lately, you may have noticed a new addition to the menu of options you can include with your post; Practice Sets. Practice Sets allow teachers to generate practice problems for various types of skills that they may be interested in having students practice. In many cases, these skills can be attached to various standards or learning targets. 

Practice Sets allows teachers to choose from four different question types; short answer, single select, and multi select questions can be automatically scored (more on that below) and paragraph question, which cannot be automatically scored. 

For many skills, (not all) Practice Sets can automatically attach helpful resources for students that will provide assistance as they answer the questions. Or, if the student answers the question incorrectly, provide resources for remediation. Resources are identified using the power of artificial intelligence, so the teacher is not spending the time finding these resources when they could be doing something else.

March 2023 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

 

Congratulations Are In Order

First things first! Congratulations to MSD of Boone Township Spanish teacher Melissa Summerville for successfully passing the Google for Education Level 2 Exam. Melissa has earned 15 Professional Growth Points (PGPs) to use toward licence renewal and a $250 stipend from the district. 

All MSD of Boone Township teachers are eligible to earn the $250 stipend, which also includes 30 PGPs, by passing the both the Google for Education Level 1 and Level 2 exams.

Low Key PD Update

Low Key PD now has tutorials available for Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Jamboard. The complete set of tutorials for Google Drawings will be available later in April, but you can catch a sneak-peek here. 

Low Key PD is designed to provide easy to follow, video-based tutorials on the tools that you use everyday. Some videos are more detailed and last a bit longer, but most of the tutorials can be viewed in a passing period. You can find all of the Low Key PD videos on the Instructional Technology Coaching YouTube channel.

Google Has Been Busy

Ed Tech guru Eric Curts has posted a blog entry about all of the new updates Google has been working on that affect the Google tools you use everyday. As an added bonus, Eric has a terrific video explaining the Screencast App available to you on your chromebook.

February 2023 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

Google Docs

Google Forms

Low Key PD

The Hebron Instructional Technology YouTube Channel now has complete tutorials available for Google Docs and Google Forms will be finished by the end of February. What do I mean by complete? Pretty much every menu option in Google Docs is explained either in its own tutorial video or as part of another video covering multiple menu options. For Google Forms, every question style in Google Forms and pretty much every possible setting and option is explained in its own tutorial video, including themes, quizzes, response analysis, and so much more. 

These playlists give you the opportunity to learn specific skills for Google Docs or Google Forms or engage in a deep-dive study to maximize your learning. More Google apps will follow in the coming months as the tutorials are produced.

ParentSquare

Earlier this year MSD of Boone Township rolled out ParentSquare, an online community site for Hebron Schools students, parents, and employees. Links to the ParentSquare platform, the ParentSquare quick start page, and the ParentSquare YouTube channel have been added to the Hebron Schools bookmark folder.

ParentSquare allows teachers to communicate with both students and parents en masse with notes, messages, calendar events, and much more. Many parents have already activated their ParentSquare accounts and are staying in the loop with active teachers. Are you one of them?

January 2023 - Instructional Technology Newsletter

 

Google for Education Certification

The MSD of Boone Township is committed to providing teachers with professional development opportunities that will benefit student learning. As part of the district's commitment to teacher professional development, teachers have the opportunity to earn a $250.00 stipend (as well as PGPs for license renewal) by becoming a Google for Education (GfE) Level 2 certified educator. The process for becoming a GfE Level 2 educator requires teachers to pass two exams; the GfE Level 1 exam and the GfE Level 2 exam. According to the Google for Education website, the Level 1 skills provide teachers with "lessons and a progressive set of tips designed to help educators make the most of Google’s classroom technology," while the Level 2 skills allow teachers to "move beyond fundamentals with advanced lessons and cutting-edge strategies for integrating Google in [their] classroom."

In an effort to assist teachers in this process, the Instructional Technology Coach has provided online course work on Google Classroom for both the Level 1 and Level 2 courses and the district has purchased vouchers to cover the costs of the exams. The first iterations of these courses were offered as synchronous online courses, meaning that content was uploaded according to a schedule and participating teachers were typically completing work according to that schedule. Now that both courses are complete, these two courses are now available on Google Classroom as asynchronous online courses. Teachers are now free to complete the courses as quickly (or slowly) as they please. If you are a teacher in the MSD of Boone Township and would like to participate in GfE certification course, please contact the Instructional Technology Coach for more information.

Lastly, but certainly not least, I am happy to report that in 2022, nine MSD of Boone Township teachers successfully passed the GfE Level 1 exam and are on their way to becoming GfE Level 2 educators...and receiving additional PGPs...and receiving the $250.00 stipend.

Low Key PD

In other news, the Instructional Technology Coach will be working on a new initiative this spring called "Low Key PD." The purpose of Low Key PD is to provide teachers with short, (nearly) on-demand tutorials on the skills that they want to learn. There is already an extensive collection of tutorial videos on the Hebron Instructional Technology YouTube channel. Or you can go to YouTube and search "low key pd." The videos are in the neighborhood of five minutes; some are longer, many are shorter. Teacher time is valuable and often the skills they want to learn are very specific. Teachers can also make requests at the Low Key PD website.

Using the Share to Classroom Chrome Extension

Part 1: Sharing a typical website.

Part 2: Sharing a document in Google Drive.

***If you are at all familiar with Google Drive and Google Classroom, you know that using the Share to Classroom extension to share a document from your google drive is not the most efficient way to do that. In fact, to use the Share to Classroom extension to do that is not just more complicated than using Classroom, it's much more complicated. So no, I'm not posting a tutorial on how to do that.

Gee! Sweet!

Earlier this month Google made a rather significant change to its Google Apps for Education collection of apps. Google Apps for Education has been renamed (rebranded?) as G Suite for Education (GSFE).

But the change isn't only in the name. The change also means that the current collection of apps associated with GSFE will be updated with "new intelligent features that make work easier and bring teachers and students together", according to the announcement.

These changes include the addition of an "Explore" feature in both Sheets, Docs, and Slides. In Sheets, teachers and students can use the new feature to quickly visualize data to make judgments on how to proceed. In Docs, teachers and students can the new feature to find related topics, images, content, and Drive files that may provide additional information on the subject of the document. In Slides, the new feature can suggest slide formatting options to make formatting the presentation go quicker so teachers and students can spend more time on adding rich content.

You can read more about these updates on the official blog post and the Google for Education site.

Four More Reasons to Love Google Forms

When I assign problems from the textbook, I love being able to create a Google Form that the students can use to check their answers as they work. I create the form, add a few directions on how to enter their responses, fill in the form myself, and then (reason 1) I enable the Flubaroo Add-On to automatically grade student responses against my own.

This workflow has several benefits; 1) the students get their graded responses by email within seconds, 2) the email can be used as documentation to show they did the assignment, 3) the students can go back and fix the questions they got wrong, 4) and there is no limit to the number of times the student can submit their solutions.

But all of this is dependent on one tiny little thing. When I create the form I have to set it up to collect the username of the student submitting their answers. That isn't done automatically. Otherwise Flubaroo has nowhere to send the emails.

Today I posted an answer check form where I forgot to collect usernames. Whoops! Students were submitting their responses and not getting them back. And did I ever hear about it. To fix the problem I went back into the form and changed it so that it would collect usernames. Then I changed the response destination to a new spreadsheet so that the username field would get filled with each submission. I copy and paste the old data into the new sheet and we're all good to go.

When I did that, I opened the new sheet and, much to my surprise, (reason 2) the old data was automatically imported into the new sheet. I didn't have to copy and paste any data. That made me happy.

In addition to that, I checked the old sheet and saw that (reason 3) the username column was appended at the end of the columns. This apparently happened automatically when I changed that setting. So I didn't need to create a new sheet at all.

And the most amazing thing about this, there were students who had the form open as I was updating it, and when they submitted the form, it used the new settings and their data went into the new sheet even though they never refreshed the page. (reason 4) The updates I made took affect in real time.