Final Reflection 2018-2019

Thanks, Polly for years of great inspiration and PD.  I learned so much from taking all of these Cool Tools classes. 

For the longest time, my greatest hurdle was having the technology to do the lessons. Now it is TIME.  TIME to plan the lessons and time to implement them.  Something always goes wrong during technology-dependent lessons and you need more TIME. Sometimes the kids just don't follow the directions (even when they are step-by-step demonstrated on the SMART board AND step-by-step on paper next to them) and I need TIME to figure out what they did wrong to get them back on the correct path.  Even the idea of showcasing their work takes extra TIME - to edit so they make corrections and to download the PDFs, upload them, and link to them on the website that I needed TIME to edit.

But thanks for motivating me to try even if I haven't really mastered which ideas are worth the TIME from an educational standpoint.

Happy Retirement!  We will miss your class.  I hope we can find someone else to continue to teach even if they can't fill your shoes.

Thing 23: New AASL Standards

The six ‘Shared Foundations’ of the new AASL Standards and their accompanying ‘KEY Commitments’ are: 

·       Inquire -Build new knowledge by inquiring, thinking critically, identifying problems, and developing strategies for solving problems.

·       Include -Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to inclusiveness and respect for diversity in the learning community.

·       Collaborate -Work effectively with others to broaden perspectives and work toward common goals.

·       Curate -Make meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance.

·       Explore -Discover and innovate in a growth mindset developed through experience and reflection.

·       Engage -Demonstrate safe, legal, and ethical creating and sharing of knowledge products independently while engaging in a community of practice and an interconnected world.

So just looking at these foundations, I’m trying to wrap my head around what I cover and what I don’t.  I think, in general, that the Inquire concept has always been a strength of my classes and library program.  We have a lot of resources.  I have every grade do research projects.  Except for this year when I didn’t have time due to being a teacher prep, I usually create individualized book lists for all of the intermediate students.  I still do this on a one-on-one basis if a student or parent has a question that I can’t answer off the top of my head on the spot.

I have always tried to talk to the students about the Include idea.  I have done most of the modifications for students who need them but I try to push them to work hard.  I have always tried to make our book collection diverse and inclusive despite being in a largely homogeneous, conservative community.

The previous Special Education Director used me as a resource for helping to find appropriate resources for our students.  For instance, one student who was VERY intelligent and curious struggled mightily with reading and writing.  She was really willing to put the time in to improve her reading ability; she would read a book of interest that was just out of her reading level over and over until she really understood it.  Her interests were wide-ranging and intense, so just using books at her level didn’t cut it.  I suggested that we get her hooked up with audio books and suggested the Speak option of Google Docs for writing.  She spoke her writing and then copied it by hand where appropriate to try to help with the spelling aspect.  It was hugely successful.

In addition, when we had our first blind student (who graduates this year) I learned Braille, pursued a Capital Region BOCES grant to jumpstart our Braille book collection, pushed for the purchase of other Braille materials and equipment, and joined a listserv to learn more.

I discuss thinking about others a lot.  This year, I started what was going to be a word of the week, but evolved into a word of the several weeks.  The Include concept is part of our discussion of Cooperative and Compassionate.  I try to particularly talk to the students about working to your strengths: you are my partner and you might not be great at reading, but you might be better at the technology than I am. 

From looking at Tech Tools & Resources AASL Standards for the Learner, I found the Penpal Schools site.  I wasn’t able to locate information on pricing, but the concept has always interested me.  I know that being from such a poor, homogeneous community means that my students could benefit from more exposure to the world and what other people think.  There are certainly a lot of other tools on this chart that would benefit from a second or third look, too.

Thinking about the Collaborate concept, it wasn’t a strength of my program years ago, but since Common Core, I have really tried to include more group projects.  Ironically, I have been thinking that I have gone too far in the group project direction so I am not sure that every child has been getting all of the skills.  But what with more and more of any project work having to happen during the school day as parents are unwilling or unable to help their child or give their child time to work on projects at home, the model I used to use for independent projects in grades 4 through 6 is unfeasible.  In addition, collaborating is certainly a necessary work skill and our students tend to be so bad at cooperating now since their lives are so isolated that it needs to be emphasized where it can.  I also try to incorporate the G Suite for Education products (that I know they will still be using in the high school) because they are so good at allowing collaboration AND at allowing me to see what has happened in the process through Version History.

The Curate concept is frankly not one that I have ever really touched except in the lessons I do with third grade on internet searching.  There the students use our model for judging websites to partner up and evaluate the first few links of a search about frogs.  Then, they are to search for two other hits, evaluate them, and share out their conclusions.  I know that the concept of curating has also come up during other projects in the sense that one group will help another by pointing out where they found necessary information, but it was informal.  I guess that this is a real weakness.  I wonder what the easiest method of allowing them to share information sources might be.

When looking at Tech Tools & Resources AASL Standards for the Learner, it seemed like most of the tools were more for the library media specialist (or whatever the professional calls themselves) to curate than for the students to curate.  I was focusing my answer to the inclusion of curation in my program to how I teach students to do it, but my website, my google classroom, and even my Destiny Quest book lists are examples of my shared curation.  When I used the old Common Sense Media Digital Passport program which included videos to watch as well as the games to play, my students earned their login information for Destiny Quest and they shared reviews and recommendations safely through that site.  Perhaps I should revive that somehow, but it will only address sharing book information, not websites or apps.  Even my Symbaloo demonstrates curation, but the students don’t personally experience it much unless they ask for me to add something that I feel comfortable adding immediately.  Along with many other teachers, I am Pinterest crazed as I can use it on my phone to find things to use in future lessons.  I can use it while waiting in the doctor’s office.  BUT, it isn’t something I would feel comfortable having students use because it is tracking crazed.

The Explore concept is an interesting one.  I think that I demonstrate the growth mindset to students a lot – though maybe not as often as I would like to.  I don’t hesitate to say to students, especially as they get older, that I don’t know, but I can find out or that it sounds like you know more than me, so maybe you should tell us more.  This definitely came up in our Digital Citizenship discussions when a student asked if a VPN couldn’t solve the problem we were discussing.  I had to admit that while I knew what a VPN was, I don’t personally know that much about them, so I couldn’t speak to them.  Again, I try to support their interests as much as possible and encourage students to pursue them by providing materials to help.

The reflection part of the Explore concept, however, is a weakness.   I am trying to include it more and more in my lessons, but it is hard to find the time AND I’m not sure that the students who really need the reflection the most really give it justice.  I seem to get really good responses and really bad ones.  It seems hard to use with younger students, too.  Maybe I am going about it the wrong way, but I usually have them complete a written response on paper or on a Google Form. The younger the students the more difficult simply writing is for them so the reflection suffers.  I have tried to have the older students reflect on their work AND on the work of others in order to have some of the growth ideas come from someone other than me.  Boy, some students have so much trouble giving ideas either for what was good or what needed improvement.  There are so many students who either only see the roses or only see the thorns.

Again, looking at Tech Tools & Resources AASL Standards for the Learner, I never considered how well coding fit into the Explore idea.  I did host our Hour of Code week in the elementary school this year.  I had students code in an afterschool group years ago and have had coding sites on my website, my Symbaloo, and bookmarks in the library for a long time.

Finally, there is the Engage concept.  I am definitely trying to emphasize the “safe, legal, and ethical creating and sharing” aspect.  We talk seemingly endlessly about note-taking and paraphrasing versus plagiarism.  We talk about copyright and the importance of giving proper credit to our sources.   They use Creative Commons to search for images. I try to show the students how I use technology from email in kindergarten through posting to our Google Sites site in the intermediate grades.  I don’t currently, however, have a way of allowing my students to share information themselves aside from sharing the results of their G Suite work using the SHARE button.  I don’t know how to get around the issues. 

First, there are the new regs about student data and websites that are coming up.  I am already concerned that all of the products we use are not compliant.  Some projects will have to be reworked due to that.  Then, there is already an issue in our district and probably in others with parents who do not want their child’s name on the web.  And there is even the issue of parents who do not want their child ever to be photographed, though especially not on the web.  All of this combines to make it hard to allow the children to post themselves and to find the appropriate site where posting themselves might be feasible.  When I post, I make sure the student isn’t identified.  Of course, I tell them to only use initials, but so many students ignore that direction.

Again, looking at Tech Tools & Resources AASL Standards for the Learner, I do, as discussed in previous posts, utilize a modified and personalized version of the Be Internet Awesome curriculum.  Some of the teachers in our school use Prodigy and the students love it.  I looked into Nearpod last summer after the LIT conference, but money is always a stumbling block.

I quickly looked at New AASL Standards, So What?.  It will certainly bear revisiting, but the process looks a lot like me going through this post foundation by foundation to reflect on what I do and what I should do more of.  If only there was more time built in for us to do that.  It seems like schools try so hard to prove that PD days are worthwhile that they don’t really give us the time to delve deeply in to make improvements.  I’m too busy on PD days going from workshop to workshop where I have to follow the presenter’s priorities.  If we asked teachers to submit their own plans and their results, I think we might see more improvements faster.

I would love to hear how others are tackling these issues (with Engage and Curate, expecially) in order to allow elementary students more latitude and experience in sharing their creations.

BTW, I admit it, I wrote this post in Word and pasted into Blogger.  Sorry about the formatting in this one, too, but since the Blogger only post didn't seem a whole lot better...

Thing 10: Search Tools Ninja

Okay, so I am exploring this topic both for personal reasons as I keep learning new tricks to find things better (as mentioned in the Update on Thing 24 in a previous post) and for professional reasons because I try to teach my students, especially in third grade, to be savvy searchers.  I would love to have links to better child-friendly search engines.

I have showed them www.Kiddle.co, but they aren't always reliable or appropriate sites either.  Lately, they seem to be better however.

SweetSearch seems to be a viable option.  Startpage looks like something I want to share with my 5th graders.  Now that we have discussed how big data tracks them everywhere, they are more aware of it and mention it often.  They might like to use this option to avoid the tracking.

Interestingly, random searching for topics to test the various search engines with found me DOGOnews which looks interesting.  It is a current events style site for kids, like Tween Tribune or NewsELA, but apparently without the ability to search by reading level.  Still it is an interesting site to remember.  (I also found https://mrsgraysms.weebly.com/ which has interesting links that I might want to explore in the future.)  Another interesting find, is OneTab which looks like a really good Chrome extension.  I will have to research it more, but as I am the queen of tabs with two monitors at school and only one at home, this looks promising!

I personally have Duck Duck Go as one of the tabs that opens automatically on my computer at home.  At school it seems pointless as I'm using Google Chrome within a school district that is thoroughly Google.  We use Google Classroom, Google Suite, Google Calendars, gmail, the whole nine yards.

I looked into the Custom Search Engines.  I looked at  Mrs. Gray’s Research Site for Kids. Although I see the appeal, it would be tough to target enough sites that are at a relevant reading level to cover what the children might want to search for.  Mrs. Gray's seems to favor the New York Times, which while it is reputable, is not exactly at the reading level of "kids" as I know them.  Maybe it would work better for teenagers.  She does seem to have managed to cover a huge variety of topics in a safe way.
Building a custom search engine could work well for individual projects though.  For example, for my third grade frog project I could probably easily compile a list of sites that cover the information and are reputable.  The downside is that the students aren't really learning how to judge a website and how to verify the information.  It solves one problem, but creates another.

I did try creating a custom search that would search the databases we use most frequently at school.  I even added it to my website on the databases page.  If kids like it, I might move it to the front page.  The unfortunate part is that it includes ads.  I had to make it with my personal google credentials as my school ones wouldn't work. That is very disappointing.  It said, "We are sorry, but you do not have access to this service. Please contact your Organization Administrator for access." Obviously, I can try to get them to change this, but since our IT department is NERIC based, the decisions seem to be made more globally than locally sometimes.  I do wonder how if I will remember how to find my custom search should I want to edit it in the future.

I would love the LibGuides option, but I don't have the budget at school for it.

I liked the article 11 Great Kids Safe Search Engines.  It gives a brief view of if it is ad free or not as well as a brief description of the search engines pros and cons.

Six easy ways to tell if that viral story is a hoax was interesting to read, but certainly not something to share with my students.  My fifth graders and I have discussed snopes.com though and the need to investigate before you believe the latest posts.

I briefly checked out Five Tips for Teaching Students How to Research and Filter Information.  It was interesting, but even better was the link to "Kathy Schrock’s PDF document which demonstrates how you can progressively teach citation from grades 1 to 6."  That gives me an idea of how others deal with the fact that young kids just can't handle everything required of an MLA citation for a website.  My students are great with copying the book citation from Destiny Quest or the citations on sites like World Book, but a regular website is tough - frankly, it is even tough for me.  I have a tendency to use something like NoodleTools to get the citation correct.  She mentions in Staying Organized the option of creating a "system for students to organize their information while they’re searching."  I try to do that, but sometimes it feels as if I am doing too much of the work.  Then again, trying to do index cards with fifth grade was a nightmare (despite taping zip bags into their folders to keep them safe) that I finally ditched this year.

Well, I've spent a long time with this topic, so I guess I will leave Power Searching with Google and How to Live Without Google that I wanted to read for myself for another time.  I sure hope, Polly, that you manage to leave all of your great resources up for us to consult in the future.

BTW, sorry about the weird highlight.  I don't know what I am doing wrong.  This time, I did not start in GoogleDocs or Word.  I just typed right into Blogger, but I still get this weird formatting.

Thing 11: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship

This has been much on my mind of late for a few reasons.  First, it was a topic of conversation in our district's technology committee last year.  Second, our kids seem woefully unprepared for the realities of the digital world.  Third, I went to the LIT conference last summer and took a digital literacy session.  Fourth, since I am a "special" teacher (teacher prep) this year with weekly one-hour classes, my fifth graders finished their big projects early and I needed to do more. (I should mention that I already taught most students about copyright and citations as well as intermediate students about finding appropriate online sources.)

Enter the digital literacy lessons.  I created my own presentations fashioned after Google's Be Internet Awesome resource guide with additions as I found them or as they came up organically in the lessons.  What I thought, in about February, would take a few weeks, has consumed essentially the rest of the year.  The kids are so interested, so involved, and they have SOOOO many questions.

For sub plans, when necessary, I have also included articles from PebbleGo Next on: Information Technology, What is the Internet?, Internet Publishing, Global Communication, and Online Safety, as well as BrainPOP's videos on Digital Citizenship. The students are really interested and engaged.

I haven't really incorporated the Interland experiences yet. I hope to find time for it in June as I think it is a valuable part of the lessons. This is all taking so much longer than I had planned. I guess that is a caveat I would give to other users of the Be Internet Awesome lessons -be aware that you are opening a can of worms! TA's, aides, volunteers, and other teachers who have wandered in and heard part or all of a lesson think that it is great that I am teaching it and they realize how much it is needed, BUT most would be nervous to attack it themselves because there is so much we don't know and sometimes the kids bring up something inappropriate. This is not so much to disrupt the class as because they don't know who else to ask. You definitely have to be on your toes. I just admit what I don't know and try to find answers for them. Shockingly, most of the kids were using devices with no security protection at all. Over the course of several weeks, they begged me to tell them what to get to protect their devices. I ended up posting a series of links to reviews of security software and apps.

Let's see what the "Thing" has to offer to help improve this for next year.

I added the Common Sense "I took a photo" poster into my lessons for next year as I think it will really help them fully think out the posting idea.

So the CEOP video.  I actually watched this months ago in preparation for what I was teaching.  I think it is a good video, BUT..... I think some kids would get too scared.  I know that some of the parents in my district would object.  Plus the British accent would throw some of them.  Wish there were a slightly tamer American version.

I peeked at the Notes at the bottom... I used to use the Common Sense Digital Passport with the kids.  At that point, it was pretty student-directed to watch the videos and complete the various aspects of the passport.  I did have to check their scores because if I didn't ANYONE would pass even if they didn't really try, but I figured that out and made it work.  The kids came in at recess or on their own time to get access to a computer to finish the lessons and earn their passport.  It worked fairly well.  But what with the changes I saw, it didn't seem to be the best choice anymore.  The students can get to the games without the learning anything first.  I wish they still offered the old method because not every school has someone devoting all of this class time to teaching digital citizenship and even I can't at all grades.  A site where they had to watch videos, perhaps play a game, and answer a quiz of some sort would allow people to use it as a flipped classroom model.  I checked and videos still exist, but they seem fairly buried and hard to get to.  Maybe I could make a Symbaloo out of it if I find the time.

I tried to do the Pipl search, but you need an account and the last thing I need is another account.  I was successful with the Family Tree Now search however.  Scary how they could link to information from SOOOO long ago.

I looked at What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship.  Regarding the 9 key P's,:
1. Passwords -This is in the Be Internet Awesome lessons and we will cover it, but it is not really something we have our students do in school at the elementary level.  SOOO many of the kids cannot remember their passwords even though they are based off of their student numbers.  It is really a problem when you're trying to do a lesson with an online component.  If they changed their passwords we would never be able to keep going on the lesson.  I know that some people will say that then they just need to make up the lesson, but they are little kids and don't have study halls.  The teachers don't have extra free periods to reteach during AND the after school bus service is not an option, especially for the primary students.  So, in summary, I will teach it, but we don't really model it well in school.  I know that I need to personally explore this more as well.

2. Private information -This was a big part of the Share with Care lessons and my students really got into it.  There was a lot of discussion about what was okay to share and, assuming the students were paying attention, it was obvious how different people can view information as private or not.  In general, I think the kids got the idea that it should be up to the person who's information it is to decide AND that the kids should be talking to their parents about what is okay with them to share.  I integrated a whole discussion about identity theft in here and how horribly prevalent it is and that even infants are having their identity stolen.

3. Personal information and 4. Photographs: This was a big part of Share with Care, too.  I even segued into how personal information can help a hacker to gain access to someone's accounts because too many people use personal details like children, pets, and favorites to create their passwords.  We did not, however, get into the dangers of geotagging on the photos.  In was interesting how the some of the students were upset about how many photos their parents (and particularly their moms) upload of them.  Some of the kids had obviously told their moms to stop posting their photo even before the discussion and their mom ignored them.  It really hit a nerve.

5. Property - I start teaching about Creative Commons searching in 2nd grade and repeat the lessons in our projects in 3rd, 4th, and 5th (and 6th, last year).   We watch the Copyright video on BrainPOP to try to increase understanding of the topic. I know that they don't always do it, but they know how.  I will say that I think that the kids are always so rushed to complete their assignments (because we push, push, push -at least in our school) that they take the easy way out.  

6. Permission - I start citations in 2nd grade, too.  I don't know what else to do.  I will say that it is hard for the kids to do the online citations.  Even the sites designed for citation, like Noodle Tools, are really complex for at least my elementary students.   Now, many of my students are not as tech-savvy as many of the suburban students might be, but still.  The citations in Destiny Quest and World Book are easy for them to create, copy and use, but creating an MLA citation for a web page is much harder.

7. Protection - As I said above, this was covered in our discussions ans everyone should know how much the students WANT to know it.

8. Professionalism - We have talked about the ramifications that posting without thinking could potentially have on their future.  The situation with the VA governor provided an easy segue into that discussion because I could say to look at how much this has been covered in the media and no one ever expected anyone to find out because it was only in a print yearbook.  I explained that what they post is never as private as they think, that companies constantly change the way their privacy settings work so you have to keep checking and that things online never go away.  Some students definitely understood this especially when I pointed out the articles about students losing their admission to college based on their posts, like the They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets and Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes articles.

9. Personal brand - This I haven't covered at all.  I'm not sure that my students would get this yet.  Does anyone have any ideas of covering this with elementary students?

I briefly looked at 8 digital skills we must teach our children. I haven't really considered covering the digital use or digital emotional intelligence topics with my students. I guess it is something to ponder, but there is so much in general to cover and I can't cover everything...

Finally, I like the list of Digital Citizenship Videos from Teaching Channel that is mentioned in the Digital Citizenship Week resources.  I think I could find more here to add to my lessons, especially if there are shorter ones I could squeeze into the younger grades.  Exploring them will take more time than I have now.

In short, there is always more to explore and consider about this topic and every week brings a new example to show to the students so it feels relevant.

Another interesting resource

I found another interesting resource that I haven't fully explored yet:
https://sites.google.com/view/cool-tools-for-schools/home/cool-tools-for-schools
I'd love to give  credit to the creator, but they don't seem to have any name associated with the site.  I did put in a comment asking about it.  (Of course, I've told my students not to trust sites like that, but what little I looked at seemed interesting.

Update on Thing 24: Google Drawings

Because I did the Google Drawings thing, I knew how to use the program.  I needed to find the citation for one of the photos that  some students used in a project (that I was posting to my website), but didn't cite. I knew that Google had the ability to search by image, but I hadn't done it.  After searching for the instructions, all I did was:

•  recopy their image to a Google Drawing (which I had to publish to the web), 
• copy the link,
• go to image search, 
• click the 
• and search for the original location.  

I know the process is even easier on a phone or tablet.

Thing 15: Breakout EDU

Okay, not an official Cool Tools 2018-2019 blog post here. 

I am a little interested in the whole puzzle-solving experience for the students, so I took a brief look at this Thing.  $275 for one year!  Whoa!  That is about 3/4 of the average teacher's supply budget for the year at my school.  Maybe when I get independently wealthy or the prez gives all of his billions to upstate NY schools, but in the meantime I need to make a new plan, Stan!

Guess I'll look into some other "Things."