Learning in Progress

Post also appears on FTISEdTech Last night I participated in an #AppleEDUChat for Animated Sketchnoting and the learning was too good not to share right away. I have long seen the value in using Sketchnoting as a strategy for engaging learners in summarizing, visualizing and remembering content. There are lots of apps you might use with your class to encourage this activity including: Jamboard , Paper 53 , most of our Microsoft Apps (PowerPoint, Word, OneNote) include a drawing tab, and Sketches for School shows some promise.  Last night, however, I was completely blown away by the use of Keynote  as a sketchnoting and animation tool. What on the surface looks like just another presentation tool, is in reality a seriously robust application that we have not been using to its potential. at all. In just a few minutes I was playing and learning new strategies as the chat happened. How It's Done Challenge to 3-5th grade students I was so inspired by m...

Post first published on FTEdTech If you were lucky enough to hear Donalyn Miller speak this week you might be feeling inspired to work on building a culture of readers that are engaged and intrinsically motivated through strategies like the 40 Book Challenge. Not sure what I'm talking about? You can get the gist of the what the 40 book challenge is about here, and you might modify it to match the number of weeks we have left in the year: I would also suggest before you get started, that you might want to check out Miller's 40 Book Challenge Revisited post. Getting Started Right Now with Small Shifts You don't have to wait until the beginning of next year to get started with something like the 40 Book Challenge. We can start making small shifts in practice to encourage wider reading. Use your School Library First, you don't have to worry about the size of your classroom library. Our school libraries are stacked with tons of amazing books, and our libra...

Post was also shared on FTEdTech Some time last Spring, I heard the podcast "Digital Readers Read in an F-Pattern" by Teach Thought. This episode, hosted by Ryan Schaaf, marked the beginning of my newest journey to understand how our students are processing information in a digital environment and how we might help them focus their attention in a world of distractions. Because of the podcast, I was inspired to pick up my own (digital) copy of  Reinventing Learning for the Always On Generation: Strategies and Apps that Work  by Ian Jukes and Ryan Schaaf. The considerations and research they explore are fascinating to me and there are many implications for classroom practice that I think are worth time to discuss and study. The F-Pattern In the podcast and through the book, I was introduced to the idea of F-Pattern reading and research conducted by the Nielsen Normal Group on Eye Tracking .  What does this mean for the classroom? I have a lot of qu...

Post was also published on FTIS EdTech Chances are if you asked your students how they learned how to do something outside of school, they would reply, "I just YouTube-d it". We live in a highly visual and media rich world, and our digital natives are certainly adept at creating their own content. In a world, where according to Ian Junes and Ryan Schaaf, authors of  Reinventing Learning for the Always On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work “Every minute of every day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 100 hours of new video are uploaded,” you might wonder: is video becoming the new "old standby" project for when we can't think of anything else to assign our students? With endless tools and app smashing techniques, it is true, that even our youngest students can produce quality, engaging videos that demonstrate their learning in creative ways; however, what could we add to the list of choices that would challenge their critical thinking skills and ...

In the days of deep budget slashes and little money for professional development, the school librarian is in a perfect position - as someone who has the ability to work with every student and teacher - to lead from the library and fill in what some cases is a major gap.  One of the big trends in education today is working towards a system of more personalized learning for students. By meeting students where they are in terms of interest and ability we can do so much more to engage them in deep learning and help them develop skills that will aid them in becoming college and career ready as well as model citizens and life-long learners.  While advocating for personalized learning for students, it is also important to consider the personalized learning needs of our teachers. Talk to any group of teachers, and you will discover that there is a wide range of ability and interest for our teachers when it comes to digital age teaching and learning competencies, because of this i...

Digital Interactive Notebooks are an amazing way to help engage students in the learning process while creating personalized notes with content that is meaningful to them on an individual basis. Teachers can custom create notebooks to help guide students through project based learning, specific units of study or for tracking personal goals. Check out this 2nd grade example for a unit on plants to get an idea of how one might look. The digital interactive notebook can act as a compilation of hyperlinked content like video and digital articles, combined with note taking strategies and student created digital products that demonstrate key understandings.  If used with tools like Google Classroom, teachers can check in on work and insert comments throughout to give feedback and help guide students in deeper understanding. As students grow accustomed to the model, teachers can gradually release creation of the notebook over to the students to choose their own note taking strat...

It's been almost two years since I've updated my resources for SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy .  As I was considering the newest tools out for students to use, it became really clear that as time has gone by my own view of what is "Redefinition" has shifted. This really highlights the subjective nature of the SAMR model. What is Redefining in one classroom, may not be that at all in another.  When I first began to develop SAMR resources back in June 2014 , I placed Nearpod under the Redefinition category. Back then the possibility of putting your presentation directly into every student's hands where they could see clearly and engage in the lesson seemed so forward thinking. When I revised in 2016 , I chose to keep it there because of the addition of so many interactive elements, the ability to self-pace for differentiation and of course the virtual field trips that allowed kids to go to even the coral reef. Now, as I look at how far technology integration in t...