Innovative Educators: Nancy Barlow

There are so many new technologies and tools available to educators right now that we think it’s important to highlight those educators who are taking risks and leading the way in education innovation. Through our Innovative Educators blog series, we hope to not only honor these amazing teachers, but to also provide our readers with examples and insights that will help them bring their own classrooms into the age of digital learning.

Nancy Barlow

For today’s Innovative Educators profile, we talked to Nancy Barlow, a first grade teacher from Connecticut who has been teaching for 7 years.

Nancy spent 12 years working in television production before changing into education.  She’s taught in New Jersey and Connecticut, grades 5, 2, and 1. She was also a contributing writer to the main book of Pam Allyn’s Be Core Ready series. You can learn more about Nancy and her work by checking out her blog, www.theteachergeek.com, where she writes about Best Practices in the Classroom.

We asked Nancy a few questions about what it means to be an innovative educator and what innovation looks like in her school.

What does being an “innovative educator” mean to you?

Innovative educators are always moving forward and looking for new ways to teach students by seeking out best practices. An innovative educator is someone who enjoys stepping out of the box and taking a calculated risk with new (and sometimes untested) methods. Sometimes it places us outside of our comfort zone, but ultimately has a huge payoff. An innovative educator is also one who doesn’t listen to the naysayers, finds work-arounds for problems, and wants to share their discoveries with others.  The motivation for innovative educators is never to use the “newest, best” just for its own sake, but as a means to an end, always with the students’ best interests in mind.

How do you incorporate technology and digital literacy in your classroom?

While I don’t have a huge amount of digital resources at my fingertips (2 student computers and I just recently received an Interactive White Board), I try to make do with what I can. Younger primary students need guidance, as many have never even been on a computer before. We have a few lessons in the beginning of the year about the “language” that we use with technology. Then, we work our way up to using the computer for research. Being that they are new to computers and emergent readers, I can’t just put each student on a computer and say, “Off you go!!” and hope they can find something on penguins. So, for our penguin research I created a website on Google Apps with pre-selected sites the students can navigate to. I then have them work with a partner to read and find the basic, specific information we are looking for. We also publish digitally, and do shared reading from digital resources on the IWB together. Our new Big Deal recently was to introduce the students to social media via a classroom Twitter account.

What is the one app, device, or website that you think all teachers should be using? Why?

Twitter. I have expanded my own PLN (Professional Learning Network) so much in the past two years, it blows my mind. You will find passionate, like-minded educators on there that will help you find inspiration, resources, humor, and advice.  I think of Twitter as my own personal curator of resources. You can do it on your own time, it doesn’t cost anything, and you’ll discover new things every day. It is truly a place where innovative educators gather.

Can you share one anecdote of incorporating a new piece of tech in a lesson? How did you do it? What went right? What went horribly wrong? 

I recently started a classroom Twitter account, and it has been a huge hit with students, parents, and even other teachers in my building. I had wanted to do one for a couple of years, but for various reasons couldn’t pull it off until this school year. Right now, we use it at our end-of-the-day class meeting as a reflection and writing tool. We tweet as a class, with the students composing “paper tweets” with partners, discussing how to edit down messages, even calculating the characters left in a message! The students are engaged and motivated to participate, and get so excited when we receive a message from a family member or from one of the other teachers in the building. I know that it’s authentic writing for an authentic audience and that I’m modeling safe and appropriate use of social media, but they just think of it as super fun. I did have one parent who strongly disagreed that children shouldn’t be on social media or even have screen time, but I have a supportive principal who backed me up, and we worked it out.

What do you think schools and districts can do to better prepare teachers to embrace technology in their classrooms?

I think schools and districts need to be cautious in the sense that one needs to think about infrastructure before making big purchases. My district got one iPad for teachers to share and experiment with, however, our current wireless setup doesn’t reach to my classroom, so I can’t use it in there. I also feel strongly that technology should be capital expense and budgeted as such. When PTA’s and other outside sources of funding are utilized for hardware, there tends to be a disparity in the end, as the school or classroom with the most fundraising ability gets the goodies. Don’t think of technology as the add-on. It should be embedded into curricular planning, and not as an after-thought or a “bonus.”

To find out more about Nancy’s Best Practices, check out her blog, The Teacher Geek or follow her on twitter @TheTeacherGeek. You can also follow her class to see how they’re using Twitter for authentic writing experiences @MrsBarlowsClass.

App Breakdown: Educreations

App Breakdown is a regular blog series in which we take an in-depth look at one of our favorite apps for classroom use. This week we will be looking at Educreations. 

 

from educreations.com

 

What it is:

Name: Educreations
Purpose: Lesson creation/innovation for teachers and students
Works With: All web-enabled computers and the iPad
Price: Free

Educreations offers a straightforward approach to record audio and visual components of a “whiteboard” lesson. It allows students and teachers to not only create video lessons on the go, but share them online (privately among classmates in a “course” or publicly with the world).

Why we like it:

A major (if not the most important!) value in education technology is student usability and overall mobility. Everyone in a learning environment is a “student”: teachers can use this app to make quick video lessons for the class just as swiftly as students can create their own tutorials and presentations. Visual media is soaring in today’s world, so why not be on the same page while staying ahead of the curve?

Potential users sign up as a “Student” or “Teacher.” Teachers can set up a “Course” on the website and grant access to their students, in a separate and private sphere specifically for your class. Through this method, teachers can create videos and have their students return to them later – no more needing to repeat the Pythagorean theorem over and over again. This is where the concept of the “flipped classroom” becomes most efficiently used.

There are several ways that students can get creative with this app: from reading and highlighting a poem, while thinking out loud and recording their verbal observations to real-time problem solving with long division. With multiple discipline sections – Math, Science, Social Studies, English, World Language, and the Arts – students have the freedom to create a video on just about anything, in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes.

Outside of a Course, the public directory includes all videos from users who choose the “public” option when creating their lesson. Users can also email their lessons and embed them on a website or blog.

How you can use it:

Teachers can use this app as a formative assessment option through their Course account. Within a collection of their students’ videos all demonstrating the same application, teachers can watch (and listen to) their process, offering an exceptional level of evaluation.

Students can record themselves reading, listen to old recordings, and track their own improvement. Any subject involving explanation – a scientific theory, an analysis of Old Man and the Sea – can be used both as a tutorial for peers and a personal method for further study.

The app can also be used for flipped classroom lessons, in which teachers record the direct instruction portion of a lesson for students to view ahead of time, so in-class time can be spent practicing a skill with the teacher there to give one-on-one and small group support to those students who need it.

Things to keep in mind:

The whole video has to be made in one take – so there isn’t room for mistakes. Therefore most students will want and need rehearsals before clicking ‘Record.’ Perhaps in future versions the app will possess an editing and deleting tool (which, looking at most of the user reviews, should happen very soon).

Connecting with LitLife at IRA 2013

This weekend, the International Reading Association is hosting their 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas. The convention brings together top authors, educators and vendors from around the world for a weekend of professional development and networking.

This year, LitLife is happy to announce that our Executive Director Pam Allyn will be at the convention, delivering her feature presentation, “4 Doors to the Core: Organizing a Strategic Approach for Teaching Lifelong Literacy Skills in the New Era of the Common Core.” Pam will be discussing the Four Doors to the Core that are outlined in the Core Ready series as well as some important steps to take when implementing the Common Core State Standards. We hope you’ll join us for this inspiring presentation on Sunday, April 21st at 9 am in Convention Center Room 217D.

We are always looking for new ways to connect with other educators. If you are at IRA 2013 this year, please let us know so we can find a way to connect! And for more opportunities to hear Pam speak this weekend, check in with our Facebook page and Twitter account.

 

Reflections for National Library Week

At LitLife, we are book lovers. Our staff is made up of avid readers, who are constantly sharing new book discoveries and old favorites. For us, reading is about community building, sharing ideas and growing together. We believe that building a strong reading community is critical to student success.

Our love of books and reading communities, in turn makes us lovers of libraries. Libraries are portals of opportunity where we can learn, explore and discover. Librarians help us, and our students, cross the bridges between academic and independent reading.

This week, as we celebrate National Library Week, we think back on the role libraries have played in our own lives, helping each of us on the road to becoming life-long readers and learners. When I think of libraries, I think back to trips to the library with my mom.

Going to the library was an exercise in independence. My mom would let me wander the children’s and young adult sections, selecting the titles that called out to me. I learned to read the backs of books and scan the chapters to pick the perfect titles. I remember the excitement of signing my library card for the first time, nervously writing my name out in newly learned cursive. I loved being able to check out books with my very own card.

Using the computer catalog was particularly exciting, entering favorite authors or subjects and being presented with lists of possibilities. Very carefully, I would write down the titles and call numbers on a piece of scrap paper and carry them back to the shelves as I hunted for books.  When I got to college I was surprised to learn during a group project that a friend had never learned this particular skill. I had felt so important learning to navigate the library on my own, it made me sad she had never experienced that.

Libraries are amazing places to learn and to bring the community together. Here at LitLife, we are very excited to celebrate National Library Week. We hope you’ll join our celebration by sharing your own library memories with us, either in the comments below, or on our Facebook page!

Innovative Educators: Matthew C. Winner

There are so many new technologies and tools available to educators right now that we think it’s important to highlight those educators who are taking risks and leading the way in education innovation. Through our Innovative Educators blog series, we hope to not only honor these amazing teachers, but to also provide our readers with examples and insights that will help them bring their own classrooms into the age of digital learning.

For today’s Innovative Educators profile, we talked to Matthew Winner, a library teacher from Howard County Public Schools in Maryland. Matthew is a National Board Certified Teacher in the area of Library Media.

Matthew has given presentations at conferences at the state, national, and international levels and has presented virtually at the TL Virtual Cafe. He has had articles published in Knowledge Quest and School Library Journal, and he is the author of the Busy Librarian blog. In 2012, Matthew was named Maryland Outstanding Educator Using Technology by the Maryland Society for Educational Technology (MSET). He has been recognized as a 2013 Library Journal Mover & Shaker, and is the cofounder of the Level Up Book Club, an online book club for teachers and professionals focused on game-based learning and gamification.

We asked Matthew a few questions about what it means to be an innovative educator and what innovation looks like in his school.

What does being an “innovative educator” mean to you?

I think good educators are always trying to innovate. After all, that’s where we feel the most connected to our profession. Finding new ways to instruct students and fostering a learning environment that celebrates creativity, exploration, and skill mastery is energizing and gives you something to look forward to each day. It also means having a healthy relationship with failure. Things rarely work out the first time and seldom do projects turn out the way you envisioned they would. There are days when your wins will be epic and everything will turn out better than expected. But with that comes an equal number of epic fails, those days where you just have to ditch the plans and start new. Those that innovate aren’t intimidated by the failure, but instead find a way to use the misstep to propel the project forward.

How do you incorporate technology and digital literacy in your classroom?

I use technology in my lessons whenever it is the right tool for the job. I want my students to see that technology isn’t always the answer or the right tool, but that, when employed correctly, we can use technology to do some really awesome projects. I take very seriously the role of preparing my students to be effective users of information. Much of what we do in the library revolves around a central inquiry question and the tools we can use to meet the information need. We research using online databases, connecting with experts via Skype, and collaborating with one another through Edmodo. But we also create 3-D sculptures using recycled materials, we engineer model homes for the three little pigs, and we create pocket-sized animal fiction stories. I work to ensure the classroom of the 21^st century learner is everything I would have wanted when I was in school.

What is one thing you would recommend to teachers trying to expand their use of technology in the classroom?

It’s important to challenge yourself. Growth comes when we step out of our comfort zone. And because technology is changing all the time, there’s an awful lot to try. But the thing that’s worked best for me is to find a handful of apps or programs that I like and then work to master them by using them frequently, intentionally, and meaningfully. Skype. Google Apps for Education. Prezi. GoAnimate. These are all tools with which I’ve had time to build proficiency, and I love each of them more and more with each use. Better to do a couple of things really well than to try and do it all.

What is the one app, device, or website that you think all teachers should be using? Why?

Twitter, without a doubt. There are incredible things happening on Twitter and I learn something new there every single day as a direct result of my interactions with people from the education community. Leave your preconceptions at the door. Some of the very best professional development, networking, and collaboration happen via Twitter, and you don’t even have to have an account to participate. Educators share resources at a constant and astounding rate and, through the use of hashtags such as #edtech and #edchat, it’s much easier to tame what would otherwise be overwhelming and intimidating. You can learn more about why I’m such a big fan of Twitter and why I think other educators should be, too, on my blog.

How are you using technology to meet the Common Core State Standards?

One of the coolest ways I’m currently using technology to meet the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics is through the use of the Nintendo Wii. There are so many inherent math applications within the games on the Wii. The games never come out and say, “Hey! All this stuff you’re doing in this game… it’s all math!” But that’s exactly what’s going on! So a colleague and I started writing math lessons that are aligned with the CCSSS in Mathematics and that incorporate the Nintendo Wii as an instructional tool. Sometimes the math is in the data we collect while playing, other times the math comes from the sport itself. We’ve been working with the Wii for two years now and we’re excited to be publishing a book this October through ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) on Teaching Math with the Wii. But what’s coolest is the idea of students using a tool they’ve known for so long purely for its entertainment value and now seeing it in a new light.

For more information on the Level Up Book Club, visit http://levelupbc.blogspot.com. Learn more about Matthew’s library program and work at large at http://www.busylibrarian.com. Follow Matthew on Twitter at @MatthewWinner or email him directly at mwinne2@gmail.com.

If you know an Innovative Educator that you think we should highlight in our blog, please contact us on Facebook or Twitter, or let us know in the comments below.

Our Favorite (Free!) Apps for Classroom Use

There are so many great apps available for classroom use, it’s important to experiment to find what works with your students. We put together this list of our favorite, free apps to help get you started. Give them a try and let us know what you think!

1.     Storia eBooks

This e-reading app from Scholastic is one of the only platforms of its kind that’s just for kids. You can easily access leveled eBooks for students from Pre-K and up. The app is free and comes with 5 free eBooks; more books can be purchased through the Scholastic Store.

Storia has a few additional features that take it beyond your typical e-reader, including the abilities to highlight, take notes and use an in-app dictionary. It also includes an in-app eBook Wish List and Read-to-me eBooks for students to listen to and follow along with. Many of the eBooks have built-in quizzes and activities that make reading an interactive, engaging experience for students.

The app also includes a Reading Report feature that allows you to track which of the eBooks a student is reading most, how long they are spending with each title as well as which words the student is looking up and how often. You can easily monitor students’ reading habits and track their progress as readers over time.

2.     Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational platform that allows teachers to bring the classroom online. Teachers can connect with students, continue class discussions online, share documents and assignments, and measure student progress. We love that Edmodo feels like a social platform for students but stays educational. Both teachers and students can upload content and teachers are able to moderate posts before they are shared.

Edmodo can also be used to promote home to school connections. Parents can easily log-in to follow what their children are doing in the classroom and to receive updates from the teacher.

Our last (and maybe favorite) use of Edmodo is to connect with other educators. Teachers can connect with one another and follow groups that share valuable classroom resources and tools. It’s a great way to expand your PLN!

3.     Educreations

Educreations is an interactive, recordable whiteboard for iPad that allows you to easily flip a lesson. The app records your voice and handwriting to create video lessons that can be shared with students. In a 1:1 iPad classroom, it can also be used by individual students as a note-taking tool. Students can keep the app open on their laps to record their learning or can use the app to create videos that demonstrate what they’ve learned.

4.     Google Drive

Google Drive allows students to access their documents, photos and more from anywhere, on any device, with just a Google Account and Internet access. It’s a great tool to help students collaborate on projects in class and at home. We love that students can work in the same document simultaneously and that they can give each other feedback through the comment and chat features.

5.     Socrative

This easy to use assessment tool allows you to create quick quizzes and assessments that students respond to on their own devices. You can pose a single question and have students respond right away in the app or create multi-question quizzes ahead of time.

Socrative stands out because it gives teachers instant access to assessment data. The app generates Excel spreadsheets and Google docs that are emailed to teachers so they can evaluate data and put it to use right away. This makes this app a must-have for tracking student progress getting real-time feedback on students’ success.

For more on Socrative check out our App Breakdown post.

Have you used any of these apps in your classroom? We’d love to hear what you think of them. Let us know in the comments below!

App Breakdown: Socrative

App Breakdown is a weekly blog post in which we take an in-depth look at one of our favorite apps for classroom use. This week we will be looking at Socrative, an assessment tool that gives teachers quick access to student feedback and data.

 

From Socrative.com

What it is:

Name: Socrative
Purpose: Assessment
Works With: All web-enabled computers, tablets and smartphones
Price: Free

This easy to use assessment tool bills itself as a “smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.” The app allows you to create quick quizzes and assessments that students respond to on their own devices. You can pose a single question and have students respond right away in the app or create multi-question quizzes ahead of time.

Why we like it:

One of the great things about this app is that students don’t need to create a personal account to use it. All they need to log in is the “room number” that the teacher receives upon registering. This makes the initial set up of the app a lot easier. There’s no need to spend hours creating accounts and passwords for each student. The only set up required is to download the “student” version of the app on the devices of your choice and to set up a teacher account on your personal device.

The app can be accessed on a variety of devices and platforms. There are versions for both iOS and Android devices. Students can also access quizzes by going to m.socrative.com and teachers can login to their own accounts at t.socrative.com.

Socrative allows teachers to access data quickly and effectively. One-question quiz results are displayed right in the app and offer on the spot evaluation. For the pre-planned quizzes, the app will compile the information and email it in the form of an Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc. This puts assessment data in teachers’ hands as quickly as possible.

How you can use it:

Use quick quizzes to group students: You can give students a Take Five question, sort the data immediately and pull small groups as needed.

Create pre-tests before units: The Excel spreadsheet generated will help you to see exactly where your students are at the beginning of a unit, you can the use this information to track students’ progress and make adjustments.

Add another element to discussions: During class discussions you can quickly poll students using the true/false and multiple choice quick quizzes. The results can be displayed on a SMARTBoard or with an LCD projector so students can see where their classmates stand on certain issues.

Assess your teaching with an Exit Ticket: The app has a built-in Exit Ticket quiz, although you can easily go to “Manage Quizzes” and create your own. If you’re trying a new lesson for the first time, you can use the data generated by the quiz to evaluate its success and see any areas for improvement.

Things to keep in mind:

This app would work best in a classroom where students have 1:1 devices. You may be able to offer quizzes in small groups if you have a limited number of computers/laptops but quick polls and grouping can get more complicated when students are sharing devices.