Gena+Early+Adopter

Doing More or Doing Some Things Differently? Our Edublog posts.
[|http://learnoutloud.edublogs.org/2013/11/04/doing-more-or-doing-some-things-differently/#comment-69]

Early Adopter next project
Name: Gena >> - Can I come up with a process for evaluation? >> - Will my process work with all sources? >> - What will I do when students find the checklist evaluation too monotonous? >> - What can keep the process from being too overwhelming for students? >> - How do I adjust for those who catch on fast? Slow?
 * Campus: Stratford High School
 * Grade Level(s): Juniors +
 * Discipline: United States History (AP and Academic)
 * Topic: Evaluation of Primary Sources
 * Have students post questions about the documents. Need to get students on to Canvas or Edmodo.
 * APPARTS Analysis sheet - handout for students to reference. Students will see this modeled.
 * Individually, design a student resource, //activity type//, or project to try in the classroom over the next month to test. Then, get feedback from partners.
 * Try out resource, activity type, or project during the month(s), documenting plan, process, execution and reflection and collect student work samples.
 * Focus Question:
 * Subquestion
 * **Activity Type**

Get the students to talk more about the historical documents, eras, personalities, know about bias, point of view, and the significance of certain decisions, how those decisions effect us today. My goal to get there would be having students visit various types of resources more often than I have in the past. Then each time, doing something different with those sources, so I will need to be creative with types of activities.
 * Destination **

//Questions to consider:// //Resources://
 * Technology Change Agent and Evangelist - ** Chris Lehmann (Principal of Science and Leadership Academy - Philadelphia)
 * What is Chris' vision for change in his school and in education in general?
 * That schools need to change their direction and thinking in the way that teaching needs to happen in order to better serve students.
 * Technology shouldn't be used for technology sake; use it so much that it no longer becomes a big deal; make it transformative
 * Teaching should get kids engaged in things they are passionate about and can collaborate among themselves and the world outside the classroom walls
 * Why teach students in the old model, it robs them of their future
 * How can we have so many passionate, dedicated educators in our schools and still have so many problems?
 * The focus has been data driven, but the data that we are using for "accountability" purposes is bad data.
 * Our students need to be engaged.
 * Schools end product of "how" a student has learned is based on tests, but it should be projects
 * What does Chris mean when he says "technology must be like oxygen"?
 * used so often that it's not even thought about
 * //[]//
 * []
 * related slides - []


 * []

Soft Skills Students are Acquiring

 * ** time management **
 * ** collaboration/communication with students **
 * ** work ethic/efficacy **
 * ** determining reliability of information **
 * ** how to access a variety of information **
 * ** troubleshooting technology problems **
 * ** approaching managers/teachers with work related problems **
 * ** appropriate communication based on audience **
 * ** fairness vs. equality **
 * ** deeper understanding vs. surface knowledge **
 * ** when it's okay to ask for help **
 * ** developing appropriate, deep questions **
 * ** completing a task **

MANTRA "JUST DO IT"


 * Shaping Your Opportunity**
 * Ideate** - my goal for this year is to make it so that students are doing more thinking and analyzing of historical documents, and constantly coming back to those skills or activities where it is practiced once a week or every-other week. I want to incorporate where they can do these things from home as well, so that their comments, questions, visions will be shared on Canvas or Google Docs.
 * Prototype** - The picture makes me think about medicine that you have to take in a timely manner, on a daily basis. Our practice of looking a historical documents will happen more often in class. Now when you take medicine you might wash it down with a variety of beverages, which is how we will incorporate documents. We might answer questions, I might have students write responses, discuss only one part, not discuss and just incorporate into writing, create their own questions, etc.

Early Adopter: Inquiry & Design Challenge
Name: Gena >> - Can I come up with a process for evaluation? >> - Will my process work with all sources? >> - What will I do when students find the checklist evaluation too monotonous? >> - What can keep the process from being too overwhelming for students? >> - How do I adjust for those who catch on fast? Slow?
 * Campus: Stratford High School
 * Grade Level(s): Juniors +
 * Discipline: United States History (AP and Academic)
 * Topic: Evaluation of Sources
 * SOAPSTone - handout for students to reference. Students will see this modeled.
 * Search for existing resources (articles, websites, blogs, videos, etc.) - post below and be sure to add them to your campus Diigo
 * Jigsaw notetaking and sharing of resources
 * Individually, design a student resource, activity type, or project to try in the classroom over the next month to test. Then, get feedback from partners.
 * Try out resource, activity type, or project during the month(s), documenting plan, process, execution and reflection and collect student work samples.
 * Focus Question: How am I going to get students to recognize the varying value of different sources they find on the web and then internalize those skills so they can use them when they are researching anything from an academic topic to where they should buy a car?
 * Subquestion


 * An Opportunity in Overalls**

How is your journey like that of a storyteller? Of a researcher? Focus is how this is like that of a researcher.
 * 1) I feel like I go into each process like a scientist with a hypothesis and an idea of how I would like the project to end.
 * 2) I come up with the steps like a scientist.
 * 3) Unfortunately, many times I'm disappointed with the outcome (which I think happens with scientist many times too).
 * 4) I end up giving students the benefit of the doubt.
 * 5) I have notice that they are better at attaining important information and filtering useless information from important information.
 * 6) The overall product of what they've been working on is disappointing.

What question did you start out to find answer(s) to? original question - How am I going to get students to recognize the varying value of different sources - then internalize those skills?
 * What tweaks, edits, modifications have you made to your focus question?
 * I think that one of the things that would be important for tweaking this original focus question would be first to not only recognize the value of sources, but where to find valuable sources. So I need to get students to practice finding things that are helpful to them by using proper keyword search. These are old skills but need to be translated in new technology forms.
 * The students have since practiced evaluating web sources.
 * I want them to go back and do this some more. We did practice finding out who is the writer or owner of web sites and that was very helpful for them.
 * What question(s) remain? How will I come up with a process for evaluation? How do I adjust for those who pick up on these skills fast and those who work at a slower pace?
 * I used Edmodo as a forum for putting the work online for them to find handouts.
 * I also forced myself to stop the entire class and then find teachable moments.
 * I still struggle with a process for evaluation, but figured that having students write more on what they have found and use a rubric to grade the thought process, a rubric to grade the process of evaluating websites, and then a rubric to evaluate products.
 * What new questions have surfaced as a result of your exploration this far?
 * I think that my questions that remain - I need to develop more web literacy. Where do I go to get trained in that so that I can model such techniques with the students? Feb 2013 - I think that I've done this a little better.
 * I want them to write more with these skills of evaluating sources, so would that be too much for academic students?
 * Where do I fit in the time for AP students to do similar things?

As a researcher: Come Back To These What are you measuring? I'm struggling with measuring. I want to measure students' ability to analyze primary sources.
 * What patterns are surfacing?
 * What themes are emerging?
 * What does your data suggest?

As a learner:
 * Where have you allowed yourself to be vulnerable in this process?
 * creating activities and having students go with it
 * mistakes were made when I came up with a grading process
 * How are you allowing yourself, your professional learning to be 'seen'?
 * I was thinking about going back to a blog and recording some of this with our 11-tool blog we set up.
 * I talk to other teachers about some of the tools that I'm discovering.
 * In what way(s) have you found the courage to be 'imperfect'?
 * Finding courage to be "imperfect" is not a problem.
 * I generally accept that I can only do so much in a day.
 * If I ever felt overwhelmed, I went back to "teacher knows all" for a few days to get everyone's bearings straight.
 * What //a-ha!//moments, elements of a 'spiritual awakening'/"breakdown" have you experienced? What might these insights suggested to you?
 * Breakdowns - incessant concern over students preparing for their TAKS exam.

What story is unfolding from your research?
 * //The Never-Ending Story//

>> [] >> [|Library of Congress] >>
 * Resources:
 * [|Evaluate Internet]
 * []
 * Activity:
 * Round 1
 * Round 2
 * Round 3

[|GLOGSTER Early Adopters] =6 Word Memoir = Packed mind, No time, endure reflect.