Hanging Out for Authentic Feedback

Written By Monica Champagne

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you already know that Sr. Mares is a pro at creating authentic learning experiences. A few weeks ago Kelly Skillingberg highlighted his use of  Book Creator app in this post. In that lesson, learners sought authentic feedback by posting their projects on Twitter. While they did receive some feedback, they wanted an even more authentic experience. And so, the Earth Day Book Creator project was born.  

With a target audience of Spanish speaking fourth graders in mind, learner's were challenged to create Earth Day children's books. Instead of just posting the books on Twitter, Sr. Mares connected with a fourth grade dual language educator in another city. Her learners read the books, and then met with his learners through Google Hangouts. The high schoolers were able to practice authentic conversations in Spanish and received feedback on their books from the fourth graders. 

As I always do after designing a lesson with an educator, we sat down together and spent some time reflecting. We learned a lot from this project, such as headphones are a must 😂. But more importantly, Sr. Mares saw those learners that can often times be difficult to motivate highly engaged. Their next steps are to edit their books based on the feedback, post them to this Flipgrid created by one of our middle school educators, Jodie Deinhammer, and look for opportunities to connect with learners in Spanish speaking countries. 

If you are looking for opportunities for your learners to connect or collaborate with others outside of your classroom, just leave a comment below! We will be happy to support you in getting connected.

English I Cultural Unit Gets Real, Virtually

Written by Monica Champagne

What is the best way to learn about other cultures? When our English I team asked themselves this question, team member Jessica Lynch suggested that they immerse their learners in the cultural environments virtually through Google Expeditions.

Google Expeditions is a virtual reality teaching tool that lets you lead or join immersive virtual trips all over the world — get up close with historical landmarks, dive underwater with sharks, even visit outer space!

I reflected on the lesson with our English I team lead, Ashton Wright. This is Ashton's second year teaching English I and her first experience with Expeditions.

Tell me about the overall design of the lesson.

Ashton: I did a practice expedition with all of my classes. I was the guide and they all followed.  Some of them even brought their own virtual reality goggles. That was really cool.  After I lead them through an expedition, I showed them how to be guides. Then, with their groups they had different roles, such as leader/recorder. They were then able to conduct research through the Expedition to help them get some preliminary information on their chosen culture. If they didn't find an Expedition that was exactly what they were looking for, they were all able to find something close. This gave them an opportunity to see the cultural experiences in a more realistic way instead of just reading about them. Learners then lead their group or the whole class through the Expedition.

What surprised you about the lesson?

Ashton: I was surprised by how much they enjoyed it and the increased number of engaged learners. Sometimes when we introduce new things, for them it is just still a checklist, but they seemed to get involved and it wasn't just about getting the assignment done. They took their time and explored and got into sharing the information with their peers and not just scanning through to find all of the information.

I know sometimes when learners are this excited about a new tool, it can be hard to get their attention when you need it. What kind of classroom management strategies did you need to incorporate?

Ashton: When we would first begin a new scene in the Expedition, I would give them time to explore around and see everything before I started sharing information. We also incorporate the "Apples Up" method which works very well with my classes. It was also helpful to have specific "look fors". In this case, they were looking for specific cultural elements such as norms, language, value, and symbol. We still did this through text, but having them search through Expeditions gave us another way to do this that is hands on and different than what we normally do in the classroom.

What Expeditions are you excited about conducting in the future?

Ashton: Shakespeare's Globe Theater and Civil Rights Museums!

Resources

Google Expeditions has a huge library of resources to address every content area. Check out this ThinkLink below to learn more, explore resource, and complete practice challenges of your own. 

This isn't my first time to write about Expeditions. Read here about how I used it with my class and their Challenge Based Learning Project.

What's Next?

One of the highlights from my week was seeing my teammate, Sam Neal, pilot Google Expedition's upcoming Augmented Reality Tours with her learners. I was given the chance to preview secondary content and can't wait to share more with you when the tours are released. Read more about Expeditions AR Pioneer Program here.

I really enjoyed working with the English I team on this project. If you are interested in designing a lesson that integrates Google Expeditions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Keep the conversation going. Comment below or on this Flipgrid to share how you have or would like to use Google Expeditions in your classroom.

Connecting, Collaborating, Creating

Written by: Alli Pryor, Monica Champagne and Kelly Skillingberg

This year, Pilar Castro-Zena joined the Creativity and Innovation Personal Learning Network (PLN). Not long ago, she attended a coffee meet up organized by her PLN to connect and chat with other educators. At the meet up, she had a conversation with DLC, Alli Pryor about a project her learners were working on using design thinking to create toys from idea to prototype. One key piece of the project was to gather market feedback from the target age groups for which the toys were designed.

Since Alli is a DLC for Cottonwood Creek and Lee Elementary, a beautiful idea was born from the conversation. They wondered, how could we make a connection between the learners in Pilar’s class to other CISD learners within the target age range? Alli reached out to us and both of her campuses so their kindergarteners could test the toys for product market research in order to provide feedback to Pilar’s engineering learners.

From there the idea flourished. In a true partnership between DLCs and educators, we were able to design a process to make it easy for the learners to record feedback using Flipgrid. The CHS learners created a commercial video and posted it to a Flipgrid topic. The kindergarteners would watch the commercial video, play with the toys, and provide feedback through a video reply of their own and the use of the emoji icons located at the bottom using the key below. 

The DLCs loaded up the toy prototypes and delivered them to Cottonwood Creek Elementary, where the kindergarteners took turns playing with the toys and providing feedback via Flipgrid. Take a look at some of the feedback they have been able to provide:

When introducing the project to the kindergarteners, we quickly learned that they were even savvier than we had hoped. “That’s Flipgrid!” they cried. “We love Flipgrid!” Beyond that the main question they had were “When do we get to PLAY?” After talking through key vocabulary, in addition to talking through the purpose and how to provide feedback, they did just that - played. Take a look at this video made by Stacey Harris that illustrates the process on the Kindergarten side.

https://twitter.com/WaytoBeK3/status/981622067878678528

After a week of toy testing at CCE, the next stop for the toys will be the Purple house kindergarten classes at Lee. All because of a coffee conversation, multiple learners are now connected virtually!

What connections can you make using Flipgrid?

If you are interested in making connections or utilizing Flipgrid in your classroom, we are here to support you in the design and implementation of your lessons. Feel free to leave a comment below or contact us for more information on how we can support you in the design and implementation of your learning experiences.

Jump on the SOLE Train

Looking for ways to help your students to appreciate the process of learning and not merely the results? Consider SOLE. What is SOLE? SOLE is an app that supports educators in facilitating a Self Organized Learning Environment for their students. The format starts with a big question, moves into the investigation phase, review, and finally educator reflection.

After being introduced to the SOLE concept from a team member, Sam Neal, we quickly fell in love with this type of learning experience and wanted to spread the word. What we love about SOLE:

• Encourages the educator to give more control to the learners
• Supports the educator in providing immediate feedback to students on the learning process 
• Engages learners through public praise, encouragement, and feedback
• Encourages true collaboration over the divide and conquer method
• Prompts the educator to reflect throughout and after the project
• Stores all educator feedback and reflection from each session

Holly Anderson, one of our AP and IB Environmental Science educators, recently used SOLE with her learners to launch a new project. She loved that the format encouraged more face to face dialogue between her learners and that the app provided her with a way to capture and provide instant feedback during the process.

Hearing of Holly’s success, her teammate, Angela Barnes, was excited to try it with her Earth Space Science learners. Angela’s reflection of the experience reiterated some of the same sentiments as Holly, “Student engagement was HIGH! The communication within groups and between groups increased substantially from other lessons we have done recently.”

Angela also noted that keeping the teams small (3 and under) was good for discussion and kept everyone on task while researching.

Want to learn more about SOLE and how it can impact your classroom? Visit their website for information, educator experiences, and resources on how to start your first SOLE experience.

If you are interested in using SOLE in your classroom, remember your DLCs are here to support you in the design and execution of your lessons. As always, feel free to leave a comment below or contact your campus DLC for support on any tools highlighted on this blog.