Why NOT Google Classroom

What it is...

Google Classroom, a new feature in the Google Apps for Educators suite, has streamlined the use of digital tools in a traditional/blended learning environment.  

It replaces the need for individual teacher course websites for announcements and links to online content by creating a clean streamlined user experience for teachers and students.  

Additionally, it provides file sharing capabilities; once only available to intermediate/advanced G.A.F.E. users who were familiar with  the various scripts and add-ons that now support your Google Drive Applications; such as Doctopus.

What you'll miss...

Advanced users who migrate to Google Classroom will miss the ability to customize the appearance and layout of their online classroom. 

Also, Google Classroom lacks certain file sharing settings that make differentiation and group projects/jigsaw activities possible via other bulk file sharing processes.

The biggest drawback is the lack of a rubric option that accomplishes standards based grading; a-la' Goobric.  You can still use Doctopus to "slurp" in assignments from Classroom and attach Goobrics, but this seems like more "teching" than should be necessary to accomplish this task.

So it's bad?

I highly recommend Google Classroom for teachers taking the first step toward digitizing their classroom.  Teachers who lack the expertise, time, or may be intimidated by attempting to design their own website will immediately be able to jump into this very user friendly system.  Oh, and there is "an app for that" that allows you to access your classroom on the go.  

Additionally, teachers who have never, or previously tried and then grew frustrated with, bulk file sharing management systems can easily easily accomplish this task.  In fact, this feature in Google Classroom is more refined, in terms of setting due dates, and communicating with students about specific files, then I have previously seen; though at the cost of rubric integration.

  

A Step Back?

For advanced users, I would say yes.  While Google Classroom offers an amazing student/teacher experience; it does so at the level of "substitution/augmentation" on the SAMR model.  While it is classroom online, it is not an "online classroom".  

It is a private environment, lacking the outward facing component that early G.A.F.E. adopters may be used to.  Google Classroom shuts the door on teachers ability to share content and best practices with the world.  Accordingly, students can communicate, collaborate  and share their products of learning with each other; but not with the world. 

Google Classroom may be a good first step toward climbing the SAMR model, but the streamlined interface leaves little room for customization and innovation.  Google Classroom should be seen as a stepping stone, and not a target for best digital teaching practice.    

  

Election Day PD

Election Day PD

Today is election day, and while most schools are sitting in boring meetings, wondering why they are here and the students are not, at the School of Awesome, our PD is worthwhile and inspiring.

Today we are doing some work around identity, and where we are from. We are leveraging this reflection to make better connections to each other, and our students.

I will be updating this post (and Tweeting @cambrianed) throughout the day with thoughts, photos and reflections,

Where I'm From 

If I told you I was a teacher at “The School of Awesome”, 

would you know where I’m from?

Where I’m from, I hear the sounds of students being ushered to class 

by a bowl that sings and the encouraging words of faculty and staff. 

I see the faces of students, happy and sad, 

tired and awake, engaged and disenfranchised. 

I feel supported, nurtured, protected, safe, and inspired 

and work so as hard as I do so that they can say the same.

Where They (Our Students) Are From

 

• How can visiting student’s neighborhoods help us better understand our students? 
• What do I hope to gain from this experience?
• How can my students benefit from this?

Science Team Walkabout in Central Harlem

Search #HudsonHomes on Twitter

Some Reflections

• My discomfort with being a tourist in my own city was obvious, not just because I would be walking the streets of neighborhoods that I otherwise would avoid, but because the lens that I was given was to observe measures of quality of life that I knowingly take for granted…
• We walked through areas of Harlem that were as sanitary, cosmopolitan, and  cooperate as anyplace in the world, blocks away from places that were comparably  as raw, urban and gritty as others.
• I observed men as old as their 50s openly and casually consuming marijuana in the street.  This rattled my prudish sensibilities on the subject, but thought that this behavior was more symbolic than my superficial glance in their direction could tell me.  The men almost seemed empowered by this act and I wonder in what way this influences the community.

Forensics Online -- Blended Learning

"The days of a class full of students working on the same thing at the same time is over."

~Someone Smart~

Therefore, I am starting to dip my toe into a true blended learning course. 

Check it out at Cambrianed.com.

Students  will use the site above to access content. 

All products of learning will be posted to the students personal outward facing online portfolio.

Portfolio infrastructure courtesy of SiteMaestro 

Stay tuned for updates and reflections.

A Shift Toward Digital Honesty

I presented a Technology Forum where I participated on a panel that was discussing "digital footprints." 

My knowledge of the subject was rather basic and I quickly realized as my turn to speak approached that I had no idea what I was about to say as my prepared statements were off topic.  

I had anticipated to "toe the company line" so to speak and discuss, from the high school perspective, methods by which my students begin to develop a digital dossier that will enhance their future rather than promote simply avoiding behaviors that might be potentially damning to their future.  I generally try to take a provocative stance on things of this nature and with my limited experience in this sphere, thats as an original thought as I could muster.    

...But then, as I was about to speak, some input came from the audience (possibly fellow co-workers) that inspired a different line of thinking.

"Why do we care what our students are doing online?"  

I get that the internet can be unsafe, but so is the real world.  I get that the internet is permanent; yes, but so is life!      

Why do we encourage our students to sanitize themselves?  Why do we tolerate this separation between our digital identity and our actual identity; between our personal lives and our professional lives?  

We have all heard the horror stories, and maybe even experienced the fall out from such things that we are trying to protect our students from.  

Perhaps, the best way to avoid these mistakes is a paradigm shift towards embracing digital honesty.  Current thinking advances the notion that the more we share, the more vulnerable we become, but I think the opposite might also be true.

Perhaps as we begin to share ourselves more completely, this separation will start to blur.  And because the internet becomes a permanent record of ourselves,  we can begin to appreciate the fallacy of our youth and reflect on who we are by bearing witness to who we were.

Admittedly, these thoughts are in their infancy, but this is the most complete "blog post" that I have yet to dedicate myself to.  The irony isn't lost on me that I habitually sanitize myself; digitally and otherwise.  I rarely feel strongly about something, so much as to try to change other people's thinking.  I am a pacifist in the sense that I consider myself the inverse of an activist.  So, while there is more to develop here, I don't know how far this idea goes.  

Perhaps it is just a first step toward digital honesty.  In any event, I am grateful that the internet has cultivated an environment  where I have the opportunity to share myself openly and develop this idea.  Regardless of what it becomes, I can't wait to look back on this. (Hi future self) 

How do we encourage students to ask higher order questions? Reflections from Critical Friends Group:

At HHSLT, teachers help each other plan using a Critical Friends Group Protocol.  A teacher presents a lesson and with the lense of “How do we encourage students to ask  higher order questions?”

Here is what we came up with:

1. Create a culture where asking questions is encouraged.
2. Use a protocol that prompts students to ask higher order questions by using DOK (or similar) questions.
3. Model the process of what asking a higher order question looks like.
4. Build time and opportunities for students to explore.
5. Create authentic opportunities to learn:  higher order questions come from students that are internally motivated.  

Found Poems

Check out this Reading Activity called "Found Poems"

Students read a passage and then create a poem by taking words, phrases, sentences or inspiration from the text.  

Here is a Haiku written completely from words that appear in order from this article (ironically about reading).

Old-school reading, slow.

Ever-faster pace of life.

Neurology,  words.

Parking Lot of Uncertainty: Forensics Journal Entry

Parking Lot of Uncertainty

Deviations from lesson plans end up on the this board because the best learning takes place when you let your mind wonder around what you are learning.  Learning does not require laser like focus on a singular task, but mindfulness within the task.

Student:  Are there more serial killers then (historically) or now (currently)?

Me:  I don't know? "Park-it"

Student:  (after looking it up)  That's interesting, serial killers seem to be on the decline. I wonder why.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2011/01/blood_loss.html

Me:  Yeah, it seems we see more "mass killings" rather than repeated serial killings these days.  I wonder if that has anything to do with terrorism being so endemic.

Other Student:  ...what's the difference between terrorism and genocide?  

Students:  (discussion)

Me:  (While Researching) Looks like the overall homicide rate increased during the 70s and 80s and then declined.  Some of the reasons offered to explain this decline include an aging society, legalized abortion, and environmental lead exposure.

9/11 Student Interview

HHSLT remembered the events of 9/11 during the school's commitment ceremony.  Being only periphery affected by the days events, I have never (or not recently) given much thought to the day until a few experiences I had this year.   

A colleague of mine encourages his students to interview people to gain their perspective on the events and gauge the magnitude of the impact that 9/11 had on their lives.  When I began the interview, I wasn't really sure how 9/11 affected me, but after sitting down and thinking about it; I began to develop some perspective on the influence of 9/11 in my life.

Hopefully my the students learned as much from my responses as I did.  

1) How did 9/11 change your view in society?

This happened at a time when I was still crafting my political/social identity.  In the aftermath of 9/11, the 24 hour news cycle and constant presentation of political fear tactics had to have a significant effect on me, but I am not sure I can put into words.  Living during the "war on terror" has probably made me numb in a way; like I don't feel strongly about it because it's normal.  Sometime, then, I feel guilty because people are fighting so that I can feel the way I do, and sometimes I think even THAT is just propaganda.  I guess It made suspicious of anyone with agenda because I saw what people with an agenda are capable of.

2) How was your life affected by 9/11?

My life was not significantly affected, or directly anyway.  I sort of hate flying now, but that's because I don't have patience for airport security.  On that day I was afraid, but far from traumatized. Maybe it changed me, speaking for the people only marginally involved, in ways that I am unaware. I am a firm believer that we're the sum totality of every experience up until this moment, and 9/11 was a significant event; even if I can identify specifically how.  

3) What is your opinion or definition of terrorism before and after 9/11?

Before 9/11, I only knew of the terrorists that hijacked planes and then got karate kicked by Chuck Norris in the movies.  The word terrorist was also used during the OKC bombing, and I remember the media saying that he was a "domestic terrorist" to distinguish the fringe lunatics in our country  from the ones we see in the movies.  I guess I sort of think, now, that terrorists are these dudes that sit in caves all day waiting to blow stuff up.  I know in my mind that is wrong, that there is probably a grey area between people that support so called terrorist, and people that that actually carry out acts of terror. I also know that they are also not all in rural places, and much more technologically capable then we give them credit for, as they use the internet to share information and what have you.  It's like the media gives us a mixed message.  They want us to believe that we have an opponent that is able to be beat, but every now and then reminds us that it difficult and time consuming and dangerous to do so.

4)Would you have done something if you were in one of the planes that were hijacked?   

At the time, no.  I probably would have put my head down and cried.  Me now however,  not just in retrospect, but as an older and wiser person, a little more cynical;  I'd like to think I would be so bold. Then again, maybe that cynicism was bread in the post-9/11 environment.  Who knows what we would all be like had it not happened?

Summer Professional Development

I have been at the Microsoft offices for the past week or so, training to teach "Exploring Computer Science" this upcoming academic year.  This curriculum was developed by Code.org and the training is courtesy of a fellowship with iZonenyc.  I was inspired by the "strands of equity, inquiry, and content" that are endemic throughout the curriculum and also the inquiry based teaching strategies that were modeled over the past week.   Check out this reflection video that my group prepared at the end of the week.   

cambrianed.com for student use instead of tinyurl.com/comered, and creating this blog for the purposes of personal reflections about "science, education, technology and equity". Stay tuned for updates and for more information go to cambrianed.com/blog

iZone has taken over for the final few days and we have been given some work time to develop and refine our blended learning strategies.  I have began to refine my online student portal tools in an attempt to operationalize