Want to discover an educational service that is making an impact in our communities that you may not know exists? Adult Education programs may just be that as K-12 and Higher Education dominate the education-related discourse we see. Discover the impact of Adult Education so it is not the best-kept secret in your community as this post explores what it is and its various programs!
Having spent most of my career in K-12 and Higher Education, I did not know much about Adult Education and the impact it was making in our communities. After now spending almost two years in my current position, I have learned A LOT about Adult Education and how it is changing the lives of students in our communities across the United States. If you are looking at where you can see the impact almost immediately as an educator, Adult Education is probably one of the only places you can see in a matter of days, weeks, or a short few months how it can impact someone’s life.
The stereotype about Adult Education is that fact that many label it as where students who need to get a high school diploma, can earn their high school diploma or GED. However, Adult Education offers so much more than these services, which is the goal of this post. Adult Education offers a wide range of classes, supports, and services to students aged 18 and above in our communities. Whether students are wanting to learn a new skill to progress their career, learn English, earn their citizenship, or become more involved in a community, there are many opportunities for anyone wanting to learn and be a part of something!
Let’s just into learning more about Adult Educations’ various programs.
Programs Within Adult Education
English as a Second Language – This program is designed to teach English language skills to adults who are not native speakers of English. It covers reading, writing, speaking, and listening, with a focus on practical language skills that can help students succeed in daily life.
US Citizenship – This program is focused on preparing non-citizen adults to become naturalized US citizens. It covers topics such as US history and government, civic responsibilities, and the English language proficiency needed to pass the citizenship test.
Adult Basic Education – This program is designed to help adults who lack basic reading, writing, and math skills to improve their literacy levels. It typically covers topics such as numeracy, reading comprehension, and writing skills, and can help learners gain confidence and improve their ability to succeed in other educational and employment settings.
Adult Secondary Education – This program is designed to help adults who did not complete high school to earn a high school diploma or equivalent credential such as the GED. It covers a range of high school-level subjects, including math, science, social studies, and English.
Career Technical Education (CTE) – This program is designed to prepare adults for employment in specific industries or career fields. It focuses on developing practical skills and knowledge related to specific careers, such as healthcare, information technology, or skilled trades.
Community Education (CE) – This program provides non-credit educational opportunities for adults to learn new skills or pursue personal interests. It can cover a wide range of topics, including health and wellness, art and culture, and personal finance, among others. Community education programs are often offered through local schools, libraries, and community centers.
Diving Deeper
Let’s dive a bit deeper into a few of these programs found in Adult Education. we will further discuss Career Technical Education and then Community Education.
Career Technical Education
CTE has many different programs and pathways such as medical, technology, and business. These programs provide hands-on training and education for adults looking to enter the workforce or advance their careers. CTE programs often partner with local businesses and industries to provide training that is directly applicable to the needs of the workforce in that area. These classes can be completed for credit for certification as well as landing a career or advancing one’s career. Many students take CTE classes to learn the foundational skills within a destinated career path before taking an entry-level position before they decide to further their career and education with more training and certification.
Community Education
Community Education, on the other hand, provides opportunities for personal enrichment and lifelong learning. These programs are often more informal and are designed to meet the needs and interests of the local community. Community Education programs can be a great way for adults to learn new skills, pursue hobbies, or connect with others who share similar interests. Learning a new language, pickle ball, cooking, knitting, technology, and coding classes can all encompass community education. Ultimately, these classes are not for credit, but definitely can make an impact in your life in a multitude of different ways!
The Impact of Adult Education
Adult Education programs have a significant impact on individuals, families, and communities. For many adults, Adult Education is a pathway to better jobs, higher wages, and more stable careers. By improving their education and job skills, students in Adult Education programs can increase their earning potential and improve their quality of life.
Beyond the individual level, Adult Education programs also have a positive impact on communities. By improving the education and skills of adults in a community, Adult Education programs can help to build stronger local economies, increase civic engagement, and improve the overall well-being of the community.
Final Thoughts
Adult Education programs may be the best-kept secret in our communities, but they shouldn’t be. These programs offer a wide range of opportunities for adults to improve their education, job skills, and quality of life. Whether you are looking to learn English, earn your high school diploma, or gain career-specific skills, there is an Adult Education program that can help you achieve your goals. Additionally, as we see artificial intelligence and technology progress, Adult Education will be a critical avenue to help retrain large portions of the population for new careers throughout their lives.
Overall, as educators, it’s important for us to recognize the value of Adult Education and promote it as an important part of our education system. By doing so, we can help more adults in our communities to achieve their full potential and build stronger, more vibrant communities for us all.
Designing a lesson plan takes a wide range of strategies that incorporate the elements of engaging students, having students collaborate, assessing students, and then providing feedback. In the world of ever-changing instructional modalities, we have more opportunities than ever before to innovate our instruction.
#AmpGlobalEdu
In education, teachers provide us with tried and true strategies. They are our best resource to learn what works and what doesn’t in classrooms. In Amplifying Instructional Design, you will see research-driven strategies and EdTech integrations from educators throughout the world. Additionally, for many of the strategies and integrations, you will receive illustrations and resources of how to do each step-by-step in four major areas:
Engagement
Collaboration
Assessment
Feedback
To preview how strategies and integrations are outlined in the book, we will illustrate a few engagement strategies and fun EdTech integration to help bolster your social-emotional learning instruction.
Activities to Build Connection with Students and Engage Them – A Quickwrite with Pear Deck or Nearpod
To build connections with students, we want to ask them about themselves as well as provide opportunities for them to share with you about themselves. As a result, two activities where you can obtain this information from students are through Quickwrites and Poll Questions.
Let’s first dive into Quickwrites and how they can be integrated and amplified by EdTech. With both Pear Deck and Nearpod as the EdTech tools to integrate with this strategy, we can create open-ended questions where students write their responses. Pear Deck and Nearpod are interactive slides that can be added to Google Slides, which allow teachers to engage students covertly and overtly through being able to interact on a slide deck that’s been created. Usually, we can model an answer as a teacher and then provide students the opportunity to write their responses. Once students have completed, we can cold call mechanism using Wheel of Names, or call on volunteers to share their response. Immediately before calling on students, you can provide an overview of the responses of the students by summarizing the class’s responses using Pear Deck or Nearpod. As a result, you can anticipate what’s coming, assess student responses, and learn more about all of your students at once even if you do not hear from the student directly.
Figure 1
Quickwrites Using Interactive Slides
Social-Emotional Learning with Pear Deck or Nearpod to Build Relationships and Engage Students
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a set of strategies to help build our student’s emotional and social skills. Interactive slides like Pear Deck or Nearpod are a great opportunity for your students to build these skills through active learning. Examples provided demonstrate how students can self-assess how they are feeling by interacting with a mood chart and using the draw feature on each tool. On the mood chart, students draw circles around how they are feeling, which allows a teacher in real-time to assess how students across their class check the barometer of their classroom. Additionally, teachers can narrow in and see how specific students are feeling, which is good data to help interact with them during their time in class.
Figure 2
SEL Using Interactive Slides
Amplifying Instructional Design
Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative -Amplifying Instructional Design provides teachers and school leaders with a toolkit of instructional strategies integrated with EdTech to be utilized within any classroom setting. Our goal is to demonstrate that teachers are always the drivers of strategies in addition to illustrating how the power of technology can amplify the strategies we are using. With the integrations in play, students and teachers are given opportunities never before present in classrooms to demonstrate their learning and provide feedback in innovative and creative ways.
About the Editors of Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design
Matt Rhoads, Ed.D
Matthew Rhoads, Ed.D. is a practicing EdTech Integrationist and Coach, University Lecturer and Teacher Candidate Supervisor, Podcaster, Author, and Consultant from San Diego, CA. He is an innovator who has expertise in integrating research-based instructional strategies with EdTech tools to amplify student learning. Additionally, he has expertise in data literacy, Special Education, and navigating classrooms without boundaries For more information on Dr. Rhoads, check out his website at www.matthewrhoads.com.
Becky Lim, M.Ed. is a Digital Learning Coach, Author, Blogger, and Podcaster from Chicago, Illinois. She is an innovator and expert at integrating EdTech with instructional strategies to amplify student learning through coaching teachers on how to use these integrations within their classrooms. She is also a member and leader of Global Google for Education, where she makes connections with educators across the globe with the goal to build capacity as a global community to improve student learning. For more information on Mrs. Lim, check out her website at www.techwithbecky.com.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy? It is comprised of five major components that require us to teach students a wide variety of skills that are integrated with the very technology that has AI embedded in it. AI literacy and its themes encompass perception, representation and reason, learning, natural interaction, and societal impact. All of these factors relate to how computers collect data, interact with that data, and how we as humans can interact with it. These components of AI Literacy are described below as we discuss how AI is impacting our work as educators. From understanding what AI entails to how it impacts our workflow and our practice as educators, it is and will change how we operate.Â
Via AIK12s Five Big Ideas in AI
Note: AI Literacy still is being further defined by the greater community as it is an emerging technology that is now being scaled.
The goal of this article is to describe how AI works, how it is used in industry, in our own personal workflows, and in education. Additionally, the goal is to provide foundational information in each of these areas. Last, as you progress through this articles, think about the five themes discussed above in relation to AI Literacy. Think about how this may look in practical examples in your daily life as well as your students. Additionally, think about how you can teach about AI and how to use it in your content area and industry.
How AI Works?
AI encompasses a number of tools and mechanisms that analyze data to solve problems through algorithms. Tools and mechanisms such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, computer vision, and natural language processing can be utilized as a pathway to AI. For example, machine learning is a pathway that uses algorithms to learn insights and recognize patterns in data automatically. Then, it applies that learning to make better decisions over time based on the number of data processed and data available. Another example is deep learning, which is a more advanced method than machine learning that acts as large neural networks that function like the human brain to analyze data in a logical manner to find and learn complex patterns. Ultimately, its goal is to make logical predictions without the need for human input.
To see how AI works in your daily life, an example you see every day is text prediction. Using data inputted from users based on the words and phrases utilized over time, while writing a sentence the AI makes an informed prediction of what text may follow thereafter. Another example of this in action is predicting favorite websites, netflix show preferences, and advertisements we see. Based on the data we’ve provided over time along with users with similar preferences, through the nature of the algorithm, it can predict our preferences and even our behavior. For example, you will see your top preferences immediately in front of you to select. More often than not, someone will select that top preference reinforcing the prediction made.
Have you ever noticed how one preference or advertisement may be larger than the other? Developers can use what we call A/B testing to see user patterns over time, which amasses large data sets to see which preference users are more likely to press. This then reinforces the predictions the algorithms make and you will see how those same preferences are visible throughout your interactions on a variety of platforms (i.e., YouTube, Instagram, Netflix, Google Search).
AI in Industry
AI now has a presence in every industry. For many industries, the goal of utilizing AI is to improve efficiency, profitability, and productivity. For example, in banking AI can use machine learning algorithms to prevent fraud and cybersecurity attacks. Additionally, it can use biometrics and computer vision AI-based algorithms to authenticate users and their identity. For example, think about when you last logged into your online bank. Usually, you must first provide a biometric identification such as your fingerprint or face. Then, through what we call dual authentication, we are sent a text message to our phones with a randomized password, which then allows us to log in. Another example is in Healthcare, which can use our biometric data and historical biometric data to make predictions about our current and future health by taking vast amounts of data sets that appear to have similarities to ours. Through these predictions, doctors can see a number of prognostics they can then work towards with the treatment or preventative care.
Understanding AI Bias
AI has bias’ and is not entirely accurate. It is only as accurate as the data it utilizes to make ongoing predictions. Also, note that the data it may have in its database may also be biased. For example, when we use Google Search, our own searches have our own human biases, which Google then stores in its database. While algorithms may have rules built into them that try to filter biases within the data, it is imperfect as the biases may manifest themselves as the data it is making these predictions are inherently biased. Ultimately, this same principle also applies to the accuracy of the data it is pulling for its algorithms. Misinformation can easily be placed within a database that can be pulled by AI. Thus, bias and misinformation can be easily pulled into AI, which can then be scaled to meet mass audiences (i.e., social media newsfeeds).
With this said, we need to discuss bias can be filtered, but as discussed, we must have filters and safeguards in place for when the data is collected and then when it is pulled by the algorithms powering AI. While in many cases AI can reduce our own human subjective interpretations, it can scale them quite easily due to our own subjectivity found in the data that we are feeding it. Thus, we must determine how to measure fairness in terms of the data we are collecting and utilizing as well as pre-process data to counterfactual data to filter sensitive attributes.
In the meantime, we must be judicious and skeptical of all information we see. We must triangulate our conclusions by synthesizing the information we process as the accuracy of the information we encounter each day is subject to many biases’ and can contain misinformation. Therefore, a key skill to build is digital and multimedia literacy, which is also based on having a higher degree of literacy to process language and understand it. When thinking about any education program, we must keep these skills central to what we are doing.
Integrating AI into Workflow
We now live in a world where we have a personal secretary embedded into many tools we use every day. From text prediction, the impressive language and code applications of ChatGPT, formulas in Excel and Sheets, and predictive content to edit in tools like Canva, Adobe, etc, to the search capabilities of search engines, this is only the tip of the iceberg. How this can impact your workflow is astounding. Below are a number of examples of how AI can help improve workflow.
Create templates of content to be used for email, newsletters, communication, marketing, and more.
Revise writing to make it more engaging and grammatically correct.
Providing code templates in a variety of different languages such as Python, Java, HTML, etc.
Search content and provide basic information on topics
Provide resources
Generate multiple drafts of content
AI in Education
In our classrooms, we are collecting vast amounts of data on our students when they engage with our EdTech tools. From basic quizzes, time on task, and content they have created, to the number of clicks and the locations of those clicks in relation to the problem they may be solved, a plethora of data is being collected. Currently, AI is embedded in various tools, which predict student performance based on their current performance. For example, on tools like iReady, MobyMax, ReadTheory, and even state tests, adaptive AI can review large amounts of data based on present and student performance and provide a student with a question/problem at their current ability level. It can even provide lessons and tutorials based on student performance levels and determine which areas students need to make progress in before learning various skills that may be more difficult.
The implications of this go far beyond what was described above. AI can be harnessed by teachers to make real-time data-driven decisions for individual students, groups of students, and entire classes of students. We can then make decisions about our student progress and utilize assistive AI such as ChatGPT to support us in making personalized learning opportunities for our students.
Additionally, AI can improve the workflow of teachers by providing opportunities for them to optimize their workflow and instruction in their classroom through the following means:
Brainstorming Ideas.
Revising Writing and Providing Feedback on Thinking
Checking student work and providing insightful feedback using embedded rubrics assessing their work.
Creating Rubrics.
Creating Lesson Content For Students.
Developing Lesson Sequences and Units.
Creating Assessments Based on Learning Objectives.
Writing Student Progress Reports Based on Collected Data.
Creating Personalized Student Learning Plans.
Project-Based Learning Lessons and Summative Projects.
Developing Assessments and Differentiated Assessments
AI is Changing the World
AI is changing the way we interact with the world, each other, and how we conduct our work. There’s a large opportunity for educators to help students and our communities adjust to these technologies and navigate how they can learn how to use them in a way that benefits themselves and the community. Many new professions and jobs will arise from AI, but much will have to be done to ethically develop AI to ensure it is being used responsibly. Thus, our job as educators will be to further study and learn how we can teach this technology as it evolves over the next few years.
Another version of this Article: The ChatGPT Version of this Article – I inputted the article into ChatGPT to see if I can make it more fun and engaging to read. What do you think?Â
Are you curious about AI and its impact on various aspects of our lives? In this article, we will explore the five big ideas in AI literacy and how AI works. AI encompasses a variety of tools and mechanisms, such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, computer vision, and natural language processing, that use algorithms to analyze data and solve problems. AI is present in almost every industry today, such as banking, healthcare, and cybersecurity, where it is used to improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability. However, AI is not entirely accurate and has biases that must be filtered out through safeguards and filters that need to be put in place when data is collected and utilized by the algorithms powering AI.
AI has an impact on our daily lives in various ways, and one example is text prediction. The algorithm uses the data we provide, such as the words and phrases we use while writing, to predict the text that will follow. Another example is the predictions made for favorite websites, Netflix show preferences, and advertisements. Based on the data we have provided over time, AI can predict our preferences and even our behavior. AI can also be used to prevent fraud and cybersecurity attacks in banking through machine learning algorithms and in healthcare by using our biometric data and historical data to make predictions about our current and future health.
However, AI is only as accurate as the data it utilizes to make ongoing predictions. Therefore, the data it may have in its database may also be biased, and misinformation can easily be placed within a database that can be pulled by AI. Bias and misinformation can be easily pulled into AI, which can then be scaled to meet mass audiences (i.e., social media newsfeeds).
To filter out bias, filters and safeguards need to be put in place when the data is collected and utilized by the algorithms powering AI. We must also be judicious and skeptical of all information we see, triangulating our conclusions by synthesizing the information we process, and putting counterfactual data to filter sensitive attributes. In the end, AI literacy and its themes are essential for teaching students a variety of skills integrated with technology that has AI embedded in it.
How AI is Impacting Education
AI is having a significant impact on education. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in how AI can be used to improve the educational process. One example of this is adaptive learning, where AI algorithms are used to personalize learning experiences for individual students. By analyzing data about a student’s progress, the AI can determine their strengths and weaknesses and adapt the curriculum to meet their needs. This has the potential to improve student engagement and increase academic performance.
Another way AI is impacting education is through chatbots. Chatbots are AI-powered tools that can answer student questions, provide personalized feedback, and even grade assignments. This can help reduce the workload for teachers and increase efficiency in the classroom.
However, it is important to note that there are also potential downsides to the use of AI in education. For example, there is a risk that the use of AI may perpetuate existing biases and inequalities. Additionally, some educators are concerned that the use of AI may lead to a loss of human connection and empathy in the learning process.
Teaching AI Literacy
Given the increasing impact of AI on our lives, it is important that we teach AI literacy to students. AI literacy involves not just an understanding of how AI works, but also an understanding of its societal impact and ethical considerations.
One way to teach AI literacy is through interdisciplinary projects that incorporate AI concepts into a variety of subjects. For example, students could use machine learning algorithms to analyze data in a science project, or use natural language processing to create a chatbot in a language arts class.
Another way to teach AI literacy is through dedicated courses and workshops that focus specifically on AI concepts and their applications. This could involve hands-on coding projects, guest speakers from industry experts, and discussions of ethical considerations related to AI.
Conclusion
AI literacy is an essential skill for students in the 21st century. With AI playing an increasingly important role in our lives, it is important that we not only understand how it works, but also its potential impact on society. By teaching AI literacy, we can prepare students to be responsible and informed users of AI technology, and to be critical thinkers who can recognize and challenge bias and ethical issues related to AI.
Have you thought about your “why” much? Do you think about the intentionality behind everything you do?
Beginning my time in education years ago, our contexts change, and what we do on daily basis changes. It consistently makes me wonder where I am at and what my why is as to the work I am doing.
While this blog is devoted to providing resources and know-how to educators in teaching and leadership contexts, I wanted to provide a short blog dedicated to “my why.” As the year moves forward, I reflect and see where I am at and how I can best articulate my vision, and how I can act that out. Beyond the facade of what you may see behind tweets, blogs, podcasts, and books, there is a driving purpose and vision I want to share.
Ultimately, I do not want this to get lost in everything I do. Thus, I wanted to reaffirm it in this post.
As an educator, my vision and “my why” is to make a positive difference in people I, directly and indirectly, work with locally and globally. Whether that is through academics, a positive relationship, or through providing outlets to learn and grow and also impact our local and global communities.
The notion of amplification is also within this vision. If pockets of positive impact occur, you never know of how that may also have a compounding effect. While ultimately never perfect nor intentionally perfect, it is something I strive for in the work I do. It gives me energy and motivation to work towards all of the contexts and projects I am participating in and working in.
To provide more context as to what gives me energy. The teachers and students I serve in Adult Education, Higher Ed, and K-12 are what truly motivate me. Their daily experiences and life experiences motivate and humble me – I learn from each individual every day and try to remain present. I am still working on being as present as I can in the interactions I have throughout my days.
Beyond that, my wife, who is also an educator, provides me with plenty of motivation and wisdom you do not see on the surface. It manifests in the work if you know us well. Additionally, my PLN has also been one of the most impactful and influential groups of people who have given me the energy to create and work toward fulfilling my vision. Last, my family also provides that motivation. I learned early on that action toward fulfilling your vision is a major determining factor. I thank my Grandfather and Dad for modeling that to me from an early age.
In the end, I hope this contextualizes “my why.” I also hope this provides more context behind the work and projects I have released. As 2023 moves forward into the future, I keep these thoughts close and hope you have time to also reflect to either reaffirm or continue to modify your vision and why as life moves forward. It not only helps bring forth purposefulness, it brings forth gratification when you see your vision manifest every day in the work you do.
Matt Rhoads Ed.D is a Tech Trainer, Innovator, University Professor, Author, Podcaster, and Consultant with hands in Adult Education, K-12, and Higher Education
ChatGPT is a new Artificial Intelligence platform by OpenAI that uses machine learning to use text, research, and know-how from the internet to solve problems, improve workflow, and possibly revolutionize the world (Note: ChatGPT is free for now while it’s in Beta). ChatGPT aims to make it easier for you to share resources, lesson plan, assess students, write documents and complete administrative tasks, ask for help on general inquiries and research, and stay up to date on the latest developments in your field. Ultimately, there are many pros and cons of ChatGBT and its implication’s going forward.Â
As a coach, ChatGPT can be utilized for you to develop graphic organizers, tables, find information, brainstorm, creating standards/objectives, develop assessments, review a draft of a lesson, and search strategies. As coaches, we must be able to harness new forms of technology to support teachers and amplify their workflow and instruction. As a result, we must be ahead of the curve!
I am providing three resources to help you further learn more about ChatGPT from a few great educators to support you in learning more about ChatGPT. ChatGPT may not be 100% accurate and biased at this point, its a powerful tool that will only become more relevant and impactful over time. Therefore, ensure you have Google Scholar and a tool like Perplexity.ai available for you to double-check sources and information. Nonetheless, this tool and form of technology may revolutionize our world before we know it!
Check out the information below to support you in learning more about the tool. Thank you to all of the amazing educators out there who are testing ChatGPT and sharing their knowledge about it with other educators around the world!
On January 4th, 2023, Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Learning in Authentic Reading, will be released withEduMatch Publishing! It is a book on research-based strategies integrated with EdTech tools crowdsourced by teachers across the world who are doing these strategies and tech integrations within their classrooms, schools, and districts. This is book two of a series of four books, which is focused on providing K-20 teachers with strategies to support student learning in reading, writing, and mathematics. Additionally, it focuses on building student voice and agency while using research-based strategies with EdTech tools. Last, its geared towards providing an entire toolkit of instructional strategies and EdTech integrations to teach reading, writing, and mathematics, regardless of teaching and EdTech expertise, as it has strategies and integrations for anyone that can be utilized across all age levels. To learn more about the book and Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative series, you can visitwww.AmpGlobalEdu.com.
Thank you to Becky Lim, who helped edit, curate, write, and collaborate with me on this project along with our wonderful contributing authors Dr. Jenn Toney, Dr. Janet Ilko, and Sammi White. Additionally, thank you to our eight other contributing authors that provided additional strategies and EdTech integrations for each chapter throughout the book’s three main chapters.
Throughout this post, you view the book’s Livestream launch celebration interview with the authors as well as information about purchasing the book in its printed and Kindle formats. We hope you enjoy learning more about the book as well as hope you can join our #AmpGlobalEdu community by reading this book and joining in on the conversation to amplify student learning across the globe.
See below to review a preview of the book for FREE. Additionally, below you can review the cover and back cover to learn more about the book and its reviews.
What a year! We’ve seen much change over this year as well as adjusting to living in our quote-on-quote “new normal” after two years of major upheaval and change. As with every year, the goal of the end-of-the-year blog is to provide some thoughts on the past year and where we are going into the next year. Let’s jump into these trends and then review what is going on now and in the future. Additionally, what separates this blog from the rest is that it is Blog 100 of this website. Thank you to our readers from around the world!
Trends to Review and Projections Moving Forward
Trends in Education in 2022
The Omnicron wave of January 2022 saw schools at the brink with staffing shortages due to infection and staff shortages as a result of the pandemic.
Return to “normal” by Spring 2022 without mass school closures, which created much more stability throughout the year.
Large investments in education from COVID rescue funds throughout the US.
EdTech companies begin consolidating after two years of exploding growth.
EdTech becomes a mainstay in classrooms around the world.
Deemphasis of online education for K-12, but growth persisted in alternative programs and academies.
Increased politicization of education on issues such as social justice, critical race theory, particular books being banned, and controversy over what should be added or taken out of textbooks.
A large focus and emphasis are beginning to shift to educator well-being and sustainability.
SEL for students has become a mainstay in classrooms.
Teacher shortage persists and worsens. Some states deteriorate standards to make entry easier into the profession.
Increased emphasis on research-based instructional strategies.
Accountability indicators released in many states for the 2021 school year.
Trends in Education to Watch for in 2023
Artificial intelligence and how that will change the nature of instruction, student learning, and how teachers can harness it to improve workflow, lessons, and student learning.
Will EdTech continue to see consolidation and buy-up of companies by large multinational corporations?
Will ideas for teacher sustainability continue and be further implemented?
What will be done to take on the shortage of educators and support staff?
How can we use research-based instructional practices along with AI to improve student learning and long term outcomes?
What skills can we build to harness AI in an ethical and responsible manner that can be implemented in K-12 schools?
What will careers, jobs, and life long learning look like in a world of AI?
Overall, these are the trends I watched in 2022 and what I will watch for in 2023. There’s much to focus on and reflect upon. What are your thoughts and what are you looking for in 2023 as a major trend in education?
Last, before jumping into what happened to me personally over the year, let’s celebrate that this blog is Blog 100 of this website. Thank you to our readers from around the world!
Writing Publications, Podcast, and the Future
A Big Year in Writing
Three titles were released in 2022 with an additional title launching on January 4th, 2023 – what a year of book releases. It has been an amazing year of releasing work that has been in the works since early 2021 and late 2020. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Additionally, it’s my own form of professional learning where I research, write, and collaborate to share what I have been doing in my practice to hopefully support educators throughout the world.
Crush it from the Start: 50 Tips for New Teachers – October 2022
Instruction Without Boundaries – August 2022
Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design – June 2022
Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Authentic Learning in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics – January 4th, 2023.
Thank you to my co-authors Becky Lim, Shannon Moore, Janelle McLaughlin, Casey Jakubowski, Kevin Leichtman, and Samantha Fecich for your collaborations in this year’s publications. You are all inspiring educators who bring a level of expertise and experience that provides so much breadth and insight to everything we’ve written together.
Thank you EduMatch Publishing and SchoolRubric as the publishers of this year’s publications! Sarah Thomas and Mandy Froelich at EduMatch along with Wallace Ting at SchoolRubric have been fantastic to work with on each of the books. Your collaboration with each of these projects brought them to life!
New writing projects are in the works. Data literacy, co-teaching, and instructional coaching projects are in process as well as Books 3 and 4 of the Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative series (hoping for 2023 releases).
The Future of this Blog
My goal is to continue to post monthly blog posts on education-related topics. Instruction, EdTech, coaching, and leadership may remain themes of this blog, but it will continue to diverge into research and policy and other topics influencing education such as Artificial Intelligence, Special Education, Adult Education/Continuing Education, and Higher Education. Ultimately, similar to that of Navigating Education – The Podcast, I want to provide educators, regardless of their context, to help them navigate the present and future of education. Educators face many challenges. Providing resources with the goal to help educators overcome these challenges and support student learning and well-being is what drives this blog.
The Future of Navigating Education – The Podcast
After 30 inspirational and insightful episodes, Season 2 of the podcast came to an end in late December. As an opportunity to grow, learn, and amplify voices, I was blown away by the guests joining the podcast for each episode, their stories, and their expertise as we progressed through each episode. I hope each listener learned as much as I did producing these episodes from the amazing lineup we had.
The next season will revamp elements of the podcast, including its intro and closure. My goal is to also work on adding my own monologue into each episode to either intro the episode or focus on an element of the content of the episode that I would like listeners to also focus on. New episodes will come in either late February or early March 2023.
Throughout North America, we are facing an unprecedented teacher and support staff shortage. Several states across the U.S. are facing a deficit of 5000 or more teachers throughout their state. As a result, we see states scrambling to fill positions, which in many cases, caused policymakers to pass laws and policies to erode the needed educational qualifications to become a teacher. In some cases, a completed degree nor a credential in the process would be required for a teacher to take the helm of the classroom. This is alarming!
Ultimately, this is an existential crisis that needs major policy change. In my opinion, it is a national security crisis that will only get worse unless major policy action is taken at the state and local levels. Therefore, states, districts, and schools have a variety of opportunities that are small and big policy actions they can take to retain and recruit future teachers. Provided below are ideas that can be further researched and discussed regarding their implementation. States, schools, and districts do not need to focus on all of these suggestions. Rather, taking two to three from the retaining and recruiting categories is realistic for the short term with the hope for more in the future. Last, each local school, state, and district are different, which also reinforces that this is a list that can be best utilized to brainstorm and use where best applicable for your local municipality.
Retaining Teachers
Increase Instructional Autonomy, Planning and Prep Time, and Teacher Collaboration
Move to a Four Day School Week with an Asynchronous Fifth Day
Increased Opportunities to Receive Mental Health Support (for free)
Increased Pay Opportunities on the Payscale and Beyond the Payscale
Create Multiple Entry Points for PD and Growth with a Focus on Coaching and Mentoring
Provide Ongoing Mentoring, Coaching, and Community Growth Opportunities
Offer Housing Subsidies and Federal and State Income Tax-Free Salary
Create State Accountability Indicators for Positive School Climates for Both Teachers and Students
Lower class sizes
Hire support staff and more than enough subs
Community and national respect for the profession – patriotism
Recruiting Teachers
Tuition-Free University Education Degrees and Credentials
Solidified Partnerships Between Districts and Local Colleges/Universities
Create Multiple Entry Points for PD and Growth with a Focus on Coaching and Mentoring
Provide Ongoing Mentoring and Community Growth Opportunities
Increased Pay Opportunities on the Payscale and Beyond the Payscale
Salary Income Tax-Free
Offer Housing Subsidies and Income Tax-Free Salary
Lower class sizes
Give new teachers easier assignments to start their career
Hire support staff and more than enough subs
Community and national respect for teacher – patriotism
Conclusion – Policies Must Change
These are only several policies that can be passed at the state and local level, which may have an opportunity to positively affect the retention and recruitment of teachers. You may notice many of these policies within each category of teacher retention and recruitment overlap. This is because much of the research on the retention and recruitment of teachers overlap significantly. With an emphasis on positive working environments, a manageable workload, mentorship/coaching, and opportunities for career growth and pay increases. All of these areas are key to implementing policies that will help mitigate the teacher shortage crisis that will continue to be ongoing until major policy actions are taken at the state and local levels.
Beyond these suggestions, what are your suggestions in terms of policies that can be passed at the state and local levels that can help positively affect the recruitment and retention of teachers?
Additionally, mentorship, coaching, and building new teachers up, are key as well. Our latest book, Crush it from the Start: 50 Tips for New Teacherscovers this and more with helpful tips, conversations, and activities to put learning into action to help new and experienced teachers create sustainable, effective, and enjoyable careers of positive impact!
As we experience our first few years of teaching, they seem to blend together, but also there are moments of the highs and lows of navigating the profession. Teaching is a rewarding and challenging profession that is constantly changing and evolving. Understanding how to navigate the ebbs and flows of new students, building your pedagogical toolkit, establishing and maintaining a class community, amplifying the voices of students, and meeting students where they are at in their learning. There are also elements of navigating families, the local community, your own personal life and boundaries, and other external events. Ultimately, as a new and even experienced teachers, there are many variables we must navigate and learn as we move through our careers as a teacher.
The Why Behind the Book
Early in 2022, I wanted to provide teachers with a resource on how to navigate education as a new teacher because I know of the challenges teachers go through during student teaching and their first five years of teaching. For example, during my student teaching, it was a challenging experience that at times, I felt like I almost failed. Ultimately, without the support and mentorship I received, I would have not been able to pass as well as build my skillset and move into a position as a Special Education teacher. When thinking about my experiences as a new teacher, I reflected and knew a resource like Crush it from the Start would have been helpful to have while student teaching, teacher credentialing program, and in my first years of teaching.
As a student teacher supervisor for a local university in the Dual Language and English Language Learner Department and an instructional and digital learning coach and instructional leader for new and experienced teachers at the consortium level (i.e., district level for Adult Education), developing the resource was a goal of mine as I see it on a daily basis the challenges and the rewarding nature of teaching and the invaluable work teachers do. Also, in a world where we are experiencing a teacher shortage, we need resources that are honest about the challenges teachers experience, research-based, and practical on how to navigate them.
To make this resource a reality, I teamed up with practicing educators who also work with new and experienced teachers in their day-to-day work. Drs. Sam Fecich, Casey Jakubowski, and Kevin Leichtman all teamed up to share their experience and knowledge within the 50 Tips and Four Critical Conversations that are found throughout the book. As a result, Crush it from the Start: 50 Tips for New Teachers was born and is now available for pre-service, new teachers, and experienced teachers. Published by School Rubric, a publisher focused on amplifying educator voices, we believe this book can be utilized within schools and districts, universities, and credentialing and mentoring programs across the world.
Contents of the Book
The goal of the contents of the book was to provide teachers with the content they need to navigate many of the experiences they may encounter within the classrooms they serve. We wanted to provide research and our experiences to navigate these experiences. Ultimately, the 50 Tips and Critical Conversations cover topics that include:
Pedagogy and Instructional Strategies
Lesson Planning and Workflow
Classroom Management
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Equity and Inclusion
Special Education
Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
Utilizing Educational Technology to Teach Within Any Classroom Setting
As we know as educators, the school year ebbs and flows, and our overall mental and physical well-being does as well. This book is a great resource for any educators who need encouragement and some tips to navigate the school year. – Susan Jachymiak, Elementary Teacher
The organization of topics, partnered with reflective activities is well-designed and provides a user-friendly guide to growth. 50 Tips for New Teachers is the book I wish I had when I began my career as a teacher. – Sarah Thornell, Campus Administrator
Much of my thoughts regarding equity and access has been about evaluating the systems within classrooms and schools to promote equity and access for students. My goal is to determine whether our systems promote equity and access and how we can tweak or change our systems to promote it further. To me, this is part of our equity work that’s important and can be very actionable and impactful. Thus, I will describe several examples of this and more throughout this post so you can do the same in your own educational context.
Systems are mechanisms in which how various processes work in sequential steps and cycles. Systems thinking refers to how we think about them to make them more effective or efficient to meet our needs and goals. What does this look like in the classroom and schools? For example, when we take attendance there’s a process you conduct every day. Whether it’s taking it on your student information system at the beginning of class or jotting it down on a paper roster, it’s something you do very often in the same manner. When we think about that particular system of taking attendance, we are evaluating the system and its steps to see if it’s meeting our goals effectively and efficiently. Major researchers and leaders such as Fullan, Quinn, and Senge, discuss this often in their research and literature. They are my go-to’s for learning more bout systems thinking in education.
Now, let’s bring equity into the systems thinking. Before combining them, my working definition of equity relates to equal opportunity to access the services and supports being provided at a given time. Now, let’s combine them. To ensure we have a lasting impact on improving equity, we must evaluate the systems within our classrooms and schools and then make adjustments or systematic changes to those systems in order for there to be improvements to support further equity and access for our students.
Let’s jump into several examples of what this looks like in practice. I am not going to discuss how we do a breakdown analysis, but a few examples of the systems I am alluding to so you can think about the systems in your context.
Examples of Equity Systems in Practice
Devices and Services – An example of such a change has been the advent of providing students with devices to use at school and to take home. Systems such as implementing chromebook charts, check out policies, repairs, purchasing new devices, etc., all much be created within various facets of a school. Evaluating these systems with an equity lens has us determine in each of these areas I mentioned if everyone has an opportunity to access the chromebook and utilize these services without barriers such as wait time, going days without a device, not being able to log into apps, and being able to connect to the internet. To ensure these barriers can be broken down, we have to the aforementioned systems and the communication and collaboration amongst members to make this happen.
Classroom Instruction – Another example is when we are thinking of equity and access in terms of instructional scenarios and sequences within the classroom. Using a tool that allows to overtly and covertly engage, such as an interactive slide or whiteboard, allows for students to respond and then share with either pairs or the entire class creating opportunities for everyone to participate during that sequence and receive feedback. Instructional sequences are all based on systems thinking as we always think about how particular strategies go during and after they are conducted. Equity in this instructional sequence relates to creating opportunities for everyone to participate in one or more ways to work on a particular skill(s). For all aspects of our instruction and lessons, we must think of the systems in which they are sequenced with equity at the forefront.
Students Accessing Instruction and Curriculum from Anywhere – The last example is providing opportunities for students to access instruction and curriculum. A system that allows that to happen is to combine the ability for students to access devices and connectivity during and after school as well as access points to engage in curriculum and instruction. This takes place when a student has access to that instruction and curriculum through a learning management system, a single sign-on to multiple applications, and organized processes of engaging with organized content to help students learn. Each of these involves complex systems. First, the devices and connectivity are all systems based, which involves distribution, maintenance, and continuous service. Second, the notion of having content from the day, week, and months on a learning management system require systems where teachers have to build and maintain content, review student content, and provide opportunities for communication and feedback.
Conclusion
This post shares how we can think about our systems with an equity lens. Sometimes I believe when discussing equity, it is often very generalized and doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. Thus, I advocate for discussing systems and processes and thinking of equity in each step of these systems and processes that take place among individuals, departments, and organizations. I did not get into data and data-driven decision-making which also comes into play when thinking of systems and equity or finance and funding, but that’s another set of important elements that need to be touched on too to further move the needle.
A major part of my role is to provide instructional and EdTech integration coaching to teachers. The goal is to build capacity in instruction as well as build equitable learning environments and opportunities for our students. The new teacher center provides a framework that helped me devise some of our systems relating to the coaching systems discussed in this post. I also use quite a bit of Jim Knight’s work, including the book “The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching” to support my coaching practice. Creating systems with coaching is a key to its success across various departments and schools. Ultimately, we want to improve teacher efficacy and instructional capacity. Using coaching systems has been key in building our programs and teacher confidence to try and experiment with new things in their classroom to support our learners. Also, before jumping into discussing coaching systems, relationships must be built and cultivated throughout each of these systems in order for there to be trust for coaching to be effective. Trust is the foundation for coaching, which is predicated on building strong relationships between the coach and coachee. Relationships and trust ensure the systems work for the long term. Therefore, with this said, the goal of this post is to share systems that can help support instructional and EdTech coaching by illustrating what I do in my role as an instructional leader and coach.
Coaching Cycles
We provide several types of coaching to support teachers. This includes drop-in observations and feedback, POP cycles, and one on one coaching meetings. Most recently, we are moving into using the POP cycle for many non-evaluative observations and coaching cycles to support teachers in instructional and EdTech by building capacity in one or more areas.
Drop-in observations relate to drop-ins to provide feedback. Teachers need feedback – especially feedback that can help build their efficacy and brainstorm on various ideas for their lessons. Providing positive feedback, and appreciation, and then adding a few recommendations have been the ingredients for this.
The POP coaching cycle relates to having a pre-observation conference, observation, and then post-observation conference. These are the foundation of coaching cycles. Goals are set relating to where a teacher wants to improve in and then an assessment is given by the coach and the teacher on where we both think they are and how growth can occur in a specific area(s). Within this POP coaching cycle, the rubric related to the TIM is provided and various levels as assessed and provided to teachers. Additionally, the goal is to also use it for goal setting, which gives teachers examples of what they can strive for and project towards for the end of this coaching cycle. Once the coaching cycle is established, various observations using the rubric and qualitative feedback are given and it continues for a given time period.
Learner Variability – The Digital Promise Learner Variability resource provides teachers with classroom practices and strategies to amplify student learning. From Kindergarteners to Learners, they provide a series of strategies and resources to help support them in their learning based on a number of variables that affect how we learn. Additionally, they give a series of strategies that are research-driven that demonstrate their effectiveness. They illustrate examples of how to incorporate these strategies within the classroom with videos, resources, and more. Please feel free to explore these strategies. You are likely doing many of them in your classroom! Below are a number of steps you can take to utilize the tool. In this previous post, we go further in-depth as to how you use the Learner Variability tool and how it be utilized to support teacher instruction and student learning.
Technology Integration Matrix – The TIM is a research-based matrix that allows teachers to see where specific strategies and technology integrations fall in regard to the learning environment and the levels of technology integration. Each level represents various ways you integrate strategies and technology to amplify student learning. You can see examples, research, videos, and activities that demonstrate each of these levels. In this previous post, we go further in-depth as to what the Technology Integration Matrix is and how we can utilize it to support teacher instruction and student learning.
One on one coaching sessions relate to having meetings about lesson design, incorporating lesson design and strategies within a variety of EdTech tools, including our LMS, and co-planning. Within our coaching meetings, we focus on the lesson itself, the instructional strategies utilized, and then the EdTech once the foundation of the lesson and instructional strategies are determined. There are times we also focus on co-planning and backward planning. Last, when introducing a new strategy and/or EdTech tool, we plan on co-teaching together to introduce the new strategy, EdTech tool, or integrating them together within a lesson sequence. This helps model what this looks like for teachers as well as help them build confidence in something new they are trying in their classrooms.
Collecting Coaching Data – Connecthub.io
To collect data on coaching experiences, we use Connecthub.io. We collect data on coaching cycles, professional development sessions, instructional tech support, course design, co-teaching for strategy and tool integration adoption, and observations. Each of these opportunities provides qualitative data to be inputted as well as quantitative when it comes down to assigning various metrics to teaching performance (i.e., utilizing the TIM). Various tags and themes can be denoted for each opportunity to collect data, which over time helps the coach, as well as orthe ganization, to determine instructional trends. To see how Connectub in action, take a look at this video here demonstrating the tool.
Analyzing Data
Throughout the year, I analyze the data collected through coaching. Trends are aggregated based on department and school. Then, professional development and further coaching goals are developed. The analysis takes place quarterly where the data is transformed into reports, which illustrate the instructional trends that can be broken down to be very specific nuances in what’s happening. For example, within a department and group of educators, we can segment which strategies are being utilized the most and then review through the qualitative observations how they are looking across multiple classrooms.
Coaching cycles are then evaluated in segments of however long they have been determined. For example, if a coaching cycle is 12 weeks long, it is evaluated every 12 weeks and then reassessed. The data collected across coaching cycles are analyzed to see growth from multiple teachers across the instructional capacity that is being built. This allows us to see our strengths and gaps as well as where we are at in relation to our instructional goals at the school and consortia.
Aligning Professional Development to Coaching
Based on the coaching data, professional development themes are developed and old ones are reassessed. Additionally, professional development is also reassessed to determine the means by which how it was delivered and if it had any visible effect on the instructional capacity we see across departments and schools. After this is analyzed, professional development is developed for asynchronous and synchronous participation, and themes to take into coaching are also developed. For example, if we wanted to focus on creating more Universal Design for Learning lessons and tasks for students, we would look at incorporating more professional learning in creating these tasks on our LMS, through active learning strategies, and how these opportunities can be developed throughout the sequence of a lesson.
Conclusion – Systems Thinking is the Key to Instructional Coaching and Organizational Capacity Building
When we think of coaching as a system and a sequence that we utilized to analyze what’s going on in classrooms, we can see large instructional trends that we can then use to support our schools in building capacity and reinforcing already solid practices. This helps us deliver the coaching and supports that can help teachers immediately as well as over time. Additionally, it helps us pivot what we provide in our professional development and coaching as well as reinforce instructional practices. Over time, we continue to re-evaluate systems and most importantly ask our teachers how they can be best supported through the coaching we provide. This ultimately helps us make important changes as things evolve within our consortia as well as in education so we can best support our teachers.
I hope this helps coaches and instructional leaders think about their systems and make parallels with what we do and what they do. Feel free to leave your thoughts and let us know what your coaching systems look like in your school and organization.
Designing a lesson plan takes a wide range of strategies that incorporate the elements of engaging students, having students collaborate, assessing students, and then providing feedback. In the world of ever-changing instructional modalities, we have more opportunities than ever before to innovate our instruction.
In education, teachers provide us with tried and true strategies. They are our best resource to learn what works and what doesn’t in classrooms. In Amplifying Instructional Design, you will see research-driven strategies and EdTech integrations from educators throughout the world. Additionally, for many of the strategies and integrations, you will receive illustrations and resources on how to do each step-by-step in four major areas:
Engagement
Collaboration
Assessment
Feedback
To preview how strategies and integrations are outlined in the book, we will illustrate a few engagement strategies and fun EdTech integration to help bolster your social-emotional learning instruction.
Activities to Build Connection with Students and Engage Them – A Quickwrite with Pear Deck or Nearpod
To build connections with students, we want to ask them about themselves as well as provide opportunities for them to share with you about themselves. As a result, two activities where you can obtain this information from students are through Quickwrites and Poll Questions.
Let’s first dive into Quickwrites and how they can be integrated and amplified by EdTech. With both Pear Deck and Nearpod as the EdTech tools to integrate with this strategy, we can create open-ended questions where students write their responses. Pear Deck and Nearpod are interactive slides that can be added to Google Slides, which allow teachers to engage students covertly and overtly through being able to interact on a slide deck that’s been created. Usually, we can model an answer as a teacher and then provide students the opportunity to write their responses. Once students have completed, we can cold call mechanisms using Wheel of Names, or call on volunteers to share their responses. Immediately before calling on students, you can provide an overview of the responses of the students by summarizing the class’s responses using Pear Deck or Nearpod. As a result, you can anticipate what’s coming, assess student responses, and learn more about all of your students at once even if you do not hear from the student directly.Â
Figure 1
Quickwrites Using Interactive Slides
Social-Emotional Learning with Pear Deck or Nearpod to Build Relationships and Engage Students
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a set of strategies to help build our student’s emotional and social skills. Interactive slides like Pear Deck or Nearpod are a great opportunity for your students to build these skills through active learning. The examples provided demonstrate how students can self-assess how they are feeling by interacting with a mood chart and using the draw feature on each tool. On the mood chart, students draw circles around how they are feeling, which allows a teacher in real-time to assess how students across their class check the barometer of their classroom. Additionally, teachers can narrow in and see how specific students are feeling, which is good data to help interact with them during their time in class.Â
Figure 2
SEL Using Interactive Slides
Amplifying Instructional Design
Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative -Amplifying Instructional Design provides teachers and school leaders with a toolkit of instructional strategies integrated with EdTech to be utilized within any classroom setting. Our goal is to demonstrate that teachers are always the drivers of strategies in addition to illustrating how the power of technology can amplify the strategies we are using. With the integrations in play, students and teachers are given opportunities never before present in classrooms to demonstrate their learning and provide feedback in innovative and creative ways.
About the Editors of Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design
Matt Rhoads, Ed.D
Matthew Rhoads, Ed.D. is a practicing EdTech Integrationist and Coach, University Lecturer and Teacher Candidate Supervisor, Podcaster, Author, and Consultant from San Diego, CA. He is an innovator who has expertise in integrating research-based instructional strategies with EdTech tools to amplify student learning. Additionally, he has expertise in data literacy, Special Education, and navigating classrooms without boundaries For more information on Dr. Rhoads, check out his website at www.matthewrhoads.com.
Becky Lim, M.Ed. is a Digital Learning Coach, Author, Blogger, and Podcaster from Chicago, Illinois. She is an innovator and expert at integrating EdTech with instructional strategies to amplify student learning through coaching teachers on how to use these integrations within their classrooms. She is also a member and leader of Global Google for Education, where she makes connections with educators across the globe with the goal to build capacity as a global community to improve student learning. For more information on Mrs. Lim, check out her website at www.techwithbecky.com.
Over the last few years, we have had to teach within online, blended, and fully in-person classroom settings. While great strides have been made leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, it demonstrated how the future for K-20 education is within classroom settings that no longer are bound to only a physical classroom space. We’ve learned that it is possible for equitable and effective instruction can take place within any setting with the advances in online and blended learning classroom settings as well as EdTech integration taking place within fully in-person classrooms.
As a result, more than ever before, current and future educators will be expected to know how to navigate and provide effective instruction within each of these settings. This requires knowledge of research-based instructional strategies and the integration of EdTech tools that can be utilized interchangeably within in-person, online, and blended learning classroom settings synchronously and asynchronously. Now, our classrooms are a synthesis of in-person and digital spheres where learning has the opportunity to take place anywhere and anytime. As educators who have taught in each of these settings, we felt it was time to synthesize and put everything together for K-20 educators across the world.
This is how the concept of the Instruction Without Boundaries book was born. The need and yearning to deliver a playbook and guide to demonstrate how a series of instructional strategies integrated with EdTech can be used in each of these settings was a goal of mine (Matt) and co-authors Janelle McLaughlin and Shannon Moore. Each of us has taught within each of these settings and has coached K-20 teachers and school and district leaders on how to integrate technology with research-based strategies to amplify student learning. Additionally, we felt a great deal of capacity needed to continue to be built, developed, and refined. On top of this, we believe the future of teaching and learning takes place in classrooms without physical boundaries that are synthesized within physical and digital boundaries. Therefore, all current and future educators will need an understanding and ability to see and teach within any classroom setting.
We felt that creating opportunities for interchangeable instructional integrations with EdTech within the instructional categories of Classroom Routines, Engagement, Collaboration, Creativity, Innovation, and Assessment and Feedback. This is Instruction Without Boundaries! We hope you can take this journey with us to see a multitude of strategies and EdTech integrations in these instructional areas that are content and grade-level agnostic. The goal of the book is to provide strategies and EdTech integrations that span any classroom, setting, and content that can amplify teaching, learning, and equity. See for yourself how we can teach within any classroom setting!
Our colleagues in education are our best assets to learn and grow. Whether it’s a teacher down the hall, in your school, district, or within your greater professional learning network (PLN), teachers learning from teachers yields incredible results when trying a new strategy in their classroom.Â
To further grow as educators and work together, we cannot work in silos in our classrooms, schools, and districts as the profession are changing the most it has in recent history. We need our colleagues to collaborate and support us to grow and navigate the present and future.
What is very compelling and advantageous to teachers is that we can now use our PLNs to crowdsource innovative and creative practices that we can teach teachers down the hall as well as other colleagues across our PLN. We can do this with educators across the world, which is amazing as you can get many diverse perspectives and experiences. Additionally, you may get expertise and perspectives you’ve not encountered.
In Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design, we crowdsourced educators who are doing innovative instructional strategies integrated with EdTech in their classrooms with the goal of amplifying student learning and their experience. Our motto is that when educators are working together, we are #bettertogether as an #AmpGlobalEdu community. Ultimately, we wanted to share with you how you can crowdsource your local and global PLN to help build you and/or your school build capacity. Here are eight steps to help you do this for your own project!
Step 1 – Determine the Vision for the Project
Step 2 – Create a Timeline
Step 3 – Build your PLN
Step 4 – Find Key Players that You Can Connect With
Step 5 – Vetting Individuals
Step 6 – Creating Buy-in for the Project
Step 7 – Putting the Project into Action
Step 8 – Share Work With Your Local and Global PLN
By following these steps, you or your team of colleagues can take a vision for a project and utilize your local and global PLN to help you make it a reality. You can not only share the finished project with your team, but you can also share it globally. It can take the form of resources and templates, books, courses, professional development, or a website. Share your crowdsourced projects using the #AmpGlobalEdu hashtag to connect with us as well as contributors to theAmplify Learning: A Global Collaborativebook series. We will amplify your work by sharing it among our PLN and each other!
About the Authors and Editors of Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design
Matt Rhoads, Ed.D
Matthew Rhoads, Ed.D. is a practicing EdTech Integrationist and Coach, University Lecturer and Teacher Candidate Supervisor, Podcaster, Author, and Consultant from San Diego, CA. He is an innovator who has expertise in integrating research-based instructional strategies with EdTech tools to amplify student learning. Additionally, he has expertise in data literacy, Special Education, and navigating classrooms without boundaries For more information on Dr. Rhoads, check out his website at www.matthewrhoads.com.
Becky Lim, M.Ed. is a Digital Learning Coach, Author, Blogger, and Podcaster from Chicago, Illinois. She is an innovator and expert at integrating EdTech with instructional strategies to amplify student learning through coaching teachers on how to use these integrations within their classrooms. She is also a member and leader of Global Google for Education, where she makes connections with educators across the globe with the goal to build capacity as a global community to improve student learning. For more information on Mrs. Lim, check out her website at www.techwithbecky.com.
On June 13th, 2022, Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative – Amplifying Instructional Design will be released withEduMatch Publishing! It is a book on research-based strategies integrated with EdTech tools from teachers across the world who are doing these strategies and integrations within their classrooms, schools, and districts. This is book one of the series of four books, which is focused on the instructional design elements of engagement, collaboration, and assessment and feedback. It’s geared towards providing a foundational set of strategies and EdTech integrations to build a lesson plan for K-20 teachers, regardless of teaching and EdTech expertise, as it has strategies and integrations for anyone that are content-agnostic that can be utilized across all age levels. To learn more about the book and Amplify Learning: A Global Collaborative series, you can visitwww.AmpGlobalEdu.com.
Thank you to Becky Lim, who helped edit, curate, write, and collaborate with me on this project along with our wonderful contributing authors Debbie Tannenbaum, Jeni Long and Sallee Clark, and Dr. Zach Groshell. Additionally, thank you to our eight other contributing authors that provided additional strategies and EdTech integrations for each chapter throughout the book’s three main chapters.
Throughout this post, you can review their Livestream podcasts that were done leading up to the book’s release as well as information about purchasing the book in its printed and Kindle formats. We hope you enjoy learning more about the book as well as hope you can join our #AmpGlobalEdu community by reading this book and joining in on the conversation to amplify student learning across the globe.
See below to review a preview of the book for FREE. Additionally, below you can review the cover and back cover to learn more about the book and its reviews.
Introducing the Book and Project Livestream
Engagement Chapter Introduction Livestream with Chapter 1 Author Debbie Tannenbaum
Collaboration Chapter Introduction Livestream with Chapter 2 Authors Jeni Long and Sallee Clark
Assessment and Feedback Chapter Introduction Livestream with Chapter 3 Author Dr. Zach Groshell
To see what specific lessons and instructional strategies look like within classrooms, concrete examples, resources, research, and step-by-step directions can help us think about how they would look in our classroom. If we were to plan, build, and implement a specific lesson or to utilize specific strategies and technology integrations, having the examples and illustrations there can be game-changing. Sometimes we cannot go observe another classroom within our school to see this in action. Therefore, we need resources we can access that can help us with this as it is critical to see what lessons and instructional strategies look like before implementing them in our classrooms. Whether you are a teacher, coach, or instructional and technology leader, these two resources that you can use to evaluate instructional and student needs as well as find strategies to implement and satisfy them in our classrooms and schools. Luckily, there are two great resources that can help us do this as well as support us in evaluating and reflecting on our lesson and instructional practices. Ultimately, the goal is not only to provide awesome resources to share research-based strategies, but to also help mitigate aspects of siloing we see in education as we do not get many opportunities to see things outside of our own classrooms, schools, and districts.
The Technology Integration Matrix and the Digital Promise Learner Variability tools are free and research-based tools that can help us see lessons and strategies that can be integrated with the technology being implemented. What we are going to do is to illustrate a number of steps of how you can find lessons and strategies using these tools for you to research, evaluate, and then implement into your classroom. We will begin with the Technology Integration Matrix followed by the Learner Variability tool.
The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM)
The TIM is a research-based matrix that allows teachers to see where specific strategies and technology integrations fall in regard to the learning environment and the levels of technology integration. Each level represents various ways you integrate strategies and technology to amplify student learning. You can see examples, research, videos, and activities that demonstrate each of these levels.
Step 1. Go to the Interactive Technology Integration Matrix and review the various levels. As you can see its organized horizontally and vertically. Vertically its organized by the characteristics of the learning environment while it is organized horizontally with the levels of technology integration. They goal is to illustrate what various levels of the rubric represent and then to select the area to see what it looks like within classroom settings.
Step 2. After clicking on an interactive segment on the rubric, it will take you to a page that looks like this. This is the page of the extended descriptors, video lesson examples, and related resources. Ultimately, the goal would be for you to review the video lessons and further resources to help you brainstorm and see what the lesson looks like that meets these criteria on the technology integration matrix.
Digital Promise Learner Variability Tool
The Digital Promise Learner Variability resource provides teachers with classroom practices and strategies to amplify student learning. From Kindergarteners to Adult Learners, they provide a series of strategies and resources to help support them in their learning based on a number of variables that affect how we learn. Additionally, they give a series of strategies that are research-driven that demonstrate their effectiveness. They illustrate examples of how to incorporate these strategies within the classroom with videos, resources, and more. Please feel free to explore these strategies. You are likely doing many of them in your classroom! Below are a number of steps you can take to utilize the tool.Â
Step 1. Click on the factors affecting adult learners. Then, click on one that you feel you want to learn more about and research strategies, lessons, and resources that you can possibly use in your classroom.
Step 2. Find a strategy you can want to learn more about that relates to the factor(s) you selected. You can tell which strategy interrelates best with the factors you are analyzing because of the colors you see below each strategy.
Step 3. Select a strategy and then review the various resources, examples, lessons, and research. By being able to review these resources, you can see what the strategy looks like in classrooms. Additionally, the example, research, and tools can give you examples to help you further brainstorm to help you implement the strategy in your classroom in the future.
Conclusion – Strategies for You
I hope you’ve had an opportunity to take a look at the various strategies you can see examples of what it looks like in classrooms as well as a wide variety of resources to help you learn more about it and implement the strategy. Additionally, I hope these resources can help you plan and implement strategies you find that will meet your instructional and student needs.
As we near the end of the school year nears, I wanted to share a number of ideas and strategies for lessons as we finish out the spring semester. I wanted to see if my professional learning network had any ideas that they would like to share so I tweeted the question below to ask if they had any ideas. After about a day or so, I had over 10 responses, which I then curated to add to this post for you to review and think about if any could best fit a future class session.Â
As you review these ideas, some also include links to further review. I hope you ultimately find these ideas to be practical and applicable to your class now and in the future as you end this term going into the summer. Additionally, if you would like to build your Twitter professional learning network, I highly recommend following each of the following educators who contributed to this thread as they are posting great free resources and strategies for teachers!
In my capacity as an Instructional and Technology Leader and Coach, we have been gearing up towards working with several of our teams to further build capacity in using Canvas. Canvas is a learning management system, which helps teachers and students create content to support learning and to demonstrate learning, communicate, provide feedback, and interact within any classroom setting. Beyond just using Canvas’ features, we can do many things with Canvas along with integrating various other EdTech tools to amplify learning.
For this post, we will be discussing how we can embed and app-smash various tools within Canvas to provide multi-modal and engaging opportunities for students to learn. By integrating, we mean embedding and app-smashing. Embedding means taking the code of the website where that interface is located and then placing it into another web interface. In this case, we will be taking one website and embedding it, and smashing it into a Canvas page or assignment. Ultimately, through embedding and app-smashing these tools by integrating them into Canvas, it centralizes and consolidates the tools accessible to students and provides multi-modal (i.e., listening, speaking, collaborating, and creating) learning opportunities for students to build content and skills you are teaching them.
Get ready to see examples of how Google Docs/Slides, Flipgrid, and Canva (among others) can be integrated into Canvas in an App-Smash. An App-Smash involves two tools being synthesized together in a sequence for students to access and utilize simultaneously. What you will notice there are two patterns to note: Embedding Google Apps Using the Google Embed Option and Other Applications Using Embed Code. Let’s first talk about how to do this before discussing the instructional applications.
Embedding Google Docs and Slides
The first pattern includes embedding from Google Workspace onto a Canvas page. You will notice that we must share the document or slideshow to everyone with a link can view before embedding it into Canvas using the Google Drive embed icon.
Embedding Outside Tools Using Embed Codes
The second pattern you will notice is that for Flipgrid, Canva, and Edpuzzle (along with several other applications), you will have to take the “embed code” when you share content you have created on those applications, which then can be pasted into Canvas.
LTI Google Docs and Slides
As illustrated above, we must share our Google Docs and Slides to anyone with a link before they can be embedded directly into Canvas. There are many instructional implications with the ability to embed Google Docs and Slides. Both can be utilized as mechanisms to share all of the courses content, weekly slideshows, and examples of student work. They can also be interactive with audio, video, and hyperlinks to content you would like students to access within and outside of Canvas.
(The Art of Education, 2022)
Some instruction applications include frontloading information for asynchronous instruction, embedding important information for students,
Note: Remember, for the LTI integration for assignments, ensuring they are shared in this manner is also important because it will only recognize those types of documents with those shared capabilities.
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a tool where students can record their voices and video, which can then be customized and edited with many student-friendly customization options. Additionally, students and teachers can reply, assess, and provide feedback on each recording students produce. With the Canvas embed opportunity open to us, we can create our own Flipgrid topic on Flipgrid and then directly place it onto Canvas so students can record it on that page where the assignment has been placed. With this embed in place, it consolidates where Flipgrid responses can be housed and reviewed by students and teachers alike.
Canva
Canva allows us to create many types of graphics, videos, and templates that can be embedded into our Canvas courses. They can be informational and interactive. Short GIFs, infographics, videos, and graphics can be embedded directly.
Note: Be sure to share to anyone with “anyone with the link” before embedding the code or will not appear for your students.
Other Tools That Can Be Embed Into Canvas
Other tools such as Pear Deck, Nearpod, Padlet, Edpuzzle, and more can use the same methodology to embed them directly into your Canvas pages for your students. Additionally, if the embeds do not work, you can hyperlink directly to the application for students to access from Canvas through a link or a button.
Tango is a revolutionary Free Google Chrome Extension that automatically creates a written step-by-step guide in real-time without the need for video recording or writing down your own step-by-step guide. Tango transcribes the actions you make with your mouse, URLs, and screenshots, which can all come together to create the step-by-step guide. Ultimately, this is an easy-to-use and game-changing tool that can help you amplify how you provide written instructions for your students to come back to again and again to support them in their learning.Â
Tango Interface for Viewers Seeing the Interactive Directions
There are a wide variety of applications for students in your class. They can be shared as PDFs or direct hyperlinks to students, which can be housed on Canvas or a website for students to always have access to. Below are a number of the following to think about:
Tech Instructions
Directions for Assignments and Projects Involving Tech
There are many ways for us to build our capacity and learn as educators. More so than ever before, we have a multitude of different opportunities and pathways to learn and grow. In my growth as an educator, I have curated many resources that have helped me grow in my practice. Having a wide range of opportunities that I can access is great to build capacity and learn something new. Additionally, I like to have options as my mood and yearning vary for a type of modality I would like my learning to look like for that day. Giving yourself options changes things up and keeps the learning fresh and motivating.
The purpose of this post is to provide thoughts and resources to help you formulate your own personalized learning professional development pathway. Throughout this guide, you will find avenues that can amplify your practice. We will be cover seven pathways you can utilize to personalize your learning:
District, County, or State PD Opportunities
Adult Learning Education Resources
Twitter & Twitterchats
Education Blogs
Podcasts
YouTube
Education Themed Books
Education Research
Take a look at some great curated resources to help personalize your learning pathway!
District, County, and State PD Opportunities
Within our local and state education districts and institutions, there are a wide variety of opportunities to grow and learn. At the district level, there are school site and district-based PD opportunities. Then, there are county-level and state-level PD opportunities. Many of which now you can select and attend online. Currently, there are more opportunities than ever before to attend a PD training to meet your specific learning interests and needs.
School-Based
District
County
State
Your Current Education Niche
Each of us has our own current niche and context in education. Whether you are in elementary, secondary, higher education, adult education, Special Education, EdTech, or leadership, there are many opportunities for us to grow and learn from associations and organizations that provide PD for our specific niches.
In my case, it’s Adult Education instruction and leadership. There are a variety of resources to help support teachers in building their instructional toolkit. CalPRO provides online courses, resource guides, and teaching tool resources. OTAN is the leading adult education supporter of the effective application of technology. They give online workshops, tutorials, and the Technology and Distance Learning Symposium conference. Each of these organizations provides many opportunities to continue to grow and learn within the context of Adult Education.
Twitter is one of the best platforms where you can connect with educators from across the world to learn and grow from one another. It has been a game-changer in my career! You can not only view the stream of Tweets, but you can also follow various lists of educators who are experts in various areas (i.e., ELA, EdTech, etc.). Additionally, you can follow #hashtags related to topics and trends you may be interested in by going to https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ to search and curate the Tweets. Last, you can participate in real-time chats with educators related to a specific topic and respond to their thoughts.
For a quick read and overview of a topic you want to learn more about, there are education blogs that are easily accessible. Blogs provide opportunities for educators to reflect, provide tutorials, put research into practice, and describe what’s working versus not working within their classrooms and schools. Included below are a number of blogs that provide a plethora of information on a wide range of topics related to instruction, leadership, EdTech, and more.
Additionally, writing your own blogs helps you formulate the ideas you’ve digested from professional learning. It also is a way to display your learning to share with others who can learn fro your insights.
Podcasts
While grading, driving, planning, or writing emails, podcasts are a great way to listen to content that you may be interested in learning and applying to your practice. From instruction, EdTech, leadership, equity, grading, to education research, there are a wide range of topics you can choose from. Find your own! Or, create your own as it’s a great way to interview and learn from educators locally as well as from across the globe.
YouTube is a fantastic resource to look up various tutorials on how to do a specific tech technique or instructional strategy. Use the search bar and you can look up a wide range of topics that may help you. Besides tutorials, podcasts and interviews with educators are also posted, which can be nice additions to your playlists to watch to learn something new.
Books
Books are another resource and gateway to learning information that can be transformational to your practice. Education-themed books are a great avenue, but also are inspirational, motivational, and self-care books. Each and every one of these books can not only improve our practice but also us learn about other important facets that can make us better educators and people. Whether it’s a physical book or an ebook, they provide an amazing opportunity to take in and find ways to support ourselves and practice. Rowman Littlefield, DBC, EduMatch, Solution Tree, ASCD, and Corwin are some great publishers to look at for education books.
8. Education Research
Education and neuroscience research has been a huge facet of my learning. In my capacity as a chair and committee member for doctoral students, I have to keep up to date on a wide variety of topics to support my doctoral students as they progress in their research in their dissertation. Therefore, I utilize many types of research tools and pathways to access the latest research. Google Scholar, being a Member of Two University Libraries as an Adjunct Faculty to access journal databases, and Proquest has provided me access to the latest research. Tools such as Feedly and Zotero help me curate the research to then be used for supporting my students and for my research and writing.
Create Your Own Pathway
The information and expertise are out there to grow our practices. Besides content available, it is digestible in a wide variety of modalities, which has changed the nature of professional learning and development. As a result, we truly have the ability to see what we want to learn and then find a modality that we can learn and digest the content to impact our practice.
Strategies power everything we do in the classroom. Instructional strategies are the drivers of how we teach students to learn. For this post, the goal is to share a number of strategies that build our instructional toolkit. These strategies can be utilized with or without EdTech tools, which makes them great for any classroom setting. Many of these strategies may be one’s you are already familiar with and using while others maybe not. Take a look and review the strategies and think about how they can be implemented within your classroom and lessons.Â
Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies
Kagan Cooperative Learning strategies are an assortment of strategies that help engage students as well as put students in the position to collaborate. They can be used throughout your lesson plan for formative assessment, engaging students, and cooperative learning.
Besides Kagan’s Cooperative Learning strategies, I recommend checking out Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In a similar manner, Project Zero provides us with a series of scaffolds and steps for us to direct our students to process, consume, and then produce a work product of their learning. There are about fifty strategies to review and analyze.
Integrating Strategies with EdTech – An Example
Each of these strategies discussed can be integrated with EdTech tools to amplify student learning. Using a combination of Zoom, Canvas, Google Slides or Jamboard, we can take many of the strategies and create opportunities to use them within any classroom setting. For example, we can a strategy like Rally Robin with Google Slides. Each student pair is given a slideshow with their names labeled. Then, they have editing access to the slide. Once they have access, they can then collaborate and write down together a list of adjectives or words to describe a character, story, etc. To deploy the slides, they can be linked on Canvas, Zoom, or email for students to access. Whether you provide the instructions in-person or live synchronously online, directions can be provided for our students to engage in these strategies and EdTech tool integrations.
One great resource to help in integrating these strategies is to use the 1200 Jamboard templates provided by TCEA. For each of the strategies provided, a template on Jamboard can be used to help facilitate the strategy within any classroom setting.
Conclusion – Strategies Are EdTech Tool Agnostic
Instructional strategies and tool-agnostic because they are teacher-driven and the teacher can select the best tool, if needed, to amplify the strategy being used. Sometimes an EdTech tool is not needed. Sometimes it is needed. Altogether, it’s up to the teacher as they weigh factors relating to whether or not an EdTech tool is needed to further augment the strategy.
Hopefully, this set of strategies is helpful along with the example of how the strategies can easily be integrated with EdTech tools within any classroom setting. Ultimately, our goal is to always evaluate our instructional and tech integration toolkits to see what we are doing and how we can further expand and refine our practice of strategies that help students learn!
References
Kagan, S. & Kagan, M. (2009). Kagan Cooperative Learning. Kagan Publishing: San Clemente, CA.
QR Codes provide a signature for someone to access the content. Think of it as a shortcut to access the content. It is very similar to a hyperlink, but it can be displayed in our physical and digital worlds. It can transform physical and digital environments. In this same way, it can transform our classrooms and our instruction. There are many ways QR Codes can be integrated into our instruction to amplify student learning, which is the goal of this post. First, we will outline how to create QR Codes. Then, we will discuss how to use them. Finally, we will outline strategies in the classroom QR codes that can be utilized for and deployed.Â
To create a QR Code, go to one of the three following websites. You will need content that the QR Code will act as a hyperlink to. Generally, a link to a Google Slideshow, document, Canvas page or assignment, PDF, or YouTube video is needed first. Once that link has been copied, you can use a QR Code generator.
Or, create them in Canva. See this video to learn how!
You will copy and paste the link of where you will want the QR Code to direct your students. Once you do this, click the generate button and a QR Code will appear. Once it has appeared, copy it to your clipboard and then copy and paste it into a document that you will want to print. If they are QR Codes you want to use for a long time, be sure to laminate the document they are printed on.
Note: You can also have your QR Codes digitally and they can function in the same exact way as they would on a physical document.
Using QR Codes
To use QR Codes, you will need a mobile device with a camera. You will need to open up the camera function. Then, you will place the camera over the top of the QR Code to scan it. Once the camera has scanned the code, it will direct you with a hyperlink to the content it is a shortcut to.
Instructional Strategies to Integrate QR Codes and Other Uses
Now, we will be discussing a number of instructional strategies as well as other uses of QR Codes by educators within our school communities. Overall, the goal of each is to amplify student learning and disseminate as much information and content as possible to augment what we are doing to do for our students.
Vocabulary Practice – Digital/Physical Flash Cards with QR Codes
One strategy can be the creation of flashcards with QR Codes. For multilingual students, hearing and/or seeing the vocabulary word is a great way to help them build their vocabulary and fluency when saying that word. Using vocabulary cards is what we call retrieval practice, which should be used in mass practice and then spaced out over time. Over time, students will practice less and less after a major frontloading of practice sessions.
Read Aloud Activities
Read alouds are a powerful way students can practice listening and reading. Providing students with a piece of paper of an excerpt of the text or the entire text along with a QR Code they can scan with their phone for a read-aloud allows them to practice these skills. For in-class and asynchronous practice at home, this is possible. A recommended location to place the QR Code on your handout is at the very top of the document along with directions related to the task assigned.
Note: If the text you are using is a novel, look up whether the novel on YouTube has a read aloud of the text available you can turn it into a QR Code.
QR Code Generated Digital Portfolios Using Flowcodes and Flowpages
QR Codes can be placed onto resumes, cover letters, and even on someone’s phone so they can network in addition to providing more information about themselves to share. On a digital portfolio platform like Wakelet, we can easily create a digital presence to share content on one’s self with others. The link directly to that Wakelet page can be turned into a QR Code and placed in physical and digital spaces others can scan. Another platform that does this is called Flow Pages, which allows users to build a landing page that is associated with a unique QR Code.
Station Rotation/Scavenger Hunts
A fun and engaging strategy QR Codes can be integrated into is station rotation and scavenger hunts. A QR Code can be placed at various stations or places throughout the room where students can interact as they complete a specific task. Students scan each QR Code as they are directed to move from station to station. The QR Code directs them to the task and content they will need to complete each task.
Similar to Station Rotation and Scavenger Hunts, students can be given QR Codes taking them to places on a map. Using Google Earth on the web, we can create QR Codes taking students to specific locations on Earth. From buildings, cities, monuments, national parks, and more, the opportunities are endless.
Share Resources with Others
Last, we can use QR Codes to share resources with others in physical or digital spaces. We can place QR Codes around our classrooms and buildings for students, faculty, and staff to scan. It can be for events, digital field trips around campus, the sharing of resources, and more. Additionally, we can place QR Codes on our digital presentations, which can be scanned by those attending in-person or online to retrieve further information and content.
Google Jamboard, like Google Slides, has many opportunities to integrate various instructional strategies to amplify student learning. Google Jamboard is an interactive slide that can act as a template for many strategies and activities in your classroom (see this blog to learn about how to use it). Like slides, it has an ease of use for students and teachers alike. Coupled with the many templates we can create or add on various applications like slides, Canva, and Adobe, the opportunities are endless to set up Jamboard with instructional strategies to amplify student learning.Â
The goal is to illustrate a number of instructional strategies integrated with Jamboard and provide the steps on how to implement them. They are routines and protocols to ensure that we put our students in the right positions at the right time. We will cover a number of strategies relating to the following:
Activating Prior Knowledge
Reading Comprehension
SWBST Chart
Brain Dump
Main, Idea, Key Detail, & Summary
Summarization and Reflection
Let’s dive into each of these strategies we can integrate with Google Jamboard!
Note: Thank you to TCEA for providing educators with such a resource of templates (which will be provided later) to help support the use of Google Jamboard and incorporate the strategies mentioned here.
For this strategy, you begin your lesson by asking what students know about the topic of the lesson. Then, you ask a follow-up question with what they want to know. You will then leave the Jamboard for the duration of the lesson. After the lesson is over, you will return students to the Jamboard to complete the final column relating to what they learned during the lesson. On another note, while you do each of these protocols of the strategy, you can do a think, pair, and share or a wide range of other cooperative learning strategies.
See, Think, Wonder
Another strategy to activate prior knowledge and develop conceptual frameworks is the see, think, and wonder strategy. To begin, present students with multimedia and have students observe and analyze what’s happening. Ask students to first think and process what’s happening and then describe what they are seeing. After writing down what they see, they are then asked to think again and write down any connections they have towards what they’ve observed. Finally, students are asked to write down what they further wonder about what they have observed and discussed. Throughout each of these sequences, students can discuss what they write with pairs, groups, or even the entire class. It’s up to you as to how long you want to spend on the strategy and each stage of it.
Reading Comprehension Strategies
Above is the SWBST Chart, which can be used by a group or pair of students to complete as they read a story or article. Students can add images, text boxes, and sticky notes as they read the story to diagnose its major elements. You can scaffold this chart if you are doing guided reading, or you can have students jigsaw the story if you want them to read it in parts. Ultimately, it depends on what you would like to do and how you want to sequence using the strategy and SWBST chart for the reading.
The next strategy relates to brainstorming about a story or article students are reading. Each corner represents a different question relating to who, what how, where, when, and why. Students can place everything that they remember about the text through their annotations and paraphrases, which can then be dumped. This can be done individually or within pairs, groups, or the entire class for a mass brainstorming session to occur. Overall, these braindumps can help students see a variety of different perspectives and can be utilized to even predict what the text could be about if it’s not being entirely read in one lesson.
Another strategy can involve breakdown the various elements of the story or text by having students first review the main key details of the story. Then, in this same exercise, have them identify the main idea and then write a summary of the text. A curveball you can throw to students is to write the summary of the text within a word count range, which can help them work on their summarization skills.
If you would like to divide up students into groups and pairs and have them utilize various strategies and graphic organizers to complete regarding the text they are reading, you certainly can do it with Jamboard. Recall, you can have multiple Jams within a Jamboard (multiple slides) where various groups of students can work together. This creates opportunities for you to differentiate among groups or jigsaw the task as alluded to earlier.
An activity that gives students the opportunity to review multiple Jamboards created by various groups is called a Digital Gallery Walk. Students from the other Jams on the Jamboard can review the other pairs or group’s work they did for the reading comprehension activity. This can then help be utilized to propel a discussion and make connections in their comprehension.
Summarization and Reflection Protocols
At the end of the lesson, we want our students to summarize and reflect on their learning. The strategy and protocol of “I Used to Think” and “Now I Think” provides students the opportunity to reflect and also summarize their learning. To begin, you can ask students to think about and then write down what they used to think about what they learned. Then, you can have your students discuss in pairs the bullet points they’ve written. Following this phase, you then ask students to summarize what they think about the topic now, which can also include a short pair or group discussion after students write down their thoughts to share with others in a group or to the entire class.
Concept Mapping
Concept mapping is a strategy you can implement when you want your students to make connections related to the content they are learning. From brainstorming to summarizing key relationships of the content and skills being discussed, concept mapping can be done individually and then within pairs or small groups, which can be followed up by a whole-class discussion. Overall, concept maps can be saved and placed onto Canvas or printed out to be placed around the classroom for students to view. This can be a helpful study tool for students.
Conclusion – These Examples Are the Tip of the Iceberg
There are many strategies we can incorporate into Google Jamboard that can further amplify student learning. Eduprotocols, cooperative learning, and thinking routines are all types of instructional strategies that can be integrated into Google Jamboard, Google Slides, Pear Deck, and Nearpod. They are all part of the interactive slide family. Additionally, they can all be utilized for formative assessment to an extent, which can help you determine where your students are at relating to what you are covering at that point in time in your class. Take a look at the templates below as well as the strategies discussed here to see how you can begin to experiment with your students in your classroom.
Templates and More
Here’s a video going through how to use Google Jamboard. Then, take a look at the Ultimate Google Jamboard Collection thanks to TCEA. This Jamboard Template collection provides you with over 1200 templates for you to make a copy of and use for your classroom instruction.
Jamboard Templates by Matt Miller
Mad Libs Template – Students develop a mad lib to create concrete concepts of content learned.
Timeline Template – Students develop individually or collaboratively a timeline.
Book Snaps Template – Students find a passage, snap a picture, and annotate on it.
Special Education is a huge support for students and families within our school communities. It can provide services and supports to neurodiverse students to make socio-emotional and academic progress as well as provide the support to help students transition into life as an adult. Additionally, it gives many students the opportunity to be included with all students within inclusive general education classes. By providing these services to students, it can be game-changing for many students as it provides them opportunities to amplify their strengths to attain their goals!
Before jumping too far into this post, I wanted to disclose I was a Mild to Moderate Special Education teacher for seven years. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and working with students. However, I did not enjoy the bureaucratic systems in place, which made it very difficult for me at times. Thus, the goal of this post is to discuss the problems facing Special Educators and then propose a number of solutions that may make their job more sustainable and attractive for future and current educators to join or stay within the profession. Thank you to #edutwitter for refining the recommendations we will discuss throughout this post as this thread provided many good ideas that helped me in drafting this post!
Undoubtedly, Special Education is a great service to our students and communities. However, the topic of this blog is how it is unsustainable as currently constructed for educators, which has caused a mass exodus of teachers, which hurts not only the teachers leaving but the students and families receiving Special Education services.
Unfortunately, due to many of Special Education’s (as constructed currently) unsustainable bureaucratic structures, it requires systematic reform in order for it to become sustainable for teachers as well as to recruit and retain teachers who have the yearning to teach. It ultimately is not about whether teachers want to work with students. For most, teachers want to get into teaching to make an impact within a student’s life. Ultimately, what we are talking about is the sustainability of how teachers systematically fit into the system in which Special Education services are provided to students. Currently constructed, Special Education is unsustainable for teachers as they have to juggle many different responsibilities that go far beyond teaching and working directly with studentsand families.
The Problem – Too Many Hats and Responsibilities for Special Education Teachers
Currently, Special Education is unsustainable for teachers as they have to juggle many different responsibilities that go far beyond teaching and working directly with students and focusing on administrative, legal, logistics, and service compliance. Sadly, due to the way teachers are systematically being utilized in Special Education, burnout is extremely high. As a result, for many Special Education teachers, they are only in the profession for five years or less due to the pressure, stress, and job responsibilities. Ultimately, we want to allow for Special Educators to do what they love in a sustainable manner so they can be there for their students and do their job well at a high level without burning out and leaving the profession. As a result of this burnout and the massive upheaval of teachers moving in and out of the profession, students ultimately lose out. Therefore, one of the goals of this post is to provide several recommendations to make it sustainable for teachers.
Within Special Education, in many schools and districts across the U.S., Special Education teachers hold multiple hats beyond instruction that have much more of a focused magnifying glass as they have legal ramifications. Generally speaking, Special Education Teachers (also known as Ed. Specialists) are required to teach individual classes and/or co-teach along with case management. Teaching by itself can be extremely difficult in itself in our current climate. However, case management is just as difficult or even more difficult depending on the students and families they are serving because of the various needs and services that have to be provided.
Case management entails many administrative roles, which include Individualized Education Plan (IEP) drafting (one or more times a year), ensuring services are being implemented, goal progress on academic, executive functioning, and social-emotional goals, planning and holding annual IEP meetings, assessing students, and communicating with stakeholders in the student’s education such as psychologists, general education teachers, families, the principal, speech pathologists, and the student themselves. Overall, along with teaching, it is essentially carrying the job as a pseudo-administrator in many cases.
Ultimately, these two roles with high numbers of students they are serving within their classrooms (upwards of 130 students if the teacher works in a secondary setting) and having a working caseload of students they are servicing as a case manager in the mid to upper 20’s, creates a recipe for burnout because of the multi-tasking and energy it takes to ensure students are being taught as well as being serviced as a case manager. This does not take into consideration whether this is being done well or at a high level because of the many different responsibilities it takes to complete each of these tasks. Altogether, this creates a recipe for it being unsustainable for teachers, which creates a large door of teachers entering and exiting the profession without much stability for students, families, and schools.
Possible Recommendations and Solutionsto Make it More Sustainable to Teach in Special Education
Below are a number of ideas to help make Special Education a more sustainable practice for teachers and schools. The goal is to ultimately simplify the responsibilities of Special Education teachers and distribute their responsibilities to other stakeholders and harness technology to make various processes required more streamlined and efficient. The thought is that many of these recommendations could help make the profession much more sustainable for teachers and create more longevity for teachers to stay in the profession.
Divide Case Managing and Teaching Responsibilities into Two Separate Jobs – Having two jobs in one is simply unsustainable. In order to increase Special Education teacher retention and allow for a more sustainable occupation, dividing the role into two would be advantageous for multiple reasons. Instruction would improve. Case management would improve. Better student outcomes. More stability for students. Higher compliance relating to services and goal progress. Also, better communication and relationships among Special Educators, the school, stakeholders, and families. Districts would have to hire more teachers to make this happen, but it would create opportunities for there to be more sustainability in terms of having highly qualified and experienced teachers completing each of these tasks. This would ultimately serve students and families better by giving teachers more to provide the services and support than having to focus on several other capacities at once.
If this cannot be done, substantial pay increases (upwards to 30% or more) would be needed. This could be a separate salary schedule, which would outline this pay increase. In addition to the increased salary scale, overtime pay could be done for work taken home; especially if it is IEP writing and goal progress related. Increased pay also should include instructional aides as they are a huge part of supporting students. Like teachers, the increased pay and providing benefits would attract and retain instructional aides to keep much more consistency and stability of having them on staff.
Reform IDEA by Simplifying IEPs and the IEP Writing Process – An IEP has many pages that outline the services it provides to students. This is likely the most controversial area since many will have different approaches to what this will look like. However, my point of view involves having several pages of the IEP consolidated to a document like an IEP At a Glance since that’s what describes the services and goals in the document. This would be the yearly document that is reviewed at the annual meeting. Then, for the triennial meetings, the longer document would be reviewed along with the most recent re-evaluation assessment data. Ultimately, the goal here is to limit the amount of paperwork for Special Education teachers, which will then open up time for directly working with students.
Creating New Technology that Consolidates Data and IEP Drafting – To streamline goal progress and IEP drafting, we need technologies to take adaptive assessment data relating to academic goal progress and overall academic progress to be taken from that tool, consolidated, and then placed into the narrative form on an IEP writing software. If we can create alignment and automation surrounding these collections of data, it will create more time for providing services versus collecting and consolidating that data and drafting the IEP itself. Additionally, it will provide data in real-time for the IEP team to make decisions and share that data directly with students and families.
Provide Further Training for General Education Teachers – General education teachers need to have more training in Special Education. This includes an understanding of IEPs, collaboration, and implementing services outlined in the IEPs as well as providing instruction in all types of learners. These training opportunities would be within teacher preparation programs and implemented within district professional learning plans. In a reform of IDEA, these types of trainings could be mandated to be part of a districts overall professional learning plan. Co-teaching, teaching reading, IEP contents, and differentiating instruction would be a number of areas that all teachers would need extensive training on Overall, with further training and collaboration, there can be a larger shared responsibility among stakeholders.
On another note, professional learning for Special Education teachers should be geared towards what they do on a daily basis. Much of the professional development sessions are geared toward general education teachers. While some of these learning opportunities may be beneficial, having targeted learning opportunities for Special Education teachers for the type of instruction they are providing, to support them in case management, and IEP writing and goal progress.
More Time & Fewer Responsibilities or Students On Caseload – Regardless of whether the Special Education teacher is both an instructor and case manager or one or the other, they need more time to prep, communicate with families, complete the responsibilities and tasks outlined in the position, and time to work with students one on one. Right now, there simply is not enough time in the day to complete all of these responsibilities. More time and fewer responsibilities must be given in order for the profession to be more sustainable for teachers. If more time and fewer responsibilities cannot be provided, then lower caseloads and class sizes significantly.
Another option is to revise the weekly schedule. Provide at least two hours of prep and case management time a day, at a minimum, or designate an entire day throughout the week for this work. A four-day instructional week would be advantageous if time cannot be afforded for enough time to prep and case manage throughout the day.
Ongoing and Long-TermMentorship – Many teachers entering the profession do not have long-term mentors. What helps many is to have one or a core group of teachers that can help mentor and provide support. Having a mentor can go a long way if there’s a strong relationship that is built. Designing opportunities for mentorship to go beyond the first two years of teaching would provide more opportunities to grow, collaborate, support, and share experiences to amplify instructional and case management practices.
Respect and Shared Responsibility – Special Education teachers are oftentimes an afterthought. Sometimes they are may be treated as “less than” because of their role. Yet, they work with the vast majority of students and have much more contact and communication with families than general education teachers. Additionally, some school cultures put all of the pressure on the Special Education teacher to ensure the IEP is being fully implemented when in reality it is a team effort. The Special Education teacher and case manager is essentially the point guard who initiates services, checks progress, and works towards having all service providers and teachers collaborate to provide the best opportunities possible for that student to learn. The entire team needs to hold a shared responsibility and schools need to ensure their culture is clear that decisions and responsibility of implementing the IEP are on the team versus having the entire brunt being on the Special Education teacher.
Conclusion– Let’s Work Towards Making Special Education Sustainable for Teachers
The proposals discussed here are only the tip of the iceberg of what can be done to make Special Education much more sustainable for teachers. These are all proactive recommendations, which may save schools and districts money over time as services and compliance will be much more aligned and implemented more effectively. Many of these proposals require higher amounts of funding, which is critically needed in Special Education as IDEA has never been fully funded. Additionally, I believe more respect within the educational community needs to be given to Special Education teachers and service providers. They are critical for students, families, and schools. They cannot be an afterthought when developing policy or programs as they should be part of the conversation as major players. Hopefully, policymakers and education leaders can work together with Special Education teachers and service providers to collaborate and reform the profession to make it more sustainable, which would ultimately be a win for everyone!
What are your thoughts relating to this topic? How can we work together to make Special Education more sustainable for teachers? Write a comment below or continue the conversation on Twitter. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts as this is a conversation we must continue to help support the profession.
Creating content on Canvas is very similar to creating content on Word or Google Docs. Many of you know to use the content toolbar to write and create content on a Word Processor. Essentially, it is very similar on Canvas! The goal is to show you the various similarities each tool uses to create content, which many of us are familiar with. This helps us with the ease of use of the EdTech tools we utilize to create content for our classroom instruction as many are very similar.
It’s all about the content creation toolbar. Let’s see some comparisons below between Word, Google Docs, and Canvas.
Microsoft Word Content Creation Toolbar
Google Doc Content Creation Toolbar
Canvas Content Creation Toolbar
Using this content creation toolbar, you can create pages and assignments on Canvas, which are the two of the main mechanisms you can use to create instructional content for your students. The content creation toolbar does not change throughout your use of Canvas. Ultimately, the options that change are the additional content you want to add when uploading assignments through either a file or the Google LTI integration (using a document or slideshow previously made and uploading from Google Drive). Keeping the content creation tool the same on Canvas allows you to easily transition from doing various actions on the learning management system, which ultimately helps with learning the platform and its ease of use.
Final Thoughts – Creating Content is Very Similar Across Platforms
Overall, creating content across platforms can be done in very similar ways. There may be a few steps that it takes us to open these various tools, but once we are creating the content, the toolbars have many of the same options we can choose from to create the content. I recommend taking some time to dabble and play with the content creator toolbars on Canvas. You can do just as much as you can on Google Docs and Microsoft Word, which is amazing! The more time you spend, the better you will get building out the content for your classes. Over time, you become much faster in creating the content as you are using the tool more often.
In my experience, much of the technology we use in education has many of the same functions to create content we can use to amplify our instruction and student learning. Once you know how to use one or three content creation toolbar interfaces, you know how to create content on ten to twenty different tools. Hopefully, by looking at these various content creation toolbars shows a brief preview of this pattern we see with EdTech tools we can use in our classrooms to amplify our instruction, content, and student learning!
Introduction to MOTE – A Game-Changing Audio Recording Tool for Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets
Mote is a voice recording and voice player, which can be integrated into directly Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. This is one of my favorite tools that can help improve student accessibility and differentiate instruction. It is free for 30-second recordings that can be used to play instructions and can be utilized to comment on student work to provide them voice feedback.
Let’s discuss how to use it and how it can benefit your students. As you go through this post, watch howMOTE works by watching it in action through this video. It will help you see how each of its uses outlined throughout the post can be put into action and utilized by your students.
Mote is a Free Audio Recording Tool for Feedback or Directions
As you can see here, MOTE allows you to comment on text and record a voice comment students can listen to when they hover over the text or comment where the recording is located. It can be utilized to provide student feedback and outline directions. Once you go to mote.com and download the extension, you can highlight text, comment, and then provide a voice recording on Docs, Slides, and Sheets. As shown above, this is what MOTE recording looks like after it’s been recorded on a Google Doc.
Getting Started with MOTE
To get started with MOTE, go to www.mote.com and download the extension and sign up for the free plan. Sign up and create an account, download the extension on the website, close your internet browser, and then open up a Google Doc, Slide, or Sheet. The Mote will then appear with its symbol either at the top of the application or on the comment feature.
Note: One note to make about the video, you cannot download the extension in the extension store. Rather, you need to install directly from the www.mote.com website.
Mote on Google Slides
Mote can be directly integrated into a Google Slide. Create a Google Slide and then click on the MOTE icon above the slide. Then, record your directions or feedback directly into the slide. An audio symbol will then appear for students to click on when they want to hear the recording. Additionally, a MOTE recording can be integrated into a Google Slide by clicking on the text and recording a MOTE recording through the comment feature.
Mote on Google Docs Beyond Comments – HyperMotes
Motes can be directly integrated into the text of a Google Doc. HyperMotes provide an opportunity for your directions to be hyperlinked directly in a text. A HyperMote can be recorded by clicking on the Hypermote icon on the Google Doc and then place directly into the text you’ve underlined.
Conclusion – MOTE Is a Game-Changing Tool to Make Learning Accessible for All
MOTE is a great tool to help differentiate instruction and can make learning much more accessible to our learners. It can be used for any form of content within any of our classes! We hope you check it out as it can be a game-changing tool for your instruction that can help amplify student learning.
As we end 2021 and move into 2022, much has happened in the world of education that can help us navigate our present and future. This past year consisted of challenges brought upon by the pandemic, divisions in local and national politics and discourse, school culture, the realities of reacclimating students to school as well as navigating disruptions brought upon by the pandemic, and the increasing pressures on teachers and schools to provide our students beyond an education has been a monumental challenge. For many, it’s been the most challenging school year they’ve ever experienced; even beyond that of the 2020 school year. A few questions resonate:
1. How can we navigate the present and future of education in ever-changing world?
2. Where do we go next?
3. How can we work towards retrofitting education and making it sustainable for educators?
4. How can we develop the curriculum and environment where we teach our students to be lifelong learners?
Efforts have been made to navigate and weather the storm of the pandemic. Public education in the western world has received immense amounts of funding, most notably in the United States. These rescue funds were geared towards mitigation efforts, testing, technology, curriculum, social services, and more. The long-term effects of this funding and changes as a result of the pandemic are beginning to take shape. Much of the changes we are seeing in education are taking place within the 120-year structure that has been in place. Innovation has taken place in pockets and pushback towards innovation has taken hold in many places as we’ve seen schools and classrooms move towards instruction we saw prior to 2020. The notion of innovating inside the box has been resonating throughout the year. Have you seen this happen in your classroom, school, and district? Or, have you seen a regression backward?
On a positive note, technology has become more widespread and equity gaps in this area have begun to be bridged. Additionally, we are beginning to imagine and see that instruction can be delivered within any classroom setting. Instruction without boundaries will continue to gain steam as more teachers and schools will gain the skills and capacity to do this effectively as we move into the future Also, social-emotional learning (SEL) has exploded in popularity and use in K-16 education. Now, when you walk into many classrooms, you will see SEL strategies and activities integrated into the instruction throughout the day and lessons you observe. Although, there is much debate as to what’s working and not working with SEL in classrooms. In addition, there’s a glaring need for more social and psychological services within schools, which has been there since long before the pandemic. Last, there’s been a huge move in many places to change how students are assessed and graded. Formative assessment can now be conducted much more efficiently with EdTech in place. Teachers can now see each and every student’s progress multiple times throughout a lesson and make adjustments to the lesson and provide feedback to bridge gaps in understanding. Similarly, going gradeless and competency-based grading has gained more steam. Many districts have eliminated D and F grades and are moving towards skill-based competency grading scales. While this is still not completely mainstream, this movement that has been on the fringes of education is becoming more front and center than before the pandemic. What opportunities do you see with these developments?
As the year 2021 ends, we are amid the largest wave of COVID-19 we’ve seen even with widespread vaccination available to all ages beginning at age five. Unfortunately, we are far behind where we should be across North America. Several large K-12 school districts and universities are toggling online for the time being to avoid high case rates as they return in January. This has also occurred on a smaller scale when various classes or entire schools had to toggle for a week or so here and there this fall when outbreaks have occurred on campus. On a final note and on top of the toggles that are occurring this winter, we are seeing massive teacher burnout and resignations from the profession. We saw this in 2020 and beforehand. Yet, the warnings are now manifesting into major teacher shortages. Last, we are seeing students struggling with their mental health like never before. Before and during the pandemic, this has only progressively worsened.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. I have tried to highlight many of the things I’ve observed and experienced in addition to dialoguing with educators locally, nationally, and globally. While there have been some positive developments, education is clearly in a crisis that has been brewing before the pandemic and has been exasperated over the last two years.
Ultimately, the goal is to highlight some of these challenges and opportunities and provide some ideas of how to move forward and navigate through the challenges we are facing in K-16 education in 2022.
Let’s begin to further dissect some major challenges and address them.
Teacher Burnout and Mass Resignations – In both of my books, especially in Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders, I outline various practices that can be done within a school system as well as on an individual basis to mitigate teacher burnout. How can we as an educational community take this on? I believe there are things we can do now that are systematic and can be done on an individual basis.
Schools can do a number of things. Schools can systematically increase planning time, increase pay, decrease meetings, personalize professional development, eliminate extra duties, more push back and support by admin to parents and students, and improve school culture through trusting and building the confidence of teachers, which can help mitigate burnout now. Some of these are building-level decisions, which can be implemented now. While some of these measures can be costly, there are several that are low cost and can happen without school board approval. Major funding policy changes occur at the state level. You can vote, advocate, and lobby policymakers locally and at the state level to push these policy changes.
On an individual basis, there are several things teachers can do to help lessen the stress on their plate. First, teachers can stop taking work home, create a not-to-do list, focus on their top three priorities, mitigate the multi-tasking, and lessen the amount of time given to grading. Beyond this, having an activity outside of school that can help you mitigate stress like working out, reading a book, and/or spending time with family and friends, can all help as well.
Continued COVID-19 Disruptions Resulting in Toggles – As we’ve seen throughout the school year. Entire classrooms, schools, and districts have had to toggle back and forth between in-person and online instruction due to outbreaks. Unfortunately, this has not improved throughout the year even with vaccines because children ages five and up have only been recently been given clearance for vaccination as well as having to navigate the overly infectious omicron variant. Going forward, more treatments will become available and, we hope, that the variant is much less deadly and serious than delta. With this said, we must be prepared to continue to toggle as well as amplify our testing at schools and vaccination programs. The only way to avoid toggles is to have a robust testing strategy in place where all students and staff (regardless of vaccination status) are tested on a regular basis. Amplified testing protocols should continue until the local test positive percentage drops below .05% for community transmission and having a school vaccination rate of 95% or above.
You can check out the MCH Strategic Data website outlining all districts in the US instructional model and COVID policies. Expect this map to change in the coming weeks to reflect the exponential case counts occurring during the 2021 holiday season. How many toggles do you believe will occur nationwide and in your community?
Immense State and Federal Funding for Education – Will it Continue? Over the course of the past year, we’ve seen unprecedented funding come from state and federal stimulus bills to help fund education. The big question is will this funding continue? As mitigation efforts need to continue to be improved and amplified along with teacher salary and working conditions, this funding will be needed moving forward. If we see any massive drop in this funding across our K-16 system, it could prove disastrous. Therefore, a huge question moving forward is will the funding continue?
In many states, funding models directly associated with attendance are proving to not be effective and handicapping schools due to the disruptions caused by COVID. When students are out for long periods of time, schools lose this funding, which is out of their control. Thus handicapping them when students are out with funding deficits. One major effort to navigate this is to provide funding as if all students enrolled were attending each day throughout the year. In California during the 2020-2021 school year, the average daily attendance (ADA) function for funding was frozen but then reinstituted for the 2021-2022 school year. As we move forward, this indicator should be eliminated from the funding mechanisms utilized to fund schools. Without this barrier, schools would be better positioned to fund programs, teachers, and mitigation efforts with more predictability at a much quicker pace to keep up with the ever-changing conditions we are facing.
A Big Snapback in the Fall and a Push Forward in the Winter – EdTech – If you walk into classrooms, many schools still have devices for each of their students that they can utilize in the classroom as well as at home. However, countless school districts have taken away student devices and limiting access to them. We’ve seen schools and teachers lose the technology-infused pedagogy they were using and observed a move back to paper, pencils, worksheets, and high-stakes testing. Unfortunately, for some educations, this may have not been by choice as the technology devices were taken out of the classroom and students hands. Also, many had to go down this path to simply survive the school year with or without using technology. This is what we call the big snapback, which was inevitable moving back from online and hybrid instruction to being fully in-person. A large snapback was expected after a year of constant change.
Much of the professional learning that took place over the past two years was not continued and not personalized to meet teachers where they are at. The best form of professional development during this time is asynchronous and then reinforced by coaching that comes directly into the classroom. Forming collaborative relationships with teachers and teaching with them while learning a new strategy and/or a tech tool will yield the best results. When done intentionally as a strategy for improving the capacity of a school, it will move schools forward rather than experience a snapback.
Looking Forward to 2022 – Some Ideas to Help Us Navigate and Move Forward into a New Year
Based on these topics, there’s much we can move forward to prepare for the future. Here is a list of things we can do now that can help prepare us for the year to come and beyond. Ultimately, the goal would be to focus on three to five of these items to begin (many already are). Then, add more over time. Navigating these challenges will be gradual. Change will not occur overnight. Yet, over time, change can occur that will be positive to teachers and students.
Focus on social-emotional learning and building relationships with students.
Advocate for funding and more testing.
Decrease number of meetings and additional duties.
Personalize PD that is asynchronous in delivery and provide coaching that goes directly into classroom. Ensure PD focuses on a learning management system and strategies that can be utilized within any classroom setting (in-person, online, blended).
Provide more planning time and spend less time grading. Focus on formative feedback.
Don’t forget about the tech. Focus on tech integrated instruction; especially for formative assessment.
Focus on collaboration, autonomy, and trust.
Connect with other educators by expanding your local and global professional learning network.
Focus on your school and classrooms systems. Spend time thinking about what systems are working versus what are systems that are not working or efficient is key for making organizational change. Change the systems if they are not working nor efficient.
Provide teachers additional resources and services for mental health.
Develop online academies within each district.
Create personalized learning pathways within schools and districts for students.
Change grading practices to competecy based or gradeless.
What other items would you like to add to this list? This list definitely does not encompass everything that can be done. Rather, it is a list to build upon moving forward. Please feel free to comment at the bottom of this post and share your thoughts.
Conclusion – Moving into 2022
As we progress into 2022, we have many challenges ahead yet I have optimism. As someone who has hands in K-12, Higher Education, and Adult Education, I am lucky to see a variety of different perspectives and see change already taking place. We have shifted course and the pedagogy and use of technology have significantly improved. Although, with COVID being a major challenge that does not seem to be going away as a significant challenge anytime soon, much of what we see is headlined by COVID and how it’s wrecking havoc on a system that was already in dire need of systemic change. Our course moving forward in education will be predicated much more on greater societal systemic changes. Although, I do believe at the school and classroom level, things can be done now to improve the education experience for students and teachers, which many amazing ideas are highlighted in this Twitter thread.
I believe education in our day and age should be to create lifelong learners. In 2022 and beyond, we all will have to reskill every five years as the skills today may need to be completely refined or refitted. Our goal should be to set students up with the skills to learn new skills and cultivate a mindset that yearns to learn and reskill. Personalization for teachers and students is at the forefront of my mind as I move into the next year. Many of my upcoming projects with AmpGlobalEdu and Instruction Without Boundaries all relate to creating personalized pathways for educators to teach students important lifelong learning skills in any classroom environment.
Overall, arguments have been made to either innovate inside the box or tear down the system to help mitigate many of the challenges we are experiencing. I do believe our education systems are outdated and the world we live in today does not fit our current education models. Ultimately, the world is changing faster than our institutions, not only in education but also in governance and in economics. As a culture and society, especially in North America, it comes down to building trust and esteem for the necessary reforms and the institution itself for change to occur systematically.
I hope everyone has a fantastic and safe New Year. I cannot wait to connect, learn, and collaborate with you in 2022 and beyond!
The last and final recap of Season 1 of Navigating Education – The Podcast, includes the Education Coaching Series that made a huge splash and a series of episodes relating to futuring in education, digital assessment tools, going gradeless, and how to podcast. Each of these episodes have so many nuggets that can help teachers, coaches, and school leaders navigate the present and future of education. Thank you to all of the amazing guests that made each and every episode possible! I cannot wait to get started on Season 2 in January 2022 in my new recording office. In the meantime, take a listen to all of these fantastic episodes!
Having students create an ever-changing resume and portfolio online is essential in the world we live in today. By creating a landing page all about yourself that can be shared with the world, it provides a platform to share everything we’ve created, accomplished, and experienced. For our students, this is an awesome way to help them create resumes and digital portfolios that display their knowledge and accomplishments to help with future employment or moving forward in their careers. Besides creating an online portfolio and resume, students have the ability to download and print the portfolio to use when applying for jobs outside of providing a hyperlink for employers to access at any time.Â
Therefore, the goal of this post is to demonstrate how to use Wakelet as a template to create the portfolio as well as use it as an online landing page for the student to share with employers.
Below are the steps on how to get your students started creating a resume and digital portfolio on Wakelet. Included here is a video demonstrating each of the following steps below for you to review.
Step 1: This is the example of the Wakelet digital portfolio template (to see, join Wakelet by joining via Google) discussed within this blog. Go here and review the template. Students will need their own Wakelet accounts, which are free. They only need an email address to be able to have one.
Step 2: On the template, share the link to your students through your Canvas, email, or Google Classroom. You can do this by clicking the share button on the top of the Wakelet.
Step 3: Have students click on the top three buttons on top of the template to make a copy.
Step 4: Once they have a copy, they will go to their “home” Wakelet page on their account to view the copy to then edit.
Step 5: Students can edit the template by clicking on the edit button. Students can add text, photos, hyperlinks, assignments from their Google Drive, and videos. Be sure to have students click “done” each and every time they edit the page as it doesn’t save automatically.
Step 6: Once students are done, they can download the PDF of the resume and portfolio. Additionally, they can share the link to the page they’ve created by clicking on the share button and copying and then pasting the link to whomever they are sharing it with.
Overall, Wakelet is an easy-to-use platform that students can use to create portfolios and resumes over their educational careers. I recommend having students begin a portfolio at the beginning of the semester if they do not have one already. Then, for the specific class, create a page that leads to a collection of all of the learning artifacts they’ve created.
Take a shot at using this amazing tool! To learn more, see the resources below as well as our previous blog post on Wakelet to learn more about it and its uses to amplify instruction and student learning.
After the first ten interviews of the podcast, interviews began being categorized into series. During Season 1 of the podcast, the Seven Part series on Coaching was produced. This series created an engaging and informational sequence of shows that were geared towards all coaches in the educational realm. Moving into Season 2 of the podcast, expect more series to be produced on a wide range of topics to help educators navigate the present and future of education.
Enjoy these final 15 episodes as they are jam-packed with information to amplify your practice! Season 2 is coming in 2022!
Do you want a place to save links, social media posts, videos, and images that can be curated and interacted with by you and your students? If so, Wakelet is a great free tool where this can take place. On Wakelet, you and your students can create, curate, and organize content together to amplify the learning experience within any classroom setting.Â
The goal of this post is to introduce Wakelet, its uses, and resources to help you put it into action for yourself as well as with your students.
Ways to use Wakelet & Getting Started
Wakelet has many different uses to amplify your work and instruction with students. Take a look at them below before taking a deeper dive.
To begin your journey using Wakelet, here is a ten minute video outlining its features and how to use them.
Using Wakelet as an Organization and Content Curation Tool
One important way to use Wakelet for yourself is to curate and organize your content.
If you want a series of websites where they have templates you like to use, you can drop them into a collection.
If you want a series of video resources, you can keep them grouped together in your collection.
If there was a series of resources dropped from an educator on social media, you can include their posts on your collection too.
Additionally, you can place the links to all of your important documents and slides you’ve created on your Google Workspace.
Also, you can share your curated and organized work with your colleagues for collaboration, which is a really cool feature. Here’s a short two minute video showing you step by step how to share your collection.
Using Wakelet with Students
There are many ways to utilize Wakelet with students. Present below are a number of strategies integrating this tool.
Collaborative Brainstorms
A great way to collaboratively brianstorm with students is to create a new blank collection. Then, determine what you would like your students to brainstorm and collect and curate information. To do this, create a topic and then invite students to the blank Wakelet collection. You can share the link to the collection via Canvas, Zoom, or email. Provide students with about 5 minutes and you will see the collection to start exponentially having content and ideas related to that topic.
Digital Portfolios/Resumes
Another fun way to use Wakelet with students is to have them create their own digital portfolio using Wakelet as the template to do so. Show your students the Wakelet Templates for digital portfolios. Students can create their own collection on Wakelet using a digital portfolio template to house their work and content for your class as well as others.
Other Strategies Using Wakelet
Besides the collaborative brainstorm strategy, there are “getting to know” each other activities. Also, students can work collaboratively on a project together in the same Wakelet collection by sharing the link to each other.
Conclusion – Many Opportunities with Wakelet!
Overall, there are many opportunities to utilize Wakelet for yourself and your students! There are endless opportunities. Take a look at more resources below to help you learn more about this free and easy to use tool!
Over the last few posts, we’ve covered how to create and utilize HyperDocs and HyperSlides. These integrations with these EdTech tools are game-changing as they provide a variety of instructional options ranging from student choice, personalized learning, and the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). We have already covered how they can be utilized for the purposes of implementing student choice and personalization. Now, we will focus on how they can be used to provide multiple modalities for students to receive information, engage in a task/assignment, and demonstrate their learning. This is the foundational instructional strategies and learning science that powers our use of HyperDocs and HyperSlides.Â
Review HyperDocs and HyperSlides
Before jumping into discussing UDL, let’s review HyperDocs and HyperSlides. Generally, HyperDocs and Slides follow a lesson sequence where students analyze and process content and then synthesize the content they have analyzed and evaluated. The last step of this sequence is the opportunity for students to demonstrate their learning and by creating something that demonstrates that learning. Throughout this sequence, within the HyperDoc and Slide, various hyperlinks go to content they want students to analyze and assignments and tasks that ask students to synthesize and organize information and then create something that demonstrates what they’ve learned.
A reminder before moving into UDL, HyperDocs and Slides are not just a document or slide with hyperlinks. See below that outlines these differences
HyperDocs/Slides
Hyperlinks
Students Create to Demonstrate LearningStudents Can Collaborate While Interacting with the HyperSlides/DocsHyperDocs and Slides provide opportunities for synthesization and reflection for studentsStudents can connect what they’ve learned as well as extend their learning because activities can be embedded in HyperDocs/Slides to allow this to occur.
There is no connection or extension to the lesson sequence. A link to a specific site without an opportunity for students to utilize its content. No opportunity for students to create something to demonstrate what they’ve learned. Students only consume information rather than processing, analyzing, and synthesizing. Used for navigation purposes only (helpful for navigational purposes, but not for integrating instructional strategies)
What is the Universal Design for Learning
According to CAST (2021), the Universal Design for Learning is a framework to help cultivate expert learners who are purposefully motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal directed. Additionally, by incorporating the UDL framework, we are providing access for all learners to participate in authentic, challenging, and meaningful opportunities to learn.
The UDL framework has three major components along with three sub-components that go along with each of the three major components. Below is the UDL framework provided by CAST (2021).
CAST UDL Framework
When reviewing this framework, can you see how many of its major and sub-components may align to how we’ve been discussing HyperDocs and HyperSlides? If we look at the three major components of the framework, we can see how HyperDocs/Slides can provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression as they generally have multiple pieces of content that can be analyzed and evaluated followed by opportunities for students to create recognition networks of what they have analyzed by synthesizing that information and making it their own. Finally, they provide multiple means of action and expression by giving students a choice to demonstrate their learning through multiple means. Recall when we discussed how a number of choiceboard’s embedded in a HyperDoc/Slide gave students the opportunity to write an essay, record a podcast, create an infographic, or edit and record a video? This is a prime example of multiple means of representation in play.
Example of a HyperDoc and HyperSlide that is UDL Friendly
Below are a number of examples of HyperDocs and HyperSlides that are UDL Friendly. Additionally, the examples provided in our previous blog posts
How HyperDocs and HyperSlides Can Be Used Over and Over Again for UDL Friendly Lessons
As discussed throughout this blog post series, HyperDocs and HyperSlides can be easily changed and altered to meet future lessons. First, make a copy. Create the content (or reuse the templates for that content). Add the links. Revise the directions. Then, you are done! Once you begin using them on a regular basis, the lesson design and preparation go much quicker and become rather efficient.
Conclusion – Now It’s Your Turn to Try Them!
HyperDocs and HyperSlides are amazing instructional tool that can help amplify student learning and make your lesson preparation more efficient. They also align with many of the components of the UDL framework. Therefore, it’s an instructional strategy that’s a win-win situation for teachers and students! I highly recommend trying it out! Also, below are some more excellent resources on HyperDocs and Slides for you to utilize.
Repositories of HyperDocs and Slides to Select and Modify for your Lessons
HyperDocs and HyperSlides can be utilized to create student tasks and assignments that promote choice and student agency. Additionally, they can help improve the efficiency of your lesson planning by being utilized as templates time and time again for your lessons. Last, they can boost student engagement, creativity, and innovation as it provides them with the choice to add their own elements to the final work product.Â
Overall, the goal of this post is to show you how to create your own student choiceboard using Google Docs and Slides. However, before we begin, a few quick notes about choiceboards will be provided.
First, before utilizing chocieboards, we need to teach our students how to analyze the content we provide them as well as how to take the content and create something out of it. Creation applications such as using Flipgrid for podcasts, Canva for infographics, and writing a blog post using Google Docs, must be taught over the course of the first month or so of class so students know how to use them before taking on student choice tasks. We can scaffold this over time by providing several tasks over the first month of class that require students to create their own podcast, blog post, or infographic. If this is done beforehand, we can have successful student choice tasks provided to them in a manner that can be successful.
Second, much of the creation process requires a bit of research. For the content you want your students to evaluate first, this will take you the longest to research while setting up your choice board. For the steps relating to evaluating and synthesizing the content and creating a student work product demonstrating their learning for the final step, the same tasks students interact with can be very similar throughout the choice boards you create each semester.
Now, let’s focus on building a choice board!
Choiceboard Using Google Docs – How-To Steps
Here are the following steps to create a choiceboard using Google Docs. Following these steps is a detailed video on how to create them using Google Docs. Let’s do this!
Step 1: Create a table with three columns. Label them Step 1, 2, and 3. Step 1 is Content,
Step 2 is a task for students to synthesize the content they’ve analyzed, which is typically a graphic organizer, and Step 3 is a task related to students creating something that demonstrates what they’ve learned and/or a problem solving task.
Step 3: For each column, provide two to three choices for your students.
Step 4: Hyperlink the content you would like your students to click on for the choiceboard. For Step 1, the content can be easily linked from the internet. However, for Steps 2 and 3, you must generally make an assignment on Canvas that you can then hyperlink to the choiceboard. This will help you grade student work and keep them accountable for completing the choiceboard tasks.
Step 5: Post the choice board on Canvas or send out via email or a link to your students.
In a similar manner, you can create a choiceboard using Google Slides using the same steps. Essentially, the same steps are followed, but the content of the choices presented on the choiceboard are slides embedded within the slide presentation. On each of these slides, students complete a task that is associated with the choiceboard. It may include links and instructions required for the assignment to be completed. The major area that differentiates is the hyperlinks. Instead of linking content outside of the slides to the choiceboard front page, you will hyperlink each slide, which then can be utilized as a platform to hyperlink content related to that specific task (click on the image of the Google Slide below to see an example).
Note: Click here to view the HyperSlide. Thanks for Slidemania for template!
Conclusion on Choiceboards
Choiceboards provide a great opportunity for students to analyze and synthesize content and then create something creative and innovative demonstrating what they have learned. Also, it provides teachers with an efficient and effective way to plan and deliver lessons. Additional resources have been provided regarding the choiceboards below. Check them out and please feel free to use the many templates provided throughout the article!
Additional Resources on Creating Student Choice Boards Using Google Docs and Slides
I wanted to provide a series on HyperDocs and HyperSlides as it is the basis for creating fun, engaging, and interactive lessons for students that can take place within any classroom setting. Lets learn the basics and then expand our knowledge in this three part series!
What are HyperDocs and HyperSlides?
HyperDocs and HyperSlides essentially can take the form of a lesson, instructional strategy, or visual interface. Generally speaking, all of these elements are combined when a teacher creates a HyperDoc or HyperSlide and delivers it to their students during a lesson. What makes them powerful is that they can take students on a creative journey and amplify the content and strategies you’re delivering to your students. HyperDocs and HyperSlides can be built within the Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 platforms.
Throughout this blog series, there will be three posts that cover the following topics about HyperDocs and HyperSlides:
What are HyperDocs and HyperSlides? How to Build HyperDocs and HyperSlides
How Can Using HyperDocs and Hyper Create Student Choice
HyperDocs and HyperSlides Create UDL Lesson Opportunities
Ultimately, the goal is to provide how to use these great integrations with HyperDocs and HyperSlides as well as demonstrate how you can use them to amplify student learning!
Before Building a HyperDoc or HyperSlide – Intentional Design
Before building a HyperDoc or HyperSlide, we must determine what their purpose is before building one. Are we building a lesson slideshow, choiceboard, scavenger hunt, or developing an assignment that requires students to move between multiple documents or slides? This question is important as we must determine what learning outcome we want our students to achieve as a result of designing a lesson that includes a HyperDoc or HyperSlide.
Determine Intended Learning Outcome As a Result of Using a HyperDoc/Slide
Design HyperDoc/Slide to Meet that Learning Goal
How To Build a HyperDoc and HyperSlide
To build a HyperDoc and HyperSlide, we must have content. Whether it’s a slideshow or multiple documents, we must have the content first before hyperlinking everything together. Therefore, first and foremost, content is the most essential piece. Once the content has been developed, we can follow several steps to make the HyperDoc and HyperSlide.
Go to the Slideshow or Document you want to part of your HyperDoc/slide
Go to the “Share” Button at the top right hand corner of the screen.
Determine whether this will be a collaborative task or not, which will then determine if you will share the link to all in a viewable format or in an editable format.
Then, go to the document or slide you would like to add the hyperlink. You will either click the hyperlink icon (the paperclip icon) or use the keyboard shortcut Control + K to insert the hyperlink.
Copy and paste the link and then come up with a title for the hyperlink to be placed on either the slide or document that is being linked.
Watch the following video of taking these steps and putting them into action.
Developing Lessons Using HyperDocs/Slides – Begin with Templates
After knowing the basics of creating a HyperDoc or HyperSlide, we want to find an efficient way to develop our lessons and strategies using these tools. As a result, one of the easiest ways to create these lessons is to use templates already created or building your own to utilize. Once you have built two to three templates of lessons and strategies you want to use HyperDocs and HyperSlides for in your class, all you will need to do is change the links when the content changes from lesson to lesson when you want to use them.
To build your own template, use the “Table” option for Google Docs. You can create one that looks like this depending on what your lessons goals are for your students.
Notice
Wonder
Know
Generally, underneath each heading, you add links, content, videos, or articles you are hyperlinking to.
Similarly, on Google Slides you can do the same by creating Hyperlinks to various Units, Weeks, or pieces of content by using the same “create a table method.”
After templates are built, content can be linked directly to them. To reuse, all you need to do is to make a copy and change out whichever hyperlinks you would like to for the new lesson or task you will have students completing.
Templates and More
On the website Hyperdocs.co, there is an assortment of templates for lessons and strategies that can be utilized. All you will need to do is choose the one you would like to use, make a copy, and then start adding the hyperlinked content to the template. You may have to edit a bit of the content, but much of the design has already been done, which helps you build these out for your lessons quickly and efficiently.
Over the next few weeks, the two future posts will be on the following topics:
How Can Using HyperDocs and Hyper Create Student Choice
HyperDocs and HyperSlides Create UDL Lesson Opportunities
We can’t wait to talk about how HyperDocs and Slides can foster student choice as well as be utilized to develop lessons that are Universal Design for Learning friendly!
After the first ten episodes of the podcast season, we began interviewing educators from around the world. These interviews touch on many important topics to help us all gain insight into various niches in education to help us build capacity. The goal was to provide our audience with experts in a wide range of topics to help them learn more about each topic to further their practice. Each episode ranges around 30 minutes in length. As the host, it was engaging and such a learning experience to learn from each of these experts. I hope you will also learn from these educators who are doing great things in classrooms, schools, and districts! Together, we are better. Enjoy and connect with each of these educators on social media to learn more about what they are doing to further learn and amplify your practice.
First Ten Interviews of Navigating Education – The Podcast
As we know, Pear Deck and Nearpod can be utilized and integrated into a wide variety of strategies. Student reflection and metacognition strategies are part of this range of strategies! In Part 4 of our Interactive Slide Blog Series, we will cover this in-depth.
Metacognition and Reflection – A Skill Set for Lifelong Learners
As educators, we want our students to be lifelong learners. However, this needs to be something we intend to put into our lessons to practice reflection and metacognition, which is the basis for becoming a lifelong learner. Through metacognition and reflection, students can assess what they learned, their strengths, areas of improvement, and next steps they need to take to extend their learning.
We can provide these opportunities more than ever on a daily and weekly basis. Thus, what we can do is build self-assessment into all our lessons and units to practice these skills. Our goal in this post is to show you how students practice self-assessment metacognition using interactive slides. Not only does self-assessment give students an opportunity to practice metacognition skills, but it also provides teachers with a plethora of information about our students they can use to become better teachers and learn more about their students, which will bolster their relationships. Overall, the information collected can help teachers learn more about the student’s thoughts regarding what they know, where they need to go, and what areas of strength they feel like they are strong in. Ultimately, this will facilitate dialogue between teachers and students throughout the year to help monitor and adjust our instruction as well as focus on the personalizing learning of our students.
Note: Here is a provided template for you to copy and paste these slides into your own presentations you are utilizing in your class. Use these for your reference too as you read through this blog.
Daily Self-Assessment & Reflection
Daily self-assessment is quick, which can be employed during the closure of a lesson. Teachers can pose one to three questions regarding what was covered, student understanding, and areas of strength/improvement for students to interact with and think about. We can use Pear Deck or Nearpod for my interactive slideshows so I can have active engagement throughout my entire lesson. Ultimately, at the end of most of my lessons, we can provide students an opportunity to think about what they have learned. This provides students an opportunity to practice metacognition and gives me quick feedback on where my students believe they are currently at on the skills or content discussed during that class period. Below, there are three examples of how you can utilize interactive slides for reflection at the end of your lesson as an exit ticket.
Weekly Self-Assessment & Reflection
Weekly self-assessment allows students to practice metacognition skills by allowing them to summarize what they have learned throughout the week as well as narrow down areas of strength and areas of improvement. In addition, a weekly self-assessment gives students an opportunity to give themselves self-reported grades on their reading, writing, math, participation, and work completion. By providing students an opportunity to self-report their progress and grades, it can allow teachers to have a dialogue with students thereafter to facilitate conversation about their strengths and areas they can improve in. For the weekly self-assessment, we can utilize either an interactive slide or Google Forms for a weekly self-assessment because sometimes we can provide multiple choice and free response reflection questions for my students. Also, the data output from Google Forms is extremely valuable because it allows me to analyze individual and class trends over the course of a semester versus the readout from a single lesson using Pear Deck or Nearpod. Below you will see how you can use interactive slides as well as a Google Form for students to interact with while they reflect. This can be done at the end of your lesson at the end of the week.
Regardless of the content you are teaching your students, provide them an opportunity to self-reflect, self-assess, and self-report grades because it gives them a multitude of opportunities throughout the year to practice metacognition and reflection. Metacognition allows our students to become lifelong learners, which builds their self-efficacy and confidence to think about or dialogue with others about their abilities and skillsets. Furthermore, we want our students to consistently look to grow and improve. By focusing on practicing metacognition throughout the year, it gives your students an opportunity to do this. On the teacher side of the equation, teachers have the opportunity to review this data and learn more about their students than ever before besides our student-to-teacher-to-student relationship, evaluating student work artifacts, and analyzing assessment scores. Evaluating the self-assessment data is critical in focusing on improving your instruction for all of your students and personalizing learning for your students by conversing with your students to work on improving gaps in their learning and making their strengths shine.
Season 1 of Navigating Education – The Podcast is almost over! As the season comes to an end, there will be a number of blog posts summarizing all of the great episodes from the season. The purpose of having a number of posts reviewing the season is to provide an opportunity for you to take a listen to all of the amazing content and guests. So many insightful episodes and nuggets of information all educators can take from each episode to amplify their practice!
In this post, we have our first ten episodes of the podcast as well as the twelve bonus episodes that are based on the content from the book Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. Take a listen as each of these topics are relevant to navigating education in our ever-changing world!
Bonus Episodes – Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders
Featured in the first 13 Bonus Episodes of Navigating Education – The Podcast are a series of interviews from the contributing authors who contributed each case study to the end of each chapter in Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. They provide their insight as to how they are navigating education through a variety of different topics discussed in the book.
Collaboration with Pear Deck and Nearpod can be done in a variety of ways that can amplify student learning. In this post, several strategies will be discussed to help you create these collaborative activities using interactive slides. First, we will outline several steps to think about while creating collaborative tasks and activities. Then, we will discuss three strategies that can be utilized on Pear Deck and Nearpod that can be done collaboratively by students. These strategies include Think, Write, Pair, and Share, Reciprocal Teaching, and Collaborative Bulletin Boards.Â
Collaboration – Things to Think About Student Collaboration Activities
A few things to think about before student collaboration. This list will help you create collaborative groups and activities that will lead to students being successful in completing the task and getting the most learning out of it!
We want to keep our groups to three or four students max.
We also want our groups of students to be heterogeneous, but also strategically placed. For example, in ESL, you place a student whose strength is in writing while the other two students have strengths in speaking.
Also, we want to try and create roles within the group to complete the task.
Last, we want to create a task that students can do in three to four steps. We do not want to overwhelm the group with too many things they are required to do.
Collaboration Opportunities Using both Nearpod and Pear Deck and Nearpod
On either Pear Deck or Nearpod, we can create collaborative tasks using the slides. We will be discussing Think-Pair-Share and Reciprocal Teaching.
Think-Write-Pair-Share
This strategy is geared towards being collaborative. Students complete a task individually and then are paired with a partner or group to share their ideas and synthesize them. Finally, after synthesizing their ideas and writing them down together, they will have the opportunity to share them with the class. Generally, this strategy can be utilized to activate prior knowledge at the beginning of the lesson or it can be used during guided practice to further develop ideas and share insights.
For Think, Write, Pair, and Share, you will need to develop three slides that are ordered consecutively in your slide deck for the instructional sequence of the strategy.
Think – This is a slide that has the initial prompt and visual to go along with it.
Write – This turns into an interactive text or draw slide.
Pair/Share – This is an interactive slide as it allows both students to share their responses and then write a combined response to share with the class in the last sequence.
Generally, students are provided with a prompt. Think time is given for students to process the prompt. Then, they are asked to write their response on the following interactive slide. Three to five minutes is given for their response. Following their response, students are grouped or paired using breakout rooms or a place in the classroom. Once this has been completed. Students share their answers in the group. Then, students are asked to synthesize their answers to then be possibly shared with the class. After this has occurred, two to three groups are asked to share their responses to prompt further discussion on the topic.
Reciprocal teaching provides our students with opportunities throughout an entire lesson to critically think regarding what you are teaching them. This strategy has four interactive slides sequenced at the beginning, middle, and end of the lesson. During each of these instructional sequences that make up the predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing slides, students are given opportunities to collaborate with interactive slides.
Predicting – On this slide, a prompt or phenomenon is discussed. Students are asked to predict what may happen next. This can be a text or draw interactive slide. Students can work with a partner or group to make a prediction regarding the lesson.
Questioning – Following the prediction slide or guided practice where the concept is discussed more in-depth, students can be asked to formulate several questions that can be collaboratively developed. This generally is a draw or text interactive slide.
Clarifying – Students are shown by the teacher through modeling the solution or answer several of the questions the students have provided. This is generally near the end of the lesson. This is not an interactive slide.
Summarizing – Students are paired or grouped together and are asked to summarize the lesson. Students are asked if the prediction they formulated at the beginning of the lesson was anywhere near where the lesson took them. Additionally, they can be asked if their questions were answered throughout the lesson.
When this strategy is initiated, it is scattered throughout an entire lesson. It’s not a consecutive sequence. For the collaborative aspects of this strategy, students can be paired or grouped together within breakout rooms or in specific areas of the classroom. The groups of the students can be changed throughout the lesson or changed multiple times depending on what you would like to do. Overall, this strategy is a great way to keep students engaged and consistently collaborating throughout an entire lesson.
Specifically for Nearpod, we will be showcasing the bulletin board feature that can be turned into a collaborative activity for your students.
Bulletin Board
On Nearpod, you can create a bulletin board where students are required to answer a prompt and answer. Then, their response appears on a digital bulletin board. To make this collaborative, you can pair students in multiple groups or in pairs. Then, in a breakout room or on a table in a classroom, they will be asked to work together to come up with a response to the prompt. Thereafter, once they have a response, the group members will be asked to respond to the other bulletin board posts and to like them. Their response can quote another group’s response and/or have the group’s names at the top of the response to signify its a response versus the first answer given. This is then followed up by a short classroom discussion on the prompt and topic.
In Summary – Collaboration Strategies Using Interactive Slides
There is a wide range of strategies that can be configured to be done collaboratively. Jigsaw, concept mapping and sketch noting are also strategies that can be done collaboratively. Many others exist as well. We are looking forward to assisting you in integrating these strategies with EdTech to amplify the learning of your students!
In Part Two of our series on interactive slides, we are going to be discussing formative assessment. By the end of this post about this topic, you will have three to five go-to formative assessment strategies to try using on Pear Deck and Nearpod. These strategies will help amplify how you assess your students, provide feedback, and monitor and adjust your instruction.Â
What is Formative Assessment?
Formative assessments are opportunities for you to see whether students are learning in real-time. These assessments do not have to be for a grade. They can simply be an opportunity for you to see in a short segment of time in your lesson whether individual students, groups of students, or your entire class is understanding what you are teaching them. With this data collected in real-time, you can then monitor and adjust your instruction to help and support your students. Also, you can provide feedback to your students verbally or covertly during this time. This can help point them in the right direction during and after the assessment has taken place.
Interactive Slide Formative Assessment Strategies
There are several formative assessment strategies we will review along with a screenshot demonstrating each. Be sure to review the getting started professional development links for learning how to build Pear Deck and Nearpod slideshows in Google Slides.
Quickwrites/Free Response
Quickwrites and free response questions can be incorporated throughout your lesson to assess your students. You utilize them to activate prior knowledge and to review concepts from the previous class. Or, you can ask students throughout class open-ended questions they can respond so you can determine whether they are understanding the task ahead. Another way open-ended questions can be deployed during your lesson is at the end of the class session. You can ask students to summarize what they learned at the end of class as well as provide a question they may have and where they want to take their learning to next.
During the time students are providing responses, you can give them overt feedback in the form of verbal responses or covertly in written text. On Pear Deck, you can provide written responses directly onto their response, which students can see immediately.
Multiple Choice
Multiple choice can be utilized at any point in your lesson to assess your students. Multiple choice can be traditional A, B, C, D, True/Fale, or students can draw a circle around a specific answer choice. What’s great about Nearpod and Pear Deck is that they show how students are doing in real-time. You can see which students got the question correct and incorrect so once the assessment is over, you can quickly determine discrepancies in the answers provided by students.
Matching & Retrieval Practice with Flashcards
Matching and digital flashcards is a great form of retrieval practice, which helps our students take information from their long-term memory as they practice words and concepts they have learned. This can be a form of assessment to determine how well your students remember various terms, facts, and concepts they have learned in your class.
There are two forms of matching and flashcards that have been provided: Nearpod Matching and Pear Deck Flashcards. Each is an interactive option on Nearpod and Pear Deck. However, the Pear Deck form of flashcards is a different avenue in the application you will have to learn versus building interactive slides. Yet, each of these activities is engaging and Universal Design for Learning friendly as it provides multiple modalities for your students to take in and process the information provided.
Learn more about Matching on Nearpod by watching this YouTube video.
There are two forms of matching and flashcards that have been provided: Nearpod Matching and Pear Deck Flashcards. Each is an interactive option on Nearpod and Pear Deck. However, the Pear Deck form of flashcards is a different avenue in the application you will have to learn versus building interactive slides. Yet, each of these activities is engaging and Universal Design for Learning friendly as it provides multiple modalities for your students to take in and process the information provided. Above you will see the Nearpod matching activity and below you will see the Pear Deck vocabulary flashcard activity.
Learn more about setting up Flashcards on Pear Deck HERE and watch it in action HERE
Problem Solving Performance-Based Formative Assessments
The last form of formative assessment using interactive slides is problem-solving, which is a performative-based assessment. What this means is giving your students an open-ended problem or a problem that has a single solution where they must show their work and understanding as they solve the problem at hand. This can include a math problem, completing a grammar and punctuation problem, a short essay, or summarizing a task. Ultimately, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can do. Generally, when using Pear Deck or Nearpod, you create drawing slides for these performative-based assessments. These types of slides give you a multitude of options for your students to interact with the assessment question you have provided.
Formative Assessment is a Powerful Strategy for Interactive Slides
Formative assessment is a great strategy to utilize while using interactive slides. Many options are there for you to see how your students are doing, provide feedback and use data to drive your instruction. Both Pear Deck and Nearpod provide a platform for this strategy to be amplified! Take advantage of it, experiment, and see how it can impact your instruction and the learning of your students.
For today’s post, we are focusing on how we can use interactive slides to build connections, relationships, and social-emotional learning skills for our students! You will see examples of how to do this throughout lessons to amplify your student’s learning and your connections with them.Â
Activities to Build Connection with Students
To build instant connections with students, we want to ask them about themselves as well as provide opportunities for them to share with you about themselves. As a result, two activities where you can obtain this information from students are through Quickwrites and Poll Questions.
First, we have Quickwrites. With both Pear Deck and Nearpod, we can create open-ended questions where students write their responses. Usually, I will model my answer and then provide students to write their responses. Once students have completed, we can either cold call, call on them at random using Wheel of Names, or having volunteers. Immediately before calling on students, you can provide an overview of the responses of the students by summarizing the class’s responses.
Second, we have polls. Both Nearpod and Pear Deck have polls and multiple-choice features that allow us to poll a class. What’s great about polling your students is that you can quickly learn about them individually as well as your entire class. This can be done to activate prior knowledge or as a way to build motivation as a hook and/or lead into a new portion of your lesson.
Social-Emotional Learning
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a set of strategies to help build our student’s emotional and social intelligence through teaching them a series of skills. Interactive slides are a great opportunity for your students to build these skills through active learning. Examples provided demonstrate how students can self-assess how they are feeling by interacting with a mood chart. On the mood chart, students draw circles around how they are feeling.
Pear Deck and Nearpod both provide templates for SEL. As seen below, here are two that Pear Deck provides. These include activities on what is filling your bucket versus what’s training it. Additionally, we can use SEL strategies to help students practice metacognition as seen in the slide example of a series of questions regarding how the lesson went for the student.
Throughout our lessons and classes, we want to build connections and relationships with our students as well as work on their SEL skills. By incorporating opportunities as discussed today with interactive slides to work in these areas throughout your lesson, active learning opportunities will yield more connections with your students as well as bolster their SEL skill set. For more information on how to do this further, check out the following webinars below.
More Ideas on SEL – Two Videos for Further Investigation
In the past, I have written on interactive slides. However, for this specific series of posts, I wanted to review some of their major instructional strengths as well as reintroduce them. You will see a number of posts relating interactive slides in a four part series, which will take you from the basics to integrating instructional strategies with these tools to amplify student learning.
Active Learning Interactive Slide Blog Series
Building Connection and Relationships with Students Using Interactive Slides
Formative Assessment (Quizzes, Checks for Understanding, Quickwrites, Exit Slips, etc.).
Collaborative Student Activities
Student Reflection & Metacognition
What are Interactive Slides?
What are interactive slides? They are traditional Google Slides that have a special add-on that makes them interactive for students to write and draw on them while you are presenting them in your live online or in-person classrooms. A great adaptation to interactive slides is your ability to provide students with feedback as well as see their progress as you move through your lesson. This allows you to provide active learning opportunities and feedback simultaneously, which will create a fun and engaging lesson for your students. Also, in terms of prep, it does not take long to prep your lessons as you can take your current slideshows and transform them into interactive slides!
Access to Interactive Slides
Currently, Poway has a district license for Nearpod and Vista and Escondido have a district license for Pear Deck. There are some aspects of each you can utilize for free. However, when it comes down to it, you can integrate the same strategies using the same tools.
Strategies/Activities for Interactive Slides
You can do a wide range of strategies and activities ranging from social-emotional learning, quickwrites, drag and drop, flashcards, bulletin boards, exit slips for formative assessment, and student reflection. This is just the tip of the iceberg! Both Pear Deck and Nearpod can be used for all of these strategies and activities.
Getting Started with Nearpod and Pear Deck
The goal here is to show how you can get started using Nearpod and Pear Deck. You will see step-by-step instructions to add both tools to your Google Slides to then be incorporated into your slideshows.
Step 1: Open up Google Slides and create a slide. Then, click “Add-ons.”
Step 2: Click on “Get Add-ons” and add “Pear Deck” and “Nearpod.”
Step 3: Open up Pear Deck or Nearpod by clicking on Add-ons.
Part 2: Opening Nearpod and Pear Deck on Google Slides
Now, we will open up Nearpod and Pear Deck. First, we will begin with Nearpod.
Nearpod
Step 1: Log on through your Gmail or Office 365 account. You will have to create an account for either Nearpod or Pear Deck in order to use the add-on.
Step 2: Now, click on the slide and turn it interactive by clicking on one of the various options provided to make it interactive. The free version of Nearpod includes Drag and Drop, Draw, Open-Ended Questions, and Poll (Multiple Choice).
Accessing Pear Deck
Step 1: Click on the Add-on tab on Google Slides.
Step 2: Open up Pear Deck and determine what you would like your slide to be in terms of what interactive feature you would like. Free Pear Deck includes text and multiple choice features to be added to slides.
Hopefully after reviewing these steps, you will now be able to begin using Pear Deck or Nearpod in your classroom. Comment below to let us know how it has been going using these two tools.
Have you ever wanted to randomly pick on students without using popsicle sticks? Do you want to create a fun and engaging way for students to see their names possibly being picked? This can be done in a matter of a few minutes and either online teaching synchronously or in-person. Ultimately, using a mechanism like this to call on students is a more equitable opportunity to get all of your students to participate verbally in your class.Â
Go to www.wheelofnames.com to begin! You will first see below what it looks like when you access the website. Then, following the image of the wheel, there will be a set of steps and a video showing how to create a wheel and launch the wheel while in class online or in person.
Open up your wheel of names that you’ve created on www.wheelofnames.com. Be sure to KEEP theWheel of Names open on your internet browser.
Open up your Zoom meeting through Zoom.us or on your calendar.
After opening up your meeting, sharing your screen.
Be sure to keep your slideshow presentation on the same line of browser tabs as your Wheel of Names tab on your internet browser.
If you are in person, this is something you should do as well so you can go back and forth between your slideshow and Wheel of Names as you call on students throughout the class.
Then, as appropriate, click on the tab for the Wheel of Names and spin the wheel when you would like to call on students to provide an overt verbal response.
After you spin the wheel, you will be able to either remove students who have been called from the wheel OR keep them there.
Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that has many uses as an instructional strategy. It involves taking a task and dividing it up into small chunks so students can interact and work together in a collaborative manner to learn. Then, after the task is completed, the entire class can come together and discuss it or complete a subsequence task, assignment, or activity where everyone has background knowledge. It can be utilized in a wide variety of ways as listed below and can be used with a number of EdTech tools.
Jigsaw Strategy for Reading Comprehension (i.e., Annotation, Paraphrase, and Summary)
Today, we will be using Jigsaw as a strategy to help with reading. Jigsaw Annotation is a strategy where a teacher can have students do a similar reading, speaking, and writing task but using two or more reading levels of the same text. This creates an opportunity to differentiate your instruction but keep the content and topic the same that students will discuss. It also is a good opportunity to have students read together and collaborate by annotating and paraphrasing what the text is stating. Then, having students discuss the text in their groups and then as a whole class. By doing this activity, students can build their comprehension and speaking skills.
How to Implement this Strategy and EdTech Integration
Using Readworks or NewsELA and Google Slideshow, an article from Readworks and NewsELA can be broken down into two or more slides where a portion or the entire text from the article or story can be copied and pasted into the slideshow. Then, a set of slides is dedicated towards one reading level of a specific text and another set is dedicated towards another reading level of the same text. Sets of slides can be numbered one, two, or three so students are eventually assigned those slides to read and annotate with a group. Usually, we suggest having three levels of the same text is great to start.
Once the slides are created, make a copy of the slides and set the link share to be “everyone with the link can edit.” You have two choices of where you would like to distribute the slides for the activity. The protocols of how this can be done will be discussed in a moment. You can either place the link to the slides as a Canvas assignment or copy and paste it directly into the Zoom chat box for students to click on. Either way works. Ultimately, it depends on what you and your students are comfortable with.
EdTech Tools Needed
Google Slides
NewsELA/Readworks
Zoom
Canvas (Optional)
Steps to Implement Jigsaw Using Google Slides & Zoom
Step 1. Log into NewsELA or Readworks and find an article.
Step 2. Determine which article you want to use and then break it down into two to three different reading levels.
Step 3. Open up Google Slides. Create two to three sides, which will make up the number of slides needed for the article. This is about 10 to 12 Google Slides when it is all said and done.
Step 4. As discussed above, ensure you have opened up a 10-12 Google Slides presentation.
Step 5. On the first slide, always have the title of the article.
Step 6. On the second slide, divide the slides into two to three groups. Each group is represented by a number, which represents the reading level of the article you choose.
Step 7. Then, on the slides, copy and paste the article onto two to three slides (based on the length of the article). Do this for at least two to three different reading levels. Altogether, this will be 10 to 12 slides in length.
Step 8. Last, be sure to click on the far upper right-hand side of the slide and click on “share.” To distribute the slides on Canvas or Zoom, it must be shared as an editable link for “anyone with the link.” This allows once a student access the slideshow, they can go to their assignment slides and edit that page.
Step 9. Once ready to share, share the editable link with your students in the Zoom chat.
Step 10. After students have clicked on the link, model to students the directions of the task. You may want to model how you do it for about 3-5 minutes as an appropriate scaffold.
Step 11. Then, divide students into groups and create breakout rooms. They will then begin the jigsaw task you’ve asked them to complete.
Step 12. Provide your students with a time frame of the task completion and possibly a follow-up task thereafter.
After follow steps 1-12, you will have implemented the Jigsaw strategy in your classroom. Let us know in the comments how it went. Additionally, see below for more information regarding the strategy.
For more information about the Jigsaw Strategy, check out the following resources.
Flipgrid is an interactive audio and video recording platform where students can respond to a teacher’s activity, prompt, or question as well as responses created by students. Teachers and students can add emojis, graphics, augmented reality, and more to their recorded response. Responses generally are short and last from 15 seconds to a little over a minute. Student responses can be assessed and graded by the teacher. Last, Flipgrid is very straightforward and easy to and can be shared to students quickly on Canvas, Zoom, an email, or anywhere you can send out a hyperlink.
The goal is to demonstrate the basics of Flipgrid as well as demonstrate the instructional uses of this tool (as there are many!). After reading this post, you will know how to use it in at least eight different ways to amplify your instruction for your students within any classroom setting!
5. Once you create your own Group and Topic on Flipgrid, you can share the hyperlink for students to access the Flipgrid through email, Canvas, a Document or Slideshow, or through Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.
Instructional Uses
Building classroom communities and learning students’ names.
Online discussion boards where students can respond to the main question posed and respond to their classmates.
Practicing language vocabulary, grammar, and phrases.
Student led podcasting.
Social-emotional learning tasks and activities
Student assessment
Student presentations
Above are several instructional uses of Flipgrid that you can place into your classroom. It is a great tool to integrate into your instruction and provide an opportunity for your students to use their voice in many ways to articulate what they know to you and their classroom community.
App-smashing is one of my favorite instructional integrations to help support students in their learning by ensuring I hit many of the elements of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) within an instructional sequence in my lesson. The goal of this post is to show this through several examples that can be quickly incorporated into your instruction and lessons using the EdTech tools of Pear Deck and Flipgrid together in an instructional sequence. These strategies will offer your students overt and covert opportunities to actively learn in any classroom setting!
Integrating Pear Deck and Flipgrid for Warm-ups/Activating Prior Knowledge
In our classes, we want our students to problem solve. Yet, we also want them to demonstrate HOW and WHY they took that course of action. Now, we have the ability to have students do both tasks within a sequence, which benefits learning. What this does is activate prior knowledge and builds conceptual frameworks. Additionally, when done in a sequence, it provides the opportunity to lessen the cognitive load on students. Last, it gives students the opportunity to complete a task that is multimodal because students complete an initial task by demonstrating a skill and then have to then transition to another task requiring a different skill to discuss the task and their problem solving verbally.
Two examples are going to be provided of this integration: Write a Claim + Provide Evidence & Solve a Problem + Math Talks. Both of these integrations can occur at the beginning or end of a lesson for a formative assessment and as a way to activate prior knowledge. The goal here is to show the integration and demonstrate how it can be implemented step by step.
Note: For students to maneuver between slides, you can turn on control to students on your Pear Deck slides by doing on your teacher panel. We do this so students can review their work once they are on Flipgrid.
Write a Claim/Answer Prompt + Provide Evidence
First, we have an example that can be used in the humanities. During a quickwrite or short writing task, we can provide our students with the opportunity to answer a writing prompt with a thesis statement relating to a text or historic event you are studying. Then, with students knowing this while they are writing their statement, they must provide evidence related to their thesis statement immediately after answering the prompt using Flipgrid for about 30-45 seconds.
Then, on the following slide, students will then click on the link and record their evidence. You can provide prompts and sentence frames to help students think about how they will articulate evidence verbally to support their claim.
When students are completing their Flipgrid response, you can provide feedback on their initial claims/thesis statements they have created responding to the prompt. This can be a number of students who work better with individual covert feedback or students you feel need immediate feedback. Then, once the students complete their Flipgrid response, go back to the initial claim/thesis statements students have generated. Call on two students to read their claim/thesis statement and ask them to paraphrase their Flipgrid response to the class. Additionally, if you need to make any whole class corrections or need to model to the entire class, this can be done during this time as well.
Solve a Problem + Math Talks
Second, let’s focus on math warm ups and math talks. Essentially, in a very similar way as the first example, students complete a problem as a warm-up. Students use the drawing tool to show their work step by step. Give your students a time lapse to initially solve and then have them move onto the next sequence. If you want to add a twist, you can have students pair up in a break up room for a few minutes to compare their steps before moving on to the next step which is the verbal math talk on Flipgrid.
Have students first solve the problem and show their work. Then, you have three options. First, send the direct link to Flipgrid in the chat box or move to a new slide after a time period has elapsed and have students click on a direct link (as seen below). Third, as mentioned above, you can turn on your Pear Deck slides to student paced, which can give them control to move back and forth between their work and the Flipgrid hyperlink slide.
After students have completed their Flipgrid response, go back to the initial warm-up slide and ask one or two students to share how they solved the problem (you can have them share their screen or pull it up through Pear Deck). Then, model and clarify questions students may have. Additionally, be sure to provide feedback as students completed their Flipgrid response, you can provide feedback on a number of students’ Pear Deck responses covertly. Ultimately, individually and collectively, feedback can be given and students can make necessary adjustments before moving on to the next portion of the lesson.
Other Ideas of How the Integration Can be Used
Humanities
Math/Science
World Language
1. Social-Emotional Learning 2. Similarities/Differences Support an argument with relevant evidence 3. Making predictions and inferences 4. Review a text or piece of media
1. Social-Emotional Learning 2. Comparing/Contrast phenomenon 3. Discussing relationships among scientific concepts 4. Math Talks and Proofs Constructing explanations and interpreting data
1. Social Emotional Learning Learning new vocabulary words 2. Response to a prompt and then further practicing the language Interpret a concept in writing and verbally
Other Tools for this Integration and Strategy Sequencethat Work!
It’s been a month since the release of Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. Readers from around the world have enjoyed this playbook and guide to help them prepare for the new school year as well as navigate it once the year has begun. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to amplify your leadership and teaching during this year and beyond! Read a recent review about the book here as it provides glimpse as to what you’ll learn within the book.
Take a look at the content you will be able to review in this celebration post!
Beyond celebrating this book’s release, you will have the opportunity listen to the book’s July launch party on Navigating Education – The Podcast.
Additionally, you will have the opportunity to read a short blog post about educator self-care that previews some of the book’s Chapter 12 content.
Special Release – Audio Podcast of the Book’s Launch Party
In the coming weeks, the video version of the book’s launch party will be released. However, with the month anniversary today, I wanted to release the audio podcast version of the launch party for those interested in taking a listen and enjoying the amazing, raw, and authentic conversation we had with many of the book’s contributing case study and foreword author’s.
Summary of the Launch Party: In the final bonus episode of the Navigating the Toggled Term series, all of the contributing authors of Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders met for a launch party to celebrate the book as well as discuss the present and future of education. The book’s contributing authors all wrote short case study’s at the end of each chapter to illustrate and provide firsthand accounts as to how the themes of the chapters are being implemented by teachers and school leaders from across North America. Perspectives from case study contributing authors provided a lens to the schools and students they serve in urban, suburban, rural, private, and public settings. Additionally, we had teachers and school leaders in varying points of their careers from a first-year teacher to veterans who have been in the educational profession for over 30 years. Â
These various perspectives provided for powerful conversations and case study’s in the book as they provide diverse perspectives of how to navigate education now and in the future. The goal of the launch party’s conversations was to discuss the following five areas:Â
1) Instructional Innovations and EdTech Integrations
2) Challenges to Future Innovations
3) What have we learned in teaching and leading students and schools over the past 16 months (after March 2020) and how has that prepared us to navigate the future of education?
4) How can we best support teachers and school leaders?Â
5) What advice would you give teachers and school leaders as they navigate the upcoming school year and the future of education.
 Overall, the conversation we had was inspiring, motivational, and empowering. If you are a teacher, school leader, parent, or a stakeholder in the educational community, this is a discussion that will inspire you along with giving you real practice strategies and advice to navigate education now and in the future.
Blog Post: Tackling the Challenges of the Present and Future of Education – Navigating the Toggled Term
In a blog post published on Peter Lang’s Medium blog, I discuss the challenges of navigating education during this time. However, I discuss primarily how we can at the institutional and personal level create opportunities for self-care. It’s a great read for classroom and school leaders to help provide a roadmap of how to take care of ourselves during the school year. It is a bit of a preview of what you will find within Chapter 12 of the book!
I cannot believe we are moving into August of 2021. More than half of the year is already over. It’s hard to imagine that we are also starting a new school year. Within this issue, I am providing a number of resources ranging from books, blogs, podcasts, and educational research to help teachers and school leaders prepare and start the school year! Review this newsletter and see what can help you. Then, determine how you can take action with the information you learned to help amplify your teaching and leadership!
Subscribe and Share! Be sure to ask your professional learning network and colleagues within your educational organization to subscribe to receive this newsletter, which can be done by completing this form. Also, connect with me on Twitter @mattrhoads1990 and check out more content on my website www.matthewrhoads.com. Last, if you have any content you would like amplified in future newsletters, please contact me at mattrhoads1990@gmail.com.
Personal Career Update – I Am Now An EdTech Trainer, Integrator, and Coach!
A short personal update. I will be taking on a new position as a Technology Trainer and Coach overseeing EdTech integration among eight different schools. With a focus on Career and Technical Education along with Adult Education within online and blended learning settings, I am looking forward to working with teachers and school leaders to amplify how we can best serve their students. I can’t wait to get started in this new role!
Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders is Now Available Worldwide
On July 15th of July 2021, it was the worldwide release of Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. Writing this book was a labor of love with the goal of impacting teachers, school leaders, and most importantly, our students as we navigate the present and future of education during this challenging time. Overall, this book provides a playbook to how to navigate online, blended, and traditional in-person classroom settings as well as toggling between each instantaneously, integrating research-based instructional strategies with EdTech tools to amplify student learning, and a variety of other topics ranging from differentiating instruction, Special Education, communicating with the students and families, and educator self-care.
Learn more by going to the book’s landing page. Additionally, be sure to check out Bonus Episodes of Navigating Education – The Podcast that feature the contributing authors of the book who take a deeper dive into their case study’s they authored at the end of each chapter in the book.
Featured Blog Posts to Prepare for the 2021-2022 School Year
Three Blogs from Alfonso Mendoza on Creativity, Connected Educators, and EdTech Leadership (@MyEdTechLife and @Techteacher1381)
We wanted to share three podcasts from Fonz Mendoza who has been writing extensively this summer on topics related to creativity, connected educators, and EdTech Leadership. Each of the following blogs discusses how we can exercise our creative muscles to amplify what we create as well as building your network as a connected educator followed by the four characteristics of becoming an EdTech Leader.
Within this article, seven strategies to help flex your creativity muscles are provided. After reading it, it will leave you feeling empowered to flex your creative muscle on a project!
Throughout this blog post, Mr. Mendoza provides a short synopsis on what it means to be a connected educator and its power towards amplifying your work.
Mr. Mendoza provides four tips for becoming an EdTech leader. Each step acts as a foundation to help you lead your students, teachers, and school leaders in your capacity as an educator to integrate EdTech and lead.
Technology in the 21st Century ELA Classroom: Data-Driven Instruction and Student Success by Samantha Shaffner (@samanthasaffn2)
In this article, Ms. Shaffner provides an overview of the Edulastic platform for the use of formative assessment and how to utilize it as a platform to track student data to help us drive instruction. Take a look and read the article here.
New Podcasts to Help Build Your Teaching and Leadership Toolkit
Navigating Education – The Podcasts episodes from July 2021 to watch
In the month of July, four episodes of Navigating Education – The Podcast were released. So many important topics we discussed ranging from EdTech coaching, rural education, restorative justice, and bias within algorithms of the technology tools we utilize. Each conversation outlines great nuggets of information to build your teaching and leadership practices!
Also, Navigating Education – The Podcast released eight bonus episodes related to its Navigating the Toggled Term Series. Be sure to check them out by clicking this link here.
The Innovator’s Mindset (The Podcast)
The Biggest Barrier to Innovation – An episode on George Couros podcast, which outlines barriers to innovation. He discusses the barriers we see in education and outlines how we can overcome them.
Edu-Cashin Podcast
Edu-Cashin – A podcast by Kevin Leichtman, Ph.D., discusses tips and tricks for educators to build their side hustles as edupreneurs. For educators interested in learning how to start their own business, this is a great podcast to begin following!
Research on Teaching and Learning
Predictive Analytics Are Coming to K-12 – Big Data on Campus Putting Predictive Analytics to the Test
Colleges and universities have invested in predictive analytic models to determine which students are most likely to complete programs of study based on a variety of different metrics. This is in its infancy in K-12 education, but it will likely be a trend that will continue to grow in the upcoming years. An article produced by Education Next outlines how colleges and universities are doing this as well as how effective the practice is in determining student success. View this thought-provoking research article here.
Within this online blog that summarizes research related to teaching and learning, Paul Kirshner provides an immense number of articles summarizing the research in easy-to-read short articles. This is a blog you will have to favorite as the research and practicality of the instructional strategies associated with the research are immense.
We made it! The 2020-2021 school year is almost over. For many, the school year is about to end, which means there’s time to rest and recharge during summer. With time to rest and recharge, there may be time to spend learning at your own pace and what you want. As a result, the goal of the next few newsletters is to provide you with many options to learn new practices over the summer at your own pace to then apply to the next school year. These learning opportunities and resources include podcasts to listen to, instructional resources to store in your drive for next year, research articles to read, and voices from other educators that have amplified.
Ultimately, the goal of this newsletter is to be a helpful resource to help you continue your learning. Be sure to ask your professional learning network and colleagues within your educational organization to subscribe to receive this newsletter, which can be done by completing this form. Also, connect with me on Twitter @mattrhoads1990and check out more content on my website www.matthewrhoads.com
Pre-Orders – Purchase Your Copy for a Great Summer Read Before Next School Year
As we get closer to the summer, we are closing in on the release date of Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. Pre-order your copy of this book that will be a great playbook to navigate the present and future of education!
In this video demonstration, Dr. Rhoads outlines how Frayer Vocabulary can be utilized for a collaborative class activity called A-Z vocabulary. This strategy can be employed at the beginning of a unit or at the end for review. Groups of three students are assigned a slide. For each slide, group members must complete their portion of the slide associated with the vocabulary word. Once their Frayer Vocabulary slide is completed, a gallery walk will commence and students will review the slide deck. Then, on an individual basis, the slide deck can be used by students for retrieval practice. Last, a template slide deck has been added. Please make a copy to use for your classroom!
Template for Jigsaw Reading & Summarization Using NewsELA Articles
In this video demonstration, Dr. Rhoads takes you through the Jigsaw Reading strategy. In a twist, passages are assigned to groups and students work together on slides as they annotate and paraphrase the slides content. Then, once each group is completed, they write a combined summary on hyperlink to a Doc attached to the end of the slideshow. Each group’s summary along with groups who may have read a higher Lexile reading rendition of the same passage will have their summaries all in the same space.
In this article, Zach Groshell shows a number of instructional strategy integrations with EdTech tools. These instructional strategy integrations are known to help students learn. Take a moment to review this article as it shows a how mainstream EdTech tools we use everyday can be paired with strategies to help students learning.
EDUCATION RESEARCH ARTICLES TO REVIEW
Daniel Willingham is a famous cognitive scientist that researches and writes about learning. On Twitter, he shares many groundbreaking research articles that can impact our practice in the classroom. For this month’s education research articles to review, we have listed a number of research articles Dr. Whittingham has recommended and posted on social media. You can follow Dr. Willinnghan on Twitter @DTWillingham.
In this study, researchers found there was a positive association with screen time starting at four years old was significantly associated with dysregulation and negatively associated with mathematics and literacy grades at 8 years of age. Researchers recommend that parental involvement, specifically mothers, is key to regulating device usage.
In this study, researchers looked at early elementary aged children and looked at the development of reading comprehension. They found that executive functions do not have a significant direct effect on developing recording comprehension beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills. The results also showed that children who learned to decode well, their language skills and not executive functions have a strong effect on developing their reading comprehension. The authors of the study recommend interventions for reading in elementary school should stress the development of oral language skills.
NAVIGATING EDUCATION – THE PODCAST EPISODES TO CHECK OUT
Since last month, five new episodes of Navigating Education – The Podcast have been released. Take a listen to them as they are full of best practice nuggets to help your teaching and leadership practice. Starting in June, episodes of the podcast will feature guests. Dr. Rhoads will interview educators from across the world on a number of topics ranging from assessment, feedback, cognitive load, culturally responsive teaching, fine arts education, and much more!
Here are several articles and a podcast to amplify the voices of several educators. Each article and podcast can provide insight to help amplify your practice as a teacher and leader. From each of these articles, you will have a number of nuggets that you can implement immediately to amplify student learning!
In this blogpost, Zach Groshell outlines a number of research-based instructional strategies that can help students learn. He does a great job summarizing these strategies by outlining them in a table called “How Much Would Students Learn If,” which provides a list of rhetorical questions asking ourselves as educators what teaching strategies are effective versus the ones that are not effective.
In this article, Dr. Matthew Joseph and Shannon Moore explore a number of free alternative web-based EdTech tools that support learning. While there are many mainstream tools we all enjoy utilizing, there are many other EdTech tools that we should take a look at for next year. When looking for new tools for next school year, this article should be one of the first places you look to see what’s out there.
In an upcoming Navigating Education – The Podcast, Dr. Rhoads will interview Dr. Malik Boykin aka Malik Starx. Before listening to the podcast that will be released in July, this is a good episode to learn more about this influential educator, scholar, and music article.
The purpose of Navigating Education – The Newsletter is to provide all educators in K-12 and higher education with resources to help amplify their instruction and leadership. My goal as the author of this newsletter is to curate and develop a helpful resource of strategies, podcasts, blogs, research, and tips to navigate the present and future of education. Additionally, the goal of the newsletter is to amplify the voices of educators from across the United States and the world. Many educators are doing amazing work within classrooms and schools that can help us in our practice as educators whether we are in or outside of the classroom. In this newsletter, it cover the following topics:
Helpful Resources form April 2021 to Help your Practice as a Teacher and Leader
Introducing Navigating Educating – The Podcast
Update: Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders – Pre-orders Now Available!
Amplifying the Voices of Educators
Ultimately, the goal is to have the newsletter release at the end of each month with a monthly issue. If you find this resource helpful, please be sure to ask your professional learning network and colleagues within your educational organization subscribe, which can be done by completing this form.
Helpful Resources from April 2021 to Help your Practice as a Teacher and Leader
The goal of this section of the newsletter is to provide teachers and leaders with research articles and blogs that can help their practice as educators. Take a look at each resource as it’s been placed here to help amplify your practice!
Research Article: Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Overload during Learning While Using Multimedia Learning – Learn about how to reduce cognitive overload during learning when multimedia is involved. Cognitive overload is an important concept as instructors to be aware of as it relates to the capacity of our working memories to take on more information to process. If our working memory is overloaded with tasks and information, it makes learning difficult. Therefore, understanding strategies that help prevent overload are imperative in our learning environments for our students to learn effectively.
Blog Post: Teacher Feedback and Coaching During the Toggled Term: EdTech Tools to Help Teachers and School Leaders Observe Online & Blended Learning Classrooms – Within this blog post, several strategies are discussed relating to observing teachers within online and blended learning classrooms. Additionally, EdTech tools like SIBME and Edpuzzle are discussed as tools that can be utilized to provide teachers with feedback on recorded lessons. This is a great blog for instructional leaders and coaches who want to provide feedback to teachers as well as coach teachers throughout the year to improve their instructional toolkit.
Lectures & Panels
During March and April, I had the opportunity to host three panels sponsored by Paper learning for the Teacher Discussion Series. Themes related to the chapters in Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders, which focused on discussions centered on teaching in diverse environments and EdTech infused pedagogy from teachers around North America. Check them out by clicking on the links below.
In April 2021, Navigating Education – The Podcast was launched with the goal and focus on discussing relevant issues in education that help teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and community members navigate the present and future of education. The podcasts are available on all major podcast playing applications such as Anchor, Spotify, Breaker, and Google Podcasts. New episodes launch each Monday in three different formats ranging from individual bite sized professional learning monologues with the host Dr. Matt Rhoads, guest interviews, and spouse education talks featuring Dr. Matt and Alicia Rhoads.
If you are interested in coming on as a guest to the podcast, please complete this form. Episodes in the calendar are already filling up for the late spring and summer. Fill out the podcast guest form as I am excited to have conversations from educators across the world.
Update: Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders – Release Date in July 2020
As we get closer to the summer, we are closing in on the release date of Navigating the Toggled Term: A Guide for K-12 Classroom and School Leaders. We’ve had some early reviews of the book, which are detailed further on the books landing page at matthewrhoads.com. This book is a playbook for the present and future of K-12 education from the instructional and leadership lens as it’s practical, filled with research and how-to integrate instructional models and EdTech, and provides perspectives in the form of case studies from educators throughout the country on how to navigate our current times in education.
Reviews
“The Teacher Training Manual for Post-Pandemic Teaching” – Phillip Culter, CEO Paper
“An Essential Resource to Navigate Our Changing Education Landscape” – Alfonso Mendonza Jr. Host of MyEdTech Life, District EdTech Coordinator, & Google Innovator
Pre-Orders – Purchase Your Copy for a Great Summer Read Before Next School Year
In this segment of the newsletter, the goal is to provide recommendations regarding blogs, podcasts, and resources educators from around the world are producing.
Blogs: This month I recommend the following blogs to check out:
Dr. Catlin Tucker – In Dr. Tucker’s blog, you will see a wide variety of articles related to blended learning and technology infused instruction. In each post, she provides easy access to free resources that can help your instruction.
Dr. Janet Ilko – In Dr. Ilko has been in education for many years and has experience teaching almost every single grade level K-12 education. She is an advocate for student voice and agency, which is expressed in her blog. As a member of the National Writing Project and the San Diego Writing project, Dr. Ilko reflects in her blog relating to student agency, writing strategies, and amplifying the voices of her students.
Podcasts: For podcasts, I recommend:
3 Caffeinated Coaches – This podcast aims to enhance the practice of instructional coaches, educators, and leaders by discussing research, interviewing experts in the field, sharing experiences, and engaging in unique book study experiences. The hosts Shannon, Becky, and Georgina provide a diverse range of expertise ranging from coaching, instruction, and research, which provide educators opportunities to always learn new practices to help amplify their instruction, coaching, and leadership. I highly recommend this podcast as the dialogue between each host is entertaining and insightful, which makes for engaging episodes.
Dr. Will Podcast – This podcast aims to provide Edupreneurs and entrepreneurs a forum to discuss their business and ventures within K-12 education. Dr. Will Deyamport is the host who is also an Edupreneur in his own right, sits down and meets with a diverse set of edupreneurs who are making waves in education. From authors to consultants, each episode provides an excellent summary of their ventures and how they are conducting their business. Episodes are informative and can help any educator wanting to get involved in setting up their own education related businesses or building their business. I highly recommend it!
In September 2021, I had the opportunity to lecture doctoral students at Concordia University, Irvine (my alma mater) on how we can collect and export data from our EdTech tools we use in our classrooms and schools to make instructional decisions as well as utilize it for research projects.
Within this hour long lecturer, I discuss how we can export data from mainstream EdTech tools to be employed in our instructional decision-making and in our research. Currently, we are collecting and harvesting vast amounts of data, which can be utilized to help amplify our instruction, programs, and research to enhance student learning and outcomes. This thought is the theme for the lecture.
Overall, if you are a teacher, school leader, district leader, or an EdTech company, much of what I discuss is extremely relevant to modern schools and the direction we need to go to enhance what we do in our classrooms and schools. I encourage everyone to view this lecture and think about how this can affect your practices in the classroom and in schools.
Thank you to Dr. Belinda Karge and Concordia University, Irvine for the opportunity! I cannot wait to be back in the future to support educators in your School of Education programs.
Navigating the Present and Future of Education 