The Curious Educator - Blog

The Curious Educator

5 Reasons to Use a Bullet Journal

11/26/2020

My Bullet Journal

Evolved - that's what I have to say about my Bullet Journal. In the beginning, they were called my "notebooks". I am on version 7 of what I now call my Bullet Journal. Each year I have tweaked how I set my journal up and utilize it. I look back at each year's book and cherish the memories, documentation and learning that I see as I read through the pages. Ryder Carol is the original creator of the Bullet Journal Method and his book is a solid resource.

Five reasons why you should consider creating and using a Bullet Journal are:

They are customizable to meet your needs and budget
They are easy to Set-Up
They are visual
They are comprehensive, in that everything is in one place
They are helpful in tracking short and long term goals

I have a favorite when it comes to my physical Bullet Journal. I crack open a new Leuchtturhm 1917 every July. ( I start mine each year in July as I plan for the upcoming school year.) I love the feel and the weight of the Leuchtturm paper. At the beginning of each journal their is a blank table of contents. Utilizing the table of contents allows me to quickly reference notes. The Leuchtturhm 1917 also has pre-printed page numbers that can be referenced in the table of contents. These features make organizing and finding your content easy and efficient.

A Bullet Journal can be set up in a number of different ways. Some people's Bullet Journals are works of art, others, like mine, are not. (I have art envy for the effortless creativity and artistic skills that some people possess!) There are tons of resources you can sift through when setting your Bullet Journal up. Masha Plans is one blog that offers ideas and inspiration. Below is the method I am currently using with my Bullet Journal. I section my journal into three parts:

Weeks - I divide a page into thirds and give each week for the year a section. I enter in items that need to be taken care of during that week or notes that I need.
General - Day to Day Meetings and Notes (This is the largest section as most everything goes into these pages. I can find notes quickly by using the table of contents.
Learning - This section is where I take notes and process things that I learn during the year.

And finally pens, my favorite bullet journal accessory! I have tried a lot of different pens over the years and Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Medium pens have become a favorite of mine. They are reasonably priced, don't bleed through my Bullet Journal pages, write smoothly and come in a variety of colors. If you are reading this on Black Friday, Paper Mate Flairs are on sale today on Amazon for half off.

If you use a Bullet Journal and have tips or advice, please share them with me below. My Bullet Journal will continue to evolve!

And a quick shout out to others that I know on the Bullet Journal journey - Dan Greenberg, Amanda Seba, Michael McDonough and Kori Catlin!

Creating Rules in Email - It's probably not in your lesson plans!

11/15/2020

This week we held a meeting to touch base with student leaders on our campus. At the beginning of the meeting we opened it up and asked students how everything was going? We received some solid feedback about online learning and the challenges and successes that students were experiencing.

Communication came up a few times and specifically the challenge they were facing with email. This was something that I had not even thought about. Prior to COVID email was not a system we used across the school to routinely communicate with students. Our student email addresses are formatted with a string of numbers and at a domain that has been hard for students to remember. Students did use personal gmail or other domain specific addresses but we did not utilize our district addresses. Not having a centralized email system was one of the first things we realized we needed to use when we transitioned to distance learning. As we prepared to reopen in September virtually, we made sure that students were aware of their district emails and taught them how to find and sign into their accounts. And that's where we stopped. We assumed that accessing their email account was all that they needed to learn.

At the meeting, one student leader brought up the challenge of managing their email account. The student talked about the many notifications and assignments that they received from our learning management system as well as other platforms. As he was speaking I was thinking, we haven't introduced them at all to the tools that are available in their Outlook account to help them manage email and stay organized. (I know as an adult and experienced user of Outlook, I struggle to stay up to date and organized.) I explained that there was a way to set up rules in Outlook to filter emails into different folders as they arrived. Students' hands went up from across the meeting asking to be taught how to utilize this feature. I told them I would send out a screencast showing them how to create rules. Following the student meeting, I retold this story to a colleague. They looked at me and asked if I would send the screencast to them because they did not know how to create rules. Reminder, we don't know what we don't know.

While COVID has slowed learning in some ways, it has accelerated the learning in other areas that are not necessarily a part of the standards and course content. Many of these skills I am realizing we just assume students/adults know because they have had access to them on their device. I am going to continue to look for the nuggets of learning that are happening in spite of the pandemic.

If you haven't met with your students or solicited feedback, I highly recommend it. This is one of a handful of things we learned from one brief meeting.

Designing Online Asynchronous Learning Experiences

6/21/2020

In March we moved from face to face classroom experiences to emergency teaching. Teachers worked incredibly hard to move instruction from brick and mortar classrooms to a distance learning environment. As I visited classrooms virtually and looked at courses in our LMS, I became curious to learn more about what factors might contribute to a successful asynchronous learning experience.

When it comes to asynchronous learning, there needs to be a shift in thinking about a student’s workload, there no longer is classwork vs. homework, there is only learning. Think holistically; how much total time do you have with students in a given week? How long will each task or experience take a student on average to complete? Rice University created a tool that can help teachers gauge the amount of time it may take students to complete assignments.

Student agency gives students voice and often, choice, in how they learn. It is important because it gives students a stake in choosing from opportunities provided for them and triggers a greater investment of interest and motivation. The design of the learning experience must include clear goals that learners are working to demonstrate mastery in. If learners know what their goal is and trust that their teacher is going to allow them to move towards that goal while offering feedback, students are more invested in their own growth.

Instead of having students download large files of text, consider creating playlists that include diverse content in a variety of formats. Include links to academic resources, news sources, popular culture, and other online resources. In Jennifer Gonzalez’s podcast “Self-Paced Learning: How One Teacher Does It”, she interviews Natalie McCutchen. In this episode McCutchen shares about how she converted her pre-algebra class to a completely self-paced system. Students worked on different skills at their own pace and moved through the curriculum as they showed mastery. I highly recommend listening to this episode as it provides some connections to asynchronous instruction. A second podcast of Gonzalez's to add to your list is "Are You a Curator or a Dumper?" This episode offers guidelines, strategies, and tools to assist with the curation of content. (Personally, I feel students need to be taught the skill of curation.)

Asynchronous assignments by design must be clear, coherent, and concise in order to provide a smooth, navigable experience. You don’t want your students spending more time figuring out instructions than actually engaging in the work. When designing an asynchronous assignment, ask yourself the following question: "Am I reducing the cognitive load on my students?" Wayfinding is a new term for me. Wayfinding forces educators to step back and look at how students will move from point A to point B. Eric Hudson wrote "Hybrid Pedagogy". In it, Hudson does a nice job of explaining how important it is to design a learning experience that is easy for students to navigate. Take a minute and click over and read it, I promise you'll gain some insight.

8 tips to consider when designing asynchronous learning experiences:

Communication - checklists, calendar reminders, and instructor announcements can also help remind students to assess their progress. These reminders are necessary not because students have short attention spans or are unmotivated, but because the absence of a physical and face-to-face social interactions necessitates an alternative. Establishing a system that provides reminders to students in the same way each week is critical.

Organization - "chunking" activities and resources gives structure and a meaningful sense of fulfillment for the students as they work through them. What tends to turn off students, the most is the never-ending list of things to do in a course.

Consider creating a pacing guide that students can clearly follow. Here is an example. A calendar can be used in the same way, but a more narrative guide has also been shown to help students.

Make sure there are items for students to read, watch, and listen to. Let students pick and choose. Break your unit or lesson into individual tasks. Then clearly label and distinguish between tasks by placing an icon or white space between them. Organizing tasks into a table also adds organization. Examples of icons you can use are below. (All of these icons can be downloaded individually here. )

It’s important to remember that learners enter online spaces looking for what they need to learn. You do not want the design of your page to interfere with or distract from that goal in any way. Write concisely. Use images or other media only if it supports the intent of the page. Use no more than two fonts: one for headings and one for body text. (Top 10 Beautiful Google Font Combinations.) Adjectives you DON’T want to describe your pages are “crowded,” “busy,” or “overwhelming.”
Use the time outside of asynchronous tasks to connect one to one, or one to a few. Sometimes the feedback that you need to give students needs to be face to face. You can use Google Calendar's appointment slot feature to have students sign up for small group times to meet with you during office hours or tutorial times. This video will show you how.
Establish a system for students to self advocate and assess their learning and request specific follow up help. Click here to see a form that a student can complete to request additional support. (A plus for using a form is it also helps the teacher keep track of requests and have a record of who has asked for help and the resources that were shared.)
As you move through your course ask questions specifically about your role as the teacher, examples:
- Is the timeliness of my responses helpful?
- Are the types of responses you are getting helpful?
- Is there anything else I could be doing to help you?
- Were the directions clear, or were there points you didn't understand what you should be doing?

These are a few of the key take aways that I have gathered as I have looked more closely at designing asynchronous learning experiences. The more I read and learn, the more I realize how much work it is to do it well. If you have additional ideas and resources, please share them below!

A Focus on Instructional Design & Assessment

4/18/2020

As we move through our Covid 19 distance learning experience, my focus of inquiry has turned to what role instructional design and assessment play during distance learning. When you take away the carrot and the stick of earning a grade for engaging in learning, how do we motivate students to show up and engage in learning?

Focus on the critical learning targets - scale way back
Make the learning intention clear.
Make the learning relevant. Students should be able to answer the question "Why do I need to know this?"
Articulate the success criteria that will be used to determine when students meet a learning goal.
Provide examples or good models for students to reference.
Offer choice in how it can be learned
Focus on feedback
Be clear about how you will know if students "get it" and not worry about quantifying their performance on a scale of 0 -100

By making student learning our primary focus and helping students share that same focus, the learning experience moves from knowledge transmission to active learning. Teachers are the authors of their instructional design and should take into account the different ingredients when designing instructional experiences. Think about something that you are good at. More than likely, you were not always good at it. How did you get good at it? Look at the graphic below, were all or most of the elements below a part of your learning pathway to achieve the level of proficiency you now have now?

How can teachers that relied heavily on the common lecture format find success during distance learning? They must ensure that success criteria is established for earning credit for a skill or learning target. The success criteria must be clear, rigorous, and attainable. When students are working online and submitting evidence of their learning, teachers must make sure that they are assigning things that they can give feedback to the student on. Feedback should be offered along the way to ALL students so that they know where they are in mastering the criteria. It will also be critical to have additional resources or paths available to students who don't "get it" when others are ready to move on. The graphic below designed by Stephen Taylor was adapted from Grant Wiggins work and touches on the different avenues effective feedback can take online. Feedback needs to be a conversation and not a statement. John Hattie and Helen Timperley found that effective feedback answers three major questions asked by a teacher and/or by a student: Where am I going? (What are the goals?), How am I doing? (What progress is being made toward the goal?), and Where to next? (What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?) We must remember what the student does with the feedback is what matters.

Learning should be assessed formatively using digital tools in small checks for understanding along the way. These are low or no stakes experiences or practice assessments that yield feedback to students. Check-out Retrieval Roulettes developed by Adam Boxer as a tool to use. The brain science behind retrieval practice is solid and this is an excellent tool to empower students. It allows them to spiral back through content knowledge.

Generating opportunities for students to give you "summative output" can be done by student created products or student performance within an online testing environment. Check out 100 Things Students Can Create to Demonstrate What They Know or the website Exam.net. Exam.net is free to use right now if your school is outside Sweden. An additional resource for math teachers to look at is a post by Alice Keeler, From @mathdiana: Have Students Talk About Math. (I prefer to call it a task not a test” – @mathdiana)

During these difficult times, we will learn new and better ways to guide students along a learning pathway than placing a number on a paper. I believe that growing and getting stronger in instructional design and assessment practices will transfer to improved learning experiences for students once we are back in our brick and mortar classrooms. And this goes without saying, but if you have a solid relationship formed with students this is all going to be a lot easier!

If you have additional resources and ideas on instructional design, assessment and feedback practices, please share them! I know that I have only scratched the surface in my own learning.

Distance Learning....Resources and Reflections from Week 1

4/4/2020

The last thing I feel like doing right now is being on the computer but I want to pause and reflect and gather some resources that I have learned from. As we finish our first week of distance learning, we have felt the weight of this quote, "Progress is impossible without change. Change Makes Us Grow." I purposefully chose the word weight, it's because the work has been heavy and the educators that I am surrounded by have worked hard, long hours. We have grown, not just a little but a LOT....

Key take aways from week one:

There are many benefits to starting slow. There is less stress for teachers and students as everyone is given additional time to get used to the new normal.
Creating a schedule that is flexible and allows for students to work and connect at times that work for them is critical.
Allow for time for teachers to connect with students and just normalize what their online space will look like. Check-out the fun themes that math teacher Julie Burnside put in place in her live sessions.
While a teacher may not be physically present in a classroom, there are many ways to make oneself known in a digital space. Achieving connection online means utilizing a range of different communication methods and ensuring that you check in on them daily or hourly if needed. Discussion boards, emails, announcements, and data forms, are just some of the ways you can be present each day in your online classroom.
Establishing and teaching routines, systems, and expectations clearly and consistently. Fewer “How do I…” or “Where can I…” questions and a smoother transition to distance learning. The two infographics below are good resources to use with students regarding netiquette.

Created by Jennifer Wathall

Created by Touro Edu

Asynchronous learning is different than synchronous learning. Creating a learning experience that students navigate independently takes time. Some of the resources and tips I have found to helpful are below.

Use a planning tool. Here is one planning template and here is a second one. Using a template might help you structure the learning in a different way than you would in a brick and mortar classroom.
Encourage students to make a daily schedule to help them be successful. Oscar Cymerman shares a resource that helps student identify their chronotype and offers different schedules students might follow. You can read what a chronotype is here and why it's helpful to know yours.
- What Chronotype are you?
- Setting up your distance learning routine.
Organize the content in a pathway that learners will move through. Defining the path can be as simple as loading the resources and writing in you agenda the order in which students should move through them. There are other ways in which resources can be presented to students. One example of this is the use of Hyperdocs.
- Check-out the linked post and podcast about creating a hyperdoc by Jennifer Gonzalez.
- (Here is an example of a hyperdoc that I saw on Twitter today by Kevin Feramiso) You might also read this post,
- "7 Tips To Create Personal Learning Paths In eLearning" by Christopher Pappas. Feedback along the way is crucial. That's for another blog post!
- Linked is a folder of templates you can copy and use to create your own hyperdocs.
Create a system for students to contact and connect during office hours. Trying to field requests and questions through email can be very difficult when you have a large class load as our teachers do at the high school level. Have students submit through a Google Form or post to Padlet. That way you have a central place to look and a easy visual to see if you have missed anyone.
Seth Godin shared tips for Video Conferencing.
- 5 Tips for Creating Instructional Videos.
- 3 Ways to Use Video Conferencing with Students Learning Remotely
Do This Not That - created by Alison Yang - This is one of my favorite resources to share.

And the last take away I'll share is this....extend grace and follow that with empathy and repeat. Everyone is doing the best that they can.

Quick Tip - Share Work Via Notes

3/29/2020

As we begin our transition to distance learning having students submit hand written or created material will be something we need to make simple. It's easy to snap a picture and send or upload, but now on the iPhone it's SO easy to actually scan it into a note and upload it directly to Google Classroom or Microsoft. The quality is much better than an actual photo too!

In the past I have used the Office Lens app by Microsoft. It's a good alternative, but using the Notes scan feature is just faster.

Check-out the short screencast below to see how it works.

This is just one more tip that might help a student or teacher's workflow be more efficient!

Quick Tip - Access Google Classroom Classes in 2 Clicks

3/17/2020

Whew.....what a week! We are off and running organizing what distance learning will look like at my high school. I want to share a quick tip that I learned this week around creating a folder in my bookmarks bar in Chrome and adding classes in one place from Google Classroom.

First make sure that your Bookmarks Bar is visible.

Next go to Google Classroom and sign in so that all of your classes are visible.
Watch this short screencast and you will access one of your classes in two clicks!

Tricks like this save time and increase efficiency. Let me know how it works for you!

Create a Custom Header for Google Classroom - Super Fast

3/1/2020

This weekend I was creating a new course in Google Classroom and wanted to use my own image. Experimenting with the right size and placement of images took me a bit of time. Have you had the same header for awhile or are you creating a new class? Make your own custom header fast using this template. l

Click on this link
Go to file
Select make a copy to edit you own file

Watch a quick screencast to see how to use the template below.

Students will notice that you have made a change! Use this template to quickly create new headers and keep your Google Classroom page updated throughout the year.

I would love to see examples of headers that you create!

Super Easy - Create an Audio File

2/17/2020

This Voice Recorder is a convenient and very simple online tool that can be used right from your browser. It allows you to record your voice using the built-in microphone on your device and save it as an mp3 file. Just click the mic on the landing screen and you are on your way to recording your audio file.

Additional features;

it's free (FREE),
the tool auto trims the beginning and end of recordings for you
allows the user to crop the recording and share just what is needed
all of your recordings are secure, accessible only to you

Student voice is powerful. An audio file is a product that a student can create as a product of their learning. When might you use voice to enhance or show learning? Check out this Voice Recorder to make the process simple.

3 Tools to Use to Check for Understanding

2/1/2020

Checking for understanding is the backbone of effective teaching. As learners are introduced to new material and concepts, many students make errors as they process the information or they don’t have adequate background knowledge to be able to form connections. And the larger the chunk of material that is presented, the more likely there is for learners to develop misconceptions.

Effective teachers stop to check for understanding by asking a lot of questions that require responses, have students summarize what the understand, or have students agree or disagree with other student responses. Through participating in these checks for understanding students have a chance to elaborate on the material and augment connections to other learning in their long term memory or signal to the teacher that parts of the material need to be retaught.

In the book Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques in Your Classroom, Fisher and Frey paint a picture of an ineffective learning experience for a student.

Checking for understanding permeates the teaching world. If you doubt that, consider the last lecture you heard. Whether the lecture was about chemical reactions, the great American novel, or the causes of World War II, the person speaking most likely checked for your understanding several times during the lecture by using such common prompts as "Any questions?", "Did you all get that?", "Everybody understand?", or "Does that make sense?" Rather than respond to these questions, most learners will sit quietly, and the lecturer doesn't know whether they understand, they are too confused to answer, they think they get it (but are off base), or they are too embarrassed to show their lack of understanding in front of others. Such general questions are simply not sufficient in determining whether or not students "get it."

Allow your mind to flashback to a lesson that you taught or observed that bombed. (I have many memories of learning experiences that I created that fell short because I did this.) Chances are good that the questions above were asked as described. Knowing ahead of time where common misconceptions occur for students helps determine the best places to stop and get a quick pulse on where the students are at in their understanding. There are many ways to check for understanding during instruction. Varying the instructional practice that you use for formative assessment helps keep students engaged and actively participating.

Here are three simple strategies that are easy to use to check for understanding:

Socrative Quick Question is a dependable efficient way to check students understanding. While multiple choice and true false questions can give quick feedback, the short answer option creates an opportunity for teachers to receive a lot more information from students. Quick Question requires no preparation time on the part of the content teacher. The use of Socrative also allows for every student in the room to contribute and share their thinking in a safe space. Many students would rather sit in silence than share a thought that they are unsure about.

Response cards are a quick, no tech strategy that supports active student participation. This strategy allows the teacher a quick check of understanding by visually seeing each student’s level of understanding by the scanning the student response cards by color. Response cards can be used in groups, as Dr. Waller did in the video above. (Dr. Waller is an amazing AP English 3 teacher at Bellaire High School in the Houston ISD). Response cards can also be used by individuals as @FastCrayon (Amy Fast) shared in this tweet. The use of student response cards is also demonstrated in this Teaching Channel Video.

Plickers is a blended tool that allows teachers to use technology while eliminating the need for students to have a device in hand. Students just need to rotate a card to show their answer. Teachers use the Plicker's App to scan and to project answers. Questions can be loaded previously or posed in the moment. It is simple to use, simple to set up, and only requires one electronic smart device which reduces risk of failure or technical difficulties. All students have to do is pull out their Plicker Card and they are ready for the questions. You can download a set of cards here.

@BurnsideMath shared the idea of having students glue their Plicker Card on the back of their interactive notebook. When she wants to ask a quick question, students just pick up their notebook to answer. This eliminates the need to have any device out to respond.

These are just three of a countless number of strategies that can be used in classrooms. If you are looking for additional strategies, check out these resources:

Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques in Your Classroom by Fisher and Frey.
56 Examples of Formative Assessment ( A crowd sourced slide deck by David Wess.)

Do you have some "go to" strategies that you like to use to check for understanding? I would love to hear more ideas of which strategies you have found to be effective.