#teachtech

April 2nd, 2023 – Amogh had a fabulous time with Elenco’s “Teach Tech Mechanical Coding Robot” kit! He built and programmed the “Mech Coding Throwing Bot” and was awestruck watching the bot turn around, pull its mechanical arms backwards to release the ball. Recommended Ages: 10+ years. (Can be independently assembled & coded by 7+ year-old intellectually gifted children). (more…) “”

Today marked 2 weeks of distance learning with my students.  It has been an incredible amount of work to train students on how to use the technology to a degree, revamping my lesson plans and creating a balance of collaborative projects with direct instruction and student practice.  Not to mention helping students develop a routine for motivating themselves to do school at home.

Today I found out that we will be losing our spring break,  I was devastated.  These past two weeks have been taxing.  The last time I worked this many hours was my first year teaching.  I was planning on using it to plan, and maybe finish painting my bathroom that I started in October.

Distance Learning means that we have fundamentally changed how school is executed.  All of my skills in classroom management are no longer applicable.  I make it a goal to talk to every single student every day.  I need to know how the learning activity is working for them so I constantly speak to them and elicit responses about how much they understand.  We also talk about their lives and I do my best to know them. A lot of my classroom management is structured around them knowing that I genuinely care about them.  Throw that out the window with this new structure.  

So today I tried something new.  I earned a 66%, so that is a passing grade.  Today I planned on Google Meets with 3 of my 4 classes. (My other class goes tomorrow).  Students have been working on projects and today was presentation day, 45 minutes with time slots already chosen on a collaborative google doc.  2/3 classes were successful so I’ll take it. It turns out that there was an issue with the wifi.  The Hubs and I can’t be on the same extender at the same time and after the video chat crashed for the 5th time my Medical Intervention class bailed and decided that students could opt to record their presentation and post it to the google classroom or try again with the Google Meet on Friday.  

We would call this Habit of Mind thinking flexibly.  I am proud that my students were just happy to see each other and helped me to figure out a solution that works for them and made sense for our goals.  

My student presentations were great! Students had to hear the same content over and over and will have to present on the same, but a requirement was to include a video of each concept.  This allowed me to reinforce the content in lots of different ways and students had ownership over how they presented content.  

Students have been working so hard! They have had to learn in isolation, without their peers or teachers to learn from. Teachers have been working so hard in order to deliver meaningful instruction in this new novel learning environment.  We need a break.  We deserve a mental break.  

For so many teachers across the country within an hour of finding out that we were closing school for two days which turned into two weeks which now likely will turn into the rest of this year and asked to pivot to completely remote learning.  For everyone this pivot has left our heads spinning.  

It took some time to process how I will teach the rest of Chemistry, Medical Interventions and a new course I just designed, Environmental Solutions. completely remotely.  How will I still allow my students to have hands on inquiry based lab investigations that require collaboration with their peers and construction of knowledge when we can’t do any of this together.?? That piece I am still working on... more to come on this...

So for now... I will remember... I love technology, it makes my life easier in so many ways.  So here is how I am currently leveraging technology in order to continue to teach my students remotely:

1. Google Forms as a Quiz. Google Forms can create automatically graded multiple choice quizzes that automatically import grades into the built in gradebook.  Additionally you can add feedback if the student gets the question wrong in the form of text, a picture or a video.  So when they get the question wrong a video of how to solve the problem pops up. I am creating and assigning reviews this way.  They are labeled as HW in my google classroom.    

Pro Tip: I have a subscription to Problem-Attic through my district which allows me to generate a quiz from a bank of Regents Questions.  It exports to a Google Form with key already generated.  It also includes an image of the question which is super nice for Chemistry.  

2.Flexbook 2.0 cK-12 is an online interactive textbook.  It has text with embedded videos and challenges.  It is also totally free! You can also assign problems from the end of the chapter.  I just created a class and assigned the Ecology chapter from the High School Biology Book for my Environmental Solutions Class. 

3. EdPuzzle! EdPuzzle is my favorite! It allows you to embed question into a video, and of course multiple choice grades itself automatically.  You can use any video, and they have a library of already created videos that other teachers have embedded questions into.  I screencast myself and ask leading questions.  There is a no skipping feature so everyone gets the lesson individually at their own pace.  Also I have way more information now than I did live to 28 kids in one room.  

School Flyer

Thought this was interesting.  I ran a poll the other day and some of you guys/gals answered it.  Something that stands out to me is that although most of you think education would be free...

But when asked if you would donate to a platform to help it provide free education a good many of you said you wouldn’t be willing.

We don’t bore you with lectures or provide you with information you can’t make use of.  Our classes are hands on, showing you how the job is done and providing you with the same tools the creator had so you can try to do the job yourself.

Don’t let your dreams fade into the backdrop, start learning and pursue your interest today. Visit Createch Academy today.