Homework Deathwatch 2017! - · PDF fileWinter 2016 » Vol. 38 » No. 4 ON Homework...

Winter 2016 » Vol. 38 » No. 4

ON

Homework Deathwatch

Re la t i ng w i t h S t uden t s >> L eg i s l a t i v e Upda t e >> Spo t l i gh t on Membe r s

PLUS: 9 More Entries in Our First-Ever CUE Shortlist

2017!

Professional Development Independent Study Courses for Educators

$10 off per course using code A11612CPD

ce.fresno.edu/cpd/courses/

The next step on your

pay scale

is possible.

cue.org • Winter 2016 OnCUE 3

CO

NTE

NTSCONTENTS WINTER 2016

DEPARTMENTSUPFRONT: How Can We Develop Positive Student-Teacher Relationships in a 21st-Century EnvironmentRay Chavez

BITS AND BYTES

COLUMNSLEGISLATIVE ADVOCACYCollaboration and Strategic Implementation LegislationJohn Cradler

LEARNING NETWORK FOCUS The Teacher-Student Relationship Change Agent: CommunicationTim Landeck

OnCUE Editor Lisa Kopochinski [email protected]

Design Kesler Communications [email protected]

Copy Editor Mary Kopp

Contributing Writers Ray Chavez, John Cradler, Pam Hernandez, Jenny Kostka, Tim Landeck, Taylor Mali, Antonio Manriquez, Jonathan Natividad, Ryan O’Donnell, Doug Robertson, Erin Schwartz, Bill Selak, Adam Welcome

Mike Lawrence, CEO mlawrence@cue. orgCUE, 877 Ygnacio Valley Road, Suite 200Walnut Creek, CA 94596Phone 925.478.3460 Fax 925.934.6799 [email protected]

2016-2017 CUE Board of DirectorsRay Chavez President [email protected]

Andrew Schwab Vice President/Treasurer [email protected]

Jason Borgen Secretary [email protected]

Suzanne Mitchell Assistant Treasurer [email protected]

Lainie Rowell Member-at-Large [email protected]

Tim Green Member [email protected]

Kim Harrison Member kimevansharrison@ gmail.com

Diane Main Member [email protected]

Roger Wagner Member [email protected]

7

9

12

34

30 Years of IT Innovation

11::1 Classroom Innovation1 Classroom Innovation

1275 Puerta Del Sol San Clemente, CA 92673 1-800-346-6315 www.BuySehiEdu.com

For the past 30 years Sehi Computer Products has supported schools by providing educators with innovative classroom solutions

that engage students and advance academic achievement.

HP Sales, Service and Support

Chromebooks

Mobility Solutions

PCs and Laptops

Printers & Imaging

HP Networking

Server Solutions

Storage Solutions

Managed Print

Audio and Video

Digital Displays

Warranty Services

Supplies & Accessories

Chrome Services

Classroom Solutions


CO

NTE

NTS

FEATURESIn Memoriam: What Seymour Papert Meant to UsJenny Kostka

California Districts and Schools Chosen for Their Exemplary Learning

Secret Handshakes and Student-Teacher Relationships Doug Robinson

Relationships Matter MostPam Hernandez & Adam Welcome

Communication ToolsRyan O’Donnell

The First-Ever CUE Shortlist5 to Love & 5 to Lose

Want to Know What’s Up at School? Check Twitter!Bill Selak & Erin Schwartz

The Evolution of Twitter at La Habra High SchoolKarl Zener

A Metaphorical Exploration or This is a (Modified) ThatBy Taylor Mali, CUE 2017 Keynote Speaker

After the Finkel FellowshipBy Jonathan Natividad

Spotlight on MembersMeet Jason Seliksar, Margaret Agbowo & Scott Smith

AdvertisingPaid advertising accepted in accordance with editorial policy. For ad deadlines or additional information, please contact CUE, 877 Ygnacio Valley Road, Suite 200, Walnut Creek, CA 94596, 925.478.3460 cue.org/advertising/oncue

OnCUE journal (ISSN 0739-9553) is published and bulk-mailed four times during the academic year by CUE, and is one of the benefits of membership. Membership for CUE is $40/year,

U.S. regular rate, $30/year, U.S. student rate, and $20/year retired rate. Corporate memberships are available. Entire contents Copyright 2016 by CUE unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. To reprint articles that are copyrighted by the author, you must contact the author for permission. All other items may be reprinted for educational use, but not for sale, with the provision that proper credit is given to OnCUE and to the author, if any.

INFORMATION CUE Rock Star

Join the CUE Movement

JET Review

CUE Professional Learning

Calendar of Events

CUE 2017 National Conference 23

10

15

16

18

20

31

36

39

4043

1414

44

8

38

CONTENTS WINTER 2016

CUE inspires innovative learners by fostering community, personalizing learning, infusing technology, developing leadership, and advocating educational opportunities for all.

33

*Compared to leading 1-chip DLP business and education projectors based on NPD data, July 2011 through June 2012. Color brightness (color light output) measured in accordance

with IDMS 15.4. Color brightness will vary depending on usage conditions.

EPSON is a registered trademark and EPSON Exceed You Vision is a registered logomark of Seiko Epson Corporation. Copyright 2016 Epson America, Inc.

D’Arce BuescherPhone: 707-364-8664Email: [email protected]: Northern and Central California

Contact your Epson rep today:Alex Corfar Phone: 657-221-0961Email: [email protected]: Southern California

Wow students with 3x brighter colors from Epson Projectors.*

• Interactive Projectors

• Classroom Projectors

• Document Cameras

• Speakers, Mounts & Lamps

• Interactive Projectors • Document Cameras

407-848 EPSON CUE Ad Update Jan 2016.indd 1 1/5/16 10:38 AM


UPF

RON

THOW CAN WE DEVELOP POSITIVE STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS IN A 21ST-CENTURY ENVIRONMENT?Ray Chavez

A strong relationship between student and teacher is key to a successful learning experience for both student and teacher. What a student learns from a teacher and his/her instruction is often dependent on the positive relationship that is established.

Over the years, many of us in the teaching profession have experienced the joy of having very positive relationships with students that have led to increased success. Also as students, who can deny the impact of a supportive and encouraging relationship with a teacher that made a profound impact in our lives? Many students today feel isolated and disconnected from school not having developed the kind of relationships with teachers that help them succeed.

As we look to the research related to school connectedness for students we see three school characteristics that stand out as helping young people feel connected to school while simultaneously encouraging student achievement: (1) high academic standards coupled with strong teacher support; (2) an environment in which adult and student relationships are positive and respectful; and (3) a physically and emotionally safe school environment (Blum, 2005).

While many of us can attest—based on our own experience—that learning and succeeding in school requires high standards, strong teacher support and safe environments, we can also affirm that positive adult and student relationships are essential for student engagement. Further research by the National Research Council & Institute of Medicine (2004) confirms “supportive personal relationships are critical in promoting and maintaining student engagement.”

The question then posed for us as educators is, “How will we develop these positive relationships in a 21st-century learning environment?” We have been focused on building the technology infrastructures and providing the professional development necessary to utilize the tools of the 21st-century for communication, collaboration, and critical thinking (e.g.,

Web 2.0). We have also enjoyed some success in utilizing tools/applications that students have become accustomed to using in their daily lives (e.g., social media). This is to be commended as we seek to address issues of equity, access, and powerful learning environments for our students.

However, connectedness is more than acquiring devices and getting connected to the Internet.

As we acquire more devices as part of one-to-one initiatives and move to more online learning and blended learning approaches, we would be wise to remember the student teacher relationship is key.

I hope you enjoy this edition of OnCUE.

Ray Chavez is the President of CUE Board of Directors. He has been a teacher, instructional specialist, and administrator in public education the past 25 years. He is currently the director of the Instructional Technology Outreach division at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Ray recently earned his

doctorate in education leadership and administration with a special emphasis in technology. He has presented at numerous technology conferences, taught classes, and consulted on issues related to the use of technology in public schools. He can be reached at [email protected].

REFERENCESBlum, R. W. (2005). A Case for School Connectedness. Educational Leadership, 62(7), 16–20.

National Research Council, & Institute of Medicine (Eds.). (2004). Engaging schools: fostering high school students’ motivation to learn. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.

Educators are Rock Stars.

Change the way you teach!

MAKE-IT AND TAKE-IT PD FOR TEACHERS

Every school has a story to tell. Let yours be a Hero’s Journey.

HANDS-ON LEARNING FOR ADMINS

Give them the training they deserve!

DISTRICT-SPECIFIC TRAINING IN

ROCK STAR STYLE

CUE.ORG/BlackLabel Affordable, high-quality PD.

For more details visit CUE.org/PL #CUEROCKSTAR @CUEROCKSTAR


BITS

AN

D B

YTESBITS AND BYTES

10 Years of Certified InnovatorsGoogle for Education

CALIFORNIA STUDENT MEDIA FESTIVALNow in its 51st year, the California Student Media Festival is our nation’s oldest student media festival. The festival is produced jointly by CUE and PBS SoCal. Over the past 19

years, the California Student Media Festival has awarded more than $120,000 to California schools. It has expanded to include the work of more than 6,000 student contestants from schools across the state. The festival exists to celebrate the amazing media and multimedia projects produced by California’s best and brightest students and teachers — rewarding and acknowledging their successful classroom work at an awards event in June. The Festival showcases what can be accomplished when talented students and dedicated teachers work together integrating media and multimedia into education. Check out the 2016 Festival video at www.cue.org/csmf.

CUE CEO PARTICIPATED IN UNESCO PROJECT IN CHINACUE CEO Mike Lawrence joined other educational experts from around the world in China in July to take part in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) project provisionally titled “Best Practices for School-Based Mobile Learning.” The worldwide initiative took place in Beijing from July 25-27 where foundations were laid for the two-and-a-half-year project. Lawrence was tapped to join the project because of CUE’s expertise providing professional development opportunities to educators in North America and elsewhere as well as CUE’s status as an Official Coalition Partner of Future Ready Schools. Lawrence spoke to the assemblage on the topic of “Future Ready Schools of the U.S.”

10TH ANNIVERSARY OF GOOGLE CERTIFIED INNOVATOR PROGRAMCUE CEO Mike Lawrence attended the 10th Anniversary celebration of the Google Certified Innovator program. Mike, along with CUE Member Chris Walsh, two of the co-founders of the program in 2006, were recognized at a 24-hour worldwide celebration held in Mountain View, Sydney, London, and New York on November 7, 2016.

CUE EXTENDS DEADLINE FOR FREE MEMBERSHIPCEO Mike Lawrence extended one

year of free CUE membership to each of the more than 20,000 new teachers currently involved in this statewide effort to support and train them. “In recognition of the extreme teacher shortage our state is facing, CUE wanted to extend to California’s newest teachers access to our network of the region’s most innovative educators,” said Lawrence. Any 2016-2017 induction program participants should contact their Regional Conveners to take advantage of the opportunity. Memberships must be redeemed by December 31, 2016 and will extend 12 months from the date of registration.

TED TALKS EVENT EXPLORED CHANGES IN EDUCATIONPBS SoCal and CUE hosted an evening of big ideas in education on September 10, with TED Talks: Education Revolution in Santa Monica, California. The event explored changes in education through talks from local educational innovators and included Erin Gruwell, teacher, author, and founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation; Victor Rios, award-winning professor and author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys; and The Amoeba People, a science-focused rock band. The event was FREE and open to the public.

Winter 2016 OnCUE • cue.org10

IN M

EMO

RIAM

WHAT SEYMOUR PAPERT MEANT TO USBy Jenny Kostka

Let’s play a game. Guess when the following quotes were first published:

“[W]hen a child learns to program, the process of learning is transformed. It becomes more active and self-directed. In particular, the knowledge is acquired for a recognizable personal purpose. The child does something with it.”

“[M]any children are held back in their learning because they have a model of learning in which you have either ‘got it’ or ‘got it wrong’.”

“Most of what has been done up to now under the name ‘educational technology’ or ‘computers in education’ is still at the stage of the linear mix of old instructional methods with new technologies.”

Any of those could have been posted on Twitter in the last week, right? You’ve got growth mindset, self-directed learning, lamenting the use of potentially transformative technology to sustain the status quo. If that last one had included the word “worksheets” it would have been just about perfect.

In fact, all those quotes come from Mindstorms, a book written by Seymour Papert in 1980. 1980! For Pete’s sake, I was wearing diapers in 1980. Papert’s work in education, going back to the 1970s, was, if you’ll pardon the cliché, truly revolutionary and ahead of its time. And if you’ll also pardon me being a little bit dramatic, it changed my life.I first read Mindstorms when I was trying to learn more about Scratch, the block-based coding program developed at the MIT Media Lab. Mitch Resnick, who leads the Lifelong Kindergarten group that created Scratch, was a student of Papert’s. The book was mentioned over and over again in everything I was reading as The Book that originated Scratch’s open, exploratory, and powerful approach. So of course I read it, and was completely blown away by how clearly and compellingly he wrote about kids and computers.

He called his philosophy “constructionism,” and he expressed it by saying that kids (and adults, for that matter) are motivated and inspired to learn when they are using that learning to make something they care about, that a teacher’s most important role is to provide them with the tools and freedom to make those things, and that the computer is an especially powerful tool when kids get to use it for creation.

After reading his book, I started to look for more opportunities to let my students make stuff. I started to give fewer directions and more freedom (which was really hard). I started to let them fail a little bit more, and resisted the urge to correct and figure things out for them (which was even harder).

Eventually, I even took a year away from the classroom to study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where ScratchEd, Scratch’s research and collaboration with teachers, is based. I took a class on constructionism that made my head explode and I spent as much of my year as possible learning about how to bring making and

A Heartfelt Tribute to Seymour Papert by Gary S. Stager, Ph.D. cue.tc/2eyYsdiSeymourPapert

Gary Stager Talks About Seymour Papert at TEDx ASB cue.tc/2dEovkjSeymour

In May 2000, Seymour Papert delivered a great keynote address at CUE’s 2000 Annual Conference. cue.tc/2gwmVDKPapert


IN M

EMO

RIA

Mconstructionism into my classes. For me, Mindstorms was the catalyst for the biggest and best changes I’ve ever made in the way I teach.

It may have taken a while for Papert’s constructionism to become widespread, but these days it’s everywhere: the maker movement, the push for computer science, project-based learning. Maybe the word constructionism isn’t exactly a buzzword (yet), but the ideas pop up in all sorts of forms and in all sorts of places. “Learning explodes when you stay with it.” “The kind of knowledge children most need is the knowledge that will help them get more knowledge.” (Seriously, the guy is endlessly quotable.) Seymour Papert died on Sunday, July 31, at the age of 88, but these ideas aren’t going away anytime soon. At least not for me.

Jenny Kostka is a science enthusiast, an obsessive nerd, and a mom. She

teaches high school physics, astronomy, engineering, and computer science at the South Shore Charter Public School in Norwell, MA, where she tries to bring making and creativity into all aspects of learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

MEMORIES OF SEYMOURBy Dr. David Thornburg, Ph.D.

I had the honor of knowing MIT Professor Seymour Papert for most of my professional life. For those to whom his name is new, Seymour was arguably the first to think seriously about the positive impact personal computers could have on children – thoughts he shared far and wide years before the personal computer came to market. He believed that the real power of these tools would be unleashed if kids could program the computers themselves. The question, of course, is what the language should look like.

Alan Kay introduced me to Seymour when Alan and I were at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), probably in 1972. By this time Papert and his colleagues were able to get a kid-friendly version of LISP created, which they called Logo. Various flavors of Logo remain today and the block-like languages Scratch and Snap are just two recent incarnations of the Logo philosophy whose legacy goes back to those early days.

On the hardware front, Alan Kay wanted to make a tablet-sized computer called the “Dynabook” for which I invented the world’s first touch screen in 1973. (Yes, this was all done many years before personal computers were even on the market.) At PARC, we build the Alto computer – the precursor to the Macintosh that we had a decade before the Mac was introduced. While the Alto was a desktop computer (actually, a desk-sized computer), the dream of a tablet with a flat panel display was never far from our mind.

But Professor Papert’s contributions went way beyond the world of technology. As a former student of Jean Piaget, he embraced the constructivist ideal represented by project-based learning. Beyond that, he was the developer of a related pedagogical model – “constructionism” – in which he made the point that students confirm their learning through the creation of external artifacts. As Seymour said on numerous occasions, it doesn’t matter if the artifact is a poem or a sand castle. This observation is one reason that the educational thinker, Gary Stager, calls Papert the founder of the “maker movement.”

David Thornburg Ph.D. is an award-winning futurist, author, and consultant whose clients range across the public and private sector, both in the United States and in Brazil. As the founder and director of global operations for the Thornburg Center, he conducts research and provides staff development. His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge.


LEGISLATIVE A

DVO

CA

CY

COLLABORATION AND STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION LEGISLATIONBy John Cradler, CUE Policy and Legislative Consultant

Since the last edition of OnCUE, legislation and policy activities have focused on collaboration with other education associations and new computer science strategic implementation legislation. Ongoing updates regarding educational policy and legislation updates as well as related prior OnCUE articles are found in the OnCUE archives located on the CUE website.

COLLABORATION WITH CALIFORNIA EDUCATION ASSOCIATIONS

CUE is taking a leadership role in the establishment of a state-level educational technology collaborative. The purpose of the collaborative is to increase the probability of gaining support for issues of interest to CUE defined in the CUE advocacy platform that are of common interest to other professional education associations. This is critical in that technology access and use, clearly, and increasingly has an impact on all aspects of education.

After much discussion and planning the first of planned periodic meetings of the collaborative were held in Sacramento in October. Education associations represented in person at the first meeting were CUE, K12 HSN, CCESSA, and on video conference were CETPA, ACSA, and the Imperial COE.

Other potential association members included California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), California Teachers Association (CTA), Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), California School Boards Association (CSBA), Small School Districts Association (SSDA), California State Employees Association (CSEA), and the California Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (CASCD).

The group shared the belief that we are stronger working together on shared issues, and having a framework for collaboration will allow us to respond more rapidly to issues with a unified voice. Based on conversations at the first meeting, following are the issues of mutual interest that we agreed to work on together from 2016 to 2018.

The initial intention of the collaborative is to create policy statements for these issues and create an action plan.

• Net Neutrality

• Security and data privacy

• 1-to-1 access to computers

• Curriculum integration

• Professional development

• Home access to computing devices and the Internet

Other discussion topics that emerged in the meeting included:

• Broadening the purpose of the collaborative to focus on “modernizing” or increasing instructional impact and learning opportunities with the integration of effective and appropriate technology resources into instruction and learning experiences.

• Preparing for and conducting informational hearings at the State Capitol to inform legislators about the critical current and future educational needs that can be addressed with technology.

• Focusing on professional development of educators offered by associations, beyond CUE to insure that the role of technology is communicated.

• Establish state budget priorities that can be supported and actively advocated by all members of the collaborative.

CUE also added an additional policy and legislative consultant located near Sacramento to provide a closer link to Sacramento-based collaborative advocates and other Sacramento activities specifically relevant to CUE. Ongoing activities of the collaborative will be reported in future CUE policy and legislation updates and CUE conferences.


LEG

ISLA

TIVE

AD

VOC

AC

YNEW CALIFORNIA COMPUTER SCIENCE LEGISLATION APPROVED BY GOVERNOR BROWN

Assembly Bill 2329, Computer Science Plan: This bill by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla was signed by Governor Brown on September 27. This bill was actively supported by CUE as well as most of the education associations potentially part of the coalition mentioned in this article. The bill requires State Superintendent Torlakson to convene an advisory panel to prepare recommendations for a K-12 Computer Science Strategic Implementation (CCSSI) Plan to be adopted by the State Board of Education and implemented by the California Department of Education on or before July 1, 2018.

The 23-member panel is to include six K-12 teachers, representatives of the State Superintendent, Governor, Senate, and Assembly, the CTC, private sector technology industry, UC, CSU, community colleges, private colleges, county offices of education, the Instructional Quality Commission, STEM education representatives, school administrators, a public school pupil, a parent organization, and the National Computer Science Teachers Association. To see the text and legislative history for AB 2329 to cue.tc/2eionIo

The CCSSI Plan would provide recommendations to address:

• Provision of professional development for education in computer science

• Teacher certification pathways in computer science• Defining computer science education principles to meet

needs of K-12 students• Ensure all pupils have access to computer science from

K-post secondary education• Ensure school districts have adequate broadband

connectivity and infrastructure• Ensure school districts have hardware and software• Increase participation of underserved pupils in computer

science education

Funding for Computer Science: The bill states that if state or federal funding is not available, the panel will investigate the process and ability to accept grants and accept public and private donations to fund the convening the Panel and preparing the Plan. The bill supports President Obama’s Computer Science for All initiative, which provides federal funding for the next three years for states to increase access to computer science education in elementary and

secondary education classrooms. Under the program, states would submit comprehensive five-year “Computer Science for All” plans in order to be eligible for federal funding. In addition to state-level grants, the Federal budget allocates competitive grant funding for districts to execute computer science education expansion efforts to serve as models for national replication.

Computer Science Standards Defined: The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is a professional association that supports and encourages education in the field of computer science and related areas. CSTA has developed computer science standards that provide the foundation for a complete computer science curriculum and its implementation at the K-12 level which are found at cue.tc/2dPxFIq. The CSTA Standards are intended to:

• Introduce the fundamental concepts of computer science to all students, beginning at the elementary school level.

• Present computer science at the secondary school level in a way that can fulfill a computer science, math, or science graduation credit.

• Encourage schools to offer additional secondary-level computer science courses that will allow interested students to study facets of computer science in more depth and prepare them for entry into the work force or college.

• Increase the availability of rigorous computer science for all students, especially those who are members of underrepresented groups.

The Panel will be able to refer to the CSTA Computer Science Standards because CSTA will have a representative on the Panel. Given the work already done in this area by CSTA and others, it seems that the panel would not have any difficulty completing its work well before the July 1, 2018 deadline stated in SB 2329. It may be assumed that CUE will make efforts to ensure that it is well represented on the Panel.

John Cradler is a legislative policy consultant with CUE and works with the CUE board, staff, and Legislative Advocacy Committee to advise on policy, legislation, and other public initiatives to support CUE’s mission and vision. He can be reached at [email protected].

“IF ENOUGH PEOPLE MOVE,

THAT’S A MOVEMENT.”

Sir Ken Robinson, CUE Conference Keynote

JOIN THE MOVEMENT. JOIN CUE.

INSPIRE INNOVATION

CUE.ORG/JOIN

School districts invest millions

in network infrastructure,

classroom devices, and student devices.

The JET Review will maximize the performance and

efficiency of these systems for any district.

KEY ELEMENTS OF A JET REVIEW• Ed Tech Rounds analysis to improve use of

classroom technology• Teacher/administration/student focus groups to

generate real feedback for IT improvement

• IT focus groups to determine district infrastructure needs and deployment planning

• Comprehensive, three-tiered report written in easy-to-follow language for all stakeholder groups

The JET Review program is a joint effort of CUE and CETPA and leverages the Future Ready

Schools Framework and ISTE Essential Conditions.

JETReview.org


DIS

TRIC

T A

NN

OU

NC

EMEN

TS

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recently announced that two California districts, three schools, and one early learning program have been chosen throughout the nation as 2016–2017 21st Century Learning Exemplars. This honor is designed to identify learning environments where students obtain an authentic 21st century learning experience.

Of the four districts recognized, half are from California. In total, 16 organizations were chosen to earn this prestigious designation, which is given out by the national coalition Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) (p21.org/exemplar-program-case-studies).

“I am pleased that for the second year running, more than one-third of the schools and districts are from California,” said Torlakson. “This is a tribute to our state’s continued efforts to make great strides in preparing our students for the challenges and opportunities of 21st century careers and college.”

The 2017 California P21 Exemplars are:

The P21 Exemplar Program identifies schools and districts that serve as national models for what 21st century educational practices look like, providing educators and communities with a variety of examples to replicate. Schools are recognized for a variety of programs, ranging from designing and 3D printing, to dual language learning for transitional kindergarten students, to agriculture focused career pathways.

P21 uses this rubric (cue.tc/2drh3Wp) to evaluate schools for exemplar status through onsite visits. Key exemplary practices are identified in the Patterns of Innovation Report (cue.tc/2e9h0Vy).

Under the leadership of Superintendent Torlakson, California became one of 20 P21 Leadership States in 2012, recognizing its commitment to integrating the P21 framework. The application period for the 2017–18 P21 Exemplar Program is now open. More information is available on the P21 website at www.p21.org/apply.

TOM TORLAKSON ANNOUNCES DISTRICTS AND SCHOOLS CHOSEN FOR THEIR EXEMPLARY LEARNING

School Districts• Downey Unified School District,

Downey• Encinitas Union School District,

Encinitas

K-12 School Exemplars• Valencia High School, Placentia• Sanger High School, Sanger• Roosevelt Elementary School,

Burlingame

Early Learning Exemplar• The Goddard School, Ladera Ranch


FEATURE

SECRET HANDSHAKES AND STUDENT–TEACHER RELATIONSHIPSBy Doug Robertson

The best part of any friendship is the in-jokes. The times when you can be in a crowded room and say, “purple” and have another person crack up laughing while everyone else looks on in confusion. When someone else says what Groucho would have called “the secret word” and you can’t help but die laughing. There is no reason this should not happen in our classrooms.

I spend a lot of time thinking about building rapport with students. I’m a fifth grade teacher and 80 percent of my discipline plan can be summed up as, “Have a good relationship with the kids.” The other 20 percent is “keep them so busy with interesting things they never have time to mess around.”

I also recognize that there’s a wide and deep gulf between saying, “have a good relationship with your kids” and actually having a good relationship with your kids. The bridge across that gulf is full of loose boards that will tumble a teacher head-first into “adult who thinks he’s down with the kids’ hip lingo and that’s sad” limbo. That’s not a student–-teacher relationship. That’s us being lame and trying too hard. So how do we build relationships?

Well, first — smile. I’m not breaking new ground here, but I know there are some among us for whom the “don’t smile until Christmas” advice still holds sway. I smile immediately. On the first day. I also, because it’s my shtick and works for me, tell my students that I’m “mean and scary and never smile and do not like it when children smile.” I stole this from an old principal I knew back when I was a substitute teacher. It worked for him and it works for me. I scowl deeply and put on my meanest growl and the kids see right through it. They love it. They spend the rest of the school year pointing out every time I smile. Yes, the students pay attention to when I look like I’m enjoying being with them. I also tell them I don’t like it when students smile because “school is a place for work, not for fun.” Do you know what kids do when you tell them not to smile? They smile. A lot. So soon I’ve got a group of kids determined to prove to me they are enjoying their time at school and so I am. I want to note that I have no

idea if this strategy works if you don’t have my specific face. I have a face kids like to laugh at.

Show students you care is also an easy thing to say and a harder thing to put into practice. How? Can’t get too much in their face. Can’t be overbearing with some of them. A teacher must let the student come to him or her. Some of our kids will leap (figuratively) into your arms and tell you all about themselves. Others approach cautiously, slowly and you must wait on your haunches, hand outstretched. Find a way in. I have a deep background in nerdery, so I can talk video games and


FEAT

UREmovies all day long with kids. And I do during class

meetings and free time. I have geek properties on my desk like conversation starters. “How bad can he be, he’s got Darth Vader right there.” But a lot of my kids aren’t into that so I have to be genuinely interested in what they are into. When a student mentions loving something I’ve never heard of I ask more, follow up. This doesn’t happen in big chunks, but neither does a friendship. It happens in small moments, little interactions. Body language and dropping it back into a lesson in a natural way.

I said the f-word a moment ago. “Friendship.” This is a dangerous word to use about the teacher–student relationship. We are not there to be their friends. That’s not the dynamic at play. At the end of the day, we’re the teacher and the adult, and they are the student and the child. We can be friendly, but not friends. I want them to confide in me if they need to, like they would a friend. But I’m a mandated

reporter so I can’t promise to keep it secret like a friend might. Our relationship shares

many things in common with friendship. There’s a give and a

take. There’s honesty and, if I’m being open, emotional clarity. Not

long ago I said that I growl at my kids and tell them I never smile, but I

will also read Charlotte’s Web aloud and cry at the end of chapter 21. Every. Single. Time. We talk about things happening in

the world like friends might, but my overarching goal is to get them to think for themselves about the

topic. What do they think and why? Dancing on the friendship line. Keeping them invested in me and in our

class. Hoping they buy into the idea that we’re all in this together, them and me.

“What about secret handshakes and in-jokes, Doug?” you ask. I did mention those and I’m glad you remembered. I believe in creating an environment in the classroom that would confuse other adults sometimes. Kids love games, and I think we should try to trick adults, play with them, do things that confuse them. It bonds the class. For example, early in the school year one of the vocabulary words in our textbook is “gorgeous.” Unlike the other nine vocabulary words on that list, when I read “gorgeous” I throw a hard emphasis on

it, like Billy Crystal or an old-timey fancy lady used to say it.

I stretched the word out, “gooooorgeous.” I made the kids repeat it like that. “No no,” I said, “this is the proper way to say the word.” Soon we were all in. And it stuck. For the rest of the year when a student needed to describe something pretty it was, “gooooorgeous, darling.” I told them to do it to the substitute teachers they had. They loved it. It was something that was ours and ours alone. No other class knew about it.

In the first week of school I made them invent secret handshakes with their friends. I had an ulterior academic motive — you will create and memorize a sequence of events. They demonstrated the ability to be creative quickly and memorize quickly and I’m going to hold that example over them all year. But it also bonded them tightly to each other. I know they are doing their secret handshakes on the playground. “To be sure you’re not an evil clone, alien, or robot.” My student teacher and I have one too.

Have things that make your class special. Unique oddities personal to your little community that act as glue. Laugh and play and talk together like real humans, not like teachers and students. Let them know who you are and what you love, and be interested in who they are and what they love. Do that work and it will be so much easier to be patient and open when assignments don’t get done and poor choices get made. Do that work and the year will pass more easily, with joy and a little (or a lot) of foolishness as a grease for the challenges.

Doug Robertson is the CUE blog editor, Ravenclaw faculty representative, and a tenth-year teacher currently talking at fifth

graders in Northern Oregon. He’s taught in California, Hawaii, and Oregon in third, fourth, and sixth grades. He’s the author of two books about education, He’s the Weird Teacher and THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome) and an active blogger. Doug speaks at teaching conferences including CUE Rock Star Teacher Camps, presenting on everything from technology to teaching philosophy (or teaching The Weird Way, to use his words). Doug is also the creator and moderator of #WeirdEd on Twitter, which happens every Wednesday at 7pm PST.


FEATURE

RELATIONSHIPS MATTER MOST By Pam Hernandez and Adam Welcome

She sat in her 6th grade science class as she wrote her first blog post. The content didn’t have to be about science; her teacher just wanted his students to start writing for an audience that would interact with the students and comment on their work. Flori wrote about her relationship with her family and what her Catholic faith meant to her. Her teachers quickly began to comment on her first blog post, and swiftly identified this this newly minted bilingual Latina as a young lady to be mentored towards college. With her teachers’ encouragement, Flori enrolled in the Advancement Via Individuals Determination (AVID) program and before the year was out, she and her classmates went on their first field trip to a college...Stanford.

It was soon after this trip, that she wrote her first blog post about her college dreams and the challenges she knew she would have to overcome to break the cultural expectations the community had for her as a traditional Latina. In addition to this were the financial challenges of coming from a family with an income falling below the poverty line and being the first person in her family to embrace the dream of higher education.

Today, Flori is a freshman at San Jose State University. She proudly posts pictures of her Spartan pride, her new friends and shares shocking stories of gender bias from one of her professors. Yet, she moves forward unfazed and gives credit to the relationships she had with her teachers over the years, the teachers who encouraged her, invested in her and continue to stay in touch as her cheerleaders.

When asked her opinion of the importance of the student- teacher relationship, Flori responded, “The primary function of a teacher is not to teach a student the principles of science, math or literature. This, although important, is secondary to how essential it is for a student to know that his/her teacher believes in him/her. All too often, we let a scientist go to waste, a writer lose a beautiful talent, and a student go home believing that they have nothing to offer. I was once that student and I am sure that had it not been for four remarkable teachers, I would not find myself claiming

the title of first-generation student at San Jose State University aiming for a STEM career. The truth is that a well-maintained student-teacher relationship opens the door to so many opportunities and encourages students to strive for greatness as it did for me.”

The student-teacher relationship is a powerful one that— at its best—has the ability to build confidence in students that allow them to achieve their biggest dreams. It is also a relationship that has the ability to tear down a child’s confidence, to put up barriers and to get in the way of success. It is incumbent on today’s school administrator to create the expectation and the culture that supports student success. Great examples of how to do this abound across the country.

Michael McCormick (@valverdesup), superintendent of the Val Verde Unified School District, shares his advice on what administrators can do to support strong student-teacher rapport.

“As an administrator, capture great moments of teaching and learning...celebrate and share!” he says. It is in celebrating and sharing, that a culture which embraces and encourages supportive student-teacher relationships is created.

McCormick goes on to say, “In fact, most of our district initiatives were originally captured by observing amazing


FEAT

UREteachers

and scaling their practice district wide. Unfortunately, teachers still primarily practice in isolation. So, look for ways to share what you see as an administrator with other teachers. I’ve found social media is a great way to motivate others to try something new. It is the basis for

my philosophy of “motivate not mandate.” It is in creating this “motivate not mandate” mindset and leveraging social media to share examples of great professional practices by teachers that this expectation is modeled and established.

John Miller (@johnmilleredu), middle school social studies teacher, and author of the Unofficial Minecraft Lab for Kids, gives teachers advice on establishing rapport by stating, “As teachers, we need to provide our students with opportunities to share with us what they are most passionate about. Play games, learn a craft, or collaborate on a music playlist.”

He suggests that administrators can support teachers in developing rapport by, “creating opportunities for play and inquisitive exploration both in and outside the classroom” for students and teachers to get to know each other.

IMPACT OF STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPSIt’s a pretty simple strategy. Kids will want to be at school when they know their teacher cares, when their teacher knows their name, something personal about them and what makes them excited about learning. Mistakes will happen, not everything will be perfect, teachers will encourage, they’ll work together and—most importantly—teachers will celebrate kids!

In his book, co-authored with Todd Nesloney, Kids Deserve It, Adam Welcome writes, “When I was a classroom teacher,

I always spent time at recess and lunch hanging out with my students. Inevitably, other kids would also come around to join us in a game of football, four-square, or just chat when I was in the yard. One student always talked to me, gave me high fives, and really connected with me. I could tell he was a kid who needed some attention. We clicked right away, and he wasn’t even in my class. This particular student did not have a positive relationship with his current teacher. In reality it was pretty bad. When the opportunity arose for me to have him in class next year, I said yes without hesitation!

Fast-forward to the following year and our first parent-teacher conference, which included this student. I was telling his mom and dad how amazing he was, how much I loved his ideas, his energy, his passion. Both parents were beyond excited. “Thank you for building a relationship and caring about our son.” This is exactly why I got into education in the first place.

Quite a few years later, this student came to visit me. He’s now an Eagle Scout, playing varsity sports and headed to college! We must build relationships with our students, it’s the core of our work, it supersedes curriculum and technology integration any day of the week. If you don’t have strong relationships with your kids, not much else will get done!

Interested in some more tips? Check out @thenerdyteacher for great advice and take a look at this Edutopia blog post which you can find at cue.tc/2elBFnv.

Pam Gildersleeve-Hernandez is the Superintendent of the San Antonio Union School District in southern Monterey County. Passionate about preparing students for the 21st-century workforce, Pam believes our number one investment is in

our people. This happens by providing both certificated and classified staff with the knowledge and tools to guide our students.

Adam Welcome is the director of innovation, a former K-5 principal, marathoner, philanthropist, NSBA 20 To Watch, Principal of the Year, CUE Rockstar Faculty, @KidsDeserveIt co-founder. He can be reached at [email protected].


FEATURE

COMMUNICATION TOOLS Reshaping how educators think about connecting and communicating with students and parents.By Ryan O’Donnell

We’ve gone from “Wow, I got an email!” to “Wow, how can I get through all these emails?”

As a teacher who started back in the days of Windows 3.1, I remember when my district announced the “mandate” that we will all use a new tool called “email.” We were told that, instead of communicating through teacher boxes, email will be the primary way to communicate with each other.

This shift to email left many teachers confused feeling like the anchors Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric of the Today show did in 1994, where Katie asks her producer: “Allison, can you explain what INTERNET is?” (cue.tc/2eoObQa).Fast forward over 20 years, where educators today have a mountain of communication with which to deal with on a daily basis. Emails between staff, parents reaching out about their child, and students asking about their grade, are just a few of what comes through the inbox each day. To add to this, there seems like a never-ending stream of new communication tools, many of which promise to help change the way teachers interact with parents and students in their classes.

What’s the answer? Let’s start with that email problem; what can we do? Well, unfortunately there is no silver bullet to solve it all. The dream of getting to “Inbox Zero” at the end of the day is like finding the Fountain of Youth; you hear that it exists, but know deep down that it’s really just a myth. So, if you can’t get rid of them all at the end of the day, let’s talk about ways you CAN try and improve your email overload.

1) Come up with a plan! Create a plan which you can stick to. This could be:• Create a system of folders, categories or labels • Archive them after each reply• Set aside time about when you should and shouldn’t check

your mail

2) “Delete, delete, delete. The vast majority of email is transient, repetitive communication,” says Dr. Melissa Gratias (melissagratias.com). So, don’t worry about keeping them and be quite liberal with that delete key.

3) Don’t email out updates. The more emails you send out, the more you receive. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your parents and students informed. Try using some of these other tools and strategies as ways to push information.


FEAT

UREWEBSITES 1.0

Along with email, websites became one of the early tech communication tools for teachers. They served as a static page where teachers could post information. Although this seemed like the answer to this communication problem, there are some issues with traditional websites.

First off, making websites for a long time has not been easy. Teachers had to learn programs like Frontpage or Dreamweaver and for many it proved too great of a barrier of entry. Also, websites required people to come to them, which often led to viewers

failing to return on a regular basis. They did not have the capability of pushing notifications, like emails would. Lastly, the idea of having each teacher create their own web page led to disjointed school websites, where parents and students had different user experiences for every teacher page they went to. All of this led to a bit of a website Wild West; everyone kind of did what they wanted to and it was a bit all over the place.

WEBSITES 2.0That was a little history lesson on early websites, but a lot has recently changed. Website building has become easier with sites like Weebly, Wix, and even the new Google Sites just recently released this last summer. Plus, many schools and districts are looking to create a unified experience by using a common platform and companies are creating platforms to create and host these sites. These tools are referred to as Content Management Systems (CMS). There are many of these on the market and they allow everyone from the school district to the individual teacher to create and host a website. Some of the issues with CMS’s are that they generally aren’t very easy to use and they still rely on the viewers to come to them.

“If you don’t tell your story,

someone else will.”

~ unknown

Remind App’s Busiest Season YetRemind—a communications tool for people in K-12 education—just had its busiest back-to-school season yet. In September, the app passed 20 million monthly active users: a number that shows that the teachers, parents and students who’ve signed up for the product are using it regularly. In fact, Remind is now used in more than 50 percent of U.S. K-12 schools.

The secret to the massive adoption? Teachers. Because Remind can be used on every platform and in every lan-guage, teachers have figured out that this is the simple and powerful way to communicate with all their students (and their students’ parents), about everything that goes on in the classroom. Parental engagement is a crucial component of increasing student success, and Remind gives parents an easy way to plug into the school lives of their children.

Record high-user numbers wasn’t the only news coming out of the company this year. It launched an administra-tor-facing version of the product, brought in a new CEO (Brian Grey, former CEO of Bleacher Report), and spent a solid amount of time in the #2 spot on the App Store.

The company also launched Activities, the biggest expansion of Remind to date, which makes it possible to coordinate the logistics and payments of any type of school-related activity. Already, field trips and PTA fundraisers—as well as things like the sales of year-books, event tickets, and team uniforms—are happening in Remind. No cash, check or paper permission slips required.

The company, which has been quite vocal about its teacher-centric mission since its inception, has been transparent about the key to its recent momentum: It talks to its users constantly. By involving the people who actually spend time in the classrooms day-to-day in their product development process, Remind has been able to make itself essential to the K-12 experience.

Remind’s vision is to give every student an opportunity to succeed by connecting everyone in the k-12 education space. For more information, visit remind.com.

“The only thing that is

constant is change.”

~ Heraclitus of Ephesus


FEATURE

In the tech world when tools don’t do what’s needed, innovative new ones will be created.

Today, there are more tools than ever to connect and communicate. These tools have different features, but one of the major themes amongst all of them is that they PUSH. This means that they reach out to the user and notify them of updates. It is this key feature that empowers teachers to reach to tools like these since they see the power in connecting with their audience.

By the way… what are teachers trying to do with these tools? Regardless of whether the audience is 1st grade parents or AP physics students, the goals for the classroom teacher range from sharing resources, reminding of upcoming events, having out of classroom discussions, and celebrating successes. As you think about trying new tools and platforms keep these goals in mind of what you what to do.

Here are some of the most used tools being by teachers and other educators to connect and communicate:

Remind: One of the easiest to use tools out there, Remind is a service designed to reach students and parents where they are by utilizing text messaging. It sends one-way messages to individuals and small groups via their phones.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) (Schoology, Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) These are robust platforms that in many ways replace the traditional website approach. These allow teachers to create classes or courses where the students can access resources, interact with the instructor and each other, and in many circumstances, allow for an online or blended classroom. In many ways they do want to be your “everything,” meaning that they may offer a wide array of tools in order to keep you in this ecosystem. This can be a huge benefit since that once all your users,

both teachers and students, are using the platform, usage and familiarity improves for everyone.

Unfortunately, the one-stop shop doesn’t necessarily always provide the best experience or tool for every occasion. Teachers may look elsewhere, for example, if they find other tools like a better messaging system.

Google Classroom: A bit of an anomaly, Classroom is a platform which facilitates the creating, distributing and grading of digital assignments. Not quite an LMS, it very simply and easily allows for a teacher to manage the back and forth flow of resources between the teacher and students. Part of its success lies in its extremely simple and friendly interface.

Lastly… the social media tools:

These include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Voxer, and even SnapChat (seriously, SnapChat? Yes, there are teachers out there making it happen!).

Many teachers are finding success in using these tools that they push directly to their audiences. The use of these tools is generally more common in secondary school settings, often with high school teachers. One of the appealing reasons for using these tools is that teachers can reach their students where they are already. Generally speaking though, these tools can do little more than serve as ways in which to either remind, share information, or celebrate students’ successes.

Here we are now at the end of this, and you may have thought “I’m ready to try some of these new tools.” And that’s great… each new semester and school year gives educators opportunities to try out new ideas and strategies. So spend some time looking around these tools and platforms. Try out some with your student or parent populations, all the while knowing that they may not be the perfect solution because “the only thing that is constant is change.”

Ryan O’Donnell is a technology teacher on special assignment and former high school social studies teacher in Rocklin Unified School District. His passions are ed tech, innovation, and teacher professional development. He is also the co-host of two podcasts, “Check This Out” and “Talking Social Studies.”

He can be reached at [email protected].

THE CUE SHORTLIST

5 TRENDS ON THE RISE• The Maker Movement

• Student Voice

• The TOSA

• Laptops and Tablets

• Open Education

5 TRENDS THAT ARE DISAPPEARING• The Teacher Lecture

• Interactive Whiteboards

• Reading Anthologies

• Paper in the Classroom

• Homework

We are very proud to present our inaugural CUE Shortlist — both those that are on the rise, and those we would like to see disappear.

The compiling of this list of trends is the result of a strong collaborative effort of CUE’s Communications Committee — a member-led committee comprised of educators from across the state who have devoted their lives to becoming better teachers.

Disclaimer: Please note that the list of trends presented here are not necessarily the viewpoints of all CUE members. Rather, they represent the thoughts and viewpoints of CUE’s Communications Committee.

To view the list of trends in its entirety, please visit the CUE blog at blog.cue.org.

As always, we strongly welcome your feedback!

— Lisa Kopochinski, Editor

([email protected])

201655TO LOVE

TO LOSE


12

The TOSA: Teachers on Special Assignment By Lisa Highfill

Teachers on special assignment, instructional technology coaches, future-ready innovator … these are the new names roaming the halls of schools around the country. The adoption of new standards, new technology for testing those standards, and one-time educator effectiveness funds all add up to a popular trend — instructional coaching.

“Quality teaching is the number one contributing factor to student success,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, with coaching being among the most effective method for improving instruction.

It is no wonder this trend is not only on the rise, but staying in place as a solution for successful change management. Coaching works because of the flexibility in its structure. From job embedded professional development, to modeling lessons in the classroom, coaches are the connectors of a school, personalizing effective practices and fostering a collaborative environment for educators to improve their craft.

As a classroom teacher for 20 years, I never believed there was another role for me in education. Becoming a tech coach opened up a whole new dimension. I had time to be creative, plan demo lessons, and search for answers to teachers’ needs, knowing how swamped they were with daily life within the classroom. And most important, I was still able to work with the students in the classrooms I coached, through demo lessons, co-teaching experiences and observations.

“It’s not about the tech” became my mantra as digital lesson planning became the goal. Learning takes time, practice, failures, and successes; as a coach I feel lucky to partner with teachers through the journey.

For those looking for a new way to stretch their thinking around effective instruction for students, coaching brings the best of both worlds. An opportunity to implement best practices with kids and connect with teachers through creative lesson planning and delivery. Coaching works. It’s one successful trend that deserves an enduring place in our schools.

Open EducationBy Kristina Peters

In the 2016 National Education Technology Plan (cue.tc/2end40j) the U.S. Department of Education defines openly licensed educational resources as teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others. Digital openly licensed resources can include complete online courses, modular digital textbooks as well as more granular resources such as images, videos, and assessment items.

Most teachers spend a great deal of time and effort to identify the right materials to give their students the best learning experiences and to personalize them to meet students’ individual needs. Traditional materials tend to be static and teach to the middle, and, therefore have limited relevance to most students. In contrast, more flexible digital content can be tailored by teachers to match specific student needs and gives students more choice based on their interests.

The combination of proprietary, free and openly licensed educational resources can all be used effectively for


3

personalized learning. Proprietary resources are limited by copyright and cost, whereas openly licensed and free digital educational resources both can be used for teaching, learning, and assessment without cost. However, only openly licensed educational resources allow free, unfettered access and perpetual, irrevocable “5R” permissions, that is, permission from the creator to retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute. So while all openly licensed educational resources are free, not all free resources are openly licensed.

As teachers begin to rethink how instructional content can be personalized for students, because of their flexibility and the fact that they can be used and reused at no cost, openly licensed educational resources are growing in popularity and use. As districts begin to make this transition, they are reinvesting in professional learning to support teachers learning how to curate, create, and assure resources are high quality and standards-aligned.

To encourage the expanded use of openly licensed educational resources, the Department launched the #GoOpen movement (cue.tc/2e51BlO). #GoOpen districts commit to replacing traditional instructional materials with openly licensed educational resources in at least one specific grade level and content area. The Department has also released a #GoOpen District Launch Packet (cue.tc/2eVQFJE) that collects and organizes into sequential phases a number of best practices collected from districts who are leading the way.

Student VoiceBy Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Want to know how to engage students, enthuse them, and bring out their best effort? Give them a voice. In a society that barely listens to each other, listen to our students. In a system that can be a flood of

top-down information, let your classroom be one that allows voices to trickle up. We have, in our very classrooms, the brains that will solve the problems of tomorrow, but to give them training means we have to give their neurons a chance to solve the problems of today.

• Hear the new ideas that students bring to the table on problems that range from local issues to global ones.

• Have them develop questions about how things are run, and challenge why our systems can’t be different.

• Have them find the research to back-up their theories.

• Have them develop surveys to crowdsource advice from others, and have them synthesize their findings in multiple ways chosen by the student themselves.

• Have them present and publish their research-based thoughts and solutions.

• Have them create the items that will make our lives easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable.

• Have them design, print, make, write about, and speak about their solutions.

And do you know what makes this all possible? Technology. With a single computer, a student can have the world of research at their fingertips. With a single computer, any student can create, collaborate, write, publish, record, and share their thoughts with the online and offline world.

You don’t need a political think tank to solve the problems of the world, you need the think tank that can be found in every classroom and at every keyboard.

That din you hear is student voices on the rise. It’s getting louder, and with our guidance and with the equitable access to information that technology grants us, they will change the course of our world.


5

4 The Maker MovementBy Sam Patterson

There is a thing happening in the world; it is the Maker Movement. Make magazine, founded in 2005, describes the Maker Movement as “a community of tech-infused DIYers.” This means that the Maker Movement is a community—both physical and online—comprised of people who make things, often with cool programmable parts.

What does this mean for schools? Making stuff is really cool and popular right now. Many schools are in the awkward position of having trading classes where students make things (like shop and home economics) for long double blocks of literacy skill building and test prep. Now with the unchecked popularity of the Maker Movement, many schools are trying to figure out how to get a Makerspace started. There are so many options, but it is important to remember a few guiding principles:

Making is a mindset, you can engage “Makerspace Mode” in any classroom. You can make great things without moveable furniture or a 3D printer.

The most important things students make in the Makerspace are decisions. More than any other space in school, the Makerspace is about allowing students to make their own decisions. We are also available to help them troubleshoot when things don’t go as planned.

Start with what you have. For the first month of school, my Makerspace ran on paper. We built airplanes, boats, bridges and puppets—all from paper.

Making is very engaging. Ask the kids to document and capitalize on the literacy opportunity.

When my PreK-6th grade students are making in class I give them directions, usually via video or document. They have to read those directions, and document their process as they design, create, or build. They work as a group and we spend time on building our groups work skills and tools.

The greatest benefit of making in class is that the students find the work engaging and rewarding enough to do the hard work of reading, writing, and working together.

Laptops and Tablets Equal Portability By Robert Craven

“Portability is key” is uttered so frequently it’s become a cliché. Yet, for the last two decades this cliché rings true as educators and students continually benefit from lighter weight, more powerful, faster portable devices.

Little more than 15 years ago laptop carts began to storm the educational landscape providing students new avenues to construct learning. In the last six years with the explosion of app stores, cloud storage, and more ubiquitous Wi-Fi service, tablets ascended rapidly to the most sought after classroom technology for many, followed closely behind by Chromebooks. Students can now create videos, collaborate on documents, code satellites, design prosthetic devices, and create an in-game empire capable of conquering all others all on the fly.

The desktops days are numbered as the standby machines clustered around classroom edges or in a lab are moved to the surplus bin to make way for Makerspaces. Laptops


continue to be the go-to daily device for most educators and when provided as an option many students select a laptop over a tablet for their daily school life.

While the laptop and tablet are currently at the pinnacle of educational technology, I think a challenger to their dominance looms large. As prices continue to drop while

the technology improves, a new player is emerging; the touchscreen detachable might be just the best of both worlds. With all day battery power, a touchscreen, an app store, full keyboard, and additional computing power, what’s not to like? Watch for the detachable touchscreen laptop revolution to be a huge trend in the next few years.

CONVENING ORGANIZATIONS ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS

THURSDAY, APRIL 20 toSATURDAY, APRIL 22Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach Hotel

Lead 3 Symposium exists at the intersection of leadership, technology, and innovation and provides over 400 educational leaders a venue to connect, share, and learn about new technology solutions to improve teaching and learning.

CANDACE SINGH AND LEVAR BURTON

2017

www.lead3.org


21 Paper in the

ClassroomBy Christina Torres

I’ve always been a messy human. Since childhood, I have been one of the lost-paper kids, the bottom-of-the-backpack diggers, the where-did-that-go askers. I made mini-piles of mayhem that were supposed to create some kind of organized chaos. They did not.

As much as I’ve tried to better myself, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a messy childhood became a cluttered adulthood.

Unfortunately, this affects my capabilities as an educator. Studies from the University of Western Michigan and the Journal of Neuroscience suggest that cluttered learning environments can affect a student’s ability. Attempting to navigate a messy personality among mountains of worksheets and administrative papers began to get messy.

Then, I returned to the classroom at a school with 1-to-1 computer capabilities. My world changed.

Here’s the thing: There’s a billion things I could share about paperless classrooms. I could cite studies about closing the digital divide, or how technology can help close the “achievement” gap.

Honestly, here’s the nuts-and-bolts reason why I switched away from worksheets is this: Having a paperless classroom just made life easier for both me and my students.

There are many things to consider with education and technology (least of which is the resources gap between my school with multiple laptops and schools with very little access to technology). Still, those of us with the privilege to that access need to make it clear to those in power that technology will only better student learning.

Paperless classrooms don’t just clear away physical clutter to make space for more play, they free us from the linear notions of worksheets and fill-in-the blank that we’ve indoctrinated ourselves to believe education is for so long. Once we open ourselves and, more importantly, our students to the unlimited access of technology, who knows what the future holds?

HomeworkBy Scott Bedley

It’s gone viral, been highlighted in many major newspapers across the nation, and it’s even recently been written about in People magazine.

What is it? It’s homework, and it’s on the verge of becoming a polarizing topic with both sides of this current debate giving valid reasons why they so strongly believe in their position.

Regardless of what side you stand on in this debate, one-size-fits-all homework, as well as overloading our students with work outside the school day, is trending down. So trends like these beg the question, “Should I follow this trend or buck it?”

For myself, I’m not opposed to any practice that may support my students’ improvement, but with research from the likes of Dr. John Hattie saying homework’s impact has basically a zero effect and respected university math professors, such as Stanford’s Dr. Jo Boaler, writing about eliminating or greatly reducing the amount of homework required, it’s hard not to rethink homework practices.


43

What’s odd is the middle ground seems to be avoided on this topic. There are alternatives to being for or against homework. A few years back, I made a change to a third option: optional homework. What is optional homework? It’s homework that helps guide students and parents who want or need to spend additional time learning outside the school day but its completion is based on parent or student choice. Check out my blog at (cue.tc/2e4Zu1i) or listen to Brent Warner’s podcast for more details and benefits of using optional homework. Another approach was compiled by my brother (who I co-host a podcast with “The Bedley Brothers Edchat”). It’s a list of Homework Alternatives (cue.tc/2eon7AM) to help good-meaning teachers and parents who may not have ideas for what their kids could be doing in place of homework. So as you approach this topic, I hope you don’t get bogged down in the “For/Against” battle or trends but consider a few homework alternatives.

“Interactive” WhiteboardsBy Jon Corippo

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have fallen out of favor for several reasons, including the expense of installation, the extensive time needed to learn proprietary software, and the move away from projectors and their all-too-expensive bulbs.

But I think the main reason that IWBs are fading from view has nothing to do with the IWB at all. The shift away from a 1-many, lecture and take-notes model of pedagogy has made the idea of standing in the same place all day, just talking to kids while they listen passively seem very limiting. And that — in the end — is the failed promise of the IWB, the idea that enhancing a lecture is the “Holy Grail” of education has been pretty well busted. Kids today want to do the work, create the things, and share their work. This “democratization” of the board has meant that more and more the projector (and now the flat screen TV) is far more desirable than the board by itself.

By Andrew SchwabAs Jon said, IWBs went hand in hand with the Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) model of instruction, which focused the

attention of the class on the teacher standing at the front of the room. That’s not the kind of learning environment we want for kids.

Our goal with Common Core is to build student centered, collaborative spaces that support active student learning in classrooms.

Instead of one large (and expensive) front of room interactive display, we’re equipping every student with an “interactive” device and using commodity large format digital displays (LED TVs) to provide multiple viewing opportunities in classrooms. And the best part is, everyone knows how to use a TV, so the focus is on the instructional design of the lesson around students and not a “smart” board at the front of the classroom.

Reading AnthologiesBy Matt Miller

Where’s the depth? The classic reading anthology just lacks the richness and depth that a good novel provides.

Sure, reading anthologies give students a chance to explore many genres of great writing, but students only get a snapshot of the story and never get to develop the higher level reading skills that a full-length novel provides.

With a shift to Common Core Standards, teachers are starting to see that reading anthologies are just not cutting it. Students need to have strong reading comprehension skills. Ditching the anthology and picking up a full-length novel is part of the solution. Combined with classroom discussion


5and purposeful, collaborative projects, rich and deep novels give students the advanced reading comprehension skills they will need for a productive, successful future.

Once you put the anthology on the shelf and set a novel in front of the students, you’ll dive into worlds never seen before. Have you had a class for 35 fourth-graders begging you to read the next chapter, even when it’s their recess time? Anthologies just can’t do that. There is no investment in the characters, no connection to the plot, and no connection to the setting or mood of the story.

Novels offer the time and commitment to “get to know” your characters. Students start to see the characters as real people, they learn their personalities, they cry when they hurt or suffer, they can’t leave their new “friends” just because it’s time for recess. On the other hand, don’t throw that anthology away (the district won’t like that), but don’t give it a permanent spot in the students’ desks.

Pick it up off the shelf, dust it off every now and then and use it for a quick comprehension assessment. Or choose a story to introduce a novel or science topic, or to give another perspective on a subject you are teaching. In the classroom, there is never a perfect tool or book that meets every need your students have. The reading anthology has a small purpose still, but to gain the life skills our students need, novels give us the most bang for our buck.

The LectureBy Eric Mazur

Discussions of education are generally predicated on the assumption that we know what education is. I hope to convince you otherwise by recounting some of my own experiences.

When I started teaching introductory physics to undergraduates at Harvard University, I never asked myself how I would educate my students. I did what my teachers had done — I lectured. I thought that was how one learns. Look around anywhere in the world and you’ll find lecture halls filled with students and, at the front, an instructor. This approach to education has not changed since before the Renaissance and the birth of scientific inquiry. Early in my career I received the first hints that something was wrong with teaching in this manner, but I ignored it. Sometimes it’s hard to face reality. When I started teaching, I prepared lecture notes and then taught from them. Because my lectures deviated from the textbook, I provided students with copies of these lecture notes. The infuriating result was that on my end-of-semester evaluations — which were quite good otherwise — a number of students complained that I was “lecturing straight from (his) lecture notes.” What was I supposed to do? Develop a set of lecture notes different from the ones I handed out? I decided to ignore the students’ complaints.

A few years later, I discovered that the students were right. My lecturing was ineffective, despite the high evaluations. Early on in the physics curriculum — in week 2 of a typical introductory physics course — the Laws of Newton are presented. Every student in such a course can recite Newton’s third law of motion, which states that the force of object A on object B in an interaction between two objects is equal in magnitude to the force of B on A — it sometimes is known as “action is reaction.”

Reprinted by permission from cue.tc/2hg6gnD. To read the rest of the article, visit the CUE blog at blog.cue.org/farewell-lecture/.

31

FEAT

URE

cue.org • Winter 2016 OnCUE

WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S UP AT SCHOOL? CHECK TWITTER!

WHAT’S HAPPENING?Have you looked at the bottom of a backpack lately? This unruly bag holds snacks, books, papers, folders, pencils, small animals. Of all the tools we have for sharing information with parents, why trust a backpack to hold a newsletter that is meant to communicate critical information?

At Hillbrook School, we see a huge opportunity to share what’s happening in our classrooms using Twitter. Using Twitter to communicate with parents solved so many of our traditional school communication roadblocks and integrated into our school’s culture an understanding of the way in which people are digesting and enjoying content in-the-moment and online in the real world.

Our initial plan was to create grade-level Twitter accounts and keep them private to protect our students’ and families’ privacy. This also helps to protect the teachers as this allows them to conveniently capture student experiences without worrying about students who, for instance, may not have been signed our photography and media release form. This is a safe space. Teachers don’t need to worry about staying “on brand” or “brand voice;” they’re on social media to tell their stories and are making our school and “brand” stronger for it.

GET ON THE BUS! The first step was to move from one school Twitter account to ten additional grade-level Twitter accounts. Here’s an invitation we shared with kindergarten families:

Please consider subscribing to our class Twitter account @HillbrookKinder. The account is private and teachers must approve each follower. If your Twitter handle isn’t obvious from your name, please email the teachers with your Twitter handle.

We regularly invite parents to follow our Twitter accounts, and continue to see more and more parents engaging with us on Twitter. That’s only one part of the puzzle, though. We had to get our teachers on board, too.

I’M ENGAGED!These grade-level Twitter accounts work because teachers love them, and actually use them. Twitter solves a problem: How do you communicate regularly with parents without writing a mammoth newsletter each week? Twitter is the answer. Tweeting more is actually less work, making it a tempting way to connect with parents.

By Bill Selak and Erin Schwartz


FEATURE

Our teachers enjoy, just as we all do, knowing that their work is reaching parents and being engaged with in a really active way. Teachers have enjoyed receiving “likes” on their posts and seeing the number of times their tweet has been viewed. This truly has incentivized our team of educators to grow their social media presence, to be brave about trying out new tools and new ways of telling their individual stories, and our parents are feeling more deeply involved and engaged with their child’s learning journey.

Parents have really helped lead the charge in making Twitter a major part of our school experience. Our Grade Level Parents, parent volunteers who help to disseminate classroom news and updates to their peer groups, regularly promote the grade-level Twitter accounts and blogs, and encourage each other to refer to Twitter to start great, fun, and impactful conversations at home. Gone are the days of asking, “What did you do?” with your child to respond, “I don’t know. Nothing.” Now, parents are given a glimpse into their child’s classroom and from there, conversation flows.

IT’S IN THE MOMENTSharing happens in real time. Parents can turn on push notifications for an account, and see inside the classroom as the learning is happening. Last week, I got a tweet from our Junior Kindergarten class. They were using sieves to sift dirt to create homemade mineral pain [huh?] in science class. I looked outside my window, and saw the class continuing to work. That’s powerful communication.

IT’S NOT IN THE MOMENTTeachers share in real time, but parents don’t have to read in real time. They can catch up on activities from the classroom at their convenience, at 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday or every day at 8:00 p.m.

It’s not just about the convenience, though. Parents are able to scroll back in time and see growth over time. Leveraging Twitter’s chronological timeline, it’s so easy to scroll back through nine months of Tweets and see where the class began. Benefits of Tweets include the following:

• Easy to find• Paper newsletters get lost. Often. Tweets don’t.• Show your work.• Inspired by Austin Kleon’s book, Show

Your Work, we strive to share the learning and thinking of our students. We know that sharing benefits.

While parents only follow Twitter accounts of their student’s grade, teachers can follow all ten accounts. This is a powerful way for them to stay connected, and see what students are doing in other classes. This creates many opportunities, particularly in the middle school, to make connections between their content and other disciplines.

With grade-level Twitter accounts, we are giving our parentsa media-rich experience that enables us to tell the story of what is happening in the most effective (and at times, most time-effective) way possible. With traditional newsletters, teachers found themselves investing vast amounts of time grappling with words, words, and more words. Still others struggled with communicating to parents without using terminology and jargon that often “gets in the way” of effective parent communication. Also, if a photo says a thousand words, imagine what a video can do when posted on a grade-level Twitter account!

SHARING IS CARINGOur main @hillbrookschool Twitter account is public, and we share items that best fit our school-wide and external audiences, including fellows in our local community, alumni, other schools, and prospective parents. With grade-level Twitter accounts, we — as a school — have access to hundreds of stories, case studies, and amazing learning moments and pick from those and share with our broader audience on our main school account. This might include sharing projects our classes are doing or cool things we are piloting as an organization to inspire other teachers.

BUMPS IN THE ROAD/PAIN POINTSThe onboarding and buy-in process took some time with teachers who were less comfortable online and on social media. However, once you have teachers who can act as ambassadors for grade-level social media communication, before you know it, your organization’s presence and engagement will grow exponentially.

We also made the tech available to our teachers, offering iPod Touches as a convenient, always-in-a-pocket tool to facilitate sharing. Our teachers and classrooms are also equipped with iPads for quick and easy photography, videography, and chronicling of student work.

BEYOND TWITTERCommunicating with parents is so much more than just 140 characters. We still have a weekly newsletter. We also have a Facebook account for more public highlights like school

CONTINUED ON PAGE 42


FEAT

URETHE EVOLUTION OF TWITTER AT

LA HABRA HIGH SCHOOL By Karl Zener, Ed.D., Principal

Five-and-a-half years ago La Habra High School in La Habra, California, started up its first Facebook page. This was our school’s venture into social media and—as principal—I was happy and satisfied to have this social media presence for our staff, students, parents, community, and alumni.

One of our teachers overseeing marketing for our school would post on Facebook with announcements once a week. And we thought we were cutting edge! A few months later, our teacher in charge of marketing approached me asking if we had a Twitter account. My answer was “No. Why would we? We now had Facebook and that was enough.” (Besides, I knew Facebook, had used it personally, and had no idea what Twitter was.) The next day our marketing teacher started @LaHabraHS Twitter account, logged me in on my phone, and said, “You are in charge of this one.” Sometimes we need that push.

I was scared to tweet. No clue what to tweet and afraid of doing it wrong. What does trending mean? What are the “@” signs for? What does it mean to follow or have followers? I went home and started looking at other educational Twitter accounts. I started to feel overwhelmed as I realized Twitter was not like Facebook. Twitter was buzzing constantly with minute-by-minute interactions. I started noticing a few staff members at LHHS who tweeted with each other and other educators around the world. I decided to try my first tweet and quickly grew to over 100 followers (mainly students) who seemed starved for updates on their school. I had an epipha-ny—students are not on Facebook, their parents are!

Students started tagging our account and asking questions. Staff started tagging and providing updates on their classroom. Recognizing students and staff and promoting our school was invigorating for our culture and climate. I’m now in classrooms more, taking pictures, and posting on Twitter. This has brought me closer to our teachers and their craft. It has also brought our teachers closer together and broken down the barriers of isolation and created a culture of “We are in this together!” Staff and students are now becoming more comfortable with observers in the room and sharing great practices!

I started posting more updates (athletics, arts, ASB) and more followers came on board with parents and community members. Our culture started to change as the student body became more unified, spirited and rallied around various

activities (including a football CIF championship) and earned the number 1 student section in Orange County.

Then something happened on Twitter I never imagined. Pro-fessional development and relationships blossomed. More teachers came on the Twitter train and shared their creative ideas. Other teachers around the world shared back! Relationships were built and classrooms were transformed especially with our feeder schools. (As a high school district this has always been a challenge and Twitter has helped break down those walls.)

Our new challenge is how to manage (or not) all the new accounts that are being created more and more frequently—booster organizations, clubs, ASB, athletics, spirit groups to raise awareness of events, parents, teachers, classified, and students. Some of the more vibrant accounts are our Theater Guild, Well-Behaved Villains Improv team, Student Spirit for dress themes at athletic events, our tech guru teachers, math department, HUB student store, ASB, Class of 17, Link Crew, boys and girls basketball, football, social club, publications, band, cheer, key club, FFA, Heritage, and feeder schools.

As of now, we do not manage these accounts. Some are run by staff, some by students, some by parents. While they are associated with our school, we give them the freedom to use their account to advertise and promote their activities. I have had only one conversation with a Twitter account manager about what Twitter is for and what is appropriate to post. @LaHabraHS tries to model daily what is appropriate and positive. We now have nearly 2,500 followers and have been able to bring in our Twitter relationships to our school for PD with our staff. Twitter has become the vibrant hub and symbol for what we do, who we are and what we value.

Karl Zener is in his 23rd year in public education. He spent his first 12 years as an English teacher He has served in leadership roles the past 11 years and has been in administration the past six years as principal of La Habra High School in La Habra,CA.

He earned his BA and MAT at the University of Puget Sound and his Doctorate Educational Leadership at CSUF.


FEATURE

LEARNING NETWORK FOCUSThe Teacher-Student Relationship Change Agent: Communication By Tim Landeck

The times they are a changin’... and they continue to change, as technology ushers in yet another medium and a different tool that affects the way students and teachers communicate. The list of communication tools has grown and the need to make choices about which tools to use for students and teachers to communicate has become an important issue for us as educators to address.

THE PAST IS STILL WITH USFace-to-face verbal communication continues to be a viable, although sometimes less convenient, way to communicate. Clearly it has the added benefit for integrating body language and voice intonation with the spoken word, which is usually lost in most technology-enhanced communication tools. However, the advent of a plethora of alternative ways to enhance communication between teacher and student has brought so many options to the K-12 environment, that to ignore, or to not utilize, the best tool for the job would be an oversight and significant missed opportunity for the educator.

BEYOND THE TELEPHONEReal-time, or synchronous, communication continues to offer the significant advantage of immediate response or feedback, which is difficult to replace with asynchronous forms of communication.

The use of Google Hangouts (hangouts.google.com), Skype (www.skype.com/en/), Apple’s FaceTime (support.apple.com/en-us/HT204380), and other free videoconferencing tools has allowed for the next step in enhancing the phone call, by incorporating live video of one or multiple people in the conversation. Creating a meeting place outside the classroom where computer screens are shared can offer outstanding collaboration and communication opportunities for all involved.

Texting or messaging can be a synchronous tool that, although it does not easily integrate the subtleties available in a video call, can help maintain the real time tenor of a non face-to-face conversation. Remind (www.remind.com) and Arch The Way App (www.archtheway.com/) are applications designed for the K-12 teacher to assist in overcoming the challenges associated with regular text messaging. These apps help to create all class group messages while addressing the need to display only the name of the sender and not their phone number.

Communication, especially synchronous communication, requires that all participants have access to the needed tools to make the connection. 1-to-1 mobile devices provided to students on a 24/7 basis will enhance potential communication between teacher and student, if network connectivity is in place in the student’s home. The homework divide is omnipresent in many communities and needs to be addressed with urgency and expediency by assuring an Internet connection in all homes which is as common as other utilities, such as water and electricity. There is increasing attention to the pending Federal LifeLine program (cue.tc/2eaUYzt), which soon may offer a discount on ISP service for low-income families.


FEAT

URE

THE OL’ STANDBYOne of the first and most popular digital asynchronous communication tools has been email. However, this tool has been identified by today’s youth as “so very 20th century!” Today’s students tend to choose other tools than email to address their need for communication. Email is frequently identified as a tool for grownups, and one that today’s K-12 student will only use when it is required by their “adult” teacher.

The use of robo calls home to families via services such as SchoolMessenger will increase the one-way communication about school activities but overuse can quickly overwhelm parents to where calls are ignored more than noticed.

A web or blog site, such as WordPress, Blogger, Kidblog and Edublogs, have the potential to enhance communication by offering tools to post announcements, highlight student achievements, disseminate resources, and assign group tasks. They employ the use of a primarily one-way portal where one party has information to share with another person or group.

DID YOU SEE WHAT HE SAID?Asynchronous communication tools have great potential for enhancing student-teacher communication. The Google Docs suite of applications encourage collaboration and communication among all that use them. Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets offer excellent venues to enhance communication within the curricular arena, by allowing for peer and teacher editing and making it as simple to read as it is to edit.

By soliciting feedback and information via a Google Form, teachers and students can share insights and compile formative and summative data evaluations that rival previous options in both ease of creation and efficiency of use. A simple form that takes an educator 10 minutes to create can produce data from respondents that previously might not have been obtainable. Polling sites such as Poll Everywhere (www.polleverywhere.com) offer a simple way to collect data but tend to be less flexible than Google Forms.

LET’S GET SOCIAL!Social media has brought an enhanced form of communication and, due to the enthusiastic adoption by today’s youth, these tools should be a key component to every educational communication strategy. Facebook, due to its interactive and social nature, can be an excellent tool for distributing information and receiving feedback from your followers. “Friending” students (first check your district’s policies concerning teachers’ use of Facebook and how it relates to interacting with students) can help build a professional friendship based on increased knowledge of details that are specific to a teacher or student’s public life.



FEATURE KEYNOTE SPEAKER

A METAPHORICAL EXPLORATION OR THIS IS A (MODIFIED) THATBy Taylor Mali

I’m going to talk about educational technology, but I’m going to get there by way of poetry because that’s how I talk about everything.

One of my favorite lines of poetry comes in the beginning of Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese,” which is, perhaps consequently, one of my favorite poems of all time. Shortly after the first line—“You do not have to be good”—Oliver writes, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” I’ve spent years thinking about that line, and because I want to be able to write like that one day I’ve picked it apart to find out how it works and what I really love about it. I think the majority of my admiration is rooted in Oliver’s simple declaration that “the body [is a] soft animal.” What a beautiful observation that is (even though it is completely false)!

Because, of course, the body is actually not a soft animal. Not literally. But that’s okay, because Oliver is speaking metaphorically, and metaphors, by definition, are not concerned with literal truth but with figurative truth, which is to say, they are merely imaginative ways of expressing a certain truth that manages to aid in the overall understanding of it. Mary Oliver knows that the human body is fragile, alive, prone to sickness, vulnerable to injury, and worthy of care, kindness, and protection. And in that way it is just like a soft animal. But how did she come up with those two words? That particular adjective (“soft”) and that particular noun (“animal”)? The short answer to that question is, of course, “Who knows?” But for the rest of this essay, I’m going to pretend the answer to that question is “By sheer manufactured coincidence.”

See, the simplest metaphors are just two nouns slapped on either side of the verb “to be,” which operates like an equals sign in a mathematical equation. This = that. This one thing equals this other thing. Love is a game. Your

eyes are stars. My heart is a stone. Those are all simple metaphors. If you want to get a little fancier, throw in an adjective on one side. The country is a melting pot. Her eyes are bright stars. His heart is a jagged stone. And of course, the body is a soft animal.

So imagine Mary Oliver sitting at her desk writing her poem “Wild Geese.” Imagine that she keeps a stack of index cards on the back left corner of her desk next to her pencil sharpener. They’re normal white index cards and each one has a single adjective written on one side of it. On the other corner of her desk, next to her dictionary and thesaurus, there’s a similar stack of index cards, except they’re all blue, and these cards each have a noun written on them. Not a big, abstract noun, but something smaller, like an object, or a thing, or the word . . . “animal.” She writes down words she hears in conversation or encounters while reading, and she is constantly adding to, revising, and shuffling her two stacks of adjectives and nouns.

When she got to the line in “Wild Geese” about letting your body “love what it loves,” maybe Mary Oliver stopped and considered using a metaphor for “the body.” Maybe she reached out with both hands and selected the top card from the white stack of adjectives and another from the blue stack of nouns. Maybe the first couple combinations didn’t sound right to her. Maybe she thought to herself:

Let’s see what we get here: wounded and . . . flame. Hmm. “The body is a wounded flame? You only have to let the wounded flame of your body love what it loves?” I think I can do better than that. The body is a . . . smiling candle? No, that doesn’t make any sense! The body is an untapped clown? That’s just stupid. One more time. The body is a soft . . . animal! Ooooh, I like it! “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Perfect! Time for a snack.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE7

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA MARCH 15-18


FEAT

URE

In my class room we have a white box of adjectives and a blue box of nouns. Like Mary Oliver might, we edit the collection all the time. When we read a metaphor we like in someone else’s poem, we take it apart and put the adjectives in the adjective box and the nouns in the box with the other nouns. And then we wait until someone needs a good metaphor. For example, maybe it’s a love poem, and the writer has written a line that reads “All I wanted was to call his heart mine.” He or she wants to come up with a metaphor for “his heart,” so they call for the two boxes and try out a few possibilities: “All I wanted was to call . . .

. . . the cheap bracelet of his heart mine.

. . . the soft, unlit candle of his heart mine.

. . . the graceful, untapped animal of his heart mine.. . . the jagged and resourceful scar of his tiny heart mine.

Even if the writer doesn’t end up using any of those metaphors for the heart, the floodgates are often suddenly opened, and he or she says, “Never mind. I have a better idea!” Finally, if the stars are aligned, I might get to hear another student ask, “Can I use one of those metaphors in my poem?”

When someone says “educational technology,” most of us think of gadgets, devices, software, and computers. But I’d like to offer up two simpler definitions: outsourcing drudgery and the automation of learning. Technology can be anything that makes a task or series of tasks easier. In the case I describe above, we had a “system” for bringing two random words together quickly, over and over again, to see if any sparks will fly. The “hard work” of recalling two words—and it really is hard to be creative on the spot!—had been outsourced to the past. No batteries necessary.

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” A four-time National Poetry Slam champion, he is the author of three collections of poetry and a book of essays, “What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in

the World.” In April of 2012, Mali donated 12 inches of his hair to the American Cancer Society after convincing 1,000 people to become teachers. Please visit www.taylormali.com.

Earn your Master's or Certificate in

Submit your interest to http://tinyurl.com/LDTInterest to be notified when applications open.Applications for Fall 2017 open November 2016

With a worldwide reputation for excellence, our unique program offers:

Realtime online sessions and anytime/anywhere coursework

Authentic projects with community clients

Theorybased analysis and design strategies to support learning and performance

Emergent technologies, topics and trends

Tightknit community of faculty, students, alumni, and employers from K12,

higher ed, corporate, government, and the military

Complete 30 units for the Master'sTake 69 units per semester

Visit our website at ldt.sdsu.edu and hear more at tinyurl.com/sdsuLDTexplore

PROFESSIONAL LEARNINGPROFESSIONAL LEARNING Training partners and PL services for:

1:1 Deployment & Pedgogies

Serving Teachers, TOSAs, Admins

Let us produce a PL event for your

district or CUE Affiliate

A CUE PL event at your site means

no travel expense for your staff!

TestimonialsI have had our teachers tell me that CUE Rock Star Black Label changed their teaching forever.– Kelly Martin, Instructional Technology and Curriculum Coordinator

CUE Rock Star Camp not only changed my life, it has connected me to a family of like-minded educators where collaboration and development continues…– Michael McCormick, Superintendent Val Verde Unified School District

CUE PL events are considered to be seminal moments in our District’s journey toward the full implementation of 21st Century teaching and learning.– Rick Rubino, Superintendent Gridley Unified School District

See all our offerings here!

CUE.org/PLDanielle Forst

[email protected] 925.954.4491

@CUELearns


FEAT

UREAFTER THE FINKEL

FELLOWSHIP By Jonathan Natividad

At my first CUE in 2012, I listened to a Thursday Keynote from Marco Antonio Torres and the biggest takeaway I got was to keep coming back to CUE! I have made every effort to come back every year to be inspired and bring back the awesome learning that takes place in classrooms near and far.

Since that time I’ve tried to teach my students in different ways, I’ve given my students opportunities that they normally would not get in a classroom in East San Jose, and I’ve been inspired to connect with awesome educators to keep that feeling you get from attending a CUE conference going!

We all know that teaching doesn’t always go as we plan, and life is the same way. My fellowship idea was to integrate GoPro cameras with student narratives, and I started working with students on short video narratives over the spring last year. However the year ended and it didn’t pan out the way I thought it would. In the span of a few months, I went from looping with my students from 3rd to 4th grade, to considering a district coaching position focusing on tech integration, to becoming an assistant principal in my district. Jon Corippo said it best when we were planning for our Alum Rock CUE Rock Star session, “Wait, you’re an assistant principal at two sites? Right on!”

So why not loop with your students and implement the idea with the students you’ve worked with over the past year or work with supporting new teachers with technology integration? Well, it’s the challenge! I love teaching because it’s a different adventure every day! I enjoy encouraging students, watching them grow, and seeing them get to those a-ha moments!

Do I miss being in the classroom? Ask any teacher who has made the transition from the classroom to coaching or administration, and they’ll tell you they sure do! But again, what’s the point of doing awesome things in your classroom if there are still gaps in instruction, leadership, and opportunities for students in your community? I feel

that I can bring that energy and enthusiasm for creating opportunities to all students in my community. And you know what they say, time to put up or shut up! If I can help create learning environments where teachers are supported to take risks in challenging their students as well as have access to technology and quality professional development, then the gaps that exist within our community will lessen.

So where am I at now? Well, I’ve dispersed my GoPros to teachers at three different schools, one K-5 and two K-8. I’ve identified teachers who are willing to take the GoPro narrative idea and run with it, or integrate POV film in a different way with students. I have teachers ranging from grades 3 to 8 and I’m excited to check in with them throughout the process as well as see the end products their students create. It’s great because I know the teachers who have these items will be having exhibition nights or student showcases where I’ll be able to see students present their projects and learning as well as engage with them in conversations about how the process went.

So did I fail with my idea? Well, I didn’t get to directly oversee the work my students do, but I know their new teacher is trying to integrate the GoPros as she sees fit, so they are still getting the learning opportunity to explore and create. I am currently working on running grade-level collaboration time for teachers at both of my schools. This way, I can still work with students integrating technology while giving my teachers release time where they can reflect on their practice and plan with their partner. I also make myself available to teachers to offer advice on lesson design or bounce ideas back and forth about things they want to incorporate in their classroom. Now this isn’t what I do

Jonathan Natividad (center) receives a check for $2,500 as the winner of the 2016 LeRoy Finkel’s Big Idea Fellowship Program.



SPOTLIG

HT O

N M

EMBERS

SPOTLIGHT ON MEMBERSOnCUE chats with CUE members Jason Seliksar, Margaret Agbowo, and Scott Smith

WHAT IS YOUR TITLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES?

Jason: Currently I am the library media specialist at Merwin Elementary School in Covina-Valley USD. I am in the beginning stages of transforming the library, and computer lab and going into classrooms doing innovation activities for students while coaching teachers with educational technology.

Margaret: I just changed jobs so I am now New Haven Unified School District’s technology integration support specialist!

Scott: I’m a dendrite developer at Golden West High School gardening brains of a diverse set of teenagers and opening career doors to aspiring filmmakers.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO BECOME AN EDUCATOR?

Jason: Dan Litzinger, my track coach and guidance counselor in high school, saw qualities of being an educator while encouraging me to be an educator. Initially I was going to be a physical education teacher in my first attempt at college. Later when I did finish, elementary was the choice. I have always loved computers as I was in the computer club in fourth grade.

Margaret: I became an educator #ForTheNextGen. I wanted to work with youth so they could learn to learn and become awesome employees prepared for the companies of the future.

Scott: Given my love for kids, the teaching profession made sense to me. It also supported my sports habit. I've coached a variety of sports during my career.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS TODAY AND HOW CAN IT BE OVERCOME?

Jason: There are lots of challenges, and one area of challenge is having the courage for districts and schools to change the system, rather than conform to the system.

School districts need to change their mindset from traditional methods of what school is for students to a mindset of innovative methods driven by teachers. This includes professional development and learning experiences for students while being provided the tools needed for student learning. District administrators need to get their hands dirty with teachers and work with them, not down to them. They need to work side by side in creating that innovative mindset.

Margaret: The biggest challenges facing California schools are the waves of change and the subtle resistances that counteract 21st-century updates to our education systems and practices.I believe they can be overcome by giving educators enough time to accommodate and assimilate change into their practice.

Scott: California public school reform remains isolated from families. Programs don’t change lives, cultures do. Any reform effort must include a significant outreach to families and neighborhood leaders.

WHEN DID YOU JOIN CUE AND WHY?

Jason: In 2007, a colleague mentioned I should check out CUE and attend their conference in Palm Springs. I never looked back. Now I present at National CUE, Fall CUE, CUE Rock Star Teacher Camps, while serving as SGVCUE president, and on both Fall CUE and the Affiliate & Learning Network Leadership Committee. It is a great community.

Margaret: I joined CUE when I first began teaching because the name said “Computer Using Educators.” That was me! As


SPO

TLIG

HT

ON

MEM

BERS

the instructional technology specialist I was responsible for helping teachers integrate technology so it was a natural fit.

Scott: My first CUE conference was at Independence High School in San Jose in the mid 1980s. As a young teacher, I was drawn to the powerful learning that came from Logo projects. I presented a session the following year on the compelling reach of interactive-fiction video games (e.g., Zork, Wishbringer, Planetfall) to improve writing and reading skills.

WHERE DOES CUE NEED TO GROW?

Jason: CUE needs to continue growing in its support for their affiliates and learning networks. The affiliates and LNs are the grassroots of CUE and CUE has done a great job in this area in recent years with their support. While serving on the Affiliate & Learning Network Leadership Committee we have worked hard together with CUE to make the affiliates stronger and feel supported to serve the schools in their area.

Margaret: CUE does an excellent job for teachers at the beginning of the technology learning curve, we just need more offerings for intermediate and advanced teachers.

Scott: Over the years, the CUE Board and staff have navigated well through rough seas. The new leadership is fresh, energized, filled with hope. CUE stands poised to change the world... one educator at a time.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME?

Jason: In my spare time I enjoy family—my two children Brennan, 4, and Rachelle, 2, and my wife Brenda. I also enjoy traveling and photography as a hobby. I’m also

a Cleveland sports junkie who has season tickets to the Browns and attended Game 7 of the historical Cleveland Cavaliers Championship.

Margaret: I have a two year old (you may remember me carrying a folding chair during CUE 2012!) so my spare time is spent cleaning up all her “learning experiences!” LOL

Scott: I have yet to discover a “rather be” as in, “I'd rather be doing something else.” Right now, classroom teaching is “rather be” even in my spare time. It's live! As a site and district administrator for 15-plus years, I know it’s easy to lose sight of the trench work. You think in terms of theory, not reality. Classroom teaching is live. Each day, 110 students face me with open luggage. Some say, “Fill it up!” Others say, “Give me more please.” Still others have suitcases that are broken, torn, holes in it. Teaching is live. You meet students on their terms to get them to your terms. It’s live. A lesson may flop, the Internet may go down, then real teaching happens. It’s live. Even beyond the classroom in casual settings or at church or bike riding with friends, I’m looking for opportunities to bring the outside world into the classroom or ways to put my kids in front of the world. Teaching is live.

AND FINALLY, WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HASHTAG?

Jason: #caedchat and #sgvcue

Margaret: My favorite hashtag is #ForTheNextGen because this profession keeps me in touch with the next generation and all I do leads back to them, whether in my life or in my classroom there are always lessons to impart to them and learn from them.

Scott: #cue

Jason Seliksar Margaret Agbowo Scott Smith


CO

NTIN

UED

FROM

...

CHECK TWITTER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

best practices in education. We also have an Instagram account to share our uniquely beautiful campus. Instagram’s emphasis on sharing visuals and video artifacts makes this a great fit for sharing our school’s beauty, community, and campus-as-classroom learning opportunities.

NEXT LEVEL STUFFNow that our teachers are using grade-level Twitter accounts, it’s time for our students to share their own learning on this platform. Third grade classes have The Tweeter as a class job; each week, one student is responsible for taking a photo and explaining the learning happening in that moment. The entire class helps to edit the photo, and they publish the tweet together.

We just rolled out a new leadership opportunity for our middle school students: social media ambassadors. Six students from each grade level applied to be a social media ambassador, sharing how they want to tell the story of their own learning with parents.

ENDING WITH A FANCY NAMEIn a culture where more people get their news via social media, having classroom news on social media is a natural way to better communicate with parents. We love using social media to not only communicate with parents, but to also share best practices with other educators as we reach beyond ourselves to make a difference in the world.

Bill Selak is the Director of Technology at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, CA. He is an ISTE 2014 Kay L. Bitter Vision Award recipient, ISTE 2013 Emerging Leader, and a Google

Certified Innovator. Bill has been on the planning teams of EdCampSFBay and EdCampLA, and is currently obsessed with sharing his professional learning on Snapchat.

Erin Schwartz is the Director of Communications and Community Engagement at Hillbrook School, an independent JK-8th grade school in Los Gatos, CA. Considering herself an “edu-storyteller,” she enjoys

connecting her campus and community on a digital, media-rich landscape.

Twitter is quickly becoming very popular in educational communities and effectively increases the educator and student’s Personal Learning Network.

Many find Twitter to be their best source for both sharing and soliciting information relevant to their network of followers. Twitter requires the author to be succinct with their communication but the addition of links to images and resources goes a long way in enhancing the value of the shared information.

A PICTURE IS WORTH 1,000 TWEETSWith an Instagram posting the author utilizes pictures, brief descriptions, and hashtags to tell their story. Communicating via images may not be as obvious to your audience as text but it can certainly convey feelings and emotions in ways untouched by the average writer.

MANAGE THE LEARNINGThere are many Learning Management Systems (LMS) on the market that have made blended and online learning extremely effective and interactive. Edmodo (www.edmodo.com), Schoology (www.schoology.com), and others offer an excellent venue for teacher-student communication about all aspects of the classroom curriculum. Educators that flip their classroom (cue.tc/2dE2gec) or incorporate screencasts, Podcasts (cue.tc/2enO0JE), and YouTube need a location to house their digital resources. An LMS can be used to distribute and receive assignments, share resources, encourage collaboration, enhance communication, and ultimately improve learning.

There are many other tools that can assist with enhancing communication between teacher and student and more tools come into the educational arena daily. No matter which tools you choose to incorporate in your educational environment, be sure to be open to new and improved resources as they become available. Educators need to teach a variety of ways for students to learn and need to be lifelong learners themselves.

Tim Landeck is the director of Technology Services at the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in Watsonville, CA. He has been in a technology leadership role for over 20 years and is a CETPA board member, a CUE Gold Disk recipient and a Google Innovation Educator. He

welcomes your feedback and ideas and can be reached at @tim_landeck or [email protected].

LEARNING NETWORK FOCUS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35


CA

LEN

DA

R O

F EV

ENTS

all the time in my new position, and it’s challenging balancing what I want to do with what I have to do and what pops up during the course of a school day, but I’m still learning and I’m still trying to #RTTF (Represent To The Fullest).

What I love about CUE is that I get a chance to converse with others, check in on the work they’re doing, and share the learning experiences others have regardless of what their position is within education. This year, I’m looking to bring a team of teachers from my schools to share the passion and learning that CUE has given me. I know that the teachers that get this opportunity will in turn bring those opportunities back to our schools in East San Jose.

Jonathan Natividad is a first-year assistant principal at two K-8 schools in East San Jose, CA. He loves integrating technology into the classroom, still loves working with students, and works to bring learning opportunities to everyone in his school communities. Every day is an opportunity to Represent To The Fullest! #RTTF. He can be reached at [email protected].

AFTER THE FINKEL SCHOLARSHIP FROM PAGE 39

CALENDAR OF EVENTS2017

2018

January 6-7, 2017 CUE Rock Star Admin Camp Del Mar, CA cue.org/rockstaradmin

January 28, 2017 CUE-NV 2017 Tech FestMinden, NV bit.ly/CUENVTECH17

January 28-29, 2017 CUE Rock Star TOSA EditionSan Francisco, CAcue.org/sftosa

February 11-12, 2017CUE Rock Star NGSS EditionOrcutt, CAcue.org/rsspecialty/NGSS

March 15-18, 2017CUE 2017 National ConferencePalm Springs, CAcue17.org

April 29-30, 2017CUE Rock Star Math EditionArcadia, CAcue.org/rockstar

October 27-28, 2017 CUE 2017 Fall ConferenceNapa Valley, CAfallcue.org

March 14-17, 2018 CUE 2018 National ConferencePalm Springs, CAwww.cue.org/conference

October 26-27, 2018CUE 2018 Fall ConferenceNapa Valley, CAwww.fallcue.org

CUE, Inc. | 877 Ygnacio Valley Road, Suite 200 | Walnut Creek, CA 94596phone 925.478.3460 | fax 925.934.6799 | email [email protected] | website www.cue.org | twitter @cueinc

SPOTLIGHT SPEAKERS Darryl Adams, Nicole Dalesio, Hall Davidson, Leslie Fisher,

Karen Janowski, Brad Montague, Tom Murray, Mark Ray, and Toni Robinson

GEORGE COUROSGeneral Session KeynoteFriday, March 17

TAYLOR MALIWelcome Session KeynoteWednesday, March 15

NATIONAL CONFERENCE7

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA MARCH 15-18

CUE17.org #CUE17

CATHY HUNTClosing Session KeynoteSaturday, March 18

JO BOALERKickoff Keynote SpeakerThursday, March 16

Homework Deathwatch 2017! - · PDF fileWinter 2016 » Vol. 38 » No. 4 ON Homework...

Documents

Transcript of Homework Deathwatch 2017! - · PDF fileWinter 2016 » Vol. 38 » No. 4 ON Homework...