New Year, New Role

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During the first week of December, my principal had asked me about taking on a new role at school. This role would involve me sharing my teaching duties with another teacher and working as the school’s community partnership coordinator part time (with the same teacher). After consulting my wife and other teachers on campus, I decided to accept this new role.

The hardest part for me was giving up teaching my classes every other day (since we are on block scheduling) to another teacher. I will admit that I am a bit of a control freak in my classroom and giving up some of that control is unnerving. In addition, it is hard not seeing my students every day. These are students that I have had in my classroom for the last two and a half years.

The thing that I am going to enjoy most about my role as the community partnership coordinator is that I get to help out and participate with the rest of the program areas at our school. I get to work with the program leaders, administration, and our community partners to enhance the effectiveness of the entire school. I think this is the next step in my progression as a CTE educator and I am looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead.

When Students Want More

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It is always great when you have motivated students and this year seems to bring me more than the last few years. My sophomore class, with a few juniors, are the driving force behind a new after-school game development program to learn new pieces of software. I am hesitant to call it a club because of the extra paperwork and stuff that goes along with the formation of a club at our school. I have essentially made it an enhancement of my existing office hours, which I now call “Studio Time.” Any student, in any program area or club at our school, is welcome to come and work on technology-related projects. Students that need assistance in my class or any other class are welcome to come in for help.

The students forming the program have named it C-Dev Studios after the name of our building. The goals of C-Dev Studios is to give students additional time to work on class projects, work on projects for competitions, contests, and scholarships, and to have a mini-lecture series on new software concepts or on general game design. The students are creating a list of topics that they would like me to cover as part of the mini-lecture series and several students are already starting to teach their peers about what they know.

As for long range goals that I would like to see with C-Dev Studios are the following:

  • Guest speakers to help with the mini-lectures (either in person or via Skype)
  • Summer camp for existing students to continue to work on projects over the summer
  • Summer camp for future 8th graders to help our school recruit students
The enthusiasm that my students have shown me has re-energized me this quarter and I am looking forward to seeing what the students will produce inside and outside of my classroom.

Numbers and iPad for Student Assessment

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In a previous post and during a few conference presentations, I discussed how I use Google forms and an iPad to assess my students on a daily basis. Shortly after the start of the school year, I realized that I had to change my plans on assessing my students. My school has added several new teachers this year and more students have devices that use WiFi which was slowing down my use of Google forms in the classroom. It was taking too long for the form to submit and I found myself wasting time waiting on the Internet.

I still wanted to assess students in the same method, but without using a Google form. I have started using Numbers for the iPad. While I did not set it up as a form, I did create a spreadsheet on my laptop that included all of the students names in one column and my grading tenets in each of the other columns. Using my iDisk account, I was able to transfer the documents for each class to my iPad. I enter the grades as I am walking around to each students work into the copy on my iPad. At the end of class, I copy the document back to my iDisk account and open the document on my laptop so I can copy and paste the grades into the gradebook.

The total process does involve a few more steps, but the biggest benefit right now for me is that I am not dependent on WiFi to grade the students work.

Dumbing Down of CTE in Wisconsin?

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This week I read two articles from an ACTE email newsletter that discussed the state of Wisconsin creating a vocational diploma. At first glance, I am thinking that this is a good idea, but then I read the articles. Both of these articles were lacking specifics, but the impression that I am left with is that Wisconsin is going to bypass some math, English, and science classes in order to create the vocational diploma.

While math, English, and science may not be subjects that are directly related certain vocational degrees, they are not less important because they are not directly related. Students will need these subjects as most jobs do need these skills in some manner. Hopefully, the details will point out that the students will still be responsible for the classes, but in a slightly different setting. For example, classes title “Math for Culinary” or the “Science of Welding” will be used to replace the standard classes. If not, I don’t think Wisconsin is doing their populace any favors and are not preparing students for the high-skill, high education jobs that this country will be depending on in the future.

The two articles I am referencing can be found at:

Busy Start to the Year

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A very busy start of the school year has had me ignoring this blog which was something that I was trying to prevent this year. I do have several topics that I am preparing to write about in the next few days. Below is a list of items that I would like to discuss in the next week or two:

  • My partial abandonment of Google Forms for Student Assessment
  • Flip method
  • After-school game development program
  • My experiences in each of my game design classes so far this year
  • High school capstone projects
  • Digital portfolios
  • A couple of articles that I have read from the ACTE daily emails.

A New Year as an FBLA Adviser

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Tomorrow is our first FBLA meeting of the school year. It is the one drawback of having meetings on Mondays because tomorrow is the first chance we get to meet due to Labor Day Weekend. I am really excited and nervous about this year’s FBLA activities.

I am excited because it looks like I have a motivated executive board that is more active than my previous boards. This is mainly due to the experiences the board members have had in the previous two years. They have seen what has worked and not worked for previous boards and are willing to try new things.

I am nervous due to the new things the board wants to do. They want to attend leadership conferences, compete in the state conference, and are willing to do work outside the every other Monday meetings. I am proud that they want to do these things, but I’m nervous because I want to make sure that they can participate in these activities. This means that I now have to learn and complete the proper paperwork for trips which I have never done before and make sure that the students are properly fundraising for the events.

Yesterday, I attended an adviser training provided for FBLA advisers in the district. After the training, I am more confident that I can accomplish these tasks, provide the proper leadership for my members, and contribute some new ideas for the club. I may be excited and nervous about this year in FBLA, but I think the excitement is overtaking my nerves.

Show and Tell

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Yesterday’s post discussed my decision to do a demo for my presentation instead of a hands-on activity. The limited time of my sessions was the leading factor in my decision, but I think another surpassed it today. That factor was actual interest in using the iPad for student assessment.

The teachers on campus had to choose four separate topics from a selection of eight to attend. I presented three times and assisted another teacher during his presentation during the fourth. I think my best session was actually the best one. It was my fullest session, despite the request from administration, to limit each session to fifteen teachers. I know that I was over fifteen, but I don’t have the heart to turn anyone away. In this first session, I’m estimating that all but two or three teachers will actually use the iPad to assess students in their classes. The group was tech savvy and asked quality questions throughout the presentation.

My second session was small with five teachers. Most of these teachers will probably not use the iPad for assessment, but were there to be informed about what I am doing in the class. While the may not have been interested specifically in student assessment, they did ask great questions about other apps I use and whether or not they can be used on an iPod effectively. The last session I presented had about fifteen teachers, but only about four or five will seriously consider using the iPad to assess students.

These last two groups are why I am glad that I didn’t do a hands-on presentation. I don’t think there is anything more difficult than teaching hands-on technology to people that don’t want to use it. My time will be better served by giving an intro, provide a resource for teachers to do step-by-step, and make myself available for one-on-one help.

Demo vs. Presentation

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Tomorrow is the first official day back for teachers in Clark County. I say official because I (and several other teachers) have been back to work for the last couple of weeks. The first day back is typically filled with staff development and tomorrow is no exception. The teachers on our campus can choose four sessions attend from ten potential options. I am responsible for presenting during three of the four sessions and assisting another teacher in the fourth session.

I am presenting a variation of my NACTE presentation on using the iPad and Google Apps. The focus of my presentation is on creating forms in Google Docs and use the forms on an iPad for student assessment. I have created a Prezi presentation that shows the step-by-step process of setting up the forms and the iPad. My concern is that I will not have enough time, about 45 minutes, to have each teacher work through each step.

What I have decided is to do a live demonstration from beginning to end on the entire process. If there is time at the end of each session, teachers can start to create any forms. I am usually not a fan of doing live demos because since so much can go wrong when using Internet-based technologies, but at least I have the Prezi downloaded in case something goes wrong.

Adventures in Google Apps for Education

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A friend of mine recently asked me via Twitter if I would write a blog post about becoming a Google Apps school. I was not involved in the initial setup of the Google Apps for our school. Another teacher had signed the school up and started the initial process of the Google Apps at our school. What I am going to describe is our school’s evolution with Google Apps over the couse of the 2010-11 school year.

The initial purpose behind using Google Apps was to allow each teacher to create Google calendars for each class and insert his/her lesson plans in the calendar. In the first year that our school was open (2009-10), every teacher had posted lessons online either through personal Google accounts, Moodle, or uploaded PDF files via Dreamweaver. The lack of consistency in posting lessons and methods of posting lessons was troublesome to our administration and they had decided to have the staff use Google calendars. On the very first day back to work last year, I did a presentation on and helped every teacher sign-in to their accounts, create the calendars, enter events, and embed the calendars onto their class website.

The teacher who initially set up the Google Apps also set up accounts for the students in his program areas and my program areas which is about 180 students on a campus of just over 1000 students. I can only explain my (and a third teacher across the hall) progression through Google Apps. I started off small. I had every student login to their calendar and subscribe to the calendars of his/her other teachers. This allowed every student to see what was happening in all of their classes in one location. Since our school was also piloting a 1 to 1 program with the iPod Touch, my juniors also made sure they had access to their calendars on the iPod.

Once I got the calendars squared away, I moved into Google Docs. I started small here as well. My students initially typed assignments in Google Docs and when they finished they shared the document with me. I would provide feedback to the students in the document and allow them to make any changes if necessary. The students moved on to sharing documents with other students in the class. This was mostly creating group contracts and small presentations, but the students quickly learned that they could be more productive if four of them were working on a document simultaneously instead of watching one person type the entire document. In addition, I started making my deadlines due earlier to force simultaneous work and avoid having one person do all the work. Small group contract assignments eventually grew into large scale documents when my students created complex documents like a user guide for Maya and a game design document for their senior capstone project.

At first, I was content with just using the calendar and documents, but curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what else I could do. I moved to creating groups by graduation year. I mainly did this because I didn’t want to recreate groups this year and the graduation year of my students isn’t going to change. I started creating discussion questions that students would reply to at the beginning of class. Some of these posts were simple recall questions about the previous lectures, some were to provoke a debate, and some of the posts were designed to have my students write multiple choice questions about the material covered in class (some of which I used on tests).

The last big step in our school’s use of Google Apps came in a meeting about student portfolios. Our school is going to require that each student will complete a digital portfolio by the end of his/her senior year. We discussed several options and decided that using Google Sites was going to be our best option. This decision was made because using the school’s Google Apps account, we can control outside access to the portfolios and believed that every student, regardless of technical skills, would be able to complete a professional-looking portfolio.

At this time, only 10% of our student population had a Google Apps account. I was able to import the remainder of the student body using an Excel spreadsheet. The teacher across the hall and I taught the web design juniors how to create and modify a Google site and had them create some basic templates for other students to use. Once the web design juniors were proficient, we invited the other 10 program area juniors into our classrooms for a 30 minute lesson on setting up a portfolio. The other program area students logged into their accounts for the first time, selected a portfolio template, and had one-on-one time with another student to learn how to modify a Google site. While the juniors were getting lessons on the portfolios from their peers, the freshman were learning how to use Google Sites in their computer-based projects class. The only grade level that did not receive training last year was the sophomore class. This was mainly due to time constraints and that grade level will be trained at the beginning of this school year.

I realize that I have covered a lot in this post and I’m not positive that I got everything. One feature that we do not use is Gmail because the district has it’s own email system for students. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them to this post, email me, or send me a message via Twitter.

Reverse Mentoring

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Since the beginning of the school year is quickly approaching, my principal asked several of the “tech savvy” teachers on campus to come in to work for a meeting. The main focus of the meeting was on using ePub and the Flip Method. The majority of our school’s juniors and seniors will have either an iPod or iPad assigned to them during the year and will have access to ePub documents outside of the classroom.

Everyone who attended the meeting is onboard with this idea. Our discussion quickly changed to how can we get some of the other teachers on campus involved. Our school has two staff development days right before the first day of school, but there is a lot to cover in those two days in addition to a training on ePub that some of us are attending next week. One of the school’s best staff development days last year is when the broadcast teacher had several of his students come in and help teach all of the teachers on campus how to create a podcast.

The students had a great time teaching the teachers, and the teachers enjoyed the one-to-one attention needed to create a podcast. We decided that we could have students learn how to create ePub documents and work with teachers on one of our staff development days. By using reverse mentoring, our school is able to get teachers familiar with a new technology in a one-to-one, hands-on setting instead of trying to learn it by watching a presentation.

I will post further updates on our school’s rollout of ePub and the FlipMethod once the staff goes through the training and starts creating ePub documents.