With a year of Canvas under our belts, it's time to start cleaning up our Canvas courses. With this being the first year of Canvas implementation, there was quite a bit of trial and error. Staff survey results showed that teachers either want to make minor adjustments or completely overhaul their courses and most of the responses referred to the organization of their courses.
Being in the middle of remote learning during COVID-19 quarantine, a face-to-face training is not possible. I debated between a Zoom webinar or an asynchronous option and I settled on EdPuzzle because I really wanted to talk through the presentation and collect responses from participants. I am so excited that there will soon be a Screencastify + Edpuzzle integration.
Check out the 30-minute EdPuzzle "webinar" for real teacher examples and to get inspiration for how to organize your Canvas course to simplify navigation and increase student engagement.
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I'm so excited to team up with Polly Simpkins to offer a book study. Blended Learning in Action by Catlin Tucker demonstrates the advantages a blended model has over traditional instruction when technology is used to engage students both inside the classroom and online. Based on conversations with teachers who were interested in the Blended Learning in Action Book Study and some who had participated in online course about blended learning, I learned that what was missing in their training was actually experiencing blended learning from the perspective of a student. For this reason, we planned the book study to not be just online, or just in-person discussion, but a blended experience. We kicked off the book study with this short video! Our first in-person meeting is planned using a station rotation model. We'll open the meeting with a poll about the challenges teachers face in the classroom, then work through station of how to access the digital eBook, defining blended learning, and discussing what makes a good book study experience. We will close the meeting with a card mapping activity to break down the flow of the lesson. Teachers will walk away with their own set of Blended Learning Icon Cards to aid in planning blended lessons for their own classrooms.
Future meeting models will be determined based on the needs and preferences of participants. I hope to model a different structure each time we meet, giving participants a chance to experience the model and digest the book we're reading. Have you read Blended Learning in Action or have experience with blended models in your own classroom? I'd love to hear about it. Our teacher Chromebooks have arrived and our Clark PD committee discussed that having some time to orient teachers to their Chromebooks and ways to use them would be a great use of PD time at the beginning of the year. As a result, I planned ‘Camp Chromebook!’ Sessions were summer camp themed like 🧭 Orientation, ⛺ Pitch the Tent, 🎨 Arts & Crafts, and 🧗Obstacle Course. Who doesn't love a theme? Ours was complete with campfires and smores trail mix! I enlisted the help of some teacher leaders on campus. We stated with Camp Orientation for getting acquainted with the new teacher Chromebooks and followed that with four rotations.
⛺ Pitch the Tent: We talked about classroom design and how teachers are no longer teachers to a teacher workstation. We encouraged teachers to design theri space based on the types of learning activities for the day. In additional, Ms. Scott shared with teachers how to mirror their Chromebook to the to the projector and annotate using Kami app. 🎪 Talent Show: We had stations set up around the library for teachers to try out different apps/sites like Flipgrid, Screencastify, and Google Tour Creator. 🎨 Arts & Crafts: This session was housekeeping for getting started with our new learning management system, Canvas. In addition, we learned about how to use the Google Docs Cloud assignment integration. 🧗Obstacle Course: This session was all about classroom management. Ms. Sears shared ideas for device management, student accountability, expectations, and what to do when there's no wifi. It was a fast and furious training with big payoff. Teachers left training feeling a bit more confident about their new classroom setup and with ideas for how to use the student Chromebooks that will be stationed in their classrooms for student use. Hands down, this is the best professional development I've attended. Sketchnoting with Sylvia Duckworth was hands-on, relevant, and challenging. Sylvia defines sketchnoting, or visual notetaking, as "an effective and fun way to take notes using doodles and text. It has many other benefits such as increased focus and engagement in class, improved comprehension and memory retention, helps develop creative thinking skills and allows students an alternative way to display their learning and make connections to course content." I went analog during the #Sketchnote workshop. It was easier to soak up the new information without learning a new program or app at the same time. I decided to recap with some digital practice this evening though and I'm extremely proud of my work!
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