Google Maps goes to the White House!

For a fun virtual tour, check out the walk through of the White House holiday display for 2021. This could connect to technology, math, a creative writing prompt, discussion of the history of decorating the White House for the public, art analysis, and so much more!

Google Maps is a tool that not only provides 360 views that might compliment a unit of study, but the My Maps can allow you to create and share your own map with students, creating an annotated virtual tour of many spaces. And best of all, students can move through these at their own pace.

If you want some examples, email TLI :) Enjoy your trips!

Canva: Time-Saving Templates

GPS is a Canva partner! As an educator in our district, you can freely access Canva tools (and allow students to access them as well). This is a great time-saver if you value visual appeal or like more options when customizing classroom tools.

You can use Canva templates for videos (you can record over slides as you would with Screencastify), presentations, student-friendly lesson plans, worksheets, and specialty items like quiz games, comic strips, newsletters, infographics, and even FlipGrid backdrops. You can also share templates, and so teachers are adding content all the time for use.

Editing in Canva is fairly straightforward if you are using the templates "as is", but there is a learning curve if you want to customize. If you have ever used photo editing or desktop publishing software, however, then this learning curve is small!

Canva also allows for download and import, if you prefer to keep all of your documents in the Googleverse, whether for your sanity or for ease of editing by students in Google Classroom. 

If you haven't tried Canva, it is worth a 20 minute trial! Login with your GPS account and explore what the educational templates can offer you. For more ideas, visit DitchThatTextbook's post of 20 ideas for using Canva.

Future math teachers take on videos

Why does so much of blended learning rely of videos? There are many great reasons to use video (see this TLI blog post for more of the research), but I wanted to share a few powerful reasons that future math teachers shared:

1. In essence, as Phil Michener, GHS intern and future math teacher, shared, the video is not replacing the teacher, but rather, multiplying the impact of the teacher, allowing him to be in multiple places at once. Although it seems counter-intuitive, the time spent preparing direct instruction in advance (or during class, if you have a student or a tripod-mounted camera recording you) frees the teacher from the front of the classroom and provides time to meet with students and personalize to meet their needs more efficiently. 

2. Likewise, videos save time if students miss something. Here's an example that SHU teacher candidate Katherine Clyde wanted to share:  Katie didn't think much of videos as a student; to her, they were something left for a substitute to show and unproductive. However:

"Last year, I was working one on one with a student while the teacher was going over exponents. She said any number to the exponent of 0 was always one, and then moved on to the next subject. My student got really upset because he did not understand why this was true and therefore struggled with grasping the concept and so the topic. I went to the internet and looked to see if I could find a better way to describe it and found a really great Khan Academy video on how that math worked. I showed it to my student and he immediately connected with it. He went from not even trying because he couldn’t grasp it, to totally on top of it because the video helped so much. The video was only about three minutes long and it made a big difference in this student’s learning."

Videos meet the needs of many learners, and not just students who regularly need a slower pace. In fact, videos can allow students who are ready to move faster to go ahead, rather than disengage waiting for other members of the class. Additionally, learners who might need or enjoy extra challenge can be given the opportunity to make their own instructional videos, not only providing teachers with more evidence of learning, but potentially providing more support for their peers.

Thinking about using a video to give you more time to connect with students or give students more control over the pace of their learning? Check out these tips (credit to Edutopia for many!):

• Be selective and clear on your purpose—that will help you determine what clip to show or what content to film--and how to frame it for students.
• A good rule is a video should be no longer than the # of years a student has been in school...and 5 minutes or less is most impactful.
• Provide a mission. Setting a goal for what students are about to watch will keep them accountable and attentive.
• Give students time to reflect by encouraging them to pause (or using a tool like EdPuzzle that forces pauses) and then providing time to discuss, record notes, etc. 
• Turn on closed captioning. Students can read along as they watch.

Stepping on the Scale

There's an old saying along the lines of "you don't fatten up a pig by weighing it." Usually this is said in the context of standardized testing, making the point that we shouldn't sacrifice instructional time in favor of testing time, as we need to "feed" students knowledge for them to grow.

But if we extend this analogy, while we might give a pig food to eat, ultimately it has the choice whether to ingest it. Likewise, that food might not be what that pig needs to gain the weight it needs in a timely way. Just putting food in front of the pig doesn't guarantee a good outcome.

And to be clear, students are certainly NOT pigs. 

So, how do we recognize what is enticing, helpful, etc. for students? It is by continuously evaluating our actions and our students response to them, and having conversations around this evidence. This is in alignment with recent findings about the best way to boost teacher efficacy: seeing actual improvement in students’ learning as a result of specific classroom practices. In “The Past and Future of Teacher Efficacy”, Thomas Guskey describes a study showing positive results for those teachers who give frequent formative assessments and immediately follow up with students below mastery (80%). 

While assessment is not a goal unto itself and our students are certainly more than their numbers, frequent "weighing" coupled with immediate feedback is the way to help students AND teachers grow! The more frequently teachers receive targeted feedback on student performance in direct response to their lessons, and the more they provide targeted feedback to students in return, the better.

So, how can you do this easily? 

• A favorite strategy is to use "piles" for things like entry or exit tickets. Rather than spend time grading formative assessments, teachers sort the assignments into stacks--perhaps students who fully, kind of, or don't "get it"--and then plan to follow up with small groups based on which students need what supports. Using Google forms or even Kahoots can quickly provide this data too!
• If you feel the need to provide detailed feedback or examples, commit to a few things to share and reuse! You could use Mote to provide audio feedback--if you use Google Classroom, you can save detailed feedback in the comment bank--and quickly insert/reuse the file. Provide a few minutes in class for students to listen, reflect, and plan to implement the changes for maximum impact.