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Remix the 5E Model with PBL and Technology - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Remix the 5E Model with PBL and Technology - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Try the 5E Model with PBL and technology to engage learners with curriculum-based, real-world connected thinking and solution development opportunities.

Remix the 5E Model, blending project-based learning and technology (e.g. Minecraft: Education Edition), to serve up engaging learning opportunities. These jazzed-up lessons have the power to captivate students' hearts and minds. If you're wondering why you should use the 5E Model with PBL and technology, keep reading. Aside from Generation Z research, which focuses on students we have in our classrooms now, research supports the idea that engaged learners retain more and apply that learning more.

Research

Here are some points that make it an imperative we remix learning in our classrooms:

A 2013 Gallup poll of 500,000 students in grades five through 12 found that nearly eight in 10 elementary students were "engaged" with school, that is, attentive, inquisitive, and generally optimistic. By high school, the number dropped to four in 10.

A 2015 follow-up study found that less than a third of 11th-graders felt engaged (as cited online by Tim Holt).

Teachers must often overcome several obstacles when initiating PBL in their school. Yet the shift to active learning involves students in open-ended, scaffolded learning opportunities. Terms like active learning are often synonymous with engaged learning. Some see engaged learning as "providing students with opportunities for practice in unscripted, authentic settings, where stakeholders (including the students themselves) are invested in the outcome" (). Reviewing the definition of common terms helps ground our work.

Defining Terms

Is this your first time in the kitchen? Let's take a moment to define terms that have been tossed around.

Active Learning: "Active learning is generally defined as any instructional method that engages students in the learning process. In short, active learning requires students to do meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing" (Source).

5E Model: The 5E Model organizes lesson planning, focusing teacher-created activities and making them student-centric with attention given to Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate to transform learning. You can find a more detailed overview online.

Project-Based Learning (PBL): The PBL approach drops students into a real world problem-solving situation and engages them emotionally and intellectually from stakeholder perspectives. You can find more information about PBL online. You may also want to read this LifePractice PBL book review by TCEA member from El Paso ISD.

Now that definitions are out the way, let's dive into a fun exploration of the 5E Model with PBLT, one step at a time.

Step 1: Engage with Problems

Craft an engaging scenario or problem. You need not limit yourself to problems or issues that arise in your community. Use local news, as well as news sources online such as , , or . Combine tools like Summarize This or to to help transition students to make their research process visible. When selecting a video or news story, search for one that is aligned to the TEKS Standards.

Here are two examples featuring Minecraft: Education Edition (MCEE) PBL Task Cards I adapted from lessons developed in TCEA MCEE workshops:

You can read more about this in another blog entry, Fantastic Voyage: Minecraft Lesson Planning.

Step 2: Explore Student Thinking with Videos

As we explore student thinking, you can quickly make thinking visible with video. Encourage students to "think, plan, investigate, and organize collected information" with either Flipgrid.com or LetsRecap.com. Both offer opportunities for students to share their reflections and research take-aways.

Don't forget that you can also encourage students to snap pictures in Minecraft: Education Edition (MCEE), write a short description of those, and then export the images. This makes it easy to collect the information into a slide show and have students record audio reflections describing what they learned as a narrated slideshow.

Another approach includes having students fill out paper rubrics sharing their learning. Here's one example of a rubric that fosters reflection. Students had worked on building a community in MCEE:

Step 3: Explain Learning Take-Aways

In this step, students can use a tool like Shadow Puppet EDU, Toontastic, Google Slides with Screencasting tools, or Powerpoint and Office Mix to create some type of media (e.g. audio, narrated slideshow, video) that shares their learning. The main goal is to externalize their thinking and learning process in such a way that helps others understand it.

Step 4: Elaborate with Paper Slides

In this step, have students apply their new insights and framework to a new idea. One approach involves creating a narrated slideshow with paper slides, where students storyboard their application of a newly developed problem-solving process to an existing problem. Their illustration of the problem helps them see what is happening, bringing order to chaos. Then, video record a paper slide of the process as students explain their thinking.

Here are two sample storyboards (which could be made in a comic book app or website, Powerpoint, or even hand-drawn in OneNote with digital ink. Other tools include Padlet, Google Drawing, Google Slides). It really doesn't matter what you make it with, provided that students make their thinking visible.

Sample storyboard involving Minecraft and the "Horror" genre:

Another approach is to rely on a tool like Skype or Appear.in to bring in an expert to offer feedback on the paper slide students have created. Here are a few folks you can connect with via Twitter:

Step 5: Evaluate with Quizziz or Kahoot!

In this step, students are expected to take evaluation to the next level. Rather than the teacher creating a or type assessment, students reflect on the process they have gone through and then create an assessment to offer others who are learning from them. The assessment serves as a reflective measure for the solution developers and for others who seek to learn from the solution or apply it.

Wrap Up

Once you have crafted your 5E Model Lesson with PBL+T, you can take a break and relax. Learn more about PBL in the Classroom at an upcoming Tots and Technology conference.

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Remix the 5E Model with PBL and Technology - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Try the 5E Model with PBL and technology to engage learners with curriculum-based, real-world connected thinking and solution development opportunities. Remix the 5E Model, blending project-based learning and technology (e.g. Minecraft: Education Edition ), to serve up engaging learning opportunities. These jazzed-up lessons have the power to captivate students' hearts and minds.

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Credly is the end-to-end solution for creating, issuing and managing digital credentials. Thousands of organizations use Credly to recognize achievement.

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A collection by Dana Sparkman, Ph.D. Everybody loves games! In this collection of resources, teachers can learn about ways to gamify their classrooms in order to promote maximum student engagement and motivation. The tutorials featured in this collection come from Capella University's Free PD for Digital Educators program and uses the Sophia platform to deliver learning around this competency.

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Animal Adaptations - Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Animal Adaptations - Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Interactive Learning Sites for Education

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Doing More with Google Forms - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Doing More with Google Forms - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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During a recent Get Your Google On webinar, Jennifer Bergland, Director of Governmental Relations at TCEA, shared ways in which you can move beyond just the basics and do more with Google Forms. One of those ways included the use of add-ons.

If you aren't familiar with add-ons, they are small programs built by third-party developers that can be installed to bring more functionality to your forms. Form add-ons allow you to add extra features to your forms, get customized notifications, turn your form entries into documents, and much more.

Finding Add-Ons

To find Form add-ons, click on the More button (which looks like three little dots in the upper right-hand corner of your form) and then scroll to Add-Ons. You can browse through the add-ons and install the ones you want. You'll then get a new puzzle piece icon in Google Forms, with a menu that lists each of your add-ons.

Most Google Forms add-ons run in a popover on the right side of your form, and they may also include an options pane that opens in the center. To open an add-on, just select it in the add-ons menu, which looks like a puzzle piece. To manage or remove add-ons, just open the Add-ons pane again under the More button, find the add-on you want to remove, click the green Manage button, and then select Remove in its menu.

Useful Google Forms Add-Ons

Below is a list of some useful add-ons to get started with.

Choice Eliminator 2 - This add-on eliminates options from multiple-choice, list, or checkbox questions if they've already been selected. It's a great way to make a signup form.

CheckItOut - This add-on lets you check in or out items with a form. When the items get checked out, the items move to a section of the form titled Check In. When they return the item, they can check it back in, which moves it to the Check Out category.

Form Notifications - This add-on sends custom email notifications to you and, optionally, to form respondents, with details about the form results, as well as a thank you message.

formLimiter - This add-on limits how many times your form can be answered. It can watch for a number of responses, a date and time, or a set value in your results spreadsheet, and then will disable your form once that number is reached.

formRecycler - This add-on lets you recycle questions from other Forms in your Drive. Just pick the Form in the popup window and it will populate with the questions from that Form. Select the ones you want to insert and the formRecycler will automatically insert them at the end of the Form.

As you can see, Google Form add-ons can save you a lot of time, as well as make your forms more functional. The next time you create a Google Form, give some of these add-ons a try, and don't forget to tune in to our Get Your Google On webinars. They are held the first Thursday of every month and are free to TCEA members. Register here.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Doing More with Google Forms - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During a recent Get Your Google On webinar, Jennifer Bergland, Director of Governmental Relations at TCEA, shared ways in which you can move beyond just the basics and do more with Google Forms. One of those ways included the use of add-ons.

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Elementary teachers, looking for an easy app to have your students display their learning? PicPlayPost combines different types of media into a collage.

I love working in the brick and mortar building of TCEA HQ, but it is also invigorating to get out on the road. The best part of workshops is connecting with teachers. I love hearing what their students are learning and what technology they are using to get the learning accomplished.

This past week I was in Amarillo, Texas delivering the Google for Education Educator Level 1. We kicked off the three days with a sharing activity of favorite tools. I overheard Jodi Stary and Krissy Clark from Canyon ISD talking about a VERY COOL iPad activity with their second graders. When you hear a great idea, it just needs to be shared with the world.

PicPlayPost is a free app to create collages with photos, videos, GIFs, and music. Here are the steps Jodi and Krissy wrote on the board for their Shapes Project.

1. Choose your favorite app to write your shape name and take a screenshot. (Suggestions: a Chalkboard app, Doodle Buddy, Notes or ABC Magnetic Lite or use your favorite drawing or painting app.)

2. Use the camera to take a photo of the shape found in the real world.

3. Use the camera to shoot a video of the child explaining how many vertices and faces are on the shape.

4. Open up the PicPlayPost app.

5. Choose the #3 frame. (You can add up to nine videos or images per project.)

6. Insert the pictures and videos.

I also asked Jodi and Krissy to share one of their student's shape. Take a look at this wonderful example by second grader Tayden.

This is a perfect app for kindergarten, first, and second grade students. It could also be used for vocabulary words, life cycles, or math story problems for third and fourth graders. Please comment below and share how you would use PicPlayPost in your classroom.

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Elementary teachers, looking for an easy app to have your students display their learning? PicPlayPost combines different types of media into a collage. I love working in the brick and mortar building of TCEA HQ, but it is also invigorating to get out on the road.

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Digitizing Cornell Note-Taking with OneNote 2016 - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Digitizing Cornell Note-Taking with OneNote 2016 - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Earlier this summer, I received an email from Port Arthur ISD teacher, Hope Scott. Hope shared the following:

Our campus uses Cornell Notes, and I'd love to see/share what it looks like in OneNote.

Looking for a Cornell Note-taking template to use in OneNote? Take a look at this short video tutorial (scroll to Relevant Links section at blog's end and click on link #3) on how to get them. There are various Cornell Notes templates online, as well as note-taking templates you can use that are built into OneNote. Let's take a quick look, shall we?

OneNote Page Templates

You can find templates in OneNote 2016. These are located in OneNote 2016 under the Insert menu as Page Templates. In the screenshot, you can see more Page Templates, including some decorative ones. This is well-worth exploring.

If you switch to View menu, you can also make further adjustments that affect page color and/or Rule Lines. You can also decide what kind of paper you want to see appear in your OneNote Notebook, whether it will just be a blank white sheet of paper or include ruled lines.

Other Sources for OneNote Templates

In the video linked at the bottom of this blog entry, I'll be showing you some of those templates, as well as where you can find some templates that I've pulled off the web. I hope these tips will save you some time. Before going much further, I definitely want to credit the awesome work the OneNoteGem.com folks have done in preparing this and many other formats. You definitely need to pay them a visit and see what else they have. To save educators effort and confusion (that's good, right?), I've taken the liberty of placing a variety of templates online.

When you go there, you will see a OneDrive space where you can right click and save files to your computer. For the purposes of this video, I'll be using OneNote 2016. Right-click and save the template you want (for example, Cornell Note-Taking) to your Windows device. Then double-click on it and choose to open it with OneNote 2016. It will open as a loose section.

From this point, you can copy and paste it into another OneNote 2016 Notebook, including a Class Notebook. Once there, you can also choose to distribute it to your students. That's pretty much all there is to it! Have questions? Don't hesitate to leave them as a comment below and I'll get back to you with an answer.

Relevant Links

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Digitizing Cornell Note-Taking with OneNote 2016 - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Earlier this summer, I received an email from Port Arthur ISD teacher, Hope Scott. Hope shared the following: Our campus uses Cornell Notes, and I'd love to see/share what it looks like in OneNote. Looking for a Cornell Note-taking template to use in OneNote?

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How to Use Edtech to Get Your Learners Active and Moving | EdSurge News

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How to Use Edtech to Get Your Learners Active and Moving | EdSurge News

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Winter weather sometimes means nasty rain and snowstorms, indoor recess, and less physical activity for our students. But instead of dusting off the DVDs buried in your desk drawer, consider using these edtech-powered ideas to get your learners' bodies moving and brains working.

Open Class With "Activators"

Teachers do not have to wait until the bell rings or until they have formally addressed the class to get their students' learning started. They can have an enticing challenge waiting for students as they enter the room. I like to call these challenges "activators" because they activate curiosity, thinking, and problem-solving in students' brains. Certain edtech tools allow the teacher to use a dashboard to track student progress in real time, including:

Teachers do not have to wait until the bell rings or until they have formally addressed the class to get their students' learning started.

Socrative from MasteryConnect: This has been a go-to for teachers for years because of its simple interface that allows teachers to create assessments in advance or on-the-fly. Socrative's free version does not require students to create accounts.

Formative: This tool and its varied question types fit more content areas (even advanced math and science) than most other platforms. It also boasts Google Classroom integration.

Pear Deck: This platform has a new dashboard in beta that users can activate in the add-ons section, meaning it is easier for students to engage in self-paced activities.

These three platforms offer great options for providing students with engaging and challenging activities to look forward to immediately upon entering your classroom. Just project the necessary codes onto a screen at the front of the room, and watch students dive in.

A Little Healthy Competition and Movement

Review games often inject energy into a classroom before a test, and right when students need a jolt of energy to get that over that summative assessment hump at the end of a unit. Activities that push students to work in teams and use their combined knowledge and skills to achieve the best results will add noise and movement to your classroom, as well. Here are a few tools to consider using in the process.

Kahoot! is a go-to because the music alone gets students moving. From upper elementary to 12th grade, students are unable to resist standing up, moving around the room, and even cheering at the results.

A common tool seen in the world language and social studies classrooms at my school is Quizlet Live. Students are up and moving, talking, and cooperating to compete with their classmates to answer the quiz-like questions.

It is worth noting that both of these tools offer modes for self-paced studying and learning. Engaging students in modes that include bright colors, music, and even competition is only appropriate when they are already relatively confident with the material. Try those other modes when students are first learning content and need to practice at a pace that's right for them.

Explore the Hallways

After notifying administrators-just to ensure there isn't some other school event that would interfere-use edtech tools and students' mobile devices to move the lesson beyond your classroom walls and spill into the hallways. Depending on your students' skill level and the time you can dedicate to the adventure, here are three approaches.

Teachers can create scavenger hunts with Klikaklu. Even before Pokemon Go, teachers were creating indoor and outdoor scavenger hunts for their students with this tool. Just scan in images of objects and places you want your students to visit; they will find that object based on learning clues you set up to be revealed in the app as they go.

Students can work together as a class to create their own scavenger hunt with QR codes. I recommend i-nigma as a free QR code scanner due to it's speed and ease of use. Students can do their own research, and then make it accessible to their classmates via a jaunt through the hallways using the steps detailed here. (Not a fan of i-nigma? Just Google "QR code creator" to find a wide array of free generator tools.)

Augmented reality is another option. Students or teachers can trigger videos, articles, or other content to appear when scanning preselected images. Try this kind of scavenger hunt at your school's next art show. Aurasma is a great go-to tool for creating your own augmented reality experiences. You can find even more ideas in Monica Burns's recent book Deeper Learning with QR Codes and Augmented Reality.

Teaching mindfulness and self-control is such an important part of encouraging young learners to self-advocate and push themselves through frustrating moments.

Brain Breaks

Brain breaks help learners to re-energize when they are in an energy slump or refocus when they have become distracted. Whether it is with silly songs and dancing or classroom yoga, edtech products can help.

Students can refocus their brains and bodies with breathing and stretching thanks to amaZEN U. There are sample videos to try out with you class right on the homepage, as well as a monthlong free trial available to all teachers.

A favorite in my own home with my second grader and preschooler is GoNoodle. When young learners have the post-lunch slump or deserve a reward for nailing that tough Common Core math activity, a song and dance-mixed with a little dose of empowerment-is just what they need.

Teaching mindfulness and self-control is such an important part of encouraging young learners to self-advocate and push themselves through frustrating moments. These services can provide the content and motivation to help your students when they need a mental and/or physical boost.

Do not let winter's cold temperatures and wet storms keep your students from learning with activity and movement. Rather, facilitate a more physical and focused learning experience-particularly when the winter blues have settled in.

Kerry Gallagher (@KerryHawk02) is a Digital Learning Specialist at a 1:1 iPad school serving 1500 students grades 6-12. She is also the Director of K-12 Education for ConnectSafely.org, and an EdSurge columnist.

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How to Use Edtech to Get Your Learners Active and Moving - EdSurge News

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Winter weather sometimes means nasty rain and snowstorms, indoor recess, and less physical activity for our students. But instead of dusting off the DVDs buried in your desk drawer, consider using these edtech-powered ideas to get your learners' bodies moving and brains working.

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Align Your Social Media - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Align Your Social Media - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Learn about a number of free and powerful technology tools that can help align your social media efforts, make an impact, and save you time.

"Don't wait for the stars to align, reach up and rearrange them the way you want," says Pharrell Williams. "Create your own constellation." Want to rearrange your learning experiences with social media? Bridge the gap between face-to-face community efforts and online? Then read on to discover tips on how to shape the social media flow. Grab a friend, your mobile device, and let's go!

Manual Approach to Social Media

If you're like most people, you probably have been cajoled into creating a social media account. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, YouTube, and LinkedIn are the most common ones that people start with. But how do you create a community around what you share? Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Tip #1: Mix-and-Match Your Social Media

Combine audio and video tools. Instagram and Facebook make it easy to post links to other social media tools, such as Twitter. That means you can start a Facebook Live session, record audio using Voxer (or use the YouTube Capture app on your phone) and share the link out via Twitter. This is great because it allows you to "liven up" Twitter with audio and video. Imagine recording a student explaining his/her solution to a problem or thinking process. Here are some Voxercasts that I shared via Twitter. If participating in a Twitterchat, try responding to a question with audio or video. It will leave participants "mind-blown." And, if you're feeling adventurous, use Voxer and/or Flipgrid.com to kick off audio or video reflections respectively.

Tip #2: Decide on a Content Curation Tool

Content curation involves finding great stuff, stowing it somewhere for safe keeping, and then sharing the relevant information with other interested parties. How the sharing happens is usually through social media. Here are a few tools that I use for content curation. They make sharing with others via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook easy.

Get Pocket.com: This remains my favorite content tool. Anything I find on my mobile device or on my computer, I promptly save to Pocket. Since it is everywhere and works well with other tools, it makes saving content easy. Getting content out is also straightforward. More on that later.

Diigo.com for Educators: An oldy but goody, social bookmarking with Diigo is a cinch on computers, not so much on mobile. Still, the benefit of Diigo is that you can turn every item you save to it into a tagged item. Tags in Diigo come with RSS feeds (learn more about RSS), which make it easy to share to Twitter and other places. Using the free for Educators account comes with additional benefits.

Flipboard.com: A fantastic curation tool since anything you "flip" into a digital magazine (ezine for short) becomes an easy-to-share resource with others. People can subscribe and leave comments. Imagine creating a flipboard ezine for your class on a particular topic or having students collaborate and contribute to a shared ezine. Flipboard makes it possible, and viewing is a pure pleasure.

Storify.com: This is a helpful tool since it makes capturing tweets and sharing content easy, although to access some of its more esoteric features will require payment. Storify is often used to archive Twitterchats, even though there are more comprehensive tools. Storify makes finding and sharing content for a classroom of learners simple.

Paper.li: Want to create a newsletter that curates itself? Paper.li makes that possible and can auto-publish itself via Twitter with new content daily. It can be hands-off or you can spend time updating it. Like Storify, full feature access costs money.

Tip #3: Master Those Twitter Chats

Every day, there are thousands of educators like you connecting and learning from each other. This network of professional learners, open to anyone and everyone willing to learn, is known as a "professional learning network" or PLN for short. You can find a wealth of hashtags, such as #tceachat, that boast robust conversations on days or nights. Here are several tools you can use to make navigating and participating in Twitter chats easier:

Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck allows you to set up multiple columns, as opposed to Twitter's single column of content. You can follow multiple hashtags simultaneously, as well as see what you are tweeting and what others are tweeting at you. What's more, as you get more proficient and want to manage your own Twitter chat, you can schedule your own tweets days in advance at anytime. Great for tweeting during a presentation and wowing your audience.

Participate Learning: This is a must-have tool to take advantage of since it provides a concise schedule of hashtags for Twitter chats and when they are taking place. What's more, you can search hashtags for relevant conversations, as well as add your own chat. This makes it easier to find other's chats, as well as sharing your content.

Twubs.com: Straightforward interface aside, Twubs is intended to help you get to know who is participating in a Twitter chat. A unique feature includes your ability to get an embed code so you can place the results of a hashtag search on your web page.

Tip #4: Create Image Flyers to Hook Twitter Chat Participants

Decided to facilitate a Twitter chat for your school or district? Create a landscape flyer with Adobe Spark, Pixlr, Powerpoint, or Google Slides that includes pertinent information, as well as a link to more content. In addition to creating a way to advertise your Twitter chat to the world, you will also want to solve the archive problem. For small Twitter chats, you can use Storify or simply copy-and-paste into a GoogleDoc or IFTTT recipe to feed tweets into a Google Sheet. However, for larger chats (>1000 tweets), consider using a more robust solution like TAGS.

Tip #5: Automate Your Social Media Sharing

"Share once and done!" Avoid having to share information via multiple outlets. Some school districts embarking on social media domination move to post the same piece of information on each social media outlet, but that can be a big waste of time. Use one or both of these tools to automate your social media sharing. Create a blog post and then see it shared automatically to Twitter and Facebook, post images to Instagram and email them to others, and more.

IFTTT.com: If This Then That allows you to create mini-apps, or recipes, that execute when a trigger action occurs. For example, if I add a tag "2tweet" to a web article I save on one of my content curation tools, Pocket or Diigo, that item appears as a tweet within thirty minutes. If I add a tag "tceamie," the item is posted to a Slack group for technology directors and coordinators.

Microsoft Flow: A newcomer to the scene, Flow works like IFTTT, yet it works hand-in-hand with Office 365 tools. Visit their website to see some sample "flows."

Tip #6: Create a Virtual Sharing Space

At a certain point, you will want to archive all the great things that are being said or happening. One way to do that is to save all chats to a virtual space, such as a OneNote Online notebook (see example, Google Plus Community (see example), or Facebook group. You can, of course, also use popular blogging platforms like Blogger and/or WordPress.

Use tools like Remind.com to share daily updates via mobile phones. This helps keep your community connected to you, enabling easy, non-intrusive sharing. My favorite example is Dr. Scott Mcleod's Dangerously Irrelevant daily reminders that arrive via SMS text message every day.

Conclusion

Don't be afraid to grasp the stars and rearrange them! Social media tools like those discussed in this blog entry make shaping the flow of social media a joy, not a chore.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Align Your Social Media - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Learn about a number of free and powerful technology tools that can help align your social media efforts, make an impact, and save you time. "Don't wait for the stars to align, reach up and rearrange them the way you want," says Pharrell Williams. "Create your own constellation."

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Peergrade – Better feedback for your students

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Peergrade – Better feedback for your students

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Peergrade - engaging student peer review

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Peergrade is an online platform to facilitate peer feedback sessions with students

Get started

The teacher sets up an assignment

You start by setting up your assignment. You pick a feedback rubric from our library or create your own, select an assignment template and you're ready to get started.

Students submit their work

Students submit their work to your assignment. They can submit anything - text, files, videos, links and even Google docs!

Students review each other

Your students give each other anonymous feedback through your rubric.

Students engage with their feedback

Students receive feedback from their peers, they react, discuss and engage with their feedback.

The teacher has a complete overview

You get the complete overview of everything that is happening in the assignment.

Built on academic research

Peergrade is not just a tool that can provide you with insights into your students' performance and save you time. It also creates a much better learning experience for your students. Don't believe us? There's a bunch of studies that actually proves that it can increase learning up to 30%!

Used by thousands of schools and universities

Get Started

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Peergrade - engaging student peer review

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Learn by giving feedback! Peergrade is a free online platform to facilitate peer feedback sessions with students.

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Quizizz: Fun Multiplayer Classroom Quizzes

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Quizizz: Fun Multiplayer Classroom Quizzes

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Obama’s Education Dept Issues Last Hurrah: A National Edtech Plan for Higher Education | EdSurge News

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Obama’s Education Dept Issues Last Hurrah: A National Edtech Plan for Higher Education | EdSurge News

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Just days before a new administration moves in, the Obama Administration's Education Department today released a supplement to its National Education Technology Plan that focuses on higher education. At times it reads like a student's final paper, straining to demonstrate understanding of every concept learned over a long course. In other sections it has the hint of a manifesto, with an urgent call to action that boils down to this: Colleges need to adapt to meet the changing demographics and needs of students, rather than expect them to conform to a tradition-loving system.

"Unless we become more nimble in our approach and more scalable in our solutions, we will miss out on an opportunity to embrace and serve the majority of students who will need higher education and postsecondary learning," says the report. Later it underscores that "higher education has never mattered so much to those who seek it. It drives social mobility, energizes our economy, and underpins our democracy."

The report weighs in at about 60 pages, and provides more than a dozen short case studies of schools and tools on the cutting edge of innovation. (The report does note that these mentions are not an endorsement of the companies or even their methods). That's where the document feels like a student's report, diligently including examples but stopping short of incorporating all of them into a single argument or coherent call for action.

One official familiar with the report, who asked not to be named, noted that such a "kitchen sink" approach is not necessarily a bad thing, and is probably necessary given the many stakeholders and audiences that the department is trying to serve.

In an e-mail interview this week, Russ Poulin, director of policy and analysis for WCET, a nonprofit promoting e-learning programs, who was consulted by officials who created the report, called it "less of a plan than an aspirational set of best practices underscored by a rich set of case studies."

Poulin said it was a "long overdue addendum" to the National Education Technology Plan, which focused on K-12 institutions, that was released in Dec. 2015.

Education Department officials explained in an interview on Wednesday that their goal is to encourage colleges to take a more holistic look at their innovations around technology.

"We want to see college leaders change in the way they organize themselves," said Joseph South, the department's director of educational technology. "Right now the Chief Information Officer is very much still in a technology services role, separated from the Chief Academic Officer. What we hope to see is those roles structurally working in tandem so that technology can work to support learning, to break silos between the tech and academic sides."

In an interview for the EdSurge On Air podcast, the office's former edtech director, Richard Culatta, said he expects innovation leadership to shift to the states during the Trump Administration. Asked whether he agreed with that assessment, Ted Mitchell, Under Secretary for Education, said it's not an either/or issue. "These federal issues are also going to be state issues," he said. "At the core, we believe changes will happen most profoundly at the institution level."

A Focus on Outcomes

The report makes clear that the landscape in higher education is expanding, with more "fluidity with which students move between formal and informal learning environments." And some worry that such an environment could breed bad actors such as Corinthian University, which was found to have defrauded students with misleading advertising practices.

"There is always a concern about bad actors and the best way to ensure that bad actors don't get a share of the market is to measure actual outcomes for students and learners," said Mitchell. "That's why our EQUIP program is so focused on outcomes," he added, referring to the department's experimental group of projects that have been allowed to act outside of the usual student financial aid regulations. "We think that moving towards meaningful outcomes is the best way to ensure long-term student success."

Among the many best practices mentioned in the report:

Make educational materials more accessible to those with disabilities. Any learning materials that are "born digital" should also be "born accessible," the report says.

Create clear policies for handling educational data. "This is true not only for formal contracts, but also for consumer-oriented "Click-Wrap" software that is acquired simply by clicking "accept" to the provider's "Terms of Service," the report argues.

Technology can help "elevate" the importance of teaching at colleges. One idea included in the report is creating "career ladders" for faculty members who master technology in teaching.

Poulin, of WICHE, praised its focus on student-support services, not just what happens in classrooms. "Students need support services to succeed," he says.

Michael Horn, principal consultant for Entangled Solutions, said that he was pleasantly surprised by the range of institution types represented in the report's examples.

Still, he and others wondered about the timing.

"It's a strange time to be putting a supplement to the national edtech plan whose policy and priority is about to shift," he said.

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Obama's Education Dept Issues Last Hurrah: A National Edtech Plan for Higher Education - EdSurge News

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Just days before a new administration moves in, the Obama Administration's Education Department today released a supplement to its National Education Technology Plan that focuses on higher education. At times it reads like a student's final paper, straining to demonstrate understanding of every concept learned over a long course.

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21Teach - K-12 Learning Anywhere, Anytime

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21Teach - K-12 Learning Anywhere, Anytime

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Group Work Roles for Modern Learners - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Group Work Roles for Modern Learners - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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New ways of learning may require revised cooperative group work roles in the classroom and in professional development opportunities.

When I was teaching a thousand years ago, I remember attending a professional development workshop on using cooperative learning techniques with students. During the workshop, the presenter emphasized the need for assigning roles to each student so that he/she could contribute to the group work. There were only four or five job roles mentioned at the time, including things like leader, materials manager, time keeper, and note taker. I agreed with the concept of assigning group tasks, but my students didn't seem too excited about them. It seemed like the materials manager, for example, often didn't have much to do in the group other than at the beginning and end of class. And no one ever wanted to be the note taker - how boring!

Fast forward to today. As I work with educators doing group work in cooperative learning situations, I am still convinced of the benefit of each person having specific jobs to do that contribute to everyone's learning and the success of the team. But I believe that the jobs themselves have changed based on the way we now work. So I would like to propose a new set of group work roles as follows. These will work with students as well as with adult learners. I've included a brief job description and possible problems that might crop up.

The Coordinator

Duties: The coordinator, formerly the leader role, is the person who manages the work (but not the workers!). He/She ensures that the goals to be accomplished are clear, delegates responsibility based on each person's abilities and interests, and checks on everyone's progress. This means that the coordinator must really know the members of the team, which may require doing some team building activities before starting to work.

Possible problems: If not careful, the coordinator may be perceived as bossy or lazy. So care must be taken that he/she does an equal part of the work and allows others the freedom to work as they wish as long as the goals are being met. It is important to remind the coordinator that he/she is not the boss, just someone who helps others do their very best.

The Divergent

Duties: The divergent is the group member charged with constantly thinking outside the box while looking for more effective ways to accomplish the goals. He/She must use creativity while brainstorming new solutions to the given problem, different ways of presenting the final product, and ideas for helping the team to work better together. All aspects of the group work are within his/her responsibility.

Possible problems: If not careful, the divergent can spend a lot of time in la-la land and not be grounded in the reality of what can and must be accomplished. Time can sometimes be his/her enemy, as can a lack of communication with the rest of the group. It is helpful if the coordinator checks in routinely with the divergent to see what he/she is currently working on.

Resource Specialist

Duties: Similar to the long-ago materials manager, the resource specialist's job is to gather and curate all of the materials, whether physical or digital, that the group will need to accomplish the goals. This may include anything from getting markers and chart paper to doing research for the project. Once gathered, the materials must be collated and organized in a way that makes it easy for the rest of the team to find and use what they need. And the research process does not end until the completed product is turned in, which means that a good resource specialist is busy throughout the entire project, gathering data on each phase of the work from beginning inquiry to determining what form the final product might be in.

This is the only group role, by the way, that is encouraged to visit with other teams and see what they are doing. This is not so that others' work can be copied, but so that all of the groups can learn from each other.

Possible Problems: This position may be perceived as a "boring" one by students. After all, who wants to spend all of their time doing research? By stressing the curation and organization of resources to ensure that all possibilities are covered and that the team members can easily find what they need when they need it, the teacher can ensure that the importance of this role is understood by everyone. The resource specialist must work with every member of the group, which can also sometimes lead to off-task behavior.

Tech Support

Duties: If the assignment has a technology component to it, then one member of the group should provide tech support as needed. While we may believe that all students are inherently gifted with technical knowledge, that is not really the case. The tech support person is there to help solve any problems that may come up with a device, an app, or a website. In addition, this position may also assume the recordkeeping duties by creating a Google Doc or other collaborative workspace that can be shared with the group. Having this role frees the teacher or workshop leader from having to stop facilitating and worry about "fixing" things.

Possible problems: Because this person is a techie, he/she will want very much to DO all of the technical work. But that is not the function of this position. Encourage him/her to take a "hands-off" approach to supporting the others in the group and letting them solve problems under his/her tutelage. Think "call support center" help instead of "me doing this for you" assistance.

The Finisher

Duties: The finisher has excellent attention to detail and is perfect at checking the final product. He/She ensures that the stated goals have been achieved and searches out errors, polishing and perfecting. This position does not mitigate the need for all other group members to check their own work, nor should its duties happen only at the end of the project. A good finisher is constantly checking in with the other members of the group to see if they need help.

Possible problems: Meticulous and detailed, the Finisher may be perceived as a nit-picker. So it's important for this person to explain why changes need to be made.

Recommendations for Use

While students with certain talents may naturally fall into one particular role most readily, I do believe that it is important that roles be rotated throughout the year, allowing everyone to develop skills in each of these area. Whether this is done through a rotation schedule or by random drawing doesn't matter as long as everyone knows that the jobs will change. This will require a certain delicacy on the teacher's part in motivating those learners who are not comfortable with a particular role to be successful at it. And training in what the duties of each role look like is definitely required before the teams begin meeting. This training may even include role playing in how the coordinator, for example, can help to keep the divergent on track.

It may also be helpful to bring all of the individuals filling a particular role together at various times throughout the year so that they can share ideas on how they are working in that job and learn from each other. The teacher or workshop leader will need to scaffold these discussions with pre-determined questions for them to answer.

What do you think about these new group work roles? How do you assign roles for your students or adult learners?

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Group Work Roles for Modern Learners - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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New ways of learning may require revised cooperative group work roles in the classroom and in professional development opportunities. When I was teaching a thousand years ago, I remember attending a professional development workshop on using cooperative learning techniques with students.