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Making the shift to digital is NOT about doing what you've always done in a digital format. Digital allows us to rethink our tasks.

"When students can access information, I can talk less."

How the class functions should be different when students have access to devices. First, students no longer need to wait for you to know what to do. Students walk in the door, go to Google Classroom and get to work.

If you teach kinder, make sure you check out Christine Pinto (@pintobeanz11) and how she uses Google Classroom and Google Apps with her Transitional Kindergarten (TK) students.

Value of the Teacher

Your value is not in your ability to tell facts that students can look up on the internet or find on YouTube. Probably the most important thing we do as teachers is to build relationships with students. What improves student learning is not necessarily telling students information, but rather providing students high quality and specific feedback. Release the telling of directions, collecting and distributing, and providing basic information. This magnifies the importance of the teacher. We now have more time to talk with students one on one or in small groups. We can spend more time providing feedback and asking students questions to push them further.

You can not talk a student into being a critical thinker. We have to let them think and provide feedback.

SAMR is Not A Ladder

SAMR is not a measure of difficulty. Sometimes new tasks are EASIER than trying to figure out how to make old tasks digital.

Mindset

Moving to digital tools is a shift in mindset in how we interact with students. When starting with Google Classroom, start with a shift in thinking rather than a shift to being paperless.

The goal of 1:1 is not to be paperless, it is to change the task.
-Terri Stice (@tstice)

1. Use Paper for Paper Tasks

Being digital is not better. Same task yields the same learning. Digital tools will sometimes not work. Battery is dead, internet is down or slow, etc... If we are not improving learning, why put up with the potential hassle? Using technology is a whole new classroom management strategy.

Using technology is NOT more engaging.

No matter the medium, we must design for student engagement. Technology does not create engagement, your lesson design does. While anything new may energize students for a short period of time, there is no substitute for designing high-quality lessons.

Get started by not jumping in the deep end and throwing all your stuff online. Use paper for paper tasks.

2. Post Your Agenda

Get used to using Google Classroom by posting the tasks in Google Classroom. You do not need to make or attach anything. Take a little time to get used to sharing information digitally. Even if the task is "carpet time story" or "run around the track 10 times," post this to Google Classroom. Create transparency that students can see everything that is expected of them that day.

3. Mark as Done. Leave a Comment

Students are able to mark tasks in Google Classroom as completed. Students go to Google Classroom, click on the OPEN button and click on the blue "Mark as Done" button. What allows Google Classroom to make a better learning environment is the "Private comment" feature. This allows students to provide feedback about a task or ask a question. More than just leaving a comment, Google Classroom allows you to have a conversation with students. You can reply to student comments in the private comments. This is a big deal, particularly with quieter students. Google Classroom gives every student an opportunity to ask a question or admit they are confused.

Create a culture that you encourage students to make comments. After carpet time story reading, ask students to go back to Google Classroom and mark the assignment as done. Ask them to leave a private comment about their favorite part of the story. Encourage them to ask you a question. Google Classroom changes how we interact with students for the better. Practice using Google Classroom to hear from students and have conversations together.

4. Ask a Question

When posting to Google Classroom the 3rd option is to ask the class a question. You can ask a short answer or multiple choice question. This is possibly one of the easiest things to do with Google Classroom. You can ask students questions on the fly and hear from everyone. Leave the default "Students can reply to each other" to help create a mindset of "We are a community of learners and we help each other get better."

5. Give Resources

Suggestion to get used to interacting with students before creating and distributing things. Google Classroom is a great way to share resources with students. Students can easily find the resources and this can be a great way to differentiate and provide additional resources for struggling students or those wanting additional challenges.

There are 4 ways to attach things in Google Classroom. After creating an assignment, notice the 4 icons at the bottom of the assignment creation window.

1. Paperclip: Attach anything on your computer. Browse and attach.
Caution: Think DIFFERENTLY when using tech. Suggestion to avoid attaching your Word documents and PDF's. Students deserve us always updating and modernizing our lessons to prepare them for THEIR future.

2. Google Drive: If it is in Google Drive you can attach it in Google Classroom. By default the file is view only.
I encourage you to embrace Google Drive and have ALL of your stuff in Drive. Do not be tied to a particular device. When your files are in Google Drive you can access them anywhere, including on your phone.

3. YouTube: Link to a YouTube video.

4. Web Link: Copy and paste the URL to any website and link to it from Google Classroom.
Be consistent, always have students link to a website from Google Classroom rather than typing it themselves.

6. Have Students Create Google Docs

Remember, the person doing the work is the person doing the learning. We do not have to create templates or graphic organizers for everything the students do. Students are able to create Google Docs right from Google Drive. In the same way that you would instruct students to "get out a piece of paper," we instead ask students to create a blank Google Doc.

Students click on OPEN and use the CREATE button to create a blank Google Doc. The document is automatically attached in Classroom, appends the students name, and the teacher has immediate access to the students work while they are working on it!

Take some time to get used to accessing and reviewing student work that is digital. Google Classroom organizes all of the student documents in Google Classroom as well as Google Drive. From the Stream in Google Classroom, click on the assignment title to open the assignment assessment page.

A link to the folder in Google Drive that has all of the student documents makes it easy to view each student's work.

7. Give Feedback

The single most important thing you can do to improve student learning, after building relationships with students, is to provide high-quality feedback. Specifically, what the student did well and specifically what the student can improve on. Google Classroom makes learning better when we take advantage of the feedback opportunities.

There are 3 ways to give feedback in Google Classroom.

1. Private Comments: After clicking on the assignment title in the Stream, click on a student's name on the left-hand side. For each student, there is a spot to leave a private comment. This is an excellent place to provide specific feedback to the student.
What is game changing about Google Classroom is it changes your comments into CONVERSATIONS! Students are able to comment back so you can talk about the students learning together.

2. In Doc Comments: You are able to leave comments in a Google Doc. Highlight the text you want to comment on and an icon in the right margin appears to allow you to leave a comment on the side of the document. What makes this better than leaving comments on a paper (or an annotated PDF) is that it is not a comment, it is a CONVERSATION with the student. Students can reply back to the comment.
Note: When students TURN IN a Google Doc, the ownership of the document switches from the student to the teacher. The student is made a viewer of the document. Students can not view or reply to comments until you RETURN the document in Google Classroom to the student. Suggestion to RETURN the document BEFORE you give feedback.

3. Before The Student is Done Comments: Okay this is really kinda the same as the last two in that the feedback goes in the same place. When you make comments on a student's paper we all know they typically do not read it or do not internalize the information deeply... why?! Because they are DONE! In their mind, they are DONE with that assignment. We can spend HOURS giving students feedback with minimal learning outcomes. Giving the exact same feedback comments BEFORE the assignment is due changes the comment to being formative instead of punitive. Students appreciate the feedback when it is formative; resent the feedback when it is too late to do anything about it. Even given the opportunity to go back and make corrections is not something students typically appreciate. They think they are done with the assignment.As often as it is feasible, try to provide feedback comments to students WHILE they are working on the assignment. Before it is due.

8. Collaborate. Students can edit file.

When attaching Google Docs in Google Classroom the default is "Students can view file." Click on the arrow next to this setting and change it to the middle option "Students can edit file." This allows all of the students to edit the same Google Doc.

Google Apps are a collaboration suite.

At the top of your lesson plans write the word COLLABORATION super huge. How does teaching and learning in 2016 look differently? We can ACTUALLY collaborate together, whereas before it was difficult to impossible. Now that it is possible, as often as possible, have your students collaborate and work together.

My favorite activity is to attach BLANK collaborative Google Slides. You can create and distribute collaborative Google Slides in under 40 seconds. Each slide is essentially a blank piece of paper, what can you not do with Google Slides? Opening 30-200 of anything is not fun. Attaching blank collaborative Google Slides (or Google Sheets, spreadsheets are awesome for this too!) gives you ONE document to open. It is super easy to give students feedback as they work since there is only one file to have open. You can see students work as they work. Creating that "community of learners who help each other get better" is a snap. When a student is on slide 7 they simply jump to slide 12 and insert peer feedback comments.

9. Make a Copy For Each Student

Switching to digital tools requires a change in mindset. Instead of doing what you've always done with distributing photocopies to students, first, work on how you will interact with students. How you will provide high-quality feedback. How you will have students collaborate.

I suggest that the last thing you try with Google Classroom is replacing the photocopy machine. Google Classroom allows you to take a document and create an individual copy for each student. Create a document in Google Drive. Create a new assignment in Google Classroom. Click on the Google Drive icon to attach the template. Change the default from "Students can view file" to the 3rd option of "Make a copy for each student."

Remember, same task = same learning. Students do not learn more just because a document is digital. Students are not more engaged because a document is digital. Opening up a bunch of digital documents is NOT fun. I suggest you use this option more sparingly and try to use collaborative documents as often as makes sense. Think differently, go further with Google Classroom.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016

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Google Classroom: Do Not Jump In The Deep End - Teacher Tech

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Making the shift to digital is NOT about doing what you've always done in a digital format. Digital allows us to rethink our tasks. "When students can access information, I can talk less." How the class functions should be different when students have access to devices.

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At youcubed, we inspire, educate and empower teachers of mathematics, transforming the latest research on mathematics learning into accessible and practical forms.

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( iStock/shironosov)

Stanford education professor Jo Boaler's message about teaching math in visual ways that don't emphasize one right procedure has become a rallying cry for many math educators ready for a seismic shift in how American schools teach mathematics. But her ideas also challenge much of what has been done in classrooms for decades, including the ways that current teachers and parents learned themselves. Alice Keeler is one of the converted, despite the fact she taught math traditionally for many years.

"I was a math teacher, and I'll be honest," Keeler said, "I didn't teach it to be creative." She always felt pressure to move more quickly through the curriculum. Every day brought a new topic, whether or not students had deeply understood what came before. When Keeler read Boaler's book, Mathematical Mindsets, she saw herself as a young student in much of what Boaler described. With tears in her eyes, she told a group of educators at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) that since fourth grade she secretly thought she was dumb because she couldn't pass timed math tests. Boaler's message that fast is not the same thing as smart was liberating to her as a person and as a math teacher.

"When we work on a math problem, any type of problem, there are five different pathways in the brain that light up and are working," Boaler said by video call at the same presentation. "Two of them are visual." She argues that much of traditional math teaching focuses on numerical representations, teachers demonstrating procedures, and memorization, when it would be more effective to try to strengthen connections between the various parts of the brain needed when working on math.

"That comes about by showing information in different ways," Boaler said. Representations of math problems using words, images and numbers each use different parts of the brain, so the concept gets hardwired in a neural network drawing on multiple brain faculties instead of one numerical pathway.

"The least likely way of helping kids have those brain connections is having kids sit and listen to lectures," Boaler said. That doesn't mean all math classes need to be project-based or that direct instruction is always bad, but when lecture is the default classroom mode, it doesn't require students to use their brains to make sense of the new ideas.

Boaler's website YouCubed has many activities to help teachers learn to open up the exploration of math from one of closed questions with a right and wrong answer, to one where different ways of seeing and articulating math are valued. When teachers ask students to explain why their thinking makes sense, students are forced to articulate their thought process, how it compares and contrasts to ideas peers have shared, and in doing so may help the teacher identify any misconceptions.

A simple example of opening up math in this way starts with a closed question: Divide one by two-thirds. But rather than asking students to apply a rule, ask students to come up with a visual proof. "What happens is the kids have these amazing discussions with different visual proofs, and it's such a great way of taking a very closed question and opening it up," Boaler said.

As a math teacher Alice Keeler loves the ideas on YouCubed and readily admits most of them can be done without technology. However, Keeler sees many ways that technology could enhance the visual and collaboration elements of the work, so she has adapted several YouCubed activities for the Google Suite. While Keeler spent 14 years in the classroom, she now has her own consulting business and teaches at California State University Fresno. She also co-wrote two books on using Google Classroom with Libbi Miller: 50 Things You Can Do with Google Classroom and 50 Things To Go Further With Google Classroom.

"It's not about being digital and it's not about being paperless," Keeler said. "That doesn't make learning better. But collaboration does." She likes doing open-ended math activities in Google Slides because each student can play with visual representations, give feedback to peers, and receive ongoing feedback from the teacher. She usually makes blank slides and gives editing power to students.

"I ask each student to add their own slides explaining how they did it, how they visualized it, and we're all doing it together in the Google Slides," Keeler said. She's found that when students can see how a peer visualized the problem, they then reflect on different approaches. She also values her ability to comment in real time with students because it becomes a conversation, not a static comment on returned work that the student may or may not look at again.

"I can have conversations with them around the ideas and help them to develop their thinking rather than just marking things right and wrong," Keeler said. A math teacher who isn't using G-Suite in class could also have these kinds of formative conversations by circling the room and talking with students working in groups, but Keeler likes using the technology because she can easily see how each individual is thinking about the problem. And students can interact with one another's ideas, even when they aren't physically in her class.

Keeler often tells students not to delete mistakes from the slides, instead telling them to duplicate the slide and keep working. That way she can see the progression of their thinking. This also helps students to see how far they've come.

A popular YouCubed problem asks students to take exactly four 4s and use any combination of operations to come up with the numbers 1-20. Keeler often does this in Google Slides, where each slide is a place for students to show how they combined four 4s to get "1" and then on the next slide the work for "2," etc.

She likes working in Google Slides because students can add media or even do work on paper and upload an image. This gives different types of learners options. Students with disabilities or who benefit from speech-to-text help can also participate using EquatIO, a Chrome add-on that has voice typing capabilities, as well as handwriting recognition. EquatIO used to be g(Math), and now also makes it possible to use math symbols in slides and other Google apps.

Another popular YouCubed activity asks students to visualize division by divvying up a pan of brownies equally among friends. Keeler does this activity in a spreadsheet, and often asks students to create their own brownie pans - their own problems - in the next tab. "It allows them to experiment and play," she said.

Keeler has become something of an evangelist for technology in math classrooms, learning how to set up conditional statements and even simple code in Google Sheets to aid her purposes (she also shares these ideas regularly on Twitter, including activity templates). Over time her teaching evolved and by the time she left the K-12 classroom she had upended some of the practices she once considered fundamental, like assigning homework.

One of the most controversial ideas in math education revolves around how, when and how much students should practice. Many teachers believe it is important for students to do homework so they can practice new concepts learned in class. Boaler agrees that practice is important, but doesn't think that requires doing the same type of rote problem over and over. Boaler explained this to her daughter's teacher and was pleasantly surprised at how she used the feedback. After their discussion, the teacher started giving students four problems to practice the calculations and then asked them to represent the concept some other way. They could write a story, make a drawing or come up with something else. The key was showing their knowledge in different ways.

Many elementary school educators are willing to consider that homework is not necessary for the young learners they teach, but far fewer high school teachers agree. Keeler taught Algebra and AP Statistics when she was in the classroom. She found that "the only kids who did the homework were the ones who didn't need to," so she stopped assigning homework. "It didn't make a lick of difference" in terms of achievement, she said, but kids started enjoying class more. When she eliminated homework, Keeler found she had much more positive relationships with students and parents, a benefit that far outweighed what she called the "marginal gains of more rote practice."

Ultimately both Keeler and Boaler hope that by making math a subject that's about ideas, discussion, differing viewpoints and visual representations, students will learn they can not only do math, but excel at it. Too many students don't feel that way now, which is why teachers are beginning to see the need for a new approach.

How the Google Suite Can Enhance Open-Ended Math Exploration

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How the Google Suite Can Enhance Open-Ended Math Exploration

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Stanford education professor Jo Boaler's message about teaching math in visual ways that don't emphasize one right procedure has become a rallying cry for many math educators ready for a seismic shift in how American schools teach mathematics.

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Neuroscientists now know that the brain has the ability to grow and shrink. This was demonstrated in a study of taxi drivers in London who must memorize all the streets and landmarks in downtown London to earn a license. On average it takes people 12 tries to pass the test. Researchers found that the hippocampus of drivers studying for the test grew tremendously. But when those drivers retired, the brain shrank. Before this, no one knew the brain could grow and shrink like that.

"We now know that when you make a mistake in math, your brain grows," Boaler said. Neuroscientists did MRI scans of students taking math tests and saw that when a student made a mistake a synapse fired, even if the student wasn't aware of the mistake. "Your brain grows when you make a mistake, even if you're not aware of it, because it's a time when your brain is struggling," Boaler said. "It's the most important time for our brains."

A second synapse fires if the student recognizes his mistake. If that thought is revisited, the initial synapse firing can become a brain pathway, which is good for learning. If the thought isn't revisited, that synapse will wash away.

A recent study of students with math learning disabilities found in a scan that their brains did behave differently from kids without the disability. "What they saw was the brain lighting up in lots of different areas while working on math," Boaler said. The children were recruiting parts of the brain not normally involved in math reasoning.

The researchers tutored the group of students with math disabilities for eight weeks using the methods Boaler recommends like visualizing math, discussing problems and writing about math. At the end of the eight weeks, they scanned their brains again and found that the brains of the test group looked just like the kids who did not have math disabilities. This study shows that all kids can learn math when taught effectively. Boaler estimates that only 2 to 3 percent of people have such significant learning disabilities that they can't learn math at the highest levels.

People who learned math the traditional way often push back against visual representations of math. That kind of thinking represents a deep misunderstanding of how the brain works. "When you think visually about anything, different brain pathways light up than when we think numerically," Boaler said. The more brain pathways a student engages on the same problem, the stronger the learning.
GROWTH MINDSET AND MATH
Increasingly, educators are buying into the compelling research showing that what students believe about themselves affects how their brains approach learning. Growth mindset is probably the best known aspect of this research, and many school leaders are trying to figure out how to implement growth mindset programs in their classrooms.

"More kids have a fixed mindset about math than anything else," Boaler said. And it's no coincidence that they feel this way. Teachers often believe their students can't achieve at the highest levels, and in turn, students believe that about themselves. Plus, the tasks themselves communicate a fixed mindset.

"It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer," Boaler said. Instead, she recommends giving visual problems that provoke discussion and have multiple ways they could be solved.

She also says kids should not be grouped by ability or tracked into "advanced" or "remedial" groups. That common practice sends fixed mindset messages to students, both the "advanced" ones and the "low-performing" ones. Kids considered to be "gifted" suffer from ability grouping the most because they develop the ultimate fixed mindset. They become terrified that if they struggle they'll no longer be considered smart.

Instead, mixed ability grouping can work if the tasks are open-ended and what Boaler calls "low-floor/high-ceiling" tasks that allow every student to participate, while allowing lots of space within the task for students to grow in their thinking.

Boaler has lots of example tasks on her website, YouCubed, and on the NRICH website.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
During the summer of 2015, Boaler invited 81 seventh- and eighth-graders from a low-income district near Stanford to come to a summer math camp focused on algebra concepts. She gave the students a pre-test and found that their abilities ranged from very low (getting 0 answers correct) to fairly high. Then, for 18 days she taught them math well.

The instructional program focused on mindset messages, was full of inquiry-based, low-floor/high-ceiling tasks, was visual and used mixed achievement groups. At the end of 18 days, when Boaler gave them another test they had improved on average by 50 percent.

"They improved because they changed their beliefs that they were not a math person to believing they were a math person," Boaler said. After the course, students said they looked forward to math and saw math as a creative subject.

Administrators from the district came to observe partway through the camp and couldn't tell who was a low achiever and who was a high achiever in the class. Boaler also makes it clear to the students in the workshop what she expects from them, and speed is not something she's evaluating. Instead, they do norm building so that everyone knows how to appropriately work in groups, help one another and be supportive.

"If we don't pay attention to those kinds of interactions, and kids are dominating, or thinking they're smarter, then we're really in trouble," Boaler said.

Removing the time pressure from math is another important issue for Boaler. Neuroscience research out of Sian Beilock's lab at the University of Chicago has shown that time pressure often blocks the brain's working memory from functioning. This is particularly bad for kids with test anxiety.

"The irony of this is mathematicians are not fast with numbers," Boaler said. "We value speed in math classrooms, but I've talked with lots of mathematicians who say they're not fast at all." But it is common for math teachers to call on the kids who get the answer quickly, reinforcing the idea for all students that rapidity is what matters.
COMMON PUSHBACK
Math education experts have been making the same case as Boaler for decades, and yet math education in the U.S. has not shifted much. Teachers often say they have to cover all the topics in the curriculum to prepare students for the tests they will be expected to pass, leaving them with no time for the kinds of open-ended, discussion-based math that Boaler advocates.

'It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer.'

Boaler agrees with teachers that there is way too much to cover in the curriculum, especially because she finds much of it to be obsolete (don't get her started on the textbooks themselves). "The most important thing we can give kids is to think quantitatively about the world and apply a mathematical lens to different situations," she said.

In addition to teaching students, Boaler trains teachers in her methods. Often they go back to their classrooms and apply these theories, which means they aren't covering every topic in the textbook, and yet their students do better on the standardized tests anyway. Boaler is not a fan of all the tests American students must take, but she says teaching math the right way deepens kids' understanding of math in real ways that show up on tests, too.

Teachers and parents often push back against this kind of math. They wonder where memorization of math facts fits into the model, given the belief that kids must know their times tables to succeed in higher-level math. Boaler says that's unnecessary. She is a math education teacher and has risen to high levels of math learning without ever learning her math facts. She has number fluency, knows how to manipulate numbers and understands concepts, but she doesn't have her math facts memorized.

The Programme for International Student Assessment test (PISA), which is often used to compare achievement across countries, has a section about attitudes and beliefs. Those surveys show that kids who approach math as memorization are the lowest achievers in the world. "America has more memorizers than almost any country in the world," Boaler said. The highest achievers are those who think about the big ideas and make connections.

Likewise, repetition of math tasks is not helpful to deep learning. The same kind of problem with different numbers does not improve understanding, Boaler said. What students really need is "productive practice," approaching the problem from different directions, applying the ideas and explaining reasoning.

Boaler is on a mission to "revolutionize" how math is taught in the U.S. She has written several books to help teachers learn to teach with her methods, offers a free online course, and even gives away curriculum for teachers, students and parents on her YouCubed website. During one week at the start of the 2015 school year Boaler gave away five free math lessons, encouraging teachers to try this approach. She's pleased that 100,000 schools tried the lessons, and teachers could see the difference in their students. A survey of students found that after the lessons and the growth mindset videos, 96 percent believed they should keep trying after making a mistake in math.

Boaler said a big problem is that math teachers themselves are math-traumatized. They came through a system very similar to the one in which they work. Elementary school teachers in particular often feel insecure about math.

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'Not a Math Person': How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math | KQED

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Neuroscientists now know that the brain has the ability to grow and shrink. This was demonstrated in a study of taxi drivers in London who must memorize all the streets and landmarks in downtown London to earn a license. On average it takes people 12 tries to pass the test.

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Alice Keeler has great resources for google classroom and using google to teach math
http://alicekeeler.com/

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http://coffeeedu.org/
#LearnTogether

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AASL Blog

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American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

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Beginning in 2020, the Best Apps for Teaching & Learning and the Best Websites for Teaching & Learning will be presented as one list: The Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning. To view archives of the previous apps and websites recognized, please visit the links below:

Deadline to apply February 1. Applications and nominations will open in the Fall.

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Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning

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Beginning in 2020, the Best Apps for Teaching & Learning and the Best Websites for Teaching & Learning will be presented as one list: The Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning.

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formative assessments
guide for teachers

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Socrative is a web-based system that lets teachers and students set up quizzes and polling questions on any device that has access to the internet via a web browser. This includes iPads, smartphones, laptops, iPod Touches, etc. This makes it perfect for use in a BYOD classroom. For Android and IOS devices you can also access it via an app. And the best news is that it's all free.

If you've always wanted to use it, but didn't know where to start, then I've put together a How To Guide which explains how to use Socrative. You can Download it here.

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How to use Socrative - A guide for Teachers

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Socrative is a web-based system that lets teachers and students set up quizzes and polling questions on any device that has access to the internet via a web browser. This includes iPads, smartphones, laptops, iPod Touches, etc. This makes it perfect for use in a BYOD classroom.

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Online brainstorming & voting
Includes "Pro/Con
" column

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technology standards

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40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book
by Terry Heick

You can't watch a video like you read a book; the modalities couldn't be much more different.

On the surface level a video uses light, color, sound, and moving images, with the potential for adding text and shape and color and light filters as overlays to communicate ideas, while the most basic text structures use alphanumeric symbols, paragraph and sentence structure, and an assortment of text features (e.g., white space, headings and subheadings, fonts, etc.) to convey their message.

There is much, much more to it than this. Videos are meant to be consumed in short bursts, while literature, for example, is meant to be "sat with." Videos are (often manic) sprints, while texts are (often meandering) walks. Because of this very different tone and purpose as a matter of design, it's unfair to criticize videos as "less rigorous" than texts, just as it would be misleading to say that video is universally "more engaging" than text (something I may or may not have said in the past). It's more complex than that.
The Interaction Between Video & Text
Studies of the effectiveness of video in formal learning environments have yielded some confusing ideas, namely that content acquired via video consumption doesn't easily transfer to the medium of text (Fisch 2002; Koran, Snow & McDonald 1971). This doesn't mean students aren't learning from the video (or the text for that matter), but it rather suggests that the design of each medium may impact how the brain processes and stores the "lessons" from said medium, disrupting seamless transfer from one form to another.

This suggests that video consumption would more readily transfer to video production, or even video as a means of assessment. Similarly, the reading of a text naturally transitions to text production and text-based assessment-or so some research suggests. How this works in your classroom is ideally a matter of your own experimentation, and a matter of voice and choice for the students. In lieu of these data, inter and intra-media interaction from texts, images, voice, video, and other existing and emerging digital and non-digital forms represents a significant opportunity for innovation and creativity. Books, twitter, YouTube, poems, text messages, Meerkat, tweets, and other physical and digital aesthetics all matter less in form than they do in function-all represent and enable nuanced idea expression.

Like reading a text, video comprehension is a matter of decoding, but with different symbols based on unique modalities. Light, sound effects, scene cuts, dialogue, voice-overs, video speed, music, and more. How should students approach a video? How should they watch one? What should they do when they're done? More largely, what viewing comprehension strategies should students use to promote close viewing? What can they do to increase comprehension and retention of video content so that they are able to repackage meaning into other media forms?

Due to diverse content, mobile access, credibility with students, and temptingly passive consumption, video is a pedagogical goldmine. In fact, the YouTube model of content distribution has been so successful, we took lessons from it last year and applied them to academic content distribution in How To YouTube Your Classroom.

Below are a few possibilities, many of which you'll notice apply to non-digital media as well.
A Note About Student-Centering
Reading strategies, viewing strategies, thinking strategies-any "strategy" should be student-centered. One way to interpret this is to say that it should only be used if necessary, should be accessible and meaningful to the student, and ideally would be selected by the student without prompting. See Readicide for a powerful argument of how we as teachers, while well-intentioned, can "schoolify" reading and viewing and learning to the point that it's unrecognizable to anyone anywhere on the planet outside of the classroom, and make students think they hate what they're doing in the process. This doesn't mean we can't support students to use said strategies, but blind force-feeding will likely be self-defeating in the long run.
How The Viewing Comprehension Strategies Are Structured
The viewing comprehension strategies are organized in a Before-During-After structure, much like traditional reading strategies are. As with reading strategies, there is overlap from one part (e.g., Before Viewing) to another (e.g., After Viewing). That is, some strategies can be used at different times, but we had to place them somewhere.

Each category has four anchor strategies. These are "thinking templates" that can be used in multiple contexts and combinations. For example, "Predict' can be used in countless ways-predict the tone, predict the audience, predict the narrative, etc.)

These anchor strategies are the most universal, and thus the most flexible for use with different kinds of videos, in different content areas, and at different grade levels.
Before Viewing 40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies That Help Students View Videos Like They Read Books Anchor Strategies: Viewing Purpose, Preview, Predict, Connect
Before viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content.

1. Set a viewing purpose

2. Predict (e.g., sequence of events, video creator's position on a given topic, etc.)

3. Preview video (editing conventions, length, title)

4. Identify media connections (e.g., I read a book on a related topic recently; I saw a tweet that described this same idea but in sarcastic terms, etc.)

5. Make True/False statements about general video topic

6. Begin KWL chart

7. Roughly summarize (e.g., what they know about topic. video creator, channel, etc.)

8. Concept map the video topic in a given or self-selected context

9. Complete Anticipation Guide
During Viewing
10. Create self-produced guiding questions
Anchor Strategies: Stop, Clarify, Question, Infer
During viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content.

11. Stop (or pause) the video while viewing based on viewer preference and monitoring of own understanding

12. Rewind to clarify understanding or uncover subtle data/events

13. Rewatch video with new purpose and perspective

14. Form relevant questions based on viewing
16. Monitor & Repair Understanding
15. Clarify (e.g., information, bias, fact/opinion, "author" position, etc.)

17. Evaluate use of primary and secondary modalities

18.Make meaningful and personalized inferences (e.g., primary and secondary audiences)

19. Infer underlying assumptions of video
After Viewing
20. Adjust viewing speed (i.e., use slow-motion) if available (e.g., physics videos)

After viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content.

Anchor Strategies: Summarize, Analyze, Create, Socialize

21. Retell what happened; Paraphrase "standout" ideas

22. Summarize main idea and key supporting details

23. Recall own thinking and/or emotions during video (metacognition)

24. Modality Analysis (e.g., identify and analyze prevailing modalities and their effect)

25. Metric Analysis (e.g., to infer social context with respect to total views, currently watching, social shares, etc.)

26. Analyze idea organization of video

27. Create a word cloud (e.g., that reflects diction, tone, theme, etc.); Tweet, comment on, blog, or otherwise socialize initial impressions in a way that reflects digital citizenship

28. Socialize extended responses (e.g., in writing, on social media, etc.)

29. Categorize information and perspectives
Extended
30. Separate explicit and implicit ideas
Anchor Strategies: Reflect, Create, Critique, Design
Extended comprehension strategies are meant to provide extended learning around video and streaming content, as well as opportunities for more complex thinking about that content.

31. Reflect on "fit" of video with regards to Viewing Purpose

32. Compare & contrast video with similar video content

33. Create Anticipation Guide (for viewers that haven't seen video)

34. Identify " big idea " of video

35. Critique video for which modalities supported video purpose and theme, and which seemed to distract

36. Roughly determine history of topic in similar and dissimilar media

37. RAFT thinking & extension (Role, Audience, Format, Topic/Theme)

38. Prioritize ideas & information from least to most important

39. Distinguish between tone and mood of video
40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book
40. Design follow-up medium that extends and deepens purpose of video

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40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book by Terry Heick You can't watch a video like you read a book; the modalities couldn't be much more different.

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skills checklists for educator certifications
*note: in 2017 these tests were updated to focus more on integration concepts than technology skills but this is still a great resource for preparation

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So you are thinking about taking the exams to become a Google Certified Educator? But you are wondering what topics and skills are covered by the tests. This blog post is here to help you!

Google provides several possible certification options for educators including Educator Level 1, Educator Level 2, Trainer, Innovator, and Administrator. Of these, Educator Level 1 and 2 are the place to start and are especially designed for teachers and other educators in a school setting.

To earn the status of Google Certified Educator Level 1 or 2 you need to take an online exam that shows your practical knowledge of using Google Apps for Education in a school setting, as well as demonstrate your ability to perform many tasks within the Google Apps suite of tools.

See below for two printable checklists covering every topic and skill addressed by the Level 1 and 2 tutorials, as well as an overview of these certifications, and the main points about the exams. In preparation for the exams, you can use these lists to keep track of the skills you have mastered and those you still need to address.

Skills Checklists

Below are the detailed listings of the topics covered in the Google Certified Educator Level 1 and 2 training resources. In preparation for the test, you can use these lists to keep track of the skills you have mastered and those you still need to address.

To develop these lists I went through all of the online certification tutorials provided by Google and pulled out every skill and topic covered. I then organized the skills by tool, removed duplicates, and arranged the items in a logical order.

These checklists are freely available for personal use, and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 United States license. In short, you can copy, distribute, and adapt this work as long as you give proper attribution and do not charge for it.

Certification Overviews

Google Certified Educator Level 1

If you're an educator who knows how to use Google tools in the classroom, this certification proves your proficiency.

Level 1 Certified Educators (GCE1) have demonstrated the fundamental skills needed to implement Google for Education tools in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning.

Google Certified Educator Level 2

If you're an educator who is a super user and enthusiast of Google tools in the classroom, this certification proves your expertise.

Level 2 Certified Educators (GCE2) have demonstrated the advanced skills needed to integrate Google for Education and other online tools to transform teaching and learning in schools.

For an overview of all the available Google certifications for educators see the slideshow below:

Online Tutorials

Google provides comprehensive online tutorial modules and lessons for both Level 1 and Level 2. You can work through these lessons at your own pace to learn or review the skills and topics you need to master for the exams. The tutorials can be found online at:

Exam Details

Google Certified Educator Level 1 and Level 2 exams are taken online.

For each exam you are given 180 minutes to finish.

The cost for the Level 1 exam is $10.

The cost for the Level 2 exam is $25.

The certifications are good for 36 months.

In Person Certification Training
If your school or organization is interested in certification training, I provide onsite, in-person professional development to prepare educators for the Level 1 and Level 2 exams. My typical training is 2 to 4 days of in-depth, hands-on coverage of every skill needed for the certifications.

Feel free to contact me for more details at ericcurts@gmail.com or view my Services page for more information at http://www.controlaltachieve.com/services

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Skill Checklists for Google Certified Educator Level 1 and 2

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So you are thinking about taking the exams to become a Google Certified Educator? But you are wondering what topics and skills are covered by the tests. This blog post is here to help you! Google provides several possible certification options for educators including Educator Level 1, Educator Level 2, Trainer, Innovator, and Administrator.

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Educator Level 2 certification

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Educator Level 1 certification

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training resources

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blog & podcast resource

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This page shares ideas for educators to use in creating websites with teaching resources. Learn how to set up and design your blog, create strong content, build a following online, and more! These tips are based on my own personal experience with running a website for teachers since July 2003-an entire decade! Lots of things have changed over the years, but the need for valuable teacher resources on the web is as strong as ever.

Setting up your blog

Choose your blogging platform carefully.

I would highly recommend that you use a self-hosted WordPress site (also known as WordPress.org.) Blogger is easy to use but far less customizable, plus Blogger users don't own their blogs-Google does. To have complete creative control over your blog, you'll want to have your own domain name (URL) and server. I've used Bravenet since 2003 for both domain purchasing and web hosting, and found them to be reliable and reasonably priced. The cost of hosting and owning a domain is minimal (around $8 a year for the domain and $8 a month for hosting.)

Pick a great template.

I use WordPress Thesis, which is a paid theme but totally worth it because it's so customizable. There's really no reason to ever need another blog theme. Plus, there is lifetime implementation support via the excellent forums: I've posed questions there many times and gotten quick responses. Many elementary teachers like to buy cute teacher-looking templates from graphic designers, and if that's the way you decide to go, keep in mind that you'll need exclusive rights to your template (so that someone else doesn't have your exact blog layout) and a readable font (not something that's so fancy or child-like that it gives people a headache.)

Choose a niche or focus for your blog.

It should be something you are passionate about. Make it broad enough to apply to a range of educators, but narrow enough so that you're not just "a teacher blog about teaching." You're probably not going to ever rank number one in Google for something like teacher resources: the big companies with huge budgets and an editorial staff usually get those slots. You could, however, become a top ranker for a more narrow niche and be considered an expert in that area. Your niche could be substitute teaching, secondary school resources (there are fewer middle/high school teacher bloggers and not a lot of competition), co-teaching, multi-grade/multi-age classrooms, etc. You don't have to limit all your posts to that niche, but the majority should relate in some way to your focus. For example, my niche is classroom management, but I still have section of pages (which you're currently in) called Edupreneurs. This works because my "voice" is the same in these pages, and also because I'm still approaching the topic from a management perspective.

Be cautious of using your grade level as your niche.

If you ever decide (or are forced to) change grade levels, the whole audience for whom you've built your blog might crumble. What good is amassing 500 subscribers to your kindergarten blog when your principal moves you to fifth grade the following year? Your kindergarten teacher subscribers aren't going to care about the stuff you do with your fifth graders, and you risk isolating them and having to start from scratch each time you change grades. Now you've probably noticed a lot of people do this, anyway, and blog exclusively about one grade level. In my opinion, best practices for teaching apply to multiple grade levels, and if you want to be a professional blogger and/or make money from your blog, you should be careful about limiting your audience!

Google your blog title and niche before going live with it.

Make sure you're not using a name someone else has already claimed-that will cause brand confusion and will NOT be appreciated by that blogger and his/her fans! Try to pick something very unique. If the name is even slightly similar to a popular edublogger, make sure your template and blog appearance are completely, totally different. You want to set yourself apart. Googling your niche will tell you who else is blogging about your topic: these are people you want to subscribe to and follow, and hopefully partner up with at some point. If there are too many people in your niche, you may struggle to make a name for yourself. If there aren't enough, that could be a sign that your niche is too narrow and you'll have trouble attracting readers.

Creating strong blog content

The phrase I live by is content is king.

Another way to think of it: If you write it (and it's good), they will come. There are bloggers who barely use social media and have extremely plain websites, yet their names are all over the blogosphere because the stuff they create is so awesome. You don't have to obsess over sharing and promoting your own stuff: if it's really good, people will find you and spread the word themselves. I started this website in 2003 before social media even existed, and I didn't start using search engine optimization (SEO) until 2008, yet prior to that my site still had hundreds of thousands of page views per year and countless backlinks from all over the web.

Many bloggers spend too much time focusing on promoting their blogs and not enough time writing stuff people want to read.

Create blog posts and website articles that give real value to your readers. Write from a unique perspective and let your voice shine through. Compose the type of article that you like to read. Relevant, insightful content is absolutely the key to success for any blogger.

Don't stress over posting on a regular schedule.

Many experts say you must blog on a regular schedule: at least 3 times a week, for example, and many people blog much more often than that. I think regular blogging is a great goal, but personally, I'd rather read infrequent or irregular posts that are valuable than daily posts that are hit-or-miss. My advice: write when you have something important to say. Don't just toss out a post because you haven't written anything in a few days. And even worse, don't write a post apologizing for not posting! BORING. If you don't post for awhile, your readers will think you've been busy doing important stuff, and they understand. In my opinion, you don't need to call attention to your irregular blogging, make excuses, or explain yourself.

Stay true to your voice.

This is a common expression in the writing world, and it basically means to let your own personal writing style shine through. Let different aspects of your personality show, but try to keep the tone of your posts pretty consistent so people know it's you. Whatever your writing style, whatever your preferred blogging topic...I guarantee there are people who want to read it, so don't worry about fitting in with other bloggers in your niche or being what others want you to be. Copying other bloggers' style is a recipe for failure, because the best you can hope for is to be a second-rate imitation. Be a first-rate version of YOU! Stay true to your voice, and it WILL speak to someone...probably a lot of someones.

How to come up with blog post ideas

The best inspiration for blogging is your own experiences.

Here are some things I write about:

Always err on the side of caution when deciding what to post about your job.

I chronicle my experiences as an instructional coach and did the same when I was a classroom teacher, but you'll notice I never say anything bad about any students, anyone who employs me, or even my co-workers. A good motto is "Complain globally, praise locally." That means talk about problems in the broadest sense possible ("Our education system is failing") and talk about good stuff that's happening specifically ("So-and-so is doing a great job tackling this problem.") Everything you post about your students should be something that would make you look good if it were ever pulled out of context. Write as if your principal, students, and students' parents are reading. They might be.

Read other people's blogs for inspiration.

I subscribe to hundreds of education blogs so I can stay current with what others are thinking and talking about. Often I'll comment on their posts and then expand my comment into a post on my own blog, especially if my viewpoint is different from the original author's. Other times bloggers will pose a question which I'll answer on my own blog. Still other times, their blog or Facebook posts will remind me of something I've been wanting to write about. Non-education blogs often r emind me of education-related topics and I'll write about the connection. The great part about using other people's blogs for inspiration is that you can build online relationships. I leave a comment for the person letting them know that I enjoyed their post and it inspired me to write my own, then share the link.

Video interview: Talking, teaching & blogging

I was honored to be a guest on the latest episode of the Edu All-Stars podcast, and I thought I'd share the conversation here with you:

Here are some of the topics we cover in the 26 minute interview:

How I got into the education field

Why I decided to leave the classroom and get into consulting

The inspiration behind my blog post about big fish, little fish, and the separate ponds of education

My blogging inspiration and how I keep a consistent blogging schedule

How long it took before I had a community of readers (and what new bloggers should expect)

My biggest takeaways from the TeachersPayTeachers conferencein Las Vegas

The incident that inspired me to write Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Change Your Teaching

How the book Awakened can help teachers develop a positive and resilient mindset

The best education book I've read in a long time and that I wish every teacher would read

The most important advice that I would give to a new teacher and to a veteran teacher

3 words I hope someone would use when describing me

My latest project that I am super passionate about right now

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Truth For Teachers - Blogging Tips for Teachers

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This page shares ideas for educators to use in creating websites with teaching resources. Learn how to set up and design your blog, create strong content, build a following online, and more! These tips are based on my own personal experience with running a website for teachers since July 2003-an entire decade!

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technology standards

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online resources - including lesson plans ( ex. emergency sub plans )

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PBS LearningMedia | Teaching Resources For Students And Teachers

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Inspire your students with thousands of free teaching resources including videos, lesson plans, and games aligned to state and national standards.

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Guides for educational technology

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As an educational technologist, I continue to learn each day. When I develop new presentations or explore a new passion, I create a page of resources. This site will serve as the entry point to these resources, ideas, tips, and tricks. The links to the pages are below.

If you have any comments or ideas to share, or want to find out how you can have me come speak to your school, district, or conference attendees, in-person or virtually, please drop me a line! Social networks are in the footer.

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As an educational technologist, I continue to learn each day. When I develop new presentations or explore a new passion, I create a page of resources. This site will serve as the entry point to these resources, ideas, tips, and tricks. The links to the pages are below.

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blog & podcast resource

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The Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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The Cool Cat Teacher Blog helps you be an excellent educator everyday with advice, ideas, and inspiration.

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Pineapple PD is a concept where teachers invite other teachers into their classroom to observe, get ideas & provide feedback 

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Pineapple PD is a concept where teachers invite other teachers into their classroom to observe, get ideas & provide feedback 

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#LearnTogether

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This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. If you click these and make a purchase from Amazon, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support.

Professional Development: The phrase has a way of striking dread into the hearts of teachers. But not because teachers don't WANT to improve. Not because we believe we're done growing and learning. Far from it.

In fact, so many teachers bristle at the thought of PD because most of the time, it's executed so poorly. Although the typical one-size-fits-all format-where every teacher in the building is herded together to listen to an expert speak-has been widely denounced, it still persists as the default model. Sometimes, if the speaker happens to be engaging, some teachers will walk away with a small tidbit they can apply to their own work. For most teachers, though, it feels like a waste of precious time, time that could be spent developing skills that would make a real difference in their specific practice.

But things are starting to change. More and more schools are experimenting with personalized approaches to professional development; this guide from EdSurge takes a comprehensive look at all the different shapes this can take. And as new unconferences pop up every week all over the world, teachers are seeing just how easy it can be to learn from each other, without the need for any kind of outside expert.

And now, taking PD to an even simpler, more local, more affordable level, we have the Pineapple Chart.

What is a Pineapple Chart?

A Pineapple Chart is a system that allows teachers to invite one another into their classrooms for informal observation. The chart is set up in some location where teachers go on a daily basis: the teacher's lounge, the copy room, or wherever teacher mailboxes live in your school. On the chart, teachers "advertise" the interesting things they are doing in their classrooms, activities they think others might want to observe. The activities could be as complex as a science lab, a history simulation, or a Skype session with a school in another country. Or they could be as simple as a read-aloud or a lesson on badminton.

The chart represents one week of school. Along the top, five columns are labeled Monday through Friday. Along the side, rows assigned to various chunks of each school day. In a middle or high school, these would be class periods. In an elementary school, the rows could be divided by hours or half-hours.

When a teacher sees something on the chart she (or he) is interested in, she goes to that classroom at the designated time, sits down in an out-of-the-way spot, and watches. That's it. No note-taking is required, no post-observation conference, no write-up. Just a visit. She can even grade papers or catch up on email if she wants, paying closer attention when the moment calls for it, but getting work done in the meantime. She can stay for five minutes or a whole class period. The key word here is informal, and it's the best way for teachers to learn lots of skills and techniques just when they need them.

The reasons the visiting teacher might come in are endless: It could be that she wants to start using Google Cardboard, but would like to see another teacher do it first. Maybe she's struggling with classroom management and knows this teacher runs a tight ship. Or maybe she's there because she always wanted to learn more about World War I. Regardless of the initial reason, what she ends up learning is likely to be far more than she expected. During that Google Cardboard visit, she'll also notice a cool bulletin board in that teacher's classroom and decide to try something similar in her room. While watching the lesson on World War I, she'll pick up a questioning technique she ends up using in her own teaching. Every teacher in your building has their own unique blend of skills and talents, but the only way you'll ever learn about them is to see your colleagues in action.

The Origins of the Pineapple Chart

The pineapple has long been a symbol of hospitality; it's used in the chart in the spirit of welcoming one another into our school "homes."

But that's just the beginning. Here's how the Pineapple Chart came to be: In early 2015, Mark Barnes and I were compiling innovative teaching "hacks" for our book, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. I remembered my sister, who teaches science in Massachusetts, telling me about her attempts to start a "Pineapple Welcome" initiative at her school, where teachers would hang a picture of a pineapple outside their classroom doors, indicating that any other teacher who wanted to visit was welcome to stop by.

When I asked her how the whole pineapple thing went, she said, "Eh. Some people came in, but usually I would hang the pineapple and nothing would happen. I stopped doing it after a while."

This bothered me, because some of the most valuable skills I have picked up as a teacher came from informally observing my colleagues in their classrooms. I feel strongly that some of the best professional development available to teachers lives right inside the walls of our schools, and if we could just watch each other teach more, we would all grow exponentially.

Just hanging the pineapple on the door, I realized, had two shortcomings. One, it was only visible to teachers who happened to pass by that door on that day. And two, it didn't offer enough information: Just seeing a pineapple on the door tells the visitor nothing about what's going on inside. If a teacher is going to spend time visiting another teacher's classroom, he wants to know that the thing he's coming to observe is something he's actually interested in. A chart posted in a central location, with a bit of information about the day's activities, solves both problems.

We asked my sister to pilot this centralized system at her school, and the first Pineapple Chart was born. Since the publication of Hacking Education, the Pineapple Chart system has taken off in schools all across the world, and the results have been fantastic.

Two Schools Where Pineapple Charts Are Making an Impact

Gator Run Elementary, Weston, Florida

"The Pineapple Chart has been a game changer for the staff at Gator Run," says Intern Principal Cyndi Felton, who initiated Gator Run's first Pineapple Chart in January of 2016. "We have some of the very best PD available under our own roof. Now teachers have the opportunity to get into each other's classrooms and learn from one another."

Since the chart has been going, Felton has seen teachers trying new things more quickly. "Last year we noticed tools and strategies spreading throughout the building after Pineapple Chart visits. Kahoot, Nearpod, Plickers, in-class flipped lessons, SeeSaw, and performance scales in addition to unique procedures, classroom management and teaching strategies."

Maple Avenue Middle School, Littlestown, Pennsylvania

In January of 2016, when Assistant Principal Cortney Golden first launched the chart in her school, she worked hard to keep it full. "I was very aware that if we lost momentum, and the chart was blank, it would die. I sent staff-wide emails, group emails, personal emails, face to face requests, and even had my secretary appealing to teachers to sign up. Getting teachers to sign up was my first priority....then, once that became more automatic, we began to 'push' visiting."

Since then, informal observation and an open-door policy have become part of the school's culture. So much so that the word "pineappling" has become a verb:

"Collectively, we embrace pineappling now more than ever," says Golden. "As teachers desire to grow their craft, to foster 21st century skills, and to help students discover and pursue their passions, it becomes clear to all that teachers need each other. Pineappling gives teachers the permission they feel they need to collaborate, observe, ask, and reflect. It is a 'safe' and powerful professional development opportunity. Pineappling is free, fits within the school day, and has proven to be the BEST professional growth experience."

Tips for Making Pineapple Charts Work

Find creative ways to make the time.
The simplest way to squeeze these visits in is for teachers to do them during their planning time, or part of it. Remember, we're not talking about a whole class period necessarily; a 15-minute visit may be all that's needed to pick up a new strategy. In cases where teachers want to see something that doesn't coincide with planning time, the staff will need to be more creative:

A floating sub can be arranged for a day (or a few days) and teachers can "sign up for the sub" in order to visit another room.

Administrators (or other certified personnel) can step in to cover a class. This solution does double-duty, as it gives the principal some time to interact more closely with small groups of students. Instead of covering the teacher's regular material, the administrator could use this time for having discussions about school issues or just getting to know the students.

Teachers can team up to cover each other's classes. Imagine a scenario where teacher A agrees to cover teacher B's class while teacher B observes in teacher C's room. Then everyone switches roles two more times. A motivated school might even experiment with a second chart (beside the Pineapple Chart) where teachers post a need for coverage and other teachers sign up to cover for them.

Keep it voluntary.
Administrators, be warned! The quickest way to suck the life out of this initiative is to make it mandatory for all teachers. By keeping visits informal and strictly voluntary (for the host teacher AND the visitor), you'll ensure that the Pineapple Chart is always seen as a positive thing, a learning opportunity initiated by the teacher.

Skip the documentation.
An equally fast way to drain people's enthusiasm for visits is to force them to do some kind of write-up afterward. Please don't turn the chart into another reason to require teachers to document. If they know paperwork is expected of them, they will be far less likely to visit.

Start with the bold and the brave...
When you first launch the Chart, many teachers will be shy about posting lessons. Get things going by having your most extroverted teachers sign up first. If you get a group of 5-10 teachers willing to put themselves out there, this will eventually help others step forward as well.

...but set the bar low.
Make sure teachers know they don't have to be doing something 'impressive' in order to post a lesson to the chart. "The hardest part is getting teachers to understand it doesn't have to be an extravagant lesson to sign up," says Felton. "Their everyday strategies and standard procedures can be incredibly helpful to someone who has never seen or thought of it. You really never know what you might learn whether it's a 5- or a 25-minute visit."

Sell it.
Especially when you first get started, encourage those who do the observing to share the good things they saw by talking about it in faculty meetings, sharing a compliment on a teacher "brag board" or posting about it online. At Maple Avenue, Golden encouraged teachers to tweet about their experiences using the hashtag#MAMSLearning. "This helped keep the excitement high, and the pressure low," she says. "Although I still have to harass teachers every once and again (I call it "gently wooing") to showcase the teaching and learning in their classroom, it has become very much part of our culture."

Share Your Story

If your school has already started using a Pineapple Chart, tell us about it in the comments. I would love to hear about tweaks you've made to the system and how the system is impacting teacher relationships and student growth.

Learn More

The Pineapple Chart is just one of the 10 hacks Mark Barnes and I share in our 2015 book, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. Get your copy today and start hacking tomorrow! ♦

Learn something new every week.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll also get access to my members-only library of free resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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How Pineapple Charts Revolutionize Professional Development

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As one-size-fits-all PD fades into obscurity, more personalized professional development models have emerged. The Pineapple Chart may be the greatest of them all.