Resiliency is a 21st Century Skill

A collaborative digital lesson plan created by Ben Berte, Jennie Dougherty, Brett Kopf, Eric Simons 

Regardless of the subject you teach, you expect your students to rise to the challenges you present them with. With that said, many of us have had to take time away from a particularly challenging content objective to help our students develop the resilience necessary to face these challenges.  This form of perseverance is perhaps best described by Dr. Robert Brooks of the Center for Development and Learning.  Dr. Brooks describes resiliency as “the capacity to deal successfully with the obstacles in the road that confront us while maintaining a straight and true path towards life’s goals.” Students who develop a “resilient mindset” can handle the challenges we give them with greater effectiveness and success.  When we take the time to help our students develop a “resilient mindset” we teach them to believe that they have the ability to solve problems and make decisions and thus, “are more likely to view their work as challenges to confront rather than as stressors to avoid.”

Resiliency is a 21st century skill that can enable our students become the gregarious and ingenious thinkers we know they can be.  With this in mind, we at edUpgrade set out to create a  to create a technology-rich opportunity to bring innovative ed. tech. entrepreneurs into your classroom via digital media. The clips below provide your students with an opportunity to engage with the real-world and practice critical skills.

The first clip provides a link to a typographic edition of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”. Following that are links to videos of ed. tech. entrepreneurs reflecting on the meaning of Kipling’s poem. In 1-2 minutes clips, each innovator discusses the creativity, self-motivation and emotional intelligence needed to overcome challenges.  Use these clips as a catalyst for discussing resiliency with your students. This discussion can be easily integrated into all subject areas and used to foster a productive classroom environment where students rely on coping strategies that are growth-fostering rather than self-defeating.

Poem Handout

Animated Typography of Kipling’s poem “If”

 

Teacher on a Mission

My name is Jennie Dougherty. I am a teacher at one of the largest urban high schools East of the Mississippi. Everyday I work within the inequitable opportunities given to students from districts with limited resources. Last summer I went on a mission to give my students access to awesome technology. I created partnerships between my classroom and ed. tech. entrepreneurs who were looking for opportunities to test their designs and programs. Our collaboration gave my students access to technology with the potential to empower their education and future. After talking with other teachers, I realized I would be selfish to keep this opportunity for myself and my students.

What began as a single teacher and a beta classroom blog, grew into a network of 150+ innovative educators from around the United States. While we are from all over the K -12 spectrum, we are united in our joy of beta testing ed. tech. and giving our students the opportunity to be the first to try out and use new programs.

On Feb. 15th, Beta Classroom will relaunch as the incorporated nonprofit edUpgrade. While the name is changing, the mission stays the same.  The edUpgrade co-founders are dedicated to supporting the work of rock star teachers and the punk ed. tech. entrepreneurs we work with. On the 15th, we will be presenting the national network of innovative educators with a portfolio of betas that have the potential to optimize our practice and our students outcomes. In exchange for free access to beta innovations, these classroom rock stars will be providing the highest quality feedback-telling what we love; what we dream it could be.

We ask each beta to be in our portfolio because we think it is awesome and has the potential to positively transform our classrooms. As such, these betas have the greatest potential to benefit from the powerful feedback that comes from classroom facing teachers who are hungry for the chance to shape the technology of tomorrow.

We are looking for classroom agents of change, tech. visionary, or friend of this revolution to support our mission.

Earlier this summer, I worked with 3 extraordinary entrepreneurs to collaboratively co-author a response to Edsurge’s beta bill of rights. What we came up with was a best practices for educator and entrepreneur collaboration. With these principals in mind I continued my mission this fall and quickly learned several important lessons.

LESSON 1: “Ms. D., B.Y.O.D.?! DO YOU WANT ME TO GET JUMPED?”
It would have to reward teachers with the opportunity to earn devices that are inequitably distributed among this nation’s classrooms. This lesson came from one of my students and is therefore the most important of all. I went into this academic year psyched to get the B.Y.O.D. message to my students. 20 minutes into my first day of class, a student raised her hand and asked, “Ms. taking out your smart phone can get you jumped. I don’t care if other students see me take out my smart phone, but I know some of my friends would be worried that taking out their phone would make them a target.” Time stops and I feel my face flush with shame at not being able to predict the infinite ways that inequality saturates every pore of my classroom. As a teacher, my first priority is to keep my students safe. 20 minutes into the school year and I had received my first major set back. I tell my students that resiliency is a 21st century skill, and feel my determination calcify as I inform them that I refuse to deprive them of the opportunity to have their education positively transformed by 21st century technology. After a momentary pause, I explain that I will be bringing enough devices for the class to work in small groups and experience the awesome betas I had the privilege of testing over the summer. The next day, and every day since then, I have brought a laptop computer, two ipod touch devices, a smart phone and an ipad with me to school each day. Moreover, I’ve become resolute in my commitment to creating an opportunity for teachers to be classroom agents of change and obtain the devices that they and their students need.

LESSON 2: I CAN AFFORD 2 IPADS
I am not satisfied with solving the problem for just my classroom. The fact is that I promised the lead teachers of the network that I would find a way to get them the devices they deserve. These educators are leaders because they have used technology to innovate the classroom and powerfully optimize the education of their students. So I took it upon myself to get the devices, and as a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I learned another important lesson: I can afford 2 ipads. As a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I can afford 2 ipads.

LESSON 3: A LETTER TO THE BIG DOGS
How could I get them the devices? The network of educators testing out these betas realized how profound an impact they could have on the classroom. Yet, many of our students did not have the devices to access these programs and no teacher would ever put a student’s well being as risk no matter what the benefit. So what to do? The network was created to give teachers a voice in shaping the technology of tomorrow as well as providing fledgling entrepreneurs and visionary technologists with the opportunity to get feedback necessary to develop extraordinary programs. I can’t ask these entrepreneurs to buy ipads for classrooms; they don’t have the funding and it would create a conflict of interest and undermine the integrity of our feedback and thereby the strength of teacher’s voices. Last summer, I wrote a letter and even shared it with my students as an example. I titled it “Letter to the Big Dogs”, and sent it to the heads of Gazelle with the hopes of getting one set of devices. While that failed I wasn’t deterred and went through with setting up a page where the money earned from old devices could be donated. This idea has not had the success I hoped it would. Another option that became very clear was to sell reports of these betas to investors. I may be a teacher and without an MBA but I know what evil smells like, and that kind of thing reeks of wrongness. It would be like publishing a wedding announcement with a photo of you from middle school…you know the one before you got your braces taken off, when you thought that nothing was cooler than a baby-t and overalls. While the last of these assumptions was in fact correct, not every decision we make as tweens was equally wise. While this period of growth is a necessary part of self-discovery, a summary of that mistake filled journey does not capture the magnificent person you are and the bright future ahead of you. While I am sure there are hipsters with save the date announcements featuring snapshots from their respective tween years, the other 99% of us get why its not okay to sell information about the highs and lows of a beta’s early development.

LESSON 4: I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE
I couldn’t not do this alone. Even with the League of Friends supporting me as mentors and guardian angels, the mission deserves more than I alone could give. Thankfully I met the individuals with the audacity, energy, and rock star status to join me. Together Beth Rabbitt, a doctoral fellow at Harvard innovation lab, Ben Berte, a co-founder of Socrative, and myself co-founded edUpgrade. During this founding period we addressed each of the lessons learned and sketched a plan of action to ensure the ideas and voices of betas and educators have the chance to work in symbiotic collaboration and produce new and awesome technologies.

Dear Ed. Tech: A Geek Lovin’ Teacher’s Word to the Wise

 IClicker                    QClick,                   AClick

When first developed, the devices pictured above were carefully marketed as “student response systems.” Well, you can bet it took about five minutes in your typical classroom before that marketing strategy met its maker. “Response system”? Hah! First, it looks like a remote control; second, it makes a clicky noise. Ergo, it’s a “clicker”.

The first student response system was called “The Classroom Performance System”, but the fact is that the technology, even its name, is ultimately determined in the classroom. Don’t believe me? Just look at what they choose to name the latest models above, and then decide who the big dog of the ed. tech. world is. But I digress, and now turn to the reasons for which these clicker systems are seriously powerful tools.

+ Clickers Make Data Collection and Assessment Instant and Easy. Student’s responses are instantly available to help the teacher guide their instruction. In addition to this, responses are saved, which makes it even easier to track participation and student understanding.

+ Clickers Make Students More Interactive. Today’s tech-savvy students expect technology to be a part of their learning process, just as it is a part of their social life and daily routine. By projecting student’s responses, you ensure the opinion of even the quietest student will be counted by the system.

+ Clicker Systems Save Time No longer do we have to manually grade through hundreds of slips of paper or sticky notes each day.

Costing between $500 and $3,000 for a classroom set, these clickers have so much potential that teachers like myself often contemplate which organ to sell in order to bring one into our own classroom. Cost isn’t the only drawback, another is the fact that the vast majority of these systems do not allow students to write short answer responses. As an English teacher, such responses are necessary for me to determine the extent to which my students have learned that day’s lesson. These are the drawbacks, I noticed before I was introduced to Socrative. The latest teacher approved technology, Socrative is transforming the technology we’ve had into the technology we’ve always wanted.

Socrative: What A Teacher Really Wants

My philosophy majoring heart skipped a beat when it first heard about Socrative, a Boston-grown beta-technology. Earlier this summer I had the pleasure of meeting with Ben Berte who is not only an official member of Socrative’s super team of educators, entrepreneurs and engineers but also an incredible teacher willing to teach me about Socrative. Unlike the clicker systems described above, Socrative is a FREE online application. Don’t let that “free” factor scare you off! Its website looks sharp-like Martha Stewart’s layout editor teamed up with Apple’s website design squad.

You can use your smart phone, ipad, laptop, desktop, or ipod touch, to run Socrative. Also, because it’s an internet application, Socrative doesn’t have to be installed onto any computers! For many teachers this is a double blessing because it means that we won’t have to get permission from IT administrators or spend an hour installing it. After you set up an account you can create multiple choice, true/false, short answer and Exit Ticket questions. It’s so easy to create these questions, that I will most certainly add questions generated by my students during class. With this brief intro, it is an absolute pleasure to celebrate Socrative as the latest teacher approved technology to will help me and my students achieve our highest potential.

Features of Latest Teacher Approved Technology

+Reports and Analysis of Student’s Work

I like assessment, I believe in using daily evaluations to determine the scope and sequence of my lessons. This worked out perfectly for me my first year, because what’s more fun that collecting over 100 exit tickets everyday, reading and grading each, entering those grades into the school’s gradebook, and generating an analysis with which I can plan the next day’s activator? What’s that you say? I must have slept at my desk? You are correct.

I have spent countless evenings at my desk; ultimately, using the scraps of paper with my student’s answers as a pillow to keep my drool from reaching my keyboard. After these nights, I begin my class grumbling about my made up dog’s affinity for stationary as I passed each of these slips back to my students. With Socrative, my pedogogical convictions don’t have to come at the expense of other important things in life like balance, sleep, sanitary conditions, etc…The power of Socrative is that it emails me reports that include not only the questions I created but also my student’s responses. These reports can be downloaded as spreadsheets and will ultimately cut the time it takes to evaluate student’s current comprehension and plan for the next day. In addition to this, I will have more time to create and post follow-up assignments for students who need extra-practice.

+ Rocketships!

In Dennis Villano’s review of Socrative he  noted the program’s “space race” feature. In his review, Dennis Villano explained how “Teachers can also create questions that students answer in a ‘Space Race.’ Students answer questions as individuals or as part of a team and try to finish the race first.” A straightforward and clear description? Yes. A missed chance for a standing ovation? Absolutely! I mean come on, the program even has the space ships already created and ready for blast off! Talk about a great way to keep students doing small group work, staying on task, and being effective. Its like these rocketships come straight out of a Doug Lemov playbook. What would easily be described by both Lemov and David Levin, as “Vegas”, the space race is that element of sparkle or fun that reinforces not just academics generally but one of the day’s learning objectives. It’s a fun game that won’t give birth to a monster that takes on a life of its own. Its objective oriented, meaning that it aligns itself to your objective, and keeps students aware of their progress (and that of other groups). With the space race covering those bases, I can help my students remain not just engaged but on point.

+ Increase “Agility”

The teaching practices with the biggest pay off often require “agility.” But what does agility require? The denotation of agility would lead us to conclude that it requires the integration of isolated movements and skills using a combination of balance, coordination, speed, reflexes, strength, endurance and stamina. In the context of the classroom, however, agility’s requisites include all these and things like faith, hope, trust, consistency, tenacity, and other superhuman abilities. If you ever thought a teacher had eyes in the back of her head, abnormally sensitive hearing or other superhuman qualities, you were right. Like X-Men, teachers-the best one’s anyway-are in fact mutants. They are the one’s brave enough to let their experience in the classroom transform them into superheroes. Yes, that’s right Jhonny, your dear teacher is like Storm or Wolverene, it was your antics and difficulty that made her that way. I am no superhero. The force may be strong with this one, but I’m still a young Jedi. This fall, however, Socrative will make it seem like Yoda’s whispering to me from my supply cubbie. By recording my student’s responses, Socrative will make me agile enough to help my students consider different—and often conflicting—ideas. As they think deeply and critically about concepts; look at ethical quandries; and develop moral principles, they will thereby refine their critical thinking skills, deepen their collective understanding of the material they discuss, retain the information and master the highest forms intellectual behavior.

Today’s Take-away:

Some argue that, Socrative’s best feature is the ease of use for students and teachers. I, however, know that what makes Socrative a teacher approved technology isn’t the fact that its easy to use, for this is a quality I’ve found in unapproved technologies as well. The greatest quality is that it makes the most difficult and effective practices easy. The pay off of best practices makes them well worth it, and with Socrative I’ll have the “agility” I need to make those best practices into daily practices. Anyone interested in learning more about Socrative should visit the website http://www.Socrative.com, or Ben’s blog http://socrativegarden.wordpress.com/.

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[1] “Socratic Seminars: Engaging Students in Intellectual Discourse” by Lynda Tredway. Education Leadership, 1995.

EDUBLOG AWARD 2011: Best Free Web Tool

This years teacher approved technologies included: Remind101, Class Dojo, Goal Book and Socrative. When it came down to deciding which one to nominate for the “Eddy” awards the decision was tough. However, given the criteria of the award of “best free web tool” and the group giving the award (Edu Blog) my final decision was ultimately for Socrative, because is not only a tool but also provides a blog that publishes dynamic and imaginative ways to incorporate this tool into any subject/lesson. In honor of their nomination, I have decided to repost my original review of this teacher approved technology. Thank you so much Ben and the rest of the Socrative team for creating such an incredible tool and providing the means for all teachers to learn how to use it to optimize our practice and improve our student’s outcomes.