What A Teacher Wants

 THE LATEST TEACHER APPROVED TECHNOLOGY: CLASS CONNECT

By Jennie Dougherty | English Teacher | edUpgrade’s Director of Teacher Innovation

Exhausted by the task of scanning and tagging thousands of pages of curriculum, I was overwhelmed and vulnerable to the kind of pictures Evernote was posting online.

With a super cute pic like this, why would I have any reason to doubt that Evernote could meet my needs. The artists and marketers who drew this knew what a teacher wanted. But it wasn’t just about looks, we also had a lot in common. Here I was trying to get rid of my binder system and there it was offering me digital notebooks for all my content.

I used the Evernote clipper tool to grab websites and add them to my digital notebooks, which helped me overcome the disappointment I felt when I realized the actual program was less attractive than I’d anticipated.

Things began to fall apart the second I got seriously involved. Uploads took too long and there wasn’t enough storage capacity, so I had to wait an entire month to get more space before I could continue transferring my curriculum from paper to PDFs. It was making me doubt my decision to leave my old binder system.

It wasn’t like Evernote was the only curriculum management system I’ve been using since school began. I’ve tried Learn Boost, Better Lesson and InstaGrok. Heck I even gave Pinterest a shot! I will be the first to admit that unlike the first three champion programs listed, Pinterest was completely void of substantive features. So why was it that I wished the other programs were more like it? I found my answer in in last week’s New York Time’s Magazine cover story written by Charles Duhigg. And no, its not because I’m pregnant.

While this article was primarily focused on how corporations use shoppers’ data to target consumers, it contained a paragraph that made me realize what it was that I was looking for in a curriculum management program and why it mattered so much.

Duhigg’s description of habits made me confident knowing I wasn’t destined to drive around a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life. According to Duhigg, “[h]abits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced.” A teacher can escape the fate of driving around with a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life.  Eager educators should be cautioned that the author also acknowledges the difficulty of resisting old habits. “Unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically.” So, unless we find the new experience of lesson planning more rewarding than the old one, we may want to start thinking about investing in a trailer hitch.

Further explanation of my struggle to transfer my curriculum creation and organization to a digital medium was found in Duhigg’s concise explanation of habit formation. “The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use.” For me, this is every Sunday night, when my anxiety level peaks and prevents me from avoiding the reality that the coming week’s lesson plans are due in less than 12 hours. “Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional.” Lesson planning is obviously a mental routine, and anyone who read the sentence about my anxiety can figure its probably an emotional one as well, but for those who are not educators let me tell you that pulling all-nighters once a week 36 weeks a year-as I did my first year teaching-is excruciatingly physical.

“Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Putting the all nighters, overwhelming anxiety, and mental strain aside, what I remember most about lesson planning is that clean white binder in which each item is carefully selected, organized, articulated, in a standards based, objective driven lesson plan-complete with daily agendas, objectives and assessments. For those who read last Sunday’s article, flipping through the pages of that binder, and placing it neatly in my LLBean tote is my “Febreze moment”. It is the reward I enjoy at the end of an established lesson planning routine. “Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges.” So its not that I crave the binders. Nor is it that the programs that I used were unable to fulfill the needs of my established lesson planning routine. The problem lay in the fact that creating curriculum online was not providing a reward equal to that I experienced when I used Pinterest or my old binder system.

So what was it that I was looking for in these programs? It wasn’t a specific feature, it was a feeling of reward. The reason I liked Pinterest more than those other programs is that it gave me a huge reward for gathering the materials I would use in my lesson. I was able to instantly see when others repined my  resources and what they grouped them with. Not only that, having all of my materials gathered in one place gave me a calming perspective and let me to recognize and admire the work I had accomplished as I began organizing each of the materials that I had gathered. Unfortunately Pinterest is all looks, and does not, I repeat DOES NOT, provide a platform suitable for anything more than the most superficial lesson planning. So what was a teacher to do? Where would I find a program that would support a digitally enhanced curriculum and provide the reward I was seeking? Turns out, I’d already found the alpha I was looking for all along.

When I first alpha/beta tested this program back in July I could see its potential, as well as the fact that it was having an identity crisis, and didn’t really know what it wanted to be. Suffice it is to say, I was thrilled to continue collaborating with the genius mind behind this program, Eric Simons a member of ImagineK12s first cohort and a recent high school graduate who lives in Silicon Valley building insanely awesome edtech apps! This is always a point I like to bring up with any of my Juniors who doubt their potential. Since releasing the alpha version of Class Connect, Eric has made strategic pivots and redesigned every last line of code to meet the needs of the educators who tested class connect’s earliest iteration. I have never witnessed a more thoroughly responsive developer/entrepreneur. Today, it is my pleasure to honor his program Class Connect with the distinction of being a Teacher Approved Technology.

Class Connect is a web based application, which means that you can use it from anything that can access the internet-no downloading or installation required (score!). This application allows educators to gather, organize, and share their entire curriculum-from the documents, to the documentaries to the awesome digital resources our students deserve. Here’s a quick overview of the reasons Class Connect earns the distinction of being Teacher Approved:

• Recognizes that a lesson is more than a plan
• Gives me a place where we can save and organize all of the content required for the 21st century curriculum.
• Makes Curriculum Design a Rewarding Experience
• Saves time! gives you back the time you would have spent emailing lesson plans to admin., copying documents from lesson for students who were absent, and scheduled for working collaboratively with colleagues.
• Students and Teachers can be better protected from the content that lurks around the edges of the valuable digital resources we want our students to access, analyze and ultimately create.
• Save money would have spent on binders and paper…for more specific details see previous post
• Provides a catalyst for making every classroom a blended learning environment.
• Makes it easier for every teacher, and thereby every student, to use digital technology and digital materials. – It will help us defy the dismal stats. from 2000 that you can check out below
• Its free! Yay!
• Promotes collaboration! ***More to come in a follow up interview with Eric!
• Its not going to automatically share your work with the world! I can share my entire unit (digital items and all)

Clip Art Illustrations of Teacher, Binder, Computer and Stacks of Books are from Discovery Education’s Clip Art Gallery created by Mark A. Hicks, illustrator.

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.

Classroom Management Gets Its Game Face On

ORIGINAL BETA TEST OF AWARD WINNING CLASS DOJO

As a first year teacher, I noticed that few, if any, of my students consistently turned in their homework. This fact did not lead me to conclude that my were unmotivated or unconcerned about their work. It lead me to consider what I could to make them more aware of their homework grade. Based on my own reflections and observations, I decided to create the homework chart [see image/watch short clip below]

This homework chart transformed my student’s behavior.  Before the homework chart, fewer than 5% of my students were consistently turning in their homework. Within days of hanging the poster, 80% of my students were turning in homework and, within a week, the majority of my students were getting “As” on the assignments they were turning in. These “As” continued to be earned despite of the fact that my homework assignments became increasingly difficult.  At that time, I was too overwhelmed to consider the reasons for this remarkable turnaround and simply reveled in the “miracle” that had taken place. Since then, I have come across studies that may explain my student’s positive response to the poster.

One explanation came from an article written by neurologist Dr. Judy Willis, which  “ Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool”. In it, she explains that “the human brain, much like that of most mammals, has hardwired physiological responses that had survival value at some point in evolutionary progression.” According to Willis’ article, one reason my homework chart was so successful was because it made them aware of their achievement and able to clearly recognize their progress, which triggered my student’s dopamine reward response. Unlike before, the chart caused my students to experience the reward from the release of dopamine, which prompted them to seek future opportunities to repeat the actions that led them to be successful.

Much like a sequential, multilevel video game, my homework chart’s feedback of progress was ongoing, and took the form of accumulating points and visual tokens. However, the real reward, according to Dr. Willis’ article, was the  jolt of dopamine that my students experienced in response to achieving the challenge, solution, sequence, etc. needed to earn a higher grade and move onto more challenging assignments. According to Dr. Willis, “[w]hen the brain receives feedback that this progress has been made, it reinforces the networks used to succeed. Through a feedback system, that neuronal circuit becomes stronger and more durable. In other words, memory of the mental or physical response used to achieve the dopamine reward is reinforced.”

Stepping Up My Game: Why Google Docs. Don’t Work.

This year, I decided to not only have a homework chart, but also a class participation/behavior chart for my students. I made this decision based on the fact that I wanted the class performance chart to provide my students with “real time” feedback for their positive and negative contributions to the class.  I used Google docs. to create columns in which I could award points for turning in homework, class participation and “other”. This system provided some positive results however, its drawbacks were numerous:

1. Vague Feedback:

My system was not behavior specific. A student knew they got a positive or negative point for class participation but the point was not explicit in terms of the reason for which it was rewarded.

 2.  Limited Freedom of Movement:

In order to give feedback, I had to be standing near my computer, and unable to do it while walking around the room, which caused the system to be less authentic, and took my attention away from my students as I glanced at the screen to ensure that I had input the information correctly. I tried to correct this by accessing the document on my iphone, however, this was not ultimately a workable solution because the system was incredibly slow and made me less effective as a teacher.

 3. More paperwork

Friday afternoon, I would be exhausted and done with grading, but still have to go through the class participation Google docs and spend at least an hour counting up each student’s points, add points to my gradebook and then transfer notes on student’s behavior to their individual records.

It was Friday’s like the one described above that made it an absolute pleasure to test the beta-version of Class Dojo. Seconds after I began using this program, I thought “This thing is going to make me into a feedback rock-star!” My next thought: “Goodbye google docs!” After an extensive review of the program, I dubbed ClassDojo a “teacher approved technology” because it improves my practice and optimizes my student’s learning.

Class Dojo: Teaching  the Art of Self-Control

Class Dojo optimizes a teacher’s routine of providing recognition and rewards in class. With one touch of a smartphone or computer button, teachers can instantly award (or take away) points and badges based on student’s behavior or participation; it gives students and parents access to a profile page that is updated in real-time to display how the student is doing in class, and what badges/points she earned in class (e.g., for helping other students, for showing great creativity). During class, Class Dojo’s reward system provides instant visual notifications for students to see (‘Well done Josh! +1 for helping others!’). This tool is based on a whole host of game mechanics: think level-ups, badges and achievements to unlock, in-classroom games, avatars and leaderboards. These “game-like” notifications make students aware of their achievement, recognize the correct choices they made, and reinforce their understanding of the behaviors/skills necessary to succeed in class.

The neurological response that a student gets from successfully meeting challenges in class, makes it all the more likely that he will develop the intrinsic motivation to persevere in future situations. The specific features that qualify Class Dojo to be a “teacher-approved-technology” include:

1. Flexibility (Allows me to decide criteria, point value, and rewards)

This program is teacher-centered and therefore has greater flexibility to allow teachers to customize the reasons and incentive structure for each class. It allows me to not only decide the criteria and point value of rewards, but also add notes at any point in time that will not seen by students, which is particularly helpful when trying to keep track of follow-up to a particular event.

2. Mobility (allows me to be where I need to be, with my students and not at my keyboard)

What I particularly love about Class Dojo is the fact that I can control it with my iphone! No longer will I be forced to choose between standing near my keyboard or using a paper seating chart to record points that will have to deciphered, entered and analyzed at the end of the week!  This application allows me to be where I need to be-with my students, and frees me from being trapped at my keyboard.

3. Parent Feedback (enables me to tell each parent how their child did in class that day, and everyday)

Our circumstances often make it difficult for us to provide parents with as much feedback as we would like to. Class Dojo, however, is set up so that parents can access their child’s data and see how they performed in class each day.  Now I will be able to tell each parent how their child did in class that day and everyday.

4. Analytics

On a Friday afternoon, the last thing I want to do is enter student performance data into an excel spreadsheet and then use that data to update my grade book’s record of each student’s performance. This fall, I will rely on Class Dojo to provide me with a data analysis of the feedback I give my students. The applications analyzes each child’s progress overall (e.g. more positive than negative) as well as each type of behavior (24% of positive points awarded for correctly answering questions). This makes it even easier to keep track of my student’s behavior goals!  Additionally, it provides me with information about my own feedback patterns  in terms of my feedback ratio (Am I giving more positive feedback than negative feedback?) While the system already allows students to access their performance data and get a detailed view of their performance history, the company is currently building dashboards that show engagement and participation over time, to help teachers and administrators understand what is actually happening inside all of their classrooms, in a data-driven way.

I recently spoke with one of Class Dojo’s co-founders, Sam Chaudhary. A former teacher in the UK, Sam developed the program with the objective of helping teachers and is currently improving the program based on feedback he received from teachers who used the beta version. When I spoke with Sam and I offered him tons of praise as well as a list of suggestions to make the application even better than it already is. Some of my suggestions included:

1. Putting in a seating-plan style template of boxes, to reduce the amount of time it takes to scroll through a list of names looking for the student you wish to award a point to.
2. Using a time stamp that recorded the actual time rather than ’3 minutes ago’, so its easier to see analytics
3. Create an easy way to print or text analytics/rewards to share with parents who may not have computer access.
4. Provide teachers with a button to document giving students a “bathroom pass” as an additional way to ease some of the record keeping.

Having already developed a powerful tool for any teacher, Sam communicated his enthusiasm for incorporating my suggestions as he refines Class Dojo and prepares to release it. “As former teachers ourselves, we want to make teachers’ lives easier by creating a positive learning environment in the classroom that will make it easy to manage behavior and engage their class. This will reduce the amount of work teachers currently have to do, and give them more time to do what they love (that’s teaching, rather than crowd control or data entry!).” As Sam sees it, “teachers have had bad technology pushed on them for too long. We promise to only ever make easy-to-use, powerful, beautiful technology that teachers love (we hope, at least – you tell us!), and will enable them to do their jobs even better and more easily than before.” Given Sam’s intention, and Class Dojo’s current level of quality, I have little doubt that he will be able to accomplish his objective of empowering teachers and enabling them to optimize student learning.

This fall, Class Dojo provides a data-driven system to measure and improve students’ social / behavioral development, makes it easier to share the information with students and parents, and gives teachers more time and energy to focus on our students. Finally, rewarding students won’t have to punish the teacher.

Related Article on Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops 

This company loves teacher input! Anyone interested can sign-up for early invitations to ClassDojo at: www.classdojo.com!