Our school is moving to more active use of Lexile scores for reading selections. The Lexile website has a nice analytic tool which allows you to upload text (after you create a user account) for analysis. The pain in this process is that A) you can only do it from the Lexile.com website, and B) it has to be plaintext.

So much of the web is rich text now that it’s difficult to create plain text files. It’s even difficult to do so using Notepad or TextEdit on PC and Mac because they want to save as rich text. Most teachers don’t realize that there is a particular process that must be used.

To lower the bar for entry, I wrote a small JavaScript bookmarklet to grab highlighted text from a webpage and download it as a properly formatted plain text file to then re-upload to Lexile.com’s analyzer.

Head over to the dedicated page to install (or play with) the app.

Fair warning – this may never be updated again. Use it til it breaks. (And share it with your friends.)

Spam on Twitter feels like an all-time high right now. Twitter itself is woefully horrible at taking reports of abuse and spamming and all a user can do is use the completely un-fulfilling “Report Tweet” option to block the user. When they spam hashtags, companies create robots faster than you can report.

Twitter spam is out of control.

MMSG.net (I’m not linking because I don’t want to give them any web traffic) has been spamming the #flipclass hashtag for months on end. The problem is that they do it through bots with randomly-generated, vaguely eastern-European-named “users.” The feed is filled with junk and blocking individual users doesn’t make much sense because they just make more users.

Twitter spam is out of control.

I use Martin Hawksey’s fantastic Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS) script to grab tweets for conferences, archiving, and just playing around with data visualization. It’s now my own personal robot for fighting other spam robots.

This one doesn’t spam, though. It reports the spam.

Twitter spam is out of control, so I build a robot.

The TAGS library is incredibly powerful…it relies on the TwtrService library created by Google which allows you to interact with the Twitter REST API, which means if you can get a user’s information, you can then send it back through a Google Script to report the tweet.

I watched these MMSG.net bots and realized the all have the company website in their profile. My robot now has a weapon.

My robot will fight your robot.

With some help from Martin, I added a line to the core TAGS code library which grabs the user’s profile URL and puts in into the archive.

Then, I wrote a second script which scans through the archive looking for the URL.

Then, I used triggers to run the script every hour. It clears the archive, grabs whatever tweets were sent during that time, and then reports those that match the key. All day. Every day.

My robot will fight your robot.

Featured flickr photo shared by kurichan+ under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license

This is the hardest part of teaching, if you ask me. What are the natural consequences of not completing a task in the given amount of time?

It started with a tweet from Alice Keeler:

STOP THE MYTH! Not one shred of research supports homework teaching responsibility. It is not true. Stop saying that.

—Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) October 11, 2015

…and it really snowballed.

Homework – and whether or not to assign it – is extremely personal. It’s a methodological decision that (often) is tied very closely to the culture of learning a teacher tries to set up in their room.

Homework is divisive.

I teach high school…mostly 10th and 11th grade. Part of my responsibility to to teach responsibility to my students. Everything I do in my class rolls back around to life skills (this is called organic curriculum in the literature. See Glatthorn (1999) for more) and preparing them for their obligations once they leave the building.

I’m not naive. I know students are dealing with much, much more than I ever have. I have multiple students with children. Many with jobs. Most with clubs, athletics, and other extracurricular work. I also have some homeless, transient, and students dealing with significant adversity.

And it is my responsibility to make sure they’re learning.

We use class time to make sure that happens. I give plenty of time to work through content. I’m here to help. They work in groups. They can ask questions, make mistakes, reflect, and revise in a safe place.

But sometimes, students make decisions to not use the class time. That’s when it becomes homework.

Justin Aion wrote a great post which summarizes many of my thoughts on teaching responsibility. In particular,

At some point, the role of a teacher, in my opinion, slowly shifts to support, gradually handing off the responsibility for education to the student, helping them to become more and more independent before we release them into the world.

I struggle regularly with finding that balance. This year, with juniors and seniors, I am much more inclined to leave the responsibility up to them. I make myself available and do my best to support them, but the responsibility for learning and decision making is on them.

Is it irresponsible of me to ask that work not finished in the time given during the day be finished outside of class? For high schoolers, I don’t think so. Mainly because I know what support they’ve had during the day(s) of work on the task and really, anything leftover, should be minimal.

Here’s the problem: none of these conversations about homework consider the support already given.

It’s dogmatic. A kneejerk. And it’s hurting education discussions.

If I don’t finish work, I have to find time to do it. Period.

Why is it different for our students?

I’m here after school. I’m here before school. We have an advisory period. I can implore, beg, and even assign, but there is still a conscious decision made by a student to either take advantage of those opportunities or not. If they don’t, the only reasonable expectation that I have is that they do it at home.

Blaming the teacher for a student’s indiscretion is like blaming the principal for not getting your grades done on time. There is a set time period and it needs to get done.

Does homework – in and of itself – teach responsibility? No. Of course not. Neither does bringing a pencil to class. All I ask is that we start to look beyond the action and include the support system in place. What else is done? What could be improved? What might need to be dropped?

I left that discussion feeling angry and frustrated because we stuck to the idea that “all homework is bad.” To someone new to Twitter – and even someone old on Twitter – it comes across as a personal attack. I think Glenn Arnold said it best afterward:

@bennettscience no, old me would have too. But then I realize I'm not accountable to them, but to my Ss. And I still want to engage…

—GS Arnold (@arnoldscience) October 11, 2015

I (usually) enjoy the discussion…this time, I’m enjoying the reflection (again, Justin’s post is great). We need to think big picture. Forget homework – it’s a single thing that can influence learning. Let’s talk about the larger systems or cultures we’re building…that’s a discussion I can get into.

This post outlines a recent lesson and activity I designed for my integrated chemistry/physics students. Fair warning: science ahead.

The Plan

Simplification was the goal. The difficult thing about acceleration is that you need to measure distance and time accurately. Doing this without equipment becomes a challenge in teamwork, which was an added bonus for this activity. Rather than having one student use a timer, I decided to go with a metronome so everyone in the class could hear the correct interval. Students released a marble from the top of a slanted white board and traced the path of the marble as it rolled through an interval from the metronome.

I hadn’t taught anything about acceleration yet, so I had the students hypothesize based on the following statement:

The distance a marble rolls will double if the time is doubled.

It provided an interesting discussion point as students argued over whether the marble rolled at a constant speed. Many didn’t consider the fact that doubled meant every interval (0.25s to 0.5s is doubling the interval) or just a single block of time.

The whiteboards had a nice record of the length of each trial. I know precision is just about out the window, but the generalities were helpful in building an understanding of what acceleration is. As they were taking data, there were exclamations of, “I can’t keep up! It moves too fast!” Having the kinesthetic experience through manual tracking is something that is lost when tech is used to get more precision.

The Results

Because this was done manually, the data were all over the place. Depending on how well the group worked, some had negative accelerations at the top of the board and very, very high accelerations at the bottom. I’m a fan of error in data because it reinforces the fact that being careful in the lab is very important. I had each group report their average distance rolled for each interval and I was able to graph the class data as position vs time and speed vs time to highlight the difference in shape for acceleration between the two.

I think I finally figured it out.

Getting charts and graphs created in Google Sheets (or Excel for that matter) has always been somewhat of a wrestling match between what I want the software to do and what the software thinks I want it to do. Predictive and suggestion-based user interface is nice, but not when I want to plot some data. Let me dictate what happens.

Excel isn’t as bad – you can create a chart and then manually set the Y and X axis series. No such workflow in Google Sheets.

The Task

This week, my students were collecting data for position and speed of an object as it accelerated down an incline. We put the data on the board and then I went to make a chart of it the following day. As usual, I selected the two columns to plot and inserted the scatter plot.

Here’s a sample table:

No matter how I selected the data – left to right, right to left – Google always put the velocity data on the X axis and time on the Y (in Excel, it remembers which direction you select data, so it’s an easy fix).

The Fix

I realized, after several minutes of trial and error, that Google defaults the X axis to data in the leftmost column. Seriously. It was that small of a distinction. So, you have two options: 1) Swap the columns, or 2) Select data manually. Because this sheet was dependent on some formulas I’d already written, I chose to do the latter.

1. In your spreadsheet, click on Insert > Chart or click on the chart icon.

2. In any tab, click on the data select tool to close the chart dialog and choose your data.

   

3. Select the range you would like to be on the X axis. Then, click on Add another range and select the Y axis range of data.

If all goes well, your new chart should have data on the correct axis in the graph.

I missed two days of school last week. One day gone is enough added work on it’s own, two is nearly unthinkable. I wanted to make sure my students did something meaningful – as always – but without the need for a substitute to try and manage device access, etc.

I think one of my favorite definitions of “rigor” has to do with the cognitive task and level achieved by students as they work on a task. It isn’t related to the “difficulty” – perceived or inherent – as each student can jump to higher orders of thinking at various points in any given task, thus achieving rigorous thought patters. I’ve spent a good amount of time this year reaching for that goal in all lessons with some success and some failure.

I designed a task in which students spiraled up through an idea by first approaching the knowledge I needed them to have through applying skills developed as part of the knowledge-acquisition phase. We’re about half way through a unit on motion, so a lot of what they worked on included some prior exposure.

One of my goals this year is to help students struggle productively with ideas before I loop back to teach it. I don’t remember who said this first – probably Dan Meyer, Frank Noschese, or Kris Shaffer – but it makes a lot of sense. It builds anticipation and allows students to find and build meaning with the discrete ideas before they tackle them.

I tried to do this with my introduction to motion with my physical science students. I started with Dan Meyer’s TEDx Talk which highlights a ski lift problem and how he broke it down for students. I tried something similar by asking students to describe the position of each ball to the other using this picture:

The goal was to have them feel the struggle of explaining a position without any reference point, two very important foundations for movement. Instead, I confused kids without offering any direct path to resolution. Why circles? Why are some “higher” (again, no frame of reference, so they could be lower…) than others?

Frustrated, I tried again with a variation on the same picture with a different class:

This became too easy – they didn’t see the need for using a coordinate system because they could describe – well enough, at least – the relative position of one ball to another. I had missed the mark again…I hadn’t created a situation in which a coordinate system was essential for describing motion.

At this point, I sent out a tweet asking for help. The minute I sent it, I realized that the image was way too abstract to make any sense. I thought the framing I had done for students in the room was enough, but it highlighted the fact that I had pseudotaught rather than actually taught anything leading up to the discussion.

I tried a different tactic. I made it a game. Here was the picture I came up with:

I stood at the board and grabbed a marker. I then closed my eyes and told my students to get me – verbally – from one of the people to the other.

It was like the Price is Right. Directions, shouts, and redaction all flew at me. I let them argue over where to start and where to finish for a while. After a try, I stopped and asked what would have made it easier. They immediately recognized that labels would really help in descriptions. We set directions and names. Trying again, the class was able to identify which two people would be connected.

Then, I asked them to tell me exactly how far away one person was from another along the path. This set the stage for the coordinates. If you’re in an airplane looking down at this group of people, you can’t land, grab your measuring tape, and start counting centimeters…it isn’t practical. Some classes took longer than others, but eventually, they realized that a grid would work, which let us set exact positions for the people.

It took me the better part of a day to really get down to an okay situation for students to struggle with. I’m still not entirely happy with where we landed, but it worked. The hardest part of creating struggle is finding the sweet spot between not obvious but not too abstract. I’m still trying to incorporate struggle, mostly through having qualitative lab experiences before teaching an idea, and it seems to help build a proper frame of reference for the instructional stage. I’d still appreciate any tips you may have for building these experiences in your classroom.

Marc Seigel is always doing great things in his classroom and he tweeted out a great picture of a bulletin board that now lives at the front of his room.

My new bulletin board at the front of the #roomofawesome No more boring announcement board. Now positive messages are what the students will see every day.

A photo posted by marc seigel (@daretochem) on Aug 20, 2015 at 7:49am PDT

I’m working on making my Word Wall (more on that some other time) and my biggest beef is how long it takes to go through and make each word look nice. Selecting each term, changing the font, changing the style…way too long.

So, here’s a script that will do the same thing.

The script has an array of the most readable fonts in the Google Font library. If you want to add others, just add it’s name in single quotes on line 20.

Words go on their own line in the Google Document. When you add the script, reload the doc and a special menu will appear at the top where you can run the script. It loops through each line, applies a random font style, changes the font size to 48px, and then randomly applies bold formatting.

You can grab a view-only version of the document for your own drive. Instructions are also in the document.

It’s been an intense week of teaching, church band practice, and Google Apps Scripting. I’m really focusing this year on using the computer to do what it does well so I can focus on doing my job better. In particular, I’m using the desktop to do repetitive, marginal jobs as efficiently as possible.

This week, I’ve got two new tools in my belt to help out.

// This function converts a document from English to Spanish quickly.
// The post from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25509159/how-i-can-get-the-textwrap-image-in-google-doc/25509591#25509591
// was helpful for creating the logic to check for images in the document.

function translate() {
  var doc = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument();
  var body = doc.getBody();

  // Add a page break for the translated material.
  body.appendPageBreak();

  // Get the number of elements in the document
  var elements = body.getNumChildren();

  // Use the number to loop through each element in the document.
  for( var i=0;i

driveBox

Whiteboarding is a big part of this year in class. I want students investigating, collecting information, manipulating it, and building an argument. A lot of times, class ends before they have a chance to get clean work on paper. I needed a way for them to send photos of their work in at the close of class.

Of course, email is out. I guess that makes me old now.

We’re barely scratching the surface of Google Apps for Education at school – teachers are starting training this semester and student’s haven’t had their accounts opened up yet, so sharing back and forth isn’t really possible yet.

Some Googling turned up a great alternative, still using Google Apps, to create a public dropbox with scripts. In 20 minutes of finnagling, I had a working dropbox page which allowed students to submit things straight to my Drive with three taps. I’ve modified mine slightly from the blog post linked above. Unlike the translate function, this one requires two files.

form.html

Student Work Submission



    P1
    P2
    P3
    P4
    P6
    P7










    // Make sure everythig is running correctly. Display an error if not.
    function fileUploaded(status) {
        document.getElementById('myForm').style.display = 'none';
        document.getElementById('output').innerHTML = status;
        }




   h1 { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }
   body { width:50%; margin: 0 auto; font-size:30px;}
   #wrapper { position: relative; width:100%; margin-top:50px;text-align:center; }
   input, button, text, file { width:100%; height:auto; padding:10px 0; }
   input { font-size:25px; }
   input { display:block; margin:20px; }
   select { width:100%; margin-left:20px;font-size:30px; }
   #output { font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }

server.gs

/*
    This is based on the template shared by Amit Agarwal (@labnol) on
    the blog, Digital Inspiration. The original post with instructions:
    http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-files-in-google-drive/19697/
*/

// Find the form that is collecting the information to upload.
function doGet(e) {
  return HtmlService.createHtmlOutputFromFile('form.html');
}

function uploadFiles(form) {

  // Check for a folder called "Student Files" in Drive. If it's not there,
  // create one.
  try {

    var dropbox = "Student Files";
    var folder, folders = DriveApp.getFoldersByName(dropbox);

    if (folders.hasNext()) {
      folder = folders.next();
    } else {
      folder = DriveApp.createFolder(dropbox);
    }

    // Once the folder is found, create the new file
    // The file is named by attaching the Period Number to the Student Name.
    var blob = form.myFile;
    var file = folder.createFile(blob);
    file.setName(form.classPer + form.myName);

    // Display a success message to the user.
    return "File uploaded successfully. You can now close this window.";

    // If it fails, display the error message.
  } catch (error) {

    return error.toString();
  }

}

Those blocks of code turn into this:

Pretty easy to figure out what to do.

If you’re interested in using either of these scripts, let me know on Twitter – @bennettscience and I can help you get them set up. Like I already mentioned, I think the translate function would work well as an Add-On, and if I get there, I’ll write another post with instructions on how to get it.

More on the scripting I’ve been doing lately…

• Student Response System Template for Google Drive
• Creating QR Codes in a Google Spreadsheet
• Getting SMS Messages into Google Sheets
• Creating Endnotes from Footnotes in Google Docs
• Creating Sets of Google Docs Using Python

A while back, I wrote about a new Google Sheets response system I created for use in class. I suggest you go back and read that first if you haven’t read it yet.

First, I uploaded the template in to the gallery. That’s the best place to download and use the spreadsheet because everything copies over correctly.

The biggest update is in the setup process. Rather than posting a URL on your board, it will now create a QR code automatically for your students to scan.

Notice the tab at the bottom wasn’t there before clicking the button – it adds the code to a new sheet. You only need to do this once because the other functions (outlined in the first post) clear out responses in the template with each question.

In my continuing effort to make things more available for students, I’ve started rearranging my Google Drive files. I’ve realized that thinking of Drive as a traditional file system isn’t as effective as using it more like a topical organizer and then power searching for quick results. Because of this change in mindset, I’m getting rid of all of my old unit packets (as traditionally defined) and moving individual pages (notes, assignments, etc) to one big “Handouts” folder. The main reason for this is so I can quickly and easily create a la carte handouts for students missing papers, school, etc. No more trudging through packets and printing one page before hunting for another.

From the last post, I’m also rebuilding my class website to make it dead-simple to find information. In short, lots and lots of descriptive links.

Everything is going to be fed through the individual document this year.

From the document, if they’re accessing on their phone, the title of the page jumps them to a YouTube video for help. On the other hand, if it’s a handout they get in class, the QR code does the same thing. Access. It’s important.

Since I have a lot of handouts and a lot of videos, making a QR code for each one is time consuming. But, thankfully, Scott MacClintic came through in a big way. He shared a blog post which outlines making QR codes using Google Sheets.

I ran into an issue copying the code from the blog post (plain text is important!) If you want to use a sheet similar, use the code snippet below.

One more short note: QR code complexity is determined by the number of characters you’re encoding. So, longer string, more complex code. Using a URL shortener to make your string fewer characters is a good idea. Then encode the short URL. Again, this is something a script can do wonderfully. This WebApps post has code snippet (also below) which you can use in the Sheet you set up. If you’re curious, here’s mine.

The best thing about this is that using the Sheets method means I don’t have to download each one locally – they’re saved in Drive. It also makes updating URLs for videos (updated content, reorganized, etc) much easier to manage because the code updates with the data change. Lifesaver right there.

It seems appropriate to bookend my summer writing hiatus with some notes on the start of the year on August 6th. I’ve got a lot of things planned and I’m excited to start the year fresh in the same building and same course I was teaching at the end of last year. It’s an opportunity I haven’t had in a while and I’m looking forward to having some direct continuity. I’m also excited because I can take my notes from last year and apply them immediately in context.

These are in a quasi-hierarchy based on how much I’ve thought about it over the summer.

1. Every lesson is completely intentional.
2. Every assignment is linked back to an observable standard or skill.
3. Class procedures will be established early and used consistently to set a culture from day 1.
4. Students staying organized is a higher priority.

I’ve also made it a goal of mine to make sure anything I create is reusable and immediately helpful. I’ve learned that I get caught up in how “pretty” something is – big images, clean lines, etc. It’s a distraction and doesn’t necessarily help the learning. To fix it, I’m taking my class website back to bare-bones. Students need information and they don’t want to dig for it. So, my website is now a collapsing tree of links that is so minimal it works on everything. (Turns out, when you don’t care about images, you can build a mobile-ready site in minutes.)

The goal is usability. Titles are descriptive and in sequence. They’re also hidden until the students wants to see it. The arrow icons on some items show that they’ll be taken to another page (usually a Google Doc with more information). This is also lightning fast because the entire website comes in around 10KB right now (compared to an average website, which comes in at 2MB).

There is a lot that will probably change, and that’s okay…teaching is a learning process.

I just finished my fifth year teaching after an 18 month hiatus. I usually jot this stuff down in a notebook, but it’s full, and I haven’t replaced it yet.

In the silence, a shuffle is a landslide.

Clicks and ticks shake the air.

Furrowed brows rattle individual hairs.

Teaching is a human invention, the same is true for our Assessments.

learning has been around for longer than you or I.

(And you don’t need a test to show you know that.)

We are a culture of inventions, addicted to “data-adds-value.”

We forget that we all used to learn at one time.

We used to know more about the world, but then, schools started.

In the silence, our history slips away.

I think I’m channeling my inner Doyle. We are all complicit. We are all responsible. I feel that responsibility weighing down on me more every year.

I want to think smarter.

I don’t want to know more facts or spout more trivia. I don’t want to just work smarter, either. I want to actually think smarter. It’s a much harder goal to accomplish because I’m constantly evaluating not only what I’m doing, but how I’m doing it.

I used to use an app called Any.do to manage a to-do list. Like most productivity apps, it synced across all platforms and I really thought my productivity was going to jump because I would always have access to that list. I would end up ignoring notifications because I had either completed the task or I was being notified during I time when I couldn’t recommit my energy. I was using technology to try and work smarter, but I was actually working harder. I went back to a mix of pen and paper and strategically sending myself text messages, which has worked much better. Because I can now take the time to target – on my calendar – when to be notified to do something, I’m able to work smarter and more effectively.

Working smarter doesn’t always involve an app doing something for us. What really matters is how we can use an app – or a hacked system of tools – to make it easier to work smarter.

In his book Smarter Than You Think, Clive Thompson explores this idea through the development of computer-aided chess. The question is simple: how does chess change when you play with your computer as a resource alongside? The results are interesting and I’ll let you pick up the book to read the whole story, but the short answer is that people played better. Not because they could research every possible solution or find a computer-suggested move with an algorithm, but because they could play more informed. Ideas and hunches could be tested and iterated quickly which would, in turn, inform their final decision. The ability to test ideas and make an informed play is an example of thinking smarter using technology.

The same should be true in education. Technology is exploding in schools and districts, but often with strings attached. Rather than opening the doors to information and pushing students to make smarter decisions about what they’re learning, we’re canning information and delivering it in the traditional way with non-traditional tools. Technology affords us the opportunity to think smarter, but we’re packaging information and removing the thinking process altogether.

To work smarter, you have to be able to articulate why you do what you do the way you do it. What is the goal you’re trying to achieve? Audrey Watters has a fascinating history of the development of the multiple choice test. It boils down to two main reasons: objectivity (presumably) and scalability. Scoring a test is simple: it’s a binary decision – you get each item correct or incorrect. Machines can do the scoring for us, which should help us think smarter because we can free up cognitive processes to analyze results rather than tally. Unfortunately, instruction is rarely informed and the students’ score, rather than a diagnostic, is now a report.

Working smarter means making difficult decisions about the actual practice of teaching and learning. It means gathering information and taking action on that insight. It also means being critical about the technology you’re using to accomplish goals through action. I wanted to be more productive, but the technology I chose to do that wasn’t helpful, so I dropped it for something more effective. Working smarter is working critically and with an open mind, ready to shift if goals aren’t being met.

When you’re working with students, think about the resources available and what goals you’d like to achieve. Just because you can use an app to do something in class doesn’t mean you should. Don’t allow the push to “integrate technology” obfuscate the real reason for being in school – learning to think.

11 days left.

There’s a lot of review happening right now – we’ve finished our final chapter tests and looking ahead at a double-whammy final exam. I’m facing a large bear this year because I wasn’t here first semester, so I don’t have a good idea of what ideas need to revisited more than others. So, I’m assuming we need to touch everything at least once. Tall order, eh?

Review is tedious. Games are fun, but I already wrote about making sure information is more relevant than winning a Dum Dum. Plus, I want to always give opportunities to demonstrate thinking over memorization. If you can think through a problem, you can reason an answer.

Karl had a tweet a few weeks back showing kids finding connections in apartheid South Africa using hexagon cut outs to mind-map the intricacies.

Step 3, #DEEPdt South Africa design task: hexagonal thinking. How are aspects of the problem related. pic.twitter.com/VW4fHqWaMP

—Karl LS (@LS_Karl) May 8, 2015

It looked great and came with high recommendations from Karl, so I tried it out using America’s energy use as our framework. I made small adjustments throughout the day and it went really well in most classes.

Most.

Is the group or the individual more important in teaching? It’s a maddening question and one I’ve wrestled with multiple times already this year.

Most of my hour was spent running from group to group defending myself from, “Is this okay?”-style questions. Another group didn’t even get their pieces cut out. A third got theirs cut about three minutes before the bell rang. I think only one had a really good start at what I was hoping to see in this review activity.

I find myself asking a new, yet similar question: Do the strengths and weaknesses of the group trump the strengths and weaknesses of individuals? Which should I plan for?

“Differentiate!” you may say. “Alas,” say I.

How do you structure an in-depth activity for three or four and a straightforward, rote(?), activity for others? Fairly easily in practice, but that leads to two sets of materials, two sets of directions, and likely multiple sets of rationales about why they get to do something different.

Everything in my teacher brain says that inquiry driven activities are better for long term analysis and retention of information. Much more so than completion on a review worksheet. But, if the environment isn’t conducive to that activity, something has to give.

It’s hard to let go of the ideal in the interest of making it to the finish line.

Review kills me. I struggle with finding a good balance between fun and actual, deep, review of ideas we’ve talked about during class. I also like to make review a little tough to see if they can apply the ideas, not just recall.

I think this original idea came from Crystal Kirch somewhere way back when, but I can’t seem to find the original blog post I think I may have read. Either way, here’s Trashketball.

I split my students into groups of five – it seemed to be the magic number. Threes and fours also worked well. The team could build an uber set of notes, pulling the best from whatever anyone could contribute. They would realize what they had missed over the unit and then add it to theirs as we went, which was nice. The rules are simple:

1. Each correct response gets one point for the team.
2. Each correct response also gets one shot for bonus points for the team.
3. A shot into the Bonus Bucket doubles the point value of the shooting line you choose.
4. Each team member must shoot at least once before you begin repeating shooters.
5. Winning team gets a Dum Dum from the Bucket of Victors’ Spoils.

It was pretty incredible to see how different teams approached strategy. The incentive to answer questions accurately was high because if you get the question wrong, you can’t shoot for bonus points. You fall behind pretty quickly.

Secondly, some teams took the slow-and-steady approach. For each answer, they took easy, one or two point shots. Their score grew steadily while others took miracle shots, which only saved a team once out of the six games we played during the day. Also, teams didn’t consider the fact that shooting a four-point ball was as easy as hitting the Bonus Bucket from the two point line, which was purposely easy to do.

It’s an easy game to pull off with kids and the more you hype it up, the more fun it is. I took – and missed – plenty of “easy” shots, which broke the ice for those who were apprehensive about shooting a newspaper and tape ball. Others were knocked down a little because those long-range shots are hard to make.

I think, though, this was my favorite review because of the drive to do things well. All teams worked well together to answer questions, and that was important. I know exactly what needs to be discussed again leading into the test later this week. Kids were also attentive – up and moving around – which increased focus and helped everyone review the ideas of the unit.

Bill Fitzgerald is someone you should follow on Twitter if you need help interpreting Terms of Service or Privacy Policies. He pays real close attention to technology use in education, especially new, emerging tech.

Periscope is new and teachers love it. Show the Twitters all the great learning that’s happening in real time??? Definitely sounds like a good idea.

Please, read this.

Privacy is important stuff. You need to pay attention to how you’re sharing information about anyone, including yourself, especially your students.

You can see the whole thread here.

Also, give Bill’s blog a read to dive deeper.

Part two of a post from the other day.

First, head over to the master spreadsheet and make a copy.

Setup

An idea I'm borrowing from Andy Schwen is to utilize a central class list. Create a new spreadsheet and fill in student names. I sort mine by last name, first initial. You need the spreadsheet key from this document.

spreadsheet-key

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/RANDOM-LETTERS-AND-NUMBERS/edit#gid=0

Copy the key and paste it into the cell which asks for it.

Your class list will automatically populate for you. That's all you need to do on this page.

Results

This is the page you want to show live to students, and it's meant to go through three steps. At first, the ID boxes at the top are all red. As responses come in, the box will turn green. There isn't any way to prevent someone from submitting the incorrect ID number or a duplicate, so duplicates will turn yellow. You can then follow up individually as needed.

When you click on the “Get Responses” button, a pie graph of all the submitted answers is displayed. This is meant to spur conversation and show the beginnings of a pattern.

Clicking on “Set Answer” allows you to submit the multiple choice answer and change the graph. Rather than the pie chart, it shows the confidence score and the number of each answer submitted. Again, this can lead to conversations with your class about how confidence can correlate with making the right selection.

Clicking “Reset Form” clears all the responses from the form, resets the charts, and clears the Responses tab of data so you can ask another question.

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This isn't meant to collect persistent data – it's meant for flexibility and high-level insight. Hopefully, it's helpful to you. Please leave comments on this post (also linked from the template) with bugs, functionality improvement requests, or other feedback. This is definitely a pet project, but I'll try my best to maintain it as it gets used.