Finding Gratefulness in the Grocery Store

Teacher life gets rough. 

Life gets rough. 

This last week was rough. 

This past week I found myself feeling pretty low about the world around me. Nothing in my immediate life had necessarily gone terribly wrong but I seemed to be super focused on the pain the people around me were having to endure. This seems to be easy to do when you are a teacher and a person with a "talk about it and fix-it now" personality. You see students challenges, co-workers challenges, and random families challenges. You also see your own. The challenges faced by others and myself on top of my daily job had made me physically and emotionally exhausted and by Friday afternoon I am sure you could see that exhaustion all over my face.

Once I got some sleep and was once again able to function properly I ventured to the grocery store, a normal Saturday occurrence for myself and my husband. On the way there we discussed bills, student loans, grad school, jobs, and the future. We complained of our poor choices in college that racked up our student debt and rejoiced about being able to cancel our Direct TV subscription soon. All things that can cause some stress when considered. Then we arrived at the grocery store.

By the way - I love going to the Price Cutter on North Bypass. They have nice things; a nice health foods section, a nice produce section, a great meat counter, and they even carry some Baskin Robbins flavors. 

However, on this day it was almost too much to handle. Not because of the homeless man outside or a mom snapping at her kids, or people who kept blocking the isles. It was because of what I realized about myself and how ungrateful I had been for my own life this week. No, I hadn't been like "oh, my life is terrible" but I had been failing to see how great my life is. Maybe, that trip to the grocery store is exactly what I needed.

We did as we normally do when we have time to go the the grocery store. We filled our cart with produce. I grabbed some snack popcorn and Greek yogurt from the organics/health foods section, we gathered Salmon, Tiliapia, and steaks from the meat counter, and we filled our cart with foods we know we love and some things we just wanted to try. Then, that's when it happened. 

We were towards the end of our shopping and our cart was full. I turned around to see an older couples cart with just the basics some bread, eggs, milk, and they were discussing which Banquet dinners they should get for the week. They were at the end of their shopping too, but their shopping looked a lot less fun than ours. A lot less healthy too. Everything they were getting could fit in the top basket of their cart and most if not all of it required no stove top cooking.

Finally, we got in line only for me to realize that the lady in front of us only had enough items that she was literally carrying them and they were not likely last minute ingredients she had forgotten for a pie or something. They were things she needed. Then I turned around and saw that the man behind us had only milk and bread in his cart. If someone would have talked to me at this point I probably would have not heard them I was so in shock at my realization. All the people around us, while surviving, were struggling. They weren't buying the cigarettes, beer, or lotto tickets that are often looked down upon, they were just buying what they needed to make it through the weekend or the following week. We on the other hand had an abundance.

This was a level of gratefulness that I had not recently considered. While we have bills and our own struggles we have it so good. Our faith, families, and hard-work have blessed us and for that I should be more thankful.

This Fall Give Thanks.

Psalms 107:1

Is Technology Changing Education?

OF COURSE IT IS! 

Of course technology is changing education. If I were to ask my 4th grade teacher in 1996 if the mid 80's (likely donated) Macintosh that we were allowed to play educational games on when we finished our work early was changing education, what would she have said? YES! That answer remains the same but now has so much more depth. 

In that 4th grade classroom we were rarely using the computer but when we were, we were learning how to manipulate a keyboard, save progress to a 5.25 inch floppy drive, while playing educational games to pass our time while our classmates finished up book work or tests. 

I was recently reading an Ed Tech article and it became very apparent how much education has and will continue to change with the incorporation of technology. 

Ed Tech Article - Check out the article here. 

The article discusses the following items: 

Virtual Reality (VR)  Learning - 

From the cheaper and more simple things like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR to the more expensive Virtual Reality systems such as HTC's Vive these virtural reality systems can give students a virtual, yet real feeling look at jobs, locations, experiences, that students have not been able to experience or imagine before. How cool would it be for a student to be able to virtually escape to Egypt and walk around a Virtual pyramid while discussing that exact object in World History? 

*I recently had the chance to try out the HTC Vive and it is unimaginable how real it is. I was able to explore landscapes, draw 3'd objects and see them from all sides (how cool would that be for creating and then being able to print to a 3d printer?), as well as fight off zombies (I actually had to stop during this one because it was too real and was making me sick.)  

3D Printing

3D Printing has been making waves in education in current years. With the incorporation of makerspaces to urge students to attempt to be engineers, students along with teachers have started to dream, think, and create all kinds of objects. Some objects for fun and some to be functional to solve a problem or fix a broken piece. 

IoT (Internet of Things)

IoT or Internet of Things was a new term for me but not a new idea. IoT is referring to how devices feed information and data into the Internet to make everything work or sync together. It is how we want all of our devices to share information so all of our information is at our fingertips at anytime! I know how true this is just when I think of how I like to be able to read an email and check Google Classroom while checking in on my amount of steps taken per day. I like to be able to find this information from my phone, desktop, laptop, chromebook, and possibly even my smartwatch, if I want. We like all of our data to mesh together in a way that works. 

Wearables

Wearables in the article were referred to the current star of the Internet of Things concept. Wearable items that can count your steps, track your heart rate, send you calendar reminders, collect your text messages, and alert you of events all from your wrist are the big IoT trend. Sometimes I think of these items as something more for adults, but not really. I see kids younger and younger showing interest or having their own wearable devices that show that they like to linked into this trend just as much as the next person. 

Interactive Technology

The last item in the article discussed interactive technology in the way of things like robotics. The main thing that interested me on this subject was the rise in robotic toys that are used with special education students. It discussed robotic toys that served as counselors and playmates to children with various disorders or disabilities. How crazy is it to think a child could be paired with technology to help them feel as if they have a friend or someone to talk to when they may be struggling in ways that makes it difficult for them to make friends. Obviously, this route may seem a little concerning but it is also a very interesting way to think about solving such a problem. 

Feel free to take a look at the article. Above are just some of my thoughts as well as sort of a summary of the 5 Tech Trends that are thought to possibly change or reinvent education in 2016. 

As educators, I do feel that we do need to be aware of these changes and be thinking about how we can use them to keep our students engaged and learning as times change. Technology is not a fad, technology is here to stay. However, the types of technology are only going to continue to grow and change. With so many options we might as well jump on board the technology train and find out what works for us and our students! 

What technology trends are you most excited about? 

Google Forms - Oh How Glorious It Is!

Does your school use Google Apps for Education but you have yet to use Google Forms? If so, what are you waiting for? 

Google forms never seems to fail to amaze me. For something so easy and quick to prepare its uses are abundant.

To check Google Forms out just go to forms.google.com which redirects you to what I feel is harder to remember: https://docs.google.com/forms

The homepage looks something like this:

From the homepage you can start from scratch with a blank form or you can start with a pre-made template that is based on what you are wanting to do. Are you wanting to send an invite, gather data, give a test or quiz, or are you just wanting to gather a list of names of individuals interested in your classes. For any of these tasks Google Forms would be an simple choice. 

When I first started using forms I used them to gather information from groups about about their project questions and needs. Groups were able to access the link of the form through email or Google Classroom and then send their information straight to a spreadsheet that I could easily read. However, just in the last year Google Forms has made some updates and as recent as today I created a test that had previously been handwritten and turned it into an online Google Forms test. With the new quiz option this was just as simple as any other online test option. 

Google Forms are great due to their vast amount of options that you can use to create forms that meet your needs. Some options are in how people can respond, they look like; 

Google Forms also includes options for what you would like to include with your questions. 

Options are things like "Add Question," "Add Title and Description," "Add Image," "Add Video," or "Add Section." Add Section allows users to split forms into separate parts to keep people from seeing all parts of a questionnaire at once. This also allows for completion in sections so that a person does not have to complete everything at once or if there are technical difficulties they may not loose all their progress. On most screens these options can be found to the left of the Google Forms Page. 

Recently, Google Forms have added the option to be able to create quizzes where a person can allot point values to individual questions. If all questions are multiple choice or have definite answers Google Forms will also grade for you! All forms come back to you in a way that you can see them by each individual, a summary page of how everyone answered compared to each other, or all together on a Google Sheet. 

Google Sheet Example

Google Summary Page Example

Individual Results Example

Overall, I was pleased with my first try using Google Forms to give a test. The results came back in an easy to read manner that was quick and painless to be able to grade. I was also able to see very clearly what questions students struggled with and what questions they really knew. I feel that Google Forms would serve as a great option for quick formative assessment in any environment. This is especially true if you are wanting to save data to be able to review or compare at a later time. 

I found after grading using the spread sheet that you can actually adjust scores for written questions and leave feedback straight from the Individual Results page! This is incredible for grading!

Please share some of the ways you have used Google Forms to make your life easier! 

Venturing Into the World of Digital Portfolios

Portfolios are not a new innovative idea, portfolios have been around for a while and have been used at all levels of education. However, assigning a DIGITAL portfolio to students can seem like a really cool idea!

https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/classuse.html  

Check out the link above for example. The link will take you to an archived article from the United States Department of Education. The article discusses what portfolios are, how and why they are used, and what some of the problems with portfolios might be. Now, this article is from November 1993. Yes, that's right 1993, well before our current high school students were even born. While the article is nearly 23 years old the idea of how and why to use portfolios has not changed. However, the way in which we have students complete portfolios is completely different.

This year I have been playing with the idea of having students complete a digital portfolio of their class project that is incorporated throughout the semester. 
This idea has come from trying to keep up with multiple classes, groups, people for the last 2 years. I knew one of the downfalls of the project was making sure every individual was getting something accomplished as well as their group being knowledgeable about what each member was doing. This is especially true when the work days start to be spread out and classmates might be absent. I thought that a visible portfolio might be a way to keep groups as well as individuals moving forward and on task with what needs to be accomplished each week.

Here are a few questions I asked myself & wish I would have asked myself before jumping into the digital portfolio world.

1. What are the abilities of my students? How tech savvy are they?
2. How do I want to be able to view the portfolios? Do I want just myself and my class viewing them or do I want them open to the world?
3. Do I want to be able to view/edit posts before they go live?
4. Do I want the group to share a blog or do I want each individual student to have one?
5. How many options do I want students to have? Keep it simple or give them lots of room to play with settings to make it their own?
6. How often do I want students to post?
7. What should student posts look like? How long should their posts be? Should they include pictures and videos?

The one thing I was really concerned with was making the portfolio as EASY as possible. The class I am trying this with first is mostly Freshmen. They are fairly new to using technology other than their phones. Within the 2 classes, 2 students said that they had some sort of blog of their own. So my focus this year was finding something simple to try out this portfolio idea. The main options I was looking into were blogger.com, edublogs.org, and web.seesaw.me. While these are the three options I looked into the most there are many other options to consider such as Weebly, Wix, Wordpress, Google Sites, Wikispaces, etc... depending on what route you want to try from simple to complex, from classroom blogs to entire personal websites.

Blogger 
Obviously, I like blogger. However, I felt that for younger teens it may seem like a bit much to set up. It has a ton of options and would allow for everything I could possibly need but I did not know if I was ready to take on teaching how to use Blogger in the midst of a project that already has 1.2 million questions. Also, I would have to have a Padlet page, web page, blog, something to put the links to each group or students blog. It would also be somewhat difficult for me to keep up with in the way of making sure students were only posting things that they should.

Edublogs
Honestly, Edublogs is the route I wanted to take. It has options to stay local or open to the world. I can view/edit before sending student posts live. Students could have group or individual access. Edublogs looks like a real blog and has plenty of options. However, Edublogs cost money. Since I was not sure how this was going to go I really did not want to invest my own money into a system until I had a better idea of how I wanted the portfolios to look.  For student and class management it costs $39.95 per year. It has a free option but is limited while not including the management features. I may jump in and try it or Blogger next year.

Seesaw
The one I chose to try this time around was Seesaw. I saw several people this past summer present on its ease of use and how they had used this site for various portfolio concepts. The website presents itself as being elementary friendly. Along with appearing to be child friendly and the multiple people I had talked to that praised its ease I decided to go this route. It has been okay, and has fairly served its purpose but I do think I could have used something a bit more technical. Seesaw is easy to set up and students can make their account and join their class in about 5-10 minutes. Seesaw post to the individual students page and to a classroom stream. You can make Seesaw visible to everyone or just the people in the class. As a teacher you can let students post freely or you can review their posts before they go live.

A part of me wishes my students had more creative control when using Seesaw but really for posting thoughts, activities, pictures, videos, documents, etc... it really does work pretty simply. I found that it wants you to make Google Docs into pdf. files but that is the main downfall I have ran into so far. I feel that for younger grades, including my freshman or anyone who is just getting introduced to the idea of a blog in a safe place Seesaw is a good place to start.

Below is an example of what the class feed can look like. I have also had students upload documents, pictures, and videos to share what they have done or what they need to do on their next work day.

Class Feed Example

In the end, I am glad I am trying out digital portfolios. Just since starting with the first class trial I have more ideas for others. I am sure to change things the next time around as this was definitely a trial run. I am happy with the way the use of the digital portfolio has worked for some groups who have taken initiative to post thoughtful in depth responses to keep themselves on task and moving forward throughout their project. I would suggest looking into a couple options to see which meets your needs and then giving it a try. You can always scratch it and go another route!