Target Runs & Blended Learning Pathways

The Target Effect

My wonderful wife once got lost in Target.  Like... for real for real lost.

She innocently went in to get some gum.

Gum, as most of us know, can be found in the checkout lines at most grocery stores for your convenience.  As in,  it should have been a quick in-and-out operation.

Because of this fact, I offered to stay in the car and wait for her while I totally dominated level 894 of Candy Crush.  After my five lives were up and I asked my FaceBook friends for help I looked up.  What seemed to be about 4 hours had passed, but there was no wife.  I started wondering if I should call the police and file a missing person's report.

Soon thereafter, my wife came out with half a shopping cart full of "stuff" with a "I dare you to say something" look on her face.  I did not say a word.


Because of this event (and many like it), I got curious and searched the Google-inter-webs to see if this occurrence was a nationwide spousal issue, a genius marketing hypnosis ploy, or just my wife's very cute but very real DTMATS (Decreased Time and Money Awareness at Target Syndrome).

You see... Just like how grocery stores place those impulse-buy products near the register in order for you to see them at the last second and think "I need and can afford this $2 (candy, lighter, soda pop, etc)", Target has a hyper-focus on it's adult consumer experience.  Their stores are tech centered, bright, clean, organized, and well stocked.

So getting hypnotized and distracted is understandable and almost fated no matter how strong willed you are!

To get through a Target store and reach your GOAL without giving into distractions takes strength of character, skills, and a plan. But fret not, Target is organized in such a way that you can use their subversive powers AGAINST them.

The key to getting into and out of a Target in a timely manner is creating a PATHWAY map, at least mentally.

I know... keep laughing.

Creating a map with a pathway to get you into and out of that place while reaching your purchasing goal helps save time, money, and something I like to call marital energy.

Constructing pathways in a Blended Learning lesson is much like constructing a strategy for a Target "run".  In both cases, you must organize experiences so no one gets "LOST" in sections they don't need to be in.


Getting Started With Pathways:

A great first step is to pull out a trusted and loved lesson plan and actually make a physical flowchart.  What happens first? What is the teacher doing? What are the standards? Which question stems are being used?  But most importantly, is every student doing the same thing at the same time?

If your lesson is too linear (ie. only a single pathway for your students to follow & they're all doing the same thing at the same time), try to find a spot in your lesson where you can offer students a choice in how they do the work, learn the content, or express their learning.  Voila!  Just with these additions you have created three different pathways!  Next,  add those different paths to your drawn out flow chart.  If need be, use a game like Chutes and Ladders or Life as your mental (or actual) template.  Whatever you do, create multiple paths for your students as they make their way through the content.  Don't let them suffer from the Target Effect.  Don't let them get distracted by unnecessary facts, activities, lectures, etc. if they don't actually NEED them.

How?


Consider the following:

• Your higher level kids may already know much of the information in a lesson so don't let them get lost in a pointless lecture... give them something else to build upon.  Challenge them either with differentiation in CONTENT, PRODUCT, or PROCESS.  Not all three, necessarily. Heck, let them choose which one to differentiate!
• Your low or ESL students may need more videos and images to more easily fill in their gaps in knowledge. So give them teacher made or Khan Academy made videos.  Expose these students  to images or visuals.  Maybe even have these students express themselves in a medium that speaks to them.
• Your GT kids may need and want more challenging tasks or more open ended tasks.  They'll certainly get distracted by low level expectations, so don't be afraid to raise the bar using tools like Sandra Kaplan's Depth and Complexity sheet. 

Construct the learning experiences for each of the groups in a way that they won't want to wonder away from their sections.  You could begin constructing pathways by surveying your students past experiences with that particular content.  Make those gaps visible somehow and then build around them.  Further, get to know their learning styles, not just their favorite summer memory.  Get to know them as learners and you will, in fact, get to know them in a deep way.

Your role, after your pathways are constructed, will be to facilitate the learning instead of pushing the kids to learn.

If your students only need to get "gum" in an upcoming lesson, don't make them go through the clothing and house keeping sections.  They'll get bored, pull out their phones, and become discipline issues. 

Fight the Target Effect in the classroom. 

And pray for me and my wife the next time we go to Target.  We usually go in for one thing and end up in a situation that looks a lot like the following video...

Don't let your lessons be like this... add pathways!

Elementary: I Got You Covered!

     When you hear about blended learning, often times people just assume its for high school and college.  But if we think about the goals of blended learning, to personalize learning using data to
provide flexibility in pace, place, path and time, then we realize that blended learning is good for all students including elementary students.  One thing that can help make blended learning successful at the younger grade levels even down to kindergarten is having the right tools to make your students successful.  Today I want to take a look at what I would rank as my top 3 tools for an elementary teacher to make blended learning successful in their classroom.

Home Base

     I want to start out with what I consider to be the most important tool: A home base.  If you don't have one consistent home base where kids and parents know that they can find everything posted, then things will just become a confusing mess. 

There are so many different choices out there when it comes to a home base so it was pretty difficult to choose one, but I did settle on one because I believe it is the easiest to use for elementary students and has a lot of cool perks built in.  My choice for a home base is Seesaw.  You may not agree, but let me explain my choice and maybe you'll change your mind.
     First, I love the sign in choices that Seesaw offers for students.  Students as young as kindergarten can easily get logged in using a class code or a QR code.  As students get older, the teacher can utilize the log in through an email address and password to get students used to logging in the traditional way.  I think this is a great option and I'm sold just based on the log in options, but Seesaw didn't stop there.

     One of the greatest and most popular features in Seesaw is the ability to assign activities to your students.  You can create your own activities, but there is also a gigantic library of amazing activities that you can just grab and assign to your students.  You can also edit pre-made activities to fit the needs of your students as well as create your own from scratch.  When I've shown this feature to elementary teachers, it was a complete game changer for them. 

     Although activities are amazing, students also have the capability to create using the add to journal feature.  Through this feature, students can take a photo or video, upload a file, add a link, draw, record audio, or type a note.  These features in this easy to use format are an amazing addition for elementary students.  In one click, students can take a photo and add it to their journal where they can annotate over it, type a caption and/or record audio.  What's amazing is it took something that might otherwise require a bunch of app smashing and uploading and combined it all into one easy step that young students can easily master.  Now teachers can have their students not just consume, but also create.
     I could really go on and on, but let me just mention a couple more things that make Seesaw a great choice for elementary students.  Most importantly, this tool is free which is always amazing.  You also have the ability to add families so that parents can view their child's work.  How awesome would that be to have them view student activities and creations and even hear their child's voice explaining their thinking.  Another reason Seesaw is a great choice is their safety.  They are complaint with both FERPA and COPPA.  So you can rest assured knowing their your students are safe on Seesaw.  For more information about Seesaw safety, check out their Privacy Center.

Data

     You know from reading previous blogs and looking at our blended learning image above that data is super important to the blended learning process.  Teachers must continually be collecting data from their students in order to guide their instruction so that they can personalize the learning to meet

student needs.  There are many traditional ways to collect data such as exit tickets, activities, conferring with students, observation, quizzes and tests and many more.  I think it is important to also have a digital tool that teachers can use to quickly gather data and provide analytics to guide their instruction.  As I'm sure you all know, there are many, many tools out there that can quiz students and collect data.  I've chosen one tool to recommend for elementary for its ease of use, visual appeal, available features and compliance with COPPA.  For my data tool, I chose Quizizz.

     Quizizz is a great choice for elementary students because it is very easy to get logged in.  The students can simply go to the Quizizz site and use the teacher's code to join the game.  Alternately, if the students have Google accounts, the teacher can set up a class and invite his/her students to join the class using a link and their Google login.  Either way, the teacher is able to give quizzes and collect analytics.  

     Speaking of analytics, Quizizz has great analytics.  You can look at the class analytics as a whole class which are also color coded for easy viewing.  You can also view them by question and by student.  If you have a class set up, you can also email the scores to parents once students complete a quiz.  One other feature that I really like is that you can attach state standards to each question so that you also have analytics per standard.

     I know that the biggest concern is about getting quizzes into your account.  Rest easy.  There are many ways to get your quizzes going.  Before you do anything else, I would browse the library of quizzes that have been shared by other teachers and see if you can find something already created.  Even if the quiz isn't exactly how you want it, you can make a copy and edit it to add your own questions or delete questions you don't like.  This is by far the easiest and biggest time saver.  If on the other hand, you want to create your own quiz from scratch, you can certainly do that too.  When adding quiz questions, you can add text and/or images and there is even an equation editor built in.  One last way that you can upload questions is by uploading a spreadsheet that contains your questions and answer choices.  Once you have your quiz ready to go, you can either play the game live or give it to students as homework that can be completed in a station, at home or any time of day.

Sharing

     When trying to decide what I would include as my third recommendation, I decided that having a universal way to share is important.  My third tool is QRstuff.com.  QRstuff.com is a super easy website that takes URLs and converts them to QR codes.  I'm always surprised that when I share this tool how many people never knew how to create a QR code before.  Not only is this tool easy to use, but it's free and you can even customize the color of your QR code.  This is also a very reliable

website.  It's been around for many, many years and it is the only one I use nowadays.

     I guess you might be wondering why making QR codes would make my top 3 list.  First, I just love QR codes!  QR codes are such a great way to quickly share links with a variety of devices and people without having to have a home base or type in long URLs.  All someone needs to scan your QR code is a camera app or QR reader app on their phone or tablet.  If you use Chromebooks or laptops in your classroom, you can still use QR codes by installing a QR Code Reader Extension in the Chrome Browser.  Once this extension is activated, students can use the built in webcam to read the QR codes.  You can post QR codes in the hallway, send them to parents through email, post them at stations for students to use with iPads, and the list goes on and on.  

Not It's Your Turn

     It was hard to whittle down my tool choices to just 3 with the vast amount of tools available today, so let me know what other tools do you consider must haves in blended learning.  Post a comment below to share your top choices.

The Hero's Journey: Failure

Failure and the Hero

Spider-Man, Into the Spider-verse is a wonderful little offshoot of the Marvel Universe.  Miles Morales is bit by a crazy radioactive spider and sort of reluctantly becomes his universe's new Spider-Man after the original dies.  (Those aren't really spoilers).

When this new teen hero comes of age in the movie, a song can be a herd in the background: What's up danger?  The hero, Miles, comes to terms with the fact that a great power has been thrust upon him and he can't simply sit back and let other's take on challenges that are now his by right.

So the song, What's up danger, is indicative of that choice to meet "danger" head on instead of hoping that things just "turn out well".  The line "What's up danger? Don't be a stranger" underpins Mile's decision to welcome the challenges that are inevitable.  That's not to say he goes looking for danger unnecessarily, he simply doesn't shy away from challenges that present themselves as he works toward the common good.

In so many ways, teachers that invest themselves in other people's kids are heroes in the making.  I use the term "in the making" because a hero's journey happens without a final arrival.  Being a hero is an active journey, not a destination.

As educators, we will have a variety of students with a variety of needs who all want to take a variety of pathways in life to reach their various goals. It seems like a herculean task IF we assume that all of this variety must be owned and planned for ONLY by the individual teacher.

THAT IS THE OLD WAY OF TEACHING AND THINKING!

Your task is NOT to take on your student's present and future on your back and think and act for them.  Your task is to develop learning experiences that allow for a multitude of expressions and growth on the part of your students. 

You get bored when you go to PD that is cookie cutter and doesn't speak to who you are.  So do your students!  Variety, differentiation, and individualized learning are a moral imperative in education.

So how do we start this difficult and seemingly complex new calling in our classrooms?

Start small and celebrate the small victories.  You can't know how to hit towering home runs until you understand the nuances of swinging your hips, not dropping your shoulder as you swing, the need for strong wrists, and keeping your eye on the ball.  The small things add up to the big things.

The Hero's Journey

So, whether you are starting off with Blended Learning, Project Based Learning, or some other new fancy pants way to prepare for learning... you gotta start small, celebrate small, and progress incrementally.

As you an see in the image to the right in "The Hero's Journey" image, failure is part of the success.  Odysseus, Hercules, and other great heroes of the past went through very similar trials and tribulations before their ascension.  The journey, though, looks very similar to the many struggles we face and humans beings, demigods or not.  The small victories add up to the big ones. 

How to fail better

1) Break down large tasks into small tasks - the big stuff doesn't happen unless the small stuff happens.  Focus on the small stuff first.  Make sure it's in order.  Make sure you complete small step #1 before worrying about or moving on to step #2, and so on... Small failures are learning opportunities.

2) Keep track of your victories - All habits were originally a choice.  Keep track of your small choices and small victories.  Act on the small victories repetitively until they become good habits.  Document your past failures and how you overcame them.

3) Celebrate - Don't be afraid to "self promote".  Students, parents, administrators are saying things about you (likely good things!).  It wouldn't hurt to add your own voice to the chorus.  Be your own PR director.  Celebrate what you do well and send those celebrations out into the ether! Use instagram to give parents a window into your classroom.  Join twitter chats and share your lessons.  Join FB pages and ask for ideas to make your great lessons better.  Read books.  Celebrate your failures and lessons learned with others. 

4) What's up danger? - When a baby begins to walk and then falls down, you don't see parents chastising and bemoaning the baby's "failure".  We would NEVER learn to walk LOL. We support failing baby walkers until we are celebrating walking baby walkers.  Meeting your "danger" head on. Get ahead of the curve.  Anticipate your challenges.  Don't fret.  You WILL fail at some point.  That's a given.  What isn't a given is how you react.  The hero will never arrive at their destination.  The hero can only be a hero within the context of their journey and struggle.  Be a hero for your students. Meet your challenges and struggle in front of them and continue your journey... preferably with a smile.  Take on your failures head on and make them your friend. 

5) Blended Learning - If your mindset is ready.  NOW go reread our blog posts, attend our Blended Learning Academy sessions, read Blended Learning books... Fail for your students sake. 

How Can You Be the Oprah of Public Education: Mission Possible

 Mission Impossible     

We all have the same mission, right?  We are all trying to do the best job that we can educating our students.  Do you ever feel like our mission is Mission Impossible?  There are so many barriers that stand in our way or make the playing field uneven for our students.  Let's look at one specific example of this - Digital Inequity.
     This blog is all about trying to provide a personalized learning experience using data through blended learning, but I know some of you out there are thinking, "This would be great, but my students just don't have adequate digital access to do that."  It is definitely a reality that there are many schools out there that have 1-to-1 technology and students have all the access in the world while there are many other schools that have little access to devices or the devices they have are old or both.  Does that ring true with you?  Just because you didn't hit the technology jackpot doesn't mean you can't offer your students personalized learning experiences through blended learning.  We just need to be more creative about how we do that.  Let's take a look at a few ways that we can offer equitable access to our students with limited access to devices.  Kinda seems like an oxymoron, right?

Station Rotation

     There are many different variations of using the station rotation model, so there is probably one that will work for you.   If you have a computer lab in your school, then I would employ a modified version of the lab rotation model where you plan out a whole class period in the lab on computers.  All students would have access at the same time.  Since you will have limited time in the lab, then I would plan something that gives me the most bang for my buck - something that includes critical thinking, collaboration and creation.
     If you only have access to devices in your room, but maybe you can only get 1 at a time or a few at a time, then this is the perfect scenario for a more traditional type station rotation.  This could include 3-4 stations.  One station could have technology, one station would be non-technology and the third station would be a meet with the teacher station.  I've seen classrooms using this model with only 1 device at the technology station.  A great activity to do at this station would be to have the students collaborate and create a product based on their learning.  This would be hands-on and will help to get all students at the station involved.
     If you have several devices, I would still utilize this station rotation model, but you would have more freedom to give students individual work to complete and/or collaborative group work at the technology station.  If you want to learn more about the station rotation model, check back in the upcoming weeks when we'll have a new blog post devoted to the station rotation model.

Partnerships     

     Another option to help get your students the access they deserve is to create partnerships around the school and within your community.  I always made a point of becoming good friends with the librarian at my school for a couple reasons.  First, they were always able to help me out with great resources such as books, videos, online databases and research tips for my students.  Second, most libraries have computers in them.  This is a great person to create a partnership with because you can often work out times that you can send small groups of students to the library to work on blended classroom, stations or projects.  Through this partnership, you just gave yourself instant access to more devices and another adult.
     The librarian isn't the only partnership that you can create.  Often times there are teachers who have devices in their classrooms but don't use them at all or at least not part of the day.  Work with others and create a plan for a trade-off.  For example, you use their devices on Monday and they can use yours on Tuesday.
     Another way to get access to more devices is to create partnerships within the community.  Have a device drive.  Often people in the community have old cell phones, tablets and laptops that they would be willing to donate.  Put the call out within the community, through Facebook, Twitter and newsletters.

Grants    

     Finally, look for opportunities to apply for grants for devices.  Many districts now have local district foundations that offer teacher grant opportunities.  This is a great opportunity to apply for money for additional devices for your classroom.  Another organization that I've seen many schools utilize to buy devices in the PTA.  If you can get the PTA on board with the goal of providing equitable access for all the students at your school, they can be a great partner to work with to make this mission possible.  One other way that I've seen many teachers have great success is by posting projects on Donors Choose.  I know some teachers that have gotten at least 10 projects funded through Donors Choose.  I think one of the ways to be successful with them is to really do a good job of sharing out your project through social media so that it gets exposure.

Check out this blog post for more grant ideas.

Flipped Classroom

     One last consideration to think about is the flipped classroom.  Many teachers give up on the idea of the flipped classroom because their students don't have internet access or devices at home.  Is that really fair to our students to just throw away the whole idea of using technology because they don't all have access at home.  School should be the place where we help to even out the playing field and give all students the same advantages.  Let me challenge you to think about the flipped classroom in a different way.  What if instead, your flipped classroom videos or online activities switched from being homework to being just in time learning.  What if you used the blended portion of flipped to allow students to work at their own pace in your classroom with school devices and school internet access.  Now your classroom could become a fluid place of learning where students are all getting a personalized learning experience.  To read more about the flipped classroom experience, check out my blog post titled To Flip or Not To Flip.

Mission Possible    

     Even though it often feels like trying to get digital access for our students is often mission
impossible, with a little creativity and persistence, you can become the Oprah of educational technology at your campus and turn your mission impossible into mission possible!

How to Become A Man (or Woman) With a Plan

     I know what many of you are thinking... All this theory and explanation is great, but seriously just give me a lesson plan template to fill in and I'll be on my way.  It's okay, you can admit it.  I'm a realist.  This is what we kept hearing from teachers, so Charles and I both researched different templates for blended learning, but let me just tell you, the results were not good.  They looked like a regular lesson plan and included things such as objectives, digital tools used, in-person components, etc.  The problem is that it was just a list of items going down the page.  Blended learning is not a linear list.  It's fluid and sometimes circular, sometimes not.  Sometimes it heads in a million different directions and sometimes it all converges into one.
     In our quest to make all of our teachers happy, we continued looking for the perfect way to lesson plan.  One day Charles came upon the image to the right that can be found at this link.  We shared this image with one of our administrator groups about a year ago and got good feedback.  We realized that showing these icons helped them to understand what blended learning could look like and also to make the connection that it still uses pieces that we have always used such as assessment, small groups and independent work.
     We decided to take this idea to the next level and create icons that our teachers could use as hands-on pieces to see how their lessons transform from traditional at the beginning of the academy to blended by the end.  We created our own cards and added a few more icons so that teachers had some manipulatives to use.  You can access our cards, here.  These cards are used to plan different iterations of blended learning lessons as well as lessons done using different models.  Once you lay the cards out in the way that you want your blended learning lessons to look, then you can simply fill in the details that go along with each of the cards.  Let's look at a couple examples of lessons that teachers have mapped out using the cards in our academy. (More examples are included in the icon card file)

     As you can see in the images above, blended learning does not fit in linear boxes down a page.  So, if you want to be a man (or woman) with a plan for blended learning, then I suggest that you print out a set of our blended learning icon cards and start laying out your blended learning lesson.  If you want to try to create these blended learning maps digitally, try using this template that I created.

     Have fun planning and please be sure to tweet out a picture of your blended learning map to us! @MrsShawGTT and @Thrasymacus