How to: Import McGraw Hill eAssessment Assessments into your Canvas LMS

*This post was originally published in 2020 and updated in Aug 2023 to reflect a change in the click-flow on the McGraw-Hill platform*

This one is for my math homies in my school and out there in the #mtbos!

I've been teaching in Canvas for only a week, and I've already learned out two very important lessons: 

1. Canvas has a LOT to offer as far as tools to deliver content to my students
2. The more I keep my kids ON Canvas, the less confusing the flow of my class will be (which is super important for keeping you, kids, and parents all on the same page!)

So, as a part of my into-the-fire professional learning, I wanted to figure out very quickly if I could import assessments from our McGraw-Hill tools into Canvas to make building my curriculum muuuuuch easier. 

Here's how I did it:

1. Create your assessment in eAssessment on the McGraw-Hill website
2. Go to File --> Export --> QTI Standard --> QTI 2.1 and save the .zip file it creates.
3. Go to File --> Export -->  QTI for Canvas --> New Quizzes and Item Banks (Updated since 2020 when I made this screencast!)
4. Go to Canvas and click on the quizzes page or a module to create a new quiz. 
5. Set the title and due date for your Canvas quiz
6. Click on the 3 dots menu in the top right and choose "import content"
7. Drag or navigate to the folder with your saved .zip file and upload.
8. You're done! Go on over to the quiz settings and tweak how it best fits into your class.

Defining Students' Capabilities (What Happened on the Scientific Notation Project?)

What do you think defines more of your students' capabilities to create, the tools you give them, or the content you teach?

Which builds more capacity in our students to solve (their own) real problems, teaching them to ask better questions, or teaching the content necessary to attack those problems?

I had a great conversation with +Jeff Horwitz from Chesterfield Day School in December about continuing to push myself to think out of a box about what problems kids can solve and what products they can create in 2015 with the technology and information available to them. There are skills we teach at the high school level in our career and technical ed and arts courses that 15 years ago a kid may have needed to make a professional-ish product.

When I was a kid...

• I "published" stories and books by using a printer, our best markers, and those little metal brads and giving them to my parents. One day, I even got invited to an city-wide event where I got to read my story in a classroom of TWENTY-FIVE other kids and parents who were attending the same event.
  
• I "produced" songs by recording myself singing along to the radio on a casette recorder.
  
• I "interviewed" people from other cultures by making up fake languages and talking into my casette recorder.
  
• I "published" a newspaper by drawing a picture in the box and writing on the lines of a pre-printed template on newsprint that my parents bought one time. (And just once. So, the fun was over in an evening.)
  
• I saw my grandparents on my mother's side fewer times than I can count on my hands, because they lived more than a day's drive away.
  

My 5 year old...

• Has published an interactive ebook and shared it on my facebook with her friends (okay, my friends, their parents, but you know what I mean.)
  
• Without even being given the idea, recorded music videos on a Leapfrog Leappad with songs she makes up herself.
  
• Has a "fashion" blog with images of her designs that she'll request we post to so she can show her friends her pictures of "horse braids", "tags for charming babies," necklaces, and more
  
• Can Facetime her Mimi and Poppa almost whenever she wants, sharing all the latest news from STL to ATL. 
  

Its hard for me to even imagine what she'll be capable of once she starts reading, but I have a feeling it will only be limited by our ability to get the tools into her hands, and her own imagination. 

I think in a lot of ways, I expect greater creativity and imagination from my preschool-aged children than I might from the high-schoolers in my classroom. Is there a chance our expectations of what they may be capable of is what defines the end product? If something is an "11th-grade" project, what makes it so? Is it the math content from a course they haven't yet taken, or is it a complexity limitation? 

Once you raise your expectations of the quality that students are capable of producing, how do you sell that to your students that have a fixed mindset of what they can accomplish? 

Two weeks ago I gave my Applied Math students a mini-project about multiplying or dividing numbers in scientific notation. I gave them the choice of 4 different questions to research and solve, and a choice of poster, collage, video, or whatever else cool they could come up with as their product. Several students steered toward poster, which was fine, but the disparity between quality was what rattled me for the better part of a weekend. Choosing to work by herself, one student finished her work in 2 class periods (and most of the 2nd was filled with coloring in block letters and graphics on her poster.) I had a group of 4 boys "finish" the same question in 4 class periods with what was probably a level of quality I could have produced in 3rd grade. 

What happened with these boys (the 2nd photo above)? Is it a matter of their teacher accepting this poster as "done," even as I already know that it will barely pass muster on my rubric? Can we mandate creativity in core classes? Do I have to put quality measures in my rubric that really should be assessing a student's learning of the content? 

From my experience, its not enough to give the option of creativity in the classroom and producing cool, quality work. Some students will flourish under that setting, but it cheats that ones who will continue to function at the lowest common denominator. I don't think its enough to show our students what they can do - we have some level of responsiblity to push and encourage them to make it happen. 

Socrative Interactive Assessment in 30 Seconds

I've written more about the Socrative app/website before, but have been tasked with presenting in a slim 25 minute window to our school staff, so I wanted to refine my experience to the elevator pitch.

Socrative is...

• an app
• a website

You can use Socrative on...

• PCs
• Macs
• Tablets
• Smartphones

I've used Socrative for...

• exit slips
• quick check-ins
• surveys
• test review
• quizzes
• unit exams
• final exams

Socrative questions can be...

• short answer
• true/false
• multiple choice

Quiz navigation can be...

• student paced
• teacher paced
• randomly ordered

You could spend...

• 5 seconds
• 5 minutes
• 5 hours

...preparing your assessment in Socrative.

It really is a versatile tool! For more info, read can read further about Socrative on this blog, or visit Socrative.com

10 Writing Prompts for Exit Slips

Exit slips are, of course, a great means of quick, formative assessment over your day-to-day lessons in class. Writing is a means to trigger students' brain to memory and learning connections. Let's do 'em together!

1. "Describe something you previously misunderstood about _______ that was clarified in this lesson."
2. "Give two tips for remembering how to _______."
3. "Give a title and two section headings to your work/the notes for today's lesson."
4. "How would you describe today's lesson to my five year old when she asks what the kids learned today?"
5. (After putting up the graph of a function with each axis labeled): "What would this graph tell us about the relationship between the variables?"
6. Have students answer any of the unit essential questions (this is good for PLC pre and post data, too)
7. "How did something we learned about ______ help your understanding of ______ today?"
8. (After putting up a solution to an exercise). Evaluate this student's work. If the student was wrong, make an inference about where he went wrong or what he needs to relearn.
9. Did today's class rock or suck? Explain your choice with two reasons.
10. Make a list of as many content-specific words we used today. Define their meaning in the context of today's lesson.

The ACT: Does it Rock or Does it Suck? Pt 2

Yesterday, all 1200+ juniors in the Ferguson-Florissant School District took part in a special administration of the ACT on-site. (As did the Rockwood School District further west in St. Louis County, and Liberty North High School near Kansas City.) The weight and scale of this undertaking required a ton of planning, training, and discussion, so the ACT has been heavy on rotation around here for most of the semester. As we got closer to the date on Tuesday, I got to wondering - does the ACT rock, or does it suck? 

In part 1 of this series, I gave 5 reasons why the ACT is good for our students. This post explores the other side.

I had a student declare on Monday, "I'm gonna get a 35 on that ACT." Without much hesitation, I told him he had no chance. In reflection, I probably could have delivered the message with more love, but there are several reasons I could tell him that quite certainly.

• We were doing bellwork on basic trig ratios, which he had just announced he could not do.
• Any junior scoring that well at my school would probably be in calculus. He's at least 3 courses behind that.
• No students from my school have done that well for several years. That's not to say it couldn't happen this year, but that it wouldn't be from a student in this course. There are simply several concepts he's not had much, if any exposure to.
• You don't just decide one day you want a 35 on the ACT - (with statistical exception) it take years of discipline to math study if math is a personal strength, much less a weakness you're trying to improve upon.

But he doesn't know any of these things, nor is he even in much of a place to hear them. He took "that's impossible" as a personal indictment on his future success. Because a student would let a test have that much power over his life, his self-worth, and dreams for the future, the ACT (and other standardized tests like them) SUCK.

4 Reasons the ACT Sucks

1. The test steals from opportunities for studying "interesting" topics to serve itself.
Stress to raise scores for the sake of funding or accreditation (in schools) or scholarships (for individual students) narrows math instruction to the discrete set of "on the test". Instead of perhaps devoting more time in class to open-ended projects or questions, we do things like "ACT Tuesday". Students spend any extra personal time for math they may be willing to devote in test prep than in exploring personal interests that ignite passion for further studies.

2. The test is expensive. 
Kids that are probably most likely to go to college AND most likely to need scholarships are dunder the most pressure. From my perspective, if only one of those is true, the student either receives "free and reduced lunch" waivers for the test, or the student's on the other end and their families can pick up at least some of the tab. For kids in the middle, the cost of each exam is also a conderations as they seek better scores.

3. Results from the test are sometimes misused to perpetrate or enforce stereotypes.
Students attach self worth to their scores, and even to their communities, and the media doesn't help when they use the scores to grade districts. When kids that don't look like them do well and kids that do look like them do not, students internalize the message.

4. ACT prep courses replace "real" electives.

If the purpose of elective courses and credits is to structure time in the high school curriculum to encourage students to study subjects of personal interest or to offer courses outside of "core" courses (even with core subjects), then we do a disservice to our students shuffling many of them through our ACT prep courses. They help in the short-term - potentially raising kids' scores to open more doors - but once they get to their place of post-secondary ed, what more do they know about themselves or their passions? When the end goal is getting kids out the door and on to a university without as much care to knowing why they should be going, it's no wonder to me that so many students wander through college courses, paying top-dollar to hopefully find something, anything that sticks. (And it's also no wonder that so many dropout before the find "the one".)

---

What do you think? Are the benefits I listed yesterday worth the costs above? Is the problem the ACT, or is it the system?

The ACT: Does It Rock or Does it Suck? Pt 1

Our district is administering the ACT to all 1200+ juniors during the school day tomorrow, so its been on our minds even more than usual around here. Love it or hate it, the ACT and standardized tests like it are not leaving the American educational landscape anytime soon. 

I've been reflecting on the explicit and implicit information that preparing for, taking, and interpreting the test's results gives us and our students, so I wondered, does it rock, or does it suck? Today, in Part 1, I'll explore 5 ways the ACT rocks.

1. Comparisons between individual states, districts, schools, and even students.

Because the ACT eliminates factors that can be tweaked and fiddled with locally such as letter grade scales, state assessment rules, GPAs, and general grade inflation/deflation, it allows for more straightforward comparisons. A solid ACT score from a student coming from a weaker district takes any asterisks off a transcript that a selection committee may be tempted to apply to a student.

2. The ACT as a set of national standards.

The ACT (and SAT) have served as a sort of national "standards" since long before states began adopting the common core. "Adoption" is truly optional relative to any given state's emphasis on tracking scores or the universities within that state emphasizing it in admittance guidelines. Along with the SAT, it even competes in a dynamic similar to the two consortia dedicated to administering common core tests for students (Smarter Balanced and PARCC)

3. Empowering students to evaluate their own learning.

More than letter grades or standards, the ACT gives students a benchmark by which they can measure their own learning progress or quality of learning. Sure, there may still be an element of "I don't test well," to factor into the discussion, but after several attempts a student's score should be relatively representative of what they have learned in high school.

4. Initiating Goal Setting

Improving their ACT score is some students' first practice in goal setting. "I want a score of ____ on the ACT" is even just an intermediary goal to larger, long term goals. Career goals beget college choices. College choices beget ACT goals for admittance requirements. Admittance requirements beget higher ACT goals for scholarships at that student's particular school of choice. I've seen many students dramatically change their focus on the ACT (and school in general) after they found out they were probably unlikely to get into a school they were hoping to attend. 

5. Encouraging Self-Discipline

Beyond (but related) to goal setting, improving their ACT score is some students' first practice in self-discipline. You don't wake up on exam day and expect to meet your new goal. Like improvement in anything, it takes the time and consistency of practice and sacrificing of other, more "fun" choices. Especially for students that don't play sports or a musical instrument, reaching for an ACT goal gives real practice in what it takes to dream a dream and see it through.

---

Do you think the ACT sucks? Check out part 2 here.

Kid-Friendly Standards Based Grading

The title of this post suggests its tips are more narrowly focused than the actual post. Transparency in grading is one of the purposes of moving to standards based grading for an individual teacher, department, school, or district. Replacing a hazy traditional scale that has homework, effort, and extra credit melted together with an equally opaque and confusing standards based grading scale will breed contempt.

We've had several of articles and op-ed pieces in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch lately that I have to believe are the result of a huge misunderstanding or, at least, misinformation.

• "Think Homework Can Help Your Kid's Grade? Think Again"
• "Rockwood District Might Lower Expectations Even More"
• "Go Back to Traditional Methods of Education"

Granted, some of the criticisms this fall and winter have been over students retaking quizzes and tests and getting new scores on standards. Multiple assessments is a cornerstone of standards-based grading, so if that's you're completely opposed to the idea, then I guess you'll never have any commonalities with a standards-based grader (and I hope for your sake you're not a teacher being forced into standards-based grading.)

If your audience thinks that giving children multiple assessments could at least, sometimes be a good idea, then here are my tips for building more bridges to gain support amongst other teachers, parents, and (ultimately, in the trenches) your students.

Be Open About Why You Chose to Start Standards Based Grading

Tell a story about a student long ago that got hosed by traditional grading or that really excelled and turned it around later in a semester. I always loved stories about former students when I was in school, and your story can build trust that you've been thoughtful about this decision.

Be Clear in Your Syllabus, at Open House, and at Conferences How Grades Are Calculated

I think its rare to find a parent that won't be on your side once they hear you out, so be prepared for their questions and to explain it multiple times.

Don't Pass the Buck to an Administrator

Handling issues and concerns yourself will cut off detractors at the pass as they see the confidence in your convictions. "My principal said we have to do this," gives an opening for negotiation. They might go to your principal anyway, but, hey, you did what you could. Hopefully your admin team has your back.

Share a Student-Friendly Rubric and Have Kids Use It Often

+Robert Marzano has a good student self-assessment rubric in Classroom Assessment and Grading That Works (2006) that will empower your students to take more control over their studies and mastery. It's also a good tool for mini-conferences with students before/after assessment. "How'd you rate yourself on the scale? Did that line up with your results? Why do you think that is?"

Here's a poster in my room with Marzano's rubric adapted.

I cannot bear to put zero on there.

Write Out All of Your Objectives/Standards and Share the List

Your students should have their own copy of the standards for the unit/quarter/semester that you can refer back to often together and track progress. I also like to post the pages-long list on the wall and triumphantly cross each off in front of the class as we get to it. The more common the language on this list, the better.

This is not an exhaustive list, nor do these strategies work for me every time and with every class, but like Marzano's High Probability Instructional Strategies, they will often work well for you in most situations.

What are you favorite tips for breaking down SBG for your students and parents?

Getting Google Forms to your Students

I've seen (and done) several trainings and presentations on the power of using Google Forms for rubrics, quizzes, and other assessment, but how to get said Forms to your STUDENTS is an important aspect of the workflow that often gets overlooked or de-emphasized in the course of the training.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

You can have the greatest Google form/survey in the world, but if you cannot get it yo your audience/students, the form is worthless. When you're using Forms within your Google Apps domain (with other teachers/staff at your school/district), it can be as simple as emailing the live form to everyone on that domain, but the access gets more complicated when students will be using their own Google accounts (or none at all).

WHAT ARE MY OPTIONS?

The solution you choose to send your students your Google Forms will mostly depend on your set-up, but most often you'll have several of these at your disposal.

WITH STUDENT GOOGLE ACCOUNTS ON YOUR GOOGLE APPS 

1. Set up an contact group with your students' Google accounts for each class (done in Gmail or Contacts). Compose an email to the classes you want to submit responses (type the name of that class in the address field) and link to the live form or embed the form in the email with HTML.

2. Create a doc with a link to the live form and share the document with the classes/students you want to submit responses

3. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

WITHOUT STUDENT GOOGLE APPS ACCOUNTS

1. Set up an contact group with your students' Google accounts for each class (done in Gmail or Contacts). You'll need to ask them for their Google account first. Some may need to set up accounts. Compose an email to the classes you want to submit responses (type the name of that class in the address field) and link to the live form or embed the form in the email with HTML.

2. Create a doc with a link to the live form and share the document with the classes/students you want to submit responses

3. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

4. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

5. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

ON (SHARED) iPADS

I advise against any solution where you email the link to the STUDENTS because I think you lose more time than on a tower/notebook waiting for students to login to email.

1. Create a doc with a link to the live form and put the doc in shared folder on Drive accessible by the default account for your cart.

2. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

3. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

4. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

ON 1:1 iPADS OR BYOD

1. Create a doc with a link to the live form and put the doc in shared folder on Drive accessible by all the students in your class. You'll need to share the folder with their personal Google accounts.

2. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

3. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

4. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

HOW DO I KNOW WHICH OPTION IS BEST FOR ME?

I have an iPad cart in my room from which students access Drive from a shared account, and I will often use several of these options for one Form. Which solution is best for me usually depends on if I want students to have access to the form from home (on their own accounts) or if we'll just be using it in class). My best advice is to not fall in love with any ONE application.

5 Questions for Every Standards Based Grader

I've dabbled with standards based grading in my high school math courses to varying degrees since January of 2010.



If you only read this far, allow me to share one piece of advice so you'll stop being scared, and just get started.

The only "right" way to do standards-based grading in your classroom is the way that is most fair to your students and gives you the best information about their learning. Most other variables will align with district policies, course structures, or personal preference.

Smart people like Robert Marzano and +Shawn Cornally would totally agree. I think. :)

That said, here is my guidance for implementing standards-based grading in your classroom.

Other Resources:

Standards-based Grading FAQ sheet (for students and parents)
Standards-based Grading Digest (weekly links, blogs, videos, articles)
PPT "syllabus" explaining my standards-based scoring
#sbgchat on Twitter (discussion, support, links)

Socrative 2.0 - "Clicker" Platform Gets Better

I've been a huge fan of iOS/Android/web app Socrative to replace the clickers in my classroom since the first week I had iPads in my classroom (January 2011).

I've used it for exit tickets, bell-work, chapter reviews, guided practice during a lecture, reflection on learning, and even a semester final. My students have ALWAYS complained that if they made a mistake or wanted to skip around, there was no "go back" functionality within Socrative. As flashy and fun as the app is, I've always leaned heavier on Google Forms to give my students that flexibility.

I gave a presentation last week on replacing the Scantron with digital tools that give you richer, quicker feedback and allow you to assess more than multiple choice. I love Socrative as a tool to close what I called the "feedback gap," that time between when you give an assessment, grade it, and then pass it back. What I didn't know was that Socrative had a new version in beta that addressed the "go back" functionality that I mentioned above! You can access the beta version of Socrative 2.0 by both you and your students using beta.socrative.com

The U/I is fresh, but there's more here than that!

Rather than write anything more, I decided to run through Socrative 2.0 briefly and share some of the new teacher and student features.

This video screencasts:
Administering a saved quiz - choosing quiz, setting student paced
Student taking quiz, going back through work and editing responses (Socrative 1.0 did not allow editing or skipping around)
Student submitting response
Viewing specific student responses and results (Socrative 1.0 only showed a student's score)
Finishing the saved quiz and getting a report

I last wrote about Socrative soon after the "insert image" into a question function went public, and it was much needed, but I think I even more appreciate the new student pacing options in Socrative 2.0.

ClassBadges.com and Standards-Based Grading

The badge art I uploaded.

 Kids LOVE competing, right?

What I appreciate about the grading reform away from A-F that we've seen the last several years is that there is less comparison between letter grades amongst students and more emphasis on "what do you know?" More students have a chance to be the "smart" ones because their failure on Standard X does not always mean they will fail on Standard Y, which traditional letter grades can suggest and sometimes lead to.

However, standards based grading can get a little black-and-white cut and dry sometimes, and kids can get overwhelmed by charts, so why not gamify your students' standards growth and get your kids to compete with each other than against?

This summer I was "strongly encouraged" to use Accelerated Math, a system we use mainly for intervention during the school year. AM is an adaptive, differentiated learning system that links in with the STAR assessments which everyone in the district uses for benchmarking. I'd been previously trained on AM, but never actually used it myself, but one thing I'd remembered from my colleagues' feedback was that AM is a great program for kids that can set goals, kids that can pace their work, and kids that can monitor their own on-task behavior. As I mentioned in my last post about summer school, these are not usually qualities I see in my students, so to mitigate the summer being a total disaster for 3/4 of my class, I decided to use classbadges.com to track their objective mastery (and other, more PBIS-type accomplishments as well.)

Above you'll see all of the badges I created to award to the students. Technically our program this summer is "credit recovery," so they need only to get 60% or higher (the black token) on the objectives I assign in Accelerated Math, but I knew some kids would work harder to get better badges (just like someone might spend hours getting a certain achievement in a video game), so I made the grey "master" badge for 80%, and the gold "expert" badge for 95% scores on an objective.

I'm still going to work on more traditional goal-setting with my students, and today's early results with the Pomodoro Technique were positive, but these badges were a fun way to give a few kids an extra, whimsical incentive.

Playing School: Using Badges and Achievements for PBIS

Thanks to +Keith Sorensen for the great badge summary post that sparked this one! If you're not familiar with uses of badges to reward achievement in Scouts, the military, and even videogames, head on over there, first.

The Five Points of Technology and Education: We need more stinkin' badges (or, how to increase student participation without using grades as a reward).

Badges work well into PBIS strategies, as well. 

The purpose of PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports) is to craft a welcoming, positive school culture in which students doing the right things are noticed and rewarded, as opposed to traditional behavioral strategies that highlight the bottom 10% and heap upon them punitive damages.

We give out tickets at my high school that can be redeemed for stuff, but I wonder if badges would be cheaper (most of the rewards cost the school something) and perhaps even more "meaningful" because peers will know WHY a student got that badge instead of the generic tickets we hand out.

I like the idea of the tickets, and perhaps the staff gives out more of them because they can be given more on a whim ("Hey, what you just did was great. Here's a ticket."), but I can't help wonder how effective they really are.

If you use Edmodo, Khan Academy, Manga High, or even Study Island, badges and achievements are built right in (to varying degrees), so you wouldn't even need a new service, if if you want one, Keith highlights Class Badges in his post.

There are more than a thousand badges already created for you to apply to your own classroom content or goals, and if you make your own (just like you can in Edmodo), the possibilities are endless!  I searched only in the "math theme" and got more than 100.

There are 4 more pages of this gold.

I haven't set up classes yet, but in less than 5 minutes, I was able to set up my account and create my first badge for what we're doing in Algebra 2 right now (which I wrote about here)

ADAPTATION FOR YOU:
Do you have an "A" wall, or a star wall where students get to put their good assessments or projects? If you didn't want to use electronic badges, it would be pretty simple to make your "A" wall a badge wall and be more specific about your achievements. 

Socrative + Desmos Calculator = Multimedia, Interactive, Easy Assessment

This came in my inbox today, so I figured it was safe to share this previously "secret" feature.

If you're new to Socrative, the web and app-based service is a formative assessment and survey tool that can be accessed via PC, Mac, or any web-enabled device. (Which comes in handy when the app gets glitchy some days and I can switch to the web). I wrote more about using Socrative to replace Scantrons if you want more info on practical application and a comparison to using Google Forms.

Math Assessment Writing Toolbox

• Equations - Google Drive
• Graphs - Desmos
• Formatting - Socrative

Adding images and auto-grading short answer makes Socrative a powerful tool.

One of the previous shortcomings of Socrative was that any multimedia I wanted to use in assessing my students had to be via a worksheet, a different file, or on my SMARTboard. This visual disconnect resulted in errors for some students simply because the content was not adjacent to the question prompt.  Even including basic equations in the prompt was awkward because I had to write exponents with carrots (^) and rational numbers or expressions with a forward slash (/). There's still no equation editor, but now that you can embed images, you can take a screenshot from your favorite equation editing platform and insert it with the prompt (embedded images is how most equations show up on the internet anyway, so don't bemoan the work-around).

My Algebra 2 students have a short assessment on exponential functions tomorrow, so this seemed like an excellent opportunity to run Socrative through the paces and embed some beautiful exponential functions from everyone's favorite web-based graphing calculator, Desmos.


Here's a screencast of my workflow this afternoon:

I'd REALLY like to be able to add images to my MC responses, also, but overall, I'm very excited about these additions to Socrative. I don't know how they keep it free and rival many paid services, but I'm thankful!

Student Blogging - In High School Math?!

Thursday's #moedchat was all about blogging in the classroom. And if the energy flowing in the chat was any indication, I'm apparently missing out on the fun.

The chat was moderated by the amazing +William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain), a #comments4kids advocate, an EduBlog nominated writer many times over, and general tweep I trust. Beyond William, my sister, @JenBearden is in her second year blogging with her 5th graders at http://kidblog.org/MrsBeardensClass2012/

The archive is here. We had a great, enthusiastic chat about the purpose of kid blogging, defining the meaning and purpose of "authentic audience" and explored what makes kid blogging transition from another assignment to a transformative experience. A lot of good experiences were shared, and I know the power of reflection in learning for myself in teacher professional development, but my perception for now is that most classroom bloggers fall into one of 3 categories:

• Elementary teacher
• English/Communication Arts teacher
• History teacher

I'm completely in favor of writing in the content area, and believe in my heart that writing/reflecting in math can improve your little thinkers' reasoning and understanding of the content, but it feels like an impossibility to integrate for my 50 minutes a day. @jenbearden says that her 5th graders write about math often, but I still think its "cheating" because elementary teachers have so much more flexibility with time allotment in their room. (How much learning time do high school/middle school students lose moving from class to class?!)

My Current Perception

Can it be done?

If you've been to any number of PD sessions, conferences, or graduate classes as a teacher, you're probably used to hearing something like, "How would this work in the math classroom?" The facilitator, bless their heart teaches NOT math, has passion for their content, but has no perspective on integrating it fully in your subject. And their waiting for you to figure it out. :) 

The "How would this work in math?" stage is how I feel about classroom blogging, so I'm just going to start my research how I would direct my students. Google. Storify. 

Now that I've even begun reflecting on this I know I've got to try, but I need your help! What experience do you have with high school math students blogging? What teacher experts do you know?

Playing School: 6 Easy Ways to "Play" in Your Secondary Classroom

I know my 3 year old daughter has a bit of a misconception of what I do at school...

We're part of a great Parents as Teachers program that comes to our home once a month to work with the kids and "assess" them every few months according to developmental norms for their age. From Lucy's perspective, Ms. Chris comes over to play with her and Landon. She doesn't know she's learning, and she certainly isn't aware that sometimes she's being tested. Its just fun.

She knows that Daddy goes to work and is a teacher, so when I told her that Ms. Chris is her teacher, she made this connection:

"My daddy's going to work to play with boys and girls."

I'm not suggesting that your entire curriculum needs to be game-ified (although MangaHigh is my favorite) or that we need to change teaching styles (if you're generally a curmudgeon, you'll feel and seem fake if you try to do what someone else thinks if "fun"), but that everyone in the room will be more productive when a little bit of play is introduced.

And honestly, I think its good for all of us. Some days, I feel like this:

My wife, who stays home with our two little ones, is a great blessing to me because she saves me from most of those days. She has her own struggles as our children's first teacher, which she blogged about yesterday and has me reflecting more on today. (Being a good mama on a bad day)

Do you ever get so caught up in learning objectives, your curriculum and or mastery of content that everything else going on in your classroom gets lost? I did this to my daughter yesterday morning at the breakfast table. Good. grief.

Per the morning tradition, I was reading to Lucy out of the Jesus Storybook Bible during breakfast while she ate her cereal. Beth reports that the kids usually really enjoy this time and always ask, "More Bible, please! And cereal." This is where my "teacher" training totally got in the way of Lucy totally enjoying the morning's reading of The Prodigal Son - instead of just reading the story, showing some excitement, doing my very best character voices, and letting the narrative do its work, I kept checking for understanding and comprehension. With my 3 year old. Sure, she was able to answer my questions and was "engaged," but she certainly didn't really seem to enjoy the story. She asked for more, but kind of in a "this wasn't as great an experience as usual" kind of way. LOL

After some gentle(?) encouragement from Beth (who always supports my character talents) to just read the story, I'd say Lucy and I both had a much better time, and she was asking the questions the second time around.

Kids expect to have fun, enjoyable, memorable experiences at school because that's how they begin their educations. Somewhere in the system, we (I) kill a lot of those expectations because there are tests to prepare for, kids that don't "deserve" to be rewarded with a fun lesson, and content that doesn't readily lend itself to games.

1. Listen to music (and I don't mean classical).
I believe the research that classical music helps students learn, or raises tests scores, and have a Mozart playlist on Spotify for my "everyday" music, but sometimes its good to indulge yourself, or your students and play something you and/or they really like.

If you're afraid of the lyric factor, allow yourself to have a lyric-check policy. You don't want to play anything offensive, so go ahead and check those lyrics with any of these 5 tools. You can also search on Spotify, Playlist.com (or even YouTube) for "clean" or "edited" versions.

2. Laugh at yourself.
I shared this image with a few of my classes last week. I used it as an example of how I always try NOT to stand, and then the kids told me the ways I DO stand. At least they're watching. :) (Apparently I have this arms crossed, shoulders hunched thing)

3. Give high fives, elbows, fist bumps.
This is my number one ice breaker when I have a crummy attitude toward a student or they have one with me for the day. Its also a day-maker for a lot of kids. Henry Wong advises in The First Days of School that you give out hugs as students enter the classroom. That's obviously inappropriate (and often times undesired) to do with secondary students, but free high fives in the hallway? Just make sure to pump the hand sanitizer.

4. Use color.
Students don't suddenly lose their taste for colorful, welcoming, designed classrooms just because they're older. Sure, you probably didn't have that bulletin board class in your secondary ed courses that all the elementary teachers rave about, but that doesn't give you an excuse for boring, blank walls.

And don't stop the color there - let your students color. Your interactive whiteboard, tablets, and even regular whiteboard have dozens of colors of available to them. Don't YOU get bored writing only in one color? (Bonus points for having your students color code their notes. For example, each step of a  solution in a math class is color coded to show process, or in a Lit class, character notes one color, themes in another, and foreshadowing in another).

5. Have kids create.
Lucy's teacher recently just told her to draw a picture. Lucy was just doing something she loved, but Ms. Chris was assessing all kinds of spatial, kinesthetic, and imaginative benchmarks from just a few marks. With proper pedagogy of learning expectations and scoring guides, I think its possible to do the same with secondary students.

Giant rolls of butcher paper, video tutorials, stop-motion lego, ebooks, regular books, songs, websites, images, etc. Here are some iPad specific examples. They can even create mobile games for assessment, review, or constructive activities. (Free game designing tools)

6. Play boardgames as a class or in small groups, but make requirements for moving correct responses to questions.
I like this for:

• Differentiation - you can ask different groups different questions
• Immediate feedback
• Collaboration
• Quick gratification

Implementation tips: 
I see my kids collaborate more willingly and effectively in their game teams when I stick big whiteboards in front of them.  There's magic in those insanely expensive pens.
Project a physical gameboard with the pieces using a document camera, create your own simple version in your interactive whiteboard software (I did this fairly easily with squares and rectangles for Monopoly, and was able to make 3-way Connect Four), or find your favorite web-based version.

---

What's most important? 

Making the effort, and trying play that feels natural to you. Just like different instructional strategies have higher yields in different settings, what play works in the classroom next door may well flop for you. Don't give up, and don't punish yourself. 

Have fun.

Why Students Are Failing Online Courses and What We Can Do About It

A recent study of students in online courses by the Columbia University's Community College Research Center (featured in TechCrunch) found evidence that "all students who take more online courses, no matter the demographic, are less likely to attain a degree," but that particularly, male, African-American, and younger students struggle. I'd just had a conversation with an English teacher, @amathews17, about online courses at METC last week, so the study particularly piqued my interest.

The Problem

Class averages with "normal" sample sizes are lower than traditional courses

Our district currently offers a ton of recovery credits to juniors and seniors during the school day and after school two days a week. The success of the program is debatable in my opinion. The math scores, which shown above, are low, but the history and lit courses, (which I thought were always better) aren't drastically better. A lot of kids get credits, but...

Here's the problem (from my experience as an online student AND teacher) with online courses that disadvantage males, minorities, and youth.

1. Online courses require more intrinsic motivation to begin and sustain work, and self-assessment of progress toward learning goals. Without social pressures or direct teacher pacing, many students cannot monitor their pacing and fall behind, or struggle to even begin coursework.
2. Online courses, even those facilitated by instructors featuring both synchronous and asynchronous interactivity in the form of chats or discussion forums, are an independent venture. Students are expected to work alone, and to seek out assistance when necessary. We work hard to socialize our students and foster collaboration (and rightfully so), but we've lost the value of independent, quiet thought in the process.
3. Online courses require students to read for learning and often to write for assessment. This is a particular challenge in OUR program because a lot of our students wind up needing to recover credits because they reading below grade level. They get by in traditional courses where teachers can modify texts and give verbal cues, but once those supports are gone, these struggling readers don't even know where to begin.

What Can We Do?

If online courses are the future of ed, (which all recent trends suggest) there are elements of online courses we can integrate into traditional classrooms to develop a blended-learning environment that can prepare our students for future online courses.

1. Make students read. You have to. Use more than just your text book
1. Check your bookroom for old texts
2. Create/adapt your own texts with a CK12.org Flexbook
3. Make use of free materials on other publishers' websites and MOOC offerings on iTunesU 
2. Hold your students responsible for monitoring and reflecting on their progress, and have tools available for self-assessment and directed intervention
1. Video repository (Your own or any from YouTube/tutorial sites)
2. Extra practice links that are self-grading or worksheets with solutions available
3. Guided chapter or lesson summaries with some blanks missing
3. Before (or after) your social, constructivist activity, introduce an independent activity of pre (or post) cognition. It will enhance later discussion and acclimate students to forming their own questions and ideas
1. Pre-reading
2. KWL charts
3. Frayer models for key concepts
4. "I learned, I liked, I wish..."

The Takeaway

It gets reiterated every year and every time standards are reorganized, but every teacher really must be a reading teacher. Whether its for future Smarter Balanced CCSS assessments, strategies for online courses, or improvement in your own subject, there's no way to get around the necessity that our students are able to read in our content area.

Is Learning Invisible in My Classroom or Does It Just Not Exist? A Rationale for Data Team Analysis

"We don't know one percent of one millionth about anything" - Thomas Edison

Teachers are paid to see what no one else can, you know? All of the learning and growth our students (hopefully) gain for the time they're in our classrooms - you can't SEE it. Not even on tests or projects. Like many of the forces and ideas John Lloyd mentions in this TED_Ed animation, learning and knowledge are also invisible. We only see the effects of the two.

Painting an image around the data you garner in your classroom is can help you see those effects. In the same way you feel a gust more than a breeze, more assessments give you more data (and more effect to see).  Sitting down with student examples in your PLC or data teams and making inferences about learning, mistakes, and building blocks and then making hypotheses are the educational equivalent of laboratory trials.

I don't intend to be hyperbolic, but when we make purely inferential decisions based on the population of students in our own classes for our instructional design, we place ourselves somewhere on the scientific spectrum usually reserved for bloodletting or other medieval medicines - you're doing things because they seem to make sense. Yes, a veteran teachers can draw upon their years of experience to increase sample size to an extent, but they aren't doing their colleagues any favors, and there are two possible final outcomes: (1) they retire and no one around and most of their knowledge and expertise leaves with them, (2) they burn out and cannot change when they day (inevitably) comes.

My encouragement to anyone who feels like their team or department doesn't willingly want to engage in common assessments, data analysis, or other research/scientific methods is to start with something simple. We have a data team meeting template from Lead and Learn in our district that is OVERWHELMING if you've not scaffolded your team with supports and celebrations up to it.

Here are some of the ideas and principles that have worked on our team.

If I were having this conversation with people in my building right now, some one would be thinking (or saying) right about now,

"I don't need a data team or a PLC to know what my kids know and don't know."

Perhaps that's true.  My carrot for that teacher (since we all ultimately want to know what's in it for us) is to suggest that even if your class is learning at or above grade level and you have all of the tools and techniques, when you share that expertise with others, you'll end up improving the quality of the students who come to you. Who doesn't want a leg up?

My summary question:
When you look deeper into your students, do you see more or nothing?

"I Secretly Agree When My Students Think They Shouldn't Be Writing in Math"

Have you ever felt that way? It's certainly easier to believe it?

"My job is to get these kids to perfect their arithmetic, solve equations, and make graphs for the ACT or state tests."

Writing has come back to the forefront the past year with the technical emphasis in the Common Core. The Missouri Algebra I End of Course Exam is reintroducing a required performance event this year, and its something that worried more than one of my colleagues. I had an opportunity to spend 5 days last semester in a writing PD with other teachers from North County, and it really helped to change my outlook on why and how to write in math class.

Where I'm Coming From

The training, sponsored by the Gateway Writing Project (which is the local effort of the National Writing Project), focused essentially on two tenets: writing for assessment and writing for learning.

I had a love/hate relationship with this training and our instructors, veteran/retired teachers from around St. Louis, most of which had spent some time in my district. Any time you go to a professional development with mixed subject areas led by someone not from math, they always will have several examples and takeaways reading for other subjects, and then I always hear this:

"I'm excited to see what you come up with on applying this to your math classroom."

You only need about 2 years of experience in the classroom before you just expect that will happen at 75% of PD opportunities. But at the same time its frustrating, it also forces the issue. How will I use this in my math classroom? And fortunately, most days, I was happy with the answer I found.

What I Learned 

Your students have opportunities for writing in the math classroom almost every day. Writing doesn't only have to happen in solutions to word problems, but (I think) is most useful in the learning process. I had already developed a practice of asking my "why" to my students after they responded to my questions, but writing those types of responses took that understanding to the next level (and got the introverts involved, too).

Tips for Getting Started:

1. Have your students explain steps to the problem they just solved, using relevant vocabulary to the lesson/chapter, and properties or laws they used. The first time you do this you'll get lots of "this" and "thats." My preferred response to generic language is always to ask the students how helpful it would be if I delivered my own examples to them like that. When my students stop moving "this" and "that," they make fewer errors of omission or inconsistency.

2. Have students describe their problem-solving process. Even better than "show all your work" is "explain all your work." When kids write down what each bit of their work is representing or in the solution for, they will often find their own errors in logic or process.

3. Have students reflect on success/failure/questions on the lesson of the day, share with a small group, and then combine their thoughts concisely. They might answer each other's questions, they'll better articulate where they have confusion, and its a good opportunity to wrap up/summarize learning goals for the day.

Have Courageous Conversations with other Teachers

Chances are, you or someone you know (kind of) really believes they we shouldn't be teaching writing. Challenge that, and (humbly) start a dialogue or brainstorm. Here's what I put together for my colleagues.
 

Where are you in your attitude toward writing in math class? Do you believe it enough to make your students do it?