NEIT16+Open+Space+4E+-+Mountain+View

Attendees: Kristin Webster from Marymount Avi Bloom from SAR Academy Erin Mumford from Friends Acadmy Megan Jones from Pingry Academy

Interesting that there is not much discussion here at NEIT about what actually happens in an Upper School 1:1 classroom. Not much conversation around what actually happens in a classroom beyond note-taking - what else is can be used? What can I do in the classroom? VoiceThread - enable rich conversations outside of the classroom. Girls do best when there is a purpose, when there is a task - teaching to each other. How much is laptop critical to your classroom? Some examples: Kahoot Socrative Concerns - some can’t deal with the time pressure as well. YouTube videos - screencasts using Explain Everything. Teachers might offload technology to time outside the classroom. Avi - don’t like letting teachers get away with doing “download content” - why lecture Erin - flipped classroom for her programming class. Kids have one semester of programming under their belts. Game design class, but some kids need a lot of review. All content put into videos - kids can watch videos in class, or experiment with their projects. Kristin - the girls make the videos - the older students teach the younger. Should students be the primary source of the material for flipped classroom? Erin - uses Camtasia - hated it, and now uses Quicktime to record her screencasts. Toying with idea of joining online learning consortium. Kristin - focus on helping students become a better teacher. That’s a more important skill, beyond reading another text from Cicero. Avi - obstacle in traditional curriculum is the idea that all kids take the same test at the end. What is the goal of this? For many teachers, use of technology is a one-off. Erin - bio department is now focused on standards-based grading. Homework is practice, not graded - allow kids to take tests more than once. Uses Haiku standards rubric. 8th grade science teacher - totally flipped classroom. Uses Moodle for his quizzes - support Moodle. Automatic grading and feedback with Google sheets - so he.

Shift to subject-specific apps and tools - mixed feedback from teachers about this. iPad school, but this means a lot of relearning for people. Especially for science - difficult to recommend something if you are not an expert in that subject. Wants to explore content-specific apps. Kristin - disagree, if I find a content-specific app, its usually not that great. iPad vs. laptops - agree that iPads are not great for the high school experience. There is a lot out there - when content experts look at things, fewer and fewer apps are useful. Why? 1:1 - advantage of iPad - flat screen, quick start up time, quick app download, management is easier (no!) - none of these things are relevant anymore. Kids break iPads.

Math - difficult to use laptops - so they only use notebooks. Some kids come up from lower school using iPads and their use of it is much more disruptive - iPads. No tool is perfect for all classes - depends Go Formative - web-based tool that allows a free-hand section. Erin - uses Nearpod. Kristin - switch between digital and physical notetaking. Avi - majority of notes are taken by free hand on iPads. What happens when your device doesn’t work as needed? Lots of people put in a lot of time to set up iPad system - you have to make sure that the background is set. Avi - Chromebook is easier to use; iPad potentially more transformative - but you have to have the right structure.

Thinglink - Stay away from shared iPads - no central anything. All students have to sign in to every app to use an iPad. Discussion of management of Chromebooks and their utility

Avi - strong push to have teachers NOT ban laptops. Have clear expectations about digital citizenship, but you cannot just say that laptops are not allowed. Major cultural piece. What’s the inroad to discussion based class, to lecture class? Two conversations at once - use TodaysMeet to discussions. Discussion of cultural shift - student centered learning, its about the kid. We are always going to have people resisting the idea. The older students get, the more traditional teaching is. Need a culture here at the conference about pushing back against the teacher-centered classroom. Technology is just a piece of a student-centered teaching system. Older teaching styles Harvard CS50 - entire course online. Give everyone everything - now, let’s figure out the role of the teacher. How do you think about the discipline? What is it like to think like a historian, scientist, literary critic? Knowledge is important, but its about skills.