Wait! Somebody Has Probably Done It Better

As a first-year teacher, and the only 8th grade English teacher at my small 2A school, I remember the school secretary taking me aside and whispering conspiratorially that her best friend, my predecessor, had left me the notebook of E-V-E-R-Y-thing she taught. My joy was short-lived as she handed me a binder with the 8th grade ELA TEKS printed and highlighted.

Bless her heart.

I knew the TEKS. I had printed and highlighted them myself. What I didn’t know was how to put it all together. Students should “write responses that demonstrate understanding of texts, including comparing sources within and across genres.”(1) That sounds great, but how do I put that into practice?

I had 10-year-old textbooks and 115 students showing up in a week. So, I turned to the internet and found my saving grace-Teachers Pay Teachers. I spent hundreds of dollars over the next few years as I tried to balance being a teacher and new mom. I don’t begrudge the teachers who sell on that site, but I do resent spending my own money on curriculum that should have been provided. Even worse, sometimes I would buy resources that didn't fit what I needed it to do or were inaccurate.

Thankfully, in the decade I've been teaching, I have gotten pickier and more resourceful about the sources incorporated in my classroom. Even better, I have found there is a plethora of quality content that doesn't cost anything.

KHAN ACADEMY

One well-known online resource is Khan Academy. Khan Academy began in 2005 with Sal Khan creating tutorial videos for his cousin. In the 15 years since, Khan Academy has grown by leaps and bounds, fulfilling their mission statement to “provide a free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere.”(2)

I first heard about Khan Academy because our math department would utilize their videos for sub plans, extra practice, or remediation. Early on, Khan Academy didn't offer a whole lot of ELA content, but that has changed. 

Sign up is easy for teachers, students, or parents. One nice thing about Khan Academy is the inclusion of teacher training. They really want teachers to fully utilize their site and have tons of built-in training.

I was very excited to see that Khan Academy had officially partnered with College Board in AP practice. However, a closer look showed me one course suspiciously missing. . .

Although Khan Academy does not have ready-made modules for AP Lang, they still have quite a bit of content that could work in an ELA classroom. Khan Academy focuses on Mastery learning so students have to get a certain percentage right to unlock the next stage in the learning practice. I’ve found this type of gamification really effective. It's low-stakes enough to not put a lot of pressure on students and puts the onus on learning, not a specific grade. The grammar module will be perfect for this.  Many of my students are proficient in grammar, but the ones who aren't could work at their own pace to achieve mastery.

I also searched for the types of writing that I teach in AP Lang. I was very excited to find videos rhetorically analyzing pieces we already read in class like Lincoln's inaugural address and the Federalist Papers. Close reading is a skill that we work on all year, and I often model close reading on an overhead camera in my classroom. With virtual learning, it's really nice to have these videos already made so that students can watch the process of rhetorical analysis through annotation.

          

All in all, Khan Academy is a much more robust resource than I originally thought, and I look forward to incorporating it into my classroom.

MIT OPEN COURSEWARE

Like Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware (OCW) operates off the idea that knowledge should be free and education available to everyone.  This amazing offering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made over two thousand FULL college courses available. This program costs 2.7 million dollars to operate a year and depends largely on donors. Professors donate 5 to 10 hours per course offering, and MIT has a full-time staff of 12 to operate OCW. (3) 

The discovery of this website has been a boon in teaching APLang. A quick search of writing courses reveals almost 150 different classes available.

I chose "Writing and Rhetoric: Rhetoric and Contemporary Issues,"a class that would be comparable to AP Lang. It begins with a course overview page. (4)

The Syllabus tab includes everything needed to teach this class for yourself. I remember as a new teacher trying to come up with class policies, dividing up the percentage points for grading, trying to decide how many texts per week were too many or too few. The syllabus has all of that.

The next tab is Calendar, and true to name it outlines the semester’s work. I find the Reading tab even more important. It is set up like the Calendar but includes hyperlinks to the readings covered in the class. The Assignment tab covers all the types of assignments outlined in the calendar.  Again, as a new teacher, I struggled so much with how to format assignments or how long essays should be. This tab covers many of those questions.

The last tab is Related Resources and it has handouts, writing resources, and links to other sites that might be helpful in finding texts or managing the class.

TERMS OF SERVICE

Khan Academy has a 17 Page terms of service agreement. To me, the key was that users have “a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to download, install, view and use the . . . Content. . . solely for your personal, non-commercial purposes.” (5)

MIT OCW operates under a Creative Commons license that allows users to “copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and. . . remix, transform, and build upon the material. . . [as long as]you must give appropriate credit… and [do]not use the material for commercial purposes.” (6)

Essentially, both sites allow the liberal use of the materials for educational use, but users may not use any material found on the sites in any commercial venture.

CONCLUSION

In 12 years of teaching, I’ve been given seven different textbooks. I’ve survived three different sets of state standards, C-Scope, and scopes and sequences with neither. With just Khan Academy and MIT OCW, I can easily create high-quality courses for my classes. Better yet, I don't have to pay for or create them and can save my energy for feedback, relationship building, and actually teaching.

Edmodo VS Canvas

Canvas and Edmodo are both easy to use course management systems that teachers can utilize in blended, flipped, or digital learning.

In both systems, creating an account as a teacher is as easy as having an email address. Once you have created your account, you can add classes and begin setting up your online course.

Canvas and Edmodo offer many similar features that make it appealing to teachers. Teachers need to create content for students to engage with and teachers need to be able to assess students. Students should be able to interact with each other and the instructor. Students need to keep up with assignments and turn those assignments in. Edmodo and Canvas tackle these issues in similar ways.

As a student, the Edmodo layout is direct. Classes are listed on the left and a built in planner on the right hand side keeps track of coursework.

One fun aspect of Edmodo is the Discovery tab. For students, this tab offers up educational games and apps that work within Edmodo.

This tab for teachers is an instant learning community where teachers can find lessons and add-ons for Edmodo.

From a student standpoint, Edmodo is easy to navigate. Students can log-in with their Google email address, and OneDrive and Google Drive are integrated into the aptly named Backpack. Edmodo has clearly made many improvements since I used it years ago. 

From a teachers perspective, Edmodo is easy to use as well, but in my opinion, Canvas wins in the organization department. In Edmodo, everything is in a stream (much like Google Classroom). You can filter by type of assignment, but that can be cumbersome, especially if a teacher is posting multiple things per day. 

     

Canvas is organized into Modules. Teachers have the flexibility to set up these modules by week, by unit, or however they see fit.

Modules have arrows at the bottom that allow students to navigate from one page to the next. This allows a teacher to curate the learning experience from formative assessment, to learning activities, to summative assessment.

I created an Edtech module for new students to my school. It begins with a pre-test to determine their starting point. They then navigate through pages that explain different tech available to them. Unlike traditional lectures which depend on a student's ability to remember and/or take notes, students can return to the material at any time. The affordances of online delivery allow for deeper learning.

Both Canvas and Edmodo deliver content and allow students to have a more tailored learning experience. I appreciate that my district pays for Canvas, but for a free course management system, Edmodo is a fantastic option.

Google Apps in the ELA Classroom

This week’s design experiment was somewhat bittersweet. As a long time Google fan, I used Google Classroom years ago when my district was trying out different learning management systems. For a variety of reasons, my district chose Canvas (which I've grown to love) but in some ways, revisiting Classroom was like coming home. 

Using Google Classroom

The affordances of Google Classroom make it easy for even non-tech savvy teachers to use. They have added many features since I last used Classroom, such as topics and Kami assignments. One of my biggest critiques with Google Classroom is that organization can be overwhelming, but adding topics and using icons to differentiate between materials is a great step in aiding teachers in the organization of the online classroom. Google Classroom has changed the face of online learning with Classroom and its suite of apps. 

For many, when they hear Google, they think email and they think Docs. It’s hard to believe Google Docs and Slides came out almost fifteen years ago. As a broke college student, I was a very early adopter of Google Docs because my nerd husband ran Linux on our home computer and we couldn’t use the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. As an English student, I had to use type papers and loathed OpenOffice, so Google Docs was a godsend. 

In the decade and a half since Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides appeared, Google has continued to explore apps. One Google app that I have underutilized is Arts & Culture. This app is the partnership between Google and cultural organizations to bring images and videos to the public. It's almost 10 years old and has grown from an initial 17 partners to 151 museums.1 It is beautifully designed and well-organized into sections including Choose Your Own Adventure, Music + Art, and Explore. 

Google Arts & Culture

One of the 10th grade standards in Oklahoma is to analyze the intended rhetorical purpose in written, oral, visual, digital, and interactive texts to create new understandings. When I'm teaching rhetorical analysis, we often begin with visual pieces as an intro to rhetorical analysis. This year instead of me choosing the piece, I'll allow students to use Google Arts & Culture, choose a museum, and then choose a piece to analyze. 

In Learning to Choose, Learning to Learn, Mike Anderson identifies student choice as one method of fighting student apathy. My students might never be excited about rhetorically analyzing artwork, but giving them the autonomy to choose a piece to analyze will hopefully tap into some ownership of the assignment. The majority of my students will probably never be able to visit the museums curated on this site, so the content (rhetorical analysis) and the pedagogy (student choice) will be greatly augmented by Google Arts & Culture. 

Google Jamboard

Another Google app I'm in love with is Jamboard. Jamboard is much newer and originated as hardware that allowed people to collaborate together on a 55” screen. Although I don’t have the hardware, the software is available to any Google user. When I first started looking at it it seemed similar to Slides, but after using it a bit, it is so much more than that. Jamboard is developed for collaboration. It's a Google app, so it's well designed and streamlined, with affordances that make it easy to use. 

One standard I teach is applying components of a recursive wring process for multiple purposes to create a focused, organized, and coherent piece of writing, so I'm always looking for a way to get students to prewrite. Especially at the beginning of the year, I focus a lot on the thinking that goes into an essay much more than actually writing full-length essays.

After my students have read a piece, I'd like to put them in pairs to brainstorm an analytical essay, using sticky notes in the Jamboard to create the shell of an essay. After I have looked at their prewriting to make sure they're on the right track, students can add frames and spread those sticky notes across each frame. Jamboard allows outside images to be inserted, so instead of having students write the entire essay, they can create a graphic essay, a layer of complexity made easier through Jamboard. As a constructivist, I use often use prewriting and graphic essays to scaffold writing. Having done prewriting with actual sticky notes, I can’t wait to use Jamboard! Especially when I think about potentially teaching online in fall, Jamboard offers virtual collaboration and infinite redos. 

Although I’ll never forgive Google for taking away my beloved Reader, I’m still a Google fan and I’m thankful that my students have access to so many opportunities for learning through Google apps. 

RIP Reader

Gone But Not Forgotten

_________________________________________________ 

1. Knowles, Jemillah. "Google's Art Project grows larger with 151 museums online across 140 countries". TNW Google Blog. The Next Web. Retrieved 6 April 2012.