UNC BEST Alumni Retreat - Storified!

Happy Almost End of Summer!!!!!!

In college, I was in an awesome education program called UNC-BEST (Baccalaureate Education in Science & Teaching). This program is designed so that future teachers can have the time to get a BA or BS in the field of science they are interested in teaching and get a comprehensive science high school teaching license. The program is small and close knit. We had seminars on educational best practices every semester in addition to our core education classes. The quality of classroom observations and follow up discussions helped me grow as a pre-service teacher. Jennifer Coble, who developed the program, runs an alumni retreat every summer which somehow I always miss... And, I almost missed it this summer because I decided I wanted to sleep for my last few days of summer. However, Friday morning, I got a call from Jennifer saying, "You should come, it will be refreshing," followed by a tweet from a fellow alumni saying "Sleep when you are dead"... So, I went, and I am SO GLAD I did. We are all science and math teachers, mostly high school. This made everything very transferrable. I got to catch up with old friends, to hear how to effectively do flipped class for science, and to troubleshoot different classroom difficulties. Highlights for me were Dayson Pasion's session on gamification (check out @MrDpasion and #levelupedchat) and Jennifer Coble's session on teaching and mindfulness. I think I actually for real understand gamification now. And, the mindfulness talk might lead to some summer research next summer which would be BEYOND AMAZING! I left the conference feeling refreshed, reconnected, and a little (aka A LOT) neurotic about the school year (I basically start Monday...). But the reconnected and refreshed part override the scared part, and I have all these ideas for mindfulness in teaching! WOOT!

#UNCBESTpd Twitter Notes!

High Tech/Low Tech Notes and Notebooks! UNC BEST Retreat 2014

Hey Teacher Buddies!!!!
*************************
Objectives: 
...list right and left side options for Interactive Notebooks.
...redesign "low tech" Interactive Notebooks and C-notes to use technological resources.
...brainstorm how to apply related strategies to your classroom.

"Condensed" notes

**************************
What I did last year...

• Cornell notes (modeling, occasionally using in class)
• Science Dialogue Notebooks with Warm Up and Exit Ticket questions
• Collaborative group work using Google
• Labs
• Lesson plans are posted here
• "Condensed" notes
• **This is an inventory of my favorite labs, assignments, and resources**

What I want to do this year...

• Keep on blogging!!!!
• Use Cornell notes 
• Revising (Think/Pair/Share, collaborative annotation)
• Reviewing (Writing and asking questions)
• Developing vocabulary skills (highlighting key words in the summary)
• Reflecting (Writing a summary that answers your Essential Question)
• Facilitate the use of Interactive Notebooks

Left Side (Personal/Collaborative Output)	Right Side (Teacher/Class Input)
FOLDABLES :-) Vocab flip cards Visuals Ring of Truth (misconceptions go on the outside of a circle) Cartoons/comics Diamante Newspaper articles T-shirt or bumper stickers Reflection on project progress Graffiti walls	Readings that are annotated with sticky note questions and summaries added (or flap) Notes from class Diagrams Graphic organizers (analogy, compare/contrast, sequential, etc) LENSES (label and list, equation, notice, speculate, explain/evaluate, summary) Current event tables (example here)(disclaimer - that's an OLD blog post back when they were silly) Lab notes, data collection Research notes

• Redesigned w/ technology and collaboration in mind:
• Collaborative reading (example here)
• Ideas I haven't tried: 
• Digital Cornell notes
• Have students make videos, take pictures, or write blog posts



Tree graphic organizer:
 Causes - issue - effects - solutions

• They could print QR codes to then paste into the left side of their physical INB
• They could also have a digital interactive notebook (wiki  or weebly) to post on - BOOM! Digital footprint!
• Skeptic/Lobbyist to have students convince themselves of a concept

Folder for Sorting (#marzanoshighyieldstrategies)

Why I want to use these strategies and tools in my classroom...

• Note taking, making, and using are a process - if material isn't revisited, I feel like we are wasting students time...
• Curve of Forgetting
• Students need breaks!!! (See below!)

How I would structure this in my classroom...

• Students come in, write the Big Idea and EQ on a page in their notes. They answer the warm up question. Ideally, they already did take some notes from the flip class video if there was one...
• We use UbD - Here's the training resource website our district used this summer.



Teachers oxygenating their brains at NCCAT

• Bulk of the lesson: I hardly lecture - we use video clips, labs, seminars, readings, projects etc. 
• If direct instruction is happening, stop after 20 minutes and have students do a Left Side task.
• If students are working in groups, stop after 20 minutes - Left Side task would be a check in on progress.
• Repeat.
• Incorporate active transitions and brain breaks.
• Close by having students highlight key terms in their notes, answer the EQ as the summary in their notes, etc.
• I'm trying to plan to maximize the primacy/recency effect by doing things in 20 minute chunks and using down time to have students revise notes, TPS, do/start a left-side activity, etc. (Here's an article on that.)

#NCCATNews: Learning to Survive and Thrive Day .5 and 2!

Heyyyy!

Since ISTE, I've been on an interview committee, ran a lot, celebrated the Fourth of July, got told to run elsewhere by some people on a golf course (whatevs... I can get hit by a golf ball or a truck, I'm choosing golf ball...), and SLEPT! And now, after a RIDICULOUS day of travelling, I'm at NCCAT's Ocracoke Campus for Success from the Start: How to Survive and Thrive your First Three Years in the Classroom workshop with Deb Teitelbaum (@DebTeitelbaum) and a bunch of awesome NC teachers.

Someone stole some ice cream...

Sketchy grocery that took 10
 hours to find

For the first time ever, I (with two of my colleagues) was an hour early to a thing (our ferry to Ocracoke), however, the ferry was broken, so we had 3.5 hours to explore the bustling metropolis of Swan Quarter, NC and then a 2.5 hour ferry ride to the island. We were very late to the seminar, but jumped right in to some powerful carousel discussions on socioeconomics and the classroom - with an emphasis on working with students from poverty.

Is this bus floating?? WHAT?

FERRY! FINALLY!

Feather game (I really want a student
to say, "Ms. Nickel, I'm oxygenating.")

Today, I got up and ran to the beach and then walked with some other teachers. We spent the day learning about classroom discipline, effective procedures and transitions, communicating with parents, primacy and recency, kinesthetic learning activities, and "brain break" activities. My favorite mini-take aways were blowing feathers in the air to get oxygen to your brain and a twister/sorting game that I'd use in Earth and Envi Sci to show processes. We also played tag with word parts that rhymed (ex. Or). I was terrible at it because I thought this picture was cereal which didn't rhyme with anything but...because it was a picture of "pour"...

Rhyming, dizzy, spinny tag...

We are going to have time to set goals for our classroom and work on them, but I'm totally all over the place about what I want to work on:

Envelope for sorting (#marzanoshighyield)
And! My improved INB.

• Work on gamifying a UbD unit for differentiation
• Scripting transitions
• Scripting what 100% compliance will look like in my classroom

 Overall reflection:

• NCCAT is AMAZING. I fully plan on transporting ALL of LEC here. And getting married here. 
• I will cry if anyone stops funding NCCAT.
• I will buy ALL the NCCAT stuff.
• Ocracoke is beautiful.
• I have never felt so pampered EVER. THANK YOU NCCAT!

NCCAT china and GREAT food!

#summertimemadness: Reflection so far + Next steps!

After all the conferences and PD I've been to so far, I really want to have a #stayconference where everyone works in the comfort of their own homes or classrooms on applying all the awesome ideas. Then, there would be twitter chats hosted by awesome folk throughout the day for feedback. I may try to make this happen in a chill version... we'll see! 

Work Break!!!! :-) 

One thing that ISTE made me reflect on is my own personal ideas about technology. I couldn't get past the home keys in keyboarding until most of the way through 3rd grade, my mom typed my papers until I got into AP classes, I've never gamed, I had a free flip phone with no texting or camera or data until a little over a year ago. And now, I tweet and blog a pretty significant amount, text too much, and embed technology in my teaching in meaningful ways. It's nuts... Sadly, I have AIM to thanks for my ability to type, but getting an iPhone and using Google Drive and teaching with awesome teachers has really helped me be a profficient 21st century teacher. Gotta have that genius time and professional learning network to grow!

Twitter + Google = GREAT teaching!
 Never thought I'd use them sooo much

SO, goals because #cantstopwontstop #neverstopexploring:

1) Plan a mini #stayconference???

2) Gamify a unit

3) Make models of Cornell notes and AVID binders

4) SLEEP

5) PLN it up

6) Help students create PLNs

7) SLEEP

8) Convince Revolution Donuts to move to Sanford, EAT DONUTS FOR DAYS

Quotes and Ideas (mainly from Kevin Carrell of Red Rubber Ball (@kckatalyst) and Amy Burvall (@amyburvall):

• "How is your want to? You've got to check it, EVERY SINGLE day" @kckatalyst
• Thanks to Google (and other search engines, but REALLY, standards y'all - GOOGLE!), teachers can be freed up to be designers
• "Iteration is the new failure" @jaimecasap (#firstattemptinlearning #FAIL)
• "Play is the highest form of research" @kckatalyst (#geniustime)
• "If you can bring a community together around an intention, we can do amazing things" @kckatalyst

@kckatalyst

#ISTE2014 Days 3-4: Gamification, culturally responsive technology, GOOGLE

I'm going to start this post of by saying,

Like probably way more than is healthy... So, here's the rest of my recap from ISTE 2014.

Day 3

Awful photography skillz evidence - I don't get  badge for that.
BUT Liz looks awesome... and is being awesome!

On Day 3 at ISTE I woke up to a roommate (aka Liz Wiggs) running through her session which inspired me to apply to present about blogging at NCSTA's conference. The problem is that presenting makes me want hide under a rock... I headed over to the convention center and wandered around in the expo hall. I got truffles and a trial membership from PD360 (super passionate people and great resources!) and talked to people at Google (I want to marry Google. Like, it's bad. BUT REALLY.) Then, I went to a session on the Digital Promise which is a new platform for PD based on microcredentials and badging - kind of like the session from Day 2 applied. The organization is also starting an award program called DILA with EdSurge. I have some people in mind who I'd like to nominate... Then, I got to use my

Liz's best friend who she tried to kill.
THANKS Rodney!

horrendous videography and photography skills to help out in Liz Wiggs' BYOD session on "Authentic writing, effective feedback, and happy students." What was great to see was all the happy teachers! Then I dragged Liz to the expo hall where we (not at all creepily) stalked Jaime Casap, an Educational Evangelist for Google. You can find his talk from NC New Schools Project training below - which based on the CRAZYNESS happening on Twitter from his talk at ISTE was pretty similar. Then I wrote our AVID Site Plan (WOOT!) and we had a celebration/sob fest about presentations and the resignation of our AWESOME chemistry teacher and competition clubs director (aka king or something like that). We rode elevators in all the cool hotels in Atlanta!

Day 4

BEST DONUT EVER! #vegan #local #revolutiondonut

FINAL DAY of ISTE! After a VERY slow morning, I wandered around tables and learned about the Book Creator app. Then I went to an AMAZING session by Philip Vinogradov on gamification. I'd had this scary misconception that I needed to be able to play and make and program and code and be awesome at video games to gamify my classroom. Philip's session showed me that gamification is WAY less scary, way more aligned with UbD, AVID, and NCNSP than I thought!!!! SO, now I'm gonna gamify all the things!!!! WOOT! Or, well, start with ONE unit! I JUST LOVE that Philip does his gamified quests in Google! When a student is ready for the next quest/level/journey, he shares the next view only Google folder with them! BAHHH! I also love his testing policy where students sign up to test! I cannot WAIT for NCCAT next week - I think my goal will be to gamify a unit to see how it goes. Philip's prezi with links to AWESOMESAUCE resources is below :-).

After that session, I went to one on Culturally Responsive Technologies which I had to leave from early so we could get home to Sanford but what I was there for seemed neat. 

The best part of the trip home was definitely stopping at Revolution Donuts. AHHHHH FIRST DONUT IN 7 YEARSSSSS! NOMSSSSSSSS. I ate three...

#ISTE2014 Days 1-2: Self-Care, SAMR, and massive crowds and burritos

I'm at ISTE 2014 in Atlanta!!!

Disclaimer: If you just want some potentially useful resources, just read Day 2 :-)

Day 1

The conference kicked off with a 6.5 hour drive, good music, and a super smooth registration sign up intermixed with running around like crazy trying to enter in secret codes from the ISTE 2014 networking game... :-).

I was immediately inspired by some wonderful ladies at the Future Friendly Schools table. They let me take 5000 free things including the postcards that I'm going to give my Art Showcase kiddos for inspiration. Future Friendly Schools is a part of TakingITGlobal which has awesome PD and resources that I fully intend on using in AVID and Earth and Environmental Science (including an AWESOME app that I want my students to use for a semester long project on sustainable choices--which I think might augment the lowtech version we'd been doing... #SAMR).

Ashley Judd's opening session was refreshing - it was basically like being at yoga teacher training again... :-). Also, I'm totally going to start wearing orchids in my hair...

ISTE 2014 has 18,000 attendees which led to some brief paranoia about "what if there was a fire" and other dumb scenarios that are really NOT beneficial to entertain when you are in this:

Day 2

Liz Wiggs (rapper name/twitter handle @e_wiggy) and I kicked off the morning at an AMAZING session, "Learning, technology, and the SAMR model: Goals, processes, and practices" with Ruben Puentedura. This session was pretty mind-blowing and left me with lots to think about. Dr. Puentedura used the analogy of looking for a resource-rich valley to desribe how technology can be used with purpose in the classroom. 

After the AVID conference and after discussions with my tech-savvy students, I've been contemplating the value of taking notes by hand or on the computer.

I've also re-confirmed that the Cornell note process is pretty invaluable because without it, I manage to forget ALL THE THINGS.

Gotta have it all! Especially the content and pedagogical knowledge :-)

Resources: 

• AWESOME article called "The pen is mightier than the keyboard" that I need to finish reading...
• Mueller and Oppenheimer suggest that the problem with typed notes is that students skip the processing part of note-taking
• My ideas for taking and making notes in the Cornell way on a computer are here.



Not a good photographer... AT ALL

• Ruben Puentedura's site.

After that session, I got inspired by Adam Bellow to take my first selfie ever and slow down in the classroom so students have time to take concepts and technology and create actually useful, authentic products to synthesize what they've learned. I also went twitter crazy and stalkerly followed EVERY person Mr. Bellow suggested. #developingmyPLN #awesomesauce

Resources:

• Adam Bellow's site "eduTeacher"
• Edcamp.org
• Student film festival
• JUST ALL THINGS TWITTER! ("Twitter was like the faculty lounge we didn't have" or something along those lines...)
• pixelpress...SOUNDS AWESOME!
• 81Dash
• This video...made me cry. And I didn't cry from The Fault in our Stars OR the 7th Harry Potter:

Then, I crammed a massive burrito bowl down my throat in a session about taking tech schoolwide. And now it's time to wander.

And remember being "just" a teacher means you make a whole lot of impact :-)

The summer so far...

Hey! Welcome to my non-classroom blog on all the random thoughts and experiences I have as a beginning teacher!!!

In May I finished my first full year of teaching. It was a year full of trying to do all the things, blogging all the lesson plans (my baby/first blog is here), letting myself (sometimes accidentally) fail (First Attempt In Learning) and reflect, and benefiting from the support of the AMAZING faculty and administration I work with at Lee Early College in Sanford, NC. It was truly a year of wonderful opportunities - I attended NC New Schools New Teacher Institute, AVID Path Training, and Scaling STEM. I led clubs and became a PLC leader. SO, it was a whirlwind which was well-celebrated with an awesome brownie on the last day of school before I headed out to the mountains to take Climate Change Ecology at Highlands Biological Station.

Local strawberries + coconut ice cream + chocolate +
the coolest candle on Earth =
Best celebration ever 

Hunting for moths which are a proxy for air pollution.
We didn't have many moths at this point :-).

Two days after the school year ended, I drove up to Highlands, NC where I was fortunate to take Climate Change Ecology with professors who let me turn my papers into blog posts I could use in my classroom. I got to be engaged in real scientific research that will provide baseline data as scientists study how climate is changing and the role humans play in these changes.

After finishing the course, I slept for a week (and ate chocolate from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge which is DEFINITELY relevant to resilience as a teacher... and went to LOTS of yoga classes). Then, I worked with Elizabeth Wiggs and a bunch of other great teachers from our district to train teachers in Understanding by Design. I led a session on Essential Questions and another on how to use UbD posters in the classroom (#transparency). It was reengerizing to work with teachers who were SO excited to enhance their classroom teaching! I learned a lot from working with them!!! Lee County Schools rocks!

Then, I went to the AVID Summer Institute at Dallas with the best team of teachers ever! Despite thunderstorms, no Wifi (whattt????), and the constant battle with summer burnout, we got SO much done! We are well on our way to implementing AVID with fidelity at LEC! #truthisnotanattitude #theCornellway

A major take away from conferences and professional development so far is that we teachers love stickers and coloring and toffee...

Practicing our Cornell notetaking...