How to Create A PLC with Google+ Hangout

G+hangout logo-featured

I critiqued the “top-down vision of innovation in schools” in a post Innovations in Teaching and Learning: Top Down or Bottom Up?

Want to find out more about instructional innovation in action? That won’t cost you a thing either. Just jump on my Twitter feed and you find superb teachers willing to share their latest student projects. And that free flow of information contrasts with a second “top-down” approach to innovation in schools – the professional learning committee. Imagine being told that, “teachers will now attend PLC meetings.. and don’t forget to fill out the PLC report form and turn it in to your administrator.” No one at the top seems to notice that teachers who want to network have already created their own “bottom-up” support systems via the social web.

PLCs for singleton teachers?

A recent post by high school physics teacher Casey Rutherford, describes how he used Google+ Hangouts (free video conferencing) to create his own PLC. A Physics PLC: Collaboration at a Distance. Casey writes:

This year my school district, like many others, implemented PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) as the driving force behind how we collaborate to help students learn. The directive was that all teachers should meet in a PLC weekly for approximately 30 minutes. This sounds, and can be, great, but I had a problem. …. For 7 years I had been the only physics teacher. …

Enter Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter almost two years now, and I have learned more on Twitter in these two years than the previous six, which included a masters degree. Among other things I have managed to build a pretty awesome PLN (Personal Learning Network) that includes a couple hundred incredible physics and math teachers from around the country.

Casey posted a tweet with a link to Google doc soliciting members for his online PLC:

My name is Casey Rutherford. I am entering teaching for the 8th year, my 7th teaching physics, and my first using Modeling Instruction. I have a relatively odd request.

My school is implementing PLCs, certainly a worthy task. The problem is that at this point there is not a logical person with whom I would form a PLC. Thus my request. I am wondering if any of you would like to form an online PLC with me, working together approximately 30 minutes/week to compare student work. My thought is that we can do a lot with formative assessments, using photos of student whiteboards to form the basis for our conversations. I am, however, open to other ideas as well. …

What follows is Casey’s step-by-step description of how his team used a G+ Hangout to manage their PLC sessions. It includes details about managing the Hangout, using it to analyze student work, and building meaningful collegial relationships. It’s a very helpful post for anyone looking for practical information on using G+ Hangouts. 

Rutherford-g-hangout

Hat tip to Marshall Memo for leading me to Casey’s piece.

Screenshot credit / Casey Rutherford

Why Do Teachers Ask Questions They Know the Answers To?

The Future will not be multiple choice
The Future will not be multiple choice

A while back I posed 13 Subversive Questions for the Classroom. Here’s the first five:

  1. If a question has a correct answer, is it worth asking?
  2. If something is “Googleable” why would we spend precious class time teaching it?
  3. When we ask students to summarize, do we actually want to know what’s important to them?
  4. What do you suppose students think they are supposed to be doing when we ask them to analyze?
  5. Do you ever ask your students questions you don’t know the answer to? Why not?

Here’s a TEDxCreativeCoast video – The Future Will Not Be Multiple Choice – that answers those questions and showcases the power of a PBL / design-based approach to learning. Turn curricula into design challenges, classrooms into workshops and teach students to think like designers.

While you watch it, try to think of a meaningful career that looks like filling out a worksheet.

DIY Textbooks With iBooks Author

textbook screenshotA recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette caught my eye. “North Hills Teachers Write a Textbook for Online Curriculum”

In eighth-grade social studies classes at North Hills Junior High School, there’s no sleeping through videos, no hiding in the back of class to avoid being called upon and no student excuses about forgetting the textbook, notes or class materials. That’s because just about everything students use for class is online, including the textbook, which was written this past summer by social studies teachers Rich Texter, Joe Welch and Larry Dorenkamp. It was edited by reading teacher Jill Brooks, who made sure it was written at the appropriate reading level. The result is the students spend their class time multitasking with technology… More

The best way to motivate our students was to get rid of traditional textbooks.

I invited the Rich Texter, one of the project teachers / textbook developers, to do a guest post on the project. He kindly supplied some screenshots and the following post. (Note: the textbook is not available on iTunes). Rich on Twitter

Textbook sidebarTwo years ago, Larry Dorenkamp was thinking about how cool it would be to teach in a classroom that enabled him to teach his students about Social Studies, and have the kids excited about learning it. In his opinion, the best way to do that would be to get rid of the traditional textbooks and jump on the technology train. So, Mr. Dorenkamp approached the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Assessment and Special Programs, Dr. Jeffrey Taylor, about the possibility of using a classroom set of MacBooks, instead of a traditional textbook. It turns out that Dr. Taylor was very intrigued by making the 8th grade social studies classroom a digital learning environment. After the initial meeting, we–the three 8th grade social studies teachers (Mr. Richard Texter, Mr. Joseph Welch, and Dorenkamp)–sat down with Dr. Taylor and the building principal, Beth Williams, for an informal discussion. We discussed our vision of how this digital classroom would look and how it would function. Dr. Taylor wanted to ensure that the learning needs of the students would be met, as well as–if not at a higher level–than in a traditional classroom. The vision was that this would allow the students to more freely explore the 8th grade curriculum, increase student engagement, enhance understanding, and critical thinking skills. Dr. Taylor had discussions with the school board about a pilot program of a Digital Based social studies classroom. The board approved the program and purchase three classroom sets of MacBooks and iPad 2’s for our classroom. The three social studies teachers collaborated, throughout the school year, to create activities that would engage students, while allowing them some options in choosing what they do. We also worked to build assessments that would allow students to do more than just measure memorizing dates, places and facts.

We can tailor our book to regional history. Plus, we can update it whenever we want.

When Apple came out with its iBook Author, we decided to write a 8th grade text that was custom-made for OUR students. We liked the idea that the book would be aligned to our curriculum at North Hills, and that it could be aligned to the state-specific standards that we need to cover, in Pennsylvania. Instead of using a book that was written to be marketable to big text book states like California and Texas, we wanted to provide the students with information that was more pertinent to Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania; we wanted to engage our students.

iBook builder allows you to make your textbook interactive; students can mark up the text and add their own notes. Bold words can be touched for an instant definition. If a student is struggling to pronounce a word, the book can speak the word for the student. Interactive maps and charts can be placed in the book, in addition to videos. We placed Keynotes, in certain sections, to highlight important information from a section. Interactive checks for understanding, that give the student immediate feedback, are at the end of each section and Unit.

The iBook continues to be a work in progress for us, we will continue to update the book to meet our needs. That is our favorite part of iBooks author as we need to update the book we can do it very quickly. So instead of waiting 5 to 10 years to be on cycle for a new textbook we can edit and update ours when ever we see the need.

textbook screenshot-1

Podcast: Reflections on Teaching Strategies That Work

I had a great time recording a podcast with Mark Hofer and David Carpenter for their series Ed Tech Co-Op. Go to show 26: Peter Pappas (Dec 9, 2012) via Web | iTunes 

If the art teacher taught art, the way I taught history, his students would be sitting there watching him paint.

Mark led off by asking me to reflect back on my some of the driving themes in my career. I confessed that as a novice teacher, I mimicked my experience as a high school student and taught primarily via lecture mixed with an occasional “guess what the teacher is thinking” whole-group discussion.

But I recalled an “aha” moment after repeated visits to the art class in the classroom next door. I realized that if the art teacher taught art, the way I taught history, his students would be sitting there watching him paint. I remember that got me thinking …

Our podcast continued with a lively discussion about what works in the classroom. Below are a few of the prompts they tossed at me. No ed theory or brain research in my responses. Just my candid and unrehearsed thoughts ranging from “why teaching should be the opposite of magic” to “how schools are not teaching good digital hygiene.”

  • Can you talk a bit about how you shift responsibility for the learning to the students. 
  • How did you support a constructivist model is information-laden, high stakes courses like AP / IB?
  • Did you get much push-back from your students and how did you deal with it? How do you deal with parents and administrators?
  • What do you say when teachers tell you “I’ve got so much to cover, I don’t have time for more student-based approach?”
  • Tell us more about your post “Why Johnny Can’t Search?” and how librarians and instructional technologists can partner to improve student information skills.
  • How is the analytic process different in different subjects – say science vs history?

See these posts for more on subjects raised in the podcast:

Stay tuned to Ed Tech Co-Op – a collaborative effort between the College of William & Mary, Alexandria Country Day School, and other educators interested in technology integration in K-12 classrooms.

Image credit flickr/ visual.dichotomy

Common Core Skills: Deeper Reading and Critical Thinking


First automobile on the Index-Galena road -1911

Across the county teachers are looking for lessons and resources to implement new Common Core standards. While some see Common Core skills as something new, most of these skills are exemplified in the well established, document-based approach to instruction.

  • Close reading of non-fiction
  • Interpreting primary source documents
  • Comparing multiple texts
  • Finding evidence and using it to support arguments
  • Recognizing historical context and point of view
  • Utilizing higher-level thinking to analyze and form judgements

As a long-time advocate of DBQ’s, I’ve re-posted sample lessons that demonstrate how to build student skills in literacy and critical thinking, while supporting mastery of the Common Core.

Lessons that demonstrate how to think and behave like a historian

Elementary – Interpret Using Summaring Skills 
US Westward Expansion on the Frontier

In life, we purposefully craft summaries for a specific audience (directions for the out-of-towner, computer how-to for the technophobe). In school, the tacit audience for most summaries is the teacher. If students are going to learn to summarize they need to be given a chance to genuinely share what they think is important for an audience other than the teacher.

Here’s a three-step summarizing process I followed in a second grade classroom using a popular Currier and Ives print from the mid-19th century. We scaffold the lesson from “right-there” observations, to telling what they think is important, to framing a summary.

Middle School – Recognize Historic Point of View
European Views of the New World

This lesson improves content reading comprehension and critical thinking skills and examines European views of Native American and the New World in the Age of Exploration. While it is a rather one-sided account, the documents also reveal a great deal about the cultural “lenses” that the Europeans “looked though.”

I developed this lesson to assist high school history teachers working with struggling readers. I wanted to show them how they could scaffold learning so that all students could participate in doing the work of historians. I built the lesson around a theme which was central to their curriculum. It was designed as an essential question that would engage students in reflection about how they allowed prejudice to color their perceptions. I selected images which could be “decoded” by students with a minimum of background knowledge.

High School – Analyze and Make Judgements
The Impact of Industrialization

The Industrial Revolution transformed humanity’s age-old struggle with material scarcity by using capital, technology, resources, and management to expand the production of goods and services dramatically. But while new technologies improved the American standard of living, industrialization concentrated great wealth and power in the hands of a few captains of industry. As economic growth increasingly touched every aspect of American society, it created both new opportunities and new social problems.

Three DBQ’s are designed to improve content reading comprehension through the examination of a selection of primary and secondary documents, graphics, cartoons, tables, and graphs. Each is keyed to a historic theme and focused on an essential question of enduring relevance. They are designed to demonstrate how student engagement can be “powered” by an essential question.

Secondary - Interpreting Primary Source Documents and Comparing Multiple Texts
Why We Fight: WWII and the Art of Public Persuasion

Designed as multi-touch student text, it focuses on the American response to WWII – especially the very active role played by government in shaping American behavior and attitudes. “Why We Fight” gives students a chance to step back to the 1940s and experience the perspective of Americans responding to the Pearl Harbor attack and WWII. Americans were hungry for information, and Washington responded with a PR blitz to sell the war to the American public.

The iBook provides access to the digital content, so users can remix the historic documents into their own galleries and projects. Students can use an iPad-friendly historic document guide to analyze all the source material and share their observations with peers and teachers. “Why We Fight” is filled with “stop and think” prompts keyed to Common Core State Standards and includes a student guide to learning from historic documents and links to a teacher’s guide to related activities and free iPad apps.

Image Credit: First automobile on the Index-Galena road, 1911 (Washington State)
University of Washington Libraries