Category: Thoughts (Page 8 of 17)

Formative Assessment

June 24, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

What do you use for Formative Assessment? A survey was sent out listing fourteen (that’s rigtht 14!) options. Now, this was just one survey, there are several of these out there.

What happens in a survey like this? Users usually will vote for their favorite – obviously. But what counts as their favorite? How many of those voters are really, intimately aware of the strengths and weaknesses of all fourteen options?

For those that are aware of the fourteen options, what did those users give up by researching and trying out all fourteen options? Teacher time is limited. Given that teachers not only need to develop lesson plans, create relationships with students, grade work, spend time with friends and family and so much more, who has time to review fourteen different formative assessment tools?

The reality is that few educators have the time and attention to really review that many options (and there are more that could have been included). That time would be much better spent developing skill in high quality formative assessments. Educators would be much better served delving into a high quality tool that allows for a variety of formative assessments. It isn’t quite as “shiny” and “sparkly” as looking at a bunch of “new” tools, but it can pay off in more focused student learning. Instead of reaching for broad strokes of surface learning, educators should develop some depth to the learning process.

Are you interested in the 14 options?

Answer Garden
Crowdsignal
Formative
Gimkit
Google Forms (the ultimate “winner”)
Kahoot!
Mentimeter
Padlet
Plickers
Poll Everywhere
Quizlet
Seesaw
Spiral
Other

Interesting, one of the comments included:

…isn’t as hackable by high schoolers like…

Out of the 14 choices, my favorite (Moodle) is not listed. Moodle does a great job with Formative assessment. However, there really isn’t a sales force pushing the product. Oh, and an educator may have to learn a bit about Moodle.

I’m really not against using paid, commercial products. I do think that we should understand why something is free.

Most of all, I believe that teachers and students are worth a little bit of effort to utilize tools that can effective and not merely “shiny” objects that don’t really impact learning.

Titles and Headings

April 25, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

ADA compliance is something that we should be working toward. I’ve trained many users on creating ADA compliant documents, but there is at least one thing that is really hard to explain. The difference between Titles and Heading 1.

In coded HTML, Titles are specified. Headings similarly specified. Titles and H1 are functionally similar, but have different purposes in HTML. When writing this by hand, each page written in HTML should have one H1 which functions as the page title. (The title tag is written out but not displayed).

Here is an example of the HTML and the result:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en"> <head> <title>Testing Heading Code</title> <meta name="generator" content="BBEdit 12.1" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is Heading 1</h1> In Wordpress, the Title is tagged as a Heading 1. <i>The Title Tag is handled outside a post, in the Theme appearance settings.</i> </body>
</html>

(*Notice that the browser tab has a different name (“Testing Heading Code”) than the “Title” (“This is a Heading 1”) on the page.

Impact

Basically, title tags appear in search engines, defines the title in browser toolbar, and provides the title for the page when bookmarked. It also becomes the link that the user clicks on in search engine results. (H1 tags normally do not appear in search engines.)
H1 tags are what the end user will see on the web page.

Very few people hand code pages that are displayed on the web. Almost everyone now uses a visual editor. Most use WordPress or are posting a document written in Google Docs (or Microsoft Word, etc).

ADA

This is all important because titles and headings are used by screen readers. This allows those with visual acuities to access material on the web. The use of headings is part of the ADA guidelines.

WordPress.

By default, the Title entered is an H1, so users just need to know to start with H2. I’m not even sure why H1 is really available¹ (except that you could have a theme that treats the post title different – ie. not an H1).

Google Docs

This one is harder. There are style sheets for a Title and a Heading 1. If you don’t use the Title style, ADA checkers will flag the document as not having a Title. If you use a Title AND a Heading 1, ADA checkers will also flag that have more than one Heading 1.
I don’t see a way to get to Document Properties (where you can enter a Title), without using an external ADA checker².

Citations

Just to make this even more interesting, headings are used in properly formatted papers. APA has a five level system of headings (plus a Level 0 which equates to a Title Heading). Thus, APA has a somewhat similar structure, but allows for multiple Heading 1 uses.

Conclusion

It really seems to me that we have a single construct trying to meet the needs and perspectives of many different situations. HTML was originally designed and structured (it is, after all, a highly structured approach) to meet a specific environment and use case. As the web was developed, the use case changed. Documents and accessibility became important. The landscape and users of HTML have fundamental shifted.

WordPress seems to have addressed this situation with the latest version of Gutenberg.

¹ If you use the Gutenberg editor, H1 is not available in the visual editor. So, maybe this is being addressed and solved.

² Grackle Docs is an extension that does really nice, complete ADA checking.

Motives

April 19, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

Should I care about your motives? What if I’m a teacher and you are offering me a service? Should I care then?

Teachers are consider parents in the eyes of the law. Teachers can act “in loco parentis” (in place of the parent). This means that teachers are making decisions for parents.

Teachers want to take advantage of popular tools. Teachers want to provide students with as many powerful opportunities as possible. These days, many of those opportunities are offered online. What if we don’t understand why that tool is being offered?

Privacy

Facebook has been in the news many times of the past several years. Facebook offers a “free” service. That is, Facebook doesn’t charge users for an account. Yet, Facebook is worth billions of dollars. Obviously, they are making money somehow. Do we, as consumers, understand what that means? Do we understand the power of information that Facebook has? Do we understand what Facebook is doing with that information?

Examples

Facebook has been in the news many times for privacy issues. Here are a couple of examples:

It turns out that Facebook has manipulated the emotions of their users (successfully) by changing the information that users saw. The Atlantic has a nice write up.

For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.

Facebook also shared private messages of users with some companies as well. Those messages were shared with more than 150 companies.

These are but just a coule in many privacy issues that revolve around Facebook. It’s turning out that your data is pretty powerful when it can be tied directly to you.

Facebook is just an example that most people are familiar with. Lots of companies are tracking and/or collecting data. The question is how do we understand this change. One thing that we can understand is that TV has always been free¹. TV was free because advertisers paid for the content. Those advertisers did research which kind of told them who the market was, but not individuals.

Services

So, let’s say that I offer a teacher a service. This is a great service that offers to help with classroom discipline. I offer it to all teachers for free. Why is it free? Should teachers know or care?

There are costs associted with all services. There are server costs, development costs, bandwidth costs, etc.

How does the company pay for those services? Generally, there are three broad categories of programs that are offered to teachers (and others). (I’ve written about this previously in Free vs Free vs Paid.

Passion project
Open Source
For profit

Passion projects

These are sites/applications that are paid for and shared by an individual (or group of individual) who do so as a hobby. Generally, they want to share with the world. This blog is an example. So is Middle School Matters, the Middle School Matters Podcast, and a few other projects that I’m involved in. I pay for the domain names and hosting because it’s my hobby. I’m certainly not alone in this.

Open Source

Open source projects are similar to passion projects. Really similar. Many open source projects start or exist as a passion project. The difference is that open source allows individuals (or companies) to change, enhance, or develop the project as well.

For profit

You pay to access or use a service. Here the model is pretty straight forward. You are paying so that someone can make a living.

Free

Teachers need to be aware that not all free sites are equal. Some are passion projects. Most are not. Many are not. Many are funded by Venture Capitalists. What does a Venture Capitalist do? A Venture Capitalist invests in a product with the intent of making money. How do these companies make money? Frequently, it is by selling the information that they collect.

Summary

So, should teachers care about the motives of those providing a service? I believe that we should. I believe that we should be making intentional choices. Gone are the days when advertisers marketed to a vast group of people. Now, we stil are not sure where and how the information being collected about us will be used. Now, I’m not in the “tin hat crowd”. However, I do think that we should be discussing and making thoughtful decisions about the services that we are offering.

1: At least until cable TV came in and we started paying for TV. Cable provided additional channels. Importantly for this discussion, that was a revenue model that allowed those channels to exist – even though they also showed advertisements.

Weekly Review

March 15, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

Podcast

Shawn McGirr and I have been recording, producing and sharing a podcast, Middle School Matters, for over ten years. I enjoy talking about education and middle school. Shawn is a really great teacher. He’s an even better person and friend.

The podcast is really the two of us talking about education and our experiences. We share tools, tips, and real world experience. Anyway, last week while doing a search on iTunes, we were a Top 15 podcast for K-12. Even better, we were a Top 5 podcast in the Education Technology category.

People

I was walking down a hallway on my way to read to a class (a bit more about that below), when I was stopped by a wonderful lady. She stated that she wanted to say something, but she was obviously very reticent. She paused. Then she said, “I really don’t want to offend you. You look very nice.” (For the sake of clarity and reference, I was wearing a simple blue suit with a fedora). I was just a bit surprised by her demeanor and the “not offend” part. Thus, I’ve forgotten exactly what she said, but the gist of it was that most people (men) don’t dress like that anymore. I do remember what she said next: “These days, you never know if you can say something or not.”

Here’s the thing. I can totally understand where she is coming from. As a male, I’m very conscious of saying the exact same thing to a woman (“you look nice”). Yes, I understand that there are multiple ways of saying that. As a previous middle school principal, I’ve had conversations about tone, emphasis, and how you say things more times than I can count. And certainly, I can use those same words to my wife in different ways.

The reality is that this nice lady made my day. I was offended. Quite the opposite, I felt good. The reality is that I don’t always tell people that they look nice. Even though I consider that an easy expression to spread a bit of joy. That doesn’t make the world a better place.

News

I used the line “Greed is good” (yes, I know that it’s not the full quote, but it is commonly referenced that way) as a cultural reference. Almost no one knew what that quote was or where it came from. Then later, came the news of college admission scandal. Will people see that the unmitigated glory of money and power is a problem?

Reading to Students

March is reading month. I shared the excellent book “We Don’t Eat Our Classmates” by Ryan Higgins. The students seem to enjoy the book. If you haven’t read it, go check it out.

Weekly Thoughts

March 6, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

Tech Directors

I met with some other Technology Directors. I got on my soapbox to discuss a variety of subjects. The Technology Directors that I meet with are a great bunch. They are working really hard to provide a positive learning experience for students. Most of them do not have a teaching background. The variety of experiences and perspectives makes for good discussion.

So, what were my soapbox moments? Well, a couple that I remember:

avoiding shiny things
pedagogy vs fun

I am passionate about avoiding “shiny things”. I get that we are human and we like shiny things. However, the problem is that these shiny things take away from important and crucial work. Instead of making inroads with skills, opportunities and resources that make a difference for students, we spend time looking at shiny things. It is much more insidious than one thinks.

The shiny things issue is related to the pedagogy vs fun issue. Too often educators get caught up in doing fun things rather than addressing sound pedagogy. Like shiny things, this is much more insidious than first blush.

I was also fascinated by a discussion about classroom set up. One of the participants was adamant about having a “wonderful” classroom set up. The set was one that I’ve seen in a few places. Multiple working “pods” that seat 6-8 students with a monitor at the end of the station. Usually there are 4-6 of these pods around the room. I don’t necessarily think that this is a “bad” set up; I just don’t think that there is anything really special about it. Students can group together in multiple ways. I think that they are far more likely to group around a much smaller screen (Chromebook, iPad, laptop) and collaborate.

We also chatted about trends in education. I may have shared my experience in teaching in an open concept classroom. The point was that trends in education can come and go. I was fascinated by one of the other Technology Director who wants to predict the “STEAM end” (i.e. when the current focus on STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math) will be replaced by something else.

Wes Fryer has a wonderful write up over at Moving at the Speed of Creativity. He talks about VLAN’s, switch management, fiber, MDM’s and more. These are things that many educators don’t understand but impact them every day.

Phones

I’ve spent a lot of time working on phones. Turns out implementing a new phone system has uncovered lots of potential issues. Some of these are long standing issues that we didn’t really realize were an issue. I’ve been dealing the following acronyms quite a bit:

PRI,
ISDN ISUP
DID’s
BCA’s

I also worked on installing some new phones. All these are things that I didn’t really expect to be working on ten years ago.

Personal

Good news from my daughter. I always love getting good news from the kids.

Moodle

I did spend a bit of time working in Moodle this week as well. I’ve been working on some professional development. As part of one of those projects, I was implementing the H5P Interactive Video content type and hit a bug. Turning on “Prevent Skipping forward…” means that the “Submit screen” doesn’t pop up. This is a known issue that was “fixed”. It did take a while to figure out the connection between “Prevent Skipping” and the “Submit screen”. I’m still not sure if the update fixed this or not. More testing is needed.

I also worked with Chris Kenniburg on course views in the Fordson Theme. He does a great job of focusing on student learning. I get to walk in and provide feedback on things that he is working on. I frequently reference “The Design of Everyday Things”.

A teacher also reached out to work on a Senior Mock Election project. A bit of updating (we did this last year), and we were all set. This is one of the efficiencies of doing things digitally.

Google

Every week involves Google in some fashion. This week I added some conditional formatting to some of the documentation that we use. The formatting that I added automatically shades a row yellow if we are putting the item on hold and green if we are actually working on it.

Next, I’m going to be adding checkboxes to the document. This will allow us to have a running record of items that are done and yet to be done. Plus, we’ll create two extra worksheets. One will automatically fill with items that are done. The other will fill with items that are, hold onto your hat, not done.

MoodleNet

February 27, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’m in! I’ve been accepted to be a MoodleNet tester. I’m excited as the opening video notes that

“Moodlenet is a new open social media platform for educators, focused on professional development and open content.”

This is one of those things that I definitely feel should exist. Currently, many teachers are using Facebook or Twitter for their professional development. I don’t feel like either of these are the right tools for professional development. Both are truly closed systems. Both seem to be geared for other experiences. Facebook uses algorithms that tightly control what you see. Twitter is a firehose of information where it is far too easy to miss important information.

Both Facebook and Twitter do have the advantage of the “network effect” (i.e. many people are already there). This has been one drag on Mastodon, it is hard to find a fully developed community.

So, Moodlenet addressing both issues (professional development AND open content has exciting possibilities.

Although it is still early, I’ll be sharing my experiences.

Embed Part of a YouTube Video in Moodle

February 26, 2019 / Troy / 8 Comments

I love to be asked how to do something. Especially, when it is “how do you…in Moodle?”

Recently, I was asked by a teacher how to embed part of a video in Moodle. The teacher wants the students to watch a bit of the middle part of a video on YouTube. Hm. I know how to have the video start at a certain point. I’ve done that frequently.

To start a YouTube video at certain point, click on the Share button. There will be a “Start at” box toward the bottom of dialog box. *As a bonus, if you scroll or watch until the time that you want to start the video, that time will be the default in the “Start at” box.

But, what about only playing a portion of the video? What about starting in the middle and stopping before the end? YouTube does not offer an easy, official way of doing this. However, YouTube is scriptable. The nice people over at Digital Inspiration (written by Amit Agarwal) have a very nice write up with the code that you need.

<div data-video = "VIDEO_ID"  
         data-startseconds = "100"         
         data-endseconds = "200"    
         data-height = "480" 
         data-width = "640" 
         id = "youtube-player">
    </div> 
    
    <script src="https://www.youtube.com/iframe_api"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      function onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() {
        var ctrlq = document.getElementById("youtube-player");
        var player = new YT.Player('youtube-player', {
          height: ctrlq.dataset.height,
          width: ctrlq.dataset.width,
          events: {
            'onReady': function(e) {
              e.target.cueVideoById({ 
                videoId: ctrlq.dataset.video,
                startSeconds: ctrlq.dataset.startseconds,
                endSeconds: ctrlq.dataset.endseconds
              });
            }
          } 
        }); 
      } 
    </script>

This code can be used in Moodle quite easily. Using the code above, you can put a video on a page in Moodle and have the only part of the video play. You can also put part of a video in Quiz question. I believe that you can place the video with the time restrictions anywhere that you have a “html” button in the Moodle editor. (I’ve confirmed the page and Quiz options.)

Here’s how to add the video on a page:

Add a new page using the Add Resource or Activity and then choosing “Page”.
Give the page a Name.
In the Contents section, click the “Show/hide advanced buttons” button on the editor to display more editing options.
Click the HTML button

Paste the code from above

Now change the code to match what you want.

You really only need to change the top three lines:

Copy and paste the last bit of the YouTube URL over the “Video_ID” (leave the quotation marks).
Enter the starting point for the video in seconds (you may need to do a bit of math here).
Enter the ending point (this is from the beginning of the video – again some math may be needed).

So let’s say that we wanted to focus on a part of the excellent video that Chris Kenniburg did. The whole URL for the video on YouTube is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5W1RVU7DKE. We want to focus on the Tuck Everlasting part from 1:50 (one minute and fifty seconds – 110 seconds) until 2:20 (two minutes and twenty seconds- 140 seconds). I want to play these 30 seconds for the students.

<div data-video = “u5W1RVU7DKE”
data-startseconds = “110”
data-endseconds = “140”

Now I could scroll to the bottom and click “Save and display”. If you want to do a bit of additional editing, you could click the “HTML” button again and add text, images, etc. (*Note that in my testing, the video does NOT display in the visual editor, but setting the cursor shows a big spot. I would add my text above or below where the cursor is flashing by hitting return and then typing above.)

If you want to change the size of the video on the page, you could adjust the data height and data width to different numbers. (However, 480 by 640 is a very standard size for good reason).

data-height = “480”
data-width = “640”

That’s it. Copy and paste a chunk of code. Copy and paste part of a URL. Enter the time to start and stop. Done.

If you find this useful, please let me know.

“Buyer” Beware

February 10, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

I often advocate for understanding what we are paying for. On another site that I’m involved with, Middle School Matters, I made the mistake of not following up on that. See, a long time ago, I set up Paper.li to create a newsletter. I entered some keywords and sites that we (I share the podcast with the wonderful and talented Mr. Shawn McGirr) generally support. Paper.li would create a “newsletter” and tweet the link out.

This worked pretty well for a long time. I stopped paying tons of attention to it, OK, I paid very little attention to it. Then, someone notified me that the Middle School Matters (MSMatters) twitter account was filled with hashtags that do not support my beliefs at all.

I was horrified. I quickly closed the account. However, I didn’t want to lose everything. Since I know that you have 30 days to resurrect an account, closing seemed the best thing to do.

Next, I looked at my options to delete tweets. Fortunately, I found Cardigan. Cardigan is an open source project (yea!) that allows you to delete tweets. I was able to look for the hashtags that I found offensive and delete those tweets. Cardigan is very clear about what is happening. After looking for specific hashtags, Cardigan clearly identified the tweets. Then, I could delete those tweets. I was informed that it may take some time.

So, now the twitter account is once again available. Paper.li is now dead to me. Lesson learned. Sometimes doing things the easy way is anything but.

When

January 22, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

When, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink is another in a great line of books by Mr. Pink. When continues on with the style of Mr. Pink’s previous books. This is a good thing. The book is extremely easy to read and follow.

The underlying theme of the book is that When we do things can have a great impact on what and how we do those things. As humans, we frequently discount the concept of when. Mr. Pink makes some great arguments for understanding the power of when.

The book begins with the Hidden Pattern of Everyday life. We learn about the power of napping (limit to about 29 minutes), resting, and socializing.

We move on to the power of Beginnings, Endings and In Between. Stories are told throughout the book to reinforce the concepts. These stories help cement the argument.

Finally, we get to Synching and Thinking. Here we learn about the power of being part of something larger than ourselves. We also get a peek at the impact of working together.

All in all, a very quick read. I enjoyed the information. The book has reinforced many things that I’ve learned in a variety of previous experiences as well.

Making a Difference

January 14, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

The following video was shared with me recently. I think that it is GREAT. It’s all about making a difference. We often don’t realize that we make a difference. I’ll let the video speak for itself.