The Journey of TEDxDePereMiddleSchool...So Far!

At the end of last school year a colleague of mine, the great and wonderful Adrianne Burns, began doing Genius Hour with one of her math classes. She had mentioned how she thought it would significantly upgrade their effort on presenting if we were to do a TEDx conference for them to showcase their projects. Thus, the idea was planted. After some conversations with my unofficial TEDx mentor, Jimmy Juliano about his involvement in the very successful TEDxLFHS, the idea was born. We would be doing a TEDx at my middle school if I had my way!

I began the year with seven distinct goals in mind. One of these was creating a TEDx event. As the year progressed, however, it seemed to drift further and further away. Other initiatives (otherwise known as my day job) pushed the idea of a TEDx aside. It seemed too big to accomplish myself, yet I was wary of bringing in other teachers and putting more on their plate. As February drew to a close, TEDx was about to go out the window.

But at that point, I decided to call a meeting of the dedicated (or crazy) educators who wanted to follow this vision with me. We discussed everything - our shortened timeline, expectations for the event, and how we would procure student speakers. Out of that lunch meeting the TEDx process starting rolling, and hasn't stopped yet. 

We introduced the idea of TEDx to our students just before our Spring break at the end of March, and they had three weeks to put together a short application that included a general topic idea and a short video to display their speaking ability and why they wanted to give a TEDx Talk. Our theme is "My Unique Contribution to the World". If anything, it is a celebration of individuality for the 20 students who have been selected. During this time, we also began reaching out to members of the local community to fill five potential slots we had in mind for them. As of writing, we are at four and still searching for one more inspiring member to share their idea worth spreading!

The interest from students surpassed our expectations! Even with the short time frame, we had 27 different submissions. Because some students proposed in pairs, that means nearly 40 students were involved in the process. As mentioned above. we were limited to accepting 20 students due to time and schedule constraints, and we had to make some tough cuts. 

So here we are. We have students. We have community members. We have one month. May 27th is fast approaching and we have a lot of work left to do. After all, we want this event to be an amazing experience. Very few middle schools have run a TEDx event, but the hope is it will not feel like a middle school event at all.

What's next for our team? Most important, we have to coach and mentor the students to make their talks professional quality and TED worthy. The day of schedule has to be determined, and we need to figure out just how many volunteers we'll need. In addition, we want to feed the people who attend, so that is a task and a half to accomplish. Speaking of attendees, we can only have 100. Promoting this event to get to that number will be important, but designing an event that keeps them there for an entire Friday will be another task entirely!

Our social media pages and website continue to need work. I am fairly comfortable with my tech skills, but trying to build those out hasn't been easy and I am still not happy with their look.

We have a sign in the works. Our tech ed teacher built a small stage. To show how big this is getting, we even have our secretaries getting involved to make curtains to cover the 27 windows in our library media center so we can get as close to a theater setting as possible.

We have nearly 20 staff members involved in planning this event, with a potential addition of 5-10 student volunteers. 

And best of all, any purchases right now are currently being funded by the Bank of Josh. My principal is working hard on funding and partnerships, but we're limited on just how much we can do if we don't find another source besides my wallet. However, I am committed to making this event as awesome as possible and I will continue to do what it takes to make it happen.

In the end, it really comes down to giving our students an opportunity to share their voices, their passions, and themselves with the world. We might only have 100 people in the room, but the event will be live streamed and recorded forever. This is something they can look back on and be proud of. They can use this as they apply for competitive organizations, colleges, and careers. This event is a way to showing students that we want to provide them opportunities that transcend academics but incorporate all of those skills they are learning in their classes.

TEDxDePereMiddleSchool is going to be amazing. With amazing student involvement and amazing staff involvement, it can't help but be that. Hopefully you'll get a chance to join in, whether physically or virtually. And maybe, just maybe, you'll be crazy enough to try and make this happen where you are.

Adventures in Personalizing Professional Development, Act 1

Whew...what a month!

In fact, to give you an idea of how crazy February was, I haven't gotten around to writing this blog post for nearly two weeks!

Back in December, I attended the TIES conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was incredible. This was where I finally put the pieces together for something I wanted to try, as it related to Professional Development at my school. The catalyst? A great session on gamifying PD by Dr. Anthony VonBank. He spoke on how he tried a "March Madness" tech challenge with his teachers. You can see his wonderful slides here.

This, combined with hearing about the Gurnee district wide Tech Trek, I was equipped to go to the principals in my 5-6 and 7-8 buildings and propose a plan for February. That month was chosen due to a lack of days off, a well-placed late start at the end of the month, and the overall drag February is on everyone's psyche.

As February began, we put together a website, with challenges, teams, points, and prizes. Everyone was in the game, including aides and office staff. You can see our Fired Up for February Challenge here. I had a little fun with graphics and I also built a mail merge using formMule into our submission form so that the staff would get fun messages as a confirmation for their submissions:

Philosoraptor is always good for a laugh

The last piece, which was the biggest part for me, was that if teachers were going to invest their time in this, we needed to provide some rewards. In the future, ideally, we would great a progression or threshold in which all teachers could earn a reward if they surpassed the threshold. We settled on a compromise of top three rewards for individuals and teams at both buildings. Even better - both of our admin included prizes for individuals of "subbing" for that teacher's class. Awesomesauce.

When February launched, I was incredibly nervous. Would people give it a try? Would it make sense? Would this even have an impact? Needless to say, I was floored.  Over 70% of the staff involved (nearly 130) contributed something for the challenge. Keep in mind about 5% or less had attended one of our 14 after school sessions offered in the Fall. 

Our challenges asked teachers to reflect on their tech usage and look at it through the lens of SAMR (if you aren't familiar with it, you can learn more here). Here was the break down on what people submitted for:

The best part of this entire graph (the point breakouts aren't too surprising) is the large amount (one in every five submission) of leadership points. I wanted to weigh this heavily because I really wanted people to start branching out. Attend edcamps. Participate in Twitter chats. Share with staff. It is safe to say I am more than happy with the amount of teacher leadership I was able to witness. In the end, that can only benefit kids.

In total, there were almost 1000 submissions during the month of February of different things teachers were doing with technology. Since my initial focus was on the tasks being "new" things the teachers were trying, several more that are already integrating a lot didn't submit things they were doing (something to work on the future to make it more equitable). In any case, it was an incredible step forward for our staff.

You can see how I feel about it. But the big question is, how did the staff feel?  To find out, I surveyed the staff. 55 responded, giving me a fairly solid statistical significance. Here are some takeaways.

1.  This beats regular professional development. People crave choice. Edcamps are awesome and very successful. Twitter could be the best PD out there. Letting people choose what and when they learn is powerful. (For more ideas, I highly recommend purchasing "PersonalizedPD" by the Bretzmann Group):

2.  Teachers want to do this again. I believe the collaborative and competitive aspects, combined with the rewards for the efforts of teachers and the way this made our culture fun around technology, made this something that teachers, for the most part, enjoyed:

3.  Our late start format might be onto something. In late January, I had the privilege of being involved in the first ever Tundra Ed Tech Tool Slam.  The premise was simple - 10 presenters would demo a tech tool for 5 minutes. Then, there would be an hour for collaboration and deeper conversations. It was AWESOME. So, I modeled our February 24th late start after this. We were able to combine both of our buildings, and we had 11 teachers/teacher groups willing to share. Then, after that, we did five rounds of "Speed Dating" where teachers could rotate tables and have deeper discussions about the tools and strategies. To sum it up, I hear the same message from many teachers: "I've been in this district a long time. This was the best PD day we've ever had"

4.  We don't do enough.  We don't provide enough opportunities to learn in a variety of ways. We don't provide enough technology devices. Clearly, this was a positive experience, but several teachers commented that they don't want to commit much to tech integration when they know they can't have devices every day. While I still believe it is important, I can't fault people for feeling that way.

5.  Flipped learning is just one piece of the pie.  Like with anything personalized, everyone has different likes and interests. Professional development is no different. My favorite part of this graphic, however, is the number of teachers who said they prefer after school sessions. The amount if 11. Only 8 teachers/staff from my two buildings attended one of the 14 after school sessions offered in the fall. I guess I'm not sure what to take from that. Bad timing I suppose.

A lot more feedback is contained on the form. I am reserving the right to craft another post to include a few more graphs and a lot more specific comments from my colleagues.

What we achieved in February could be the start of something incredible. Hopefully, we can expand this so that the other 4 schools in our district can also take part. Perhaps more important, I hope we can make it part of what we do. Instead of being contained to a single month, I'd like to see a longer term "challenge" in which teachers can earn valuable rewards, like a period or two covered. I would also like to build in a progression, so teachers can do down different strands and build skills in a specific category.

If you have any say at all in the professional development in your schools or districts, I truly believe you should try something like that. You can certainly contact me and I'd be willing to help however I can to assist you in implementing this type of PD for your schools.

Thanks Zaption for Sponsoring #edcampGB 2015!

If you've ever had an opportunity to experience the great professional development that is edcamp, then you need you also thank the multitude of companies that offer their resources and support to make these events happen.

EdcampGB (Green Bay) 2015 was blessed with many sponsorships. One of the great edtech companies supporting us this year is Zaption!

If you aren't familiar with Zaption, they are an online tool that can take videos to the next level by allowing you to add videos, pictures, drawings, and questions that need a response. The videos can be trimmed, and you can import them from a ton of different websites:

If you want to add any of the additional features I mentioned above somewhere in the video, you can do so by simply clicking and dragging the icons, and pulling them over the video when it is stopped at the point you want it to be.  It will appear on the timeline below the video where it will appear. Certain features, like the response, require an answer before the video will continue:

After you've added all of your wonderful goodies and trimmed your video, you can publish this "tour" for use with the world! One of the publishing options is to share it directly to Google Classroom. Talk about saving time and being efficient!

 You can even embed it on websites. My example is below: (NOTE - the embedding feature was causing my blog to jump, so I took it off)

www.zaption.com/tours/5632371384ce4c4479d40600

Zaption is simple to use and provides some great options to take videos to the next level.  If you are interesting in flipping your class, or you just want to get better formative assessment out of videos you have students watch, Zaption is a must use tool!

Hold Me To It

It has been a crazy start to the year.  In the midst of all of this, I've developed seven goals I would like to accomplish this year.  All I ask is you help hold me to it.

Here are the goals I've developed. They are a mix of personal and professional goals which aim to improve my school, upgrade the abilities of my colleagues, students, and myself, and improve my well-being:

It is a long year, and it is easy to get dragged down by minutiae That is why, in my mind, it is crucial that I have clear, stated goals. Anything worth accomplishing was never accomplished alone.  I'll need all the help I can get, all the support I can get, and all the accountability I can get. By publicly stating my goals, everyone is aware of what I am working towards.  This puts the kind of pressure on me that I need!

Reaching all of these goals isn't impossible.  They all require slightly different approaches, different timelines, and different levels of support. But, they won't get done if I don't work hard to accomplish them, for my students, my colleague, my school, and myself.

All I ask is that you help hold me to it.

Oreos, Late Night Runs, and The Importance of Being Driven

Tonight, in a moment of weakness. I ate an Oreo.  Then another.  In total, I ate 6 Oreos.  Now it may not seem like many, but calorie wise, that is a 420 calorie hit at a time when I should be asleep.  Now, to many people, that may not be a big deal, but let me provide a short backstory.

Nightmare Fuel

Back in January of 2011, while I was student teaching, I suddenly realized, while eating a gigantic bag of Reese's Pieces, that I really needed to stop. I took that moment to weigh myself, and was horrified to see I weighed 242.  Only a few years prior to this, I was in the 180s and 190s and totally happy. So, I made a point to restrict my eating.  I didn't add a whole lot of exercise, but as I was student teaching, I was up and moving most of the day anyways.

By the following Spring, I had managed to get down to 195. I was excited, happy, and ultimately, in a place that I was okay with. However, if you will notice above, there wasn't really any exercise routine in place, and honestly, getting down to that weight was a "victory" and, after accomplishing that, quit focusing on the things that made the diet successful.

Fast forward a few years to late December, 2014.  After eating a big breakfast buffet, my wife and I decided to have Mexican for lunch.  Afterwards, I can remember feeling the same explosive feeling in my stomach like I couldn't possibly hold anymore, and that sensation that I had lost all control over my weight.

So I made a commitment to start anew. However, this time it was different. Later that week, I had dinner with my parents, aunt and uncle, sister, brother and sister in law.  That night, we hatched a plan to do a family "Biggest Loser" competition.  My wife joined in, and soon, we were off to the races.  After a week of no pop, cutbacks to eating, I weighed in for the first time at 223.  

The competitive side to things always kept me focused, and, in the ultimate geeky move, I actually kept a spreadsheet to track where I could end up if I kept on the same calorie in/calorie out schedule.  But, the real turning point came in the form of the weekly challenges we had in our competition.  No pop week (I went two months without any).  Drink half your body weight in ounces of water per day week.  Exercise at least 30 minutes 3 days a week. No fast food.  These were key things, because, while I didn't meet every challenge, they forced me to make LIFESTYLE changes, not just eating changes. 

Somewhere along the way, I started using a pedometer to track my workouts.  As I tinkered with the math on my spreadsheets, I settled on a number of calories burned that would allow me to eat a certain amount but still burn at least a couple pounds a week.  This was really the turning point, because now, the obsessive compulsive person in me could not only track what I was eating through looking at plenty of nutrition labels, but now I could track what I was burning.

And thus, for a bulk of the competition, I was looking to get my pedometer to read "1000 calories burned" every day.  Thankfully, my job allowed me to keep moving and I did a lot of standing, walking, and walking in place around the house, as well as the Wii Fit.  Recently, I even added running to my repertoire and have competed in a couple of races.

So that brings us to now.  This morning, after a pretty up and down summer with A LOT of eating, I weighed in at 184. Tonight, I went outside and ran for about 15 minutes. I couldn't come to grips with the fact that I would just eat those Oreos and go to sleep. I empowered myself to take action.  It might be too obsessive, but that works for me. Deep inside, my biggest fear is waking up one day, and seeing myself back at those heavy weights again.  It drives me to keep thinking about the calories and keep focusing on exercising.

This can be applied to so many things in life. Having a chip on my shoulder about events that have happened in the past is part of what makes me the person and educator I am.  Whether it is helping to educate the next generation, helping teachers, being a good husband, or being healthy, it is crucial to always be thinking about what is driving me. What is the point?  Because if there isn't a point, then we're all working pretty hard for nothing.

As for me, I know what I am working for, and it is that drive that keeps me going.

Having Faith Vs. Being a Skeptic

Cholesterol is bad for you, and then it isn't.

Research says vaccines might cause autism, and then it turns out the doctor was a fraud.

There are countless situations in life like this, where things are generally accepted, and then the next day, someone else comes along and disproves that notion.  While I was out running last night, I really got to thinking about the baskets some of us are putting all of our eggs in.

In teaching, many of us are so convicted in what is best for kids.  Less or no homework. Student centered environments. Technology rich activities. Project based learning.  In some cases, freedom to explore, like Genius Hour. There might not be any research that supports some of these things but we feel it is right and take it on that feeling and faith that doing these things will be better for our kids in the long run. In fact, I tend to agree more with the Sudbury and Montessori models of schooling than the traditional models of our public schools.

But what if Genius Hour becomes the next Pluto? What if someone somewhere researches it and determines that actually, it hurts kids and they are worse off for the future? Would we still be as convicted towards that as before, or would we drop it altogether?

For instance - a lot of articles have come out recently saying that kids' retain more when they handwrite, as oppose to type. Even some teachers back this up, saying their students have done poorly on assessments when they type things like sight words, as opposed to writing them out.  I still believe in doing things electronically, even in the face of that. Is that blind faith of mine hurting students? Should that really be something I continue to support?

It's not like there aren't positives to more classical teaching methods. But, because I don't prescribe to them and don't like them myself, I don't support them.  Yet, in the end, research may end up supporting those as being better for kids than the horses I am backing, like flipped learning or the Maker movement.

I don't have a great answer here, even though I wish I did. I'll continue to be passionate about revolutionizing our schools and classrooms, and being innovative with tools and strategies to make school a place that kids enjoy being for more than lunch, recess, and friends. Even in the face of little to no research that supports these practices, I feel as convicted about doing this as anything in my life.  The question is:  am I putting my faith in the right things?  I may never know...

In the end, what are the things that matter?  Is it about the way we teach, or the fact that we are working hard to provide great learning experiences and opportunities for students? Should it really be of concern which method is "better"? Maybe it should be.  We talk a lot in education about preparing students for the future with little clue as to how to most effectively do that.

So, when it comes to why I put my hopes and energy into the teaching movements and strategies I do, the biggest reason is that I believe they do prepare students better for the future we have no understanding of. My only wish is that someday, somehow, I can see some sort of proof that I'm on the right side.

Truth be told, that will probably never happen. And that's okay. I'd rather put my faith in things that give me reason to believe that life can be great for everyone.

Building an Amazing Race Activity!

A lot of people have been asking me about an activity I have used called "The Amazing Race".  I've used the strategy at two professional learning sessions and an Edcamp, and it has been very successful all three times. Therefore, I'd like to continue spreading the love of what I feel is a worth while activity design for a multitude of uses.

First though - full disclosure - the Amazing Race style of content acquisition/discovery was NOT my idea. I learned about it at the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View in 2014.  However, after creating my own, I have a better handle on the design that could potentially go into creating one of these.

The idea of the Amazing Race activity is to get participants owning the learning and exploring in a collaborative and competitive environment.  You might think it is similar to a webquest - I find it to be a vast improvement.  In my set up, the challenges are all points on a map. Students are giving a link to the first challenge, and upon finishing, fill out a form to receive the link to their next challenge.  The following goes into more detail on the planning and thought process side of things.

Step One:  Use Google MyMaps.
I don't know what it is about Maps, but something about them is just incredibly engaging. You could technically do an activity like this without it, but I'm not sure it would hold the same appeal.  My Maps gives you a lot of flexibility in putting clues in different places on a map.  This would be very natural for social studies and geography classes to utilize this tool, but I could see any class use this as a way to revamp the way content is acquired.

Step Two:  Start a planning document.
This is a necessity.  If you are going to have students or participants going to multiple places and filling out multiple forms (as I have), then you are going to have to keep yourself organized. I highly suggest creating a Google Doc with the links for each step.  Click here for an example.

Step Three:  Determine what you want to have students/participants do
An Amazing Race style activity fits perfectly in the flipped classroom. While it isn't the most time friendly of flipped classroom methods, it certainly can be one of the most engaging.  In the above example planning doc, the goal was to have teams of people who haven't really worked together collaborate, and eventually gain some comfort with MyMaps.  I have also done it where participants learn a bunch of different skills. The competitive nature of the "race" helps all participants take it seriously and give it their all. Here is the planning document for an Amazing Race session I ran where participants gained experience with Google Classroom, Kaizena, Flubaroo, and Plickers.

Step Four:  Think about time
In both cases I ran this, I had an hour, in which I also wanted to have some time for reflection.  Both times, it was about the right amount of time. I wish I could offer some guideline in figuring out how long these could take, but ultimately, it depends on the audience and what you'll have them do.  The best piece of advice I can give is to make sure your challenges are chunked in small pieces so participants, at least at the beginning, can feel success and, depending on how quickly they move through the race, get key information and learning regardless of how far they make it.

Step Five:  Consider tutorials
In order to better help the variety of participants I had in a technology training session, I incorporated visual directions on each challenge that essentially walked the participant through exactly what they should do. While there are some cases where you might not want to do that level of detail (for instance, if this is some kind of assessment review), I found it to help sell participants on the face that I wasn't direct instructing them on how to do some of the tech skills.

Step Six: Test it out
Have a friend or colleague go through your Amazing Race and ensure that all the links work correctly and that the directions make sense.

Step Seven:  Unleash and Have Fun!
I guarantee that the day(s) that you run this activity in your class will be intense and enjoyable for everyone.  Designed correctly, and you'll be giving students an opportunity to really experience the "4 C's" in a more authentic way as well as providing a memorable experience that will not only allow them to take more ownership over the learning, but can be differentiated because of the flexibility within the directions.

If you are interested in doing an activity like this but want a little more help, you can reach out to me at mrgfactoftheday@gmail.com, +Josh Gauthier on Google Plus, or @mrgfactoftheday on Twitter. Truly, I believe this could be an "amazing" experience for your class. Looking forward to hearing about how you'll use it!