Kolbe Gray
COOL TOOLS FOR SCHOOLS
For the DIY assignment, I selected to explore Flipgrid. I have created an account and worked with Mary, the ELA teacher and reading teacher in our district. We have created classes and brainstormed ideas for using this in the future. The reading teacher and ELA teacher recently piloted Flipgrid with our 8th graders. They used Flipgrid to give students the opportunity to provide book talks on the novels they selected to read. This gave students the chance to experiment with Flipgrid and get used to using it. In Social Studies, I will be using Flipgrid, unfortunately after my deadline, to have students select a city that is important in the Civil Rights Movement and highlight what happened in that city pertaining to this movement. For example, some students will be assigned Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, etc. They will used Flipgrid to create a quick video and tell the story of that city after we have covered the Civil Rights Unit. We are almost finished with the unit now. In the future, we plan on working together to incorporate Flipgrid into the interdisciplinary lessons that we already have in place. One example of this would be to have students use Flipgrid as a communication log between partners for group work. Students are allowed to work with others who are not in their classes as long as they can effectively communicate. This will be a fun way for students to communicate and it will serve as a communication log for us.
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Last year, I was introduced to Breakout EDU through this workshop and another training I attended. This year, I extended my use and knowledge of Breakout EDU. 8th grade students participated in a Breakout EDU for the Reconstruction Era, WWI, the 1920s, WWII, and an 8th grade family night. The 1920s Breakout EDU was part of an interdisciplinary unit on the 1920s. All 8th grade students took part in a Breakout EDU that used a series of codes, clues, primary & secondary sources & Google Forms locks. For example, students had to decode a secret message that said, "The only time the Constitution said jk." Once they decoded this message they had to transfer the message into a four digit numeric code on Google Forms. This code was 1821. The 18th amendment was Prohibition and the 21st amendment repealed the 18th. Once students broke into the Breakout EDU box, they received a password and secret knock to allow them access to a 1920s "speakeasy." The speakeasy was really a hallway decorated in 1920s theme. Students played 1920s games and ate popular 1920s food. Another highlight of the year, in terms of Breakout EDU, was the 8th grade family night. We had adults running down the hallways of our school to try to be the first to breakout. This was a great night for 8th grade families and really brought teachers and families closer together. Recently, I worked with two other colleagues to create a Breakout activity for our faculty and staff on a PD day. I truly believe this was the highlight of the PD day. Our PD day was the day before spring break so our administrator organized a candy bar as a reward. Just like the 8th grade family night, we had teachers running down the hall to get to the candy bar first. After the PD day, we presented at a faculty meeting to encourage other teachers to use Breakouts in their classrooms. I haven't had much luck with finding breakouts on BREAKOUT EDU, I prefer to make them on my own.
One of the main assignments for my SUNY Sociology class is a research paper on a sociological issue in American society. I went over the assignment with my students and explained the expectations regarding sources. I told them they needed to start with the databases. One of my students went to Mary frustrated about the fact that I simply told them to start with the databases. He indicated they had not used the databases since 8th grade. This was pure motivation for Mary and I to work together to “fix” this issue. The two of provided a detailed overview of the databases and how to utilize them. We went as far as reaching out to Fort Plain alumni and had discussions regarding their college/universities policy on research. All of the alumni we talked to indicated their research had to come from databases and be peer reviewed articles. Mary and I worked together to show our students how to limit what they are researching to peer reviewed articles or journals. We primarily used Opposing Viewpoints in Context because this worked wonderfully for my Sociology assignment. Mary also worked with our students using Gale Student Resources in Context. We were able to show students how to save to their Google Drives and access these articles from home. In addition, they were able to mark up the text using the databases and save their notes. Although, this took quite some time to complete and I lost instructional time, it was well worth it. I feel as if our students are better prepared for the next step in their educational career. In terms of long term planning, it was disheartening to learn of the multitude of reasons why students weren’t using databases. The main reason was because it wasn’t encouraged by their teachers. Mary and I will work together to attempt to change this. Students were using poor quality unreliable articles for class assignments. My hope is by the time I give this assignment again next year, this will no longer be an issue and databases will be the expectation.
My name is Kolbe Gray. I am a Social Studies teacher at Fort Plain Jr/Sr High School. I currently teach 8th grade Social Studies, Honors U.S. History and Government, SUNY Sociology & History of Sport.
1: What did you learn?
Since Mary & I decided to participate in Cool Tools for School together this year, I primarily worked with her to implement a lot of what we learned. Overall, I think my student's benefited from what I learned in this. A lot of the plans that we came up with to use with my 8th graders, the students really seemed to enjoy. I was continually shocked at how much they know in terms of technology. I did not branch out to others in this workshop, but maybe next time. We have participated in a mystery Google Hangouts and I would like to do that again in an attempt to break out of the four walls of my classroom and connect with other educators & classes. I mainly selected the topics that I thought would fit my curriculum and could be implemented to experiment with the topic. Most of these seemed to really work out well. 2: What’s next? I have some ideas for the future that include maker spaces in the library for my student's 20% projects and exploring the variety of the apps/programs to implement in my classroom. I do plan on sharing the things I learned with other members of the 8th grade team I am on and then maybe branching out to other teams. 3: Did you like learning this way? This is something I would most definitely participate in again. Technology changes so quickly that there are always new things to learn. I do like learning this way, it fits my needs and learning style. I liked being able to work at my own pace on my own time. I use classroom with my classes so it was nice to see how this works from the student perspective. :-) Thank you! In this lesson, I chose to focus on the article, 50 Ways to Teach With Current Events, from the Learning Network. As a Social Studies teacher, news literacy is something that is extremely important to me, as is connecting the past to present day and ultimately to the every day lives of my students. Fantasy Geopolitics is a fantastic way to get students interested in current events. It allows students to select a team of countries, in a very similar fashion to fantasy football, which is something my students love. They get points for how many times their country appears in news headlines and they compete with other teams. The first time I did this, my students were not prepared for the draft. Most of them had a good first round pick and then fell apart from there. The second time, it was a completely different story. Competition is something that really seems to drive my students. So, they did their research and came to the draft prepared the second time. Fortunately for me, doing their research simply meant they were watching or reading the news. The only problem with this is you only get so many accounts for free and then the fee is around $100 for additional accounts.
In addition to Fantasy Geopolitics, I also focused on connecting the past to the present in a recent lesson on the Korean War. So, after teaching the Korean War I asked students the question, Did the Korean War really end? I provided them with a NY Times article on the recent talks between North and South Korea and the United States' role in this. They then further explored current events to make a claim and support their claim with evidence from other current events. This is the link for the original article I provided my students with. www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/world/asia/north-korea-trump-nuclear.html For this lesson, I chose to work with the Do Ink Green Screen App. Mary purchased a green screen and a camera for the library. My 8th grade students were able to explore using the green screen and editing for a photo recreation project. Students were broken up into groups and had to pitch a project idea to a group of four teachers. Depending on their pitch, students were given or denied the topic of their choice. We then had students select a photograph from the Holocaust. Mary worked with my students to ensure they were properly citing their photos. Once they had selected and cited their photo, they then had to recreate a photo that showed the same emotion as their original photograph. Students were able to experiment with the green screen and a combination of techniques to recreate their desired emotion. They used the app as well, but some of them selected to use Photoshop. I was thoroughly impressed with the technological knowledge and skill of our students. Below are two of the examples for sadness and evil. The students had a lot of fun with this project and were able to show their creativity and learning in a new way.
I was first introduced to the topic of Breakout EDU at a Google summit conference last summer. The presenters allowed us to personally experience going through a Breakout EDU as a student. This was a fantastic experience and I was super excited to bring this concept to my classroom. As we all know, these activities take an extensive amount of time and planning. As a result of that, this lesson allowed me to explore the topic a bit more and I have created and used two Breakout activities with my 8th grade students. They absolutely love these activities. I used one of them for my formal observation. In my pre observation meeting my administrator posed the question of how do you ensure all students are engaged in this activity. I told her the concept of the activity itself takes care of that for us. I loved the visual on this topic entitled 16 reasons to use Breakout EDU lessons. All of these are an accurate representation of what this activity brings to your classroom and your students. Mary and I have both created accounts & purchased the Breakout EDU kit and subscriptions for next year. I look forward to creating more of these activities in conjunction with Mary and her knowledge of sources to use in these activities. I have attached a couple of clues we used for a Breakout on the Great Depression.
After reading through the articles and experimenting with some of the suggested apps, I decided to give Snapchat and Instagram a shot in my classroom. I focused most of my time on the ten ways to use Instagram in your classroom. While exploring this article we were working on a combined, ELA & SS unit on immigration. Students read novels (City of Orphans, Bread and Roses, Too, and Uprising related to the topic of immigration and complete activities associated with immigration and their novels. One of the suggested ways to use Instagram in the classroom was to use Instagram with literary characters. Mary and I decided to have students use either Instagram or Snapchat to show the plot of their novel through the eyes of a character in the novel.
Another way we used social media in the classroom is through the Zimmerman Note. Students had to create a Twitter handle for Mexico, Great Britain, Germany and the United States. They then had to tweet from each of those countries to show their understanding of the historical circumstances surrounding this topic. My name is Kolbe Gray. I am a Social Studies teacher at Fort Plain Jr/Sr High School. I currently teach 8th grade Social Studies, AP U.S. History, SUNY Sociology & History of Sport.
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Kolbe Gray
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