Nathan Klatt's 20% Project

My focus for the 20% started and ended with focus on Google Apps for Education. In between I explored various tools.  I started out by downloading the Google "ABC" presentation having teams in my first hour class (my guinea pig group) collaborate on a few slides dealing with India. I followed that up with a personal collaborative effort experience with a colleage building a employee climate survey that was eventually sent out to the staff of Buffalo Middle School. In the weeks that followed I spent some time leaning how to use tools like Animoto, Prezi and setting up a You Tube Channel. I followed that up with working on a site for a unit I plan to teach with my new 8th grade Quest class next year. I want to eventually incorporate several online articles and videos, and set up a page that will allow for students to blog about their questions related to the primary geographical issue of the region, population studies. After exploring the flipped classroom model my primary focus on the 20% project has been around building a google site that will allow me to flip a social studies unit on local geography.  Flipping this unit may be a great way to further engage my students and teach the unit in less time.

Addressing the NET*S Standards. Before I began these courses through Hamline my awareness of the digital tools available to use with my classes was very limited. Incorporating technology in my classes consisted primarily of SMART board activities and a few online exploratory website assignments. Students were not interacting with the technology in a consistent and meaningful way. I won't pretend that it increased dramatically this spring with the challenges surround getting computer access during testing season. But I awas able to incorporate several things and just as important, I have a plan for next year. The experimentation with Google Apps (ABC presentation and a couple forms) with a few classes was successful and motivating for both me and my students. I was also able to produce several how-to instructional videos on JING and utilized them with students who needed an activity or concept reviewed or were absent for instructions.

NET*S #5 The initial excitement associated with learning these new tools was consistedly reinforced in working with other social studies teachers this spring on developing ways to implement digital tools.  A few of us have signed up for weekly blasts from education technology blogs.including EmergingEdTech. This along with continuing to utilize twitter (the social studies chats on Monday nights are great for ideas) will keep my PLN going. I also plan to continue my training in technology integration by I having registered for a summer institute on incorporating technology into social studies classroom over the summer. Additionally, I will be one of the teacher trainers assisting with our district transition to gMail this fall.

Rob Nosbush's 20% Project

My 20% project evolved from using Study Island as an at home resource to help with understanding to having me as an at home resource to help with understanding by flipping my classroom.  As mentioned in my earlier posts, flipping was a subject which had intrigued me since last spring when I first encountered it at the Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics (MCTM) conference.  The 20% project allotted time to expose a larger part of the ice berg.  I took part in a webinar, 4 of the 7 sessions at the MCTM conference being technology related, becoming an active Twitter follower, exploring the use of Study Island, and adding to my collection of websites for student use.  This 20% time became my exploration time while the time on the projects became the time where I actually did the production.  Products of this exploration can be seen part of my unit.  Other products of the 20% time which did not eventually turn into parts of the project can be found here.

I grew in the area of NETS*T-2 as I incorporated Youtube.  YouTube went from my home use in finding funny videos, music and videos about big trucks to a way to disseminate information to my students.  I learned the SMART board recording tool to make these videos.  I worked many sessions with one of the technology support members to post these videos and trouble shoot problems with student access.  I also found videos like Reverse, to incorporate at the beginning of my class.

NETS*T-3 also saw growth as I worked to obtain support for the flipped classroom method.  I attended several sessions at this year's MCTM conference at the beginning of May.  According to Jones, Feller and Daniels in their presentation entitled, ""Stillwater's Flipped Math Classroom Pilot," they stated that assessments are showing scores equal to the control group.  The difference is appearing in the amount of material that was able to be covered in the same period of time.  I also gained confidence when I heard a presentation from a group of Byron, MN High school teachers called "Improving Student Learning Through Hybrid Courses." The presenters saw growth when comparing identical assessment results over a two year period.

NETS*T-5 saw me grow through Twitter use.  Twitter went from a medium of which I was totally uncomfortable using to one where I looked forward to checking activity regularly.  I connected with teachers who were similar to me in subject, age level and where they were on the journey to flipping.  I also connected with teachers who were farther along on their journey, as well as, some I would consider masters.  I even saw my number of followers grow(and no, not just my mom!)

Teresa Weise's 20% Project

I realize now that I had a tough time focussing during my 20% project. The Internet lead me all over, and I just kept following. Throughout the course I explored YouTube, GeoGebra, Pinterest, BrainPOP, my math book's website, and many articles from suggestions on Twitter. While I started with 6 areas of interest, I only ended up working on two of those and the rest of the time I explored. I now have a huge list of favorites posted everywhere - on my webpage, in my favorites list, in my favorites bar, on my YouTube channel, written into lesson plans, shared in emails and even on scraps of paper. I probably could continue this 20% project for a year and not have time to really look through those sites enough to create lessons for each of them. However, I have also picked two favorites that I have and will use often - GeoGebra and YouTube. I even made some videos using GeoGebra and put them on my YouTube channel to use for next year's lessons on transformations.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL673DFF4905D298EC&feature=plcp

Teachers model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.
I spent most of my 20% project time engaged in meeting this standard.  Although I always felt like I was pretty much ahead of the majority in using technology, I had stalled out when I got my SmartBoard.  I love it, but so much that I stopped looking for new activities to use with my students.  Taking on the 20% project reminded me why I can't pick one technology and stagnate - I need to keep learning.  Our current curriculum lacks manipulative activities and I never had time to create new ones, but now that I have explored and found so many online interactive manipulatives I think that I can reintroduce hands-on learning in my classroom. 

Teacher evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning.
Since every research source that I have ever read stresses the need for hands-on learning to introduce the topics of algebraic thinking, I think that I am back on course to improving my teaching.  The main focus of this year's MN Council of Teacher's of Mathematics conference was on using technology to improve student learning.  The methods of using technology differed from flipped classrooms to interactive manipulatives to using calculators to gather data to finding appropriate Ipod apps, but there wasn't anyone who would admit that technology doesn't belong in the mathematics classroom.  I read several articles that basically all said the same thing - today's students take technology for granted as a given in their lives, learning without using technology doesn't make sense to them.  It would be like taking away a textbook, paper and pencil from a student of the 1900's.

Angela Murphy's 20% Project

     Just like everything I do, my 20% project has taken me all over the place.  I started out with creating a class website.   This has been a goal of mine for years and I had started it a while ago, but just never really got it up and running, so I used a good share of my 20% project time on adding to and personalizing my site.  I also wanted to start a class Blog to share things that we were doing in class with parents.  I set up the blog, but decided to wait until next school year to start adding posts as it seemed like a more natural place to start for me.  I also spent some time creating YouTube playlists to accompany literacy and math lessons and science/health units that I teach throughout the year.  I also created a playlist of videos to use as greetings, transitions, and just for fun.  I also just took some time to just explore the many web tools available and thinking of ways in which I could integrate those tools into the first grade curriculum.  A few of my favorites were Wordle, Little Bird Tales, and GlogsterEDU.

     Taking these Teaching and Technology courses has helped me to grow a lot as a teacher.  I have completely changed in the way I approach my lesson planning and instruction.  I sadly have to admit that before taking these courses, I rarely thought about ways in which to incorporate technology into my instruction.  When I got a SMARTBoard last year and began using the SMART software to create lessons, I finally started to think of technology as more of a tool, rather than simply entertainment.  I feel that the 20% Project assignment helped me meet the second NETS*T standard because it forced me to take the time to start thinking about ways in which to integrate technology into my instruction and and research tools that I did not even know existed as a means of providing a technology rich experience for my students.

       One of the most valuable things I took from this course was the fact that my role as a teacher of very young students is to simply to expose them to and model for them how to use technology tools.  I had always felt very limited in the technology that I could incorporate into my lessons because of the limited skills of my students.  I felt liberated to know that my main role in teaching technology to my students is to model for them how to use technology tools, not to expect them to be able to use them independently.  This realization alone has helped me meet the third NETS*T standard because I am able to find more ways in which to integrate technology into my instruction because I think of it as a means of exposing students to ways in which technology can be used which gives me a broader range of tools that I can integrate when the students do not need to be independent at using them.  My 20% project helped me meet this standard because it gave me time to explore the technology tools and become familiar with them in order to be able to model how to use them to my students.

     Over the summer, I will be doing some curriculum writing with my other first grade team members to integrate technology into our literacy units, helping me meet the fifth NETS*T standard.  We will be creating integrated units for all of our LbD themes and writing up a unit plan in the same manner we did for our Integrated Unit assignment for our T&T class.  My 20% project has given me the opportunity to explore ways in which I can integrate technology into the curriculum and gets me constantly thinking about different ways in which the tools can be used. 

Heather Schaaf's 20% Project

     Parent communication is very important to me.  In the past, I have communicated through notes home, phone calls, emails.  Many of the questions parents have for me are procedural and easy to answer, but they take me away from my classroom duties. If I have more than 2 or 3 communications to address in a day, the time dedicated to this becomes substantial. Therefore I thought it would be wonderful to create a classroom website.
     A classroom website seemed a daunting task when I first declared this my 20% project. I generally call in the experts when I begin something technological, so that was my first step.  One of our district technology specialists joined me in the classroom for a half hour power website making session before school and I was off. She gave me some basic tips and showed how to link and copy information into my site. We went through the basics of editing a page, and I found it was very similar to Word. The Insert tab makes adding things to my website very easy. I have used Insert Image and Insert Link almost exclusively, but will continue to add gadgets and Google links like "calendar" to enhance usability. Finally, there are many great "help" sites and links that answered my questions when I would become stuck with what I should do next.
     To help me envision my final product, I used examples of websites provided by our instructor.  I also looked at some of the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose websites. I settled on the following theme, format, and pages:
Mrs. Schaaf's Classroom Website

     My intention for this website is to provide up-to-date information to my fourth graders and their parents. In addition, I would like for my students to be able to use the sidebar to gain access to appropriate websites to practice and enhance their reading, writing, and math skills. I have opened my website up as public if connected through the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose website, as well as anyone who has the link.  I have decided to dedicate part of my Friday prep time each week to updating my site.  Having a scheduled time to accomplish this will help my to keep my website fresh and relevant.

Eric Carlson's 20% Project

The 20% Project was a success! I loved having the opportunity to "run with an idea" and see what happened. I researched, planned, and developed a way to flip my math instruction. I have a few weeks of trial and error under my belt as I look toward wrapping up this year and planning for the future and making the flipped model part of it. I now have a YouTube channel dedicated to all curricular areas, and I've made my class website an even more useful resource for students and parents.

As I look at the NETS*T Standards, I have come a long way from thinking simply having a SMART board or some other device is using technology. Through the 20% Project and these first two cohort courses, I have grown tenfold as a teacher who strives to integrate technology. I still have a long way to go, but I am working to create a classroom in which students are given the opportunity to pursue learning curiosities, manage their own learning, and assess progress.  I truly feel that my work with flipping my math class supports this very well. My students see me model the use of technology daily for learning, connecting, and collaborating. The 20% Project has afforded me the opportunity to grow as a 21st century educator. This is just a start.

Everyone should have a 20% project going at all times. Genius, really! I plan on using it next year with my 5th graders. I want to introduce the project in the fall at the same time I introduce their ePortfolios (new for me). I don't exactly know how it will look, but I envision setting it up the same way it was done for this class. Every week students are assigned an hour of self directed learning and they journal about how it was spent. By the end of the year they have months of documented learning through journaling. What a great idea! Love it! Thanks Molly!

Katie Gohl's 20% project

“It never made sense before.” Robert said.

His words hit me like a ton of bricks. They don’t tell you in college that your students are going to show you how to teach. As Robert was working on his response on our class blog I asked him why he had never shown me he could write like that before and his response, “It never made sense before” was eye opening. He went on to tell me that when he wrote with a pencil and paper it wasn’t like his “real life” but when he was able to type his response and share it with his classmates it suddenly made sense to him. 

That day changed how I will teach forever. My students have shown me through the use of technology that they want to learn by being social, active, and reflective. 

I love the ownership and engagement technology allows my students.  For me it now validates how I know students learn. My students have made me an advocate for technology and 21st century learning.  My hope is that with these 20% projects(and many more projects to come) that I will be able to help so many more students like Robert “make sense” of their learning.

1. For my first project I created a website to organize all of my 21st century learning projects & resources.  I would like this site to be resource beyond my classroom.

https://sites.google.com/a/bhmschools.org/english-classroom-in-the-cloud/

2. For my second project I worked with my primetime students. For their PT service project my PT students decided they wanted to do something on a smaller scale.  After much debate they decided they wanted to do something to help the 5th graders with their transition to the middle school. They did a shared Google Presentation to brainstorm all of the ideas. Once they were done they decided to make a video for them. Our thoughts were to share it with 5th grade teachers and they could show it at the end of the year if they want to.

http://animoto.com/play/vHSEvJpodztr2q31YNjgHg

3. For my third project I decided that I wanted to do a video project with my classes while this is all fresh in my mind.  It was a group project for all of my classes.  They have to write their own scripts & record themselves. Once they were done I used YouTube video editor to put it all together.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Z5s65ro8M