Automating homework tweets to calendar entries using IFTTT and scripts

We're coming to the end of DEVELOND, and I'm really looking forward to the break. Looking forward for TDSB teachers: I will be co-hosting a webinar on Documenting with GAFE Thursday, January 12 at 4 pm. Register on Key to Learn.

While I've had a personal Twitter account for many years, I only got a professional account a few years ago. It's been great for professional development, but I also use it to communicate with students and parents. I tweet out useful links and interesting articles, but more importantly, I tweet out homework and test/quiz dates as a backup method for putting the information on the blackboard.

MCR3U hw for Fri:: complete Koch snowflake patterns; do the 1st, 2nd differences & ratios HO. Fractal images: https://t.co/TzeJaBr3vi

— Ms McPhee (JarvisCI) (@ms_mcphee) December 7, 2016

I like using Twitter for this kind of communication because I'm on it every day anyway and, most importantly, you don't need to have an account to read my tweets. To increase the communication, I've embedded my feed on my website (a handy widget you can get from your Twitter settings). The platform I use is Tweetdeck because it allows you to have multiple columns (and multiple accounts) open on the same screen, but also because it allows you to schedule your tweets. This is super-useful for me because that means I can schedule all my homework tweets for the week at once and they can be edited if you need to change something.

I like this system but since I tweet rather a lot, this year I worked out a way to pull together each course's information and post that by itself as well as on the class calendar. I'll create a set of posts with the nitty-gritty details in a week or two, but for now here is the rough process:

I created a recipe in If This, Then That to grab all tweets from @Ms_McPhee and throw them into a Google Sheet. IFTTT creates a sheet called "Tweets by Ms_McPhee" and dumps all my tweets there; the most recent one goes to the bottom of the list.



I have a format for tweeting out homework, quizzes, or tests. For homework, it looks like this:

CourseCode hw for next day:: what needs to be done.

Tests and quizzes look like this:

CourseCode quiz date_in_accepted_format:: what's on the test/quiz or review.

(The double colon is not a typo.) As you can see, I have made a separate sub-sheet for each course. I use query() (my favourite function in Sheets) to gather all the tweets for a particular course together, then I use split() to separate the tweet into its components (hence the double colon; I originally used a single colon, but that messes up any links I tweet out).

  

I reverse-sort all the homework, quiz, and test tweets and bring those into a completely separate sheet. I embed this sheet on my website.




In addition, a script is triggered to grab the first line and create a calendar entry out of it.



I've limited this to homework, quizzes, and tests because for other assignments and labs I want the names in the heading, I don't want to over-flood my feed with due dates, and I usually set them on my biweekly excursions onto Calendar.

There are still bugs to work out in this system: I occasionally mess up the proper date format for the tests and quizzes, and although I have sorted out the issue wherein items got posted to the calendar every time I tweeted, was retweeted, or merely mentioned in a tweet, it still occasionally posts twice. If somebody knows why that is happening, I'd love to hear it.

STAO Saturday

Another day back in the wilds of Etobicoke for more STAO goodness.

Session 1: Flipping It with EDpuzzle with Adam Mills.

When I started flipping lessons two years ago, I made a conscious decision not to use a special flipping platform because I'm not keen on having kids sign in to access materials. I also want parents/guardians (or anyone else, frankly) to be able to freely access any of my materials and, in particular, without having to go through me to sign in. However, in Friday's session on blending learning tech, Mathieu Morin mentioned that EDpuzzle was integrated through GAFE. I was already planning on attending this morning's session, but now I was even more intrigued.

So.. it turns out that it's just integrated with Google Classroom, which I don't use, but there are other benefits to using it. The most important for me is that you can embed questions, which is great for making the lessons more interactive. I realized that I make my students "log in" to their webquizzes anyway, so this shouldn't exactly a huge difficulty, and the videos are still hosted on YouTube. I'm going to experiment with using this platform a bit more. I'm liking the possibilities for POE.

Now if only EDpuzzle would get back to me about why neither I nor my students can see the closed captioning option, that would be terrific.

This session took place in the Playground, so afterward I got a chance to look around a bit. The secondary curriculum committee had some great electricity demo boards, including this one with a balloon fuse on the short circuit.

(He asked me if I noticed the light changing, but I was too busy cringing at the balloon popping.)

I also saw something I really want for the next gift-giving opportunity:

Totally adorable, programmable, and only about $50.

I think next year there should be better signage for the Playground, because on Friday I thought it was just another session room and walked on by.

Session 2: Flipping the Learning: Transformational! Part I: What It Is and Looks Like with Meg O'Mahoney.

Yes, I was all about the flipping today. While the previous session was more about playing around with EDpuzzle, this session focused on the nitty gritty of flipped learning -- which is apparently not the same as a flipped classroom. The platform Meg uses is sophia.org, which has a lot of PD about flipping and would be worth checking out just for that.

Some of my takeaways: while you can use already-available videos, it's better to make your own (or at least have your own voice) since you are their teacher; students love it when you put your face in the video; and make sure they are doing something to stay engaged during the video.

Now where is Part II?

Session 3: Innovative Classroom Science with Sarah Chisnell

Science North has developed lesson plans from K to 12 with the idea that we should give students something to do so that learning naturally follows. The activity we looked at was building a telegraph for the grade 9 electricity unit. So what if they happen to learn something about electromagnetism early - that's just a bonus! I really like these lesson plans, especially if I put them together with yesterday's design strategies.

For the record, our prototype sort of worked. I call that a win.

Session 4: Disrupting "Inquiry" for the Sake of Learning with Dimitrios Melegos

So many great specific ideas from this session, including giving a pre- and post-lab attitudinal surveys (with 10 tricky T/F questions about the content, graphical analysis) to track learning; having a post-lab reflection; sharing past exemplars and results; getting them to write a research proposal "on a napkin"; giving them opportunities to share their results with the class.

One thing I really want to give my students is the opportunity to incorporate "playtime" with the probes, so the students know how they work when they design their own labs. Dimitrios suggests using the cookbook procedure to get them to practice.

I also really like the idea of presenting their results to the class or writing up a summary report, because I rather dislike marking lab reports. Is there anyone who doesn't?

All in all, another successful STAO. I can't wait to start incorporating... everything.

STAO Friday

The Science Teacher's Association of Ontario's annual conference is one that I try to get to every year, because I know that I will always come away with new ideas. This year's conference took place last weekend (right before my marks were due) and as usual, I came back brimming with inspiration.

Session 1: Inquiry-Based Learning in Senior Chemistry with Minor Tweaks in Your Lesson with Blunky Ng

Thanks to construction on Lawrence, my bus was slightly late so I arrived to a standing-room only, spilling out the doors session. I don't teach chemistry beyond grade 10 (for good reason), so I probably won't use the specific labs she mentioned, but the main gist is: instead of starting with the theory and then doing a lab to confirm, start with the lab (without telling students what the lab is about). I already do this a lot in physics, but can I do more? The answer is, naturally, yes. I also think I could be doing this more in grade 9 and 10 science.

I didn't manage to get to STAO last year, so I don't know if the hour-long break is a new development, but it's much welcome. I had plenty of time to explore the exhibit hall, which they moved to the main floor instead of tucking it away, without worrying about missing a session. Sadly, I didn't notice the new Playground room and so missed out on helping to build the Rube Goldberg machine.

If I was truly clever, I would have gone across the street to get some lunch.

Session 2: Intuitive Physics and Why It Matters with Richard Epp and Rohan Jayasundera

Richard and Rohan teach first year physics at the University of Waterloo, and they talked about how they teach students to think intuitively about physics instead of just pattern-matching problems. We want students to learn to build their intuition so they can trust it; they can then take that into other areas.

My main take-away from this session is that I need to teach dimensional analysis right at the beginning of the course instead of waiting for the dynamics unit. It ties in nicely with the idea of Reversing the Question, which I want to try with the big-5 kinematics equations. Also, there is a fantastic intuitive approach for developing the equation for circular motion I'm really looking forward to using.

Session 3: Crazy Demos with John Caranci and Steven Fotheringham

John was my Physics Honours Spec. instructor and if you've never seen him in action, I highly recommend it. I'd seen pretty much all of these demos before, but this was a great opportunity to film them while he was explaining them. I also now have to go find an aluminum tube for an extension to the falling cow magnet demo.

And practice with my chain and ring. A lot.

Session 4: Putting It All Together: Blending Learning Approaches to Foster 21st Century Learning with Mathieu Morin

The MOE has put out a draft of its 21st century competencies document, and the gist is that we want to shift from just covering the content to focusing on deeper learning. Mathieu led us through his journey into adding all the acronyms to his class, starting with the basic class website, through flipping the class to make time for IBL, PBL, etc.

Small takeaways: watch one video in class and teach them the Cornell note-taking method; Office Mix is a plug-in to create videos from your PowerPoints; look to academia for ideas for thematic projects for PBL and "dumb it down" for high school.

He was the first, but not the last, person this conference to say something along the lines of "Don't try to flip all your lessons at once. I did and it was foolish."

Session 5: Using Design Thinking in Your Science Classroom with Bluky Ng

The difficulty I always have at this conference is there are too many choices; I usually want to go to more than one session at any given time.^* In this case, I got lucky since there was a typo and the Innovative Classroom Science session I had planned to attend was going to happen on Saturday instead, so I bookended my day with another great session with Bluky Ng. I like the Crazy-8s setup for brainstorming; turning it into a gallery walk with students posting additional ideas is great. Obviously I want to do this with the sci/eng club, but I also want to incorporate it into the physics and other science courses. I really like the idea for the grade 10 climate change: design something that will help a specific country reduce its effect on climate change.

As for the sessions I missed because I can't be in two places at once? Fortunately, STAO makes the presentation resources available to members on their website.

More on Saturday's sessions tomorrow.

^*Invariably, all the physics sessions are at the same time. Why?

Marshmallow Challenge

I wanted to create a science/engineering club at school where we could focus on not just doing or learning about some cool science, although we will be doing that, but also giving the students a taste for engineering design. I always planned for the first session to be a variant on the Marshmallow Challenge, and yesterday we finally did it.

 You've probably at least heard of the Marshmallow Challenge -- but if you haven't, go here to watch the TED talk and learn more about it -- if not actually done it. I've done it several times... most recently on Wednesday, in fact, which was kind of hilarious given that I'd planned to do it with my sci/eng kids the very next day.

Literal team "building" w/ spaghetti, 1 marshmallow & tape. Who can make the tallest tower? #tdsbdll LN23/24 @tdsb pic.twitter.com/BHPilXktmJ

— Larissa Aradj, OCT (@MrsGeekChic) November 2, 2016

In brief, you get 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 m of string, 1 m of tape, 1 marshmallow, and 18 minutes to build the tallest free-standing structure that will support the marshmallow. Usually when this challenge is done, the teams build the structure (or try to) which are then measured, the activity is debriefed, and then... nothing. Nobody gets a chance to learn from their mistakes or use the idea of prototyping.

Not on my watch.

We did the challenge; one group got to 40 cm, but the other two... didn't quite get the tall structures they envisioned^*.

Then I showed them the TED video. We talked a bit about why the less successful structures fell (they both built triangular prisms; the vertical rectangular sections all turned into parallelograms. Horizontal ones.) and the importance of prototyping. Afterword, we did the challenge again. I wanted to see if they would learn from their previous mistakes and build prototypes. There was a bit of that going on, but all three groups built towers above 40 cm, so I feel that the exercise was successful.

And everybody got candy.

I'm busy sourcing ideas for other design challenges. I'm thinking of Cartesian divers^**, CD hovercraft races (and other great ideas shamelessly borrowed from Roberta Tevlin), building a mirror maze and/or a windmill, and, my one true love, Rube Goldberg machines, but I'll happily take suggestions for other projects that can be done in an hour or so and are good for anyone in grade 9 up to grade 12.

What design projects do you do with your science club?

^*We could have had four groups of three instead of the three groups of four, but hey, it's a club, so I let it go; I'll be a bit stricter with them next time.

^**I spent the year two years ago diligently emptying Dr. Pepper bottles for just this purpose. I am nothing if not dedicated.

Happy accidents

I've been teaching for a good while now, but I'm happy to know that there are still things I can learn, because it keeps me sharp. Also? Happy accidents become teachable moments and an exercise for one class turns into several exercises for three different classes.

I'm always on the lookout for "real-world" examples of math and physics that aren't the usual boring cell phone/well bore/cannon ball stuff. I came across this video of the water fountain at Detroit International Airport and was struck by one image that was filled with different parabolas, thanks to the initial velocity of the water and the perspective of the shot. I turned it into an exercise and assignment for my MCR3U where they had to find the equations of two parabolas, and then the equation of three lines, one which was a secant to one parabola, one which was a tangent to the other, and the third was a secant to one and a tangent to the other.

Naturally, I wanted to modify it for use with my MCF3M class. I came up with an exercise where they find the equations of two parabolas: one in root form and one in vertex form. For their assignment, they'll have to turn each equation into the other form algebraically (plus standard form for good measure).

I tried it out three days ago. To help them prep, I got them to pick the axes and a parabola to look at (noting that each water jet is actually two parabolas). We measured the roots and used the y-intercept to find the a value. Pretty straightforward, and I thought determining the vertex form would be a snap.

Except that when we calculated a, we got a completely different number. Not "we're off by a few decimal places" different, but -0.19 vs -1.1 different. These students are still struggling a bit with vertical stretches and compressions, so a discrepancy like that is not on. 

I asked a colleague to verify my calculations, and he figured out that my calculations were fine. The problem was probably that for the parabola the class chose, the y-intercept and vertex were so close together that a=-1.1 was within the accepted error. I used another point far from the vertex and got a=-0.18. Much better.

[By the way, we I did also make some heinous measurement and calculation mistakes, but since all mistakes I make are intentional (ahem), this just gives me an opportunity to talk about making sure our values make sense. More happy accidents.]

Unfortunately, I had the DLL PD today, so I wrote this all down on the board and hope they got it during today's class. I'll review on Friday when I next see them. They need to have the equations (and domains and ranges) ready for next Thursday's assignment.

That discrepancy is really interesting. I will have to modify this worksheet to tell the students to make sure their points are not too close together. Plus, I may have accidentally stumbled on a realistic way to teach uncertainty in my grade 11 physics class. A happy accident indeed. I'll keep you posted.

Once I get my act together, I'll create a page where I will share my various worksheets and handouts. For now, check out my course webpages (link up top) under "Handouts and Assignments". My class notes for both (all three?) lessons will be posted under the "Notes" section at the end of the month.

The beginning... of a sort

I've been meaning to start blogging about my teaching for a few years, and I'm finally making a start.

My goal is to blog at least once every two weeks, although I will probably be a bit more prolific at the beginning since I have two months of teaching to catch up on. My goals for this year are to

• increase the number of flipped lessons to at least one, possible two (or three, in the case of the pre-AP classes) per unit per course;
• to increase my class use of GAFE (or GSuite, as I suppose I must learn to call it, which has the sole benefit of not wondering how to pronounce it); 
• formally get my students into a growth instead of fixed mindset
• to finally start (and follow up on) a non-robotics Sci/Eng design club; and
• my standard, yearly goal of trying one new/reincorporating a forgotten teaching technique per month.

Here be dragons...