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.