5 Goals for the School Year

Before the start of each new school year I sit down and identify five goals that I want to focus on for the year. These were my goals for the 2010 School year (you can read the full post here):

1. Improve reverse-instructional model.
2. Continue to improve the Wii interactive whiteboard for class use.
3. Improve assessments to require more critical thinking and problem solving.
4. Increase the number of assignments that require collaborative and creative work.
5. Encourage and challenge the teaching staff around me by modeling effective uses of technology.

I am happy to report that I met all of my goals for last year! Many of them are ongoing (I certainly haven't mastered reverse instruction, but I made some improvements). I am most proud of the progress I made on incorporating critical thinking into my assessments and modeling the effective use of technology. It's good to reflect on the past--  it helps determine the direction you are heading. 

Another school year is approaching and here are my five goals for the 2010-2011 school year. 

1. Model the effective use of Google Apps in the classroom. 

My school signed on to Google Apps several years ago but has only been utilizing it for staff email. I have been lobbying for the opportunity to use Google Apps with my students and have finally gotten the green light to pilot a program with my 49 freshmen biology students. 

As a Google Certified Teacher I have had the opportunity to see and hear tremendous examples of how teachers are using Google Apps in their classroom. Google Apps is a dynamic suite of tools that enables collaboration and dynamic student driven projects. 

I will be utilizing Google Apps on four specific project over the course of the year. It is more important for me to do four assignments unbelievably well than to do a lot of mediocre activities. 

• Project 1: Student Generated Surveys (Tools: Spreadsheet, Forms, Presentation)
• Project 2: Collaborative Cell Research Project (Tools: Docs)
• Project 3: Infographics (Tools: Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentation)
• Project 4: Biome Site (Tools: Docs, Sites)

2. Post weekly on my classroom blog.
I have been blogging for nearly two years now but it has been a reflective practice that I have done in my spare time. I have not incorporated blogging into my classroom. This year the ed. tech. director is encouraging all of our staff to maintain student blogs. It's a great challenge and idea and I'm jumping on board! 

My goal is to post at least once per week. Hopefully more, but I want to make sure I set an obtainable goal. Furthermore, most of the posts will be student generated. Tuesdays are lab days in my class and I hope to have one student summarize the purpose, process, and results of the lab for publication on the class blog. I'll also be featuring multimedia highlighting the culture and energy of the class. 

I am hopeful that through regular posting I will be able to cultivate an audience of parents, students, and other educators. I am also looking to form a partnership with another biology class somewhere in the world. If you're interested, please leave me a comment or send me an email and we can set something up! 

3. Improve and expand the use of 20% time in my Anatomy & Physiology class.

Note: 20% time is a corporate policy at Google that states that all Google employees MUST spend 20% of their time working on a project of their own choosing that is not related to their primary assignment. Many of Google's most popular products (such as Gmail) are the result of 20% time. 

Last year I piloted a 20% project at the end of the year after my seniors had left. The project had to be complex, shared with the world, and had to help the student learn something they did not know but were interested in.

The project was successful, but is in need of further refinement and focus. Over the summer I had the pleasure of swapping ideas with Kevin Brookhouser who is using the same concept in his high school English class. We collaborated on ways to improve the quality of the student generated projects through clear instruction and guidelines. I'm excited to put some of our ideas into practice with my Anatomy & Physiology students! This experience will undoubtedly turn into a future blog post. 

4. Help teachers at my school set and meet their goals for implementing technology into their classroom. 
I have been leading grassroots professional development sessions for two year. I have led sessions on conquering email, searching effectively, and presentations beyond PowerPoint. These sessions have been well received however I have not see a tremendous impact in the classroom. This year I will be helping teachers craft technology goals and helping them meet them. I expect that two of the most common goals will be classroom blogging and developing a PLN. 

5. Master the art of the webinar
I have led meetings and professional development sessions, presented at conferences, and spoken to large and small groups. I have not, however led a webinar. This popular form of virtual communication is becoming increasingly more common and it is something that I would like to become proficient at. As a professional, I see it as a necessity. Leading a webinar requires different facilitatory skills than a face to face meeting just like teaching in a traditional classroom is different than teaching online. I plan on attending a few webinars to observe good and bad practices and will lead at least one during the course of the year.

Those are my five goals for the coming school year. I welcome the accountability of my PLN throughout the year to help ensure that I meet my goals. Have you set goals for yourself? Blogged about it? Please leave a link to your post! I'd love to read it and see what your goals are. 

Reflections on the Googleplex

This past week I had the opportunity to attend three events at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. The first was a search class by Daniel Russell which I blogged about previously.

The second event was an educational summit for the newly formed Google Certified Trainer Program. Details about the program can be found here. For two days I enjoyed the company of 60 professionals from across the US. It was an interesting cross section of people including representatives from higher education, district trainers, classroom teachers, and business professionals. We shared ideas and were treated to a few sneak peaks of upcoming Google products (on which I am sworn to secrecy!).

At the summit I participated in my first "unconference" sessions. I was new to this idea paradigm shifting idea. Instead of being passive attendees in a session, an unconference is an open ended discussion prompted by an individual who facilitates the discussion but is not necessarily an expert on the topic. The discussion can take unexpected turns and you never know when a nugget of wisdom will be discovered.

The topics for these unconference sessions were chosen through the use of Google Moderator, a simple tool which allows individuals to post ideas and other to vote on their merit. The ideas that receive the most votes became our unconference topics. This has clear applications in the classroom as students could post and vote on topics for review sessions or ideas for group projects.

Some of the unconferences sessions that I attended included:

• A discussion on the diffusion of innovation model and how it relates to professional development. 
• Independent consulting: how to value your services
• A discussion of COPA, FERPA, and CIPA laws and their relationship to Google Apps. 
• Using Google Calendar to track and reserve resources (rooms, laptop carts, projectors, etc).

Wednesday evening we had our own little Google-style party complete with massage tent, giant beanbags, paint by number mural, and photo booth. It was a lot of fun! 

Capitalizing on the fact that many of the attendees at the Summit were Google Certified Teachers, a Google Teacher Academy reunion was held on Friday and featured more unconference sessions and product updates. We ended the day with a quick trip to the Google store where I picked up a nice blue Google shirt!

In the evenings I took some time to jot down ideas that were prompted by the discussions at these three events. These thoughts are fragments at the moment, but are likely to be the inspiration for future blog posts. 

Idea #1: When training anyone on anything, it is critical that the trainees/students understand the WHY before moving on to the HOW. 

Idea #2: "Google Proofing" assignments often means figuring out what the question is rather than searching for the answer. 

Idea #3: Because of its flexibility, Google Sites has great potential as a collaborative learning space. 

Idea #4: 20% project have great potential in the classroom.

Idea #5: There must be some added value that justifies the time, energy, and attention consumed by personal interaction. If not, just do it virtually.

I'm sitting in the airport waiting to board my plane from San Francisco back to Detroit. When I land it will be off to the races preparing for the arrival of my students on August 24. It has been nice to be in an environment in which I can focus on the big picture. I've got lots of ideas and plans for the year. Now it's time to get down to the details. 

Power Searching at the Googleplex

Today I had the opportunity to attend a session on web search led by Daniel M. Russell,  "Google Search Quality and User Happiness" guru. With me at the Googleplex in Mountain View were roughly 30 educators, mostly from the Bay Area.

Dan was a very engaging host and presented us with several "wicked" search challenges. Here are a few for your enjoyment (you'll have to find the answers yourself!):

Search Problem #1: What day of the week was the current US Secretary of State's birthday in 1984?

Search Problem #2: When an artist is making a sculpture for a client, they often make a small version of the sculpture in wax or clay. They're usually a preliminary sketch, presented to the client for approval. What is this thing called?

Search Problem #3: I was hiking in the woods nearby in March when I saw a pretty blue flower. It was about 3 feet high, and grew along the pathway in the middle of the woods in Henry Coe State Park. Here's a picture of it. What flower is it?

The common theme of all of these search challenges is that you don't know what you are searching for. Most of the time we search using general terms to find more specific information. These are easy searches such as "capitol of Montana."

I have continued to ponder what it means to ask "Google-Proof  Questions." The type of search challenges that Dan gave in his session helped me realize that the most challenging questions are those in which the desired search term is unknown. I would consider myself a pretty advanced searcher, but even I got stumped by a few of these challenges. Giving such challenges to students helps build critical thinking and analytical skills. This is definitely something that I will be incorporating into my lessons this year!