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#DBC50Summer 40/50: The EduProtocol Field Guide

/ Alicia Ray / 2 Comments

When I taught in the classroom, we typically had three days before we jumped into the content. During those three days, we covered handbook, policies, had a whole-school assembly to discuss school expectations through Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS), labeled our folders, notebooks, wrote our names in textbooks, and we learned all of the daily procedures for the classroom. The only thing I did during those first few days that was student-led was allowing them to create their own rules for the classroom. Even then, the rules usually landed in one of four areas, so class rules ended up being the same every year. Be respectful, be responsible, be punctual, and be prepared. After 5 years, I can still rattle them off.

It wasn’t until several years had gone by like this in the classroom that we did any culture building at the beginning of the year. This is when we were introduced to Kagan Cooperative Learning and I instantly loved the Class Builders. From then on, I would do activities where students were stranded on a desert island and had to order their supplies from most important to least important, or students would have to decide which of five patients on a donor list would get the next available heart based on the information given. They would have to advocate for their patient to their peers.

In the elementary media center, I would go over care of books, expectations, and allow students to check out books for the first time and we would discuss how I wanted that done. In the middle school media center, I still do the expectations discussion and allow them to check out books, but we don’t really discuss care of books at length. Last year, I revamped the lesson to include rules & expectations shown through memes. I was super pumped about the lesson, but according to my students’ survey results at the end of the year, 25% of the students didn’t even remember the lesson while another 41% said it was just alright. I listened to the students. I knew I needed to do something new with the opening lesson in the media center so I was super excited to see that book 40 was The EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo!

This book had exactly what I was looking for!!! I had read it back in April after purchasing it from Dave Burgess at an event in a nearby county. (I blogged about how inspired I was after that event here.) So I knew that this book held the answer, but I couldn’t remember specific directions to the protocols. I just remembered being excited to implement the protocols this year, as my media time with students was already coming to a close when I discovered the book last year.

One of my very favorite things about this book, (other than the actual protocols, which are on fire) is the banter between Marlena and Jon in the margins! Their personalities totally shine through the pages! I also love that there is plenty of space to write notes in the margins of the page! This is truly a manual to keep fingertips away when creating experiences for students!

In the 100th episode of Kids Deserve It with Adam Welcome and Todd Nesloney, Adam asks Dave who is “inspiring him right now”. His answer? See the video below.

It is that very idea of immediately implementing that has me still awake after 2:30 in the morning completing book 40 and writing this post. I’m so excited about the overhaul in my media lesson for this week that I had to blog it instantly. I can’t wait to get feedback from the students to learn their reaction to the changes!

Reviewing media expectations won’t be done with a lecture this year, not even a slide deck with memes! Instead I am creating a review game in Quizizz where students will guess my response to various scenarios. (This game will be linked in the implementation blogs to follow in the coming weeks.) Students will play the game independently, then we will review missed questions and they will immediately play the game again with the same questions (although likely in a different order). This Smart Start is called “Fast and Curious”.

A Smart Start provides a warm-up of sorts for the EduProtocols to follow. It shows students the up-tempo pace (I love this concept of shortening the amount of time given to complete assignments/activities/protocols in order to create a sense of urgency rather than procrastination!) It’s also just fun, and something outside the expected “first day” routines! Jon & Marlena have their acronym game on point in this book! Several examples of well-used acronyms are available in The EduProtocol Field Guide, with one of them being the Smart START guiding principles.

The guiding principles of Smart START are Smile (keep it fun), Teach (finish on time), Activities (developing the culture and practicing tech skills that will be needed), Routines (structured, but fluid), and Target Barriers (students are already learning one another’s names and finding similarities between themselves and their classmates)!

After completing “Fast & Curious”, I will have students put the Book Fair dates in their phone calendars (or planners) as the next media class is Book Fair! Then we will have a discussion about my reading goals this summer. I am so excited to tell the students about #DBC50Summer and highlight some of the posts from authors of books and share the hashtag with them so they can see the insane amount of learning I completed this summer in order to make school better for them! From that conversation, we will transition into their own reading goals. They will complete a Google Form sharing their goal with me and their teachers along with rationale for their goal. Then they will move through three fast-paced stations! Stations will be as follows:

  1. Flipgrid & Five Words Form: Students will share their reading goal (only visible to the student, me, and their ELA teacher) and give themselves a little pep talk (think Kid President style). This video will be revisited in October when I see them to motivate them to continue pushing toward their goal. In November, they will create a video response sharing whether they met their first quarter goal or not. They will then identify a new goal for 2nd quarter and record it. This will happen throughout the year. Also in this station, students will complete a Google Form survey about what five words describes their core classes (math, ELA, social studies, science) and their encore classes (art, band/chorus, pe, computer science discoveries, project lead the way 1 and 2). These results will be compared to the responses from teachers about what they hoped students would say about their experience in their classes.
  2. Book Checkout: Students will be encouraged to check three books out of the media center and reminded that they will return to the media center in two weeks to exchange books. Soap box moment: Students can select ANY book they’d like from our shelves. I don’t care if it’s graphic novels, Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, or Shakespeare. I just want them to get something they are interested in and READ!
  3. Club Information & Sign-Ups: I sponsor multiple clubs at my school, both in the afternoons and in the mornings. I always look forward to having students engage in these clubs and getting to know them in a much more informal manner. I will unveil the 8th grade puzzle and allow 8th graders to sign up to work on it, as well as share information in our Google Classroom about Makerspace Managers, Innovation Engineers, Between the Lines Book Club, Battle of the Books, and Virtual Reality. Students will signify interest in any of the clubs they’d like by signing up on one of the whiteboard around the media center (also giving them time to move and check out any new furniture, books, etc they haven’t yet seen in their space). Those students will have permission forms sent home the following day.

After stations, we would have moved into the “Things That Rock” Smart Start, but the power of Twitter is tremendous! Check this out!

I posted the lesson outline on Twitter.

To which Marlena replied:

I pointed out that I only see them once a month, to which she replied:

Yes… yes I did just collaborate with the author of the book while planning my lessons for the week (my implementation plan). <insert squeal here> I’ve just got to reiterate how incredible the authors of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc are! They are tremendous educators, amazing authors, and most importantly, exceptional humans. So following Marlena’s advice, I am going to move Things That Rock to the end as an additional activity if needed. I will move the What People Think meme creation up as a school-wide collaborative document. Each student will be given a slide and they will reflect on the changes in the library and what they feel they can expect from their time in our media center.

Upon completion, we will complete the Smart Start of “Worst Preso Ever” in which we watch a short video about poorly designed presentations and they intentionally create a slide in a poorly designed presentation of their opinion of their first impressions of the school year.

I am so excited to implement this plan (created with input from Marlena – WOO HOO) for The EduProtocol Field Guide! Truly, I am hoping to eventually use all of the Smart Starts and EduProtocols this year, but for the purpose of #DBC50Summer, my implementation will be these first lessons with every student in the school this week! Follow the incredible conversations surrounding this book on Twitter using the hashtag #EDUProtocols! Marlena and Jon are both very active on Twitter and I highly suggest following them at @mhebern and @jcorippo, respectively. There are many podcasts featuring the authors and/or the book, so I would suggest just using “the power of the Google” to listen to them (or watch them on YouTube). You will definitely want to check out the EduProtocols website! As always, check out the flipgrid and share your favorite of the #EDUProtocols or Smart Starts! Big thank you to Andrea Paulakovich for allowing me to co-pilot this awesome global collaborative space for all DBC, Inc books!

This post wraps up another set of ten DBC, Inc books! Wow! Summer Recap 4 is coming soon, as well as book 41! I wonder if it will Be The One you’re expecting next…

#DBC50Summer 38/50: Google Apps for Littles

/ Alicia Ray / 4 Comments

Where in the world was this book when I was still in an elementary setting? Oh my word! The sheer amount of times I have heard in my career that our littlest learners can’t do something… it’s innumerable! Sad truth is, we aren’t giving them an opportunity to show us that they can do so many of the things our older students are doing. As a teacher, I will be recommending book 38 to every PreK-2nd grade teacher I come in contact with; as a parent, I will be using so many of these ideas for my own 5 year old! I actually just bought an additional copy to gift to her kindergarten teacher (shhhh)!

I’ve been trying to do #DBC50Summer in order of release date, and we are entering a period of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc where books are released back-to-back-to-back! It’s interesting to note that Teach Like A Pirate was released in 2012 and the second book, Pure Genius wasn’t released until 2014. Beginning in 2015 and continuing through Summer of 2016, DBC was releasing a book a month on average. Then in 2017, DBC, Inc really started to take off, releasing twelve books in just over 8 months and 2 more to round out the calendar year. This year Dave and Shelley have published 22 books between January and the end of July! We were treated to three and four books a month this summer! It seemed like each week another one was coming out!

Because of that, the remaining books in #DBC50Summer were typically released within days of one another and I’ve done all I can to be sure the book numbers are correct. I reached out to DBC when I first began this process. Using the information from DBC, I did some research using author blogs, tweets, and sending direct messages to the authors asking if they remembered the official release date of their book(s). (I’m a fan of triangulating data… I blame my MLS classes, ha!) Definitively, book 39 (more on that in a minute) was released on February 19, 2018. Checking blogs and tweets, Google Apps for Littles by Christine Pinto and Alice Keeler was already out and doing amazing things on the Amazon best new release list, which would make it book 38!

Like all other books from DBC, Inc that have Alice Keeler’s name on the cover, this book is extraordinary! Each of the books about the Google line are in full color and are absolutely stunning! Check out this page from one of the #BookSnaps I tweeted today. Isn’t it gorgeous?

I love that Christine Pinto put pictures of her students and shared their work in this book! Seeing the excitement on their faces and photos of her organization really brought the book to life! The handprints with Google logos on the front of the book are a perfect addition and definitely make the cover memorable!

From the very beginning, I was captivated by this book! Even the foreword (written by Michelle Baldwin) was incredible! I have been guilty of logging into computers for my littlest students and then having them just leave the lab while I would run around and log every student off after they left. I love the authors’ idea of making a challenge for students to log on and off the Chromebook or Google Chrome account, putting a sticker on an incentive chart for each time it is done correctly. I’m telling you what’s the truth… there’s not a whole lot that the Littles (probably just go ahead and read that as middle schoolers, too) wouldn’t do for a sticker. Bonus cred if you get the smelly stickers. I’m just going to go ahead and say that smelly stickers saved my classroom management plan on multiple occasions. I especially love the “Meaningful Tech Integration” section of the Introduction in which Christine and Alice point out, “Replacing those activities [manipulatives, blocks, toys, etc] with computer tasks does not make learning better.” They go on to point out that allowing students, even the Littles, to use technology gives them an opportunity to learn, practice, collaborate, share, and connect.

The authors do an amazing job sharing the logistics of using Chromebooks, iPads (or other tablet), and/or Google Chrome on desktops in the PreK-2nd grade classroom. I love the log-in cards and color coding the keyboard and log-in cards to assist students in finding the letters and numbers to match.

One of the key themes in this book is having our students learn by exploration. Alice and Christine encourage us to allow students to click and explore as they learn about icons.

“Sometimes people struggle with technology because they are afraid to click on things. We do not want our kids to have to ask for permission to click on something or be afraid. Encourage them to explore and ask the kids what the icons do instead of telling them what they do…Let them explore, click, and learn!” ~Pinto & Keeler

As is true with many DBC books, there are links to template after template that allows you to take this back to your classroom tomorrow! I love the pixel art and appreciate the link in the book! My students love to create pixel art in Minecraft, but we only have 8 computers in our Minecraft Lab, so using Google Sheets with conditional formatting is an excellent way to incorporate this art form in class! I can totally see using this as a BreakoutEDU clue in the near future!

Searching for images with word families is definitely an activity I will do multiple times with Sophie, my daughter who just started kindergarten. She would love finding her own images on the internet. And the “explore” feature creating the best layout on the slide is just plain genius! I will definitely be using the color coded slides to assign slides to groups from this point forward! What a simple way to visually assign slides! There are so many things I can implement, even though I don’t teach the Littles anymore! Just as Teaching Math with Google Apps had a math focus, but could be used by any teacher because the information contained was just that good, Google Apps for Littles is focused on our youngest students, but certainly has relatable information for teachers of all grade levels! Don’t be fooled by those cute little handprints on the cover! Even if you’re a high school teacher, you will want get something out of this one!

I am the faculty sponsor for multiple clubs at my school. Makerspace Managers (which will also function as Innovation Engineers, thanks to Pure Genius by Don Wettrick), Game Club, Between the Lines Book Club, and now I will have students coming to the media center for an open invitation genius hour opportunity. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to manage that time without grading and formalizing the process. I want the students to want to be there and not feel as if it’s another assignment being dumped on them.  The Template Tab information from this book is exactly what i was looking for! Using this template, each student will have their own tab in one Google spreadsheet and they can reflect on their progress, communicate with me about wants and needs, and have a running journal of their genius hour journey to use if they choose to blog their story on the school’s new student-led blog (which is the implementation plan for Shift This by Joy Kirr and Ditch that Homework by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler.) I love when multiple implementation plans come together because it is making #DBC50Summer more cohesive and intentional. It’s also helping me think through the actual implementation and what will and may not work.

I also loved Kasey Bell‘s Magnetic Poetry Template! You can find more about magnetic poetry on Kasey’s blog at shakeuplearning.com/magneticpoetry (you’ll hear more about her very soon)! I look forward to sharing that with my middle school students next week, just as a fun activity. Then they can screenshot it using Alice’s extension and add it to a school-wide collaborative Google Slides. Now that revision history has been improved, I’m not as worried about a student deleting slides or adding anything inappropriate.

There are so many additional ideas for encouraging our Littles and providing them the same opportunities as our older students that can be found on Twitter! You can find these using the hashtag #GAfE4Littles! Christine has a beautiful website that can be found here. I would definitely recommend checking out the #InnovatingPlay and #SlowFlipChat sections of her site! (May also want to create a column in your Tweetdeck for those as well!) Remember the rabbit hole that is Alice’s website? It can be found here. The Google Teacher Tribe podcast (Kasey Bell and Matt Miller) interviewed Christine! You can listen to that here! Vicki (@coolcatteacher) Davis also hosted Christine on her 10-Minute Teacher podcast here. I would also highly recommend subscribing to both Christine’s and Alice’s YouTube channels!

If you’ve been following this journey for any length of time, you likely know what comes next. The flipgrid is available, thanks to the brilliant idea of my friend, Andrea Paulakovich! She kindly asked me if I’d like to co-pilot this global collaborative space available for all DBC books; of course I said yes! Please feel free to share your thoughts there and bring some friends along!

I am so excited to get to read book 39! It’s by two principals from my home state of North Carolina! In fact, they are located about an hour from my school! (Quick story) When I met Dave Burgess in April, we had a discussion about this book. In fact, it was through this conversation that I knew he (and his company) was legit. I mean, I had my doubts… I wondered if it was all a show. (I can be fairly cynical – we’ve covered this in another blog. I’m working on it.) You see, he brings a selection of books to his speaking engagements that he sells at a discounted price and will sign and personalize Teach Like A Pirate and/or P is for Pirate for you. What got me was that he could tell anyone who approached his table about each of the books he had published (not only the ones that he brought with him). He knew all 65 authors by name, and knew where they were from. The company is growing exponentially, but somehow he and Shelley have still managed to make it feel like a family. Book 39 caught my eye because of its beautiful cover; he let me know that the authors were from North Carolina and shared a story about the book with me. I knew then that I had to get it! So one of the five books I bought that day was The Limitless School by Abe Hege and Adam Dovico. I am pumped to finally be able to read book 39 after owning it for nearly 5 months! Hoping to blog about it tomorrow! Only twelve books left and 15 days until Fall begins! I can totally do this!

#DBC50Summer 32/50: The Four O’Clock Faculty

/ Alicia Ray / 3 Comments

As a requirement for licensure in my district, beginning teachers must complete multiple professional development workshops. These include sessions on Thinking Maps, CRISS strategies, Kagan Cooperative Learning, Technology, and Foundations of Reading. My first teaching job was in a 5th grade math classroom. When I found out I had to sit through 10 hours of Foundations of Reading training, I was not happy. This instruction was not pertinent to my job! (I wasn’t exactly of the same growth mindset that I now have, either.)

How many times have you endured trainings that you knew you’d never use the information? How many times have you been required to be in workshops, whether it related to your content or not? It’s frustrating, right? Book 32 in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line up addresses professional development and how to go ROGUE! Rich Czyz brings us The Four O’Clock Faculty!

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Because of my experience with “Foundations of Reading” and several other poorly designed workshops, I could relate to Rich in the introduction of his book! I’d be willing to bet that most educators have been in a similar situation. Maybe you’ve lucked up and haven’t had to go to irrelevant professional development; maybe all of your PD has been a bed of roses. I’d also be willing to call your bluff if that’s what you’re telling people. Here are three things I despise about the “standard” professional development.

  • Required: Anytime I get an e-mail about a “required” workshop, I cringe. When a workshop is required, it tells me that it’s going to be full of blanket statements. It will be generic and likely not applicable to me. Typically in these workshops, my intelligence is insulted at least once, and I start back-channeling others in the room with hilarious gifs to see who will crack first. (True story…even to this day)
  • Irrelevant: PD being irrelevant and required typically go hand-in-hand. If someone else has deemed that I have to be there, chances are I’m not getting anything out of it. It’s likely about a topic/concept/strategy that I won’t use or one I already know about through other venues. When faced with these workshops, I make eye contact with someone across the room that I know, open the group text or Twitter, and let the back-channeling begin.
  • Boring: There is nothing worse than being excited about the topic of PD, choosing to attend that session, and then being bored to death by the presenter. This can happen for many reasons. In my experience, it’s usually because the presenter reads the slides, is monotone, or worse… both! I have personally sat in sessions at conferences, so thrilled to learn from someone I enjoying connecting with on Twitter and read their blogs, only to be bored to tears and highly disappointed. When I walk into a session space and see a speaker standing at a stationary microphone or a podium, I usually leave for this very reason. (Hey, at least there’s no need to back-channel if I choose to leave!) Side note: if you’re going to read it to me, just email it! I can read it myself.

When Rich asks in the book, “What is the most rewarding professional development experience you’ve ever had?” I immediately knew my answer! My most rewarding PD experience I’ve done by myself has easily been this #DBC50Summer journey! The relationships I’ve formed with so many people on Twitter, including the authors, and the huge amount of knowledge gained from the books are definitely game-changers for me! Knowing that I will be implementing at least one thing from each book has me so excited for the new year. My most rewarding PD I’ve done that was provided by someone else has been EPIC Academy, which is a self-paced, online, gamified approach to professional development created by my friend, mentor, and Director of Digital Learning and Media Lucas Gillispie. I’ve referenced EPIC in several blog posts, and you can find out more information about why it’s so awesome here. Short version: it’s optional, relevant, and interactive. The opposite of everything I dislike in professional development!

One of my favorite parts of Rich’s book is that it give completely practical ways to go ROGUE with your own professional development. He states that ROGUE, for the purposes of his book, is Relevant Organized Group of Underground Educators. One of my favorite quotes from The Four O’Clock Faculty is:

No one else is going to take responsibility to meet our needs. We must do what we can on our own to address our own demands and wishes.

There is so much truth to this statement! It’s one of the reasons I got hooked on Twitter years ago. All of the sudden, I had people who had similar interests and were passionate about teaching students, and they were learning with me, encouraging me, and supporting me in my efforts to take risks in the best interest of students. Those are my people. It was through Twitter that I discovered my first edcamp many years ago. I’ve attended many edcamps and blogged about several of them! (Search for edcamp on my blog and you’ll see them there.) Lucas (referenced above) and I organized the first edcamp in our region in 2016, EdCampRFD. It went much like Rich’s first edcamp, and we’re building momentum to have another one in the future. See the press release in our local newspaper here.

I also approached this book as a provider of professional development. I create and deliver PD to my staff, media coordinators, and educators across North Carolina. Knowing my professional development pet peeves helps me develop PD that is optional, relevant, and (hopefully) not boring. I am sharing a survey with my teachers which asks what digital tools they want to know more about. I will be offering 8 digital learning workshops this year and teachers are required to attend the first one and the last one (because we start together and end together). Of the remaining six workshops, they are encouraged to choose three that meets their needs and attend those. Workshops I facilitate are also interactive and include follow-up, if desired. As a digital learning/instructional coach, I am able to provide follow up to my teachers through support in their classrooms. This is so valuable because we have the opportunity to co-teach and learn from one another.

My implementation plan allows me to offer teachers more choice and PD on-demand. I plan to definitely use Rich’s “Tip Jars” idea! From the survey results, I will choose two desired topics two weeks before the PD date and place those topics on mason jars in the media center. Each teacher will be given a marble and can place their marble in the jar of the topic they’d prefer to learn about at the next digital learning PD session. One week before the PD session, I will send out an e-mail with the preferred topic and invite anyone who is interested in learning about that topic to attend! The topic that wasn’t chosen will remain on the Tip Jar and another topic will “compete” against it for the next PD date. In my Social LEADia blog post, I shared that my implementation plan was to create a YouTube channel. Thanks to The Four O’Clock Faculty, I will be putting 5-minute PD segments on that channel and sharing with teachers twice a month. Each video will either highlight a Google App or Extension or a troubleshooting on student chromebook video. These can be viewed by teachers on-demand and as many times as needed. I will also share a Google App or Extension with students (sometimes it will be the same video that I sent to teachers)! Bonus points if I can find students who are willing to come to faculty meetings and share about the apps/extensions, then create a follow up video about the app/ extensions FOR the teachers! (WINNING!)

The Four O’Clock Faculty is full of ways to own your own professional learning. Everything from edcamp to Twitter to blogging and more is included, so there’s really no excuse for not going out there and getting what you need to continue to grow professionally! If you aren’t learning, your kids are suffering because of it! Your first step to professional growth could even be to purchase this book! Now. Then get yourself on Twitter and check out the #4OCF (that’s an “oh” not a “zero”, ha!) to connect with other passionate educators and chat about ROGUE PD. If you’re REALLY wanting to go down a rabbit hole, check out the #4ocfPLN – those educators are on fire! Still can’t get enough? Check out the website here and get additional resources for the book here. You can hear more on podcasts with The Principal Center and Across the Hall! You can watch Rich chat with #LeadUpTeach and then view him talking with #K12ArtChat! There’s so much goodness here, so check it out!

As always, the flipgrid is a place for global collaboration on all DBC books! Andrea Paulakovich and I are copilots on this grid and would love to have you share your thoughts! This amazing space was the brainchild of Andrea and I’m just thrilled she asked me to jump onboard with her! You should 100% check out Andrea’s blog post on The Four O’Clock Faculty – this lady & her posts are incredible!

Book 33 is one that has really taken off this summer. I have seen multiple book studies surrounding this book (even had to bail from a Voxer book study on it myself because I was starting #DBC50Summer). I started this book at the beginning of the summer and chose to stop so I could focus on reading the DBC books in order, knowing I’d eventually get back to this one. I’m so excited to see this book through because it hurt to put it down the first time! So look for the post on Culturize by Jimmy Casas coming soon. It’s currently (as of 8-18-18) the #1 Best Seller in Experimental Education Methods on Amazon! Also – yes this is the same Jimmy Casas from Start.Right.Now so you know we’re talking quality, thought-provoking stuff coming up! (But then again, haven’t they all been?!)