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#DBC50Summer 16/50: Launch

/ Alicia Ray / 8 Comments

When you open a book and literally start nodding in agreement with the very first sentence, you know you’re in for a wild ride.  That’s exactly what Book 16 in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line up did!  Launch by John Spencer and AJ Juliani could not have come at a more perfect time this summer!  Big things are in store after reading this one!

launch

This book is everything I want my daughters experiencing in their education.  It describes everything I want the media center to be for students… really, everything I want SCHOOL to be for students.  I’ve never really gotten into any of the “design thinking” protocols because they are so wordy… everything-“tion”… ideation, creation, reflection – my students needed a translaTION to understand half of it.  None of the ones I had seen really fit for middle school students; they were either too elementary or too difficult to understand.  Our school has been trying to find a new engineering/design process to implement and immediately upon seeing the LAUNCH cycle as described by John & AJ, I texted my principal.

The plan of implementation for this book will be school-wide!  The School Improvement Team (SIT) met last week; on the agenda was reviewing and selecting a design process as our current process is 10 steps long and just too much for our students. They didn’t see anything they were married tom so they began creating a mash-up of a few of the processes they saw, but it’s not been finalized!  With that in mind, I hope to have the opportunity to present the LAUNCH cycle to our SIT team as an option for our school’s design process.  I immediately fell in love with the process and the ease in which it can be implemented, and I believe our staff will too.

L – Look, Listen, Learn

A – Ask Tons of Questions

U – Understand the Process or Problem

N – Navigate Ideas

C – Create a Prototype

H – Highlight and Fix

LAUNCH to an audience.

At the end of last year, my principal requested that we begin thinking about a way to bring a focus of research skills back to our school.  When I saw that the U in LAUNCH relates directly to various types of research I all but squealed with joy!  The research methods discussed by John and AJ are exactly what I want my students to walk away knowing.  Research isn’t always about looking online or looking in a printed article or book.  Research is about learning.  It can happen in the form of an interview, watching multimedia, even action research with observation or through a hands-on experiment and collecting data.  This book came at the absolute perfect time, and I am so excited to share all I learned with my school!  The resources that John & AJ have made available are incredible!  Check out the website for their book here, as well as the individual websites of the authors – John’s is here and AJ’s can be found here!  I could spend hours just looking at the websites!

In the off-chance that my school does not choose to implement the LAUNCH cycle, I have a backup implementation plan (because that’s just how I roll; I’ve got a backup for the backup, but no need to share that one just yet).  As a backup plan (and likely implemented regardless of LAUNCH cycle implementation), I will pursue a Global Day of Design in May using the information given here.  This is an incredible opportunity for students to use their knowledge and unlock creativity in exciting ways.  I believe that being part of something much larger than our school will engage our students in meaningful ways.  Last year we held our first official Maker Faire event.  It was a terrific event, but I believe the Global Day of Design will bring about more creative products with a bigger purpose behind their creations than just the event in question.  I love that the LAUNCH cycle “ends” (we all know design thinking never really ends, but you understand, yes?) with launching to an authentic audience.  This is more than just a presentation, but actually seeing the design in action!  I believe this is a spectacular way for students to have real meaning behind their design, rather than the hypotheticals they are usually presented with.  I know my blogs being read by many of you has forced me to put much more thought into them.  Imagine how much harder our students will work when they know someone, other than their teacher and peers, are using their products.

Finally, Launch speaks multiple times about the power of challenges, risk-taking, and failure.

  • “…design thinking isn’t about abandoning the standards.  It’s about raising the standards and challenging students to think at a deeper level.”
  • “You will fail. It’s going to happen… failure is a part of the process for innovative teachers.  Each mistake is simply another iteration on the journey toward success…the only way you blaze a trail is by taking risks and failing forward.”
  • “Design thinking encourages creative risk-taking with the goal of eventual mastery.”
  • “It was the first time I had heard students talk about ‘failure’ in a positive light; they realized that creating big goals gave them the opportunity to fail forward.”
  • “…we want kids to embrace mistakes as part of the learning process… each mistake is a chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.  When students have the permission to make mistakes, they define success as growth and learning.  They recognize that failure isn’t really failure at all”

Each of these quotes stood out to me.  Creating a safe culture where it is okay to fail is of utmost importance when implementing design thinking.  It is what I hope our media center has become in the two years that I’ve been there.

I want students to know that it’s okay to mess up, that it’s great to make a mistake, that failure isn’t final.

Launch was such a powerful book to me!  I created multiple BookSnaps and posted them on Twitter, check them out!

 

 

 

 

Be sure to join the #LaunchBook community on Twitter as they discuss Design Thinking, creativity, and bringing out the maker in every student.  Follow both John & AJ on Twitter, at @spencerideas and @ajjuliani, respectively.  The Flipgrid is available, as always, as a space for global collaboration in reflection and implementation of the book!  In this Flipgrid, tell about a time you failed in the classroom!  What did you learn from it? How have you improved your teaching practice because of it?  It’s a safe space, so share, share, share!  We can learn from one another here!  The password is DBCSummer, as usual.

Andrea Paulakovich, a dear friend and vital member of my PLN, joined in the #DBC50Summer and suggested the spectacular idea of adding Flipgrid as a way to share ideas!  She’s super awesome – you should follow her at @apaulakovichIRT & her #DBC50Summer journey here!

Launch inspired another book by John Spencer and AJ Juliani titled Empower.  This book is part of the publishing company IMpress.  You can read more about IMpress here.  So why don’t you head on over to Amazon and purchase your own copies of both of these awesome books Launch AND Empower?!?!  I was blown away by Launch and look forward to rereading with my peers at work as we, hopefully, implement the LAUNCH cycle in design thinking.  I will certainly be reading and blogging about Empower once I complete the DBC books.

*Side Note: Within this book is a step-by-step process to uncover your passions… seriously, I’m not making that up!  This is another thing I fell in love with, as I plan to go through it to see if I can discover my educational passions (see Play Like A Pirate post).  How incredible would it be for our students to go through this process, too?!

The 17th book (my favorite number, coincidentally) is none other than Kids Deserve It by Adam Welcome and Todd Nesloney.  This book… well, wow… no words. Just go get it, while I reread it and try to form the words needed to describe it in the blog. Not sure it can be done. Grab your copy and settle in! You will quickly remember your WHY while you read that one!

#DBC50Summer 15/50: The Classroom Chef

/ Alicia Ray / 7 Comments

In May of 2006 I graduated from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina with a degree in Elementary Education and a concentration in mathematics.  I wanted to teach math, and only math.  I had absolutely no interest in teaching kids how to read (ironic that I now work in a media center).  I enjoy reading (obviously… um, hello #DBC50Summer, haha), but the process of “how to read” was lost on me the entire time I was in college.  When I was hired for my first teaching job in a small town in northwestern North Carolina, I was overjoyed to teach math exclusively, three times a day, to 5th grade students! When I saw the next book in the line up, I was thrilled to get it and read about my favorite subject area (more on that little misconception about the book soon enough)!

During my undergrad coursework, I was required to take multiple math methods courses, one of which was insanely difficult taught by a professor who rode a motorcycle and requested a classroom with whiteboards or chalkboards on every wall.  The assignments in this class were always the same. Problem Sets of 6-8 math problems (on white computer paper, mind you) were given to groups of 3 or 4.  Each person had to solve at least two problems before the next class period.  We had to write up how we would solve the problem with examples in order to be able to explain the process to a kindergarten student, even if it was a 5th grade concept.  Upon returning to class, we had to present our problems to the class in detail using the chalkboards or whiteboards that were on the walls.  I hated that class.  It was tough; it made me think.  I had to discover mathematical reasoning and problem solving for myself for the first time in my educational career.  It was also the class that was the most beneficial of any math class I ever took.  I even went on to take the next course she taught, which was taught in the exact same format.  She allowed us to struggle.  Because of that, I understood math.

classroomchef

John Stevens and Matt Vaudrey coauthored the 15th book in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line up.  This book, called The Classroom Chef, focuses on ways to make math meaningful to students.  Because of my mathematical background, I was beyond excited to crack the cover on this book!  I expected to be taken back to my days in the classroom teaching students math concepts.  I did not expect to be blown away by the insanely amazing lessons John & Matt describe in this book!  The restaurant theme runs throughout the entire book from setting the table to appetizers, entrees, and dessert!

In Dave Burgess’s post “Table Talk Math: Finally a Math Resource for Parents is Here!” Dave refers to The Classroom Chef as Teach Like a Pirate “with every single example straight from a math classroom”.  This assessment is spot on!  However, I have to stop and mention one little thing…

Don’t let the fact that this book specifically says “math” on the cover deter you from getting a copy!  Just as Dave’s book sharing examples from a high school social studies class doesn’t make it a “social studies only” book, John & Matt’s book sharing math examples doesn’t make it a “math only” book!  This book is for everyone, no matter your content or grade level!

See, the book isn’t just about a subject, it’s about a shift in education.  It’s about preparing a lesson, not lesson planning.  It’s about making your content meaningful to students.  It’s about giving students time to struggle with an idea.  When students discover the answer themselves, it’s much more meaningful to them, thereby allowing them to remember it longer.  Whether our students are struggling with the FOIL method in math, with discovering how people impact erosion in the environment in science, why we went to war in Korea, or what would have happened if Romeo & Juliet had lived in today’s time period… students need to experience struggle & failure in every class.  We must create a space in which students feel like failure is okay, as long as they take the opportunity to correct their mistakes.

Within the pages of this book, John & Matt present multiple ideas to make math fun!  Again, this doesn’t only apply to math, though.  Just because the focus of this book is math doesn’t mean that math is the only course that can use a little injection of fun!  Fun quickly became “the F word” and educators tend to steer their educational ship clear of that.  I, personally, want to run my little educational pirate ship straight up to Fun and invite it onboard!  In fact, I don’t even want to be on the ship unless Fun is on it with me! Otherwise, it’s just another lonely old boat ride around the island.  I think this recurring theme of bringing fun back (Did you just sing Justin Timberlake? Because I did!!) in the DBC books are a piece of what keeps me coming back book after book.  Multiple books, just within the first 15, mention making school fun/amazing/exciting again.  Each of the following books (linked to their respective #DBC50Summer blog) revolves around this common theme.  School should be fun!  It shouldn’t be easy.  There are ways to use your brain, think critically, fail, and still have fun!

When I think of DBC books, my mind automatically shifts to Teach Like A Pirate and all of the “Like A Pirate” books, Kids Deserve It, Innovator’s Mindset, etc.  Before reading it for #DBC50Summer, if I’d been asked to name the DBC books, I would have struggled to remember this one.  After reading it though, it will likely be partnered up with Teach Like A Pirate in my head! I will be recommended it to EVERY ONE!  I want my children in classes where teachers are preparing a lesson, not lesson planning!  I want to know that my daughters have been served an appropriate multi-course educational meal.  And not just in math!

The obvious implementation for this book would be to pull in my friend, Holli Hudson, who teaches 7th and 8th grade math at my school.  We have co-planned (or should I say… co-prepared) and co-taught some incredible lessons together!  She read this book earlier in the summer, and she’s already been brainstorming for our first planning session.  Next year we’re preparing an immersive lesson in which students will engage in a book tasting in the media “cafe” with books they can actually purchase with Mustang Money and decide if they have enough money after subtracting the amount of any discount they may have earned, along with adding the tax.  Sounds cool, right?

However… that’s not my implementation for this book.  Instead, I’m going to encourage my accelerated classes to sign up for three times to bring students to the media center and facilitate BreakoutEDU sessions with me.  For those that aren’t aware, BreakoutEDU is an immersive learning game in which students must think critically to decipher clues to reveal or receive the combinations to multiple locks on a hasp on a box.  They must do this as a clock is counting down and with only two hints that can be used.  Last year every content area teacher in the building signed up for BreakoutEDU sessions, except 3 of my 4 accelerated classes.  This is why I want those classes to try it out.  It is widely known that many times our advanced students despise struggle and challenges more than any other student.  They just want to the answers so they can spit it back out on a test, feel accomplished, and move on.  I felt that way, too.  It will be good to watch the playing field be leveled a bit while they struggle through a BreakoutEDU game.

Discovering teachers’ love for implementing BreakoutEDU was actually a direct result of an epic failure!  Our htc Vive virtual reality headset had a broken lighthouse station (the part that allows you to walk around, which basically rendered the headset useless until repair) which derailed multiple experiences for about four-six weeks when we could get the replacement part.  I didn’t want to lose the momentum I had built with teachers signing up for time in the media center and the collaboration occurring between the teachers and me, so I suggested a BreakoutEDU game to a science teacher, who immediately jumped onboard.  It was so difficult for her to watch the students struggle through their first experience with BreakoutEDU.  No one in the class broke out of their box.  By the end of the year, nearly every content area teacher had brought their students to experience BreakoutEDU because the buzz about how awesome it was had reached their room.  Students were begging to do more, even after some students did 5 or 6 different games last year. Students thought much more critically and, as Matt & John mention in the book, they solved a problem (as opposed to being problem-solvers).  They figured out what to do when they didn’t know what to do.

Through the creation of a safe place to fail in our media center at school, it is my hope that I have encouraged risk-taking, critical thinking, and a desire to solve problems in both my students and my teachers.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Classroom Chef, and I look forward to diving deeper into the Classroom Chef website, linked here.  On the website, you can find shirts, book study documents, and a menu which serves “take-out” (additional math resources).  John’s website is pretty awesome, as is Matt’s.  You’ll find many of the math lessons from the book linked on Matt’s blog.  You can also check out the #MTBoS community on Twitter to connect with other math teachers sharing ideas!  You may also want to follow the community in #ClassroomChef or the account of the same name.  Finally, the Flipgrid (thanks to Andrea Paulakovich for the incredible idea of using Flipgrid as a global book study) is ready for your thoughts!  Share using the passcode DBCSummer.

Well…what are you waiting for?  Go get your copy of DBC’s 15th book, The Classroom Chef!

*Edit: I goofed!!!  It happens!  Messed up the order of release dates on previous version of post! OOPS! The correct Book #16 is Launch by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani!  This is the era of DBC, Inc in which the releases started happening back to back in rapid fire.  I LOVE that I am struggling to figure out which one was first – it means that the demand for conversation, authentic, TLAP-style educational/professional development books had skyrocketed!  So…what an incredible problem to have!  So many amazing ideas coming from the home of Dave & Shelley Burgess that the information couldn’t get to us fast enough!  I am beyond excited to read about Design Thinking and bringing out the maker in every student!  I firmly believe we should be creating creators and not consumers and this book looks like a great addition to the DBC, Inc line up!  Let’s get it done!

#DBC50Summer 14/50 – 140 Twitter Tips for Educators

/ Alicia Ray / 3 Comments

I cannot make this up… I did not do this on purpose.  I promise it just happened this way.

Book 14 is 140 Twitter Tips for Educators by Brad Currie, Billy Krakower, and Scott Rocco.

140edutips

 

Today is my FIVE YEAR Twitter-versary!!!  I signed up for Twitter five years ago today! And the fact that I am writing a blog about Twitter and how amazing it is on our 5th anniversary is a bit mind-blowing! Isn’t that crazy?! … Okay, back to the book!

This incredible book, which pretty much serves as a user’s manual to create & use your own professional Twitter account, was shared with several hundred North Carolina educators over the past week.  I’m fairly certain the words, “best PD I’ve ever had… ever” came out of my mouth in association with using Twitter as my primary platform for being a connected educator.  Numerous photos were taken of the cover of the book, and a couple even purchased the book while sitting right there in my sessions.

In two weeks, I am so fortunate to work with superstar educator, Emily Brown, to connect dozens of educators (possibly even up to 140, ironically enough) with one another through Twitter.  We are facilitating a session called #Twitter101: Unlock the Power of Being Connected (link to session presentation to be shared after presentations are complete) at the North Carolina Digital Learning Competencies For Educators By Educators “traveling roadshow”.  The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Digital Teaching and Learning Division selected 33 educators through an application process to serve as Ambassadors for Digital Learning Competencies.  Emily & I both felt that Twitter has been a powerful tool and, as she and I are Professional Learning Network (PLN) friends, we decided to work together on the development and implementation of this session!  Ambassadors travel to 4 locations in the western half of the state and 4 locations in the eastern half.  Roughly 500 educators per location are able to attend through registration.  They will receive up to 5 sessions (and lunch) of professional development in digital learning, which is the equivalent of 0.7 Continuing Education Units (CEUs).  A minimum of 2.0 CEU in Digital Learning Competencies are required for teaching licensure renewal in North Carolina.

After encouraging and helping our new friends create a Twitter account, we will show them how to use it to create basic tweets.  Each participant will complete #MyFirstTweet while there.  I am so excited!  I’ve never been in a delivery room to witness the birth of a child, but I would imagine it will feel almost like that to see these educators take their first steps into becoming connected… Okay, maybe that’s a bit exaggerated… maybe. We’ll see.

If the participants choose to stay for the second part of the Twitter session series with me, they will embark on creating a PLN.  It’s so important to find your tribe on Twitter.  We believe in the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  I will teach these educators how to fish by engaging them in a LIVE #ncdlc chat each day!  It is my goal that teachers will feel confident with the typical guidelines of a Twitter chat and Q1/A1 format by having someone there to walk them through a chat in person, helping with tweet composition, etiquette, etc.  I hope you will join our chat at least once, if not all four days, from Monday, July 23 – Thursday, July 26, 2018.  The tentative time for the chat portion of these sessions will be 11:00-11:30 AM EST.  Please drop in and show these newly connected educators the power of Twitter in education!  I will continue to advertise this information throughout the next two weeks on Twitter.

The final two sessions of the day will be about #BookSnaps, founded by rockstar author Tara Martin, who wrote the 51st DBC book, Be REAL: Educate from the Heart!  Participants will learn how to connect the text and the tech using Snapchat, Google Drawings, Seesaw, Google Slides, etc.  You can find Tara’s How-To videos on her blog here.  Below are examples of #BookSnaps I created and tweeted about 140 Twitter Tips for Educators.

My personal journey on Twitter began in 2013 when I used Twitter for all things Hollywood gossip and Panthers football.  I didn’t tweet, but I followed all the blue checks I could, ha! In 2014, I met Lucas Gillispie who inspired me to try it out as an educator to gain insight, resources, reflect, and share.  Lurking for many months, I finally jumped in to a few chats and would tweet occasionally while attending edcamps.  I’m not sure why I started becoming more invested, but one day in 2015, I received a direct message from a friend telling me about an opportunity to apply for the North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network through the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  I applied, was accepted, and just finished my third (and sadly, my final) year as a mentor for that network of professionals. I credit my connectedness on Twitter to many successes I have had in education, and many of the successes of my students.  I also give my PLN credit for picking me up when I felt knocked down.  There were years that I’m not sure I would have returned to education if it weren’t for the amazing educators on Twitter constantly lifting me up.  I feel selfish when I don’t share how incredible my PLN on Twitter is with other educators because it truly is the best professional development I have.  It benefits both me and my students, which is a win-win!  I feel that each and every educator needs to be connected, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.  Our world is wide open now, and we need to get into it – sharing, collaborating, and reflecting on our practices.  That, in turn, makes our students’ experiences in school better which leads to lifelong learners.

It feels as if it’s a Twitter love story of sorts. HA! Are you rolling your eyes? Stop rolling your eyes, and hear me out!  It’s kind of like Twitter and I met in 2013 through a mutual friend; we’ll call that friend Hollywood.  We went out a few times, but it was never anything serious.  I never completely gave up, but I was quickly losing interest.  Then, a friend came and told me various examples about how wonderful Twitter was, and I decided to it was worth a second chance.  Maybe it had changed… so we started dating here and there again. Then, one day, after about 9-10 months of sporadic dating… it just happened.  Connection.  Love.  Inspiration.  I was hooked.  Twitter and I have been together exclusively for almost 4 years now.  It’s been wonderful.  We have many mutual friends and I want to share Twitter’s awesomeness with everyone around me.  Luckily for them, Twitter has many doppelgängers, looks just like my Twitter, but has a different personality and will meet their own needs.

See… love story… that’s why we’re celebrating our anniversary… (Yes, I did. I went there.)

My implementation of this book, as I celebrate five years of Twitter, is to continue doing what I do on Twitter, but do more of it!  I collaborate, share resources, advocate for students, retweet other educators, and participate in chats with educators who share my vision, as well as educators who challenge me.  I tweet what my students and teachers are doing throughout the school year, as well as during conferences and blog posts.

For me, this book was affirming.  For those who are not yet connected, this book is a must have!

You can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #140EduTips!  The website for 140 Twitter Tips for Educators is here.  Check out Vicki Davis’s (CoolCatTeacher) blog & podcast with Brad and Billy,   Join the discussion on Flipgrid!  Andrea (the genius behind the idea of using Flipgrid for #DBC50Summer and my #tlapsister) and I would love for you to show some love to those you think everyone should follow on Twitter, and hashtags that you can’t live without!  As always, the password is DBCSummer – and don’t be afraid to step out and be a trendsetter.  This space will become a global book study for all DBC books, so go ahead and take the leap! Again, go grab a copy of this book… Book 14!

Book 15 is a book I wish I had when I taught 5th grade math!  If I had Ditch that Textbook and this book during that time of my life, implementing the ideas and philosophy behind both of them, my students would have been much happier and would have had increased critical thinking skills and would have been better problem solvers, rather than workbook navigators!  I am so looking forward to reading The Classroom Chef by John Stevens and Matt Vaudrey!  Dave Burgess says he gets asked all the time about creating Teach Like A Pirate style lessons for math – this book is it! Soooo cool! Grab your own copy because I’m off to read book 15 for myself!