EdTechTeam

Global Network of Educational Technologists

Pedagogy

5 Reasons to Love Hyperdocs and Digital Lesson Design

Hyperdocs

Let me count the ways…Valentine’s Day has inspired countless poems throughout the ages. Poetry is a vehicle for creative expression and what better way to celebrate this Valentine’s Day with students but through digital lesson design and Hyperdocs.

Hyperdocs are a vehicle that provides opportunities for students to be curious, creative, critical thinkers, collaborate with others and communicate while exploring content in a digital format. More than just an online worksheet, Hyperdocs allow teachers to intentionally design powerful lessons reflecting UDL principles in a sequence of personalized tasks. These multiple pathways students can take provide different ways students can demonstrate understanding and for the teacher to give feedback. Here are 5 of the many reasons why I love Hyperdocs:

You are the designer

You know your content and your students best. Hyperdoc digital lesson design allow teachers the opportunity to develop, design, curate and create content and assessment that is authentic to your classroom and audience.

Students are in charge

Hyperdocs provide choice of demonstrating understanding through multiple pathways for students.

Creative Content

With Hyperdocs, students can interact with content in a creative way and through different modalities.

Learning Styles are celebrated

Students can experience a lesson and show what they know in their learning style and strengths.

Hyperdocs are alive

Hyperdocs is digital lesson design that is alive and interactive. Utilizing the live, powerful collaboration components within Google Apps as the vehicle for your lesson allows this and takes your lesson to the next level.

Falling in love with good lesson design is easy. The hard part is finding the time to gather or create the resources. Want to learn more about Hyperdocs? Explore templates and example Hyperdocs created by teachers that you can use at hyperdocs.co.

Check out my favorite templates below from Teachers Give Teachers and spin them into an interactive and creative Valentine’s day activity for your class!

Poetry and Me: Where I’m From

Reading and Writing Poetry Journal

Haiku Poetry

Analyzing and Writing Social Justice Poetry

From Hyperdoc Handbook co-author Lisa Highfill: Be My Valentine Text Set

Want to go in depth with Hyperdocs? Check out the Hyperdoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design using Google Apps by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis.

Check out more titles from EdTechTeam Press in the bookstore!

Gail Moore is an experienced educator with a passion for meaningful technology integration that promotes student voice and inspired change. She is inspired by teachers & students designing their own learning experiences through technology. Excited to share examples, resources and strategies for infusing technology and pedagogy Gail continues to co-plan, consult, model and provide professional development to teachers and administrators with Google for Education as a Google Certified Innovator, instructional technology and iOs devices as an Apple Teacher. She believes in technology as a tool to transform learning, empower students and teachers as co-designers in the learning process. Gail is currently an Instructional Technology Facilitator in Washington State working with teachers on inspired lesson design integrating 1:1 devices.

A Student’s Best and an Assignment’s Value

I’m on a constant search for amazing stories, and I particularly like those that tell the story of the good people can do—when given the chance.

Stories of amazing learning can define a school for its community, and fostering and sharing successes in ways that become stories shared should be an emphasis for every school.

Amazing learning, though, can require giving students opportunities that completely step away from their day-to-day experiences. The Memory Project, for example, gives high school art students the opportunity to brighten the lives of orphans thousands of miles away. The change in purpose from earning a grade to doing something meaningful for others can create powerful moments of learning.

Bringing out the best in our students does not always require a major project, though. It can also be a function of tweaks to assignments: encouraging connections to something outside of class, working in a group when individual roles tap the strengths of each student, or allowing options for how they show their mastery of what they are learning. All of these elements can lead to stronger work.

Verifying Value

As a guy who started a charity built around sharing learning through video, I’ve spent years exploring how video and expanding one’s audience can change how students think about the quality of their work. (See nextvista.org/tag/gsvff for videos from last year’s Global Student Voice Film Festival for examples of students’ talents for telling stories.)

My focus on video has sparked for me lots of reflection on what makes for strong assignments, and raised plenty of questions about the value of assignments I’ve given or seen in the past.

As an educator, when you give an assignment, you do so because it will help your students learn something. The homework, the classroom activity, the project, the oral quiz, the written exam—we do these kinds of things because they are supposed to help students become comfortable with concepts and material in the curriculum.

That’s why we do them, but that doesn’t mean that they result in the learning we have in mind.

This is obvious in the sense that not every student masters what we put in front of them. For many of us, though, there may not be enough conscious questioning of whether a given assignment results in any meaningful learning for those who complete it.

Questioning Quantity

The most common target I’ve encountered in discussions of the value of learning activities is the math problem set. Imagine a sheet of paper with fifty equations to complete. The questions about the assignment are easy enough for us. Would ten have been just as effective? How about five and feedback in the form of a couple of sentences on what the student thinks is challenging when doing this kind of problem? It’s possible that fifty is too few, but at core, the real question is whether we have a ready explanation for why we assign that number of problems.

It may not be all that different for writing. If you assign four essays over the course of the semester, is that meaningfully better than three? Should you have assigned five? If you can’t easily draw and convey distinctions for the different goals for each of the essays, then doing another may not be yielding enough value for the student to merit their time spent doing it, nor your time spent grading it.

Another way to put all of this is: is what you are giving students nothing more than busywork? If what you’re having them do is failing to help them move forward with their learning, then the assignment is simply filling time. The answer to the question above is yes.

Homework?

I have seen some seriously animated conversations about this idea with regard to the role of homework.

Those who feel homework is important may be drawing from their sense of how school should be, based on how school was for them. Giving loads of assignments may be seen as being a dedicated and demanding teacher. Coupled with this thinking, there is a directive in many settings that new grades should be entered into the system every week (or every few days) to allow parents to be able to follow the progress of their children.

Those who feel homework is or isn’t valuable are often thinking very specifically of its role in their own subject. It may be that in generalizing these ideas, one is infuriating one’s colleagues who see their work differently. Someone who sees limited value in one kind of problem set, for example, might not be considering the importance of practice for learning in an arts or world languages classes. Still, in those classes, like any other, what’s required may or may not help with what needs to be learned.

Pupils’ Perspectives

Whatever the intensity of the disagreement we and our colleagues may have on these topics, we often fail to tap the strongest perspectives on the value of the assignments we give: those of our students.

Have you ever asked a class how you might change an assignment so it would be better for their learning? They’ll probably have ideas because learning is what they are tasked with doing during most business hours.

You may need to find clever ways of asking them. A class discussion suffers from being limited only to those unafraid of speaking up in front of the larger group. You might use a survey or try an online chat or forum to prompt more participation, and then use ideas from that as seeds for group discussions.

In asking for their insights, it’s no small possibility that some eager-to-talk students have the specific goal of simply lessening what you require of them. The question “Am I giving you too much homework?” might result in a predictable affirmative, depending on the culture of your school and community. The question “How might we change this to make it as valuable to you as possible?” is something different.

Of course, students may struggle to articulate what truly works for them. After a half dozen not-so-useful ideas, though, a  student may offer a thought that enlivens learning for them and changes how you think about what’s possible. In following through on suggestions they offer (or tactfully explaining why you won’t), you will be demonstrating your commitment to help them learn in the best way possible, and at the same time let them know that you actually listen.

The fundamental question is whether or not your current class practices result in genuine learning. Being honest with yourself about the value of what you assign, along with getting meaningful feedback on what you try, can make for a better, and notably more effective, classroom environment for everyone.

For more ideas on how to improve your teaching, please take a look at Making Your Teaching Something Special: 50 Simple Ways to Become a Better Teacher, by Rushton Hurley from EdTechTeam Press.

image credits:

1. Web designer’s notebook by Galymzhan Abdugalimov from Unsplash (license)

2. untitled by freestocks from Unsplash (license)

Rushton Hurley holds graduate degrees from Stanford University, is heavily involved in service efforts in his community, and has worked and studied on six continents as a high school Japanese language teacher, principal of an online high school, a teacher trainer, and a speaker. He founded and is executive director of the educational nonprofit Next Vista for Learning, which houses a free library of videos by and for teachers and students at NextVista.org.
A regular keynoter at conferences around the world, Rushton has trained and worked with teachers and school leaders on all continents not called Antarctica. His fun and thoughtful talks center on inspiration and creativity; the connection between engaging learning and useful, affordable technology; the power of digital media; and the professional perspectives and experiences of teachers at all levels. His first book, Making Your School Something Special, was released by EdTechTeam Press in January of 2017. His second book, Making Your Teaching Something Special, was released in June, 2017.

5 Ways to Level-Up Lessons by Gamifying the Learning Experience

What if learning was a byproduct of having fun? I fundamentally believe that we engage our learners by designing experiences, not just assigning lessons. One of the best ways to make our lesson plans and daily activities more engaging is to add game-like elements to our classroom experiences.

Before You Start

What’s the point of your activity? Why should your students want to experience it? The first place to start is not necessarily your curriculum, but by identifying what is limiting learning in your class. For example, you may have limited devices in your class so you decide to create a station rotation, where students must complete an exercise before moving to the research station that has computers. After constructing something, they can then move on to the record station that has the students using webcams. Because the students are rotating, all of the devices are not being used at the same time. Because you made a game out of it by setting up challenges, kids are having fun. Win, win! Welcome to the world of gamification. You just improved student learning by taking something that wasn’t fun (not having or using devices) to making it fun (competing to get a chance to use tech).

The following are my five recommendations for any educator looking to level-up their lessons by gamifying the learning experience.

One Step at a Time

Keep it simple. When developing your activity, you will find that the most simple and easy-to-follow instructions are the best way to keep your students engaged and “playing along,” so to speak. Nothing frustrates students more than overly-complicated instructions. Make your steps really clear by explaining the purpose and gameplay. In my Smashboard Edu activity, I learned (after a lot of feedback) that the gameplay needed to be simplified. It evolved from a digital app-smashing Hyperdoc, to a physical board game with cards and dice, to just a simple set of cards. The gameplay is simple: pick a problem to Smash, research the problem, solve the problem and share your solution. Then, reflect on the process. Yes, there are plenty of advanced play possibilities, addons, and mods, but starting out simple is the best way to get buy in. To make it interesting, split the class into groups of three to four and have them collectively complete the game together.

Roll the Dice

Make it Playful. Intend for your activity to be played. What makes an activity more like a game, you might ask? It is the addition of game elements. First of all, sterile language is removed. It is not a protocol or a procedure, or even just an activity. Bell-ringers and worksheets are completed. Games are played! Two of my most popular games are called “Smashboard Edu” and “Maker Kitchen.” In Smashboard Edu, we problem smash. Kids get it every time. Another thing I like to do to make things more game-like is add musical timers to control the pace and manipulate the mood. If I want participants to think fast, I add fast paced music with a countdown timer. If I want them to contemplate their answers but remind them that they have limited time, they may get a tick-tock sound, or classic Jeopardy timer. If they have extended time, but I want to remind them that the stakes are high, I may play an epic movie soundtrack in the background. Game shows do it all the time. It works. It’s fun.

Moving Forward

Use materials. If you choose to use paper and pencil, try golf pencils and post-its instead of lined paper. Put each step of a process on a gameboard or use cards. Use less words, add more symbols and color. In the development of games, I have used dice, spinners, Monopoly and Candyland-like boards. Lately I have been creating cards to design all sorts of activities. Sure, a Google Doc would do, but cards invoke play. We hold them, we sort them, we flip them over, we yell out loud when we get down to our last one. Just by handing out cards instead of distributing a worksheet, we expect joy to be a part of this process. If your game is not is not fun, it’s “dumb” and no one is ever playing again. Game over.

Another game-like element you can add to any collaborative activity are SOS cards. Whether we’re playing with Smashboard Edu or another set of games that I created related to “Maker Kitchen,” I always hand out one, “get out of jail” card to each group. Groups are reminded that they can always ask someone else, refer to other sources, or search online. Nevertheless, if they still need the help of the instructor, they can use their SOS card one time. It’s amazing how few students actually use this card because they compete to keep it!  

Avoid Pitfalls

Trial play. Your game or activity doesn’t have to be perfect before putting it before students. Not sure if your game is any fun? Ask for feedback from your kids. Tell them you are making a game, have them play the game, then ask them for feedback on how to make it better for your next class. If you teach middle school math, you may start with the skeleton of a game in the beginning of the day, and have a full-fledged completed game to utilize by the end of the day!

Final Goal

Make it rewarding. Notice, the final goal is to make it rewarding, not necessarily give out rewards. Prizes are fine and all, but when used too frequently, we’re training our students to hold out their hand every time they do a good job. Creating a trophy or putting names on a plaque is a great way to publicly applaud a team for their good work. But notice, that type of reward is not a consumable, like a party, or extra recess, or for goodness sake, candy! I get it, candy is a cheap reward that students love and many teachers can afford. Once kids outgrow stickers our jump shouldn’t be to candy or pizza, it should be from extrinsic to intrinsic. Not only does candy rot their teeth and their attitude, for many kids with already poor diets we are exasperating a much bigger health problem that affects their behavior and mood. Build intrinsic rewards for completing your activity, and provide healthy snacks if you want to give your students a treat. Keep them seperate.

Bonus:

Have your students create their own games. When it comes to any classroom activity, I have a bias towards creation over consumption. Don’t just read a book, write one. Don’t just read a speech, deliver one. Don’t just play games, create them! Furthermore, trying to gamify all of your lessons is hard work and time-consuming. Try delegating that task to the students. Split your students into small groups, give them the vocabulary list or your multiple choice test and a set of game materials and tell them that their task is to create a fun game out of the curriculum content. Set your musical timers and go!


Originally from Southern California, “Sociologist turned Technologist,” Dee Lanier is a passionate and energetic educator and learner with over a decade of instructional experience on the K-12 and collegiate level. Dee holds Undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Sociology with special interests in education, race relations, and inequality. Dee served at Crossroads Charter High School as a full-time Vocational Studies teacher, Testing Coordinator and Title I Director then went on to become the Technology Catalyst for the Lower School at Trinity Episcopal School. He was also an Executive Director of a national nonprofit and a founding board member and tech coach at Charlotte Lab School. Dee is a Google Certified Trainer and Innovator and specializes in creative applications for mobile devices and Chromebooks, low-cost makerspaces, and gamified learning activities. Dee is currently a Program Coordinator for EdTechTeam. You can find him on Twitter @deelanier

#OneWord

It’s no secret that teachers and students enjoy some time away from school, especially during the holiday season. While getting “back into the swing” of setting alarms and missing afternoon naps can be an adjustment, the new semester can also bring a renewed sense of purpose, a clean slate, and open more opportunities for student engagement and learning.

CHOOSE A CLASS #ONEWORD

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed #oneword popping up among posts from your PLN, and for good reason. Instead of making another resolution that—let’s face it—we’ll probably end up breaking before MLK Day, teachers on Twitter (or “Tweachers”) are choosing words to help them stay motivated and focused on achieving their goals throughout the year. My #oneword for 2019 is “grit” because I plan to achieve my goals with tenacity, perseverance, spirit, and determination—all synonyms of GRIT!

#oneword

When your students return to the classroom this month, try creating a #oneword for your class. As a high school teacher with 7-8 groups of students throughout the day, it’s interesting to hear the words my students come up with as a class to help them stay focused on their goals. At the beginning of 2018, my class words included “productivity,” “awesome,” and “focus,” all of which were unique to each class section. We posted their class #oneword on the board where they made great discussion topics for other classes. When we felt like we were getting off track or needed a boost, a student, and sometimes the teacher, would direct attention to the class #oneword as a point of encouragement.

Creating a class #oneword is a great way to encourage students to take part in developing and maintaining a positive classroom culture, while encouraging their classmates and teacher to be intentional in the learning environment.

SET INDIVIDUAL AND CLASS GOALS

During the first semester of this school year, I tried something new with my students and encouraged them to chart their learning goals for each unit. Prior to beginning a new unit, students completed a brief pre-assessment that included questions tied to each of the learning targets for our unit. In addition to the pre-assessment, I created and shared a Google Sheet where they would chart their pre- and post-test data, as well as their learning goals.

In addition to tracking their assessment data, my students were also able to view their goals in relation to their pre- and post-test scores on the second sheet of the Spreadsheet. Seeing the looks on their faces when they actually saw the improvement they made in relation to our learning goals through the unit was AWESOME! While some students saw huge growth from pre- to post-assessment, others saw only a point or two increase. Once again, when they saw the improvement they made in relation to the learning goals on the chart, I could almost see them sit up a bit straighter while their confidence increased.

Students can develop individual learning goals using a variety of mediums including:

  • Google Forms/Sheets
    • Create and administer a pre and post-assessment for each unit, and have students chart and evaluate their progress using a Google Sheet. Encourage students to become familiar with the learning targets for each unit and be intentional about the content they’re learning.
  • Padlet
    • Create a class Padlet wall where students can post their goals, both educational and those that are unrelated to school. Students can revisit this wall throughout the course of the year and can comment words of motivation and encouragement on their classmates’ posts. This wall can also be shared with parents, coaches, other teachers, and administrators who can also help hold students accountable and offer support and positive words throughout the year.
  • Flipgrid
    • Students can create Flipgrid videos as they set learning goals for the new year. These videos can be revisited frequently by students and teachers and can easily be shared with parents, coaches, etc. Now that Flipgrid is FREE for educators, everyone can take advantage of this awesome learning tool.

Encouraging students to create and monitor goals can be very powerful and can contribute to increased student engagement.

CREATE POSTS OF POSITIVITY

Students and teachers in all grade levels can find themselves needing a healthy dose of positivity from time to time. Sometimes, we’re tired. Some days, we’d rather be at home in sweatpants watching Netflix on the couch. We all need a jolt of inspiration and motivation; creating posts of positivity can be the boost teachers and students need!

#oneword

A few years ago, I noticed that my high school students seemed to be more stressed than usual. Many take a heavy schedule of advanced classes, work after school jobs, participate in extracurricular activities, and are, like their dear teacher, trying to balance it all. To help bring a dose of motivation, inspiration, and a smile to their faces, I created a “Take What You Need” bulletin board in the back of my classroom. On this bulletin board, you’ll find inspirational quotes from Professor Dumbledore, Harry Potter, Franklin Roosevelt, Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and the like, on small pieces of paper. Students can literally “take what they need” from the board for motivation throughout the day. Many of my students tuck the quotes in their Chromebook cases or planners where they can see them frequently. It’s a small thing that I can do to help brighten their day.

Encourage your students to contribute to a “Take What You Need” board in your classroom, or place “posts of positivity” throughout the school in places their classmates frequent. We never really know what someone is going through, and these words of inspiration, motivation, and positivity may help make someone’s day a bit happier!

How do you plan to start the new year right in your classroom?

Be sure to share your ideas and suggestions with your PLN on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or through your favorite platform, using #edtechteam, and have a wonderful, productive 2019!

Bethany Petty is a high school Social Studies teacher and author from Park Hills, Missouri. Her most recent book, Illuminate: Technology Enhanced Learning, shares tips and tricks to improve learning and enhance student engagement in the classroom. Follow Bethany on Twitter @Bethany_Petty

The Possibilities of PicCollage: Practical Pedagogy in the Classroom

Utilising technology within the classroom is something I feel extremely passionate about. After all, as teachers, our pupils come to our classes digitally literate, ready to explore what’s next. We are incredibly lucky to teach the future, but with that comes the responsibility of ensuring our teaching is current, relevant and open to change. I love being creative with technology and using it to enhance the learning of my pupils. If you follow me on Twitter or have spent around five minutes talking to me about education, you’ll realise that one app is favoured over all others – and that is PicCollage!

PicCollage is essentially a photo, image and text editing tool. It is an engaging platform for pupils to creatively share their learning and can offer a basic introduction to graphic design and photo editing too!
The possibilities of PicCollage span as far as your creativity will allow, but in this blog, I’ll share some examples of how I have used PicCollage with my classes.

Tweet of the Week!

Recently, my pupils have been using PicCollage to reflect on their learning at the end of the week. Although, you may want to change this to reflecting on learning at the end of a specific topic, block of learning or as an assessment tool for different curricular areas.
With my pupils, I usually give them three or four questions that will encourage them to focus on what they have learned, the progress they’ve made and to think of next steps for improvement. Here are some questions that you may want to ask:

What have you enjoyed learning about this week and why?
What have you felt confident with this week?
Is there anything you think you could improve on? What are your next steps?
What are you proud of this week?
Have you been challenged this week? If so how did you overcome it? What progress have you made?

Once the pupils have discussed possible answers to their questions, they then use PicCollage to present them. The finished results are shared on our class Twitter page and are printed for display on our classroom Twitter wall. A simple and engaging way to gain insight into what your pupils really think and really know!

Photography

For this lesson, my pupils took the iPads outside and snapped signs of Autumn. Leaves falling from trees and the warm vibrant colours of plants and leaves – the pupils really enjoyed this photography lesson! Once they were happy with the photographs they had taken, my pupils edited their photos by clicking on them, clicking edit and then selecting an Autumnal filter. Once saved, they opened PicCollage, set their photo as the background and inserted the words ‘Hello October’ to welcome the new month and new season. A great combination of outdoor learning and technology! You could even extend this further by getting your pupils to create Autumnal poems, inspired by their photos!

SolveMe Maths

Use PicCollage to create math puzzles! Pupils saved a few pictures on Safari (usually emoji or Fortnite related!) inserted them in PicCollage and created a math puzzle for a friend to solve. A fun and engaging way to consolidate the order of operations, number patterns and sequences in maths!


Writing

PicCollage is an excellent tool to engage pupils in writing. From reluctant writers to accomplished writers, PicCollage offers an alternative and creative way for pupils to share their thoughts.
Recently, my pupils did a spooktacular (Halloween themed) static electricity experiment in Science. They took photographs at each stage of the experiment, inserted them into PicCollage and then wrote step by step instructions to inform others how to do the experiment too! The children love being able to change their background to something spooky, edit the font and colour of text, easily insert photographs and add stickers and illustrations.

Nicola Orr
Class Teacher at Condorrat Primary School in sunny Scotland
Follow @MrsOrrCPS for all things tech, STEM, art and poetry related. Harry Potter references may occur too…
I absolutely LOVE my job!

[themify_button bgcolor=”green” size=”large” link=”https://www.edtechteam.com/apple/”]Learn more ways to get creative with Apple Professional Learning from EdTechTeam[/themify_button]