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How to Bring the Shark Tank into Your Classroom

July 27, 2019

I remember the first time I heard the premise of the show Shark Tank. A bunch of out-of-touch billionaires discussing finances and crushing the dreams of entrepreneurs? Hard pass. But, sure enough, I happened to catch half an episode at a friend’s house, and I was instantly hooked. The combination of brief but captivating pitches, innovative new business ventures, an authentic audience with constructive feedback, and unique competition spoke to me as both a viewer and, more importantly, an educator. My first thought after seeing the episode: how could I leverage this format in the classroom?

With that goal in mind, I set about establishing various ways to apply the core aspects of the show into student-created assessments, professional development wrap-ups, and much more. After running a number of Shark Tank sessions in a number of formats, below are my five keys for a successful implementation.

Develop an Engaging Prompt to Focus the Competition

The biggest strength of the Shark Tank format is its malleability for a variety of situations. Running a workshop or professional development session? Wrap up the session with a Shark Tank competition to have staff pitch implementation of the new concepts. Developing a culminating assessment for the end of the unit? Challenge students to capture the most significant theme of the unit in the form of a product or service. Looking to add design thinking, project-based learning, or genius hour to the classroom? All are great fits for a Shark Tank competition as an endcap to the process.

When developing your prompt, consider how you frame the scenario. What is the most important aspect to you: process, product, or both? If you want a feasible “product” to come out of it, have you given your audience ample time to go through the design process to ideate, iterate, and prototype? Are you more concerned about them demonstrating understanding through the process, with the final presentation more of a celebration than a true “pitch?” In that case, make sure you give both your participants AND your evaluators the “look fors” in a successful Shark Tank pitch so everyone is on the same page for what wins the competition and what will receive plenty of constructive feedback.

For the course I teach for preservice librarians, both the process and product were key: how do we use the design thinking process to solve a challenge for today’s library media specialist? Using this prompt, students knew they needed to connect with librarians to discover their challenges, brainstorm ideas, and then pitch a potential, actionable solution that their user group could implement down the road.

Workshop How to Give a Succinct Yet Effective Pitch

What I absolutely adore about Shark Tank is the creativity through constraint: the entrepreneurs get oh-so-little time to sell their idea that every second of the pitch counts. One of my first steps to model how to give an effective pitch is to literally have students watch a few example Shark Tank pitches to get a sense of how people approached the limited timeframe and what they emphasized in their “elevator speech” about their idea, product, or service. After that, we usually get students used to the “pitch” format by playing a fun, improv game that challenges players to do their best on-the-spot pitch. My favorite games to use for this activity are Silicon Valley Startups and Snake Oil, two engaging card games that work in a small-group format.

Creating effective visuals to go along with the pitch is often a pain point for presenters. I emphasize using only a short, key word or phrase (if any text) on slides and encourage the presenter to let their voice do the heavy lifting for information. Instead, the visuals should focus on focused graphics, data, or metaphorical imagery that reinforces or enhances what they say.

My big rule for visuals in one-day workshops? Participant teams get ONE slide to use with their pitch. Getting them to think strategically about how to use their limited space to sell their idea, lesson, or solution is always a fun mental hurdle.

Find an Authentic Expert Panel

What makes the Shark Tank so fascinating is the real-world stakes associated with actual investors considering the business ideas. Although our students may not be ready to get funded by investors, there are plenty of avenues to provide an authentic “expert panel” on the subject of your choosing. For my class of preservice librarians, I brought in a K-12 librarian, a higher education librarian, an instructor who teaches in a library media program, and a tech-savvy educator. Since my students knew that they were going to be assessed by industry professionals and future colleagues in the field, they knew they had to “bring it” on presentation day.

For your potential Shark Tank, consider who might be a logical choice within your school, community, state, or even nationally. For younger students explaining the big takeaways from a concept or how to make change in the schools, enlist older students who could give them feedback on their ideas, pitch, and understanding of the concepts. For staff members pitching new ideas to implement, bring on district administrators, colleagues, students, and more. If you want your students to design a new product, process, or service, tap local business owners, government officials, or other key figures. If you don’t have them in your backyard, bring them in via video conferencing platform.

Engage the audience by making them investors

One of the biggest issues with student or staff presentations is that the viewers often take on a very passive role. Sure, we have them fill out feedback forms and encourage them to provide constructive comments that help each other grow, but there does not seem to be as much of a concrete way observers impact the presenter’s success beyond such feedback.

In the Shark Tank activity, viewers are given a set “budget” that they get to distribute however they like (I usually give them $1,000 hypothetical funds to invest overall). After viewing all of the presentations, the observers can then dole out their hypothetical however they would like, choosing to split it among multiple presenters or giving it all to the best idea they witness. For easy collection and tabulation, I typically pre-populate the groups into a Google Form and have them submit the group they are supporting with how much they are giving that team, allowing for multiple submissions if they support more than one group.

With the audience-as-investor format, you have now created more paths to victory for your students. Not only is there an expert “Shark Panel” who gets to crown some winners, but the audience investment allows for a sort of “People’s Choice” award for the team who garners the most favor from the crowd. If you are at all worried that students or colleagues might intentionally vote for the least promising pitch to up their chances of winning, simply split the groups in half and have two separate competitions. Teams only submit their investments for the other half of the groups or individuals they are not up against, taking an incentives away from funding an unworthy recipient. Problem solved!

Share the Final Products with the World

Sure, you’ve had your students pitch their ideas to an expert panel and their classmates or colleagues, but why stop there? Record the pitches and push them out on YouTube. Make a copy of their slide decks and share them on social media. Have each participant or group record their elevator pitch on a public Flipgrid and get feedback from the world!

If you try out this activity, share it on Twitter with the #SharkTankEDU hashtag – it would be great to see what you, your students, and your staff create!

Jon Spike, a graduate of UW-Madison, started his career as a high school English teacher. Since then, he has served as a K-12 Technology Integrator, helping students and staff use technology to engage, inspire, and create. He currently works as a Coordinator of Instructional Technology and Integration Services at UW-Whitewater, collaborating with preservice teachers and College of Education instructors to leverage technology. He also teaches a course on Video Games and Learning.

Jon has presented across the U.S. to educators and administrators as both a consultant and Google Certified Trainer, sharing his expertise at the ISTE, WEMTA, and ICE conferences, as well as the Midwest Google Summit. He currently serves as Director of Higher Education on the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association Executive Board. You can follow Jon on Twitter at @Mr_JSpike.

Test Time, Game Time

May 3, 2019

It’s that time of year again. Spring break is over, the sun’s out, and for many, there’s one last dreaded obstacle in the way of summer break: end of year testing. As a former classroom teacher and testing coordinator, and a parent of grade-level children, here’s one thing I know — no one likes testing!

Desks move from small group setups to rows, project creation and collaborative work is put on hold in favor of drill and kill. Rote memorization, testing techniques, anti-anxiety practices are all commonplace during this time of year. Have you ever wondered how an environment could be so stressful and quiet at the same time? How can we smash this problem forever? Enter, Smashboard Edu.

As a former high School business teacher I made it a habit to be as honest as possible with my students. I tried to inform them that as high school students all the stakes were high because of their age and stage of life. I also tried to help them understand that because we operate in a capitalistic society, almost everything that is socially valued is because of financial gain. I even explained that schools receive funding based on student attendance and additional funding based on student performance. I think they appreciated me level-setting that we all operate within a system, and our goal is to master it. One of the clichés I told them was, “Life’s a game, you just need to know how to play it.” Without over-analyzing that statement, take into account just a few things: games are rules or guidelines that everyone must follow in order to win. But what defines winning in the classroom? Ask most teachers, and they will say that they teach to help young learners to become world-changing problem-solvers. Testing doesn’t define their success, it’s simply a necessary evil.

Before Smashboard Edu existed I felt the need to try something different when it came to content-review. Filling out worksheets, studying flashcards, bubbling scantrons was not my idea of fun. I hated it. So one day I decided to try something. I went to the local dollar store and bought a bunch of gaming materials. I got foam dice, spinners, dry erase mats, markers, and 3 x 5 cards. I set the materials out and made this declaration to my classes, “Let’s make a game.” I explained that we knew that the game had to incorporate the content, but that we needed to create a game that another class could play. This was my attempt at challenging the class to not just create a game, but a good game. A game that would be played and evaluated by their peers. They were all in. This was 2009, and it was my first time experimenting with gamification. I have tried to dig up those instructions many times in the past, but they were probably saved in Microsoft Word on a thumb drive buried in a box somewhere. Nonetheless, the memories are vivid. I remember my students co-creating a game that was a weird mashup of Monopoly and Pictionary. I remember us making and creating three days a week — taking practice tests on Fridays, reviewing results on Monday, modifying the game and playing Tuesday-Thursday. You read that right, we still did practice tests and reviewed results. We didn’t pretend that end of year testing wasn’t coming up. We didn’t pretend that the test wasn’t important. We just prepared differently.

Here’s another thing I must confess. It would be hard for me to prove to you that my students did better on their exams than previous years. The state didn’t reward (or demerit) me for my students’ test results. I taught business, not math, language, or social studies. In the state’s eyes, my test scores didn’t count. Nevertheless, every student in the entire school had to eventually take my class and pass it in order to graduate. Furthermore, my principal required that every subject had an end of year test that she personally reviewed, so my test counted for something. I just didn’t get a (financial) bonus if my kids did well, and my job wasn’t necessarily on the line if they performed poorly. I understood all of these things very well because I was also the school testing coordinator. The biggest difference that occured in my gamified test prep approach was that I loved teaching in the spring again. My students took the same 100 multiple-choice test with short response and essay on the back as my students did in previous years. I was not in a position to eliminate my end of year testing, but I did have a choice in how I prepared my students. A memorable experience over memorization.

During my last year teaching full-time in the classroom, I co-created Smashboard Edu scoring cards for study review games with 3-5th grade science classes utilizing Smashboard Edu. Things have evolved immensely over the years, but the process has remained the same.

Problem to smash: Test review is no fun.
Research: Find existing analog or digital games to model after (see Smashboard Edu Creative Apps section and filter for Review).
Solve: Have student groups create a content-review game.
Share: Share with other classes to receive feedback.
Review: Review feedback to make game more engaging.

Looking for digital game idea starters in creating your own game? See this Hyper Doc template or go the Smashboard Edu > Creative Apps > and filter for Review.

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 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 and Dynamic Learning Project Mentor. You can find him on Twitter @deelanier

Unlock Critical Thinking Skills with BreakoutEDU

April 20, 2019

BreakoutEDU allows students the opportunity to collaborate with peers while using critical-thinking skills to solve clues and puzzles to open a variety of locks. This ultimately allows students to unlock the biggest box and officially break out. Students have forty-five minutes to find clues, make meaning of them, and unlock all the locks before time runs out.

In the past, I have created Breakouts relating to the content and skills being taught in my class. Students loved them and always asked when the next Breakout would be. It was amazing how well my students worked together, their perseverance, and how they did not give up until they reached their final goal. If they did not open the final box before time ran out, they reflected on what they could have done differently and used it as a learning experience for their next Breakout activity.

It wasn’t until midway through the school year when I had a group of students ask me if they could create their own Breakout to teach their peers about their chosen topic for our Microlife Unit. I have always allowed students to choose how they demonstrate their learning and loved this idea! I gave my students a list of the locks and off they went to plan. They created a presentation, had QR codes that led to informative videos regarding their topic, number codes that led to students creating words to unlock locks, and more! A few days later, they showed me their plan and how each clue led to a lock and ultimately the final box. We did a run through to double check everything worked properly and ensure their lesson was ready.

The next day the students presented their Breakout. They had the classes sit in the hallway as they read a story about the purpose of their activity and what students would be learning. Next, they broke each class into smaller groups, walked them into the classroom where the clues were hidden, started the timer, and stood back to watch as their classmates attempted to complete their Breakout.

At the end of the lesson, they asked their peers for feedback. It was an awesome moment for me as their teacher to watch them completely take over the class. They called on their peers, listened to their feedback, and revised their activity to make it even better. Additionally, they answered questions their classmates had about their topic, which showed me how much they had learned during their research. Some feedback they received from their peers included:

“I learned a lot about the signs and symptoms of the condition you chose and how to prevent it. The video you showed us was right to the point and very informative.”

“I learned what to do if I see someone having a medical issue and I learned how it impacts the body on a cellular level.”

“Your clues were engaging and difficult.”

“This was so fun! Great job!”

“Clues were hidden in difficult spots. Consider making them more obvious for the next class.”

“I learned a lot. It was fun to learn this information in a different way.”

After this learning experience, more groups of students started creating their own Breakouts to demonstrate their understanding of various standards. Students worked together to create challenging but informative clues. They used various forms of technology, incorporated other subject areas, and used critical thinking and problem solving skills to create their Breakouts. Their passion and creativity was rewarding and fun for their peers and me, and I am so glad they took on the task of creating their own Breakouts!

Kimberly Broton is a 6th Grade Science Teacher in the Northern Suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. She has been teaching 6th Grade Science for 9 years. Previously she taught 7th Grade Math and English Language Arts. You can find her on Twitter @KimberlyBroton.

Top 5 Ways to Get Creative with Assessment

October 27, 2018

One of the most powerful things about implementing technology in the classroom is the ability to capture a student’s learning cycle in varied ways. Where once, a standard fill in the bubble test was the only indicator of success for a learner in the classroom, there are a plethora of options the teacher can use in their instructional design to have students demonstrate understanding in multiple ways. This not only supports the teacher in gathering evidence for instructional intention, but it also provides every student an opportunity to demonstrate understanding, using their strengths, interests, and context creatively. Whether using formative assessment to see a student’s journey or a summative assessment as a culminating piece to a unit, here are the Top 5 Ways to Get Creative with Assessment:

Show and Tell

A lot of assessment practices can get pigeon-holed in the idea that there is only one way that students can show what they know. Mix it up by giving students the opportunity not just to write an essay but present their learning on a topic or essential question using tools such as WeVideo, Adobe Spark, iMovie, and Explain Everything. These tools allow students not only to tell what they are learning but show it as well with built-in tools to record their voice, upload images/video, record video, draw and add text.

Passive is Passé

Make your presentations interactive. Involve students to engage in the lesson by providing different modalities of information. Tools such as PearDeck, Nearpod, and EdPuzzle go beyond the learner as a passive consumer and more of an engaged participant.

It’s always about the journey

Begin with the end in mind. Allow multiple sets of data points by integrating different checkpoints of understanding along the way. Tools such as Google Forms, Formative and Kahoot give teachers more than just multiple choice when designing their formative assessments. Which means more opportunities for students to be successful, whatever their learning style.

Bring Social Back

Learning is loud. Students need engagement with their peers inside and outside the classroom. Tools such as Flipgrid, Classkick, Quizlet Live, and Quizizz allow opportunities for students to learn with and from each other.

The World Does Revolve Around Them

Don’t take it personally when students take on the role of being in charge of their own learning. Google for Education tools such as Docs, Slides, Keep and Sites allow students choice, to track their progress, reflect on their learning and share with others.

How do you get creative with assessment? What are ways you engage all learners in the learning process? Please share to the EdTechTeam communities, I’d love to hear!

Gail Moore
Instructional Technology Facilitator
Educational Consultant
Google Certified Trainer and Innovator
Apple Teacher
Washington State
@gailkmoore

The Gallery Walk Reimagined With Applied Digital Skills

September 27, 2018

I started my journey by going on a walk … a Digital Gallery Walk

I remember how I used to do poster sessions with my math classes. Groups of students would tear off a big sheet of poster paper from an easel pad and go to work crafting their math presentations with grape and licorice-scented markers. The posters would go up on the wall and students would take turns admiring each poster as if strolling the halls of the Louvre. Then, when a certain poster struck their interest, they would peel off a little sticky note and leave a comment, question or some feedback for the creative teams to digest and make corrections if necessary. A powerful activity no doubt, but what happens when the class period is over? Yup. Those posters most likely end up in the garbage.

Let’s welcome our new friend, Google’s Applied Digital Skills All About a Topic lesson and reimagine the gallery walk.

Activity: Digital Gallery Walk Reimagined with All About a Topic

1. Create student teams and assign. Create teams for in-class collaboration, assign the math presentation topic and assign each of your students the Applied Digital Skills lesson.
2. Design. Replacing poster paper with a collaborative digital canvas and smelly markers with a host of flexible and fun creation tools, students are able to create collaborative, visually inspiring presentations presenting their math findings.
3. Share and comment. When students are done they can share their math presentation with the class for feedback. Sticky notes are replaced by interactive comment bubbles.
4. Iterate. The recycling bin is replaced by a searchable digital learning portfolio that lets students take their learning with them on their math journeys for as long as they have their G Suite accounts.

Impacts on the Math Classroom

Builds Presentation Skills – Being able to communicate ideas is a critical skill not only for the jobs of the future but also for the math classroom of today. Applied Digital Skills provides students with tools and skills to design and create professional presentations that help them to demonstrate their learning in a way paper can’t. Using Google Slides and this lesson, students can choose themes, add text and images, insert videos, add transitions and do a host of other creative things with slides.

Elevates Collaboration – The big, beautiful, blue Share button in the top right corner of your Slides deck opens the door to collaboration which is critical to the math classroom. Sharing a Slides deck with the whole class pulls all of the posters into one collaborative digital space. Students can leave feedback, co-create content, peer review each other and share their learning with the world. Most importantly, when learning becomes visible it creates more opportunities for student self-assessment and critical thinking.

Asynchronous Learning – Let’s be honest, it takes more than 45 minutes a day to learn mathematics. With the paper-based Gallery Walk, students lose access to the posters once they walk out of the classroom door. Using the All About a Topic Lesson they can access the posters anytime and any place they have a wifi connection. Whether it is in their living room, the library, Grandma’s house or on the bus with their phones they will be able to access whenever and wherever they need it.

Scaffolding with Search – Google Search and Google Drive are great for scaffolding and developmental learning. A student can’t remember the definition of a parallelogram? They can do a keyword search in Drive and the presentation pops up for them. Looking for a phrase or a word within a Google Slide deck? Try Command F and find it within the document. These simple strategies allow students to quickly and efficiently connect concepts and build their own learning scaffold around them.

The math classroom is a great place to not only begin building critical skills for the future but also to build critical learning skills for today. The Digital Gallery Walks opens the doors for communication, collaboration, critical thinking and so much more!.

Sign up for Applied Digital Skills today to try this activity in your classroom.

Looking for more ways to integrate Applied Digital Skills in your Math Classroom? Check out the free, email-based course Integrating Digital Skills in the Math Classroom.

Brendan Brennan is a teacher, researcher, and trainer out of Honolulu, Hawaii. He is currently serving as the Professional Development Architect for the Hawaii’s Future Ready Learning program as well as the co-author of the statewide 1:1 Deployment & Change Guide Book. He is also working on Project Open Glassroom and launching the first generation of Moonshot Incubators during the upcoming school year. In his free time, he likes taking long walks on the beach, drinking tea with good posture and writing NASCAR fan fiction.