Hi. I'm Audrey. And I'm an Explain-aholic.

Here is my story. It starts yesterday.

Yesterday, I gave my students a situational problem to work on, which is the term we use here in Quebec for a problem that is rather complex, involves many steps, and has many possible correct answers. For example, design a house that has a total living area between such and such m², and costs no more than such and such to build, given these materials and constraints etc etc.  I've grown to love these problems, but they always seem to bring out one of my biggest weaknesses as a teacher, that is, as I've confessed, that I am an Explainaholic.

One of the things this type of assessment is supposed to measure is the student's ability to independently move forward in the problem. As such, I told the kids, as I always do at the beginning of a situational problem: "You can ask me for help, but if I help you, it's gonna cost you. Not money, marks."

But then I always fold like a house of cards as soon as someone goes all helpless and floppy and sad. For I am all too happy to swoop down and.....EXPLAIN.

Not this time. I just wrote a post right here acknowledging that I have a bad addiction to explaining the life out of everything, so I felt armed and ready to resist temptation. I faced my addiction like a Gladiator. Strength and honour.

So for each class, I put the kids into breakout rooms, which is equivalent to pods in the brick and mortar classroom. Then I waited and watched. In my first class, no major breakthroughs happened, and no one asked me for any help, which is fine, that's what I want, right? But not right somehow.

But in my second class, about 10 minutes into their breakout room time, I saw that a student in one room, I'll call him Evan, had made a breakthrough. He didn't seem to know that he had, and he didn't know what to do next, but he was onto something. So I let Evan and his group chew on it a bit. They asked me if I could give them a nudge, and I am proud to say, I said no. But I wanted everyone to sink their teeth into it and move it forward, so I moved the rest of the class into that room, one by one, and said, here you go, no marks lost if you get help from someone besides me.....

More progress was made, and there was even some checking of results using geogebra, at which point I began weeping tears of joy. Because geogebra is another addiction, but I think it's a good one, and I'm all too happy to create new geogebra addicts.

Then, in a moment of weakness...

....I buckled. Yes, I am sorry to say, I decided to give them a hint. Don't know why. I spoke. "You have 2 unknowns and only one equation."

And..........they couldn't hear me! Some glitch in our virtual environment actually made my voice not get through, but they could still hear each other! It was divine cyber intervention saying:

YOU. AUDREY. SHUT. UP.

Well that didn't stop me, of course, because I could still write on the board, which (cringe) I did, BUT all I did was to circle the equation they had written, write "equation #1" next to it, then "equation #2?" I heard and saw a lot of "OHHHHHHH!!" 's. Love that. Addicted to that too.

At this point I REALLY needed to talk, but not to explain, just to remind them about tutoring tonight, etc, because we were almost out of class time, so I did a few things to try to restore my audio, and by the time I finished that, the period had ended. But I seemed to be the only one who noticed, because they kept right on working. I'm not saying every single student was talking, but they were all still there, a good 5 minutes after class ended. There was a core of 4 or 5 kids who were doing the writing and talking, but the rest were still there.

There's more!

That's not the end of the story, though. It just so happened that last night at tutoring, which all students can attend, I had mostly customers from my first period, which, remember, was the group that hadn't really gotten anywhere. But I had ONE student from the second class, and I repeated what I had said, that if she helped them out, it was ok. I'll call her Courtney.

"Courtney," I said, "would you mind telling these ladies what happened in our class today?"

"Well, " she answered, "I didn't really understand what those guys were doing." she replied.

"@#!%#@$#^@^#%^" I said to myself. "Steady, strength and honour, hold the line," said the Gladiator. Sigh. My Russell. FOCUS AUDREY.

"But," Courtney continued, "I figured it out myself afterward."

My brain: "Sorry, what?"

And then she proceeded to show the others what she had done to get that second equation, which was actually a bit different than what Evan had done. More "OHHHHH!!!!" 's from the others. It gave me goosebumps. So proud of myself. Oh and my students too.

Thoughts/concerns:

• In disallowing my help, but allowing their help, have I just re-routed my addiction, AND fed their's, so that someone else is delivering the goods? Or does hearing it from a peer, someone in the same boat as them, have a different effect that's worthwhile? Is that the social aspect of learning?
• Did everyone get somewhere, or just the kids who were talking and writing?
• Does this mean that next time we do a sit prob, some of the kids will just wait around for someone else to figure it out and tell them? I mean what do they care who it is that's explaining, as long as they don't lose marks, right?
• How do the kids who made the breakthrough feel? Like everyone else benefited unfairly from their work? Or did it benefit them too, because as we all know, when you have to explain something you end up understanding it all the better?
• How can I make transparent whatever skills Evan and Courtney used to make that first breakthrough? Is it something the others can reproduce? And what is it? Just plain math ability? Confidence? Organized notes?

Maybe today I'll spend some time letting them discuss/process how this breakthrough came about, so that everyone will have a better chance at doing it next time. Maybe later, not sure when would be best. Strike when the iron's hot?

My Teaching Fixes

By fix, I mean something that I absolutely must have, but that isn't, strictly speaking, good for me. For example, I have to get my bagel fix once a week, and I don't mean just any bagel, I mean Montreal-style bagels.

If you have tried a real Montreal bagel, you know what I mean. If you haven't, well, you might be able to live a relatively happy life, I don't know, with support from your family and all. Or you could come to Montreal.

The thing is, it's an indulgence, especially the slabs of cream cheese....but I do indulge once in a while because it seems to quiet that inner bagel monster long enough so I can get on with my life. So.....

What are my fixes as a teacher?

Well, there are things that I need that I probably shouldn't. Somehow these things make me feel like I'm doing a good job, and I know, that's really about me, not my students, I get it. But maybe if I acknowledge it, give into it just a little, like that bagel, I can control it....

• I need to make my students laugh.
• I need to be creative.
• I need to EXPLAIN SOMETHING TO SOMEONE.
• I need to witness the moment when something clicks in a student's head, that "OHHHHH I get it now!"
• I need someone to say to me "Audrey you are doing a phenomenal job." And that someone can be me, that's not a problem. It usually is.
• I need their marks to be high THERE I'VE SAID IT!
• I need a bagel. Oh sorry. Already covered that. With a metric ton of cream cheese.

Have a look at what online looks like to me

Online Education - How do you react when you hear those words? Be honest, at least with yourself - do you automatically lower your expectations? Or worse, do you stop listening? I hope you will listen for just a few seconds longer this time.

Some things I heard said at the iNACOL VSS 2012 conference have prompted me to write this post. The word online itself needs to be clarified first, and I have blogged about that here, but today I'd like to address what seems to be a perception that online education is somehow not as good as "the real thing". That it ISN'T, in fact, "the real thing". Now I'm not saying it's all wine and roses, and as I said before, there's good and bad on both sides of the fence, but I worry that a huge group of teachers who are immensely gifted and dedicated are being written off without a moments' thought.

First here's a video I made from my actual classes, from today. This is what online is for me and my students at LearnQuebec. I want to make sure everyone reading this (all 1 of you) gets what it is I do for a living, in fact what it is a lot of folks out there do for a living, and a video is worth a thousand words. And by the way, I taped this today, not knowing I'd be using it here, so I have had to block my students' names to protect their privacy. The purple callouts are my comments for you:



As you can see, it's a live class, and we do the same kinds of things you do in your brick and mortar, we just don't happen to be in the same physical space. I've had 20 years' experience in the brick and mortar, and the last 5 years online, and I love teaching online. Here are some pro's and cons:

Online pro's

• Being able to have a private conversation with a student during the class, and I do mean private, not only does no one else know what's being said but no one knows that it's even happening
• being able to have a class even when the roads are full of snow (this also appears in the con list)
• can have way more kids writing on board at same time, most I ever had on chalk board was 4, and on a smartboard it's 1 (although I hear on the promethean one more than 1 can write)
• all the kids are already on a computer, so all online tools available to me and them, no need to book the computer lab
• not having to be constantly pulled away from teaching to do things like supervision, open house, detentions
• I have my own comp, printer, phone, scanner, don't need to share with anybody
• typing skills have grown exponentially
• completely comfortable with online presence, twitter etc because it's so necessary for us, we go above and beyond to connect since we're deprived of f2f most of the time
• so much more connected with my students than I ever was in the classroom and I'm not even sure I know why this is! Probably the flipping.

Online cons:

• no f2f, which means a lot of communication is left out
• hard to get kids who don't know each other and have never seen each other to work together and be comfortable with each other
• there is no such thing as a ped day or a snow day
• don't get to see other teachers everyday, miss those convos that happen on your way past someone's desk with ppl in other departments. I used to LOVE the french department, those ladies really knew how to live
• miss out on school spirit since teach so many different schools

But here's the thing, what it boils down to is this: good teaching is good teaching, wherever it happens.

And some students do well in the online class, but not all, just like in brick and mortar.

But you don't have to take my word for it. At VSS 2012, we heard from some kids about why THEY love their online classes, and their reasons were show-stopping, ranging from escaping from bullying and drug addiction to an opportunity to be the first in a family to go to college. In our case, we are helping kids who would otherwise not get the credits they need to go to college. Our kids write the same end of year exams as everyone else in Quebec, no special deals for them.

Phew. That feels good to get that out. Now I'll wait for the barrage of comments. From my mom.

My presentation for K12 Online 2012 Conference

Doing this convinced me that learning by doing is absolutely the best way to go - I learned SO much about using Camtasia in the 9 - 10 days it took me to make this. That's right, to make a 20-minute video....I hope you enjoy it!

I teach online. And by "online" I mean.......

I was fortunate to attend the 2012 Virtual School Symposium last week, which took place in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thank you iNACOL for this amazing conference!  And, okay, blowing my own horn here, I was there because I and my colleague, Peggy Drolet, were presented with the "iNACOL Innovative Online Learning Practice 2012" award.  I have to say, I love this picture. Not only because of what's happening in it, and who I'm standing next to, and where we were, but gosh I love my dress and shoes....focus, Audrey.

Back to business: The symposium was organized by iNACOL, which stands for International Association for K12 Online Learning. Of all the things I feel compelled to write about and reflect upon after this conference, (stay tuned, it was awesome, gbl, pbl, mobile learning, Bourbon Street, links to flipped class....later), the most burning one is that word "online."

I already knew there were many different meanings to that word, but since VSS 2012, oh boy, I had no idea how many permutations and combinations there were. There's online, asynchronous, synchronous, blended, office hours, virtual, brick and mortar.....and now I see, kind of, sort of where I fit in. If anyone wishes to add, or make corrections, please feel free to comment below, I'm just trying to sort it all out in my head. Constructing my own learning, if you will:

The basics, about which there is little debate:

• asynchronous = not live, not bound by time, whatever happens doesn't require that everyone be in the same place at the same time, for example, a recorded lesson can be listened to anytime, an assessment can be done by a student at any time, or a blog post can be written at any time.
• synchronous = live, bound by time, whatever happens does require that everyone be in the same place at the same time, for example, a live lecture, a or a class collaborating to create a review outline, or students all writing as assessment at the same time
• learning management system (LMS) = a tool that the teacher uses to deliver content, assessments, and to track what, when, and how students have fulfilled the requirements, for example, moodle
• brick and mortar = the ultimate synchronous experience, anything that happens in an actual building, everyone is there at the same time AND physical place. Also called face-to-face, or f2f.

Now for "online", about which there is infinite debate:

• online, to anyone not involved in education = anything that happens over the internet, learning or not, ie reading a blog, playing a game, using an online tool, social networking......as in, I'm chatting online

• online, to anyone involved in education = teaching/learning that happens on the internet, and can mean any combination of asynchronous and synchronous, anywhere on this continuum:

• At the left extreme, all asynchronous delivery of course content, with no synchronous component, ie students listen to lessons, do assessments, and don't meet with the teacher or other students. Teachers keep track of students' progress via the LMS. These classes tend to have huge numbers of students in them, sometimes over a thousand.
• At the right, it's all live classes, 100% synchronous delivery of course content, ie everyone meets in a virtual classroom, such as Elluminate, Zenlive, or Adobe Connect. The course content is delivered to everyone during that time. Students may interact with the teacher and each other. Teachers don't need an LMS in this scenario, but the live lessons are often recorded and made available to students afterward. These classes tend to have small numbers of students, perhaps 15 - 25 kids.
• In between these extremes seems to be where most people/organizations are, in any of the many combos. For example, many virtual schools use asynchronous delivery of course content and assessments via an LMS, with some synchronous component, ie students meet with the teacher individually or in groups during the teacher's office hours. The teachers make extensive use of the info in the LMS to tailor the meeting according to the individual needs of the students The meeting between the teacher and the student takes place in a virtual classroom environment, such as Elluminate, Zenlive, or Adobe Connect, where the teacher is often having private conversations with as many as 20 students at a time. The enrollment in these classes tends to be somewhere in the hundreds.

**(We heard some astonishingly honest, moving, and enthusiastic testimony from a panel of students about how they feel about their online classes, and teachers, more about that later.)**

Blended learning:

• can mean online learning anywhere between the two extremes on the above continuum
• can mean a combination of online and brick and mortar, or f2f  learning. Oh boy, how do I work that into the continuum? I won't.

Where do I fit in?

Definitely somewhere in between the two ends, but I think closer to the synchronous end. When I started teaching for LearnQuebec, I was all synchronous. I was doing pretty much what I had been doing for the 20 years prior to that in the brick and mortar classroom. I taught, kids took notes, I gave them homework, they came back the next day with questions etc, pretty standard stuff.

Then I started getting the kids to blog, which moved me away from 100% synchronous, because that took place outside of class. We talked about their blogging and commenting in class, so there was some real blending.

Then I started flipping my classroom, which moved me a bit further to the left. Things have evolved since then, so here's the breakdown:

Asynchronous components: Anytime outside of class, students:

• watch lessons on voicethread
• comment, ask, or answer questions on voicethread
• blog and reflect on content
• use gizmos on explorelearning.com
• do assessments on explorelearning.com
• do assignments to be handed in

Synchronous components: During class time, which we all have everyday by the way, students:

• explore the content before the voicethread (often using geogebra, sometimes introductory problem)
• reinforce the content after the voicethread (practice on eboard, discuss voicethread questions, make and present summaries) 
• apply the content after several voicethreads (often using geogebra, solving situational problems, collaborate to make chapter summary)
• get individual help/intervention from me
• etc it's all still evolving....if you're flipping, you know how it is, it's pure magic and it's never done

Now that I've gotten that burning post out of my head, time to get to the wonderful ideas I heard about. I will next be posting about two fantastic sessions that I attended, one on game-based learning by Andrew Miller (@betamiller), and one on pbl as related to competencies, also by Andrew, co-presenter Rose Colby (@rose_rosecolby).

In the meantime, stay safe during this "frankenstorm"!

When Your Audience is Loaded for Bear

Last Friday, I and my colleague Peggy Drolet (@PeggyONeillDr) , did a presentation on the Flipped Class for the CQSB's "This is I.T." ped day in Quebec City. It was almost the exact same presentation we did in June, at a conference called STEM Quebec, and we were blown away by the differences in audience reaction.

Rewind to last June: The group in June was a large one, over 40 participants, all math or science teachers. We had tried to flip it by emailing a short video to our participants ahead of time, providing hands-on things to do during the session, and giving individual help. At the time, it seemed to go well, we had most saying that they would try flipping, good reviews, but now I realize that the enthusiasm was nowhere near what we had Friday.

Friday's group was very small, only about a dozen people, from all subject areas and all levels. We hadn't had their emails ahead of time, so we weren't able to send anything in advance. Friday morning, as we rehearsed and got ready, we realized that we really didn't have any idea of who our audience really would be. So Peggy had this idea: We asked them to do something as they sat waiting for the session to begin.We left post-it notes on the desks, and had a single slide displayed on the smartboard as people walked in:

While you're waiting, please complete this sentence on the post-it:

"My one burning question about the flipped class is......" 

As we went around saying hi, we asked them to post their questions on the sideboard. Just before beginning our presentation, we had a quick look at the post-its. Only one question was "What is flipping the class?" The rest were very specific, like:

• What do you do if a student hasn't watched the video?
• What happens during class?
• How do you find the time?
• Is it applicable in grade 1?

This was our first clue that these people were loaded for bear. (More about what we did with those post-its later.)

Next hint came about 10 minutes later, when we started the first hands-on activity, which was to get them to try out voicethread. We wanted them to get the hang of the tool, not to spend time creating a lesson and slides. To facilitate that, before the session, we had created some really short and simple slides on various subjects, like history:



science:

,

and art:



We had uploaded the slides to voicethread, but we didn't put any comments, voice or otherwise, into them. That was the part we wanted them to do - to change it into a lesson! We used this website to deliver the links so they could quickly select a topic and start turning it into a lesson by adding their voice, drawing, or whatever they wanted.

Rewind to June: This was exactly what we had done in June, except that then, it was only math topics. At that time, there were issues with connectivity, and we may not have been very clear about what we wanted people to do, because I remember we were pretty busy going around and helping individual people. I do remember questions like how do you get this or that effect in powerpoint, or where did you get that virtual TI calculator, how much time do you have to spend prepping when you flip. Good questions, but now that I look back I realize they didn't contain a lot of "Wow I really want to try this out" subtext.

But on Friday, within minutes, there were people asking if they could upload their own powerpoints and make their own actual lessons, not pretend lessons just for today, real ones! Peggy did an impromptu demo of uploading to voicethread, something we hadn't anticipated people asking about! And people were asking questions like:

• Do the students have to get a voicethread account too?
• Are teacher accounts included when you get the whole school account?
• Can you make it so that only you see their comments?
• Can you upload other types of files besides powerpoint?

Now THESE had subtext - unmistakable subtext - you only ask these when you've already started flipping in your mind.

In fact, the questions just kept coming as we continued our presentation, which covered, among other things, using googledocs for collaborative activities, class management strategies, and student feedback. We had anticipated most of the questions and concerns in our presentation, which was a great validation for us. One thing we noticed was how quickly and frequently that golden question came up:

"What happens during class?"

My answer? Magic! Well, I said more than just that.

And about those little post-its:

One of the last things we did was to go through the post-its, and sort out the questions we had already answered from those we hadn't. Happily, there were more in the former pile than the latter. We then went through the as-yet-unanswered ones and addressed them. I LOVED this strategy! Peggy, you are a genius!

Final thoughts:

Reasons for the differences? 

• Well in June, I suspect most teachers are fried. It's enough to get people to show up at a conference then, never mind getting them to do homework before a session. There was enthusiasm, but it was isolated.
• We had a much bigger group in June, which automatically makes things more formal, which makes it harder to connect. I'm not saying we didn't connect, just that it was harder to happen and to detect.
• We didn't use that post-it thingy in June, so we didn't know our audience very well. Mind you, it might have been a bit tough to manage with that many people, but we would have benefited from something like it.
• We definitely weren't clear enough, either time, about the whole voicethread activity, got to fix that next time.
• Our room was like a crucible for flippers on Friday. There were many sessions going on at the same time, and we had some fierce competition. There was one on Digital Storytelling (by my incredibly inspirational and insightful colleague Susan Van Gelder), one on Twitter for teachers, two on gizmos, one on vodcasting, and lots more. So the people who came to us were really there to hear about flipping.

For next time:

• Ixnay on the googledocs activity, I think it applies more to our online situation than to the brick and mortar one.
• LOTS more about class activities, suggestions:
• ask participants what have you always wanted to do in class but never had time to?
• groups making summaries of lesson, comparing/presenting
• working on research projects
• partner quizzes (will be trying that soon myself - tks @daliazygas for the idea)
• activities to introduce topic before watching video
• activities to deepen understanding
• demo more ways to make lessons, eg recording with the smartboard while you're just doing your regular teaching this year, in order to be ready to flip next year
• don't have a raging cold on the day of the presentation

One more thing, thanks to Evernote once again, all the ideas that keep popping into my head are so easily retained now that I can just say them into my phone, and they get filed where I can find them later, like, for example, when I'm writing a blog post. I love my phone. I love my job. I love my colleagues. Bet you didn't know there would be so much corn in October did you?

The power of the WSQ

My first attempt at Crystal Kirch's WSQ strategy!

This week I decided to try out the WSQ, sort of. It was more of a WQS, since my students are already required to leave a comment/question as they watch the lesson on voicethread. So by the time they got to the S, they had already done the W and the Q. I looked forward to reading their summaries, and to getting insight into their thoughts. But I have to admit that the idea of reading and assessing everybody's summary was a bit daunting, so instead, on the last slide of the lesson, I told them that their next task was to summarize the steps of the procedure (solve an absolute valued inequation) and be ready to present in class next day, rather than hand it in to me. Here's the voicethread:




But I don't want to listen to a dozen or so of those, so at the beginning of class, next day, I put them into groups (in the virtual class that's called a break out room) and gave them about 10 minutes to put their summaries together as a group. Two birds killed with one stone: those that had watched got to reinforce their learning, those that hadn't got a peer's version of the lesson. I also LOVE that in the virtual class I can spy on them while they're working....and not have them know that I'm doing that! Try THAT in the brick and mortar!

Then I brought them back into the main room and had them present, using the microphone, no texting allowed. More dead birds: we all got to hear other voices for a change, and that wonderful class cohesion started to happen right before my eyes. Kids encouraging each other, joking, imitating me, by writing "Sketch that puppy" on their board! To the virtual class teacher, this is pure heaven!

Here are a few shots of their summaries:

What a great activity! Not because everyone had perfect summaries, because they didn't. The point was they got to work together, discuss, debate, draw, question, basically reveal their thoughts. That has to mean that those thoughts started to evolve somehow, today, in class. To evolve toward something deeper, or maybe even more right. We talked about what everyone had in common, how there were a few steps that were different, some more detailed than others. One student had actually prepared her own powerpoint summary!

Things I noticed:

• It doesn't really seem to matter that there were mistakes in the summaries, or that some were actually describing another procedure altogether. What was great was what it revealed, to me, and to them. Finding out that someone else thinks like you do can be really empowering. Finding out that you didn't really understand something that you thought you had....better to know now than later.
• It was interesting to see how two people, or even two groups, each of whom had their own summaries, could put their work together to make something better than each had begun with. The girl whose summary is the second one above noticed that some of the steps in the first one could be put into hers to add more detail. Nice!
• Some groups, like the third one above, started by working out an example, and then summarized afterward. It seemed to help to have a concrete example next to each step. A strategy to suggest next time, for those who have a hard time putting their thoughts into words.
• It was crystal clear who had not done any kind of summary beforehand. And my hope is that now they've seen that I expect this, AND, more importantly, that there is a learning and a social benefit to doing it, next time I'll have more participants.
• Most presentations were basically reading what they had written on the screen. Hmmm. Next time, I'll make a suggestion for an alternate way to present.

What's next?

Well for one thing, this activity solved a big problem that has been dogging me for a long time as an online teacher, how to get that class cohesion happening in a more organic way. I found that since it was based on something they were all already supposed to have done, and since they didn't have to present alone, it felt more authentic than the usual, here kids, here's a problem, you figure it out in a group.

Another thing that only occurred to me afterward is that now that they've done this, it'll be a great lead-in to their blogs, which will start soon, because one of the first things they will do is do a summary of a lesson. This gets them up to speed just in time. But of course, being the seasoned professional that I am, I'll pretend that that was my intention all along.....