I’ve loved Evernote  for a while.  I recommend it to students, and colleagues, and pretty much everyone I see.  I’ve also loved Omnifocus on my Macbook Pro for a good long time. I check it on my phone more times than a 10th grader checks Facebook. The iPad version is finally out. It appears to be a huge improvement over the iPhone version that simply runs on the iPad. It ought to be; with a price tag of $39.95.  I don’t begrudge OmniGroup a profit.  It’s just that I’ve purchased the Mac desktop app (about $40 ed pricing, when it was available), and the iPhone app (19.95).  I’d like a break here…… I’ll honestly be a bit sad to say goodbye to Omnifocus.

Then, I read this blog post about a grad student using Evernote in a few unusual ways. (If you don’t already use Evernote, just trust me and do it.)  I’m not sure I could do without notebooks as the author does, and I still find that I want to title things rather than just using tags in the title.  I scrolled along the post until I came to the calendar section.  I’ve never been successful with either paper or electronic calendars. I always write too much stuff on the calendar.   I have to look at the calendar and to-do list separately, and my ADHD brain just does not compute.  I’ve made it work for just over a week now, and am very pleased.

The solution:

1. Each day, open a new note.  Title it like this:  03-18-12 Log Sunday. (The creator of this system titles his daily notes “Journal”, but I”m already using that tag for something else, so I chose to use “Log.”)
2. List all the things you want to accomplish that day.  I like the checkbox format, the article guy used – and replaced it with X when completed, but he is probably also using checkboxes now.
3. As you complete each item, check it off.
4. Something you didn’t finish?  Just copy and paste them to the next day’s note.
5. When an engagement, appointment, meeting, etc appears, open a new note (title  for that date) and paste in the time, place, other info. It looks like this:
   

   Evernote To Do Notebook

I’ll add more info about the event as I get it.

When a day is complete, I will rename it MMDDYY Archive Dayoftheweek and move it to the Log Archive notebook.

Advantages to this system:

• all information for one event is in one place. Think: Linked notes, if needed.
• Within the notebook, they can be sorted on my iPhone, iPad, or desktop app.
• I didn’t have to learn and come to love a new app.
• My calendars are nice and clean.  I can still open a calendar to get a big picture. I’m wondering if a day’s note could even be linked to Google Calendar.
• Notes about the day can be added on the fly, so long as you have a device.  Notes written by hand can be typed in later, or added with a photo or app like CamScanner or Whiteboard Share.
• Notes can be linked.
• I have a premium account, so can share editable project and grocery lists with my husband.
• It’s free, unless you use it as much as I do.
• It’s available everywhere.  (I love you, Evernote!)

Disadvantages:

• I already use Evernote for just about everything.  If you don’t, you need to learn the app.  The learning curve is pretty low.
• Eventually, I will have to delete stuff, or archive things massively.

To be perfectly honest, I have only set up the system within the past week, so I’ll be learning for a while.  Please, please, add your input and tweaks.  I will, as well.

Please comment including any other resources you’d consider if you were us.  Also, please comment on individual resources if you have experience or thoughts that might help us make a decision.  This list does not include all of the traditional hard-copy textbooks and support materials we’ve been sent.  I don’t want this post to take a year to read.

Resources under consideration:

Here is a list of open source and free content and curriculum for consideration.  Each source meets related Oregon State Science Standards and so far as I can see, meshes well with the Next Generation Framework. No one source, open source of paid textbook, will meet all standards. This is not a review, only an annotated list of links for my colleagues to explore.  The list and commentary will change over the next several weeks as we consider options.

Science, math, and engineering:

• CK12 Flexbooks – Free, open-source content.  Updated frequently;  the content won’t get old. Customizable. I accessed it from my iPhone and iPad. PDFs can be customized, downloaded to any computer, stored on removable media, or even printed for students who don’t have electronics. Many choices of chapters and editions for Biology, Earth Science, Anatomy, several options for Chemistry, two options including videos for Physics, Engineering, and (I love this) Nanotechnology.TE and SE; workbooks available for most.Contain videos from KA. Enough said. According to my contact at CK12, the videos can be stripped.

Biology:

• National Institute of Health: Nstional Institute of General Medical Sciences distributes classroom sets of materials to teachers. Three that meet standards are The Structures of Life, Inside the Cell , and The New Genetics.
• Northwest Association for Biomedical Research – Curricula for genetics research, bioinformatics, stem cell research, bioethics, consumer awareness.
• Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes – Research-based materials produced and reviewed by scientists; tested and modified by teachers. Engaging for students.
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute – each December, a group of Howard Hughes fellows deliver lectures to an audience of high school students.  Lectures are 20-minute segments with Q&H between the students and the scientists.  Humorous and engaging.
• Experimental Biology by Catalyst Curricula offers excellent units for Biology and Anatomy. Not free, but affordable.
• POGIL – the high school Chemistry and Biology resources are now available. I have copies of each. Not free, but affordable.

Chemistry:

• many AP chemistry sources will be implemented in Chemistry as well.
• CK12 Flexbooks – see above.
• World of Chemistry Videos – Applications of concepts in chemistry (also biochemistry and biology) to real-world situations.  Much engineering design throughout.
• Merlot (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) Animations, inter actives, courses, textbooks, and all you’d want to go with them.

Physics

• CK12 Flexbooks – see above.
• HyperPhysics – also available as a DVD.
• The Physics Classroom – my students and I used this resource regularly.  Much great content.
• Light and Matter - thanks, @fnoschese.  Also, software.

Marine Biology

Forensics

Human Anatomy and Physiology

• CK12 Flexbooks – see above.

AP Chemistry

• Chemical Education Digital Library – That. Is. All.
• ChemReview.net – review/tutorials and summer assignments; free to download; print copies available for a small charge.
• Chemistry Experiment Simulations, Tutorials and Conceptual Computer Animations for Introduction to College Chemistry - Chemical Education Research Group, Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

And lastly, how to make your own textbook, without Apple.

Added 3-14-2012:
How did I just now find this gold mine of open-source texts?

Added 3-17-2012
Teaching Physics without a Textbook: What David Andrade uses instead.

Added 3-26-12
How to add a microscope to your iPad

My thoughts on devices:

Devices are simply one means for students to access content.  Any content that has only one delivery option opposes my standards for equity of access.  My preference for student devices is that they facilitate:

• easy access to open source materials and content from the web
• collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data
• student creation of content using text, photos, audio and video recording, and art.
• sharing of student-created content

What would you add?

Recipe:  Supersaturated Sucrose Solution

Response: Documenting the Process

Results: 

Most recently, I’ve incorporated the work began with Linda Christensen (from Lewis and Clark) and the Oregon Writing Project. Freshmen begin keeping all lab and inquiry work in a bound theme book, AKA fondly as “my lab book.” My vision for the appearance of student lab books has morphed over the years.  Some things change very little, though, because good science is good science and good science writing is good science writing. At my current school, I’m blessed with like-minded colleagues who have helped me refine my vision as it is shared in this post. Here’s our current plan…..

Students have been introduced to basic lab safety, wearing chemical splash goggles whenever heat, glassware, or chemicals are present on their shared lab bench.  They’ve measured volume and mass, and viewed wet mounts of their own construction with a compound microscope. This first lab will be their introduction to inquiry in high school science. It’s designed to model hypothesis testing as inquiry, and includes all the components needed to show that state standards for inquiry are met.  The lab is written in a format found in peer-reviewed science journals and shared as such so that students have a guide for future independent work.

In this investigation, students test various foods for organic molecules in this first inquiry; protein is identified by its reaction with Biuret solution, starch by its reaction with Lugol’s iodine, and simple sugars by their reaction with Benedict’s solution. Students have built models of each of these organic molecules, drawn structures, learned a bit about the importance and function of each in cells and in living things, and know something about food sources of each from their health classes.  Bored yet?  Thanks for hanging in with me.

And now – the inquiry:

Day 1: Using a prewritten introduction, students identify types of information gleaned from the introduction. We compare a list of their observations to a pre-fab criteria sheet, constructed to align with the criteria sheets used by language arts teachers.  Students color-code the model introduction using crayons, colored pencils, hi-lighters, or colored pens to provide a visual of the criteria, all included and working together. This is also a review of the content our state expects students to master. We discuss together their choices for placing particular statements in particular categories.  We notice, for example, that definitions may be strategically placed throughout their writing, making explanations available to the reader as needed.  We learn what type of statements belong to each listed criteria, and we learn that sometimes a statement might belong to more than one criterion. Each test is demonstrated. (This may also take place again on Day 2.)

Day 2: Students learn to prepare a lab book.  They use MSDS to identify and record safety hazards, and learn what must be done prior to going to the lab bench; we don’t just get a handout from the teacher and cookbook our way to a few correct answers to submit. This time, and this time only, the prefab introduction may be stapled into the lab book – after this, each student group will do their own research and write their own introductions according to the general criteria sheet format. Students add the materials lists, procedure, and data tables to their books, and draw out a diagram for each test they will do in the procedure to give them a visual anchor.

Day 3: Lab day.  Students are encouraged to photograph their results, and I do as well. It’s helpful if any labels on test tubes are clearly visible.

Day 4: We discuss results, with photos of lab results projected on a screen for reference.  Students answer analysis questions and write a conclusion using the Conclusion Criteria Sheet (page 3 of Materials, Procedure handout).

Day 5: Labs are peer-reviewed using the criteria sheets as guidelines.  Students read one anthers’ lab books, write strengths and suggestions on small slips of colored paper (Post-its are nice but too expensive), and return the work to the author for additions and revisions.  Revisions are written on slips of another color and attached in the appropriate place in the lab.  There is no scoring penalty for making these revisions.  The point is to learn.

What’s wrong with this plan?  Nothing, I suppose.  It has all the components students need to learn to write and  perform an experimental inquiry. Students have a sample format with all the components, all the content they really need to know, a list of materials needed, a sample procedure, and sample data tables.

Here’s what they DONT have:  resources beyond one selected textbook or an opportunity to collaborate or learn from one anthers’ work.  An opportunity to add creativity to their work based on their own personal questions or observations. The “Four ‘s” of 21st Century learning, Collaboration, Creativity and innovation, Communication, and, t a large extent, Critical Thinking. They also must meet new Common Core Standards in language arts with pencil and paper. Most labs also involve measurement and quantitative analysis, incidentally supporting math standards.

These students need access to technology, both for information procurement and content creation.  Desperately.

The actual work sample this year can be found here. Stay tuned for results.

Direct from the whiteboard, courtesy of our principal

It’s clear that we were brainstorming.  Our ideas jumped from broad, general skills such as “predicting” and “graphing” to general big ideas such as structure/function and patterns.

We have some questions.

What’s missing?  What doesn’t belong?  What needs to be rearranged?

I just began year 23 of classroom teaching.  My goal is never to become one of those “old” teachers, sneering at innovation while pulling an ancient worksheet from a dog-eared folder. I’ve asked younger colleagues to alert me should they observe these tendencies in my practice.  I actively seek and provide a variety of professional development for myself and my colleagues.  I’m active in various professional learning communities. My paper and electronic files are pruned and revised regularly.  And I listen to students, with a focus this past year on the learning skills of a particularly interesting class of intentional non-learners.  You know the type.  They enter the classroom with their minds on everything else; pencils and paper, it they have any, remain in their backpacks. Their faces say, “Teach me.  I dare you.”  They have little respect for anything, often including themselves.

Not wanting to characterize myself as one who resists change, I strive for a balance between actively seeking out and employing practices that merit trying because they likely will help students learn and having the good judgment to recognize strategies I recognize as unlikely to result in a successful outcome with students for some reason.   I’m also pretty willing to take risks in my classroom so long as the risks lead to student learning, er, being able to meet a standard. Lately, though, I’ve been questioning more and more teaching practices that are new to me. Is the voice in my head directing me to the retirement line or is my well-seasoned malarky detector speaking?

The newest, loudest voice questions the new (?) practice of assessing (read: grading) students strictly on the meeting of a standard. Time is not a factor, nor work ethic, not academic integrity. Multiple retries on all tests and quizzes must be allowed. The number 50% replaces zeros in gradebooks, because a zero is mathematically invalid as a score and puts the student so far behind that he loses all hope of success. Homework is never part of the grade, if students are asked to do it at all, because practice should never be graded. Much formative assessment is done and perhaps checked off but like homework, is never a part of the grade. Change your assessment, they promise, and presto! student learning increase measurably – by a new assessment standard. A huge piece of this puzzle is missing: student learning. Where, in this new system, do students learn?

The past few years, I implemented some practices promoted by well-known and respected, but apparently pretty much self-proclaimed, assessment gurus.  According to them, my grading practices are broken and need to be fixed, because some students still “fail”. Failing as defined at my school is not achieving an average of 70%, or having earned 70% of the points available to be earned. Nevermind that every opportunity to accumulate points was also demonstrating the degree of mastery of a standard; my method of measuring student success is broken because failure is a possible outcome. So, I allowed due dates to be extended into infinity, recorded so many I’s that our school secretary hunted me down prior to closing grades, and made many formats of assessments for retakes.

I’ve honed my assessment system over the years, changing it appropriately with an eye toward showcasing student achievement with each upgrade. I’ve made changes based on feedback from parents, practiced teachers, most of all, students.  My late work policy is not without compassion for a student who is genuinely working hard for mastery or who has extenuating circumstances.  I will excuse a student if an assignment is clearly busywork for him/her. I offer options for students to demonstrate mastery of a standard. I know my students as people and am a trained professional; I am skilled in making decisions about what is best for each student, at this time, in this setting. My intent is to help each student show success. Fixing broken grades assumes that all assignments are scored on a weighted 100% scale, that students make a fairly continuous and honest effort to learn, and that there is no compassion or second chance.  None of those assumptions are true in my classroom. Every student who is willing to engage in a way demonstrating the meeting of standards not only passes, but by default earns a “good grade” on his or her report card. I ask, then, what is broken?

Proponents of this system are making a lot of money selling professional development (of the sit-n-get variety) and accompanying resource materials to school districts harboring large numbers of low-achieving and/or failing students.They draw crowds of educators and administrators desperate to mask the clear evidence of student disengagement.  In numerous conversations this past summer with academic and industrial scientists,all mentioned serious concern about the changing focus of incoming college freshmen. A common theme was the lack of preparation with respect to thinking skills, unwillingness to engage in more difficult academic work, willingness to put in the hours needed for understanding, and interestingly, a complete disregard for due dates (to be addressed in a later post, so please save your comments for that post .

If this tactic were employed in the private sector and school districts were retirees, the salespeople would be branded as scam artists. There is no solid, empirical research to support the methods these people promote.

By the way, my experiment with these “fixes” did not result in a difference in student grades.I’d wager that significantly less student learning took place with these policies in place. I only regret that I hadn’t been so consumed with producing a zillion alternative assignments and assessment retakes that I had no time to gather any meaningful data.

Stay tuned for my fix.

My goals for the school year are to bring more relevance to our learning, better help each student reach his/her potential, and to do so without working 23 hours a day and all weekend. This partly stems from the stress last year of finishing the dissertation while starting a new job. I was either teaching, grading, planning, writing, crunching data, moving, or sleeping, in that order. (I ate while working on something. Couldn’t figure out how to work in my sleep.) I’d like my classes and my life to move at a pace that allows time for reflection and revising and laughing at least a little.  And I never, ever want my desk to look like this again:

Here’s my first day so far:

Learning Targets:
1. Science: Remember that? (A little science on the first day never hurt.)
2. Learn roles and protocols for group work (because 9th graders usually don’t know what to do in a group.)
3. Explain what we will learn this year, why and how we will learn it.

Most of all, I want students to learn and have some fun. The learning targets are to keep students engaged (and to keep their notebooks from looking like this:).

I shamelessly stole the Subversive Lab Grouping Game from @fnochese. I will use it much as he does. Students are given one card when they enter.  Biology classes will use this set, and Chemistry classes will use this set. (Enter subject area content.) Students will learn to form groups while having a little fun, and then we’ll learn to have a whole-class discussion.

We will discuss what they learned about the groups, both the obvious and the subversive, about science in general.  Biologists will discuss the characteristics of some major groups of living things. Chemists will note they grouped themselves by locations on the periodic table and understand that they are grouped in this way because they have some things in common. (Learning Target 1)

Each group will receive an appropriate set of role cards as described here.  Today’s task will require the Leader/Manager, Reader, Document Control Specialist, and Communications Specialist. Students will work through this activity, meeting Learning Target, 2 and 3. Here is the Career Skills reference. Prepare a basic version of the standards you are using (don’t get me started.)  Student advice is on your own, collected at the end of last year. Always frank; Frequently hilarious.  If you email me, I’ll get some to you.

Reminders about roles throughout helps keep everyone contributing and helps make sense of collaborating.  Roles also make is clear that everyone’s input is not only needed, but welcomed. At the end of each part in the What, Why, How work, we stop and share responses, making a list on the board. Perhaps this year, we will also write some specific, individual goals to check in with occasionally.  I tried this once with SMART goals.  I love goals that are achievable and specific, but get lost after that.  Maybe we’ll just do SA goals.

These activities will also let me see quickly who are leaders, clowns, academics; who is quiet, who might not know much English, who will need help focusing, who is willing to read aloud in a group, you get the picture.  Students understand quickly that they are to do their best, listen to others, that it’s safe to speak up, and begin to see that mutual respect is the MO in my classroom.

Neurology Students in Berlin, a long, long time ago.

My introduction to assigning student roles in group work came in 1994 at a Project Discovery summer workshop. I didn’t question the value of this practice. More experienced teachers and university professors shared their expert guidelines.  As teacher participants in the workshop, we used these canned roles as we worked our way through canned labs intended to inspire student discovery. They appeared, we decided, to be a pretty effective method for managing students in lab settings and for facilitating student communication about their work. The checkpoints added strategically to canned procedures helped me check for understanding while students were working.

The system seemed to be pretty slick. I implemented the practice and revised the duties for each role a few times over the years.  I was careful to rotate roles among students so everyone had the opportunity to hone his or her skills. Groups always had the flexibility to re-create roles so long as they were safe, equitable, and productive. Once the basics of working together were clear, the mechanical roles that had perhaps played a part in their learning were done automatically, while student thoughts were occupied with learning.

Recently, someone who I remember as teaching physics (please refresh my memory, whomever you are!) on Twitter asked about group roles.  I replied that yes, I found them helpful but didn’t really use them much in 12th grade Physics…. and then it struck me. I’ve worked in 2 small school settings since adding the use of roles to my practice, so I get to see students more than one year during their high school careers.  I noticed that it took a while to teach 9th graders how to work with one another in lab.  When I saw them again as 10th graders, many already had great lab group skills.  Lest I give the impression that I am a drill sergeant who believes that compliance = success, I’d like to clarify that often after a few months, student groups were coming up with their own norms for group roles.  So long as their norms embraced safety and learning, I encouraged this. When I saw students again in 11th grade, I spent almost no time dealing with group communication skills.  By 12th grade, kids had  perhaps learned enough about collaboration to transfer that learning to a new lab situation on their own.

Something is still missing. I want to help students learn to work together in settings outside of the laboratory.  Students could use role guidelines to learn to be supportive, contributing members of a collaborative group learning experience. By modeling roles for other types of collaboration, will students be able to transfer those skills to other situations, courses, and real-world situations? A colleague at my new school gave me a copy of a set of roles she uses in implementing POGIL activities.  I reformatted them and am fairly pleased with the way they feel at this time.

Suggestions for use:
There are currently 8 roles in all, allowing a teacher or students to choose the roles needed for a collaborative group to begin working together. One group member can play more than 1 role.

1. Choose a random way of assigning the leader/manager.  Ask the student in each group who has his back to the door, the oldest, youngest, first alphabetically by last name, or some other criteria to be the Leader/Manager.
2. The Leader/Manager can then distribute the remaining roles.  Early in the year, I sometimes choose in such a way that each student has a chance to play each role at least once during the first few weeks.
3. The first time role cards are used, I will ask all the Leader/Managers to raise their hands.I ask one of them to read aloud the purpose and responsibilities.  Often we will do a mini-fishbowl with an example of one of the responsibilities.
4. When finished with Leader/Manager, chose another role.  Repeat, until each role you are using has been explained.
5. I will sometimes call all the Leader/Managers together for a moment to check progress or to ask if there are questions.  This gives the students a chance to hear what others with the same responsibilities are doing.  I’ll sometimes ask Time Managers to hold up 1, 2, 5 fingers to let me know how much more time they might need with a certain task.

The current draft is now open for public comment I’d like permission to incorporate your ideas into my work, with credits, of course.  I’ll publish word or google docs of the final product, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License as always. Please share your thoughts.

Pre-service elementary teachers showed a statistically significant gain in their learning about the moon and teaching elementary students about the moon by inquiry.

And this supporting statement:

The study shows that pre-service teachers gain scores from pre-test to post-test increased by 7 points on a 21-item test.

If this were taken as the only finding from my dissertation, these pre-service teachers obviously demonstrated significant learning. All is well.

But wait.

Another look, from a perspective otherwise easily missed, is this finding:

While there was a significant increase in constructed knowledge among the experimental group, the mean posttest score of 11.17 out of 21 possible is only 53%.

And then there’s this:

At the individual student level, these data are of even more interest….. The experimental group, however, had 15 out of 24 pre-service teachers (or 63%) who ended the semester with more misconceptions than they had at the beginning.

At this point, the story needs a disclaimer.  I did not teach this class.   The study took place in 2002-2004.  The instructor of record is no longer teaching at this university. The course has been taught in a very different, and, it is hoped, more successful manner for several years now.

This is human subject research, folks, with many uncontrolled variables and many stories not easily measured with numbers. Using data from standardized student tests alone is very, very dangerous. I’ll stand unwaveringly on that position until this whole NCLB/RTTT/evaluation madness goes to the grave.

47,556 words, 200 pages. Defended.  Paperwork filed.

Crashed with my sons, daughter-in-law, and grandsons.  Called husband.

I’m now Dr. Mom, Dr. Gramma, and Dr. Dear.

And sitting in the airport waiting for a flight back home, I feel a bit lost and empty.

Maybe I’ll have something to say about it later.  Maybe not.