Robin Neal

#ELMLE2015 Update: Simple Classroom Hacks

The past weeks have been busy…just not with work on this blog. Writing semester one reports and preparing for the 2015 ELMLE conference in Warsaw consumed most of my time. Then the flu took me down. I’m back at the keyboard now, though, even if the hacking and sniffles aren’t quite over. Thankfully, I did not get sick until the day after I returned from another wonderful ELMLE experience.

This was my third visit to an ELMLE conference, and I always leave bursting with ideas and convinced that the teaching world is brimming with kindred spirits. As in years past, I will dedicate future blog posts to some of the ideas I took away from the conference. I will also probably make separate blog posts out of a session I presented entitled Simple Classroom Hacks.

I enjoy writing this blog, but it can be a lonely pursuit at times. The comments and growing daily hits are encouraging, but being in a roomful of educators who get excited by the ideas we are sharing is more immediately energizing. It was wonderful to make contact with so many of you at ELMLE, and I hope to get the chance to present next year in Barcelona.

For now, here are my presentation slides….stay tuned for more ELMLE-inspired posts in the near future.

Tags: #1:1, #bestpractice, #bestpractices, #classroomhacks, #edtech, #elmle2015, #engchat, #one2one, English, Neal

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Pedagogy

Philanthropy in the Classroom: Tech Tools for Empathy and Service

17 Jan

Of course, love belongs in our classrooms. Students learn best from teachers whom they know truly care for them. Teachers gladly go the extra mile for students who demonstrate a passion for a subject. Without working from a place of love, we cannot hope to develop empathetic, global citizens who care for one another. I strive to bring love into my classroom through daily actions, a patient heart, and a clear culture of respect, but I also infuse our curriculum with themes of social justice. The following sites and tools have proven helpful in this pursuit. No tech tool can be a panacea, but these are good places to start. They can help us infuse love for humankind into our daily work with students.

Kiva.org is a microlending site that allows everyday people to loan to other everyday people. Kiva works with microfinance institutions around the globe to ensure that those requesting loans actually receive the funds, and when the loan is repaid, users can either donate the money to another user or take it back.

In my classes, I tell students about the site, ask them to explore the stories, and select people to whom we should donate. I then collect a dollar (now a Euro) donation on a voluntary basis. Some give nothing. Many give more. The money is then “kept in rotation” as it is repaid, and new donations are added to the communal pot.

Kiva is a very concrete way for students to practice empathy and gain experience in directing where their donations go. I look forward to seeing how we can grow our donation pool, and it will be a nice legacy for each group of students to leave for the next year’s students.

Continue reading →

Tags: #charityintheclassroom, #dogood, #doinggood, #philanthropy, #philanthropyintheclassroom, #socialjusticeedu, #studentphilanthropists, #youmatter, empathy, modern slavery, socialjustice

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Categories Building Class Community, Social Justice

Finding Time to Maintain a Blog

18 Dec

“Where do you find the time?” That’s the question fellow teachers most often ask me after reading my blog. I am a really busy person. They are really busy people. WE ARE ALL REALLY BUSY PEOPLE.

The reality of a teacher’s life is that there are too many things to do in too little time. While I live in the daily reality of this time crunch, another part of me realizes that we make time for the things we really want to do. I mean, I did not really have time to watch seven episodes of Orphan Black in three days…but somehow that still happened. Procrastibaking is a very real thing. You’re making the time to read this blog post. (Thanks for that.)

A few years back I read an article about Buddhist monks and how they cope with stress. They try to keep a mindset of working within the present moment. In other words, whether they have 25 things to accomplish in a day or just two, as they perform a task they realize they can only perform that one task in that one moment. In this way, they stay focused on singular events and actions as they move throughout the day.

I try to do the same. Notice, I write that I try. Last week I was winking awake at 2:30 a.m. worrying about the mediocre way in which I have been leading my students through Twelfth Night due to time constraints, but after a few nights of that silliness, I returned to deep slumber because I focused on the time I had and did my best within it.

This same mindset gets these blog post written. I take comfort in routines, and I have created a set of daily rituals that help me carve out writing time. Maybe some of my habits will help you find time to write, too? At the very least, making my habits public might help me stick to them more regularly.

My Writing Ritual of Late:

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Tags: #bloggers, #blogging, #busyteachers, #timemanagement, Neal, writing

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Uncategorized, Writing

Audio Feedback on Student Writing

13 Dec

Part of my job as Year Head involves dolling out consequences for misbehavior. In this work, I’ve quickly learned that a phone call saves time. When I speak to parents directly, they can hear my tone of voice, ask questions, and express their concerns. We typically end the talk with a mutual understanding: we are in it together, both working toward the betterment of the student. When a phone call is not possible and I have to email, misunderstandings often crop up because tone is often misconstrued. None of this is a revelation; it is just common sense. I am a gobsmacked then (thank you, Brits, for that lovely expression) that until recently, I had not applied this same common sense to my feedback on student writing. I have written before about using macros to increase the precision, consistency, and detail of my written feedback, and I have shared other feedback time saving techniques. Of course, I always give students oral feedback in the formative stages of their writing. Yet, until this recent round of essays, I had never tried recording my formal feedback. Many of my colleagues have been using audio feedback to great success, so I thought I would give it a try, too. Research tells us that in order to be truly effective, students must perceive feedback as credible, accurate, supportive, and timely. A student, like a parent, needs to feel the teacher is on her side, working toward the same common goal. Giving summative feedback orally can help ensure that students feel this way, which can make all those hours and hours and hours and hours and hours we spend creating such feedback more effective.

THE PROCESS:

As I read the essay in Google Docs, I used the comment feature to leave brief reminders of what I wanted to say. I gave each reminder a number.

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Tags: #audiofeedback, #engchat, #recordingfeedback, #studentwriting, best_practice, classroom_example, English, essays, feedback, grading, Neal, pedagogy, technology, writing

Comments 3 Comments
Categories English, Feedback, Writing

Student Scribe Posts

30 Nov

Go to any grocery store parking lot in Germany, and you will never…and I mean never…see any stray shopping carts rattling along in the wind or parked in the hedges. Every carriage is always tucked back in the rack, sometimes in color coded rows. In the United States I always put my cart back where it belonged, and I secretly enjoyed rounding up any strays I came across. Imposing order on this chaotic world, even in small doses, soothes my fastidious soul. My fellow countrymen, however, do not share my O.C.D. Most people leave carts wherever they damn well please.

Yet, the difference in national shopping cart parking habits does not reveal some great divide between American and German gentility. Germans do not return their carts out of an altruistic urge to avoid scratching their neighbors’ Audis. Instead, grocery stores in Germany simply engineer order into their systems. To get a cart, you have to unlock it from the rack with a coin. When you’re done, you can’t get your money back until you return the cart and secure it to its mates. It’s a simple system that works beautifully.

The Student Scribe system works in much the same way; it’s a simple system, that once implemented, works with minimal effort on the teacher’s part. I first learned about the idea from Darren Kuropatwa, and I found his blog posts on student scribes very useful when setting up my scribe system for the first time.

On most days, one student takes communal notes and then posts these to a class wiki. Each post ends with the current student choosing the next scribe. Here are the directions I give my students regarding scribe posts:

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Tags: #1:1, #fis, #studentscribe, #studentscribes, best_practice, classroom_example, classroom_management, discussion, English, laptops, Neal, pedagogy, student_work, technology, timesavers, writing

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Categories Classroom Examples, Classroom Management, English, How To, Pedagogy, Writing

Video Reboots

23 Nov

This week I spent my writing time updating videos I lost when my YouTube account was deactivated. I still have more videos to remake (and new ones to create), but it feels good to begin piecing this collection back together. I planned to do this work over summer vacation, but I was really still too depressed about losing everything in the first place to begin again. Also, I knew what a slow process it would be. Yet, nothing ever gets done until I put my butt in the chair and do the work…so this week’s butt-in-the-chair-writing-time was spent on video re-making. Luckily, I kept some of the videos on my computer, so replacing this lost work went relatively quickly. Here are links to past posts that now have restored video clips:

Grading Essays How-To: Use Macros to Save Time

Classroom Example: Students Fighting Slavery With Technology

27 Million Dots (or Why Design Thinking Is Worth the Extra Effort)

Tags: #engchat, #nealenglish, #videos, Neal, YouTube

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Categories Classroom Examples, YouTube

The Digital Farm

15 Nov

I grew up in the Midwest of the United States, so many people (not from the Midwest) assume I grew up on a farm. Far from it. We Neals are not the handiest or hardiest of folks. We didn’t fare well in the fields and quickly found white-collar work. I grew up around farmers, though, and I understand, though admittedly secondhand, the combination of intelligence, dedication, creativity, sacrifice, and hard work required of those in agriculture. I know I would be utter rubbish at it. Yet, the metaphor of a farm has helped me change the way I am teaching some of my English classes. My students and I have been using a digital farm concept to structure our study.

I first heard of the digital farm idea from Alan November. Quick plug: if you ever get the chance to attend November Learning’s Building Learning Communities Conference held each summer in Boston, go. My BLC experiences have been some of the most practical, rewarding, and provocative professional development I have ever had.

In my experiments with a digital farm, every student is given a chore (or two). Over the course of a predetermined time period (I find students need about two weeks to try out ideas and make multiple attempts), each student must make a meaningful contribution to everyone’s learning in his or her assigned role. Students may contribute in any way and at any time, too. If they are, for instance, designated a Feedback Provider they could still make a contribution as a Big Thinker. Also, depending on the size and personality of the class, I assign multiple students the same role. Students may work with partners or alone to fulfill their task. Students must also communicate with me in a timely fashion so that I can plan our lessons around their contributions.

At the end of each chore cycle, students complete a journal reflection and their work. I give one-to-one feedback, and then assign new chores for the next cycle.

Visit our Digital Farm wiki for a complete set of jobs. Some jobs are not assigned but come up in a rotating fashion. Discussion Leaders and Student Scribes work this way, and I will make a future post on the Student Scribes concept I learned from Darren Kuropatwa.

Continue reading →

Tags: #1:1, #digifarm, #digitalfarm, @novemberlearning, best_practice, classroom_management, collaboration, English, Neal, pedagogy

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Classroom Management, English, Pedagogy, Teaching with technology

Parent Teacher Conference Game

9 Nov

I have one finely honed skill that serves me better in the classroom than all the rest: I know when I should steal a great idea. Well, I am not really stealing an idea if I give credit, and the person who originated the idea is sharing it freely.

No single teacher can always be the perfect creative force who whips up an appropriate and effective solution to every teaching dilemma. We educators work best when we work together…or we at least share. At its core, sharing is what this blog is all about, so here is a great idea for your next parent/teacher conference. I just finished mine.

Thankfully, at my school we really hold parent/teacher/student conferences; the student does most of the talking. In the past, I have always been a bit flummoxed as to how to get every student to talk precisely and honestly about his or her class work. My excelling students spoke articulately about their work, but my struggling students…well…struggled to pinpoint what they needed to do to improve.

This last time around, however, I stole an idea from my colleague that worked perfectly. You should steal it, too. Here is the explanation video he sent to us: Continue reading →

Tags: #parentconferences, #parentteacherconferences, #studentconferences, classroom_management, collaboration, feedback, grading, timesavers, vocabulary

Comments 5 Comments
Categories How To

Animoto Tips and Tricks

3 Nov

Animoto makes you look good…really good. Their simple interface makes creating professional quality slideshows soooooooo easy. If you don’t know about this site, go there now. You can get started making videos of up to 30 seconds in length without paying anything.

Even better, if you’re a teacher, the good folks at Animoto will give you a free, full-access educator’s account that gives you (and your students) six months of full service. When your six months are up, just contact them, and they will keep hooking you up with new codes and more service. Some of the themes and features require a professional account (another paid level), but the choices connected with free educator accounts are vast.

I was recently playing around on my phone and made this video in less than 30 minutes. The mobile app is quite elegant and user friendly. That short video inspired me to offer Animoto to all the grade 10 students at Frankfurt International School.

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Tags: #animoto, #fis, #flipclass, #teachingwithphotography, best_practice, classroom_example, creative_commons, flipped classroom, laptops, Neal, pedagogy, student_work, technology, video, YouTube

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Categories Classroom Examples, How To, Teaching with technology

Morgan Freeman, Memorization, and My Mutt

29 May

Sometimes, I am a crazy person walking the street. I have a reactive dog, and recently I’ve been trying something new. When another dog is near us, and Finn is about to turn into a whirling dervish of spastic barking, I recite poetry from memory. This week I’ve memorized the prologue to Romeo & Juliet. Next up is “Ocean” by Mary Oliver.

I am sure my neighbors think I am a nutter (especially the German ones), but the dog seems to like this practice. She’s getting calmer every month, and I am archiving some wonderful verse. Memorizing poetry is an utterly “old school” act, but it has real value. I am asking my grade 7 students to memorize a poem of at least ten lines as one of the closing activities of the year.

I proposed the idea after discussing Nelson Mandela and his recitation of “Invictus” during his darkest hours of imprisonment. I was describing the poem to my students, and then I thought, why don’t I just look for a recitation online? It turns out, Morgan Freeman explains the power of memorized verse much more powerfully than I do:

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Tags: #engchat, #memorization, #memorizing, #poetryaloud, #poetryoutloud, best_practice, English, Neal, poetry, reading

Comments 1 Comment
Categories English, Reading

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Robin Neal

#ELMLE2015 Update: Simple Classroom Hacks

Finding Time to Maintain a Blog

Audio Feedback on Student Writing

THE PROCESS:

Student Scribe Posts

Continue reading →

Video Reboots

Grading Essays How-To: Use Macros to Save Time

Classroom Example: Students Fighting Slavery With Technology

27 Million Dots (or Why Design Thinking Is Worth the Extra Effort)

The Digital Farm

Parent Teacher Conference Game

Animoto Tips and Tricks

Morgan Freeman, Memorization, and My Mutt

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