Tech Tips
August 2017: Volume 5- Number 38
Welcome Back!!!!!!!!!!! Have a Great Year!
You'll find a wide variety of apps, articles, and websites in this issue.
Dyslexia Reader Chrome
"Dyslexia Reader Chrome is a Google Chrome extension that makes text easier to read. It changes text attributes such as font, font size, character spacing, column with, background color, text color, line spacing to values that have been shown to be easier to read by people with dyslexia, but these values can be changed."
Webcam in Google Slides
"Install the Alice Keeler Webcam Record Chrome extension. This allows you to record 30 seconds of video from your webcam. The video is automatically saved to Google Drive and then the link to the video is saved to your clipboard automatically."
Ice Breakers
excerpt: "In my own classrooms, with middle school, high school, and college students, I have played all three of these games with great success. What I like about all of them is that they get students talking, but require very little social risk. Each activity supplies students with real topics to talk about, topics that actually help students get to know each other, without forcing anyone to reveal anything too personal."
How to Empower Students with One Simple Phrase: 40% Boost in Student Effort
How to Empower Students with One Simple Phrase
Excerpt:
"A team of psychologists from Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and elsewhere recently set out to explore the question: What’s the secret of great feedback?. They had middle-school teachers assign an essay-writing assignment to their students, after which students were given different types of teacher feedback.
To their surprise, researchers discovered that there was one particular type of teacher feedback that improved student effort and performance so much that they deemed it “magical.” Students who received this feedback chose to revise their paper far more often that students who did not (a 40 percent increase among white students; 320 percent boost among black students) and improved their performance significantly."
The Phrase:
"I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them."
Realistic Idealism
excerpt:
Perhaps the guiltiest culprit for our burnout each year is not the latest policy from on high, the newest cumbersome teacher eval rubric, or the fact that “this year’s group is a really rough one.” In my experience, these things create challenging circumstances (and many times the challenge lies not in the things but in the ignoring of them), but they don’t burn me out. Really, what burns me out is my unrealistic expectations.
In June I decompress. In July I start to dream. And so in August, I tend to bring larger than life expectations to the classroom as I prepare for the year.
Some expectations are important, and we have to cling to them:
- Even the smallest lesson can have a trajectory-shifting impact in the life of a student;
- We’ll keep our work oriented toward Everest, and our job is ultimately to invest in the long-term flourishing of our students;
- We’ll improve this year.
The Best Place to Start
excerpt:
If you’d like to start cultivating those five key beliefs in your students, then may I suggest that the best place to start is not with expectancy-value interventions or growth mindset experiments.
Nope.
Instead, start with the most influential person in your classroom: you.
- The effort belief: Do you believe that, through your effort, you can get better at teaching any student on your roster? Do you believe that, through their effort, every one of your students can get better at the knowledge and skills required by your course? When we say, “That kid’s hopelessly behind,” we’re struggling with this one.
- The success belief: Do you believe that you can succeed at the teaching task currently in front of you? (Part of that probably depends on how clear you are on what success looks like. Try the defining your Everest activity.) Do you believe that your students can succeed, even those furthest behind? How we define success is critical here — forget, for the moment, about the insane expectations too often placed upon us by people far from the classroom.
- The tribal, or “belonging,” belief: Do you believe that you belong in the teaching community — not necessarily the people in your hallway so much as the people around the USA and the world who have dedicated themselves to earnest, improvementist careers — those who are earnestly, joyfully never finished?
- The value belief: Do you believe that teaching is worth the hard work? Do you believe being the best teacher you can be is worth setting a fixed work schedule? Is it worth getting better at saying no so that our “yes” to teaching is as powerful as it can be?
SCS Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: vturner@scsmustangs.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067
Twitter: @vturner8