60 WITH SAINT
Weekly Tech Update 5/10 to 5/14
Jayson's Students Spill the Beans 🌱
It’s no secret that feedback is essential for our students to learn. Grant Wiggins writes an exceptional article titled Seven Keys to Effective Feedback published in the Educational Leadership magazine. But feedback is also important for us as educators! We should want feedback from our students in regards to how we are performing as educators through our student’s eyes. Don’t we want to get better? What we perceive as being successful may not be the reality. If the students aren’t buying what we are selling, we are going to struggle to get them ‘learning’ in our classes.
I am not going to lecture you from the soapbox. It took me 16 years to get the courage, mostly due to my fixed mindset, immaturity, and insecurities, to ask my students to a) #ObserveMe and b) Give Me a Report Card Grade. Both of those Google Forms are linked, feel free to make a copy for yourself, modify them and call them your own. I am also putting myself out there and sharing the Report Card Grades(click the hyperlink) and comments from the 86 students who evaluated me in 2018. Not to brag, but to demonstrate that the students have it in them to do this! Read the feedback. There was some very appropriate, and productive criticism from those 8th graders. I was impressed that 45 out of the 86 put their name behind their feedback even though it was optional and I wasn’t collecting emails. They were free and clear to be as honest as they wanted to be.
How was the feedback used? Most of the responses contained suggestions that I could immediately implement in our classroom. They told me that my handwriting was messy, which it was, so that was an easy fix. CHECK! The students wanted more station work because it meant smaller clusters and more 1 on 1 time, just meant creatively chunking my lessons, CHECK! Less sarcasm, that was a hard one for me but I did make an honest effort, half-CHECK. Slow down my teaching. I’ll admit that I used to push through the curriculum like I was on a mission! And for what? To say that I covered it all? It made sense to slow down and check for the acquisition of new material before I proceeded, so CHECK. Make lessons more interactive, which meant becoming a full-time lifelong learner and teaching myself new tricks, CHECK. More visual aids displayed around the room. This is an easy one, I am not a fan of white walls, so CHECK. Play music more often when we are working. Even better, music was selected by the students as long as it was appropriate, CHECK. Takedown the Yankee’s banners, NOT A CHANCE!
Those are just some of the immediate changes, but you get the idea. What I was perceiving and the students were experiencing weren’t congruent(math term). I only wish I had the courage to do it earlier in my career or at least earlier in the year because that would have made the relationships with the students that much stronger! Listen to your students, they have a lot to teach us as well! After all, we are all on the same team, right?
Eating My Own Dog Food
Tuesdays R 4 Teachers
Every Tuesday starting May 4th (sorry about that, I dropped the ball on that one), NYSCATE Is offering free webinars on a variety of topics. Here is the upcoming schedule:
May 11th: Project Based Learning
May 18th: Synchronous Meetings with the G Suite
May 25th: Google Forms: Create and Assign/Share
June 1st: Navigating Digital Resources
June 8th: Fun Ways to Use Google Slides
Click on any of the above links will take you directly to the registration page for that session. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. All webinars start at 7 pm. Here is a direct link to the NYSCATE page which has more information, especially if you are looking for CTLE credit
Thank you Bridgit Millard for sharing this gem💎 !.
Padlet in Action For Living Environment Students
No InstaStrategies This Week
Due to a scheduling conflict, the InstaStrategies sessions for this week are canceled. SORRY! We will be back at our regularly scheduled time on May 19th when the topic will be Goal Sharing.
60 With St in Gmail
60 With St in Outlook
To View Pretty Version
Getting in Compliance
In an effort to get in compliance with New York State's Data Privacy and Security Policy (NYS Ed Law 2D), WCSD has to check and make sure that the sites, software apps, and tools that are utilized at school and with our students are compliant. If there are sites, software apps, and tools that you are using with your students, could you please take a second and fill out the form below to let us know what those sites, software apps, and tools are? Fill it out as a team, a department, or on your own.
Here is the link to the form: https://forms.gle/tmbzuGeP7dttjZ6S8 or you can access it by clicking on the form icon located to the right.
Here is a link to more information on Ed Law 2D (provided by MORIC and RIC ONE).
🚨 Who Got Caught? 🚨
Has anyone noticed the new “I Caught” option on the Empower website? If you haven’t, head on over and check it out. The “I Caught…” form is courtesy of the Cyclone Learning Zone. I’m not going to spoil it, you’ll have to check it out. Here’s the link.
Tutorial(s)
Searching with Carrot2
Tech Tool(s) of The WEEK
IconsMania
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WCSD Informational Technology Website
Let's Talk Tech Integration
HT Wiley: Wiley IMC
Case Middle School: Room 210
WHS: Student Help Desk 1st Floor
Would you Mind Sharing?
Feedback Welcomed and Encouraged
Let's Hear It
Leave Some Feedback
Let's Hear It
Jayson St.Croix
Email: jstcroix@watertowncsd.org
Website: https://www.smore.com/dp1fh
Phone: (315)785-3895
Twitter: @Math3203