A Snappy Follow-up: Snapchat in (and out of) the Classroom

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Ashley Bailey

Guys.

Snapchat isn’t what I thought.

I mean, it is. It’s a powerful Augmented Reality tool that teens are using ALL.THE.TIME. And PROLIFICALLY.

But once I got into it, my ideas (see the previous post) of how to use it in my classroom shifted.

I thought I’d use it for kids who missed class, snapping English lessons to my Story, etc.

I did do that.

But that’s not where or how it was most effective for me.

Instead, I went on maternity leave and started to “snap” my life.

Snapchat removes the small talk barrier.

TELL ME A STORY

Student followed me while I was away for 8 months. I transitioned into a fuller-time guidance counselling role when I came back, and students started to pay more attention to my life.

They wanted to know, as a role model, what I do in my spare time, on the weekend, at night.

They’re used to knowing what their peers do, and it’s in some ways a great cultural divide not to see teachers and other responsible adults in that light.

Students started coming up to me voluntarily. Instead of the awkward and somewhat invasive “what did you do on the weekend” question, they could tell me how cute my dog was, and go on to talk about their own pet – or ask me what I thought of the movie they know I’d seen on Netflix (because of course, I snapped that!)

As an English teacher, I can chat all day about the Power of Stories. Humour? Drama? Satire? You betcha, I’ve got literature for that, and then some.

But guess what?! Snapchat allows me to produce these genres, anew, each day – from my very own life.

Not only that, but students are engaging and laughing along (or at … whatever). I don’t know about you, but I tend to characterize myself as a stand-up-comedian in my classroom. So engaging them with silliness or humour or the narrative of my adult, interesting (?), responsible life is natural for me.

SNAPPING RELEVANCE

This style won’t fit everyone. Likely, it is healthier not to “snap” your life than to spend the effort thinking about it, and I certainly put more effort into other things.

However, I hope you consider taking a look.

Our lives should be somewhat private, but as the adults that our students spend the most time with, they want to see how we actually live.

I encourage you to think about what that means for you! For me, it’s my dog, my evenings marking, my child, going to the farm, and silly selfies with different filters (exciting, right?!)

If you want a quick Snapchat tutorial, you can find one here .

There’s a great rundown of the platform here.

And if you’re an educator wary of Social Media – you can find some good tips here.

It’s good to be back and writing- next time I’ll keep up the social media streak, and post about my adventures on Youtube.

If you’re already on Snapchat, or thinking about it, please leave a comment to tell me what you think!

Aw, Snap! Snapchat in the Classroom

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Ashley Bailey

Add me to see my posts this term!

What Is Snapchat?

Snapchat is that app that became infamous for sending naked selfies that would disappear. Remember that? Well, its image has changed.

Now, Snapchat offers its users a number of different options to follow friends, celebrities, and media outlets like CNN and the Food Network – and teens use it every day. While Snapchat hasn’t quite beat Facebook Messenger in popularity, it’s tied with Instagram and far surpasses twitter in teen engagement.

Snapchat’s Discover feature allows users to keep up with current events, and it’s Stories feature – a compendium of short videos and photos that lasts 24 hours – allows users to vicariously experience the edited lives of their peers.

It’s fresh, it’s common, and its main aim is to tell a personal story. That’s why I plant to use it in my English Language and Literature class this year.

How I plan to Use Snapchat

All kinds of educators are using Snapchat in all kinds of ways lately. They use it to update students, to send out announcements, to teach about social media, and much more. I’m really just jumping on the cool-train here. But having studied the medium, I think it is especially relevant for English and Media Studies teachers to learn about this particular platform.

I plan to use Snapchat to post summaries of my course material for the day, and ask students to respond. But as a Media teacher, there is so much more to Snapchat than just posting short personal videos. I become a curator, an editor, (potentially) a comedian, and a student of media trends. I get hilarious and lovely snaps from friends of mine daily – and instantly! I get short snippets and tips from the Discover feature. And I am building the skill to distill the essence of my lessons (for class purposes) into relevant, pithy, personality-rich packages for my own benefit as much as for the benefit of my students.

More importantly, I get to tell a story economically, and with doodles.

Safety-wise, students can add teacher Snapchat accounts without teachers seeing what students have posted. Accessibility-wise, any student with a phone or ipad can join and participate.

As for invading a space occupied predominantly by students, I don’t think they’ll mind. When I mentioned my idea to the class last week, one student asked “why isn’t every teacher doing this?”. Students want teachers to understand where they’re coming from. They seek relevance. So this is my first experiment of the term – to share in and learn from the relevance they seek.

With the Canadian PM election coming up, and then the American Presidential election – it will be fun to see which social-media platforms keeps us millennials most informed, and which ones the parties use to create the most impact. Some predict that in 2016, the top seed will go to Snapchat.

Here’s to experiments, media literacy, and a new school year of possibilities!

If you want to become more proficient at Snapchat, you can follow these people, and read these tricks. If you are a Snapchat beginner like I was, I hope you find the links embedded in this post to be helpful.

The Four C’s : fostering 21st century skills in the lit class.

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Ashley Bailey

from “Where The Wild Things Are”, by Maurice Sendak, c. 1963

Wild times in Ms. Bailey’s Class, folks! But I’m eating them up.

Four things are happening in class right now:

1. My class has designed and is creating study tools for themselves and their peers.

2. My class is engaging thoroughly with literature they need to study.

3. They are using native (and somewhat native) technologies to do it!

4. Without even trying (almost), we’ve integrated the 4 C’s of 21st century learning – communication, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking! win, win, win, win.

Here’s how we’ve been doing it … .

1. Communication (or: A Wrinkle in Time)

“Experiment is the mother of knowledge”- Madeleine L’Engle

In case this is the first of my posts you’re reading, here’s a snapshot of what’s been happening. I’ve been looking to facilitate deep engagement with challenging literature in my students, through “digitally native” technologies- or tech that they’re already using. For my students, that means Skype, Youtube, and some Instagram and Vine – (because I haven’t figured out how to incoporate Snapchat in to lessons , although these people have).

But to go even further, I asked them to design study tools and tools to understand literature so they can succeed on their exam. I issued a survey to them the week before, which revealed that passing their exam was their number 1 priority (not surprising). They came up with great ideas, including a pill you can take to just know everything, and a website where I’d post tutorial videos, and a trivia game.

That’s where we were after my last blog post. Next, we decided on real projects.

2. Creativity, (or: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?)

I see an intimidating task looking at me.

From the design lab we came up with some workable projects – which the student seemed to be pumped about. The first was a “Crash Course”style video to learn Poetry. The second was a series of Instagram videos to summarize Hamlet (this will make Hamlet exactly 5 minutes long – take THAT, Branagh). The third was to translate greek tragedy to current times through Twitter. This one is the rockiest, as none of the students had twitter accounts beforehand.

We also explored some other ideas that came out of the lab. We debated “whether Hamlet should be taught in school”, and started some thematic T.S. Eliot discussions. That’s when I noticed this piece of one student’s design lab:

During the debate, the point that Hamlet is “too hard” or “confusing” came up more than once. The students are vocal about their frustration with The Wasteland – and I found this in an early draft of their Crash Course T.S. Eliot script:

Tall order!

They’re still working on the script, but I think they’ve found some exciting solutions to the difficulty problem – and their own assertion that Eliot is 1. Hard, and 2. Boring.

I also found this excerpt in a first draft Hamlet Instagram script (yes, (gasp!) a script for instagram vids)

They’re speaking in language they believe will be appealing/entertaining to their peers, and they’re getting some of the complexity of the text. Exciting stuff – it’s amazing what they come up with for an authentic audience!

But we hit a wall of sorts. While each group is becoming experts in their text, they all have to know both texts for the exam in May. So I underwent Cohort 21 -style tuning protocols to get some great feedback on our class project.

3. Collaboration, (or: How to Train Your Dragon)

Twelve days north of hopeless, and a few degrees south of freezing to death…

I love to collaborate. The project tuning protocol led by Celeste were no exception. After sharing the above with the team, I received some crucial feedback.

First, I shouldn’t be doing more work than the students. (THIS WAS A HUGE REVELATION). So, instead of doing “my” part – they asked me to create a website with video tutorials on it – I assigned them “critical question seminars” to record over Google Hangouts on Air (don’t worry, they signed a waiver). That way, the students are the ones leading the tutorials (though I’ll be leading one myself). And those who can’t make the hangout – unlike in a Skype call – can watch it later via the link provided. Another study tool down the hatch!

We’ve also been reading more together in class- that way the students can ask their questions about the lit as they come up. This is an obvious answer to my question about engaging them in the literature, but one I’d shied away from in the past.

Not did I get to collaborate with a number of insightful colleagues, but these insights allowed me to collaborate with my students to create knowledge-building, critical-thinking tutorials they can use as additional tools to study!

4. Critical Thinking (or : Where the Wild Things Are)

Let the wild rumpus start!

It’s time to reflect, revise, and remodel for the next phase of my project.

I learned something from the second project tuning protocol where Beth Nichols shared her exciting idea to Blog as reflection in Math class. In our Google hangout we discussed the importance of reflecting in general. I decided I need to do that more in my grade 12 English class.

How has this project affected their approach to learning literature? How has it changed their classroom experience? To what extent have they benefitted from this kind of learning? To what extent are they satisfied with their designs?

In one sense, this whole process has been a prototyping and testing phase of the design cycle. This week in class, we’ll be creating our final media and reflecting (thanks Beth!) on our experiences, setbacks, and growth through the process. I’m so curious to hear what they’d do differently next time, and how they’d revise their designs. They are excellent critical thinkers already. I’m really looking forward to the criteria they’ll come up with to assess their work, and how they plan to take this experience with them into post-secondary.

Personally, my framework and criteria was the Technology Integration Matrix. I think I’m right at the Infusion level – which is far greater than we were at before.

My personal next step is to get my classroom to the Transformation level of the TIM. But as a teacher, as we all know, I’m much more enthused about the students’ experience. I’ll be sharing that in my wrap up post on the 24th!

Any thoughts until then are very much welcome!

There Is No Spoon : Seamless Tech Integration in the Lit Class?

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Ashley Bailey

Down The Rabbit Hole

When in doubt, use students as guinea pigs (as rabbits?). So, in doubt, I invited my students to join me on my journey towards seamless tech integration in the Lit class.

Down The Rabbit Hole…and into the MATRIX!

BACKGROUND: I had my students fill out a survey for me which addressed their use of technology, their work habits, and their anxiety level for upcoming assignments. They are most worried about two upcoming assessments where they need to write essays using literature we’ve studied this year. They also agreed that they love to use SKYPE and Youtube for every-day use, and that they’d enjoy something as easy/ fun/ mindless to use for class purposes. In our discussion we agreed that perhaps a video series overview of the literature would help them succeed in these two tasks. But, we went on with the design lab to see what else they could do.

Today in class, my students and I went through the DESIGN LAB process presented to us by Cohort 21. Their challenge: to design a tool that would promote maximum literature engagement, and that they’d likely use for themselves.

This is where they blew my mind!

They collaborated to create excellent designs in the design lab. These designs were tested using the “extreme user” model. “Imagine your designs will be used by the student who currently takes notes every class and reads the literature many times, and also the student who has never opened the book.”

Let me tell you about three of those designs.

Get Appy

The first design was for a review app. It looked like this:

Does it look familiar? That may be because it looks exactly like this:

This is Trivia Crack, a trivia-quiz game where you can compete against friends in timed challenges. Do you have any students in your classroom using cell phones? They’re likely playing Trivia Crack. Actually, the initial wave of popularity in the last two weeks has started to die down here. Nonetheless, more people seem to be addicted to to Trivia Crack ) than not. So what did my students do here? They designed an app to closely resemble an app they were already comfortable with and enjoyed engaging with.

I have been searching for a quiz game that they can use to compete with one another for fun. Other than Kahoot , I have found QuizUp –thanks to THIS discussion thread. So I have a starting point, at least.

Digitize My World

The second design looked like this:

That’s a sketch of someone’s MacBook. What they’ve designed here is a responsive website for essay practice. Instead of on paper, these students have designed a website that provides randomized IB essay questions, especially Exam Paper 2 questions, with sample level 7 (top level) completed paper 2’s to use as exemplars.

I give students this kind of task with tree-based materials before exams in my class. They want to practice. And they want to see excellence to emulate excellence. Plus, they want instant feedback if possible. Again, this is familiar to them : they already have a tool like this. They simply want unlimited access to sample questions and excellent exemplars. But they want them digitized, fast, and all at once.

They’re asking all the right questions. They want to know:

What does an IB question look like?

What does a good answer look like to that question?

How do I write an excellent essay?

My next steps here are easier than app development: I can create a website with a database of essay materials for them.

I Know Kung-Fu

This was the third prototype:

Yeah, that’s for real.

It’s a pill: a pill that would allow us to remember things without having to do any work.

At first I thought : oh no! But after some brief reflection, I realized… YES! That’s what I want for this project, or at least, what I want it to feel like. I want their engagement, review, and retention to feel like the least amount of work with the greatest pay-off.

They want their tools for learning to be so integrated that they don’t even know they’re learning. Well, actually they want to not have to learn. They want this:

Matrix Plug

Eventually, according to Ray Kurzweil, we’ll have that matrix-y-head plug. But in the mean time, what we really need is a way for students to feel like they’re gaining mastery-level-knowledge effortlessly, while activating their critical thinking skills (which, even when we can access neck-ro-chip knowledge, we will need to facilitate).

Notice, none of the students were interested in designing as a part of learning. They wanted formulas, review, and instant understanding.

There Is No Spoon

Seamless : the tools between the user and the learning should not really exist. You know how we don’t notice we’ve been on youtube/twitter/facebook/in-front-of-the-tv for 4 hours? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the kind of “tools” the students are looking for.

So that’s my first challenge in my Action plan : invisible/unobtrusive tools.

I also want to integrate content creation for learning — which my students aren’t even thinking about. You know the old theory that students learn best by teaching? Well, apparently it works, cuz science. So I’m not going todevelop the materials – they will. Having them develop learning materials for others will certainly help them retain content.

So the second part of my action plan is to use the Active and Collaborative parts of the Technology Integration matrix (TIM) (there’s that thematic tie-in) to both facilitate seamless tech integration AND improve students’ active participation and collaborative synthesis in the classroom.

Here’s my task, according to my pal TIM:

“The Teacher encourages the innovative use of technology tools. Technology tools are used to facilitate higher-order learning activities that may not have been possible without the use of technology ” [ higher order: analyze, evaluate, create]

Will we develop an App? Maybe.

Will we use immersive technologies or game-style review? If we have the budget…?

But I will definitely endeavour to make this integration as painless and seamless as possible. I plan to help students explore tools to produce both review and deep engagement materials.

And I will certainly keep in mind my “extreme” audiences: those who will already do the reading at home and take notes (and enjoy doing it!), and those who wanted a pill.

I invite you to join me as we continue down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.

The Digital Natives and Their Ways

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Ashley Bailey

Image from Techandlaw.net

The Vision.

( Cue: dramatic movie-trailer voice)

In a world where students live online and learning lives in the classroom, one teacher will dare to “connect”. Will she succeed in incorporating online life, content learning, and sound pedagogy? Or will she and her students fail miserably and descend into an abyss of disconnectivity and despair?

Ok. Is that too much drama for you?

The Dream, The Nightmare, The Wakeup Call.

Picture this: a quiet night at home. Ms. Bailey diligently adds students to her Google+ network so they can participate in a Google Hangout English tutorial the night before the December exam. She can’t do On-Air, to protect the students’ privacy. Instead she figures about 10 keeners will come to tutorial, which is perfect for a regular ol’ Google hangout. 7:59 pm … anticipation mounts as the hangout is about to begin.

Does it go as planned?

Of course not.

No, 21 students show up for the tutorial. Too many for a Google Hangout (in many ways, a wild success!).

Additionally, despite her microphone working on the computer, and being turned “on” in the hangout, no student is able to hear her (in many ways, my bad).

Finally, the keen students suggest a technology which is native to them : Skype. YES! Skype! While 21 people would make video-conferencing slow on this app, the chat function and audio functions of Skype would work well, especially if Ms. Bailey can paste links into Skype chat (which she does).

SO, they move the whole party over to Skype. Since they all know how to use it already, and all have each other on Skype – save, of course, courageous Ms. Bailey- , this new venue takes about 3 minutes to get going. The evening is saved, and they all have a productive 45 minute tutorial.

The Action!

This brings me to a recurring theme in my investigations : can we reach students more effectively by teaching them using technologies that are native to their quotidian experience, than by introducing newfangled technology they have no non-scholarly applications for?

My Action Plan involves teaching students literature using “technology.” I want them to collaborate to create knowledge and experience of the texts we are studying in ways that are most relevant for them. For their high-stakes exam in May, they’ll need to recall details from texts all the way from the beginning of the year. Are there accessible ways for them to establish this content as they learn it, and access it instantly throughout our course?

I hope so. I’ve already started my investigation through google docs — which students also don’t seem to be using outside the classroom. It hasn’t been too effective thus far. Instead, I’ll continue by investigating Vine, Ask FM, and other social-ish media they already use daily to see if it’s more effective in their “out of classroom” hours.

The Matrix !!!

Yeah, prepare for a bajillion matrix jokes, quotes, and photos next post. That’s really why I chose the Technology Integration Matrix – makes for good writing.

TIM has, in my humble opinion, the coolest aid for implementation, in the form of a — wait for it — integration matrix … .

But wait, there’s more!

This matrix has not only descriptions of each level of integration, for different essential classroom skills (e.g. collaboration), but has examples of each for each subject one might teach (helpful for those of us who like concrete models for achievement). Also, there’s this rubric with general descriptors!

My favourite part is that I can measure my progress based on how natural it is for students to engage using my own tools, while effortlessly tracking my movement through the matrix. Exciting.

To Be Continued…

Digital Natives have their own “native” uses for technology and social media. To use an analogy, are we trying to colonize and convert our students to “appropriate” uses of technology? I’m hoping to conduct a brief ethnographic study, and then use students’ technologies in their ways to enhance classroom learning for our collective purposes – starting this month! We start Hamlet this week, so stay tuned to see whether my visions for Shakespearean Vines and Tumblr posts will work, with the guidance of the Matrix.

(A note on Google Hangouts: I really LOVE Google Hangouts, and all the possibilities for the classroom – the school I’m at has an elective Gmail account for students, and optional Google apps participation, which is part of the issue with making students Google apps “native”. I’m looking for something that can be seamless and natural for me and the students – hence, going towards what they’re already doing. In my case that just happens to not be Google Hangouts right now. )