Lose it or Level Up

Jump for Joy or Run for Cover?

It was about this time on Saturday of last week that our 2nd Face to Face meeting was wrapping up. Having missed the first Face2Face, there was a lot for me to take in. My emotions at the time were a mixed bag of pure joy and excitement about the world of opportunity, and utter concern about my ability to make the grade as a cohort member. System overload sums it up pretty well. By the time we hit the TIMS model, I was done. I felt so far behind, that there was no way I’d ever get where I felt I needed to go. I just wanted to run for cover and find comfort in the known with my existing toolkit.

At Rosseau Lake College,  our motto is Best of Self. Ask any student, and they can tell you what it means. As a teacher, I talk to my students a lot about how they can be their best academic self and help them as they strive to get there by providing clear expectations, lots of opportunity for practice,  and descriptive ‘for’ learning feedback. Now that growth mindset is also on my radar, I’ve been working on adding that to my repertoire, too.

In our 2nd FAce to Face meeting, we were introduced to the notion of ‘Leveling Up.’ I can’t remember if this was before or after my brain exploded, but the important part is that it’s stuck. It got me thinking about how so much of my, and other teachers’ efforts, go into helping students ‘level up’ that we don’t always focus on how we, too, can (and should) ‘level up.’

To me, this is what the Cohort21 experience is all about, so I made the conscious decision this week to leave my cover and step into the big unknown and see where it took me. I ‘leveled up’ in and few areas, and…. it was awesome!

How I ‘Leveled Up’ This Week

Having had a week to ruminate and reflect on my (perhaps over) reaction to all the new information, I decided it was time to spend some time on leveling up myself.

Twitter: For you Tweet-a-holics out there, you can skip this part. But for any other reluctant tweeters, I made a huge step this week. I made a few tweets, checked in frequently to my Tweetdeck (Thanks, Justin), and even invited my students and parents to follow me. That was my accountability piece, so I’d actually keep up with tweeting. I did a search using hashtags and found some great information. My comfort level has gone up from next to nothing to about a blue sticker. I like the colour blue.

Socrative: after our introduction to Socrative, I was intrigued, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. In my Gr. 7 and 8 Lanugage Arts classes, we’ve been working on asking great questions and have been using Garfield Gini-Newman’s Q Chart as a basis for this.

As Garfield Gini-Newman explains, critical thinking or inquiry occurs, “only when (students) are attempting to assess or judge the merits of possible options in light of relevant factors or criteria.” I created questions using the words ‘could/should/would/will/might’ for my students and put them on Socrative. Once they’d posted their answers, students discussed them. The level of engagement and quality of discussion was phenomenal. After their discussions, they had to vote on which answer they felt was the best.

This questioning/discussing/voting exercise is something I’ve done before, but without the use of Socrative. In the process of using Socrative, I was hoping to ‘level up’ on Dr. Ruben Puentedura’s SAMR model, as well. Certainly, it augmented the process, in that Socrative acted as a substitute for the traditional paper/pencil method with functional improvement. The process was faster, and the students were totally engaged in the process. In my quest for leveling up on the SAMR model, I wonder, though, could Socrative be used as a modification? I’d love to hear how other people are using Socrative in their classes. Does anyone have some good tips?

My next ‘Level Up’ goal is to discover the benefits of Google+