Launch Grant: Peer Feedback in Upper School Biology Class

Upper School science teacher Amanda Borking did a launch grant this year to explore the use of peer feedback through the PowerSchool class website. Students used the wiki-pages feature of PowerSchool to post content. They uploaded work there (such as this drawing of a chemistry example) and then used discussion boards to discuss their work. They also recorded and uploaded videos to add a more personal means of communication asynchronously.

In this example, students made a cartoon strip to illustrate chemical bonding.  

A few examples of peer feedback comments posted to the discussion board:

"When looking at their fairytale I really like how they represented the loss and gain of electrons by using shoes, I thought that was a really smart way to show this action. One part that was a little unclear was which atoms were bonding was which ones, I didn't figure it out until the end when you drew the final solution/equation. So in the future I would just write which atoms each ones are just to clarify. Secondly, another way to improve your fairytale might be to use more of the scientific words we learned such as ionic bond, valance electrons, intramolecular bonds, etc to relate your fairytale more to what we have been learning in class."

"I really liked their representation of how the two Chlorine atoms get the one needed magnesium electron. I think that perhaps they could have used more vocabulary such as non-metals and metals, or ionic or other words to describe what kind of reaction is taking place. I think that they could have also added a more scientific picture of what the atoms would looks like when they had shared them. I'm  a visual learner and it would help me understand the movement of atoms a little more. However, this group did an excellent job and I truly loved what they put on their story board."

Creating Online Resources for US Chem Course

During the 2017-2018 school year Upper School chemistry teacher Jake Nagy used a launch grant to create supplemental informational resources "chemistry online notes" for his students. He wrote,

The concept of Chemistry Online Notes (CON) is inspired by the BACON program currently employed by Prof. Neil Garg of UCLA. Garg's BACON program is an interactive and digital program that assesses and reinforces the learning of students taking his introductory organic chemistry course. I would like to explore the creation and implementation of a similar program designed for the BB&N high school chemistry curriculum. Link to BACON website: https://learnbacon.com/

Mr. Nagy put together PowerPoint files and uploaded them to the class website for each unit. His goal was to create notes not just for use in class, but more so as a stand alone resource for students to access when they've missed class or if they would like to review topics discussed in class. He says the students have gotten used to using them as a supplement and they've really gotten a lot of use out of it. He includes some questions on the slides that allow them to test their understanding as they look through the slides. He plans to continue to refine and improve this new resource for students.

Upper School Tech Byte #7- Haiku and Google Drive

In this morning's Upper School faculty meeting, English teacher Sharon demonstrated two blended learning strategies she uses in her classroom to enhance her students' learning experience: peer to peer feedback and asynchronous discussion.  Teachers in the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom are typically bound by the constraints of time and space, but Sharon is using technology to break down her classroom walls, leading to more efficient and deeper classroom discussions.


Sharon showed colleagues how she has students share their written work through a google drive folder linked to from her Haiku website.  After reading one another's writing, they post initial thoughts in an online discussion.  Having this pre-work done before entering the classroom the next day leads to a more effective use of the face-to-face time in the classroom and therefore deeper conversation.

Haiku Master on Campus!

Congratulations to Rosario Sánchez Gómez! She has been selected as one of three winners of Haiku Learning's "Raise Your Hand" contest, a best practices contest for Haiku-using teachers!  To enter, teachers accessed Haiku's Community Forum and described their most effective project, lesson, or assignment done using tools in HaikuLearning and why it was so effective.  As a reward, Rosario has earned:

• Goodies! Haiku is sending Rosario the following: a Haiku Learning knapsack filled with Haiku Learning stickers and a Haiku Learning t-shirt. 
• Blog post: Haiku will publish a blog post on their website showcasing Rosario's idea, so blog subscribers will see it as well as people who respond to their various social media postings about it. 
• eBook: Haiku will publish Rosario's best practice within an eBook “Best Practices for Using Haiku Learning” that all Haiku Learning educators will be able to download. 

Subscribe to the Haiku Learning Blog to keep up with latest news, customer stories, and helpful tips from Haiku Learning.

Check out the Haiku Learning site to read Rosario's article:
A PBL Approach to Teaching World Languages. 

You can see Rosario's haiku page here.

Upper School Tech Byte #6- Haiku

Woodworking teacher Paul showed his colleagues how he uses Haiku to create slideshows showcasing both his students' artwork and that of professionals.  He also demonstrated how to use the Haiku gradebook to leave students comments on projects completed offline.  For more information on the Haiku gradebook, check out this HaikuLearning site.

Upper School Faculty Tech Byte #3- Embedding Google Forms in Haiku

In this morning's Upper School Faculty meeting Rosario shared how she uses google forms with her

students.  She walked her colleagues through the steps of creating and customizing a google form and demonstrated how to embed it on a Haiku site.  A few "ooh"s and "ah"s could be heard in the room,

as she displayed what the google form responses look like when viewed in summary form.  Lastly, she shared a few examples of how googles forms embedded in Haiku sites could be used my teachers.  The data collected can be anonymous, or it can record the students' names with their responses.  Data collection can be used as a way to see if students have completed their homework, such as by having them answer questions after watching a video or completing an assigned reading.  In class, teachers can give quizzes or use the questions as a form of formative assessment.

Upper School Faculty Tech Byte #1: Haiku in the Russian Classroom

In our weekly Thursday morning faculty meetings, several faculty volunteers will be sharing some of their uses of technology in the classroom with their colleagues.  They will be demonstrating their professional and classroom uses of technology, sometimes sharing tech tips and tricks and at other times showcasing best practices and classroom projects.

Our first volunteer was Russian teacher Josh who showed us student wiki project created in Haiku.  He also shared how he posts his class syllabus online and uses the calendar to post assignments for students and and the online grade book to give them feedback online.  He walked the faculty through the steps of creating an assignment in the Haiku calendar, showed them what the assignment looks like in the calendar, and demonstrated how to access the assignments in the grade book to leave grades and comments for students.

Upper School Launch Grant: Google Expertise with Haiku influence

Since the beginning of the summer and during the school year, I have been using HAIKU with all my classes as I did in the previous year.  This year in particular, I decided to work on a combination of Google with HAIKU as I requested in my technology grant last summer.

It was very interesting on how easy it is to mix both platforms but at the same time, it was difficult to keep up using it for everything.  I asked my students to use Google docs and Google slides for any work that was requested in the class. This system worked very well.  One of the things that I could not do this year was Google group discussion.  I will be continuing the next school year adding more to what already we do with both, Google and Haiku.

It takes time to explore the endless possibilities I can find, especially with Google. I learned to use the green screen, Camtasia, and Screen cast.  I would love to explore more the Camtasia and Screen cast to create my own grammar videos.  I also learned many similar things in my GOA courses.  This was very important and valuable to do at the same time I was trying to do the grant.

By learning all of these technology techniques I realized that I needed to keep up with my students learning styles and other ways so I could reach each one of their needs.  And I think these two platforms will definitely help me figure out how to access to them either at school, home, or at any place they go.

I post my syllabus and other materials such as videos, readings, pictures, etc. in Haiku.  I also put up Google documents and slides in Haiku.  I started using the Haiku grading system but I stopped after the second semester because I noticed that I wasn’t been fair with the grading system.  This is a big ISSUE that I need to solve and I am asking for help.  At the end of the school year, I had to manually calculate my students’ grades because I got stocked in the program.

Thank you for the opportunity I was given to do this grant.

Gabriela

Upper School Launch Grant: Blogging site

The time and training I received to work on Haiku was very important for me. It was a new platform for me and I needed to have the time over the summer (and the year)  to learn how to use it and also explore whether I needed to use other platforms or not because of possible restrictions with using Arabic. I was (and still am) interested in making Haiku the second textbook for my classes. This grant helped me begin this project and explore options and figure out what will and won’t work for my classes.

My main interest was to offer the students a place to engage the language through blogging but that did not work out as I had imagined so I decided to use Haiku for projects instead and from there try to develop the pages where students find a place to engage the language outside of class time.

I use Haiku now to share links of songs and movies that we watch and talk about in the class…each class has access to material of the previous year and I also post my assignments and syllabus. I also found out the more I use Haiku, the more interest the students have in using it. It is also my goal for next year to connect grading with homework assignment to make it easier for students to keep track of their missing assignments and stay up to date with their grades.

-Amani Abu Shakra