EdTech @ ISB

Transforming Teaching & Learning

Category: HS (page 1 of 3)

From Sandboxes to Workspaces: Supporting your organization of DX 

We are moving away from departmental sandboxes (MS Humanities, HS English for example) and you will now have a Teacher Workspace for each COURSE (Humanities 6; English 9). While you now may potentially be part of multiple Workspaces, this should make the organization of each workspace easier. This also allows you to have the specific standards for your class attached to your Workspace so that you can create and share rubrics. The CAL will be an administrative member for each Workspace and they can add/remove the appropriate teachers in their department. Please note that all current sandboxes will be archived in August 2022. No data/units will be deleted by the DX administrators. 

Teacher Workspace Organization 

At the top of each Workspace is a section called “Finalized Course Materials”. The materials in this section will represent common units and assessments to be used by a CFL team and that are ready to be copied.   

 

The next section is called “Lesson Page Templates”. In this section there is a single unit with some examples of templates that can be used to quickly create lesson pages in a unit. CFL teams can add new lesson page templates to this as needed, and can then quickly create new lesson pages as they go. 

 

Other sections can be created below these two section, as needed. These extra sections can be organized in different ways, depending on the decision of the CFL team. For example, one section can be created for each teacher, or a new section can be created for past school years as a way of archiving. The more units and assessments that are in this section, however, the longer it may take for it to fully load.  

Preparing the Teacher Workspace: Copying materials from your current sandbox or classes 

Materials in your existing sandbox that will be used from August 2022 onwards must be copied into your new Teacher Workspace for each course. Additionally, any materials in classes that will be used from August 2022 that are not currently in the sandbox must also be copied into the Workspace. This includes Units and Assessments. 

Use the gear icon for the Materials section to quickly select from all content in your sandbox or class: 

You can then select only the materials (units or assessments) that you want to copy to your Teacher Workspace: 

Select the appropriate Teacher Workspace and choose “Copy Here” 

 

Copying Material from Workspaces to DX Classes 

At the start of the school year, or at the start of the unit, the appropriate materials can be copied (not shared!) by each teacher into their own DX class and can then be edited independently by each teacher. This includes due dates for common assessments as well as publishing/unpublishing pages for each class to view. 

In the past, we have suggested that CFL teams choose between “copying” and “sharing” a unit from the sandbox to their classes. We now suggest using the “copy” function exclusively so that each teacher has more control and flexibility over what is published and in setting assessment deadlines. If any lesson pages are added to a unit, these individual lesson pages can also be copied from the Workspace to a unit in the classroom (or vice versa) easily. 

More of a video/screencast kind of person? You can watch a 12-minute explanation of all this here: 

HS Online Learning Exemplars: End of Year

Online Learning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Asia & the World II

Clarify/Care: Brian provides multiple ways for students to understand and interact by creating screencasts, meeting 1:1 with students, and facilitating peer feedback protocols.

 

Chinese

Care/Captivate: Before asking students to share about their own neighborhoods and houses, Chuyu models with her own video. The video gives students a window into her life while also providing the opportunity for authentic questions.

English

Clarify: Allison shares a weekly overview to the grade 10 newsfeed, sharing the weekly task list, and linking to the materials section that has all of the information students need in a clearly laid out format.

 

 

Film

Clarify: Dave clearly explains expectations and deadlines. He also communicates with students about where he is in the world and when he is available.

 

Science

Care/Clarify: Janice combines written instructions with audio instructions to clarify new tasks.

 

Visual Arts

Care/Classroom Management: As part of his daily instructions, Devin gives students a ‘question of the day’  to get them thinking and engaging in the discussion.

HS Online Learning Exemplars: Week 7

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Asia & the World

Captivate/Clarify: The grade 9 team provides clear learning objectives with engaging ways (EdPuzzle & Quizlet) for students to interact with new content.

EAL

Care/Clarify: Deb uses formatting to provide clear & concise directions and focus areas. She also provides multiple ways for students to check-in and connect.

Film

Clarify: Dave gives his Film HL classes weekly plans that are concise with clear expectations.

HS Online Learning Exemplars: Week 6

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Concert Band

Captivate: Students in Nate’s classes are in the middle of a 12-lesson unit that allows them to respond, create, and perform. Nate provides lessons in a variety of formats to support student learning.

 

Math

Classroom Management, Care: David provides an overview of the next month of learning for his grade 12 DP Math class.

 

PE and Health

Care: Angela provides an engaging way for students to check-in about how they are doing during this period of eLearning while also sharing information about teenage sleep in organized format.

 

Theater

Captivate, Classroom Management: Jeff is using the Materials section to organize the resources for daily lessons in Theater 1 into units and pages. This allows him to share lessons as tasks on the newsfeed and provides organization and clarity for students.

HS Online Learning Exemplars: Week 5

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

PE and Health

Care: Cale is using Flipgrid to take attendance, connecting via video with his grade 10 students and giving them various daily prompts to respond to in their videos.

Math

Care/Clarify: Chikae reorganized DX to make the lessons easier for her Algebra I to navigate, creating a video to walk them through the changes and gathering feedback on their effectiveness from students.

Science

Care: Elicia is gathering feedback from her grade 10 students in order to make adjustments and set herself new goals.

Social Studies

Care/Clarify: Hannah and Jeff provide instructions and resources for grade 9 Asia & the World students in a variety of formats (including video) using the materials section in DX. They are also responsive to the needs of their students, extending deadlines to help their students stay caught up in their classes.

HS Online Learning Exemplars: Week 4

Art

Captivate/Clarify: In Emily’s Thinking Like an Artist class, she takes attendance by asking fun yet simple questions for students to engage with. She also provides clear, step-by-step instructions for the day’s task and gives students a preview of what is coming up.

Chinese

Care/Clarify: In this DX assignment for grade 10 Lang & Lit, Tracy provides students with the opportunity to the Covid-19 outbreak through the See, Think, Wonder visible thinking routine. She also includes COLOs and clear instructions and provides a model.

English

Care/Consolidate: In this DX post for English B HL II, Monique gives her students encouragement on the work they have done so far while also giving them the opportunity to connect with her and their peers via Zoom. She also summarizes what they have done up to this point and previews what is to come.

Science

Clarify, Care: In this DX post for grade 9, Janice provides students with objectives for the task and uses headings & formatting to organize the information. She also connects with students in the comments.

HS Online Learning Exemplars: Weeks 1-3

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Chinese

Captivate/Confer/Consolidate: Students were given a task to discuss the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on their lives. First, they watched a video that explained the origin of the virus, the impact of the outbreak, and how we should protect ourselves from infection. Then, students participated in an online discussion to reflect on and talk about how their lives have been affected by this health emergency. The culminating activity was an individual recording to share their thoughts with the class. Finally, students commented on their peer’s recordings. View an example here.

Design

Confer/Clarify: Before CNY, students began working on posters to share their Designer Persona. This week, through DX and blogs, students have been able to connect with each other to improve their work. Their published posters demonstrate this cycle of feedback, refinement, and reflection.

Angela

Stephanie

Sofia

Bill

English

Clarify: In this DX post, Allison provides organization and clarity for her grade 10 students by having all of her assignments, rubrics, due dates, and FAQ documents for the unit, linked in one post that is pinned to the top of the page and easy to navigate.

Math

Clarify/Consolidate: Angie uses the DX Feed to post daily announcements while using the Materials section to keep things organized for students. Students are able to see both the big picture of the unit and the daily lessons that include written instructions and short instructional videos that have interactive questions embedded throughout.

Science

Captivate: In IB Biology, Caroline provided students with relevant information about COVID-19 from a science perspective on the 1st day of the extended break. She also finds ways for students to interact with biology through various online simulations.​

Links from posts:

SciShow Epigenetics video

Lick Your Rats

Epigenetics explorations

Flu Attack! How A Virus Invades Your Body (NPR)  + video

How Bad Will the Coronavirus Outbreak Get? Here Are 6 Key Factors (NYTimes)

Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins (Science Magazine)

Getting Started with Rescue Time

Image result for rescuetime logo

 

 

RescueTime is an app that can help users understand how they are using their time on their laptop. It can be used in a lot of different ways, but here at ISB we want to focus on empowering students and teachers to take control of their usage and to strive for intentional, balanced and productive use of technology.

Getting Started

To get started, you need to do three things:

  1. Download and install the app from Self Service (or from the RescueTime website).
  2. Create an account for the free/solo/lite. If you are a student, I suggest you use your school email address.
  3. Once you’ve installed the app, be sure to sign in from the menu bar at the top of your screen.

 

Now what?

Once RescueTime is installed and running, it will start collecting data on how you use your computer. This includes websites you visit, documents that you are working on,  and other programs that you use (like PowerPoint or Photoshop).

Setting Up Categories

Part of the way that RescueTime works is by categorizing the sites and apps that you use. It has some default categories (like Communication, Social Media, Design, Entertainment) and default values (from Very Productive to Very Distracting) built-in. RescueTime may not recognize some of the sites and platforms that we use at ISB and might consider them as “Uncategorized” and/or might consider them to be “Distracting”.  As a user, you can create and manage different categories as well as change its productivity value.

For example, I have created a sub-category in “Miscellaneous” for the different ISB Platforms like DX and OneDrive and have rated that time as “Very Productive”:

Once your categories are set up (and I would not recommend spending too much time doing this! You can always refine your categories as you go…), you are ready to take a look at some of your reports:

The Dashboard

The Dashboard is where you get started with RescueTime. This will give you a quick overview of your time for the day. You can also quickly jump to some activity reports for more details.

 

The Productivity Report

The Productivity Report shows your “pulse” based on the different values that have been assigned to different sites and apps:

You can click on each level to see how much time you spent on different sites and apps:

 

The Applications & Websites Report

You can also view your usage data sorted by app and site. Because we use the free version, there are some limitations to the amount of data that we have access to. A very interesting view in this report is the “All Activities by Hour” view. This helps you see when and how you were using your laptop throughout the day (and night!):

Troubleshooting

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using RescueTime.

The first is that users can disable RescueTime tracking at any time! It can be turned off (quit) or paused; it can also be set to NOT start automatically. Because our focus is on awareness, understanding, and empowerment, it does you no good to turn it off! But, if your RescueTime reports aren’t showing as much data as you were expecting, check to make sure that it isn’t being turned off on accident (or on purpose!).

The second issue that you may find is that RescueTime is not collecting individual web page data. First, your Mac must be on Mojave in order to collect this information. All students should be running this OS; most teachers will be. Second, you need to make sure you grant access to allow RescueTime to collect this information. In order to do this, you can follow the instruction here.

MS and HS Report Card Grade Entry Options

Because there are some limitations to how PowerTeacher Pro (PTP) allows us to view our assessment data, we have worked to create some different workflows to help you enter levels of achievement for each reporting strand come report card time.

** All of the following is assuming that you have entered your assessment data in PowerTeacher Pro **

Just Use PowerTeacher Pro

If you plan on just using PTP, there are some helpful hints that might make it easier:

  • When looking at the “Standards Grade” view, what is displayed in each column depends on if you are in Middle School or High School In Middle School, the default is to not show anything and teachers can make a summary judgment of how each student has done at each standard. In High School, the default is to show the most recent level of achievement and this can be overridden by the teacher at any time.
  • You can use the Inspector to see what data contributes to each standard level of achievement if you think it should be overridden.
  • If you have levels of achievement for different standards, you can use the filter in order to see all of the standards make up a given strand so that you can make a strand determination for the report card.
  • You can also use the filters to show only the strands (or the SALs) so that you can see what is going on the report for each student.

SBGR Report Entry: Student – by – Student View

We have developed a new Student-by-Student view that pulls together all of the assessment by strand an orders it chronologically to help you determine what level of achievement should appear on the report. You can also write your comment for the student here as you look over all of the student assessment data. Some pointers for this view:

  • You can access this view by selecting it from menu on the left.
  • Assessments are ordered chronologically from left (oldest) to right (newest).
  • Formative assessments show as blue italics.
  • If you hover over the level of achievement, it will indicate which standard was assessed.
  • You can go student-by-student using the sideways arrows, or use the dropdown to choose a specific student.
  • You can use the tabs at the top to see what feedback was given to the student in previous reporting terms.
  • To return to your list of classes, select the view from the menu on the left again.

Class View – Standards Data Report

In order to see all of your class’ assessment data in one view, ordered chronologically and separated by strand, you can generate a static report that we refer to as the heatmap. You can then use this report to make determinations for each student and then go back to PTP or the student-by-student view to input the data and to write your comments. You can access the heatmap reports through the Apps tab in PTP:

Once you configure the report for downloading, you will see your class roster with the assessment data for each strand listed chronologically. You can use this view to help you make determinations for each strand and then use PowerTeacher Pro to enter the data for report cards.

What’s Best for You?

As mentioned previously, all of these tools rely on teachers collecting and recording assessment data in PTP. Unfortunately, none of these individual tools will be perfect for everybody on their own so you may come up with a way to combine the functionality of each one to suit your needs. For example:

  • Continue to use PowerTeacher Pro to enter your grades and comments. Nothing changes from how you’ve done things in the past.
  • Use the Standard Data Report to help you determine your Strand levels of achievement. Enter your grades and comments using PowerTeacher Pro.
  • Use the SBGR Report Entry tool to view your assessment data and enter your Strand levels of achievement and to write your comment.
  • Use the SBGR Report Entry tool to view your assessment data and enter your Strand levels of achievement. Return back to PowerTeacher Pro to write your comments (so you can use the comment bank).

 

Adding Teachers to DX Classrooms

This is something that we often get requests for but it is really easy for you to do and will probably be faster than sending us an email and then wait for it to be actioned!

Step 1: Find a teacher that is currently in the class and ask them to open up the class in DX.

Step 2: Click on the People tab

Step 3: Click Add People

Step 4: Select Teacher from the drop-down menu (you can also add students in this way – just select the Learner option instead)

Step 5: Enter the email address of the teacher you want to add to the class.

Step 6: Click Add people

Step 7: For the teacher(or student)  being added to a class, you might need to log out and then log in again for this to take effect.

 

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