Instructional Technology Superheroes: Empowering Teachers in the Classroom for Success

It Started with a Dream.... Polynesian Heritage Project

Robots to the Rescue! - A Virtual Tournament

 

COVID-19 forced many events to either be cancelled or postponed over this past year. The Northwest ISD Instructional Technology team did not want students to miss out on showcasing their learning as in the previous 9 years. This year, we got creative and hosted a virtual edition of EXPO 2021 with the fitting theme “Coming Together as One.” In conjunction with the traditional EXPO event, the past 3 years, we have hosted a face to face district wide robotics tournament sponsored by the Northwest Education Foundation. COVID also forced our tournament to be reinvented to a VIRTUAL robotics edition. 

With the goal of inspiring younger students to pursue engineering in high school, the competition challenges were developed in a pre-COVID world for the VEX and Mindstorm EV3 robots. The challenges were based on real life scenarios and were designed to be judged as a face-to-face tournament by the REACH Robotics teams at Eaton High School with their sponsor, Mr. William Gilbert. Ms. Rene Egle, an Instructional Technologist in Northwest ISD, who leads an annual TechnoCamp and the Robotics Competition at our district EXPO, took two months to tweak the format to a virtual robotics edition. This challenge was differentiated for the younger grades using the Ozobots and Dash robots.

Natalie Spann, Library Media Specialist, at Lance Thompson Elementary stated, "The whole process sets students up for success and discovery. It was truly inspiring to see student curiosity and wonder contribute to such amazingly authentic products and learning outcomes. We can’t wait for next year!"

"I really liked this years remote format to the robotics competition. The real world problem gave students connections to how robotics and STEM projects can prepare them for future careers. We had 3rd through 5th graders involved with three different robots. The format this year allowed me to observe teams and see our learners grow in their technical thinking. I also feel this process gave teams more time and depth to their teamwork skill development.  I do think the project had many layers outside of just building a robot. Students had to take notes and reflect on their thinking. Teams had to do lots of problem solving using coding to meet the set parameters of the challenge," said Sara Jones, Library Media Specialist at Justin Elementary. 

Katie Delgado, 3rd grade sponsor from Sendera Ranch Elementary stated, "It was so fun watching the team work together to problem solve and beat challenges.  I loved watching them cheer each other on."

The NISD IT team has gotten such good feedback from both the sponsors and students! They are loving the challenges and we will be repeating this format again next year.

The Houston Deluge tournament synopsis: Hurricane Gilbo has flooded Houston, downing power lines, stranding citizens, and littering the city with debris.  Robots are sent into this dangerous environment to clean up the mess, control the flood waters, and save the humans.   

This type of STEAM competition has inspired 75 teams both elementary and middle school students to learn coding, engineering, and collaborative problem-solving in a real-world disaster scenario. Other elements of the project include an engineering design website, self-scoring rubrics, peer evaluations, and judges interviews that transform this project into a cross-curricular STEAM challenge where students and learn future-ready skills, work with technology, and become more effective communicators in a rigorous and relevant student-driven project environment. 

Andy from the Sendera Ranch team stated, "While working on this project, I learned I am good at persevering because when I couldn't get this one pencil I kept trying and trying then, I finally got the pencil.  Another reason is that when the robot got stuck I finally got it free!"

Fourth grade students Karsyn and Kenly from Lance Thompson said, "What at fun experience, getting to know new people and figuring out how the technology works while making it your own." "This was a fun, and creative experience, deigning cityscapes, but also a challenging one, learning to build a robot; we learned that teamwork is the best way to succeed." 

"Robotics and the tasks of this tournament are profoundly challenging every step of the way, yet students love the rigor and enthusiastically seek out the knowledge they need to achieve mastery.  This is a STEAM education activity with higher level learning that combines with creativity!" said Mrs. Shelia Greene, PLTW educator, from Adams Middle School.   

“Robotics just may be the most perfect instructional approach currently available. It offers classroom activities that teach high-value STEM content as well as opportunities to powerfully address ELA Common Core Standards. In fact, there are connections to robotics across the full spectrum of the curriculum. Robotics is also a highly effective way to foster essential work skills like collaboration, problem solving and project management."  Mark Gura writes in a blog post from Edutopia

Campus entries for the virtual tournament were due May 7, 2021.  The REACH Robotics team from Eaton High School are in the process of judging all the videos and engineering design websites.  View NISD Post Here 

We would like to thank our awards sponsors again this year.  The Northwest ISD Education Foundation.  

Personalized and Self-Paced Learning for Educators and Students

Classrooms looks different today than they did years ago. We've evolved from a traditional classroom setting where the teacher is lecturing, to a classroom that is active, innovative, and the students are driving the learning. As an Instructional Technologist, I have been fortunate enough to see many different ways educators approach teaching and learning--from the traditional learning model to some of the most innovative and creative classrooms.  To create an innovative, open, and creative place for students and teachers to grow, take risks, and feel comfortable in their own patterns of learning three educators have raised the bar to provide those experiences.  This past fall semester, Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Seale (CTE Teachers), and Mrs. Toht (Science Coach for NISD) reached out to their campus Instructional Technologist, Rene' Egle, to brainstorm ideas of ways to raise the level of learning for students and teachers by integrating technology. 

The College and Career Ready course called Professional Communications is an 8th grade curriculum taught by Brittany Roberts and Vanessa Seale at Wilson Middle School. Past learning experiences to present the 27 CCR pathways has been a very teacher driven type environment.  This 2019-2020 school year the campus Instructional Technologist hosted a TechBytes during PLC’s titled Creating Choice Boards.  This inspired Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Seale to create a choice board of innovative student facilitated learning of the many pathway opportunities that CTE has to offer.  Students were able to click to view their options they were most interested in and document using a Google Form that provided interaction and reflection.  Mrs. Roberts stated, “This strategy was useful for students and not overwhelming with multiple documents or pages.”

 Click here to view choice board

The excitement and benefits of self-paced learning didn’t stop at Wilson, science teachers throughout the district were provided an opportunity to a self-paced learning experience at district professional development held on January 6th.  Courtney Toht, NISD Science Coach, brainstormed new ways to introduce the learning experience called Argument Driven Inquiry or ADI which is an eight stage lab process.  She wanted to keep her teachers active and engaged while practicing the productive struggle which we expect of our students.  After visiting with her campus Instructional Coach Rene' Egle and Library Media Specialist Jamie Eikenberry, she developed an escape room full of interactive tools to work through the learning of the ADI concepts.  Courtney stated, “I needed a way to facilitate PD to teachers in multiple rooms. Also, many teachers expressed interest in learning about escape rooms, so what a better way to present this new information that we will dig deeper into during the summer training.  I thought it would be a good way to allow teachers to experience an escape for learning purposes and then learn how to make them in another session. 

 Click here for the escape room

First the teachers were given an introduction video to the eight ADI stages, then they interacted with a matching game using the tool Match the Memory to strengthen their knowledge. Click here for the match game

 

Next, the tool called EdPuzzle allowed teachers to watch a video that had embedded comprehension check questions along the way. 






Because educators today want to have evidence that different learning styles have a positive impact on learning, Mrs. Toht developed a puzzle using Jigsaw Planet to provide evidence.  Click here for the puzzle

The last step to the ADI Escape room use the tool called a Snote.  Snote is a unique and creative way to deliver key words in a secret message.  The teachers loved using the directional sliders to find the hidden words. With the conclusion of each category they were given a set of CLUE WORDS to unlock the room, just like the public escape rooms that are so popular today in our communities.  Click here for Snote

The choice board and escape room are just a few examples of how technology has helped changed the student/teacher roles in the classroom. Students take responsibility for their learning outcomes, while teachers become guides and facilitators. Technology lends itself as the multidimensional tool that assists that process.

The Spotted Article - Justin ES Newspaper

Tuesday afternoons, the library at Justin Elementary quickly fills with Chromebooks and excited
students. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the world of education knows, the greatest
idea factories in the school are; the students. When 3rd grade student, Leyton, approached
Ms.Thorne about starting a school newspaper club, she immediately saw the potential for student
voice and choice through this activity. With a little research on the ins and outs of a successful school
paper, the club quickly began to take life. In an effort to provide student ownership of the paper,
Ms. Thorne allowed students to be involved from the start; selecting their own name for the
publication as well as self selecting topics of interest to be featured. Students chose to
include: Teacher of the Month, Book of the Month, History of the Month, Challenge of the Month,
just to name a few. Ms. Thorne shared, “They have free reign - for the most part - on what they’d
like to write about and are able to collaborate with their peers on ideas to include in their article.”

While the task of getting things rolling wasn’t too much to tackle, deciding on the best way for students
to write and publish the paper, proved to be more of a challenge.  Ms. Alyssa Thorne knew she wanted to
use technology to provide students a platform for effective collaboration and meaningful creativity,
however she wanted to be careful in her selection of tools.  “I value independence and desired
for this club to be student-led. Finding tools that the students could explore and easily figure out
without my constant guidance was important to me, and I’m pretty sure the students appreciate
it, too!” Ultimately, she selected Google Slides, Canva, MakeBeliefsComix, and Google Sites.  
Students utilize each tool for a different part of their process.  Google Slides is used for drafting,

revising, peer editing, and collaboration.  Canva provides a template for the design of the newspaper
and advertisements that appear in the paper.  To add a little fun, MakeBeliefsComix is used to
create entertaining comic strips.

Google Sites allows students to easily organize and share each completed publication. Click the

image below to see the monthly newsletters.

With the help of technology, these young writers are now published authors!  Students are enjoying

the club and learning a lot along the way. Reagan shared, “I like Newspaper Club because I like to
have the freedom to write what I feel like writing.”  Another student expressed, “I love how everyone
can cooperate, and it’s always fun to make articles!” The words of these students are evidence
enough of the overall success of the project.  Ms. Alyssa Thorne is passionate about this endeavor and
would love to collaborate with any other educators who might be interested in starting a newspaper
club at their own campus.

Eroding Away: A Weathering Tour

The Foundation

Study after study shows students learn best when they’re able to engage in authentic and interactive
learning experiences. But, how can teachers provide this when students are studying a process that
can take years and isn’t easily visible in their own neighborhood? That’s the question fifth grade
Math/Science teachers at Nance Elementary worked to solve. The weathering tour activity was
developed as a collaborative effort between, Mrs. Jamie Robinson and Mrs. Heather Morgan, along
with the campus librarian, Mrs. April Scott.

Thanks to proper city and community planning, most students today live in communities and
urban areas that actually see little to no deposition or erosion. Since students often lack real world
experience with the area of study, teachers were on the hunt for a digital learning tool that could
provide a way to make connections.

Google Earth Tour Builder proved to be the perfect tool for the task! Students were able to virtually
explore a variety of locations and see real life examples of what they were studying in science.
“It is hard to appreciate and understand the beauty of what is created through nature by just looking
pre-selected pictures in a textbook,” stated Mrs. Robinson. She also described, “This activity
gave them a chance to explore the locations that were assigned, as well as locations they were
curious about.” Students were actively engaged as they surveyed a few of their own favorite spots.

The Standard

The standard for this assignment was Science TEK 5.7 B: students should recognize how
landforms such as deltas, canyons, and sand dunes are the result of changes to Earth’s surface
by wind, water, and ice.

The Student Driven Process

“Tour Builder is a Beta Google Experiment that I came across recently”, said Mrs. April Scott.
“I was impressed with how easy it is to use and the students were able to easily present their
information to other classes.” Mrs. Scott explained how to use the tool for learning and because it
was so intuitive, the students went right to work.  Mrs. Morgan liked how she could check students
understanding when they added images and videos with each additional stop on their tour.

         

Students Hayden H. and Veronika C. said, “We love science and weathering and erosion are
interesting, but the best part of the project was working with the third graders.”  

@mrsscottreads @MrsJCay collaborating with 3rd grade. My students are teaching them how weathering and erosion shaped the land. Thanks April for this amazing idea. pic.twitter.com/GzUHUSru7z

— Jamie Robinson (@jamrobrob) December 11, 2018

"What I liked about this project was the fact that you could actually visit the place just like you
would in real life." "I also like the fact that you can share it so that people can visit places and
discover the place if they haven't been there before," said Queen T.

Students spent a majority of their time working on their tours in class, however they were able to
go to the library for any assistance that they needed along the way.

Following this, students were given the task to prepare a presentation documenting their findings
and tours to the third grade students who were also completing their unit on land forms.