Modern Citations

Chris Hanson always states facts.

Any statistical data Mr. Hanson references is fact.

If there are further questions regarding this data, please reread this statement.

3D Printing Year One- Failures, Confusion, and Why I'll Keep Doing It

The first time anyone sees a 3D printer they are drop-jawed amazed. My reaction was typical, but the only difference was that I had unlimited access to design, print, and teach others how to use it. Anytime you are learning a new, seemingly sci-fi piece of equipment it adds a certain element of impossibility to it. Imagine if JFK challenged the nation’s poets to put us on the moon or Mike Tyson had to perform heart surgery. It’s a daunting task.

Design Process

My first step was to figure out the design process as I didn’t want to just focus on pulling files from the internet, but for students to experience the trials of true design and prototyping. An architect friend had turned me on to Google SketchUp years ago, though by turned me on to it I mean I watched him design something one day. With pro accounts free for schools and a plethora of video tutorials, threads, and my trusty architect friend a phone call away this seemed like the best starting point.

I jumped in head first and sent out some emails around school to staff and students to gain interest. I had a couple of lunch groups come in to try it out and with a few clicks we had built a small house. Before you know it we were starting to consider what we could design and why. This was a learning process for all involved.

Early Print (?)

It doesn’t matter who you ask, if you ask people what they want to print it seems as though you just asked them what they want to order off a menu in Burma. Shoulder shrugs, wide eyes and head shakes were all I got, followed by a range of 2D ideas such as company logos, names, and basic shapes. The first thing printed on our Makerbot Replicator was a XBox logo (it just said ‘xbox’) with a loop on top so you could hang it from a chain. This is not what I envisioned. We weren’t building artificial limbs or complex geometric art installations. I knew that this would have to evolve into a project/problem based activity or I would quickly be neck-deep in copyright infringements.

STEM Connection

My background is in the social sciences. I spent my college years contemplating Nietzsche and Durkheim and teaching years discussing world religions and human modifications. In order to bring some more left brain power to the table I collaborated with our calculus teacher as well as our aerospace instructor, Will Davis. The latter would prove to be my perfect guinea pig and our shared thirst for student failure (I’ll explain) fueled not only our curiosity but the students’ drive to keep on trying as well.

Students Navigating Google SketchUp

I use the term failure because I have found in life that we learn more through our failures than our successes. It’s the process that allows us to learn more than extruders and filament can ever teach. When you stop measuring your actions through success and failure and look at everything as a learning opportunity it changes your mindset. 3D printing became a practice in exploration for myself and the students. We measured, drew, consulted, researched, tinkered and prototyped until we arrived at the “most acceptable result”. Nothing was ever a success because everything can be improved.

Rockets Are Awesome

We’ve spent billions on sending hunks of metal into space. It’s driven innovation and given us so many things we take for granted. And anyone that tells you they never got lost as a child staring at the night sky, wondering what’s out there and if they could get there is a liar.

Our plan was to design fins for small rockets (10”-16”) to shoot out by the tennis courts. Students came up with some crazy designs. I saw some of the most complex geometry going on that I could ever imagine. On one fin I counted nine angles that we needed to know. These things were about 5mm thick so I figured out some tricks quick:

• Heated build plates are recommended.
• Blue painter’s tape on your build plate helps adhesion.
• Temperature and humidity can change a print drastically.
• Rubbing a glue stick across the tape helps with adhesion.
• Clean everything with rubbing alcohol; humans are some oily creatures.

Most of all I realized that successful prints were something you had to work at. It took time, patience, adjustments, and research. I also realized that a small rocket burns hotter than the melting point of PLA filament. Whoops. The rockets flew, but there was some considerable warping of the fins due to the heat of the reaction.

Final Print (red) Next to Factory Built Button

Our next rocket adventure came in the way of some accessories for the real deal. Our aerospace club builds rockets as tall as a man and shoots them up over 1,000 feet at an annual competition. The rocket is launched of a rail system and this requires rail ‘buttons’ to guide the projectile out of the stand. These things are small, practical, and perfect for us to tackle. With a newly purchased Printbot 3D printer we were able to adjust more settings with the Cura platform and experiment more with our printing (for better or worse).

The process was simply amazing. I can’t say enough about the tenacity of the students involved. We must have gone through 15 designs and ended up printing buttons that broke on launch day. No one complained, and I even got a big ‘thank you’ from the students and teacher.

Future Failures

At a glance, we failed. Our prints weren’t successful in accomplishing the tasks that we had at hand. They melted. They broke. But the learning that happened is the hidden gem. The collaboration between students as they tried to learn how to use a micrometer. Geometry teachers getting emails from students that weren’t theirs' for help with angle formulas. Printing, and printing, and printing again; each time raising the extruder temperature or changing the density. The process was what it was all about and why, in spite of the possibility of ‘failure’, I’m hooked on 3D printing for students.

DigiAEP: Connecting Disconnected Students

In 1995 the Texas Legislature established policy that, among other things, required school districts to create disciplinary alternative education programs (DAEP). These campuses were meant to be alternative locations to temporarily assign students that violated school policies and laws in general. While there are specific actions that can lead to placement at a DAEP districts exercise discretion when placing students for violations of campus and district codes of conduct.

While placed at a DAEP students can find a variety of circumstances depending on the district. In Manor, Texas, just east of Austin, students remain on the home campus roster, meaning the home campus teacher(s) remain the teacher of record. This theoretically allows an easy transition back to campus and avoids disruptive transfers. This system does create a need for communication and solutions for assignment and content distribution. This has created imperfect practices in the past due to unclear instructions, inconsistent campus policies, and slow transportation of paper assignments.

Clogging the Pipeline

Researchers have examined the link between school discipline, such as DAEP programs, and future incarceration. This “school-to-prison pipeline” was researched by the nonprofit Texas Appleseed in 2007 with some alarming conclusions. Students that had been referred to DAEP programs were five times as likely to dropout of school. With over 80% of the prison population listed as high school dropouts the connection between incarceration and completing high school was found to be significant.

Recidivism rates for DAEPs were reported at 30% in 2006-2007 in Texas creating yet another pipeline with students experiencing the “revolving door” effect, most commonly associated with prison recidivism. At Manor ISD's DAEP, Manor Alternative Placement (MAP), 2014-15 recidivism rates climbed to 18% with rates as high as 24% at specific campuses. While these rates were lower than the state average there was enough concern to prompt action.

While solutions to specific student behaviors involve many systems such as PBIS and RtI initiatives there was an obvious issue with recidivism and academic gaps in the numbers. By targeting the issue of workflow and campus connection it was theorized that the recidivism rate would decrease and academic success would rise, thereby impacting the risk factors for student drop out. The solution would come in the form of a digital tool that was already well established in the district.

DigiAEP

In collaboration with MAP principal, Dr. Marcus Jones, Google Drive was implemented to solve the workflow issues. By creating a district-shared folder, teachers are able to upload their assignments in digital format in order to eliminate the transfer of paper documents from home campus to MAP.  Teachers were trained on uploading assignments, how to name them for easy searching, and scanning solutions utilizing district owned iPads and scan apps. Most assignments are being created digitally by teachers so the process is fairly simple, and inadvertently saves the campus money for eliminating the need to print and send.

After a pilot year with a set group of teachers the system was set as official MAP policy and is being enforced throughout the district. Thousands of assignments have been distributed through this process, keeping the student on task with high quality instruction and connected to their teachers. Through campus-based initiatives a large portion of staff have also adopted learning management systems such as Google Classroom and students are literally still part of the class despite being miles away.

This type of distance learning opens up many possibilities with home bound students and district weather days. This has been practiced since 2013 in states like Illinois that have several snow days a year. To avoid adding days to the end of the calendar districts are experimenting with distance learning opportunities to deliver content, instruction, and assessment to their students.

While digital tools will never replace the facilitation of a teacher, they can connect the teacher

Teacher Screen Sharing with DAEP Student

to the students through video conferencing. Manor ISD has adopted the tool Zoom to connect DAEP students to their classroom teachers. Other tools such as Google Hangouts and Skype have been used in similar circumstances. These tools allow the students to receive direct instruction and present questions during their MAP placement. Perhaps more importantly the visual connection creates or continues the emotional connection between the student and their home campus.

An intended effect of this could be that the student is less likely to commit another offense when they return to their home campus that could get them sent back to the DAEP. While the variables involved in removing the recidivism issue are impossible to quantify, it is logical that a student that remains academically on track and emotionally tied to their home campus will be more likely to act in a way that allows them to stay.

While in a perfect world students would comply with rules and laws and the need for DAEP campuses would disappear reality ensures that alternative avenues exist for differentiation in education. Digital collaborative tools such as Google Apps for Education and Zoom open amazing possibilities to keep students, teachers, administrators, and the larger community connected. For more information on systems like Manor ISD DigiAEP, bringing Google Apps for Education to your school or district, or implementing digital tools and solutions email tejashanson@gmail.com.

*Update 3/11/16- After running 2nd Tri numbers Manor ISD district recidivism is at 11.2%, almost 7 points below last years rate.

Works Cited

"Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs in Texas." Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs in Texas. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Texas School to Prison Pipeline.” Fitzgerald-Fowler, Deborah. Texas Appleseed. Oct. 2007.

"Online Learning Options Combat Snow Day Closures Across Country." EdTech. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

Other Resources

"School-To-Prison Pipeline In Texas." School-To-Prison Pipeline In Texas. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

Socrative Secrets

Socrative has become a very popular, as well as useful, formative assessment tool in the world of education. Mastery Connect continues to offer this tool as a free option to help drive instruction through instant analytics.

Socrative Basic Use

Socrative has some basic features that allow you to assess your students and get instant results. Socrative is device agnostic and available on browsers as well as apps.

Accessibility
Students can access the teachers questions and activities without signing up. Students simply input the teacher room name when prompted and wait for a question.

Quick Questions
Instantly assess your students with multiple choice, true false, or short answer questions. These don't need to be planned, they can be spontaneous and help drive instruction. Note- only short answer allows you to actually type in a question.

Quizzes
Deliver pre-made quizzes to your class and receive GRADED results. Sign in with your GAFE account and Socrative will even create a folder for the reports where you can store them and access them later. Tired of individual work? Gamify your quizzes using the Space Race feature. Have students race rocket ships or unicorns in randomly assigned teams.

Socrative Secrets

Frequently teachers ask me about next steps with Socrative. Like any app there are multiple ways to apply the same tool based on what you want the result to be. Here are some of my favorite tricks. 

Student Voting

Using the Vote Now feature on the response sheet of the Short Answer option is by far my favorite feature. With this feature you can allow students to drive critical thinking in the classroom. No longer are teachers providing the "right answer", they allow students to analyze other responses and vote on which is the best. This is a powerful tool that can drive instruction and affect student performance instantly. Specific examples we've seen success with are thesis statements for research papers, responses to DBQ's, point of view responses in history, and open answers in math. 

Technology Station

Stations are not just for primary classrooms. Secondary instruction can benefit from station rotations such as the Tabor model where blended learning drives student creation and assessment. Socrative provides a great platform to send assessments and allow for open ended questions. 

When using a class set of tablets/computers complete the activity and start a new one at each rotation. Even if you've locked in the app (guided access on the iPad) the new activity will allow the user to submit their name and answer without having to leave the room. 

Shared Quizes

Import thousands of shared quizzes, and add your own favorites, at the site garden.socrative.com. Follow instructions to search for your subject or specific keyword. 

Socrative as a Delivery System

Socrative can be used as a basic delivery system using the Short Answer feature. Simply type out what todays activities are and even have them submit a short answer or journal entry to a prompt. 

*Embedding Items*

Google Map with Question- Student View

Have an embed code for your activity? Paste the embed code in the Quick Question bar and it will send the item to your students within the Socrative platform. Here's a couple we have found success with:

• Send a Zaption activity for your students to complete.
• Embed the current weather conditions from the AccuWeather Widget. 
• Include an open ended question after a YouTube embed code. Students can view in the Socrative platform and submit their response. 
• Use the embed code on your Google Map to send out with a question. Can you manipulate the map? Of course. :) Switch from street view to satellite? Yup. 
• Embed ThingLink interactive pictures so students can access information and videos from pictures. 
• Use embed.ly to put in any web page. Students are stuck on the specific page you send, but sometimes that's nice. 

Playing with the embed options has become a new hobby this summer. Please post suggestions in the comments below!

SXSWedu: Cleaning Up the Brain Matter

As a classroom teacher I was seldom allowed out to continue my education and network with other educators. Despite my opinions on this I am not only pleased but often overwhelmed with the opportunities I receive for continuing education in my new position.

SXSWedu offered a unique opportunity to listen, talk, and experience. I’ve never been to an education conference with such a diverse group of attendees, bringing with them their enthusiasm and unique lens. I was truly mind blown throughout many of my experiences. For my own good I’ll process a few of those here, and hopefully light a spark in your own head along the way. 

Maker Movement

This is a new interest of mine, but the more I research I realize it isn’t. Growing up I have fond memories of testing the pitch of our neighborhood bike ramps to find the perfect launch into the lake. During one of the Winter Olympic watch-a-thons at my house I used every piece of paper I could find to construct my own vision of an Olympic park. Even today I would rather consult my garage scrap pile for functional furniture projects than head over to a big box store. 

I’ve come to find that this is what the Maker Movement is- simply a title on what many of us have already been doing. I was so taken by a speech by Rosanne Somerson on critical making and design I bought her book on the way out Thursday (first book bought in years, but the way). I look forward to reading it, but more importantly to evolving my own ideas of making to influence the way we teach. I can already see  students experimenting with modifications for a canal system out of cardboard, measuring angles and designing structures to support weight, and constructing circuits to provide power to their own lighting systems. 

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality caught my eye several years ago when an app called Around Me used it to show the location of restaurants and other places of interest. You’d hold up your phone and see the city before you with imposed signs of restaurant names. Since then it has come a long way, and apps like Aurasma and Blippar are bringing it to the education world. While the applications are time consuming I can see a day where wearable technology like glasses change the way students view and interact with their environment.

I have to assume this will evolve where the money is: gaming. I can see it now, millions of basement dwelling gamers emerge with their AR enabled glasses to battle GPS placed monsters, gain riches through hidden chests, and view their co-players with armor and regalia that us non-gamers will never know about. But from there, how hard will it be to impose Santa Anna and his troops in the plaza in front of the Alamo? Can we hold up a phone and be only a few feet from Dr. King in front of the Lincoln Memorial? I’m no math expert, but if I were able to view an object with angles and equations labeled it might make more sense to me. This is the one to watch in the next few years. 

Wearable Technology

How apropos that I heard about this in several sessions with the release of the Apple Watch in the near future. But what is out there that our students (and school districts) can actually afford? And how can we use these to innovate the learning environment? 

We collect data every day on our students. From attendance to assessment, they are tracked and analyzed their whole life. With wearable technology we can expand this to track things like pulse rate, movement, and even brainwaves. We don’t even know what we can do with all of this yet, but the possibilities of building the most engaging lessons in the history of planning periods is there. 

From a coach perspective we need to implement the use of this technology now. Students have location enabled phones in their position. Why not incorporate the data they are collecting on themselves in to weekend workouts, daily challenges, or even personal growth plans? Devices like Fitbit and Pebble offer a more comfortable version, but their smart phone works just as well. 

Community Involvement

In my district we have a firm grasp on the ability to Tweet and post just about everything that happens. But who is this reaching? How are our community members engaging in communication? Have we asked, or do we just assume they will jump on the ship we have built? 

I went to an amazing, thought-provoking session with Joe Mazza on the concept of FACE (Family and Community Engagement) and eFACE (think we’ll call it iFACE). While his session challenged many of the things I thought we were doing right it was the collaboration in the room that brought out questions and solutions that left us all carrying the conversation out of the room. Though there were many ideas present, the concept on ‘unconferencing’ parent meetings in an edcamp style was the most exciting. I look forward to bringing back some of these ideas to my team and district. 

Differentiating Education

Differentiation is not a new concept, but the way Sal Kahn explained his vision and mission for education really left me energized. It was fitting this was the last speech of the conference, and it rebooted my motivation for assisting teachers in evolving education with innovative technology. The concepts he spoke about made so much sense:

A student scoring a 90 on a test still doesn’t know 10% of the material. 

Traditional education models allow for gaps in education. Get what you can, then move on. 

Is abandoning pacing guides really a fear of teachers?? I tend to think the opposite. Today with innovative technology we can blend the learning environment and flip most of the traditional teaching to provide an individual pathway for our students to not just reach 70%, or even 90%, but 100% of the skills we want to teach them. Why should we accept anything less?

I texted something to myself on Tuesday during a session: Problems are simply opportunities for innovation. I will continue to look at the world this way, and can truly thank the presenters and attendees for influencing this way of thought. 

AVIDigital: AVID Digital Strategies

Overview

Over the course of the year I have been working closely with our high school AVID teacher, Joel Velasco, to digitize the process of organization and note taking. Our campus offers a 1:1 situation but relies on the student to pay an insurance fee before receiving their device. We wanted to build a system that would be device agnostic and cater to the smart phone generation. Through some trial and error we have found a solution that seems to be working for the students that are brave enough to practice it.

Classmint Cornell Notes

Last year our AVID instructor found a web 2.0 company named Classmint to use as his Cornell Notes system on student devices. The platform even allows students to 'fold' their notes just like the real thing. This separates it from simply building a template in a Doc and replicating it for every class. Students have cloud storage through the system and can 'publish' the notes to share the URL. Other features allow you to tag notes and organize them into folders under the My Notes tab. 

The service does allow you to export a PDF copy in order to load in cloud services or print out. Unfortunately this feature seems to fail when I try it, and this would cause some issues for students that are dealing with teachers that have a lower comfort with tech integration and need paper copies. 

Digital Binder

We quickly realized that we needed to digitize one of the key features of AVID, the binder. The traditional three inch binder complete with pencil pouch, loose leaf paper, and dividers is the antithesis of the common 15 year old. We knew that once we created a system for the binder the other facets of AVID would follow. Form templates could be made to account for tutorials. Writing activities would come alive with modern processing tools. Even collaboration takes a new face with video conferences and collaborative apps like Google Docs and BaiBoard. 

First Trial: Google Sheets Notebook

Shot of my sample Sheets Notebook.

Our first trial used a technique I saw in use at an elementary in our district. Using a website or some other tool they were able to build a digital table of contents for their class procedures, lesson overviews, etc. The system used a basic hyperlink formula that is pretty common in sheets: HYPERLINK=("URL","hyperlink display name"). With this you can link to videos, Google Docs, and their Classmint notes.
From our end this was an easy process, but I'm not a 15 year old. Most found the process very cumbersome and archaic. "Type in a formula? How 2010." This was not the solution we were working for.

Second Trial: Evernote

My last three years in the classroom I used Evernote as a digital storage bank of board notes, files, and hyperlinks. This was the easiest way I found to record what I was doing and share it with my students and parents. The process was so fluid that I would even have students turn in work coming in from an absence because they checked the site and stayed current. It was a very powerful communication for me as a teacher and I still encourage others to use it in this fashion. I often had parents emailing me mid-day asking for an Evernote update. Now that's powerful. 

View of my Evernote Dashboard from teaching. 

One night I was looking through some of my old Texas History posts and I decided to switch to my 2012-13 notebook to look back at some of my World Culture assignments. That's when it hit. Online notebooks. Sharing options. File loading. Image and photo capabilities. This was what we've been searching for, and it's one of the most advertised and successful apps out there. 

The Evernote platform was easy for the students to catch on to. With the addition of the Scannable app, students were now able to scan their worksheets from their less tech focused classes and include them in their online notebook. My co-worker even found a Cornell Notes template that students could replicate and fill in. 

Be warned: there are some storage limitations. Evernote runs it on a month to month basis. If students really got carried away they could easily hit the mark, but we haven't encountered this yet. 

To Be Continued...

As our pilot continues I'll update this blog in comments. At this point we are happy with the Evernote solution but continue to search for the next big thing. If you are interested in learning more or collaborating on our AVIDigital adventures email me at tejashanson@gmail.com.