Thanks to Gilder Lehrman I got to go to a workshop in New York this past summer.  The workshop was called "Empire City" and was led by two distinguished professors, Dr. Karen Markoe and Dr. Kenneth Jackson.  At the end of the weeklong workshop I was expected to have a lesson plan designed around a primary source document and my experiences of the week. 

 I had an amazing week at the workshop. I met some really great teachers, enjoyed the walking tours with the professors, and bounced some lesson plan ideas off of the master teacher assigned to our workshop.  I struggled a little to align the Common Core standards with my lesson ideas.  I also struggled to settle on a lesson plan.  By Friday morning I had a lesson, it was pretty rough and I was a little embarrassed to present it.  The master teacher gave us until the following Tuesday morning to put the lesson into the proper template (Note to self, take your laptop to workshops, NOT your iPad.)  It also gave me a couple of days to make it better.  Still I did not turn in my best lesson plan because it needs lessons to explain the circumstances around it.

This lesson plan has been sitting in my Google.docs waiting for me to make it more user friendly for my students.  I decided it needs an upgrade.  I am going to make it into a website with lessons that build up to it.  It will sit in the middle of this website and students will look at the documents and activities and be able to see it as it should be--part of the big picture.  This lesson will be getting an upgrade. I will resubmit it to Gilder Lehrman as something I can be proud of.

I saw this on Twitter today and thought it was appropriate to why I need to upgrade the lesson.

I created my first video quiz with edpuzzle.com Monday night. I found a video on Learn360 that provided some good information about the Populist Party.  I uploaded it to edpuzzle then cropped it by a few minutes then inserted questions for students to answer as they watched the video. 

I directed the students to the edpuzzle.com website and then they logged in with their google account and class code I gave them.  They plugged headphones into their iPads and then found some place in the room to watch and answer the questions.  Many of them sat on the floor to watch the video.  I could see on my computer which questions they had answered, if it was the correct answer, and how many times they had watched the video segment associated with the question.

I included open ended questions and multiple choice questions in the video quiz.  The website grades the multiple choice questions,  lets me quickly grade the open ended questions, and then I can see their percentages in a spreadsheet.  

One of the quirks that I came across this first time in using the program was that a couple of students were able to skip a question even though I chose in the settings to disable the skip questions feature.  But since I was on the website monitoring their progress, I could check with the student to see where they were at in the video and redirect them back to the skipped question.

I am planning on using this method of video quizzes more often. I would like to avoid showing a video to the whole class on the overhead projector because the edpuzzle method allowed students to go at their own pace and re-watch segments if needed.

In June, Tech Integration Specialist Mr. Badura (@mrbadura) sent me a website link on gamification in the classroom. <http://www.mrmatera.com/category/blog/podcasts/gamification/>  I finally sat down to read it the last week of August. Gamification was totally different than what I thought it was.  After reading the website I pulled out some paper (I compose better with paper) and started planning my Homesteading "game."  The ideas were flying out of my brain and on to the paper.  The next morning I excitedly showed Craig my plans.  His supportively said "go for it."  It sat on my desk for a couple of days, I shuffled it around on my desk and then back and forth from school to home.  I kept planning to get it into Google forms but never found time to do anything with it.  Finally, I realized I could make this Homesteading game a website.  It was Labor Day weekend and I had three days to work on it.  It took three days to finish it.  When I finished it Monday evening it consisted of eleven webpages and the integration of embedded Google forms, photo analysis activities, surveys, links to other websites, iTunesU video, canva.com for Homesteading Points graphics, a Puppet Pals video, and a puzzle maker.

My new website <hamiltonhomesteader.weebly.com> was launched in my classroom Tuesday, September 2.  Students' answers are submitted by email or in a Google form response spreadsheet.  I tried to keep up grading answers while they were working but when I fell behind I spent my time after class checking answers and tracking their HPs (homesteading points).  Students are finishing up their homesteading game this week. I will share the answer spreadsheets with them and then I will give them a test over the entire Shifting Power of the Plains unit.  Overall, even though it was a lot of work, I liked having the students be able to work at their pace and it feels like they are more responsible for their learning.  It is also something they can access outside of school.

Something else that Mr. Badura showed me after school today was the assessment feature in eBackpack.  This conversation started with me asking him about websites or apps that would grade my objective questions on the Homesteading website and then moved on to trying out this new feature.  I had a test in Exam View already to go so we played around with how to upload the questions to eBackpack.  I see a lot of potential for this assessment feature.

Looks like it has been a month since I last posted anything.  I am so excited because I spent the 3-day weekend working on a Homesteading website.  My students will work their way through the website hamiltonhomesteader.weebly.com to learn more about homesteading in Nebraska.  My website uses google forms and weebly surveys to hand in electronic assignments.  I used google forms, Adobe pdfs, canva.com, and puppet pals app to create a game version for learning.