High Order Teaching

We believe teachers deserve tools they love for the job they love doing. Posts by Team Gradeable.

[gradeable]

Gradeable HQ

Rebecca Segal You share so much with us, we thought it was about time we shared some of our stories with you.

Teachers live at school.  We live at Gradeable.  So where does Gradeable live?

We are based at Boston’s one and only EdTech accelerator, LearnLaunchX.  We moved here in June and will be here through September.  And we LOVE working here!              

Companies working together.  Companies thinking together.

You might ask: why is LearnLaunchX so awesome? And what is an EdTech Accelerator? Well, an Accelerator is a space startups share. We are new and learning, adapting, and evolving as companies. It's nice to share resources, ideas, and support each other. We share the space with six other EdTech startups.  There are also companies based here who rent space.  So we are just surrounded by innovation!

Being in an accelerator is amazing because we get access to so many opportunities that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. LearnLaunchX holds a lot of events and meetings to benefit the startups so that we can further improve what we are doing. We also have great opportunities like going to a Red Sox game with the other startup folks!

The office space is great for working, thinking, and collaborating.  There is a lounge to sit in, walls that are like whiteboards, phone booths in case you need to make a call, and Boston Sports-themed conference rooms!                      

The view after a long day of grading.

We are also based in the heart of Boston, which is THE city for innovation and education. Everyday we are thrilled to be part of this community.  What about you?  Where do you work and are you part of a learning community?

Rebecca Segal is Gradeable’s awesome intern for the summer. She is currently a student at Brookline High School.

[gradeable]

The Importance of Parent-Teacher Conferences

Rebecca Segal

Parent-teacher conferences often happen in the fall and are usually the first form of contact that parents and teachers make. Teachers and parents may see each other at other points during the year - at school plays, choir recitals, or spelling bees - but these times are not optimal settings for discussing a student. The conferences are crucial in allowing parents and teachers to exchange information about the student so that they can be most successful in school.

(Image source: Innovation_School)

Governor Dave Heineman from Nebraska emphasized the importance of parent attendance at parent-teacher conferences in a letter to parents.

“I want to encourage parents to attend their children’s parent-teacher conferences. One of the most important things we can do for our children is to attend these meetings. They provide an opportunity to meet teachers and administrators, to ask questions and to hear about how each child interacts in the classroom is an opportunity to gain valuable feedback about the development of individual students. Most importantly, it sends a powerful message about how much we as parents care about the education of our sons and daughters.”

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman (Image Source: Miller_Center)

What are some ways teachers can provide feedback to parents? They can show grades, charts, exams, or other data.

What if there were a tool that could help you to better communicate with parents to show how a student is doing? If a teacher uses Gradable, parent-teacher conferences can become far more effective.  Gradeable allows for more specific discussions of a student’s performance; teachers can show parents the student’s exams or analysis of how the student is doing in class. Teachers can communicate more effectively and parents will leave with a better feel for how their child is doing.

When parents and teachers communicate effectively, they set up the student for success. Gradeable can help make that happen.

Rebecca Segal is Gradeable's awesome intern for the summer. She is currently a student at Brookline High School.

[gradeable]

Formative Assessment

These days, it seems like education is overrun with the words ‘assessment’ and ‘accountability.’ It can feel overwhelming, exasperating, and intimidating. Sometimes, all three at once. But, imagine, just for a minute, that none of the institutional machinery of schools existed. None of the politics or policy. That it was just you and your students, and your only job was to help them become as successful as possible. What would you do to teach better? What would you do to ensure they were successful? That they reached their full potential?

And then, what if I told you that the single most effective tool for success is feedback. Consistent, timely feedback. Research backs up this simple fact. The faster the feedback, the better. The more individualized and personalized, the better.

‘Well, I already knew that!’ you might say, ‘but how do I do it for thirty students? Or sixty students? Or one hundred and fifty?’ The answer is formative assessment. All that means is regularly checking for student understanding using simple, repeatable tasks to make student learning visible. The old adage “show, don’t tell” brought to life.

Formative assessments are feedback for you, the teacher, to let you know if you’re teaching effectively and if students are getting it. And it allows you to give quick, targeted feedback to every individual student, focused on what they know right now, and where they need to go next. They don’t need to be averaged into a final grade.

At Gradeable, we’re building software optimized for formative assessment. We make it easy to give quick, targeted assessments that can be graded quickly and analyzed immediately. You’ll know how every student is doing as soon as you’re done grading, and you’ll be able to make informed decisions about what to teach (or re-teach) next.

-Andy

Further reading:

Visible Learning for Teachers: http://visible-learning.org/2013/01/visible-learning-for-teachers-book-review/

Test Better, Teach Better: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871206676

Difference between Formative and Summative Assessment: http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

[world-shaker-deactivated2013092]

Infographic: Meditation in Schools Across America

[gradeable]

Meditate on this!

[gradeable]

It's summertime.  The tumult of your classroom has faded and you've gotten in at least one good beach day and an afternoon (or three) curled up with a long neglected book.  September seems far away... but not that far.  

You don't want to think about the kids running around, endless bulletin boards, diving into lesson planning, or most of all the piles of paperwork and grading awaiting you in September.  Or do you?  

What if it could be different next year?  

What if grading was a pleasure, instead of a chore?  What if you didn't have to manually enter all those scores into your gradebook afterwards?  What if you automatically got reports in your inbox or on your phone that helped you decipher what your students understood and didn't understand, without any additional work on your part?  What if exit tickets were easy -- and free?

We think summer is the perfect time to try a new tool.  That's why Gradeable is free for the summer.  Sign up for our beta and try it out.  The secret handshake (also known as the invite code) is "SummerOfFreedomBL".  If you know a summer school teacher, be sure to let them know that Gradeable could be perfect for them too.  

Enjoy your next iced tea, your next tennis game, your next nap on the beach.  Do some summer dreaming.  If nothing else, just daydream about the idea that next year could be different.... just planting a seed.  Enjoy your summer!

High Fives!

From the Team at Gradeable

[explore-blog]

[gradeable]

LOVE this, for a whole number of reasons.  A great reminder of small - and big - ways to encourage girls in STEM areas is a big one.

[tellmewhere2start]

Amazing 16-Year-Old Girl Created a Beat for Jay-Z’s New Album

Canadian teen Ebony Oshunrinde, who aptly goes by the moniker WondaGirl in the studio, has just finished the 11th grade. She’s also just been credited as a producer on “Crown," a track on Jay-Z’s new album “Magna Carta Holy Grail."

Her story is insanely inspiring and impressive: after watching a video of Jay-Z and Timbaland working in the studio together at age 9, she began to download music software and teach herself how to use it by watching YouTube tutorials. “I wanted to do the exact same thing that [Jay-Z] did," she recently told the Star. When she was 14, she made it to the quarter-finals of Toronto’s Battle of the Beatmakers. (FOURTEEN. I didn’t even know how to make a grilled cheese when I was 14.) She won the title the following year, because she is incredible, and went on to sign an exclusive management deal with Black Box.

According to Ian Stanger, a representative with Black Box, “It’s amazing to see somebody with that much talent working as hard as she can to make the most of it at such a young age. It’s her work that people should be paying attention to, not the fact that’s she 16."

And her work is exactly what people have started to pay attention to. Earlier this year, Oshunrinde sent the beat to her friend Travis Scott, a young rapper and producer. He happened to be in the studio with Jay-Z when he received it — and when he told her that the cut had made it to the album, she thought he was joking.

"Usually that kind of thing doesn’t happen to 16-year-olds," she explains. No, Ebony, it usually does not.

[gradeable]

Yeah!  Awesome story and so good to hear about this inspiring teen from Canada.

[mrsjdr]

[gradeable]

Start here.  What #technology do you plan to use in your classroom next year?

Here are 10 questions to help you navigate all the new #edtech out there.

[revolutionizeed-blog]

Learning, Reimagined: Inside the New Classrooms Model of Personalized Instruction

[gradeable]

Awesome link!

A former fifth-grade teacher and co-founder of the Teach to One instructional model explains how it enhances the teaching and learning experience.

[gradeable]

The Potential of Your Classroom

Potential. As a teacher, you see it every day: in your students, in your fellow teachers, in your school. There is another place, though, that may not come to mind when you think of potential: your classroom environment.

A new study by Stalford University in Manchester, England found that the classroom environment can affect student learning by as much as a full year’s worth of learning material. Some factors are out of your control, like being dependent on the way the building was constructed, but there are some small changes you can make that have a big impact on your students and your success:

Idea 1: Switch it up! Put up new wall material (lots of colors, new imagery, even just moving things around from one side of the room to the other helps change things up). Students definitely like to be heard. Put up an opinions board to let them know you’re listening! It’s an easy way to change up the content on the walls.

                      (Image: The Trendy Teacher)

Idea 2: Hang things on the wall in picture frames to make your classroom look more classy! (We’ll do a post on making your class a more familiar space next!)

(Image: Pinterest)

Idea 3. Have kids take photos of subject and topic related matter. High school students are definitely using Instagram, and will love the idea of getting their work on the wall!

(Image: Goodwillionaire)

Tap into the potential of the classroom. More ideas next week!

-Mikaila

[gradeable]

Reading is not peaceful.

Reading should send you through a roller coaster of emotions. Reading propels you to other worlds and dimensions. Reading makes you put down the book in embarrassment from the actions of its characters. Reading sends you back and forward through time. Reading puts you in the minds of others. Reading connects you to characters you soon find you can't live without. If you find reading peaceful, you haven't been doing it correctly.

Great quote. What's on your reading list this summer?

[lleullinsdragon]

A parent organized some of my students in creating #SuperSelke comics. #Touching

[gradeable]

Favorite post of the week!  So cute.

[get-educated]

The Differences Between Projects And Project-Based Learning - Edudemic

There’s a big difference between using projects in the classroom versus project-based learning in the classroom. What are those differences, you ask?

From Edudemic: Project-Based Learning is a fluid technique to enhance learning that really looks nothing like projects as they’re described below. For example, in a PBL scenario, the teacher’s work is typically done prior to the start of the project, it’s graded on a clearly defined rubric, and has driving questions that keep the learning going.

[gradeable]

More on one of our themes this week: project-based learning.  We're big fans!

[gjmueller-deactivated20181226]

Can Digital Games Boost Students’ Test Scores?

There’s no question students are interested in digital games – 97 percent of kids play them — but what educators and industry watchers want to know is whether playing those games can actually improve student achievement.

A new SRI study released today suggests they do — at least in the subjects of science, math, engineering, and technology. According to the report, which is an analysis of 77 peer-reviewed journal articles of students K-16 studying STEM subjects, “when digital games were compared to other instruction conditions without digital games, there was a moderate to strong effect in favor of digital games in terms of broad cognitive competencies.”

[gradeable]

Here's a great article on a long-standing topic of debate: are those games educational?  The author suggests in STEM subjects, maybe.... read more to find out why.

[get-educated]

From Blogging About the Web 2.0: For many teachers the traditional textbook just doesn’t cut it any more. Between the rapid pace at which information changes and rising cost, many are looking for alternatives. Believe it or not, there are lots of options out there, if you know where to look and you are willing to get your hands dirty. The best part? Kids can create these using any of the tools below.

[gradeable]

Very cool stuff.  Would you ever consider this in your classroom?  Why or why not?

[gradeable]

The Dream Classroom

Summer is here. In recent posts we’ve been offering suggestions on reflecting about the year - celebrating your achievements and your students’ achievements.

You’ve accomplished a lot and none of this could have happened without your classroom. So we wanted to take some time to explore the space in which your teaching occurs. Our resident design expert, Mikaila Waters, has a passion for space use and will offer up some ideas for your classrooms over the next few days.

Before we get to those recommendations - what do you think makes a classroom space great? What is one of your favorite elements of your classroom? Where do you feel most productive? Where do you get the majority learning done? What is one thing you want to change about your classroom? Think about what your dream classroom would be...

(inhabitat.com)

What would work best for you? What would work best for your students? Think about shared space. Think about dedicated space. The classroom is your canvas and even if you don’t have the time or resources to make it the perfect classroom, small details can make a big difference. Time to reinvent, reconsider, and get excited!

-Will

[gradeable]

Last night, we packed up and moved out of the MIT Beehive, which has been our startup home for most of the past year.  It was a great chance to reconnect to the friends we made (and will miss!) throughout our time there.  It's incredibly difficult to put into words how amazing it was to be part of a community of makers, thinkers, and doers.  Thank you MIT for supporting this effort.

Goodbye Beehive!  Long live the Hive!