Hyperdoc

HyperDocs in Civics

     Last year I learned about Hyperdocs in the classroom and how it allows students to go at their own pace, while also allowing for group discussions and formative assessments.  I was reminded yesterday of why it was not only fun to create, but also to use.  The interactions are different than a traditional web quest, but still allows for exteral resources, other than the textbook (because who still has a whole class set of those?).  I started with a general example from the base that the Integrated Technology Facilitators (ITF's) showed us.  I added on to the information in the "Read This" section and then took out one section and added sketchnoting.  It allowed the students to interact, have group discussion, have individual arguments (Thank you Google Classroom "Ask"), practice sketchnoting, and overall help make connections between WHY we set up the Articles of Confederation how we did; as well as why Shay's Rebellion showed us what needed to change.  It was a great smooth day that allowed students to learn about the Articles of Confederation and Shay's Rebellion in a fun and interactive way.  

WEAKNESSES OF

THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

A Hyperdoc Activity

“I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds
that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon any country."

George Washington to Henry Lee,

discussing the Articles of Confederation

Oct. 31, 1786

While the states were setting up their governments, Americans also discussed the form of their national government. During the Revolutionary War, Americans realized that they needed to unite to win the war against Britain. As Silas Deane, a diplomat from Connecticut, wrote, “United we stand, divided we fall.”

In 1776, the Continental Congress began to develop a plan for a national government. Congress agreed that

the government should be a republic. But the delegates disagreed about whether each state should have one vote

or voting should be based on population. They also disagreed about whether the national government or the

individual states should control the lands west of the Appalachians.

The Continental Congress eventually arrived at a final plan, called the Articles of Confederation. In the

Articles, the national government had few powers, because many Americans were afraid that a strong

government would lead to tyranny, or oppressive rule.

The national government was run by a Confederation Congress. Each state had only one vote

in the Congress. The national government had the power to wage war, make peace, sign treaties,

and issue money.  But the Articles left most important powers to the states.

These powers included the authority to set taxes and enforce national laws.

Colonists will feel so much dismay about the high state taxes that in Massachusetts there will be a

rebellion showing the farmers dislike of taxes.  

This rebellion was known as Shay’s Rebellion as it was led by Daniel Shay.

STEPS	WHO AND WHAT?	LINKS
STEP 1	WITH A GROUP:  WHY IS IT A WEAKNESS? In your group discuss the EIGHT prominent weaknesses of the Articles - Why did we originally want it? Why it is a weakness?	DISCUSS IT NOW
STEP 2	ON YOUR OWN:  JUSTIFY YOUR DECISION Now that you have discussed with your group make your own decision on which weakness was the most damaging.	JUSTIFY NOW
STEP 3	ON YOUR OWN:  THE ARTICLES IN A MINUTE Test your LISTENING SKILLS by watching this short video and answering the questions.	WATCH IT NOW TAKE IT NOW
STEP 4	ON YOUR OWN: INVESTIGATION Create a Sketchnote about Shay’s Rebellion Long Term Causes, Short Term Causes, Actual Facts about the Event, What happened, Results	What is a SKETCHNOTE? READ THIS READ THIS TOO WATCH THIS
STEP 4	CLASS DISCUSSION:  WHAT YOU LEARNED Learn what you will need to share in our discussion	DISCUSSION PREP

Wanted it to be Emazing...

           Recently I attended the Pinnacle Showcase that our county puts on every year.  It is a chance for leaders in technology to show off their stuff and share what they have been doing during the school year with their technology.  Now that I don't have to present myself, I love going and seeing what others are doing and take new ideas.  This year I took two ideas away, one of which is Padlet which I will try out at the beginning of Units next year.  The other I took away was Emaze, which has a Newspaper template that I was UBER excited to try out.  In the past I have tried a couple newspaper templates and I must say that this one is by far the best in appearance and its ability to bounce around.  So I decided that I would implement it in their final project.

          Breakdown of the Assignment:
             - 10 slides total
                   -One slide needed to be dedicated to vocabulary - at least ten vocabulary words
                   -Last slide needed to be a youtube video (not exceeding 10-15 minutes)
                   -The other eight slides were to summarize the note pages from the Unit they were                      assigned 

          The main complaint by students was that it didn't allow for collaboration, and that was a minor flaw for me; although while one was typing the other could be looking for new information to add so a "divide and conquer" method was applicable since their notes were not on the device.  The other main complaint students had in their evaluation was the slowness in logging in.  As the whole class was trying to log in at one time, there did seem to be a variety of responses on the website.  Some students (those in the room first and logging in first) had no issues, those who took longer to get in, also had a rotating circle while the website tried to load.  The longest it took was eight minutes after the bell rang.  

          My critiques of the web application were the same as my students.  The only additional critique is the cost of the app for individual students or having to pay for a classroom rate.  The posting of links does not always work in the presentation for some students.  It shows they posted something, but when you click to go view it, it simply brings you back to the presentation.  My likes were the following:
-The Newspaper Template is the best I've come across thus far
-Moveability feature similar to Prezi makes the presentation more interesting
-Ease of use - top left corner has an add slide with multiple layouts to choose from; moving slides was also easy with just click and drag
-Ease of Sharing - provides embed codes and links with just a click of the button

The benefit is that we now have shortened summaries of our Units that students can use to go study on their own before finals (we are also reviewing them as a class).  

Parts of this project were great!  But I'm not as "Emazed" with the application as I was hoping... If they allow for collaboration in the future I may be willing to pay.

April - Online Testing

          I am still out on maternity leave, but have this scheduled to appear for me.  If you have not tried Flubaroo and Google Forms, may I just say it is EVEN BETTER than before.  If you have not read my blog from a couple years ago, I'm going to rehash a couple components of the ease of Google Forms and Flubaroo, but then I'm going to talk about the "Grade by Hand" function.

         Google Forms allows you to create a survey for students I have created them for Parent Surveys to see how weekly e-mails went, student evaluations for projects, student surveys for potential topics and their feelings on them, and then lastly for quizzes and tests.  This year I have the opportunity to borrow a Chromebook cart occassionally from the library and since I will be out on maternity leave have digitized all my quizzes and tests.  This allows me to grade things instantly OR in much less time as the tests still have a document based question for students to answer to grade by hand.  

        The nice new factor of Google Forms is that you can look at results as a whole (with bar and pie charts) or you can look at individual responses.  I can track my student users (through their school e-mail account).  I can also stop taking responses after a quiz is over.  When it comes to retakes I can, with a few clicks of a button, go from allowing them to submit one response to submitting a second, and then lock it back down for future use again. 

        Quizzes I simply choose "Short Answer" and then give the students a word bank.  They then type in the letter of their choice.  For tests my multiple choice questions are multiple choice on the screen, but I have set it to mix answer choices and shuffle the questions as well.  This is to help try and limit any cheating that might be tempting in the room.  For the matching portion of the test I simply put an "M - " followed by the definition/description of the item and again I hand out an answer sheet that has their choices.  

Examples of Forms:
Parent Survey
Professional Development Topics Survey
For and Against Survey

        FLUBAROO was already my love.  It showed me the most missed questions, even in the past two years when I manually would type in my students responses myself for quizzes, it was still totally worth it.  NOW, my love for Flubaroo has grown even more.  First, you enable flubaroo as an add-on on your google sheet (the responses from your google form all nice and neatly in columns).  BEFORE I give the assessment to students I take it myself.  That way my response is always the first one at the top of the list to choose from.  After running Flubaroo, it will show the individual amount students got right (point system), the percentage (percentage system) as well as the individual questions for each student going across.  0 = missed it; 1= got it, the orange columns are the most missed questions.  
         The "Grade By Hand" function came out in the fall, but I was nervous about trying to use it.  I must admit had it not been for this maternity leave I probably would not have tried it.  But my substitute asked for something quick that would allow her to grade and give students their results back as quickly as possible.  So I started running a test run of the new system and I must say I've been wasting my time and should have gone to this last semester. 

Here are the reasons I LOVE "Grade by Hand":
1) I set the value of the question - I don't want my Document Based Question to be 1 point, it comes out of 5 points.
2) No more trying to differentiate what the hand writing actually says for some of my students with poor writing - it is a typed response
3) Provides me with each student response and individual student and I can write them messages back if I choose, as well as award them points.

Those three things make it so much FASTER to grade tests than I ever have in the past.  The students thus get their test results back even faster as well.  I used to have a turn around of one - two days in grading their tests and then posting them online for them to access them.  Mind you, this was with a one year old running around the house and trying to grade until 10 o'clock at night.  With the use of Flubaroo and having the students take their test online I am typically done and graded AND in the gradebook by 4:00 that same day.  The percentage of the students grade automatically adjusts as I enter their point value for their individual responses.  You can also have multiple questions for the students to answer and click between them and grade them all with great ease.  

If you have never seen Flubaroo before I'm including a little video for it:
Flubaroo Video  
Or if you have questions you can go to Flubaroo.com which has the overview and you can search for step by step directions for how to do things if you need assistance.


On a side note: Completely unrelated to online testing, but ties in with being an assessment.  My binder checks for YEARS I have typed in excel to make my charts and then printed them and done the math by hand and taken hours to do this.  I have since this semester added formulas to my excel charts and simply type in the point values as I check the binders.... My world has simplified and I can tell students what they earned as soon as I'm done checking their binder instead of them having to wait until the next day because at that point I've actually sat down with a calculator and done the math and double checked the math.  Just something additional to consider.

March - 1920's Posters

          I will be out for Maternity leave so while I am writing this in February, it will appear in March.  My students will be completing a 1920's project while I am out.  They are creating posters of an assigned person from 1920's culture.  They have to find someone that is like that person today, find examples of their work, have an image for the poster.  They have to create a poster in a creative way (i.e. Louis Armstrong = in the shape of a trumpet, make it look like a facebook page, etc.).  
        The reason I have them finding a person similar to that person today is because one of the many questions I ALWAYS hear in my history classes is "Why do we have to learn this?" or "What does this have to do today?".  By having them conduct this project I bring forth the point that we didn't all just magically appear here one day acting one specific way.  We have developed as a society, as a world over the course of time, there are things in our past that have influenced the foundations of society whether politically, socially, economically, etc. This allows them to find connections on the social component of life from then to today.  As long as the posters are still in my room when I return in May I will post some examples.
          A digital version of this could be awesome if you wanted to use Thinglink or a Prezi, just to throw ideas out there.  This one we will be going old school with the iPad for research, but not for creation.  Apps need updating and such and don't always work right with the iPads and it will just be easier to allow students to use traditional supplies to create their end product than to have it backfire when I'm not here to troubleshoot.  

February - Gilded Age Projects

           This is the second year that I have done the Gilded Age Project with a presentation with no words on the content slides.  This year went better than the first in regards to warning students and discussing the point.  More groups were prepared and managed to balance facts.  It was interesting to see how the facts were divided up.  Some were talking all of their facts and then their partner would go, while others shared facts every other.  
          My standard classes were allowed to have note cards with their facts.  My honor's class was only allowed to have one note card for their group and no more than four words per line.  It made sure that they remembered some of the facts for their own.  
          The point of the project is multi-tiered: group work = group communication, evaluation thinking about their contributions to the group versus other members of the group, presentation skills (working on getting over their public speaking fears), and then content - listening to the presentations and seeing more pictures, which are not the teacher seems to help resound the information further.  The matching section on the test went well in regards to the people that were used for the project.  The only flaw is that the presentations from the other classes were then mixed up and confused because they didn't have that additional retention in addition to the notes.  

Basic Set Up:
-First Slide: Name of Person, Group Members Names, Picture of the Person
-Second Slide: "Upbringing" to label the slide, Standard - 3 pictures; Honor - 5 pictures
-Third Slide: "Adulthood" to label the slide, Standard - 3 pictures; Honor - 5 pictures
-Fourth Slide: "Gilded Age" to label the slide, Standard - 3 pictures; Honor - 5 pictures
-Sources

Now one thing to keep in mind, if they had a muckraker or someone that started off on a lower socioeconomic bracket may not have pictures from their childhood.  Students needed to find pictures that REPRESENTED things in their lives and not necessarily actual pictures.

For and Against - December Post

          Ever have one of those days that you think you've completed something only to realize you didn't post it?  Well looking at my list I see that I've posted everything, but this... so now it is out of order... "Best laid plans of mice and men..."

          This month we are working on our "For and Against" projects - students were assigned a topic from the list compiled - they could also give suggestions of topics.  They had to take a survey to see what their stances were before they were assigned.  If a student chose neutral they could be switched to being "For" or "Against" based on their classmates stances and groupings.  

Here was the form for their topics:

-Abortion

-Gay Marriage

-Minimum Wage - Increase

-Raising the Debt Ceiling

-Euthanasia/Physician Assisted Suicide

-Vaccine for Kids

-Gun Control

-Medical Marijuana

-Animal Testing

-Video Games and Violence for Youth

-Death Penalty

-Drinking Age

-Cell Phones

-Illegal Immigration

-Concealed Handgun Permits

-Legalization of Marijuana

-E-Cigarettes

-Social Media in Schools

-Felons and Voting

-The Gold Standard

-Standardized Tests

-Tax Exempt Organizations

-Corporate Tax Rate

-Drones - Domestic

-Drones - International

-Electoral College

-Vocational Education

-Welfare

-Social Security

-Military Spending

-Domestic Violence

-Gambling

-Medicating Children

-Vaccinating Children

-Religion in Schools

-Police Brutality

-Discrimination/Affirmative Action

          Students had to provide a historical overview of their topic in an unbiased faction.  The main bulk of their paper is their persuasive portion where they focused on being for or against the topic and explaining why.  

         Next month, we will have them create short presentations where they introduce their main arguments to their classmates and then have open discussions about the topic.  This project is working on the research component of their standards, group communication, public speaking, and presenting information.

Review Games - January Post

          End of the Semester Review is very important because students typically don't remember what we studied in August/September.  For review games this year, I have created a few new things simply because the new Smart Board in my room does not allow you to throw things at it, like the old boards did; this issue has rendered my Bulls Eye game and Basketball game worthless because you can't score when the board doesn't pick up the ball.
          Quizizz.com - review game that allows multiple choice questions - students may go at their own pace, but can be timed (mine have 30 seconds to answer their questions), but it allows them to answer questions and then see what they got wrong.

          Flippity - Jeopardy and it does the MATH for you!!! Allows you to set up your boards, you must publish it to the web and then attach the link on the second tab.   You then can play with your students and it allows you to keep track of points just by clicking the "x" and check mark.  

           Baseball - took the terms for the final exam and broke them into singles, doubles, and triples.  Students are then asked a question at random (drawn from a bag)  
     

         
Otherwise I have kept my standard reviews of History (Bingo), Square Game, and Bazinga, but those have been talked about at some point or another so I am not going to beat a dead horse.  Review games should be interactive and keep students engaged, but also review the content.