The Grateful Heart in the Classroom

My colleague and friend, Sheila Monger and I talk a lot about gratitude. After a particularly rough couple of years teaching, she and I would daily remind each other of our mantra to Choose Gratitude. When teachers get caught up in the problems it is easy to become negative and grumpy. No one sets out to be 'that teacher' but we all know them, and at times, may have been them. There really is so much to be grateful for. And lest you think I am a Pollyanna, rest assured, I am not. I was laid off every year for my first 6 years of teaching. I have had great and not so great colleagues and administrators (I liken a principal to an appendix, you don't notice them until they are bad) My husband was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of year 8 of teaching and died the following winter. So I have had a lot of reason to be grumpy and not grateful, yet still, I choose gratitude.

So imagine my great joy to meet +Scott Meile. Scott is a 8th grade English teacher in New Jersey.  His district is in an area with one of the highest teen suicide rates in the country. He saw a need for connection in his classroom and community, and he created it with the Door of Thanks. With all the bad in the world, Mr. Meile encourages his students to stop, think and appreciate what they have.  Throughout the year, students place note of the wall that state what they are thankful for. Notice I said wall. The door of thanks became the wall of thanks, and that became a virtual wall of gratitude!

I met Scott when he traveled to San Mateo, California to participate in a panel discussion at Edmodocon16. I was honored to facilitate the discussion on Supporting the Whole Student with Edmodo. This panel included short presentations from speakers on how they use Edmodo to meet the unique needs of their students for more than just academics—building community, supporting a school Gay-Straight Alliance, reaching out to students who struggle to get to school, and encouraging gratitude.

Although I've begged Scott to blog about his gratitude journey, Being a busy dad, husband, teacher and coach hasn't allowed him much time to write. So I asked his permission to share his story. in his own words.

It’s our job in education to show them that our school, our community, our families aren’t just about what we’re teaching but the people that are involved and the relationships that are created and the people we meet. The issues in New Jersey aren’t uncommon everywhere else, There is that many young kids don’t know where to turn. There’s peer pressure, bullying, and self image awareness which often leads to students not knowing who to turn to or who they can trust. Peers are left with unanswered questions, they often don’t understand or realize that some kids need help and aren’t being taught compassion or understanding and the ability to find the right people to talk to. 

In our class we try to recognize the importance of our team and our goals, in addition we take time to recognize our lives outside of the classroom. We push ourselves to complete tasks, but more importantly we learn about each other. We take 6-10 minutes everyday and give thanks. Edmodo is the key because it unlocks a level of communication and acceptance that isn’t always easy for students to receive or acknowledge. We each and everyday make it a point to reach out to one another, and comment on some of the things that are going on in our lives outside of school (or within our school community) and that allows for interpersonal growth that sometimes is lacking in today’s students busy schedules and culture. Edmodo creates a connectedness that allows for something easy, reachable, and creative. It takes a snapshot of our class, the highs, the lows and everything in between and we document these moments and get to see the growth throughout the year.

Emotional intelligence is something we try to grow throughout the year, taking time to talk about gratitude leads to more interesting conversations regarding citizenship and compassion.  As I have become more and more experienced in the classroom I have found I have less and less to say to my students regarding their learning.  I often find them discovering new things and showing me more about their learning then I ever imagined was possible.  But, what I have found myself talking more and more with the kids is their responsibility to each other, how we as a class can make a difference, and more importantly, every person should act with respect, integrity, and empathy.  

Even more importantly it has made me a better teacher, dad, and coach because I have come to realize just how much of a struggle the kids go through on a daily basis.

I am grateful for teachers, and friends, like Scott.

LOA Diaries: #CUE16

It has been a long, strange road to get me back to CUE. I really appreciate +Edmodo making good on the contest prize I won (but was unable to use) two years ago. I find the CUE conference to be inspiring and invigorating and this year was no different.  The opening keynote was none other than THE Brad Montague, the co-creator of +Kid President. Not a dry eye was in the house after his motivational pep talk.

Making Sense of Creative Commons Licenses

Interview with Jane Park

Last week I was fascinated to interview Jane Park, director of Platforms and Partnerships at Creative Commons. I always have to look up what the various licenses mean, so I was happy to have the opportunity to listed to Jane make sense of it for me! Following is a transcript of your interview. 

Tell us about you and your role.

I've been at Creative Commons (CC) for a number of years and currently I lead our platform initiatives. Which means working with OER platforms like Edmodo, Amazon, and Microsoft, as part of the U.S. Department of Education GoOpen initiative.

What is Creative Commons?

We're a nonprofit organization and we offer a suite of legal tools that make it easy for creators to share their creative work online. Prior to us, there were only two options if you wanted to share your work- all rights reserved copyright, where you had to ask for permission every time you used any part of someone's work, or in the public domain (you had no rights to that whatsoever). CC licenses are a set of copyright licenses that allow the creator to flexibly say, 'you can use my work and you have to give me credit,' and they allow the creator to manage those different permissions.

What does "open" mean in the context of OER?

The "Open" requires the 5 Rs. Retain (you can retain a copy- download/duplicate/store on your own computer), Reuse (use it in a class, in a study group, re-share it in a website or in a video), Revise (modify it, adapt it to your classroom, translate, and alter the content in other ways),Remix (combine the work with other works to create a collection or mashup), and Redistribute (share it on a website or video publicly).

On Edmodo Spotlight we have 3 choices: Attribution, Attribution Sharealike, and Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives. Can you tell us about what those three mean and why I would choose one over the other?

Attribution is the most liberal and accommodating of the licenses we offer. It essentially says hey, you have to give me credit for my work, but you can do whatever you want to do with it- you can remix it, adapt it, even use it for commercial purposes. We recommend this license as a default for OER.

The second option is Attribution Sharealike, which is basically the Attribution license with one extra condition attached. If you alter or modify the work in any way, you have to Sharealike your derivative work under the same license. You're still allowed to use it commercially. For example, if you take a song and sync it with a video, that video with the song you would have to Sharealike under the same Attribution Sharealike license.

The third license- Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives - is actually our most restrictive license. It signals to the user that you can redistribute my work verbatim, but if you make any modifications or changes, you cannot share it out. So it's saying "don't change my work but you can share it widely."

http://www.masternewmedia.org/how-to-publish-a-book-under-a-creative-commons-license/ 

What about paid resources?

If you're the owner, you can always sell it and/or add a Creative Commons license. If you're not the owner, you can use works under the first two licenses for commercial purposes, but not the third one, since it has a non commercial condition.

Do I need to worry about using someone else's work in my classroom? We teach our kids about fair use. How does that apply to this?

When you're using work in the classroom, it's more lenient than re-publishing in the open web, since the classroom is a closed setting. If the work is under a CC license, you're free to use it as long as you abide by the terms of the CC license. It applies in and out of the classroom. When it comes to using all rights reserved copyright works, you're free to use them both in and out of the classroom, the difference is the rules might be more liberal in the classroom, under fair use.

I'm not a fair use expert but there are 4 fair use factors that any court of law will judge fair use by. That is: the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion you use, and the effect of that use upon the potential market. But I would definitely read the wikipedia article on it, it will explain much better than I do.

What's the most common mistake teachers or students make when labeling using CC licenses?

If you are not the owner of the content, you should not be adding a CC license to that work. That's a common mistake, people put a CC license on works they don't own. A second one is adding a Noncommercial No Derivatives license, and say it's OER. As we discovered with the 5 Rs, if you can't remix it, then it's not OER. So if you want it to be OER, choose one of the licenses that allow derivative works or allows Remix.

What's the most important thing you want teachers to know?

There is a large world of OER out there. If you take 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with the CC licenses and how they work, you can tap that world of OER and clearly figure out what you can and cannot use and under what conditions. CC licenses really provide clarity, where there is often ambiguity, especially when it comes to fair use. That being said, we do encourage teachers to rely on fair use, exceptions and limitations to copyright, when using any educational resource.

Thank you Jane, for helping to make sense of this for us!

Quality Content on Edmodo Spotlight

Background

Edmodo Spotlight is a repository for Open Educational Resources, (ROER) as well as a source of content which is not considered "open" but is being made available, either for free or a nominal cost, from educators for educators. Edmodo Spotlight hosts and facilitates access to these resources.  

To be truly open, content must satisfy the 5 Rs: the consumers ability to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute the resource. In an article published in the online Research in Leaning Technology journal, titled: Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review,  J.Atenas and L.Havemann discuss certain indicators of quality in the design and implementation of ROERs, and some of these include user evaluation tools, peer review and use of keywords (emphasis mine).

Call to Action

To ensure high quality content is available for Edmodo users, users such as the Luminary community can provide the most meaningful, authentic reviews. To help with the review process, I've come up with some suggestions.

When I introduce  Edmodo and blogging with my students, I use an acronym, R.A.M.E to remind them than any comment should be relevant, appropriate, meaningful and edited. The same is a good start for reviewing teacher created content. 

RELEVANT: When providing feedback, be sure that you have actually looked at the contributor's resource and that your comment reflects that - what is something you liked? what didn't you understand? what connections can you make to your own possible implementation? in short, is your comment relevant to the resource you are reviewing?

APPROPRIATE: Consider your audience. Is the public comment section the right place for your feedback? As fellow teachers, we may be reluctant to give negative feedback publicly - I know I am. When I see an issue that I feel needs to be addressed by the resource owner, I direct message them.The good news is, Edmodo understands this reluctance to 'call someone out' and they are building in a messaging option on the product (Spotlight Resource) page.

MEANINGFUL: The Huffington post had a nice article written by Kim Pisolkar about Why Good Job Isn't Good Enough where she provide the analogy of a gift:

Feedback is like a gift... and as with any gift, the initial impression is in the wrapping. Think about how you’d feel receiving a gift not wrapped nicely, just sort of thrown your way with little thought or sincerity. Now think of how differently you might feel receiving a gift that is lovingly wrapped, given with pride and thoughtful consideration. That analogy represents the difference between giving ordinary, bland feedback like “Nice job” and delivering effective, sincere feedback that actually tells a person what was good.

The article goes onto cite the SBI model developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. SBI is an acronym for situation, behavior, and impact:

1. Describe the situation where the behavior was observed.
2. Describe the behavior- the specific and factual actions or interactions that were observed by you or others.
3. Describe the impact - the effect the behavior had on others such as clients or team members, and/or the results.

So please include meaningful, perhaps even actionable feedback. Contributors are able to update their resources in Spotlight and often will based on community feedback.Your words do have an impact. 

EDITED: In general, please try to make sure your review comments are edited.

After studying Socrates, my students also added the final two letters of the acronym: N and N to make RAMENN - is your input nice and necessary? Are your comments, even criticism delivered with kindness? 

When you look at at resource in Edmodo, you have the option to rate it 1-5 stars. You can also post a comment, preferably using guidelines similar to what I have outlined above.

A final note about keywords. Users, content consumers, look for and find content using keywords. When you are reviewing a resource, if you notice they are missing some valuable keywords, please let the owner know. If they add them, your suggestion might make the difference for someone looking for just the right amazing resource.

LOA Diaries: Earning NerdCred at Skywalker Ranch

I was extremely honored to be invited by +Edmodo to the US Department of Education's #GoOpen Exchange. +Office of Ed Tech's  #GoOpen campaign encourages states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning. From the day I started teaching, I've advocated for a more open sharing of content, why, after all, should we re-create the wheel in thousands of classrooms across the globe? So this event was an exchange of ideas on a subject I am passionate about. The fact that it was being held at Skywalker Ranch in beautiful Marin County, just two hours north of my home, was icing on the cake.

I met like-minded educators from across the country and was truly energized and invigorated by the exchange of ideas. We even got to watch the original Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in George Lucas' theater. I couldn't help myself, the sound of the THX 'Deep Note' caused me to break out in cheer!

I tend to use Twitter as a note taking device and below is a compilation of my tweets about the event.

Thank you to +Kevyn Klein,and  +Julia Gitis from Edmodo for making my attendance possible, and to Andrew Marcinek and Katrina Stevens from the US Dept. of Ed, Office of Educational Technology for making me feel so welcome and putting together such a fun and inspirational day!

Open and Free

One of my soapbox issues since I started in Education was the need for sharing and collaboration. Teaching is hard enough without cooperation. New teachers, including those I now find myself coaching, need all the help they can get. Providing them with free resources that they can adapt and edit to fit their student populations is so important, especially in those first few years when new teachers haven’t yet built their own personal arsenal of “go to” lessons and activities.

Decades ago in my first career, I first learned about Open Source software. Wikipedia defines Open source as computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.[1] Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner.

Working in high tech, the idea of collaborative development seemed a little like the wild, wild west. I didn’t really care much about Open Source until I started working in Education and funds were limited. Suddenly the idea of free and accessible seemed like a godsend to cash strapped schools.  

Fast forward a few years and I have now figured out a platform for sharing lesson plans in Edmodo’s Spotlight. It is a place to share, collect, review, and discover helpful resources for your students and teaching. It acts as a marketplace where both publishers and teachers can create and share resources. Teachers from the Edmodo network can download, peruse or access these mostly free resources. Some teachers do choose to sell their lessons but that is not in my ethos.

As I am approaching the final years of my time in the classroom, I love having an outlet to share some of my favorite resources. I have shared original, editable content as well as recommended some of my favorite online resources.  I've been sharing my favorite resources. I was thrilled to see the First Lady announce #OpenEBks on @Twitter and shared the resource with my PLN. I tagged my tweet with #OER and #freeandopen.

Through the magic of Twitter, I was re-schooled by Douglas Levin. Doug is the founder and president of EdTech Strategies, LLC. He is an adviser to federal and state policymakers and education leaders, Mr. Levin has conducted research that has informed and shaped the field, and written and spoken widely about the trends shaping the future of education. Doug pointed out my misuse of the term “open”

He then sent me a link to an article explaining (reminding me of) the definition of open in this context.  We had a bit of a back and forth and I sent him a quote from the Princess Bride:

Which then inspired him to write a blog post which included this FAQ for educators about what OER really means.  

Open educational resources are and always will be free, but not all free resources are OER. Free resources may be temporarily free or may be restricted from use at some time in the future (including by the addition of fees to access those resources). Moreover, free resources may not be modified, adapted or redistributed without express permissions from the copyright holder.

How do I know if an educational resource is an OER?

The key distinguishing characteristic of OER is its intellectual property license and the freedoms the license grants to others to share and adapt it. If a lesson plan or activity is not clearly tagged or marked as being in the public domain or having an open license, it is not OER. It’s that simple (emphasis mine). Creative Commons copyright licenses are standardized, free-to-use open licenses that facilitate the development and use of OER and are recommended for use by all K-12 educators.

Hopefully this will help clarify but mostly inspire you to openly share what you have created! 

Six Steps to Submit Stellar Spotlights - plus a few other suggestions

Edmodo Spotlight helps you boost your lesson planning and find resources to spark your students’ curiosity and improve their overall learning experience. It is a place to share, collect, review, and discover helpful resources for your students and teaching. It is a marketplace where both publishers and teachers can create and share resources. Teachers from the Edmodo network can download, peruse or purchase these resources.

I was reluctant to use Spotlight, until I really stopped and looked at it. It was super easy, but it helps to be prepared. So this blog post is to help you plan ahead. When you upload, you’ll be asked for some information. If you have it ahead of time, it will make the upload flow much smoother. Also please know your resource is most likely to be approved if you include a title, at least 1 (but 4 is better) thumbnail images and both parts of the description.

1. If you are “recommending” a resource, first, please, search spotlight to be sure no one else has already shared it. If they have, simply add a comment using the [review] button, seconding the recommendation.

2. Title: be sure your title gives a clear picture of your product. For example, Sandy’s Shoes tells you nothing, but Measuring Distance with Sally’s Shoes gives you a better idea. A good title helps teachers decide whether to look at a product!

3. Up to 4 thumbnails: you will need to have 1-4 meaningful thumbnails representing your product. If you do not include your own, there are defaults, but these are not going to attract users to your product. (see images below)

Great thumbnails will help draw in teachers. For example, the images for the products here...

tell you more than these ...

4. Description: The Description Field provides an overview of your content. This is what teachers will read when clicking on your resource, before deciding whether or not to download it.

• Question 1: Describe your content, including how it addresses a specific subject and standards. Tell us what academic objectives it achieves. Hint: Try to anticipate questions that teachers may have. We recommend 50-100 words.This is the overview teachers see when they are deciding whether or not to download your product. It should provide a detailed overview of the content and related standards. It may include links to related resources or products. You could also provide data or social proof, “this project is a favorite with my 5th graders every year”. If you have this written up ahead of time, you can just paste it into the box when uploading
• Question 2: How can teachers use this in the classroom? Hint: Provide an idea for how the teacher can integrate this resource into their lesson. You can mention discussion, collaboration, assessment, etc.

5. Resource type: if your product doesn’t neatly fit into one of these categories, just give it the closest choice.

6. Grade levels (up to 4) and subjects addressed. You should also know the CCSS numbers, if applicable.

There is sometimes confusion about the licensing. There are six licence options but only two are available through Spotlight. Non-commercial, no derivatives means no one can sell OR modify your work for their purpose, to fit the needs of their students. If you are okay with others using and modifying your work to fit their needs, then use share alike. This allows others to build upon your work as long as they give you credit, even for commercial purposes. I am a big fan of open educational resources (OER) so I tend to use the most accommodating license.

You will also need to select a few other things but these are pretty straightforward.

A few other suggestions:

• Create a profile! I know I like to see that someone has put the effort into letting me know something about them. As we say in twitter-land, don’t be an egg! Upload an avatar or picture representing you. And come up with a motto. It can be a mantra, guiding principle or even a nickname.. just put something!
• Share your work! You are your own best salesperson. Tweet out links to your products. Share them in content specific groups in Edmodo, let your spotlight shine!
• Share the spotlight love… review and rate other teachers’ products. Not only will it help give you great ideas, a review helps that teacher by motivating, encouraging and giving them ways to improve their own offerings. After all, it is all about collaboration!

Coming up next, 

How to Search for Stellar Spotlights

LOA Diaries - Edmodoing Again

I am back on the train and that six a.m. alarm seemed incredibly early. +Edmodo invited me to come back and work on a new project so literally and figuratively I am back on board! My job this time around is to help increase awareness and use of an open education resource hub which is part of the Edmodo product suite. Spotlight is free, though teachers can sell resources if they choose.

Ever since my first year of teaching, I have seen the need for teachers to have a way to share resources. At each of the three grade levels I taught, I started a wiki where my district colleagues and I would, I envisioned, share resources such as lesson plans, unit plans, projects and the like.  I was shocked when one teacher I worked with said she didn't want to share anything because, 'what if I shared and no one else did, then I wouldn't get anything!' This, coming from an adult! It was an uphill road, one I never fully conquered within my districts. But many of the teachers I've worked with did see the value and contributed to our collections.

But then an interesting thing happened on the way to the classroom, teachers discovered the Internet. I began to connect with like minded teachers across the country who wanted to share ideas, questions and resources! Eureka!

Fast forward a few years to what was one of my worst years teaching. Edmodo unveiled Spotlight and I couldn't be bothered. It's not that I didn't want to share, I just didn't think anything I had to contribute was worthy of sharing. And honestly, I could not bear to add one more thing to my plate.

A year later, I found myself consulting with Edmodo and was asked to meet with a user experience specialist, +Kul Wadhwa,  to talk about why I, a long time user of Edmodo and an Edmodo Ambassador for goodness sake, didn't use Spotlight. This is how disconnected from the product I was, I wore my Snapshot (a different Edmodo product) shirt to the meeting! I didn't even know what we were meeting about!  I was brutally honest with my feedback. Kul was unflappable, took it all in and asked me to give it a try so I could give him user feedback.

Some of my barriers to entry were it looked confusing, I didn't have time or energy to try something new and I didn't think I had anything to offer. Kul started me off with simple searching using filters. Aha! I hadn't noticed the filter ability before and it made searching for resources oh so much easier. As I was looking at resources, I realized that hey, maybe someone might be interested in our Twitter Tuesday routine, or our Regions of the US project, or, or, or.... I started seeing how I could make that wiki dream part of reality, on a global scale!

So I agreed to upload one 'product'. I started simple with a presentation I'd given at a tech conference, Writing for the Real World. That was easy! So then I got brave and created a few more, using projects I'd done for years in my classrooms.  I started asking my Edmodo communities for feedback and their comments and suggestions were invigorating. The more feedback I got, the more I wanted to share.  

Later, when Edmodo wanted some help igniting its Spotlight Luminary (super user) program, I was invited to step in. There is an irony in that I was slow to adopt, and still haven't earned my Luminary badge, but like a reformed smoker, I've found I am quite the evangelist.  And I am not alone. We just launched an incentive program and many of the Luminaries are creating their own challenges. Ms. Osborne has challenged herself to review one product from every person who has submitted content! Ms. Collins challenged herself and others to upload one holiday themed product for the next four weeks! They are making my job easy!

LOA Diaries: a rare business trip

My job with +Edmodo involved scheduling trainings for schools. We had a workshop paid for in Indiana and my director decided I should go so I could see how our training materials really holds up in the field. Teachers don't get many business trips but I'd had my fill in my first career. I agreed as long as I could go east a few days early and spend a bit of time with my friend Marie. 

I was able to use points to upgrade to first class and, had a relaxing 2 hour layover (with a departure gate two doors down from my arrival, confirming my belief that the distance between gates is inversely proportional to the time you have to get from one to the other.) I arrived just before midnight and without even realizing it, Marie and I stayed up talking until 4:00 am. The next two days we visited, laughed, cried, ran errands and talked. Nothing big, but really huge. Seeing Marie was tonic for both of us. She had been there for me when Jim died, and I was blessed to be there with her in her grief.

Two days after arriving I drove from Chicago to Indianapolis. I cried as I drove away, goodbyes taking on a deeper significance since Jim died. Marie and John had described the trip to me, having made it frequently.  First you see the giant cow, then the windmills, then the Subaru plant and not much else after that. What they didn't tell me is the trip would be in Kodachrome. Not only were the fall colors more vibrant the further south I got, but there was the most beautiful sunset across the plains, over my right shoulder as I drove. I kept thinking I should pull over to take a picture, but was hoping to get to my destination before it was too dark, so I pressed on.  

I cried again when I left Illinois as it symbolically ended my visit with Marie. Finally, I cried again when I got to Interstate 80, and the sign points left to Indiana or west to Iowa. My heart wanted to go to Iowa, but I turned towards the east and pressed on.  I was listening to an "oldies" station 80s and 90s and whatever, and they played We are Family, I got all my sisters and me... As I sang along through the tears, I felt blessed by all the sisters I have in my life.  My sisters by birth, yes, but also my sisters of choice, my close friends and cousins who love me like a sibling and are there when I need them. I stopped at a rest stop and texted Linda and Mitzi. Linda encouraged me to be brave and +M Ochoa  gave me courage by teaching me how to use the voice feature on my phone navigation. As so I pressed on.

I never saw the giant cow, but I did see a giant ear of corn (complete with melted butter), a giant fork, atop a tanker truck parked in a field and finally an over sized kitchen table with a red checkered table cloth. I can't be sure, but I think they were related to the giant cow. A little further down the road I passed one tall windmill to the east. I smiled thinking of Altamont and 'how cute' that they thought this was a big deal. I kept on my way and a bit further south I was extremely impressed by acre upon acre of wind farms.  I guess the one lone windmill was just a teaser. It seemed an unlikely coincidence that just at the moment I passed the Subaru factory, there was an ad on the radio for a local Subaru dealer... I wondered if they had their own transmitter that sneaked into whichever station passers by had playing.  

What the Agostas didn't tell me is that it was still about another hour to my hotel after the car factory. I passed through towns and lots of highway construction and thanks to my talking phone, I knew exactly where I was going, or at least how to get there.  I arrived safely, after dark but not too late to get dinner at the hotel and check in with folks and work back home. Still it was another late night, since Indiana is an hour later than Illinois. As I crawled into bed and set my alarm for 0 dark thirty, I cried again, missing my man and not being able to call him to say goodnight, as I did on so many trips. But I pressed on.

The training was well received, and we learned a lot about how to make the workshops even better. It was at a Catholic school that just the day before had hosted the relics from their patron saint, an event attended by thousands of parishioners and pilgrims, including some gypsies. The staff was still buzzing but were eager to learn and willing to try new things. After the training, as I drove south on a side road with seemingly hundreds of roundabouts, I briefly was irritated by the delay compared to a freeway to expressway I could've gotten to about 3 miles east. But then I remembered the moment is now, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the leaves. The reds and yellows and oranges were simply breathtaking.  Compared to our drought stricken brown California, the foliage really was a joy to behold and I was grateful to be driving slow enough to be able to take it all in. But still, I did not want to stop and take a picture. 

As I approached the airport there was a huge solar panel array right next to the highway, it was incredible and inspiring - a great use of uninhabitable space.  The training and debrief were done by 3 and I hoped that if I timed it right, I might be able to get an earlier flight home and get to my bed before midnight.  Alas, there was none, and I had about a 3 1/2 hour wait. So I relaxed and enjoyed the now. So at present I am 37,999 ft above the ground, traveling just under 500 mph. And I press on.

LOA Diaries: Humans of Edmodo

At +Edmodo I was excited to participate in q. my first hackathon.  My director, +Kevyn Klein had an idea that I thought would be fun and engaging, a riff on Humans of New York called Humans of Edmodo.

We sent out a request using influitive Teacher Leader Network and received some great quotes and pictures from the teachers who use Edmodo. 

Our team included Kevyn, Nick Jarvis, a graphic artist, Vivienne Pustell, Rachel Sherman & of course all of the teachers who made our project possible. We collected quotes and pictures throughout the afternoon and worked on the images late into the evening. We communicated almost exclusively through +HipChat each of us at our own location, but collaborating as a team. Most of our team used Canva, a free and easy to use design program to add teacher quotes to the images, creating sometimes thoughtful and sometimes funny, and sometimes both, posters. Kevyn even recruited her fiancee for some voice over work on our introduction video.

Friday morning, I arrived in the office early to work on the presentation with Kevyn while Vivienne waited for Target to open. When it opened, she bought almost every frame they had in the sizes we needed. Rachel was busily multitasking - supporting customers and printing all of the images. As she was printing, Vivienne and I started framing the posters. Once we had them all framed, we hung them in every conference room and in team rooms so that Edmodo staff could always have a customer with them in the room, a Human of Edmodo.

We took pictures of the hanging work, and pulled everything together into a Google presentation which we would show the judges at 2:00 to describe what we had done.  After presenting our project, The Humans of Edmodo, and all of the other hackathon projects were submitted, the judges, including yours truly, retired to the large conference room for deliberations. Although I had agreed not to take part in the judging of our category, I couldn't help myself and pointed out the beautiful photos that were now gracing the walls.

Again, I found myself planning how I could take this idea back to my students... The Humans of Bagby, or making memes with historical figures, character building quotes (The Bagby Bs), these are the things that keep my head spinning at night... So many ideas, so little time (#IMCAST)...if you have other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

I am really proud of what we accomplished in 24 hours and I love how each of us brought our own design sensibilities and strengths to the project.  And yeah, I like that we won, too!
 

LOA Diaries: Edmodo - Judging the Hackathon

Allison kicks off the presentation of projects

I was honored to be included on the judging panel for our Hackathon. I loved hearing about the amazing things these teams had accomplished in just 24 hours. I am always willing share my opinion, when I feel safe to do so. I do think most of the engineers valued a teacher, their customer's perspective. Chris presented a project to filter and block malicious links from being posted to +Edmodo. It occurred to me that there is much that goes on behind the scenes that we customers never see. From the judges table I pointed out that teachers, really any customer, will not be shy in letting you know when your product does not meet expectations, doesn't work, is slow. But there is much work engineers do to protect our students and keep them safe, without us even knowing. I thanked him for that.  And the most adorable thing happened, he blushed! Working in safety and security, he usually only hears about from customers when something doesn't work. It may very well be the first time a customer had thanked him for his work. This was a good reminder to me to show gratitude more often. 

In addition to Zach's formatting project, as each group presented I realized how many of the projects were designed to enhance the user experience, from giving us bigger video viewing area to more content in Spotlight, to helping new teachers get comfortable with Edmodo, the customers really are foremost in Edmodo's work, even in their passion projects..

The Judges (yes, bribes are on the table, chocolate and wine)

Despite jokes about accepting bribes, I did recuse myself from deliberations regarding my team and our category of Company Culture. And yet, our project, Humans of Edmodo, won!  So in addition to experiencing this inspirational event, our team won $500 for each member! That never happens in public education.  Even better, +Zach Rutta, who had done his initial presentation alone and had asked for engineers to help him create something teachers had been wanting for years, won the grand prize!  So really I felt like I won twice!

As I was drinking a celebratory plastic cup (recycle able of course) with the judges, we explored the idea of bringing the Hackathon concept into staff development days and classrooms on campuses. It would be interesting to see what could be accomplished. I'm not sure the union or parents would approve of a 24 hour project but imagine if we gave teachers and/or students a focused, dedicated block of time to pursue a project they thought could make a difference...whatever that means to them! I'm still working on how to implement it, but I think there is potential there. Participants develop perseverance, creativity, communication and collaboration which are all critical skills for future ready teachers and students.

I am a Human of Edmodo

                             

LOA Diaries: Edmodo - The Hackathon

I admit I had no idea what a Hackathon was. I thought a bunch of people sat around eating stale pizza, drinking Red Bull and hacking into other people's software. The term definitely had negative connotations, and after a very unscientific poll, many of my contemporaries have the same impression, but we couldn't be more wrong. "A hackathon is an event where people with diverse skill sets work collaboratively to create solution-oriented technology," writes Claire Shorall, of the Teaching Channel.

Our hackathon started at two o'clock on a Thursday and ended 24 hours later.  It's a 24 hour period when everyone can set aside their usual work and create a passion project. I normally skip the all hands meetings but was intrigued, so I sat through the kick-off, MC-ed by +Allison Laureano . I was interested to hear the wide variety of projects that mostly fit into four categories: features, monetization, culture and fixes. Of course I listened with a teacher's ear and I couldn't help myself but cheer out loud to +Zach Rutta's proposal of giving +Edmodo  users (mostly teachers) the ability to use bold, italics and underline formatting in our posts. It seems like a simple thing but it's funny how much you miss it when you don't have it. And currently Edmodo doesn't have it. Zach's was the project that directly addressed something I as a user want! Between my background in Customer Service and the fact that I am a customer of Edmodo, I felt heard.

Speaking of feeling heard... I've met a few times now with a coworker named +Kul Wadhwa, yes, pronounced cool and he is. He has been asking me what I think about a certain Edmodo product and I have been at times brutally honest with him, and he keeps coming back for more. Teachers are not often asked what they think about products nor given a real voice, outside our classrooms, so it's been refreshing to be asked. After I met with Kul one day, another man came up and asked if I'd be willing to give my input about some changes being made to Edmodo. Of course I said yes, I am always happy to give my opinion. I knew he was some sort of manager but I found out - after we spoke - that he is the General Manager, Manish Kothari. I love how accessible everyone is at Edmodo. There is no overt sense of managerial hierarchy that prevents anyone from talking to anyone else...quite refreshing.  A few minutes later Manish introduced me to CEO Vibhu Mittal and they asked me to be on the Hackathon judges panel, since I was a teacher! Talk about feeling heard!! I was thrilled to accept and rearrange my schedule to be in the office the next day.

Cheers to our hard work!

I'd pretty much already decided I was coming in when my Director, +Kevyn Klein intrigued me with her idea for a project, Humans of Edmodo.The excitement was almost palpable in the office that afternoon. Some people work at the office throughout the night. When I left at 6 p.m. to catch my train so I could get home to let the dog out, the GM was pouring people wine and IT was making dinner. We worked on our project well into the late hours, communicating with +HipChat  and I was excited to see what would be accomplished by all the teams overnight!