Building and maintaining a collaborative and creative community has been on our minds lately. The struggles of keeping strong relationships with our students and our students with one another is challenging from a distance. We've gathered some ideas that we wanted to share!

We've seen so many great ideas to provide shared experiences for our students via Zoom/Google Meet. If it is pet parades, show and tell, costume dress-up days, or scavenger hunts, teachers are doing everything they can to foster the relationships between classmates. Building in these fun, community-building ideas might be the way to do it! Jennifer Gonzalez shares some other ideas here.

Using Remove.bg gives the effect of green screen without all the extra tools! Create a class photo or have students create their own. This simple, free tool will stoke those creative fires! Check out Amber's quick tutorial below and another example of how she used it with selfies from the team!

Creating a digital flip book with Google Slides is easy! Using the duplicate slide tool makes this idea a breeze! Create a Google Slides presentation so everyone can edit and then watch the magic unfold. Use this will small groups or as a whole class (with some guidelines, of course) and create something that represents your class! Check out Mindy's tutorial below! 

Bonus tip: Check out TallTweets (use Tall Tweets Classic in the middle of the page)! It will create a .gif file of your flipbook that you can share anywhere!

Share with us how you are maintaining connections with your students! We want to hear about how you are fostering creativity in your classroom community! Tag us on social media with @DLGWAEA and, as always....

#HaveFunMaking

​~Mindy and Amber

Why self-assessment?
Self-assessment provides students the opportunity to build awareness and reflect on what they understand and do not understand. Self-assessment provides students the opportunity to empower themselves through:

• Promoting the skills of reflective practice and self-monitoring. 
• Promoting academic integrity through student self-reporting of learning progress. 
• Developing self-directed learning. 
• Increasing student motivation. 
• Helping students develop a range of personal, transferable skills.
• Learn more about self-assessment from Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation

What is a single point rubric?
The first step is making sure students are able to identify where they are in the learning through self-assessment. This means providing them with a tool like a single point rubric. We first learned about single point rubrics from the amazing Jennifer Gonzales at the Cult of Pedagogy blog. With a single point rubric, you, as the teacher, provide students with one column of a traditional rubric and the students reflect and decide on whether they match it, or are below or above that place. Learn more about single-point rubrics from Jennifer Gonzalez.

• Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics
• Meet the Single Point Rubric

Why would we want to share a single point rubric with students?
By focusing on one criteria, it narrows and simplifies the learning path for students. This self-reflection through the single point rubric helps to determine if the student is on the path, off the path and needs reteaching, or ahead of the pack. Students will step up to the responsibility of identifying where they are at on this path and share their reflection and evidence back.

How will students use a single point rubric?
To introduce students to the use of a single-point rubric, consider the ‘I do, we do, you do’ structure. Providing students with a body of work (with low cognitive load) and working through the single-point rubric to assess gives students the opportunity to practice.
As students move to independently use a single-point rubric, giving them a space and giving them time to work on this within the classroom is essential. Whether you are asking them to physically look at work or giving them a digital space where they can compile their work, you need to make space for this reflection to happen with work that they have already completed. This process will not work overnight and will require modeling, patience, and perseverance.

• Digital Space through Google Slides coming during Part II of our series

What will teachers learn about the students when they go through this process?

• Identify where the gaps are in the instruction.
  
• Learn where instruction is the strongest. 
• Begin to see how students can be learners in the learning community.

What will students learn about themselves when they go through this process?

• Learning is a process.
• Identify personal gaps in the own learning. 
• Make personal connections across content lines.

Be part of the conversation! Share in the comments or reach out to us on Twitter--@DLGWAEA

~Beth, Amber, and Mindy

Congratulations!  
If you are reading this blog - that means you are a connected educator!  
You are a person who has reached beyond the walls of your classroom to learn from other educators. You have reached across the internet and connected your computer with mine and through that exchange of bytes of information we have the opportunity to both improve our practice.  

That is what being a connected teacher is really all about, improving practice - constantly growing in our own learning to better meet the needs of our students and to model best practices.  

I have been thinking a lot about being a connected educator recently, partly because I co-taught a class on the subject and because it is part of my own personal journey.  As I prepared for the class I revised this above image to illustrate my description of a connected educator.  

Full disclosure:  I did not create the image - only the descriptions. 

As I worked on this image I was struck by all the paths we use to connect with others that are not technology based!  When I first began this journey of becoming more connected - I believed that technology was the central pivot point. The farther I travel down this path the more I have come to understand that being connected is not searching for the perfect tool, rather it is a state of mind that seeks ways to connect - period.  

This huge mind shift from being an isolated, leave my door closed, teacher to joining a worldwide group of educators challenging one another to rethink the way we teach does not come easily.  

It is downright hard!  

And I wonder if we have made it harder because of our focus on technology! If the conversation begins with ways to connect - in your building, in your community, in your classroom, would that change attitudes?

In a blog post written by Daniel Rezac he reflects on the Connected Educator movement.  He shares some sobering statistics about how few educators are actually part of the movement and some thoughts as to why that is.  He sums up his post this way...

            Perhaps our connected educator movement- is not about connecting 
            educators with technology… at all. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong. 
            Maybe what we need to close this digital divide, is not digital at all. 
            Maybe our connected educator movement involves real, physical communication. 


That resonates with me.  

Being a connected educator means more than just being a lurker on Twitter.  
       It means utilizing Twitter to connect with other HS SS teachers to find a different way to teach AP          History.  
Being a connected educator means more than just writing a weekly blog because the principal says
        you must.
        It means connecting with book authors about the book you are reading.
Being a connected educator means more than reading Facebook.
        It means taking advantage of parent connections on Facebook to promote classroom activities               and share online content in the place that parents 'live.'
Being a connected educator means more than bookmarking sites on Diigo.
        It means being able to share websites with teachers in your building at the point of need because
        you know what they are teaching.
Being a connected educator is more than these things though...

Being a connected educator means connecting with those around you in every way you can - period! 

Beth Swantz - GWAEA, Technology Consultant