Transform. Advocate. Grow.

A little over a month ago I received this message in my inbox. Tears of joy, laughs of disbelief, and an inordinate amount of screaming into Voxer ensued. I knew that acceptance into the Google Innovator Program would be a life-changing experience for me, but most importantly I knew that it would enable me to truly make a difference for the teachers and students I serve.


I am a first year Math & Technology Coach in the first year that my position has existed in my district. Alongside my #CUSDrockstar math teachers and with a supportive IS/Tech team, I have been able to define my role and begin on a path that, unbeknownst to me, paralleled the tenets which are the foundation of the Google Innovator Program: Transform, Advocate, and Grow. As part of the application process, I pulled together a Vision Deck which identified a problem in education and my ideas for the beginnings of an innovative solution by asking "What if?"...


The academy provided the opportunity to dig deeper with potential solutions to the questions I asked in my initial proposal. In fact, many or my fellow Innovators dug so deep that they ended up switching projects! While I was tempted to hop on a team that was exploring the potential of creating a new style of school where learning is 100% individualized, I decided to stick with my math project, as I feel very fortunate to be in the position where I am working with a group of teachers who are willing to do whatever it takes to help meet their students needs as learners of mathematics with positive mathematical identities.

So the brainstorm process began. Believe it or not, there was method to my madness in the layers of graphic organizer you see to your right (please, don't judge me by my handwriting, I prefer to call it doctor-scribble). Blue is the problem and possible solutions, green is the solutions that currently feel impossible, and purple is the juxtaposition of the two that I will incorporate into the initial stages of prototype development. We examined a variety of ideation techniques, but the one that stuck with me the most is wishing, and examining what we can do to make these wishes possible. This tied into the concept of Moonshot Thinking, where we aim at a 10X improvement to what actually exists.

This was when I realized that I wasn't looking to just build a platform for my teachers to share resources and experiences with lesson design/implementation, I was looking to build a wide-scale tool that could benefit all math teachers and expand their expertise in going beyond the textbook, providing authentic learning experiences for their students; I want to give all students an opportunity to love math.

The scribbles above morphed into this:

In essence, I will build a collaborative platform where middle school math teachers can not only easily share lessons, but also share their experiences in implementation of authentic learning tasks, problem-based learning, and technology integration in mathematics, engage in collaborative and constructive dialogue, establish a professional learning network, and eventually receive flipped professional development. This would integrate with the already excellent existing resources from groups like MTBoS (the Math Twitter Blogosphere). The website would be a wiki of sorts, allowing for multiple contributors and crowdsourced creation.

As a Google Certified Innovator, I will receive the support of a fabulous coach (Sandra Chow), a mentor (TBD in the coming week) and the entire Google community. I know that for the next 12 months and beyond I will be truly supported to impact change in education.





And so it begins...

Tech for Formative Assessment in Math

As we wrap up January, a month historically know for setting goals, I have had many requests from teachers who want to incorporate more formative assessment into their instruction. This awesome goal stems from the fact that our CUSD teachers realize that no two students are exactly alike, and there is no one-size fits all type of instruction. When we are teaching, if we don't make time to assess what our students are learning and gear our instruction accordingly, then we run the risk of leaving many of our little mathematicians in the dust.

One of my favorite parts of being a math/tech coach is having the opportunity to sit with our CUSD teachers while planning and brainstorm how we can take instruction to the next level. In this post, I hope to gather the main "aha's!" that happened in some of the collaborative planning sessions I engaged in this month:

Aha #1: Getting innovative with Kahoot

Many of our CUSD teachers have started using Kahoot, a gamified assessment tool, for whole class instruction. Over at Monroe Middle School, 7th grade teacher Minae Seog has started incorporating Kahoot into her station rotations. Rather than leading the Kahoot group herself, she has students who have demonstrated mastery of a concept facilitate the small group. These students then get to solidify their own knowledge by explaining concepts back to their classmates and she is able to focus in on meeting with a different group of students for targeted, individualized instruction.

Aha #2: Stop recreating the wheel in Go Formative!
Kathy Alsup, 7th grade teacher at Rolling Hills, discovered that almost all of the EngageNY/Eureka math exit tickets are already loaded into Go Formative and ready for you to use!

• Click here to view a blog post on this and access the lessons!
• Click here to access the full Go Formative library of assessments!

Aha #3: Go Formative doesn't have to tether you to your computer

Over at CMS, 7th grade teacher James Peng loves using Go Formative, but doesn't love the thought of being tethered to his computer. He is making Go Formative work for him by still floating the room during lessons rather that watching and monitoring all student activity from the teacher screen alone. He then uses the data generated on student performance to plan his next steps in instruction.

When Susan Smyth, 6th grade at Monroe, caught wind of this she had a brilliant idea of how to use the teacher monitoring features to actually free you up as a teacher. Why not use Go Formative as a station while you are pulling groups/running a lesson? You can monitor the group that is on Go Formative from the corner of your eye on the computer screen while you are able to work with another group!

Aha #4: Google Forms Speaks the Beautiful Language of Math with the GMath Add-on!

I'm surprised no one came to make sure that Christina O'Keefe (6th grade at Monroe Middle School) and myself were okay as we screamed in excitement during our planning session last week. Christina had been playing around with the GMath add-on in Google Forms, which allows you to insert graphs, equations, and complex math directly into your Form. Upon deeper examination of the tool, we discovered that it now also allows you to deploy GMath for student responses (woot woot!) and (drum roll please...) there is an option to use voice to text as well as handwriting/drawing responses. Game-changer!!

We have an upcoming opportunity to see how these tools (and more) are being used in CUSD classrooms to gauge student understanding during instruction. If you are interested in learning more, please join the upcoming session on Digital Tools for Formative Assessment on Tuesday, February 23! You can register at pd.campbellusd.org.

Please continue to let me know how I can support you!