Title: Investigation
Course: Workflow - Part II (Classroom)

Introduction

Why do I want a digital workflow with my students?

- To ease the flow of information between teacher and student
- To enable students to access class material anywhere and at anytime
- To provide easy access for absent student to obtain work
- To facilitate individualization and meet IEP or 504 needs
- To ease student collaboration on projects
- To ease student workflow and eliminate "Forgotten" homework
- To solve the issues of students losing class information
- To allow students to turn in documents electronically eliminating the mounds of paper a teacher has

Part One: Altering Learning Expectations

How might these devices alter my expectations for how students conduct their daily learning in class?

A 1:1 classroom transforms the teaching and learning process by increasing student access to content and their ability to collaborate and create.  The teacher's role expands from not only being a content expert but also a master facilitator, guiding students through a process of learning and discovery.  Ultmately learning becomes an active process where students interact with the curriculum.  Traditional assignments are transformed to become collaborative, interactive and grounded in real-world context.  Classroom communication is enhanced by providing a digital platform that continues the communicate and instruct beyond the class period.  Please read:

- Creating Learning Enviornments by Ben Johnson a HS Principal and former Spanish Teacher.  This article provides a breif insight into how technology changed the learning envrionment in his Spanish classroom.

How will my classroom look differently? Although a 1:1 envrionment does change the nature of teaching and learning ultimately your classroom will still be the same in that it is a place where students gather to gain and create knowledge.  There are four main considerations to think about as you embark on creating a mobile workflow with your students:

- Communicating class content
- The nature of learning activities and assessments
- Peer collaboration and student work
- Classroom expectations and management specific to mobile workflow

Communicating Course Conent:

- Content can be communicated to students in an electronic fashion and housed in a common place such as Google Drive.  This allows
  - Allows students to access information in class without paper helping to facilitate student organization .
  - Allows absent students to access course information from home.
  - Allows for individualization by tailoring course material for different learners' nees and can be privately shared with those students.
  - Facilitates easy review of semester content.
  - Enables parents to become involved and aware of the content you are covering in class.
- Diversifies course content by enabling you to pull other experts into your content by guiding students to various resources.

Learning Activities and Assessments: What you ask kids to do and how they demonstrate their learning can change.

- Students now access classwork in a shared digital space.
- Students display their knowledge through an increased variety of interactive platforms such as iMovie, Explain Everything, WordPress or Numbers.
- Learning activites are no longer static.  They incorporate multimedia tools, expert voices from outside the classroom and require students to create a product to demonstrate learning.
- Simulations can become real.  Instead of writing a persuasive piece to a fictional audience students can blog about it in real time getting feedback from peers and community members.
- Students can connect with others outside of the classroom (other students, field experts or community memebers).
- Teacher feedback can occur "in progress" while students are working on an assignment when created in a shared ditigal space such as Google Drive.
- Facilitiates easy formative assessments through polling.
- Individualization is easier and more diverse as teachers have greater tools at their disposal to modify assignments.  Electronic dissemination of modified work protects student privacy by allowing you to place modified assignments in individual student folders.

Peer Collaboration:

- Students can easily collaborate on projects through digital platforms that ebavle sharing such as Google Drive
- Students can work remotely on group projects eliminating issues of absenteeism and meeting outside of class to complete work.

Classroom Expectations and Management: With this structural change comes the need to communicate how this will work in your classroom.  Below are a few tips to get started.  For additional support please reference the Classroom Managment Resource Document or consider taking the Classroom Management Module.

- Clearly communicate your expectations both in writing and verbally.
- Train your students in mobile workflow procedures in a similar manner to how you train your students in all classroom procedures.
- Start slowly
- Set clear expectations and outcomes for collaborative work.  When approriate, create roles for students to assume during collaboration.
- Have a "signal" for when the device should be "on" and when it should be "off".
- Think about how you will handle student distractions.  This should be similar to how you handle general distractions.
- Think about how you will handle students who forget their device at home.  This should be similar to what you do when kids forget current resources at home (notebooks, textbooks etc.)

Part Two: Helping Students

How can I help students adjust to these changes?

- Model these skills.  Create and use a mobile workflow in your professional life.  For support please reference the Workflow Resource Document or take the Module - Teacher Workflow on Mobile Devices
- Set up a classroom workflow structure.  Teach them, reinforce and use it frequently.
- Set clear expectations and processess on how to co-create and collaborate.
- Create assignments where students practice these skills
- Start slow to go fast.  Take time to teach and reinforce these skills.  Choose to instrocue and work on one or two skills at a time.  For example when first introducing this to students first work on turning in an assignment electronically, then work on co-creating an assignment with a peer and build up to more complex tasks.
- Create clear instructions on not only how to complete the activity but on how to organize and submit the work electronically. See this example from an activity in a World Studies classroom.
- Talk and teach about Digital Citizenship.

Part Three: Resources

Where can I find new and up-to-date resources on student workflows with mobile devices?

Part Four: Creating a workflow with my students

How can I begin to create and manage a classroom workflow? When setting up a mobile workflow with students there are two main avenues to create this connection.  The first is to use a document creation and sharing platform such as Google Drive and the second is to use a Learning Management System (LMS) such as our Moodle Installation named Classes (which you are currently using in this module.)

Google Drive with Students

What is this?  Google Drive is a cloud based productivity suite.  Google Docs is one of the functions in Drive and is a word processing program that allows for sharing and co-creation.

How would I use Google Drive in the classroom?

- Create a coures handout folder for students to access class materials/resources online.
- Hsve students create turn-in folders to submit assignments electronically.
- Facilitate student collaboration by creating documents together or editing peer work.
- Access a variety of other Google Drive features such as forms, presentations and templates

How do I create this in my classroom?

- Video - Creating class handout folders in Google Drive
- Video - Creating student turn-in folders in Google Drive

Learning Manamgent System

What is this? A LMS is a program that allows you to creat a comprehensive digital classroom where you can accomplish a multitude of tasks including:

- Hold class discussions.
- House class materials/resources.
- Have students submit work
- Create quizzes and assignments
- Design lesson

How would I use Moodle in my classroom?

- To create an electronic extension of your classroom
  - Host discussions oustide of class hours and track participant responses
  - Post annoucements
  - Create learning activities inside of Moodle
  - Access online quizzes
  - Upload or embed videos
  - Have students submit work
- To create and teach an online course

How do I create this for my classroom?

- Atomic Learning Tutorial: Moodle 2.0 - Instructor Training.  You will be prompted to enter a username and password.  Please use your universal district username and password.
- YouTube Video - El Paso Teacher discusses her use of moodle in a hybrid class
- Moodle Help: Managing a Moodle Course