Hi. My name is Dean Vendramin … High School Math Teacher, proud Formative Certified Educator, and passionate about using and understanding Formative Assessment. I have been using Formative for a few years now and my understanding and use of it continues to grow. I love the features that Formative offers and continues to improve upon to make it easily my go to tool for formative assessment data and more. I am also impressed with the ability to embed other tools into Formative to create engaging learning opportunities that promote feedback, student voice and choice, and differentiated learning. For this Iron Chef edition I used three ingredients: 1) the Enhance a PDF/Document feature (this is one of my main go tos and was able to add multiple choice and a show your work questions) 2) Wakelet – I was looking for something to replace Storify to collate and share monthly school tweets with(http://wke.lt/w/s/rHPqV) but saw that there might be more to this so I choose this as an ingredient the Formative – (Pro Tip from David - While they offer an embed code, you need to remove the script part of it. For example, if you are trying to embed this one I created: <iframe class="wakeletEmbed" width="100%" height="760" src="https://embed.wakelet.com/wakes/7ad15dd5-7e3e-455a-a078-20ef3a231b88/list" style="border: none" allow="autoplay"></iframe><!-- Please only call https://embed-assets.wakelet.com/wakelet-embed.js once per page --><script src="https://embed-assets.wakelet.com/wakelet-embed.js" charset="UTF-8"></script> You need to embed it like this: <iframe class="wakeletEmbed" width="100%" height="760" src="https://embed.wakelet.com/wakes/7ad15dd5-7e3e-455a-a078-20ef3a231b88/list" style="border: none" allow="autoplay"></iframe><!-- Please only call https://embed-assets.wakelet.com/wakelet-embed.js once per page --> 3) Mentimeter – I was looking for something to add a little spice to this dish so I turned to Mentimeter. I have used in class a few times but wanted to explore it a bit more and see what flavour it would add to this Formative. Mentimeter is great for collecting feedback during a presentation and I used the word cloud feature in my Formative. (Pro Tip from Me – their embed code didn’t work when I tried it but when I copied the mentimeter link into iframe generator - https://www.iframe-generator.com/ - the code I got from there worked like a charm) The result of combining these three ingredients resulted in this concoction: Formative Assessment – Iron Chef Edition https://goformative.com/clone/WCNLMP Feedback welcome. Are there substitute ingredients that you might use for a different flavour or taste? What is you go to Formative tool, have you found a similar tool like Wakelet to compile different media, and is there something like Mentimeter for the creation of group word clouds and other responses? Thanks for sampling a little Formative food for thought. What’s for dessert?
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“Pairing ScreenBeam with Minecraft empowers students to take more ownership of their learning. Students enjoy the role reversal that occurs when they become the teachers.” As an educator, I love discovering new technologies that motivate my students to develop higher levels of engagement, collaboration, comprehension, and critical thinking. Two edtech tools that have made a significant difference in my classroom are Minecraft and ScreenBeam. Minecraft Creates Deeper Levels of Student Engagement and Understanding I am blown away that Minecraft: Education Edition has put play and wonder back into the classroom which is sometimes lost for high school students. As a game-based learning platform, it is like taking us back to where we first learned playing in the sandbox or playing with Lego. I teach math, and sometimes math can be intimating and a ‘tough’ sell for some students. Using Minecraft breathes new life into assignments. It is awesome to see students have fun while engaging in math concepts. Not only does Minecraft increase student engagement, it also fosters a deeper level of student understanding. For example, when my students were learning about surface area and volume, they created 3D objects in Minecraft that enabled them to walk around, over and underneath, as well as inside and out to get a real ‘feel’ for each object. Exploring the 3D objects in Minecraft naturally sparked deeper conversations about the relationship between surface area and volume. ScreenBeam Increases More Opportunities For Teachable Moments Before I discovered ScreenBeam, I was tethered to the front of the class and had to ‘run’ back and forth to groups to share information or share student work. With ScreenBeam, I am now able to interact with my students more efficiently and effectively. I am more in tune and aware with the learning going on, and I am able to capitalize on teachable moments—building sharing, and playing with ‘no strings attached.’ Pairing ScreenBeam With Minecraft Fosters Student-Led Learning When my students are sharing their Minecraft worlds on the projector screen through ScreenBeam, they are taking more ownership of their learning. They are enjoying the role reversal that occurs when they become the teachers. The students are more engaged in their learning as the environment is conducive to different learning styles and student voice. For instance, during our slope unit, when students created roller coasters, it was interesting to see how students came up with solutions to create a straight vertical drop as part of showing an undefined slope. Students quickly realized that if a mine cart falls off an edge, it will come down more as a parabola than a straight vertical drop. Final Thoughts: Take A Leap of Faith Whether you use ScreenBeam and Minecraft separately or combined, you need to be at least ok with giving up some of the traditional classroom ‘norms’ and take a ‘calculated’ risk. There are amazing learning and relationship building opportunities when both of these tools are used in unison that just are not available within the limits of traditional methods. By integrating Minecraft and ScreenBeam into your classroom, the new levels of interactions and are definitely worth the effort! Want to learn more about ScreenBeam? Contact the ScreenBeam team. A Formative Story – Using Formative In My Math Class My Formative story is a simple yet powerful one. I was initially hooked using Formative by the annotating a document/PDF feature. However, as I explored other features and became a part of the amazing Formative Community, I was able to take my Formatives and the learning opportunities they afforded to another level. Therefore, I will share a story on a Formative I used to help my Grade 11 math students explore and show their understanding of slope. I decided to flip the instruction on this one by using a video I was able to edit inside of Ed Puzzle and easily embed into my Formative. I love the fact that Formative is very user and ‘app smash’ friendly. The video allowed students to receive content and check for understanding at their own pace. I followed this up with another embed idea that I learned about in community. I was able to provide students with an interactive slope tool through Geogebra. This was an excellent ‘hands-on’ opportunity to ‘play’ with and check out concepts they just learned from the video. Next, I provided a short formative assessment that I created and was able to upload and annotate. The formative assessment consisted of a few multiple choice and a short answer question. The data this assessment provided me with a great picture of individual and class understanding of the topic. Data that I used to provide whole class and individual instruction on this topic. I also included a very informal question asking students how they felt about their learning of this topic. Finally, I directed students to workbook questions if they were done the all the activities in this Formative. Formative was a ‘one stop shop’ and everything I needed for the lesson was in one convenient place. I loved the fact that this freed me up from being in front of the class to interact with students individually and in small groups as they worked their way through the learning activities. Students loved this and were able to easily work through the tasks and provide samples of their learning. The formative assessment data allowed me to be the guide on the side and make instructional decisions as the students needed them (like in this story I had to go back and review question 4 as it was cause some problems for students). Students responded well to all the activities embedded inside the Formative and we had deeper conversations about content and how it applied to a Roller Coaster project we were doing in Minecraft on the topic of slope as well (the Geogebra applet really helped students play with the different slopes and how that looked). I loved the show your work question as I was able to use the examples the students gave to compare, contrast, and concentrate instruction based on what I saw. The multiple-choice data was a great ‘snapshot’ into student understanding and both the students and I loved the immediate feedback. My story definitely reflects the daily successes I have using Formative. It has definitely been a game changer in my classroom and I continue to grow and understanding how to utilize this powerful tool in my classroom. Formative Used - https://goformative.com/clone/HSXWNK (Rate of Change (Slope)) (Article with images attached below)
Hi, my name is Dean Vendramin and I have been teaching High School in Regina, Saskatchewan for 20 years. I teach at Archbishop M.C. O'Neill Catholic High School. During this time I have taught a variety of classes and I'm currently the Math/Science Education Leader. Using Minecraft in my classroom has been a game changer both figuratively and literally. I have been using this dynamic tool in my classes for a few years now and it has evolved and provided a wider range of possibilities and opportunities. When I reflect on the use of Minecraft in my classroom I see that it has helped me redefine lessons based on the SAMR model, met and exceeded 21st Century skills, offer STEM experiences, and embrace ISTE teacher and student standards. My journey down this path started many moons ago with my own love of Lego. Building and creating with Lego was always a good time and I realize now how much it helped be recognize patterns, understand structures, and more. The ability to play is one of the fundamental ways people learn and I can attest to this personally. Fast forward a few years and having my own children. We still played with Lego but now there was new ‘kid on the block’. My own kids introduced me to the world of Minecraft. I was impressed that they were not playing something that kept score or had a quest to follow, they were in a ‘digital sandbox’ where they crafted their own journey. When I saw this I thought ‘I gotta get me some of this into my classroom!’ Now I wasn’t as adept as them as playing (and I’m still not even close) but even the way they explained the game and took pride in showing me a thing or ten was also inspiring. My Minecraft journey into the classroom wasn’t a full blown, ‘Ok everything we do in class will now be in Minecraft and you will be expected to build Rome in a day’ (although with some students skills this might be possible in Minecraft). I started by giving students and option to show their learning using Minecraft as a tool in a Grade 9 Social Studies class I was teaching and had students submit reconstructions of Mayan pyramids and a scale version of the Coliseum. Later in a Grade 9 Math classroom, I had students show understanding of surface area using Minecraft Pocket Edition. It was great to use a tool like Minecraft to help students understand a concept like this and actually create a 3D object that they could walk around and explore to understand the topic rather than memorizing a formula. I have found many more uses for Minecraft to ignite creativity, curiosity, and collaboration in my Math classes. I currently teach a Work Place math class to students that are 16-17 years old. Unfortunately, many who take this class are labeled ‘not good’ at math and so much that they actually believe it. But when I have incorporated Minecraft to complete the projects, I quickly find out not only are they good at math, but what the wicked problems that they can solve is impressive. I have these students building amusement parks with rollercoaster to show understanding of slope, water parks to show understanding of surface area and volume, park features to show understanding of scale, and fencing to show understand of trig concepts. The engagement and excitement level are intense and have students that want to be the first to leave now begging to stay a little longer. I constantly have request from students to ‘come into their world’ and check out what they are working on. The students that are not ‘gamers’ or ‘crafters’ quickly find that the tool is easy to pick up and there are many mentors willing and eager to help along the way. I have also used Minecraft as an option in Genius Hour / Maker Projects (a student of mine did a prairie portrait for a Microsoft Canada/Minecraft Canada 150 contest and won the grand prize of a class set of laptops) , done Battle Builds, made a staple in our Technology Club, and more. I have shared my Minecraft journey locally, nationally, and internationally. I have put on a variety of workshops, attended edCamps, offered an online session on #MADPD, and spread the good news at Microsoft’s amazing international E2 conference. Earlier this year I applied to become a Minecraft Global Mentor and thankfully, I was selected to be part of this amazing network of innovative educators lead by a caring and supportive team at Minecraft Education Edition. I have the good fortune to have met, both online and in person, many of the educators from this group. The sense of community and passion I have felt is truly inspiring. So no matter where you may be on you Minecraft journey, there are many resources (human, worlds, how tos, lessons) out there to get you started or take you to the next level. I would also encourage you to reach out to your students, as they are a great resource and watch the magic happen. I am excited to continue my journey and look forward to where it takes me next. I am excited to infuse and explore the coding add-on, mixed reality, global projects, and more. Here is a link to a Minecraft resources page I have put together with lessons, articles, videos, and more (http://deanvendramin.weebly.com/minecraft-in-the-classroom.html). Find amazing resources and mentors at https://education.minecraft.net/. My twitter handle is @vendi55 feel free to follow. My advice to anyone is to take one good idea, turn it over to your students, and have the courage to go learn with them … you will be glad you did. After reading the book ‘What Connected Educators Do Differently?” by Whitaker, Zoul, and Casas, I started to reflect up the contents of the book and how it has reflected my teaching career to date. On one the main reasons I got into education is that there is always a chance to learn, grow, and get better. I feel there is really no limit to improving yourself as a lead learner in our esteemed profession. I reflect quite a bit on the quote I once heard and use often … “Did you have a 30 year teaching career of 30 one year teaching career?” The tools and opportunities that technology has provided educators to get better not only for themselves but ultimately for those we serve are exciting, expansive, and challenging. There are so many sayings and research into the power of ‘we’ and being ‘connected’. I feel educators owe it to our profession and the present/future of our youth to harness the power of connectivity.
I have been active in the area of using technology in my craft basically since access to the internet and other tools have been accessible to us. I have recognized the opportunities and obstacles for a long time and continue to examine how to best use technology as a way to improve instructional, professional, and personal growth. The reason I enjoy this pursuit so much is because it has provided me with so many opportunities to connect and get better. I enjoy taking risks and failing forward. There is always room to get better and I feel the examining how technology, pedagogy, and content (TPACK) can work together and bring forth empowering, engaging, and exciting learning opportunities like never before. Being connected is a vital part of growing personally and professionally. We cannot grow if all we do is talk to ourselves or just communicate with those who share the same outlooks and are fine with the status quo. I have had many great face to face interactions with a variety of educators and non-educators that have challenged me and affirmed the desire to innovate and get better. Face to face interactions are still the most important way to communicate, but are not as readily available and also limited to time and location. This is where being a connected educator on social media (especially Twitter for me) shines. I have grown an amazing Professional and Personal Learning Network. I have also benefited from reaching out, sharing, and even just ‘lurking’ through this medium. Using Twitter had become a great source of professional development (it took me a bit to get ‘hooked’ but once I did it’s been a fantastic source of knowledge, advice, and reflection), a chance to share success, and a look for comfort and/or solutions to problems that arise. The sense of community is real and meaningful relationships have formed as a result of being connected. I try to model the importance of being connected and a not only a contributing digital citizen, but citizen in general as the lines between the types of citizenship are transparent. I look forward to continuing the journey of being connect as it has made my career more meaningful, evolved, challenging, and rewarding. I have learned and shared much, but it still feels like there is so much more. I will continue to advocate the importance of being connected and creating a growing one’s professional network both on and offline. Being connected has made my career feel new, refreshing, and dynamic … not wash, rinse, repeat.
I was very fortunate to do a couple of presentations last week on Minecraft in the Math Classroom. On May 1st, I drove up to Saskatoon for the Saskatchewan IT Summitt and did an hour workshop on using Minecraft. I was an early morning and a couple of long drives i one day, but it was totally worth it. I enjoyed sharing my Minecraft journey to date and sharing the work my students are doing in my class. We even had a chance to do a build battle and it was fun to watch teachers explore and build with Minecraft. I also had chance to check out other great presentations on STEM, Coding, Genius Hour, and Minecraft. It was a short but sweet day for sure. On Sunday May 7th, I had the chance to participate in another cool PD opportunity. I was a presenter in the #MADPD initiative with other educators from across the world. Make A Difference PD gave me another chance to share my Minecraft journey. MAD PD (https://mrcssharesease.wordpress.com/m-a-d-p-d/) was an initiative started by Peter Cameron and Derek Rhodenizer as they came up with a great way to bring together and connect over 60 educators and their big ideas with fellow educators who could get world class PD in the comfort of their own home. I shared my inspiration, the rational behind why I use Minecraft, lessons and student examples, resources, and more the video of the Google Hangout can be found here http://youtu.be/9POUF6kYbDo. and my presentation can be found here http://deanvendramin.weebly.com/minecraft-in-the-classroom.html. I was also luck to have Minecraft Mentor Garrett Zimmer @pbjellygames join me and offer so much insight and support. It was a busy but great week of sharing and I'm glad for these opportunities to share, grow and learn.
Just thought I'd share a little bit of what is happening in my class with you ...
I'm working on a Minecraft Project on Surface Area and Volume with my work place 20 student ... they are to build a splash/water park with different geometric solids ...excited to see what they come up with. Here are a few examples of student projects from grade 9 math we've been doing ... Scale-https://rcsdtech-my.sharepoint.com/personal/christina-julliene_torno_rcsd_ca/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=1feb59b1230594749909ee3f2a05fc7bc&authkey=ATiydcp7s0lyx0jntd0M0qk Symmetry (pixel art project) - https://sway.com/EBJwumIUQ6tqfjf1 Surface Area - https://sway.com/OfhR1JOoCBvMbmlg Here's a couple of videos I have produced that promote what I do in my classroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skjEEsBAfnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_tq6X2ufsM (used this to enter a contest for a maker space) and here's a blog I wrote on rcsdconnect http://deanvendramin.weebly.com/blog/the-rcsd-connected-educator-experience Here's a great project I've been working with our division tech coach Genna Rodriguez on tapping into Entrepreneurs for my business tech 9 class https://flipgrid.com/bt09 (password bt09) and here's a student blog entry on this project http://doyouevencurlbro.weebly.com/tylers-blog/cj-and-kelly-flipgrid-learning Using goformative.com has been a great addition to my teaching tool box. Students love it and being able to get a read on class and individual performance is amazing. Instant feedback is game changing. Got outside and had kids measure the height of the school using similar triangles ... nice to do a math lab and get outside. I love my job ... always ways to learn and get better! Dean The last couple of weeks have been hectic but so amazing and full of learning opportunities. I have totally been enjoying the new group of students that I have been working with this semester. There have been many moments both planned and not planned and positive and not so positive that have occurred. Even though I have taught for many years there is still much to learn from each situation and there is always a chance to get better, meet the needs of my students where they need it, work with colleagues to improve each other, and also look after personal and family life. I have also many opportunities to grow professionally during the last few weeks with SIOP training, institute and teacher convention, looking a privacy protocol, teacher issues, take on a pre intern, and all the goodness that was Microsoft Education Exchange.
I plan to write separate blogs on these events/experiences but I just thought I'd collect some of my thoughts and see where they take me. There is always something to reflect, share, challenge, and grow from. I feel very fortunate to recognize this and hope to this to another level and share with and hopefully have something to offer that would at least make one person stop and think and even make them better too. I have been using Minecraft in my Math classroom for the last few years now and I continue grow in my understanding and engagement in it. My math classes have been using it a lot lately .... my math 09 has been using Minecraft to understand symmetry through a pixel art project and surface area by building structures - my work place 20 has been using Minecraft to create roller coasters to learn about slope. I have enjoyed students be creative and being able to be engaged and creative in forming their own understandings of these concepts. I saw some students who aren't always 'thrilled' to be in Minecraft really get into the assignment and some who like getting just the notes and questions get out of their 'comfort' zone. There was some great collaboration going on and saw students plan and share responsibilities. I also saw some students get distracted ... some play was encouraged but some took it a little too far. There were those who unfortunately didn't practice positive digital citizenship that we talked about and actively went into people's projects without permission and with destructive intentions. Still over all it was great for me as a teacher to pop into their 'worlds' and see them create, collaborate, communicate and use critical thinking as they showed understanding of concepts taught (which are 21st Century Learnng skills but I would argue just preset day learning skills). I would say that this be R rated on the SAMR model as it has Redefined how students look at and work through math concepts (also great to be able to show these concepts in 3d instead of 2d). I got my Minecraft Certified Educator badge this week and have been working on my Marketplace presentation for the Microsoft E2 conference in Toronto happening in 10 days (very excited). My lessons can be found here https://education.minecraft.net/user/dean-vendramin
Last week was a good but busy week at the school. I have been doing an introductory unit in my new Business/Technology 09 class on digital citizenship. I found many good sources but the one that I liked most was a program called Digital Bytes (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/training/9-12/digital-bytes) put out through @commensense media (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/). Students looked a videos from a variety of digital citizenship view points from footprints (I prefer concept of tattoos) to cyberbullying to business ideas and more. Students were engaged in the materials but more importantly shared and posted reflections and images to show their learning (http://oneillbt09.wikispaces.com/Digital+Citizenship). I was really impressed with the quality of the work the kids did and was impressed how they used the tools of Sway (https://sway.com/) and Adobe Spark (https://spark.adobe.com/) to create reflections and images. I would highly recommend checking out this activity and looking into becoming a common sense media certified digital citizenship educator. This unit couldn't have coincided better with a presentation we have last Monday through Sask Tel's I Am Stronger project (http://iamstronger.ca/). We were lucky enough to have Dr. Sameer Hinduja (http://www.hinduja.org/)c ome and address our student body on the pitfalls in our digital lives. This also kicked off our school's Titan Acts of Cyber Kindness (#TRACK2017 - https://twitter.com/i/moments/831387255973351424) campaign. Student response has been great and it is great to see the positive messages getting out there. Our digital lives are important to examine and reflect upon as there are many challenges both positive and negative that are out there that shouldn't be ignored or left to chance.
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AuthorDean Vendramin has been Educator for over 20 years. He is the 21st Century Education Leader at Archbishop M.C. O'Neill Catholic High School. He has a passion for all things in education with emphasis on technology integration, assessment, professional development, and 21 Century Education. Archives
April 2022
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