2015-2016 End of Year Celebration

Google Forms Tip

I think my favorite new-to-me feature of Google Forms is the email notification feature. You can set-up your Google Form to send you an email when someone submits the form. 

Here are two ways the Google Forms notification feature has helped me save small amounts of time and frustration this semester.

• I ask my students to submit a form to me if they have a question about their grade. The link to the survey is on MyBigCampus and I rarely have to think about it. A bonus is that they have to select from a list the standard which they are referencing; no more "Hey, I have a question about my grade for that one assignment we did." They are forced to own their grade enough to know what they are talking about. Also, no one asks me to stop what I'm doing to go to my computer to check or update a past grade during instructional time. I have a procedure in place and can take care of it on my own time during plan or after school.

• I ask parents to fill out a Google Form survey at the beginning of the year. The survey explains the course expectations and asks for parent contact information. The students receive a small grade for this assignment. I really want to make sure parents fill this out, so I will always take late surveys. This year, I used the notifications feature to receive emails when a parent updated the form after the deadline so that I didn't need to keep checking the spreadsheet results everyday unless there actually was a response.

If you want to receive an email every time someone submits one of your Google Forms, here are the instructions:

1. Open the Google Form you've created.

2.  Click "Tools"

3. Click on "Notification Rules"

4. Select the highlighted items for daily notifications when a new form is submitted.

5. Save Settings and close Notification Rules. 

I also learned how to send the person submitting the form a custom email. This is more complicated but may be a great way to provide automatic feedback to students, especially if you are using Google Forms as assessments. I haven't tried it with students yet, but promise to update this blog when I do!

Student Recognition

On the first day of school, Mr. Skinner recognized the following students in front of the entire student body. We have a lot to be proud of!


·        Thanks to the Link Crew for their help during Freshman Orientation Activities
·       Thanks to all students who worked on their Honors or AP classes this summer
·        Thanks to all students who have work with their sports teams, cheerleaders, and marching band this summer
·        Congrats to the  18 current and past students who represented North HS in participating  in this year’s Summer Musical “Mary Poppins”
·        Congrats to our North HS Boys Golf Team for being SIAC Champions
·        Congrats to our North HS Girls Track student athletes for qualifying and participating in the IHSAA Girls State Track Meet in May:  4X800m relay team members:  (Sr.) Mary Beth Grimm, (Sr.) Michaela Ward, (Graduate) Allie Rollins, (Jr.) Stephanie Roth, and (Jr) Lauren Hodoval.  In the 100m:  (Graduate) Ashlyn Smith.
·        Congrats to our North HS Girls Golf Team that our ranked #1 in the state and have already started their season with winning the Washington Country Oaks Tournament.  (Sr) Emma Keiffer and (Soph) Hadley Walts were co-medalist. 
·        Congrats to (Jr.) Eric Brinker for qualifying and making the cut in 2015 Men’s City Golf Tournament
·        Congrats to (Sr) Tate Fritchley for being named Vanderburgh County Queen 2015
·        Congrats to (Sr) Audrey Ferguson for being named Miss Teen Indiana and 2^nd runner-up to Miss America Outstanding Teen.  She’s won over $12,000 in scholarships and full ride to the University of Alabama.
·        Congrats to the students who took Advanced Placement Exams last year (309 tests taken the most in the EVSC and surrounding area)
·        Congrats to the 20 North HS Advanced Placement students for being recognized as Advanced Placement Scholars:  AP Scholars--- (Sr) Cody Daugherty, (Sr) Ethan Elleser, (Sr) Cameron Seger, and (Sr) Michaela Ward.
·        Congrats to (Sr) Zach Conroy for earning the honor to be part of the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program for his PSAT testing scores.
·        Congrats to (Sr) Jacob Riggs for a perfect score of 800 on his Math part of the SAT
·        Congrats to NHS English and Math (Algebra I) on increases on their ECA results for the 2014-2015 school year.
·        Congrats to Juniors Megan Centers and Jessica Peistrup for perfect scores on their ECA English 10 state test.
·        Congrats to everyone associated with North High School in helping to be recognized as an “A” school in the state of Indiana.

2014-2015 School Year

An entire school year flew by without a blog post! For posterity's sake, here is a video that summarizes the year's accomplishments.

End-of-Year Celebration!

It was a great year to be a Husky! :)
For best results, click the 'full screen' icon in the lower right corner of the video!

Next Year's Evaluation: Wisdom Request

So I had time to sit down and evaluate myself using the EVSC Teacher Evaluation Rubric.

I gave myself a lot of threes.  It's on a scale of one, three, or five if you haven't looked at it yet.  While it does bother me a little on the inside to get all of those 3s, I get it. Three is proficient.  What hurt more- I had to give myself a one on something :( 

It was in a category that seems to be a completely necessary skill for a proficient teacher to master.  Help me!  I would love to hear advice from you on one or all of the following areas. 

2.4 Questioning Strategies:

My deficiency area #1:  "Teacher mostly calls on volunteers or high ability students."  I often get the same few volunteers all the time and just go with it.  Many times, students call out answers instead of raising hands.  This means students who are not comfortable with speaking or don't know the answer usually do not get the chance to answer out loud.

Give me wisdom!!  How do you call on non-volunteers and low-ability students in a non-threatening way? Do you have students raise hands to talk?  Do they simply call out answers without raising their hands?  Do you call on random students all the time?  Do you have a strategy when deciding who to call on next?

My deficiency area #2:   "Teacher rarely asks questions that are varied, high quality, and provide a balance of question types (ie. knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, creation, and evaluation.)"  If I do ask good questions, it is on accident.   On classwork assignments, I do think carefully about questions I ask and do nicely with asking varied level questions.   However, during lectures, I find that verbal questions I ask seem to be on very basic understanding of content. Much of what I ask verbally is sort of on accident but with my lesson's goal in mind.

Give me wisdom!! Do you write out questions you are going to ask the students during lecture in advance? How do you remember to ask them? Do you have some sort of system to ensure you are asking questions of varied levels? Have you read a really interesting book, article, or have examples of great question styles? If it's relating to the Chemistry 1 standards - bonus points.

My deficiency area #3:   "Teacher rarely uses questions that require active responses (i.e. whole class signals, choral response, group answers).  I try this occassionally.  Students don't always respond!  I'm wondering if I made a habit of this if things would change.  

Give me wisdom!! Which 'active whole-class response' strategy works for you? How did you introduce it? How often do you use it?  What do you do if a student doesn't participate


Please share in the comments below! :)  If you are a student reading this, let me know your thoughts! Thank you! 

Website Builder Review

Are you considering creating a website for your classroom or club?  Are you looking for a better way to connect with students and parents?  Recently, I’ve had several teachers ask me about how to design a simple website to provide information that can be easily updated and maintained.  I usually direct people with these inquiries to one of the free website builder sites that are available online.  As you probably know, these sites allow you to create a simple website with a template, no coding necessary, for free!  However, the options for these types of sites continue to grow.  I found 19 different website builders in a quick 10 second search.  So I decided to do a little experiment and rate a few of these websites to see which one was the best option.  I chose to compare two of the most popular options, Wix and Yola, as well as Google Sites since we all have access to this easily through our school Google accounts.  I rated the sites on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best in the following three categories:

• User-Friendliness: Is the sign up process easy?  Is the creation process intuitive? Do they provide tutorials?  
•  Customization: Can I easily change colors, fonts, links, etc.?  Can I upload my own images and backgrounds?  Can I change the layout of the navigation bars, headings, etc.
• Free features: What features are provided for free?  Do I have to pay for “premium” features?

The highest possible rating is a 15.  And since we all have limited time, I evaluated these sites based on an hour spent on the website.  If it takes more than an hour to decipher, I figured it probably wasn’t a good option for teachers.  I’ve included my reviews of the websites below.  I hope they are helpful to you in choosing an option to create a class or club website.

Wix: Overall Rating – 12

User-Friendliness: 5

I gave this website a 5 for user-friendliness.  Setting up an account and getting started is super easy on this website.  You just provide name, email, and password and you are ready to start designing.  As soon as you begin to create your website you will see a video pop up explaining where to access all the features.  It is very intuitive.  The toolbars are easy to use and the layout of the toolbars makes them easy to navigate through.  Overall, I found the creation process very simple.

Customization: 4

I am giving this website a 4 for customization.  There are a ton of templates to choose from so it is fairly easy to find one that fits your needs.  However, I found the process of customizing the template to be somewhat confusing.  First of all, the color options are in schemes.  So you choose a color scheme and it affects all the colors on your site.  It is possible to further edit the color schemes but it is very confusing.  For example, it is not easy to choose one color for your heading, and a different color for your links, and a different color for your borders.  There is one customization feature that I love and that is lists.  Wix gives you the option to add a list to your site and gives several layout options.  This is basically different table formats for organizing information.  They are very well formatted in my opinion and can give your page a more professional look.  Overall, I rate the customization process as fairly easy but some features can be frustrating.

Free-features: 3

I am giving this website a 3 for free features.  I’m rating it a little low due to the fact that your free website will have large ads for Wix included in the header and footer of your page unless you pay to upgrade.  You can pay $4.08 a month to change your domain name but you will still have ads included on your page.  You have to upgrade to the $8.25 a month website (yearly plan) to get rid of the ads.

Yola: Overall Rating - 14

User-friendliness: 5

I am giving this website a 5 for user-friendliness.  Setting up an account and getting started is very simple and takes less than 2 minutes.  Just like Wix, the toolbars are very intuitive and are very easy to navigate through. 

Customization: 5

I am giving this website a 5 for customization.  I found it really easy to customize colors, layout, and fonts on this website.  The process is very easy to work through and unlike Wix, you can choose a theme but can still edit individual colors easily.  You can also add social media links but Yola, unlike Wix, includes a Pinterest option.

Free Features: 4

I am giving this website a 4 for free features.  Just like Wix you have to upgrade to change the domain name.  There is also an upgrade required for “Premium Styles”.  However, unlike Wix, there is only one very small ad at the bottom of the free page for Yola.  It is very unobtrusive.

Google Sites: Overall Rating - 11

User-friendliness: 1

I am giving this website a 1 for user-friendliness.  I found the creation process to be very confusing and not user-friendly.  The actual editing of the site is mostly done by going into a separate information screen with a very text rich interface to input the edits you want.  This is not as user-friendly as making the edits directly on the site preview screen.  Also, to access the help instructions you have to keep clicking on their written tutorials and read the through the instructions (see example below).  This is not nearly as easy as seeing a quick video tutorial. 

 

Customization: 5

I am giving this website a 5 for customization because I think it is possible to do a lot of customizing in Google Sites.  You have the ability to start with a completely blank template and create the layout however you would like to.  You also have the normal options for changing colors, fonts, images, etc.  Even though I don’t like the interface, if you have enough time (more than an hour) it seems that you can figure out how to customize everything on your site.

Free features: 5

I am giving this website a 5 for free features.  While the other sites charge you to change your domain name, it is apparently possible to change your URL on google site for free if you follow the written instructions.  I also didn’t see any ads for Google included on your final site.

Final Thoughts – If you are looking for a quick and easy website builder with a lot of good customization options, I think Yola is your best choice.  It has all the features you need to customize your site in a user-friendly format and it’s free without a lot of ads.