Survive & Advance: March Madness Class Tourney

It’s that time of year when I can’t remember winter break break, and I can’t see spring break. It’s the dog days of winter, just trying each day to survive and advance. Luckily, “survive & advance” is right around the corner w/ the NCAA tourney. I enjoy using this tourney to have a little competition in class with our content. Let me show you an example of a contest activity and tool I use in my classes to create our own tourney and spice it up a bit to help get us through this second half of winter. Click here for a link to the spreadsheet that you can make a copy of and use for yourself.

Download & Save Files To Chromebooks

Sometimes when our students are on their Chromebooks, trying to get creative and build a digital masterpiece, they face challenges with file downloading and saving because they are on a Chromebook and not a “normal” computer. Their Chromebooks actually DO have the capability to handle some file downloading and transferring, which can be used as a work-around if need be. Check out this little trick you can use with your kids to help them get past this stumbling block.

Google Classroom Individual Assignments

A new feature in Google Classroom has made it fantastically convenient for us teachers to individualize instruction. We can now assign tasks / projects / challenges to individual students within a class, instead of being locked into assigning everything to the entire class. I’ve also found that this gives us a great work around with group projects. In group projects, I am now picking one kid per group to be the “digital point person” and only those students receive the assignment. They share their copy with their partners for working purposes and then they turn it in when the task is completed. This keeps them and me more organized throughout the course. I love this new feature, and I hope you find it useful for yourself as well.

Gift Yourself A PLN This Holiday Season

The best gifts are the ones we give ourselves! The time for teaching on an island is over and education has so much to give and share. But, we can’t receive these gifts unless we open them up for ourselves. Twitter is a fantastic box to open for our professional growth and development as educators. No longer can we rely on others and “In-Service” days to solely help us get better...we need a Professional Learning Network of our own. If you’re not on Twitter, get yourself signed up and just follow. You don’t need to post or interact...just read and take and grow. Here are a few people and groups that I’d recommend following to start out with:

People - @alicekeeler  @gcouros  @rmbyrne  @mickie_mueller  @plugusin  @ cybraryman

Groups - @ice_il  @isteconnects  @googleforedu  @edtechteam

Forms Data Collection...Reverse The Order

I am not a fan of Google forms collecting data by putting the newest entries at the bottom. I often reuse forms with my students (I have some that I’ve been using since 2012) and can’t stand having to scroll to row 750 to find today’s entries. However, if you create a second tab in the spreadsheet and plop a simple formula in cell A2...all can be fixed. The formula pulls from the original data entry tab. So, if you make sure that tab is named “ENTRY”, just use the following formula in cell A2 of the new tab and you’ll be good to go: =SORT(ENTRY!A2:H,1,FALSE)

The only thing you’ll really need to pay attention to are the items in red. 1. “ENTRY” needs to match up with the exact name of the original data collection tab. 2. “A2” is in fact the top left cell from which you want to start pulling data.  3. “H” is the furthest right column from which you want to pull data. Don’t put a number after “H” so that it will continue to pull data ALL THE WAY down column H, even as new entries come in.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

By 35 years old, I’d had 3 close friends take their own lives. Whatever their struggles were, they felt that they were not equipped enough to go on...so they stopped. I was so angry at all three funerals. At each one, I couldn’t pinpoint my anger. There were moments where I was angry with them, moments where I was angry with other people, moments where I was angry with myself, and moments where I was angry at the dirt on the ground and clouds in the sky. I knew the direction of my anger was off about all of them. Finally, it clicked… I was angry about our culture’s lack of education and support for how to deal with struggles. So, instead of just being angry, I decided to do something about it with a twitter account and recently a TEDx Talk.

We do so much to set kids up for success, to help kids avoid failure, to build confidence through wins. We ask kids… “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” The intentions there are SO good, but the results are SO lacking. They ignore the reality that no matter how we protect our kids, they ARE going to fail, struggle, and become frustrated...A lot!  We need to put more effort into preparing kids to deal with the failure WHEN it happens, how to #GetUp from the struggles WHEN they occur, how to bounce back from the disappointments WHEN they set in.

What better time for us American adults to take advantage of the here and now, than now?!?!

This election process did not yield the result I wanted. I won’t go any further, politically, than that. There is an abundance of disappointment across this nation. Our kids are living it and watching it… but they’re also watching us! They are watching their parents, their teachers, their bosses, their coaches, their aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Over the last weeks, I heard so many adults, famous and less than famous, pre-emptively claim that they would be moving to another country if their candidate doesn’t win. And now I’m hearing so many pronounce the same declaration, reactively.

WHAT?!?!

This! Now! Here! Today! In our homes and schools and gyms and places of worship! This is our chance to show kids how to properly react to disappointment, losing, failing, and frustration. It’s NOT time to take our ball and go home. It’s time to BE AMERICA. We are NOT a nation of quitters! We dig down, play on the team that was picked for us, and make it as successful of a season as we can make it. If we don’t like a team-mate or our coach or our captain...we don’t HAVE to. But we do need to stop complaining, put our big boy shoes on, lace ‘em up, and play ball WITH them!

This “moving to another country” stuff is insane… joking or not, It’s for the quitter mindset. If we want to move to another country because we want to live in better weather, or experience a different culture, or be closer to family... Awesome!! But leaving this incredible nation (for sure we have faults) because we don’t like our new boss? Grow the… well, we need to grow up!

So, adults...parents, teachers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, bosses, coaches...here we go! This is such an incredible opportunity, right now!! #GetUp and grab your boots & overalls and strap ‘em up! Please...I beg, let’s model for our kids HOW to #GetUp from this and keep moving forward. Let’s dig and grind and forge on with each other so our kids and future can learn how to make the most of challenging scenarios.

Let’s do this, now, PLEASE?!?!

Casting Student Screens to Projector

A recent update to our Chrome browser now allows us to smoothly, with a small amount of setup work, fling student Chromebook screens (or any device running the Chrome browser) to the teacher computer.  Assuming this teacher computer is connected to the projector, this means you can project a student screen to the class with this cool tool! Just check out the video for a quick look at how it works and then dig in. It plays VERY nicely with Google Classroom. So...if you have students set up in your classroom, you can connect them all with one click. Good luck and happy casting!

Project Management Pace Tracking

Managing productivity and pacing when working on long term projects is difficult. As teachers, it’s our responsibility to provide our students with tools and skills to do this successfully. The tool I use with my students, google spreadsheets, is nothing that’s earth shattering. I used the spreadsheet to help my students create a system / map for them to follow while working on long term projects. I not only talk to them about goal setting and pacing, but also accountability for their time. We discuss the business world, especially consulting, and the need to document and bill for time. This tool has proven to be successful in helping keep students on pace, prevent them from becoming overwhelmed, and give them real time feedback on how effectively they use their time to be productive. Feel free to make a copy (from the link above) and use it for yourself and your students.

Rubric Creator

I’ve learned that getting kids involved and invested in what they’ll be graded or judged on is a crazy powerful thing. Five years ago, I committed to implementing a 20% Time project into my Advanced Accounting course. It was a good deal of work to get it up and running, but has been worth every second that I put into it. The passion that students show for a problem that THEY have identified and a solution that THEY have chosen to come up with for that problem is amazing. In this process, THEY also choose the specifics on which they will be graded. I spend ample time talking about project management, goal setting, and the importance of the process instead of just the end result. This process includes an important decision about how they’ll be judged and evaluated...or in their world, graded.


The world of handing over decisions and ownership to students can be overwhelming and daunting...for many reasons. From a logistics side, rubric creation can be tough enough for teachers...let alone students. This is why I love Rubistar, a simple rubric creation tool that not only can teachers use very easily, but they can also put the creation in the hands of students. With this smooth tool, teachers can feel very comfortable turning the “judging” process over to the kids to let them have a voice in how they are graded.

5 Things Teachers Can Learn From The CMA's!

1. When the bell rings...GO! (Hook em or lose em.)
My buddy texted me 10 minutes into the CMA’s, upset and asking what he missed. The opening bit and performance is ALWAYS solid, year in year out!! Carrie and Brad kill it when they come out and start the show. It’s called “THE HOOK”, we all know it. We’ve all been hooked. If we don’t hook ‘em we lose ‘em! If we GO from the start with GOOD STUFF, they’ll be ready for the start. If not, the first 5 minutes of class becomes irrelevant and they know it. Would your students be upset about missing the first 5% of your class?

2. Include your audience

The best laughs in the show (audience moving / making noise = absorption) come from the interaction between the PEOPLE on stage and the people in the audience. When our students are moving and responding, they are absorbing. The show is not for those on stage, it’s for the audience. Do you put your students in the show as much as possible?

3. Showcase the new, but respect history.

I love when they (and they do it at least twice every show) put a “newbie” with a “legend” for performances. They know that everyone loves “new”, but they also understand that today wouldn’t be here without those who built it. I so often see either one way or the other in classrooms. The non-adopters saying “why change it if it worked?” and the early adopters saying “this is going to change education.” Certain things just flat out work and will always work, but there are ways to make other things better through experimenting. QUALITY is about BALANCE. Does your classroom have a balance of trying the new and respecting the old tried and true?

4. Things will bomb, but if you don't give 'em hell, everything will bomb.

This year’s CMA’s were incredible. However, bell to bell, it had some lulls and boring parts. They didn’t try to make them boring, they just didn’t nail it like the planners thought they would. So what!! If we plan / teach in fear of something not working, we’ll never know if it WILL WORK. We owe it to our kids to bring them our best, even if we have doubts. Sometimes our best isn’t incredible, we need to accept that and keep bringin’ it!! Do you scratch an exciting plan just because it “may not work”?

5. Appreciate & promote your colleagues...they rock too!

Closing with a bang at #5, my favorite part of the CMA’s is the camaraderie between the artists. Say what you will about Taylor Swift, but seeing her (and many others now) belt out and dance to songs being performed while in her seat is cool. They all legitimately cheer for each other and are happy for each other when they win. They team up on stage, even though they are competing on iTunes. As teachers, we often protect ourselves and compete. Teaching is not an individual sport! We need to get off our “Teacher Island” and connect to, share with, and cheer for each other. Teaching is a challenge, it’s easier when we’re all in this together. Does your career involve ACTIVE sharing and cheering for your colleagues?