During our Google Teacher Academy Austin chat, somebody tossed out an idea on Voxer about showing people "one great thing" that we do in our line of work.  Most of what I do is the standard run-of-the-mill work that supports teachers and helps them do cool stuff in their classrooms.  We are all doing this in one form or another, so that's nothing special.  There is one pretty cool product that my colleague, Wes Batcheller, and I have come up with:

Request For Training

Before things get too cloudy, I need to give credit where credit is due.  Katie Regan and Kelly Kermode are the geniuses behind what you see in the magical jaw-droppedness that we get to experience.  How does it work?  I thought you'd never ask.

Nothing special, right?  At first glance, it really is just a Google Form, so no, nothing special.  To dissect this a little, I'll break it down:

Name automatically puts the requestors name onto a calendar event that gets created on form submit.

Site automatically gets loaded as the location in FormMule on the event on form submit (we appended it with "High School" to have Google automatically recognize it as an address and get us directions. Some say lazy. We say efficient.

Room Number is nothing special, but it gets added to the notes section of the form submission.

Email Address is there so we can send back an automatic reply with their requested date, time, and a description of what they wanted help with.  Folks like reminders, right?  We have ourselves CC'd on the email so that we receive it in our notifications and can contact the requestor if there is a conflict in the schedule or we need clarification.  Booyah.

Date Requested, Time to Start, and Time to End are all there to create a calendar event in our Google Calendar that we have associated with our tech coach email.  As soon as someone fills this out and submits, a calendar event is created for that date, starting time, and ending time.  Pretty sweet, eh?!

Description of Support Requested is loaded into the notes of our calendar event and also reiterated back to the requestor in the automated email, just to remind them of what they were requesting and give us a heads up as to what's on our calendar.

Here are some screenshots that explain the process of setting up FormMule to work properly with what we are trying to do:

The first stage in the script (or Add-on) process is setting up the email merge.  We have ours set so that any entry that has something will push a merge, just because the email address is mandatory.

This part is fun. We have the boxes selected on the lefthand side to turn on the calendar-event merge as well as creating a new calendar event on submission.  We created a separate Google Calendar for all of these requests and input the Calendar ID into the appropriate slot. Using the tags on the right, we made it easy to identify in our new events who the person is, where they're from, what time they want us there, and what they want.  WHABAM.

A closer look at the tags that we use in the calendar event creation.

This is our email merge message.  We need to clean this up and offer something a little bit better, but it's 'good enough' for now.  If anything, it drops an email into the requestor's inbox that serves as the much-appreciated reminder that they submitted the form, got validated for doing so, and someone will be there to help.

If you have any questions on how we set this up or would like to chat about it, feel free to get in touch.  Just please don't fill out the form :)

Happy "Making Your Life Easier, One Submission At A Time" Fishing

Today, I get the opportunity to come into one of our math classrooms and teach.  Ms. Depweg handed over her class, and for this, I am incredibly grateful.  For one, it's giving the teacher a bit of a much-deserved break, but it's also a chance for me to remember why I'm doing what I'm doing in education.  Sure, the technology side of things is great and creating lessons and connections are fun, but it all comes down to the kids and how we are helping them.  So, on this wonderful October 30th, I get to talk to kids... about dating.

It's crazy how being out of the classroom for even a semester and a half can seem like an eternity.  I forgot how much I used to walk, even though I remember walking around the room all the time.  I forgot how much I enjoyed interacting with students, even though I remember and cherish many of the conversations.  I forgot how much I loathed dealing with students who were disrespectful, even though I will never forget them or those situations.  More importantly, I forgot how much I enjoyed teaching math, even though it has always been a passion of mine.

To the lesson itself, it was a Mathalicious day.  You know, the one where we don't really start off with math, but with a conversation.  Today's conversation was centered around an acceptable age range for people to date and using inequalities to represent the data.  Because we only have one day for the lesson, it needed to be scaled down quite a bit.  We started with a video of an 8 year-old walking with an 18 year-old, talking about how, as time goes on, their difference in age wouldn't be as creepy (leading us to believe that she had a crush on the older boy).

Getting over the natural high school hurdles when bringing up dating was pretty easy when we talked about how creepy it would be for an 8 year-old to date someone who is 18.  It got fun when we got to the 38 and 48 year-old scenario because most kids were in agreement that it was perfectly fine, even though the difference in age was always the same.  From here, I needed to scale a little.

We used the graph in Desmos to come up with a few more age ranges and determine their level of creepiness.  I liked doing this because it led us right into the table that students would fill out about what age would be the youngest they could date as they get older.  Most students were able to fill the table in quickly and get right into the weirdness of a 10 year-old dating a "younger" 12 year-old.  This didn't make sense... Kids were confused... and it was perfect.  From here, we were driven to the age restriction in which the formula wouldn't work - 14 years old.  

Our next step was to graph out the "half plus seven" rule.  Students worked to plot the points and graph it out, only to hear that they were ALL WRONG.  It's my fault, really, for not reminding them that their graph should start at 14 years. This was a good conversation about restrictors of functions and how they help us adequately define a legitemite range.  Who wants their 4 year-old dating a 9 year-old?  Not me, but let's stick to the math.

As students began shading in their inequality, many of them stopped.  "Wait, this doesn't make sense" was a phrase heard throughout the day.  What was happening?  Well, students were interpreting the data on their graph and realizing that there should be some sort of cap on what age should be the oldest a person could date.  After all, it didn't make any sense to have a 20 year-old dating someone who is 180.  Well done, Ms. 180 year-old person, well done... but NO.

During this part of the lesson, we went back to the table and discussed that there must be some sort of lid we can put on the ages to make them reasonable, so that Great Great Great Great Grandpa Stevens isn't dating someone who just turned 28... or 40... or 90 (Ewwwwww).

Students had a chance to graph the second portion of the dating scenario that would give them a range of acceptable dating ages and this was quite the struggle.  y <= 2x - 14 being graphed was tough because, in part, the graph paper didn't go below zero.  Plus, it just didn't make sense.  This part was alright by me because it invited good conversation.  We built the y-axis down to -20, plotted the y-intercept, and students took off from there with the graphing.  For the most part, kids were able to get into the lesson without too many complications.

We finished the lesson with a dreadful "But wait! But wait! The best part..." and for that, I'm pretty bummed out.  Datelines is definitely a two, maybe three day lesson.  We didn't get to the celebrity portion of the Romance Cone, or even a chance to lay the hammer of this range being called "The Romance Cone".  However, I wouldn't just want to drop it in at the end of the lesson, so I'm OK with leaving that out.  Hopefully Ms. Depweg will have a chance to go through some of the celebrity couples to finish the lesson, but it's OK if we didn't - it was a great math day.

That's how it went. Now I want to reflect on how it actually went.

Naturally, I have a great deal of respect for what teachers do on a regular basis, but something changes when you're in charge of the class for a full day.  I've observed plenty of teachers in the role that I now have, and it's easy to sit back and "sofa coach" them, critiquing what I would've done differently.  Now, this was my class for the day.  Ms. Depweg was there the entire day, but I was in charge.  Before the day began, I was told that the kids were outstanding yesterday.  Y'know what that means? 

I loved that the kids were true to their form today and not the angels they were yesterday for her.  She got the chance to see me struggle with the same students and scenarios that she deals with.  More importantly, she got the chance to see her class from a different perspective and realize that she is doing a good job with the kids she has. This is a more important piece that a lot of teachers never get the chance to experience, only comparing their stories to the stories of their peers' experiences in the staff room during lunch.

Grab your shovel; it's time to dig into some of those kids I encountered today:


There was Kristoff, a student who is constantly out of his seat, plays the "why you gotta pick on me" card often, and riles up his colleagues.  


There was Olaf, a student who habitually hangs her head to avoid being called on because she just. doesn't. get. it.


There was Anna, a student who is socially awkward, kind of the self-acclaimed teacher's pet, who loves sharing out her full response as if it were a dissertation defense.


There was Elsa, a student who is normally engaged, but had her head on the desk, headphones in, and just didn't want to be a part of the world she was surrounded by today.

Aside from the blatant change of names, all 4 of these things happened today.  And more.  It was a real day of school, giving me a nice shot in the arm of the respect that I need to constantly have for the difficult job that teachers take on.  Afterwards, Ms. Depweg and I talked about how to deal with, or help, these students and others who so desperately need it.  As a technology coach, as a human being, I felt like I let her down by saying "I don't know".  The sad part is, it's the truth.  

It's funny to tell teachers that I'm going back to the classroom to teach a lesson.  They look at me crazy and ask why, tell me good luck (because I'll need it), tell me I'm crazy, and a myriad of other responses, mostly neutral or negative.  I don't think that this is a red mark on the teacher's perspective of their profession, but more of a reason to respect them even more.  We don't truly appreciate the work that teachers like Ms. Depweg and others around the world who give everything they have for more than 180 days a year.

Thank you to Ms. Depweg for allowing me the opportunity to come in and hang out with your class.  You gave me a refresher of why the career I have chosen has been worth the time and effort that it has taken.  Thank you to Karim and the Mathalicious team for creating lessons that are more than just Real World - they are interesting.  I got to go in and talk to kids about dating.  In a math class.

One more student that I miss oh-so-much:

There was Kai, a student who greeted me right away by name, clearly not one of "the cool kids" by his peer's standards, but was so willing to make me feel welcome.  He was respectful, asked about me, and genuinely engaged in the activity.  As I was leaving the school for the day to return to my job of supporting teachers and away from the classroom, I was given the best parting gift I could've asked for. "Hey Mr. Stevens, thanks for being in our class today.  Have a great day"


Happy "Getting Maybe Just One More Kid To Care" Fishing