A Teacher Building Teacher Tech Tools, phase 1

I first entered the classroom as a student teacher in 2004, and there’s been a few changes in the technology available in secondary classrooms since then. I started off using an overhead projector(!) as I taught social studies to high school students, and coveted the few Smartboards and LCD projectors that the school had, which always seemed to land in the math department for some reason. 🤨 Though if I’m being honest, I did love a good demo of document analysis on an overhead transparency. My fingers were covered in expo marker ink most days.

Fast forward a bit, and the number of new applications, platforms, devices that teachers have embraced is enormous, especially as our classrooms became virtual during the Covid-19 pandemic. As I incorporated new technologies into my teaching practice, some that I’ve loved, some not so much, I began to wonder- how many experienced teachers are included in the development and design of these technologies? So here I am, after teaching for almost two decades, enrolled in a Software Engineering course at Flatiron School, learning the skills that I need to build tools that will support teaching and learning in our post-pandemic world.

Here, I present the first iteration of an application that I will continue to develop, one that aims to support teachers as they focus their instruction and assessment on learning standards and criteria, and helps them to reflect and continually build and improve their work in the classroom. It can be a bit of a mindset shift to ground all instruction in learning criteria, especially for social studies and history teachers, as we’re sometimes so used to plowing through content as quickly as we can before the end of the year exam. As educators know, the skills and learning how to learn are so much more valuable than memorizing facts and holding onto them until test day in June.

This “Teacher Reflection Tool” uses the International Baccalaureate’s learning criteria for the Individuals and Societies subject group, as this is what I have most recently taught. Since I could not find an API with the learning criteria stored in a format to use for a JavaScript built web app, I created my own JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file, focusing, for now at least, on the criteria for year 5 of the Middle Years Programme (typically grade 10 in the U.S.).

I used the JavaScript fetch() method to make a GET request of this internal API, and then used the filter() method to iterate through the data.

With the GET request and filter() method, I was then able to render the strands of each criterion to the web application, as seen below. The strands for the Knowing and Understanding criterion are visible in the picture below thanks to a “mouseover” event listener. The “mouseout” event listener then hides the information.

Finally, the right of the page shows the “Teacher Reflection Tool.” In my years of teaching, the qualities that have served me the most are reflection and collaboration. Every year, month, day, and even after every 45 minute class period, I would take stock of what went well, what didn’t, and the moves that I could make to improve instruction next time. This tool prompts teachers to log a strategy, connecting it to learning criteria, and documenting their reflections and plans for improvement. While the current iteration of this app (the bebe version) does not require collaboration, I imagine this tool could be used with teacher teams, and they could build a team library of strategies, with the criteria that each strategy can address and assess, with some real feedback and tips, and perhaps even a place to look at examples of student work and products from the implementation of the strategy.

Below, you can see the reflection tool’s use. A “submit” event listener is utilized to capture information in a form, and render that information into a “card” on the page.

In my work as my school’s Social Studies Department Leader, and as an Instructional Coach to other teachers, I often led discussions and activities around the strategies we would use, and the ways we were addressing the criteria. As a team, we would make and share Google Docs, but those documents would inevitably be forgotten in the school’s drive. With an easy to use app (and quick to use, every minute is precious in a high school, and teacher workloads are enormous!), perhaps teacher teams can help and support each other even more, sharing best practices, and elevating instruction team wide.