Recap: Farm Show Ag Ed Recruitment Event

PSU Teach Ag Avenger team, faculty, and professors talking with FFA students 

Penn State Teach Ag started the new year off with a bang at the Pennsylvania in Harrisburg PA! On Monday January 7th the Penn State Teach Ag Avenger team put on a workshop for 15 high-school students interested in teaching the future of agriculture. Throughout this workshop, students had the opportunity to as questions, and learn about what it means to study agricultural and extension education, and what it’s like to be a Penn State student. Students heard from current students, faculty, and professors of the Agricultural and Extension Education program to get an inside look at the opportunities Teach Ag at Penn State has to offer. 

One of the main discussions we had with students was that every single person involved in agricultural education has their own path. Luke Kerstetter, Teach Ag Avenger and current member of #psuaged20 said this about the event "Everyone has a different story behind their interests in Agricultural Education. It may be very diverse, but we all have the same goal in mind”.

This event was also held on the same day as the Pennsylvania FFA Mid-Winter Convention where 409 Keystone Degrees were awarded, and 365 first-year members put on their blue corduroy jackets for the first time. Seeing the impact that FFA and agricultural education has on so many students certainly was moving and truly was an amazing thing to watch.

Students at Mid-Winter Convention putting on their brand new FFA jackets for the first time. 

This was also the first day of student teaching for #psuaged19. Seeing the student teachers in action was such an awesome experience. Jess Barnhart, Teach Ag Avenger, and member of #psuaged20 said “I’d like to shine a light on our student teachers at Mid-Winter Convention. They truly were immersed in all that Ag Ed is really about by having that hands-on experience with their students.”

While speaking at Mid-Winter Convention, Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera said: “today’s FFA members are tomorrow’s industry and community leaders”. Here at Penn State, we are proud to play a role in helping to develop those future leaders within FFA.

Erin Langdale

Communications Team Member

Twitter: @ItsErinLangdale

Agricultural Education Student Teacher 2020

#teachagtech -> Using Infographics in the #TeachAg Classroom

Using Infographics in the #TeachAg Classroom

Using infographics in the #teachag classroom is another fun way of evaluating understanding in a creative way.  Infographics are becoming extremely popular to concentrate incredible amounts of information in an easy to read, compact form.  I have asked my students to create these graphics on two separate occasions this semester and even if the final project is neat to look at, there is a learning curve to develop the necessary operation skills along the way.  You will have to take some time and show students how each program works.  {For example: Do you select and slide the word bubble or just click and type.}

However, once students learn these programs are more intuitive than they originally thought, they begin to have fun with the graphics.  I feel it is important to introduce new forms of communication into the classroom as much as possible.  Using web-based infograph generators like Piktochart, visual.ly, infogr.am and the site I used to create the Chapter Degree Infographic above: easel.ly.  

If you would like to have the Greenhand Degree version of this, please visit my personal web page for the Greenhand Infographic.


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If you have specific needs regarding technology in your classroom or have additional questions about infographics, please feel free to connect with me via the TeachAg! Technology Help Ticket

Yours in the Quest to be a Tech Savvy Aggie,

     

Diane Glock-Cornman

PSU Teach Ag! Technologist
@DGCornman
+Diane
elearninag.com

Pinterest:
Being Mrs. C - TeachAg Pinterest Board
Agriculture and Essential Apps Pinterest Board

#teachagtech -> Using Google Forms for Formative Assessment

Assessments are everywhere, but one way to ease the burden of constantly assessing students’ understanding is using Google Forms for formative assessments.  I have used this several times already and have enjoyed seeing the student responses to the automatic feedback. 

To learn how to set-up a Google Form, please watch the following video:

Setting up a Google Form for the Agriculture Classroom

{For anyone who wants to use Evernote as a repository for information and would like to know where you can find your Evernote e-mail:  Log-in or Sign-up for Evernote >  In the web based version you will see your name in the upper right corner > Click on your name > Than click on "Account Settings".  There at the bottom of your "Account Summary" page you will find your Evernote e-mail which ends in "@m.evernote.com".  You can copy this into your e-mail contacts for easy reference to save a whole host of materials.}

Once you have the Google Form established, you will want to add the Flubaroo script in order to automatically grade the assignment.  In addition, you can e-mail student results to them with the answer key if you choose.  Please review the following video for this information:

Using Flubaroo in Formative Assessment 

When you have e-mailed the results of the assessment out to students, this is what they will receive:

You too will receive an e-mail that shows you the number of student responses, whether you included the key, and a quick link to the “Responses” form.  It looks something like this:

I am beginning to love the Google Form tool.  It provides a way for us to collect information for our FFA Chapters, survey students or evaluate the level of our students’ understanding.  {For those non-educators reading, you can do the same for various types of feedback.  Perhaps you had a safety briefing at your place of business and you want to see how much information your employees retained prior to a formal qualifying exam, you could poll them the same way.}  

As a side note:  this blog post came about through a collaboration between myself and my PAAE / PSU Center for Professional Department mentee +Caleb Wright (@thewrightcaleb).  It is a wonderful experience to help with real-time questions to help in classrooms.  Caleb wanted a way to easily assess his students, but have the material available later for students to study for the summative assessment.  Proud of our young teachers out there who are innovative and working hard! (I neglected to mention this in the original posting.)

I hope what I have to offer will be of use to you in your classroom.  If you would like to see learning technology tidbits, follow me on Twitter @DGCornman.  

Yours in the Quest to be a Tech Savvy Aggie,

     

Diane Glock-Cornman

PSU Teach Ag! Technologist
@DGCornman
+Diane
elearninag.com

Pinterest:
Being Mrs. C - TeachAg Pinterest Board
Agriculture and Essential Apps Pinterest Board