Indications That You Are Moving in the Right Direction

This from teacher I worked with a few weeks ago on establishing a wiki for her AP US History Class:

did you see the first completed review page on my wiki--pretty awesome. some of the links are careless and even useless, but I've noticed so far with the new page that they're linking in more useful resources. i am very pleased with the content and organization. thanks!

And then this from her students:

it makes it easier to communicate with ALL of your classmates, not just the ones you normally talk to outside of school.. also, its awesome because its a group project that everyone can collaborate on but we don't all have to be together to work on it

But also the project has opened up valid discussion about the merits of using such technology in schools:

I hate the AP review project. It is a superfluous use of technology that only leads to frustration. More time is spent organizing the page and competing with overachievers for things to do then actually learning anything about history. Scrap it please before it evolves into a worse monster that no one can manage.

On Thursday and Friday of this week, I worked with two groups of teachers on the merits of feedback as a means of self-assessment for teachers. While the workshop wasn't packed to the gills, the teachers I worked with began to see why I survey them every time they leave my classes.

As people in the art and science of education, we have to be able to get constructive feedback from our stakeholders in addition to the few observations that are done by our administration. Two or three snapshots are not enough to transform our teaching in a meaningful way. Our most important stakeholders, our students, need to be voiced in the process of their own education. Imagine using the survey results as a basis for class discussion where the points made by the students are validated and discussed, or using the results as a basis for planning a new lesson and informing the students that this lesson was driven by their comments on the last unit, or last lesson.

Ownership

Since hearing Alan November speak, I am intrigued by the idea of ownership of learning and the roles of teachers and students in a classroom. I have spent the last year talking about authentic learning, tools, technology, and pedagogy in the 21st Century and how different it should be, but what does that look like? My wife asked me a question last night: how do I engage my 4th graders in their own learning? I had no direct answer. It took a few minutes of really thinking and brainstorming to find out where she needed to go (I also asked the Twitter network) I realized that it takes a lot more than just knowing that there needs to be a change, and that there will be a change in our classrooms, than actually affecting that change.

Surveying the students and finding out what works for them in your lessons and units begins to take them towards ownership of the learning because they begin to see their role in their own learning. "Hey, I can drive this process!" It takes a teacher willing to listen and act on those suggestions heard.


Technorati Tags: alannovember, wikis, survey, pedagogy, twitter, classrooms, 21stcentury

A Not-So-Prescribed-View

Starting back at school is a rush for me. So much excitement and hope by both teachers and students alike. As I walked through our high school yesterday, I was besieged by a group of teachers who were recipients of tablet PC's this past summer and had undergone the beginnings of a series of professional development on how to teach with this machine at their disposal.

The questions were so unusual, as they pushed the envelope beyond what I had expected:

• Can we set up our skype accounts to work in class?
• How do import my presentations into Journal so I can write and highlight on them?
• What is a wiki?
• Are you offering any more courses on blogging?
• How do you screencast?

Yesterday, I thought about the barrage of tasks and questions that we are faced with as the year begins, most of them being of the mundane type: logins, access to software, licensing, projector hookups, SMARTboards, etc. But this new round of questions thrilled me to the core. Are we beginning to look at a new path?

I came across a post from Harold Jarche today in which he speaks about the difference between working hard and doing hard work. The questions I have begun to answer in my buildings seem to feel more like the hard work. Although they may initially be wrapped in the finer details of software and hardware, this group of teachers now has the ability to unshackle themselves from the confines of teacher-centrism and begin creating networked learning for themselves and their students. Jarche describes the difference like this:

Anyone can work hard, but it takes courage to take on the hard work of changing our communities, questioning the education system or creating a non-profit organisation with no guaranteed return on investment. Hard work is not about literacy, numeracy or even civics. Hard work is questioning underlying assumptions and seeing new patterns and then taking action on this knowledge. Critical thinking is not only hard work, but it’s difficult to teach and not easy to measure. No wonder schools avoid it.

Last year, I remember being thrilled to handle any of the old-guard type questions about access and logins, because everything was so new. One year later, and I marvel at how my thinking has changed and been challenged to change even more. Also, the first time I stood before the faculty of the high school and pitched the idea of a wiki was a classic memory that will stand to make me laugh heartily by the end of this year I am sure: a 1950's auditorium with an overhead projector, dim lights, and screenshots copied to laser printer transparencies, a staff looking at me like I was speaking Hawaiian (which, partly, I was), and crickets chirping as I finished telling them the times and dates of the classes I was offering.

These new questions, these new ideas coming from this small cadre of tablet teachers, will help me transform our pedagogy, even if we have to answer the old questions still.

Flickr photo credit to Alexanderdrachman's Photostream.

Presentation at NJECC

Today two teachers that I worked with on a recent wiki project are presenting at NJECC, and I just threw together a quick presentation using spresent. Also, below is a podcast of the interview their students did with author Edward Bloor.







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An Appeal for Opinions

As it is Saturday, and I have a rare quiet moment in the house (boy is sleeping and my wife is at the dentist), I sat down to hammer out some content on the wiki for this week's workshops. Since it lent itself most to this format, I began putting together my resources for "Welcome to Web 2.0" and soon realized that there were too many directions to go in. And if I am feeling that way, how do I expect my teachers to feel when I begin talking to them on Thursday?

The class is broken into three, one-hour sessions, one-week apart, and I thought the best thing to do then was to separate the class into three sections: what is Web 2.0, RSS Feeds and using the web to work "for" you, and a student collaboration piece. Now, my question to the world at large is fairly simple and beautifully complex: based on those three categories, where do you think I should take them? Teachers: what would you want to be taught about Web 2.0 and its classroom uses or what has stuck with you from any workshops or formal training? Technologists: what do you think the most essential message is in terms of what teachers should see in order to connect to their students? Admins: What do you want your teachers to know?

I want the staff to walk out of the meeting not necessarily armed with a ready-made lesson for them to take to class, but with a little cognitive dissonance. They should be energized but slightly unsettled to the point that they email during the week, or post on the discussion board of the wiki because they want more clarity. Yet, I don't want to have them tune out the tech guy because I am talking over their heads.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

School 2.0: Where I am

In response to David Warlick's post on School 2.0 (which deserves a reading), I left this comment more in response to some of the responses he generated. Specifically, two responders who pointed out that David was speaking to an already converted crowd, one that had already begun implementing School 2.0. But what about teachers who are in the classrooms who do not have the luxury of mining the internet in search of not only the tools, but also implementation strategies. As one of the lucky "miners," I take the responsibility of bringing these tools and strategies to my staff very seriously. Here are the responses (comments shortened): .

From Em:

I’m doing a seven-part series with my staff this year on Web 2.0 tools. Trust me, they are stunned and amazed at blogs, have never heard of wikis, assume that podcasts are the same as iTunes, and were blown away yesterday by my discussion of RSS and social bookmarking as tools for organizing. We are barely into the second wave of adopters. We’ve got quite a ways to go before these tools are familiar and comfortable with the majority of educators.

From Candace:

Em is right. They do NOT know what wikis are. They have heard the word “blog” but have no idea why it has anything to do with school, and have not heard the term “web 2.0.” Even attorneys and professors I meet professionally say, “what’s that.” ...I am not criticizing you, just pointing out the inevitable social nature of web 2.0 proponents– that you (we) do converse among ourselves so well that we forget about others who are not even in the room. We all need to be more aware of the LARGE group of teachers/general public who are not “there yet.”

My response:

Your post, I see has resonated in two ways: those who have adopted and are applying, and those who are adopting and trying to convert. I fall into the convert category, but let me just describe briefly my experience with Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, more specificially, wikispaces.

Since January 1st, I have helped 8 teachers begin their own wikis for class projects, and each of them, to the person, has responded with a gasp after the first night that their students were active on the site. One of the teachers termed it an “explosion” of student activity.

For Em and Candace from above: get the teachers on and let them play, then unleash the students. When your staff sees how much these technologies extend the classroom, they will want more of it. My advice is to publicize your successes as well. As a former teacher, I know that when I saw other teachers doing cool things, I wanted in as well. To be so bold, check out our district tech blog at http://techdossier.blogspot.com. You will find our teacher’s wikis there too.

As with many of the technology that we’ve brought into the classroom in the last 20 years, it will all become cliched, but what I like about David’s diagram’s are the ways in which they reflect “real” learning. Social learning, connectivism, and multiple intelligences all fit very well into the model of school 2.0 that David suggests here.

The IMspeak debate

How do I answer the question regarding whether or not to allow students to use IM language on school related webs? I always felt that this decision should not be a district-wide policy, but rather a more informed, specialized decision coming after reflection from the teachers. I have bookmarked this post by David Warlick from which I pulled this quote. In it, he is responding to a comment on his blog by a women named Beth who ardently disagrees with using anything other than proper and complete English in all university writing, especially the school newspaper:

I respectfully disagreed with Beth, who describes herself in her blog as “..a freelance scientist, educator, artist, model and social engineer”. We tend to give writing assignments with the assumption that the pinnacle goal of all children is to become a college professor. We seem to want to train our children to grow up to be scholars. There is history to this, where there was a time when you went to college to become a scholar. Most other occupations were achieved through apprenticeships.

When Beth writes to her scientist friends, she will write in a style and with a vocabulary that is different than what and how she will write to her model friends. In writing about social engineering she will speak from the same creative energy as with art, but the voice will still be different.

My point is that we should be teaching students to communicate with audiences in order to accomplish goals. The style of communication, the vocabulary, and even the spelling will depend on the audience and the goal, and that’s what we should teach.

I have had discussions with teachers in my buildings on the topic of whether or not we should allow IMspeak on any of our online publications or wikis. The line falls in a similar spot as the one in the debate over whether students should use Citation Machine for works cited sections of research papers.

This is a great set of paragraphs here, where the need for teaching audience trumps that of enforcing overarching grammar rules. This is where the discussion should be. My humble interpretation of the future leads me to believe that those with the ability to specifically communicate with a targeted audience will be the most sought after individuals in the new economy.