So you are into technology, now what?

An insane two weeks of connectivity, and I am on the more moderate side of things, has left me wondering where this is all heading. So many new tools that shorten the distance between worlds and worldviews have popped up. Twitter has just blown holes in my ability to disconnect. Now it's even infected my iPhone, keeping me glued to the action in any setting (is there a hack to install twitterific on the iPhone?). Whether it's uStream, Operator11, or even plain old Skype, our ability to teach and be taught on the spot by anyone who is willing is really throwing wrenches into my ability to filter out what matters and what doesn't.

Stephanie Sandifer, who just seems to be driving a lot of my thinking lately, rattled off this great post on Friday, which contained the following push:

In a comment or on a blog post on your own blog — take some time to reflect on and address the following questions:

What? (…is going on with our work, with our blogging, with our exploration… OR …new tools are we discovering, playing with, trying to find classroom uses for?)

So What? (Who cares? Why is this important? Why is this not important? What does it matter? Will it ever matter?)

Now What? (What do we do NEXT? What kind of gameplan do we need? Do we need a game plan? Do we collaborate, start over from scratch, quit doing whatever we are doing altogether, or disappear somewhere deep in Second Life? Seriously — WHAT NOW?)

much in the same way Steve Dembo dropped this on us Friday afternoon after the previously mentioned week of interconnection:

Time for Friday afternoon reflection: Share something you learned this week. (No websites or tools. Something new you actually LEARNED)

My reactions to these questions are below, but I before you read mine, I encourage you all to think along these lines as well. In the past, when we introduced new ideas into classroom pedagogy, we had the comfort of knowing that there would be ample time before the next "big thing" would come along. Now, do we have that time?

First, in reverse order, my response to Steve was as follows:

Learned that our best assets in the classroom are still our teachers who have vision and the guts to follow it.

By this I was referring to the meetings I had with teachers this week, all who wanted to push themselves and their students beyond what was required of them. I think I am fortunate to work in two buildings where things have really caught fire in terms of expanding the walls of the classroom. Our teachers want to be involved in creating with their students, and want to reach students in meaningful ways, and the explosion of collaborative technology truly augments their desire. The fact that they are becoming more adventurous each day makes me excited to be a part of the process.

Stephanie's post is slightly more difficult as it is truly forcing me to analyze where I am going.

What: When I answer this question, the first thing that comes to mind is our stated goal of trying to expand our learning time to outside of the 40 minutes we see the students. Our first steps involve getting teachers to use collaborative writing tools: Google Docs, wikispaces, 21Classes, etc. As far as some of the tools I mentioned in the opening, those tools are going to take time to trickle into the classrooms, but that "seep time" is so dramatically shortened by the situations our teachers are creating. One teacher wanted her students to create a news broadcast for a mock trial and I immediately thought: Ustream!

So What: What's important to me is that our teachers have begun to see that their learning cannot stagnate; if I can get around to it this year, I am going t really push for the creation of PLE's for our teachers. The translation to the students will be immediate. Case in point: we gave tablet pc's to nearly 80% of our high school staff, and the students in those classes are being exposed to resources that those teachers were privy to, but did not know how to translate them into the classroom. The level of transparency is unprecedented.

Now What: Our big focus, in my humble opinion, is to keep asking this question. Tools are not what we need to focus on, but the teaching is. If our teaching does not match our technological abilities, all we have is a digital dog and pony show. When we stop looking at these tools as a means to an end, then we have failed our teachers and our students.

The best meeting I have had this year with a teacher did not involve my laptop or discussion of tech, but rather a discussion of pedagogy and the Socratic Method. As tech coordinators and technofiles, we bridge a gap between teaching and technology. We cannot afford to be lacking on either side of our expertise.


Technorati Tags: sandifer,, ustream,, operator11,, skype,, dembo,, education,, reflection,, pedagogy,, technology


Image credit: Bridge Suspension, from Jeff Epstein on Flickr

Tablet PC's and a Fenway-style venue

This past Monday we had a district-wide professional development day which, for a majority of our staff was the standard type professional development day: two sessions, or one long session and go home. For a group of 70+ high school teachers, it was four hours of introduction to a new challenge.

Last summer, we began to field interest from our high school staff regarding whether or not they would be interested in obtaining a tablet pc for this coming school year. The focus was originally on the teachers who would be teaching in the portable classrooms during the reconstruction, but also on teachers who showed interest. We found more money than we thought we would, so we ordered many more than showed interest initially. Monday, was the first day where we had all of the teachers together to begin 10 weeks of focused professional development around a specific skill or application. Here are the "strands" as we are calling them:

• Podcasting
• Journal or OneNote
• Screencasting
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Connectivity
• UnitedStreaming and Assessment
• Teacher or Student-created applications.

When we put together this program, we really looked at the ability of the tablet to transform their teaching. We did not want our teachers to get a laptop, a tablet at that, and continue to teach as they were before the tablet. We want transformation and content creation. Our staff, like many in the nation and world, consists of some extremely bright, creative people who are producing magnificent content on a daily basis. Our idea is that if the content is being produced, why not push it out to a larger audience, or push it out to our students in a manner that will allow them ubiquitous access to the content.

Four hours in a cafeteria with me had to be broken up somehow, and last week I asked for help with my presentation via a Voicethread. While I still don't have any of my teachers adding to the Voicethread, I did have some all-star participation from my network: Chris, Clay, Sue, Barbara, Anthony, Melanie, Kevin (sorry, no link), and Robin. All were fantastic, and my staff were rapt with their comments and the fact that they took the time to speak to us. Sue actually hijacked my presentation for a while with her comments and asked a series of questions regarding connectivity and the terms we use with Web 2.0. If they knew the answer or had heard of the term, they were to put their hands on their heads, if not, they were to put their hands on their backside. Here is the proof:

The majority did not know the terms Sue was asking them, but by the end of the session, they were on their way to understanding how to connect to the right sources to find out. Note to self: leave Skype until the last thing you show them. Once they found out they could call each other or message each other it was effectively the end of my presentation. However, introducing them to the power that it brings (Thanks, Cathy for the impromptu call from South Carolina!) to the classroom and your own development was worth losing them to playtime a little early.




Technorati Tags: tabletpc,, contentcreation,, teaching,, eduction,, staffdevelopment

Shut that Laptop!

In the last week and a half, my world has been flattened faster than in the previous fifteen months of, shall I say, unabashed geekery. I helped Kim Cofino (along with 17-20 others) present in Bangkok via Google Presentations, I participated in Social Software 07 with Darren Draper and Robin Ellis (sorry I missed tonight), watched Will, Steve, and David on Weblogg-ed TV via UStream, been involved with David Warlick's Fireside Chat on Tuesday night along with a whole slew of people worldwide, and sat in on a call with Graham Wegner, Sue Waters, and Clay Burell this morning to discuss David's keynote a little further.

However, there are two significant events that occurred within the last 24 hours, both centering around a premise that was far less technological in its nature. After falling asleep with the boy Tuesday night at 9:00pm, I woke up at 11:00pm to put him in his bed. On the way back to my bed, I checked the computer to see what portion of my network was still functioning. There was the maiden voyage of Practical Theory TV on UStream: something I couldn't pass up. If you are ever feeling too immersed in the tools, and you have lost sight of the real reason we are employed, grab a seat when Chris is talking, or read his blog, because his perspective never allows him to get too lost on what is cool and new, but rather always brings him back to application and pedagogy. Last night was no different.

Through the course of the 30 or so minutes I was there, Chris and the rest of the crew that were there hashed out the meaning behind a tool like UStream as it relates to student work and student understanding. Yes, very cool tool, but what would a student do with it that they couldn't do before? How would using UStream significantly alter their understanding of the topic they are grappling with? Through trial and error, much discussion, and play, we were eventually able to pull in Dean Shareski onto the UStream channel so that he was visible and audible to the rest of the audience (through some tinkering and use of CamTwist and Skype). The driving question behind the whole broadcast was not "hey look how cool this!" but rather, what does this mean for teaching? I walked away from that with more perspective than I realized at the moment.

This afternoon, I met with a Language Arts teacher regarding a culminating project for some research they are doing on environmental issues. My role in our schools, Technology Coordinator, tends to predispose me to look for technological solutions to projects like this, and that's what the meeting started out as. However, as I listened to Laura talk about what she was seeing in the students and their understanding of the research process, of the factors that were contributing to the worldwide environment crisis, my focus again shifted towards questions that were less centered on technology, but rather on giving the students an experience that allowed them to interconnect their converging ideas about the environment. And, unlike 90% of my meetings with teachers, we never once looked at a computer screen. What we designed made me envious of not being in the classroom full-time anymore: a summit representing all of the research angles the students took with the end goal, unbeknownst to them, to have them discover the obstacles to achieving solutions to their issues lie in human behavior.

This provided me with a glimpse into some potential that might be there for me: lesson design and creation. I've said it before, probably all too often, but the tools we use as teachers need not be networked in the fashion that all of us are used to now. Having students understand that "networking" can begin within the four walls of the classroom and extend beyond that is an area that perhaps needs some study.

Pitch in to my Presentation

The Students Have Spoken

Diane Cordell and I have been conducting some impromptu research via our own interest in the role of schools in the lives of children and the communities in which they exist. The original post was spurred on by Barry Bachenheimer's question to me:

Is the purpose of school to get students ready for the world of work? I argue, no. I think the purpose of school is the encourage students to do, read, see, and learn things that they wouldn't do if left to their own adolescent devices. For example, if left to me, I never would have read half the "classic" novels I read in high school, watched classic films, read the NY Times, or gone to certain museums. Now as an adult, I am glad that I was pushed to do those things. It has made me a more rounded person.

but it came to be much more because Diane and I pushed it out to our students (well, I borrowed some). Diane's student's responses can be found here and are well worth a look. They drive at the need for school to be a safe place that has clear expectations.

Our students were a little more specific, and that may have a lot to do with how I framed the question. But needless to say, here is how the students I asked the question of responded on the class wiki:

In my honest opinion, I believe that schools are doing the best they can right now, they are teaching life skills and how to react with people, while giving them an education. I think that I learn best in a clean environment.

I think that school should provide a base education for students to give them as many opportunities in the future as possible. The standard for base education should be high though, don't get me wrong. Schools should prepare us for life by supplying us with knowledge, obviously, and other skills needed to survive in the world, like social skills, common sense, knowing right from wrong, and other things. It isn't the school's problem if the students don't use the skills taught to them once out of school, but the schools need to provide these things so that the students have the greatest possibility of success. The school enviroment should be clean, friendly, and practical. The environment isn't all that important because all students learn differently in different atmospheres.

...

I also believe that schools are doing as best as they can, but I live in a middle-upperclass town so I do not know if the same can be said for towns and cities with a lower school budget. Although, I feel that schools should be clean and well-equiped with modern technology.

...

In general, schools should be geared to meet the needs of the majority of students. For our school, that probably means preparation for college or other higher learning. I myself am fortunate enough to have a voice inside my head (not literally) who helps to ensure that I take the proper steps in order to reach my college education, but many I people I know lack such a "voice". Because of this, I feel, rather strongly, that high schools need to be more goal-oriented toward the futures of their respective students, and they should be better acquainted with the college admissions process.

...

You asked, and I will answer. I'm going to say the honest truth. I have become jaded for school. I do not believe it will influence ANYTHING in my future career course, unless there's a Video game Design and Development class in this school. What I want is a teacher who can connect to the student, who can teach with all the modern technology (props to Davis and Scott on the wikis), and a teacher who can be forgiving in a time of a mistake. Life is not meant to be a non-stop 79mph crash course through a never ending flow of work. Teachers seem to forget that as students, we have opinions on our work. As a Game Designer, how will I ever need to use Proofs of Geometry? That makes the class boring, and therefore listening and learning become RIDICULOUSLY more difficult. In my life, weekends = essays, projects, outlines, etc. When I come to school, I want a teacher who realizes that we have lives outside of school that need tending to. I am of the belief that all things in moderation leads to a successful life.

Also, this may just be me talking, but I prefer a more Socratic method of teaching. As in, talking and discussing, and where everyone's opinion is key to the lesson. We still use the archaic, slow, mind-tramping process of learning through reading the text. I feel true knowledge can not be plainly read, it must be taken in of one's own accord, processed, understood, and released to others. If we read what we are forced to, we simply scan the information and speak or write it when someone puts a quarter in the slot, and just like machines, we don't benefit.

...

I think that schools should both prepare students for the workforce later on in life and give them a standard education. However, if you want to be a fashion designer, I don't think that whether or not you took physics should matter. There should be certain requirements, but they should be catered to certain career paths. This is because so many people, when they are done with high school, are not prepared for the workforce, not even the work they are passionate about. School and its work takes up so much time, that many people can't uphold or maintain jobs, thus acquiring a poor work ethic. If you constantly have to quit jobs left and right, it will not only make you look less dependable in a job interview, but then for the rest of your life, when the going gets tough either in work, or outside of it, you will always find some reason to quit or to stop showing up. Schools should try to incorporate classes that prepare students for the workforce and that can help them develop a good work ethic.

I think we should be allowed to use cell phones and IPODS in school. If it is going to be shoved in our faces left and right, how could you ignore it? By integrating websites such as this one into our education, we are not only saving trees, but benefiting from one anothers ideas. This website allows kids who are shy or quiet or even mute to share their opinions. But that's just my opinion...

Regardless of teen angst or the current reconstruction project going on at our high school, these comments speak to the idea of relevance, and that more than anything else we need to be teaching content that matters, that moves, that equips our students for a lifetime of change, and fluid, seemingly disparate careers that blend into one another. Our students are really ready for us to change.

Image credit:
"Student Protestors" Dave Bullock / eecue

Kyle MacDonald and the Absence of Fear

One of our English teachers at the high school, Dee Peselli, invited a young man, author, traveler and opportunist Kyle MacDonald, to speak to her classes the other day in our auditorium. I have been so busy between the two buildings I work in that it was only by the stroke of good luck that I heard the Media Specialist talking about setting up the projector and the cameras for the speaker. When I asked her who was speaking, her response was "that paperclip guy."

Last year, on a flight to Florida, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a man who began a quest to trade a red paperclip in the hopes of getting something better. That man was MacDonald, and after a year of trading, he did indeed get something far better than a paperclip. He got a house, complete with deed and tax bill.

He also wrote a book about the experience, and part of what he does now is promote that book. The other part of what he does now is travel. Dee hooked up with him just because, as she put it, "His number was on the website, so I called." Kyle happened to be passing through to Atlanta on Wednesday and asked if he could stop by to speak with our students. For two hours he answered questions about the process of trading a red paperclip for other objects and services until making the final trade for a house.

Peppered throughout his presentation, aside from a raucous slideshow, were some sagacious moments where the students asked him basic questions, like "where did this idea come from?" or "why do this?" His answers, which I guess are at the heart of the book, really struck a chord with the students. His motivation truly stemmed from an absence of fear. His dad had asked him this question:

"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

He wholeheartedly admits that the question is straight from Who Moved My Cheese, but still, it added such value to his idea, and it immediately dictated how he set out on this quest.

It reminds me of the posts that and the chatter that came out on the backchannels at NECC when Chris Lehmann began asking everyone "what is the worst possible consequence of your best idea?" The questions are similar in that both ask you to examine the sources of what is halting your progress, and then summarily dispose of that constraint.

How would we progress forward if we weren't sometimes our own biggest enemy? I am sitting here trying to put together this presentation on Teaching with Tablet PC's and introducing a group of 70+ teachers to the idea of creating and publishing content that is accessible to an audience wider than 150 students, yet I find myself holding a lot back due to the tendency for this to overwhelm people. Should that fear suspend what I think should be said and shown?

Burma

The second teaching job I had was one in which I was asked to a great deal of juggling. I taught English, Basic Skills, United States History and World Geography all within the span of two years. While it was crazy planning for all of the classes, one of the greatest experiences in how to manage and motivate a teaching staff occurred for me during that time.

Our curriculum was always being studied and dissected in the district, which some viewed as a tiresome process, but I always looked at it as exciting; it was current and active. Every year, especially in World Geography, we added a new facet to study because of the changing nature of the world, its borders, and the inhabitants therein. To that end, as a second year teacher, our building principal asked me to design a unit of study with him.

Stop.

Maybe I was too young to realize it, but my experience in education since then has shown me that the principal of the building spending two weeks in my classroom for a portion of the day working with me and my students was unprecedented and definitely not the norm. Also, in that same vein, it saddens me that it is not.

What we created was a unit of study based upon the last large-scale Burmese uprising for Democracy in 1988 led by Aung San Suu Kyi. For three weeks, we took our students through a comparative study of what occurred in Burma and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We compared it with other democratic struggles in the past twenty years, and compared it to the struggle that the U.S. went through during the formation of our Constitution.

Hearing, as I did of yesterday's call for blogging about the issue in Burma, it instantly reminded me of that unit I planned, and how I Roger Taylor-ed the heck out of it: video from Witness, behind the scenes footage from John Pilger of the BBC, biographies, and a culminating event that featured students from the United States Campaign for Burma in a small group session with our students.

When I hear about the work that Clay is doing, or others around the world who are creating authentic lessons with real-world implications, I get a little nostalgic for the classroom. The ideal situation would involve doing a little bit of both.