Learning Mosaic

It’s not officially summer vacation for me as I work until July 1, then fly to the US for time with family and friends. But summer work hours are 9-2 so I have more after-hours time for summer projects. I’ve started by working out with longer walk/runs and in-between pilates classes work. I’m also working the 7 Habits through text and audio of Covey’s book. But yesterday I virtually followed #ebc09, #necc09 and attended Vicki Davis’s Web2.0 Smackdown session (#w2smack). It was fairly insane and challenging to listen, follow the chat and links, and record links on a word doc- so many windows open at once, a sometimes sluggish PC (my Mac needs a US AppleDoctor) and my ADSL on Spanish siesta mode. It was great to say hello via chat to friends and see my fabulous friend Chris present a few audio tools.

Then I found a blog post by Kris Hagel with the post title, “Following Conferences Virtually Is Like Drinking From a Firehose” I had to laugh- so true. So in Kris’s spirit of sharing, here are the links I compiled from yesterday’s Smackdown session. Thank you Vicki and everyone on the chat who posted the links for us!

http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Home/

http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/ visual lit type activities

http://compfight.com/

http://www.pimpampum.net/toys/

http://taggalaxy.de/v

http://issuu.com/

http://twoogle.browsys.com/

http://www.woot.com/

Besides Woot.com, there’s 1saleaday.com and dodtracker.com

http://taggalaxy.de/

http://www.noteflight.com/login

http://www.jamstudio.com/Studio/index.htm

(Chris Chater’s Audio tools blog http://ecis07.blogspot.com/search/label/Free%20Audio%20Tools)

http://tineye.com/ reverse image search

http://todaysmeet.com/

http://bumptechnologies.com/

Kevin Honeycutt’s Web 2.0 smackdown video re his Web 2.0 keychain and album. http://bit.ly/3px1Ql

http://www.youtube.com/user/kevinessdack#play/all/uploads-all/0/COwng0hrwcE

keychain idea: http://www.twitpic.com/4ornv

http://iconnectilearn.ning.com/

smackdown wiki  http://www.edubloggercon.com/Web+2+Smackdown+2009

So excited to be able to actually attend BLC09 and edubloggercon east in 4 weeks! that will be even more fast and furious!

Ok, so I haven’t posted in a long time. I have written notes and drafts for posts but have been so bogged down in the day-to-day whatever that I’ve felt zapped at the end of the day. As the sun rises, birds singing on the moring of the last day of classes on campus for students and staff, I’m looking forward to 2 weeks of summer work, 4 weeks of vacation, and then summer work in August. Not so much looking forward to the commute to school, but am looking forward to the time to reflect, plan and prep for next year to make it an even more successful and enjoyable year than this year.

I’m looking forward to:

• Diving into my unread books
• Getting caught up on favorite blogs, starting with these: langwitches alwayslearning bitbybit E-LearningJourneys EwanMcIntosh FlatWorldEducation(http://rcarrier.edublogs.org/) and many others I have on my reader.
• Build my SmartBoard skillset
• Post to this blog and comment on others- contribute more.
• Build understanding of UbD, differentiated instruction, project-based learning and how to weave them.
• BLC09 in Boston including a day at the MIT Media Lab (have been wanting to attend this conf for years!)
• Learn how to play games- Myst and Spore and build Scratch skills

At the risk of appearing a work-aholic, I do have plans for many hours with family, friends and the ocean. But one of my passions is my vocation and I look forward to slower-paced reflection and learning over the summer.

Time to breathe!

I’ve collaborated with other schools recently as a tech-facilitator and before now for over 15 or more years as an elementary classroom teacher through email, wikis, blogs, Voicethread and Skype. However, Silvia Tolisano’s Around the World with 80 Schools collaboration I’m participating in now is different in that a template for participation and participant network was already established when I began. Also important is it’s ideal for the teachers I work with who are new to global/online collaboration because the community and template were established and the time commitment allows for easy integration into the established classroom environment. The framework is flexible enough to allow many conversations or a few a year and classroom-based participation or school-wide as we are doing. I have also enjoyed the opportunity to expand my PLN through the contacts I am making while setting up conversations for classrooms. Most of all, the students are excited, engaged and they raise questions for further learning that wouldn’t have occurred to me.

So, why participate? Why make the minimal effort to have a short conversation with students in a class on another continent? For me, the answer is that the students and I feel lifted up, engaged, and want to know more about what our new friends know and think about our world. The social interaction and connection is stimulating. But not all educators are on the same path- what is passionately clear to me is not for everyone, so I feel the responsibility to ask Why? to be able to effectively express my point of view to those who aren’t “in the choir.”

I can start by again sharing the ISTE NETs standards, but these are a bit broad for a starting point.

I wanted to refer to conversations and research so I started with Silvia’s post where she shares the project and links to other related posts she’s written.

I then decided to re-listen to SOS Podcast 2: How does making connections affect learning? With David Carpenter, Jeff Utecht, and guests Justin Medved and Julie Lindsay. Here are a few of the thoughts I came away with:
-Students know how to use tech for entertainment and communication but not as well to communicate and collaborate for learning.
-How well do we value and allow process, sharing and reflection of learning?
-Collaborations create an authentic audience that engages kids in the learning process
-Students can learn how to collaborate globally (as they will no doubt be doing in their future) by doing it.
-Start with the end in mind and if we believe in these 21st Century outcomes we need to redesign what we are doing with our curriculum.

I also found a Wes Fryer post from 2 years ago(!)
Wes shared quotes from Google CEO Eric Schmidt when asked in a WIRED interview, “Google’s revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?
His response:  It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model remains small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. The attempt to provide order drives out the creativity. And so it’s a balance.
To this Wes reflected, “The lesson here is that the business world does not merely want to hire listeners and fact regurgitators, but rather thinkers who can collaborate, “run fast” and create innovative ideas which reflect both higher level thinking as well as creativity.”

The SOS podcast was recorded a little over a year ago and Wes’s post was written 2 years ago. While progress is being made and I am inspired every day from contact with those in my PLC, I am also impatient because it seems we’re still just discussing these issues and stalled in this regard in most schools.

As a classroom teacher I would use 80 Schools from the first week of school. First begin to explore the talents and interests of each person in the room but also introduce the classrooms we have access to and the possibilities of interaction with the individuals in those rooms. An 80 Schools Ning and Twitter group would be a great way to share what classes are studying and experiencing that would be beneficial topics for other classrooms. I can see it as a living, thriving collaboration for the entire year.

Finally, just as I have a PLNetwork or PLCommunity, students in a classroom should be growing their own as well- the network within and outside the classroom walls. We need CLNs- Classroom Learning Networks and our 80 Schools collaboration is the first example of a CLN that I have participated in.

Recently, students and teachers have been unable to find files that are accidentally moved. I don’t know how this happens- seems to occur from grade 1 up and I believe it is accidental in most cases- although I’m not sure with the older grades. Another problem is inability to remember or correctly enter an account password. Whether it’s mistakes, learned helplessness or boredom with the tech pace in class I see a need for creating a beginning of the year boot camp for this fall. As the elementary tech facilitator I provide teacher and student support without being the lab teacher (lab classes are planned and led by the classroom teacher) so my contact with students is based on opportunities to co-plan and co-teach lessons in the classroom and lab.

This idea is a seed just planted and my initial thought is several weeks of classes in the lab at the beginning of the year. Each grade level class will be focused on different skills and ideally incorporate current class content and skills. I’ve informally used Understanding by Design for several years but have no formal training- planning this K-5 unit and grade level units will be a great opportunity to learn more and apply the UbD format to planning. I’d also like to frame each lab session to end with keyboarding, “sandbox” and group reflective discussion (10-10-5 minutes). Also essential will be requiring teachers to participate in each session and their own and student learning.

My beginning list of skills needed:

• Internet safety, Digital citizenship
• How to access, organize and use folders within Class drive
• MS Office basics
• How to find programs from the start menu
• How to logon, logoff, shut down, control volume on monitor and desktop
• How to choose and remember/record passwords- how to enter passwords correctly

I have already sent an email to my tech team for feedback and future meetings to plan. Do you have a similar program anytime throughout the year? What do you incorporate and how do you structure the sessions?

I’ve just returned from a stimulating walk/run to and around Retiro Park. It’s a beautiful spring day, paths not too crowded and as I took in some physical exercise I was working my mind as well listening to podcasts on my iPod. I love this and have been doing it for years, on the way to school, around the track at Dover High School, on the gym treadmill, along the beach and now around Retiro Park. It’s a great combination- simultaneous mind and body exercise.

But I didn’t start with the exercise. I started with a Podcasting workshop three years ago using Audacity. It was easy to do and fun and I was psyched to use it immediately in my grade 3 classroom. So I searched online for examples of podcasting in other classrooms for inspirational ideas. I found Bob Sprankle’s Room208 podcast- one of the best uses of podcasting I’ve ever found. Bob also kept a blog sharing how he podcasts and other related educational insights. Around that time he also started the Seedlings podcasts with Cheryl Oakes and Alice Barr, two other Maine educators. I recommend going into the archives and listen to all the Bit by Bit and Seedlings podcasts.

Anyway, while walking today I was listening to the WholeChildEducation.org podcasts. I’ll have to save many of the brilliant ideas I heard for other posts, but the main points that stood out today are:

•    “Learning is the constant, time is the variable”- in other words we need to focus on best practices for student learning, not on schedules. We also need to move to authentic, integrated learning.

•    Education, schools and caring for our children can best be improved by engaging the community- parents, businesses, teens, and citizens. Everyone needs to get on board. (I also heard this point emphasized by Ewan McIntosh at a workshop in London recently.)

I found the WholeChild podcasts from @Keytech on Twitter who posted this, “EBOOK Engaging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership FREE at http://blog.genyes.com/”

But back to podcasts and personal learning. Professionally, I was a lurker for a long time, listening and soaking up ideas and experiences. When I gradually began engaging with others by commenting on blogs and contributing through this blog and on Twitter last summer I moved from a listener/reader to an engaged member of my personal learning network.

As a teacher, after that first workshop I immediately began a podcast with my students. The best thing that came from using podcasting in the classroom was my reluctant writers began asking to stay in at recess to finish writing a story or article that they wanted to record and upload to our site. Writing and speaking became integrated regularly into all subjects and I was holding writing mini-lessons during content area activities.

As a listener, I subscribe to several podcasts so that when new recordings are uploaded, they are automatically downloaded to my iTunes library and then synced to my iPod.

There are many podcasts I listen to, but these are my top favorites:

Room208 Bob Sprankle’s class podcasts
Seedlings and Bit by Bit
SOS Podcast, OnDeck Podcast
K12 online Conf workshops (NECC for example- in fact, anytime a conference records and shares workshops/keynotes, it’s free PD)
EdTech Talk
November Learning
Ted Talks
Notes from Spain, A Year in Europe (both are currently not updating, but all worth a listen)
NPR: This American Life, This I Believe, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
iTunes Univ
Audio Books purchased and downloaded from iTunes Store (I recently listened to Bram Stoker’s Dracula during a winter trip around central Europe)

Please recommend/share your favorite podcasts!

During the last two weeks of school I’ve led digital safety lessons for all classes K-5 in the lab. This was a follow up to lessons at the beginning of the year and last winter for the 5th grade when they started blogging. I was reminded of the need for ongoing digital safety and citizenship lessons and daily teachable moments while in a Digital Citizenship workshop led by John Mikton at the recent ECIS IT conference. This is certainly an area that needs planned lessons (ideally embedded into a relevant project)- not just for our students, but our colleagues and parents. There are several free, online resources for support materials, curriculum lessons, informational letters, and other valuable materials and ideas that can take out a good deal of the footwork when planning. My favorites are listed below, but I also use delicious to bookmark sites, blog posts, and articles as I come across them- not to mention searching within delicious, edublogs or twitter.

There are 3 groups to provide ongoing digital education- ourselves, our children and our parent community.

Ourselves: At a recent on-campus professional  development day, my savvy colleague Andrew held a workshop on privacy settings for Facebook. It was well attended and a perfect way to awaken awareness for protecting our digital footprint. I also believe that all educators need further training on the overall issues in this area, in order to seize those teachable moments in the classroom, and prepare for issues that may arise when exploring Web2.0 activities and tools with students.

Our children: The safety lesson for the kindergarten classes (age 6) centered around the CBBC Dongle Rabbit video was followed by a discussion of the messages in the video. With children this young, I focused on one main message: There are many interesting things and opportunities on the Internet, but always take an adult you trust when you explore cyberspace. I did have to take time to explain what “cyberspace” meant, but they very much enjoyed the video and discussion and afterwards drew a KidPix picture showing themselves and an adult viewing something on the web. This time around I’m looking to create some great captioned images from the students to enlarge for posters to display in the lab and around the building. I’m using a variety of topics for the grade levels, but found that the grade 4 students were as excited about creating a captioned image in KidPix as the kinderkids were. During these lessons I’m also mulling over possible lessons for the fall that will be more relevant and tied to their beginning year curriculum. Also, we don’t need to be in the lab or in front of a computer to explore these issues, for example we used role-play and skits during Mikton’s workshop.
With grade 5 we viewed and discussed this video. This was the third discussion in this area as we viewed and discussed this video when we began blogging last winter. I also recently participated in the Sounding Board with a group of about 20 students for the Net GenEd project. This was such a valuable hands-on experience for the students to learn about IT communication issues and how to present oneself online.

Parent community: Every school and organization can reach out more to their community and this is a way to raise parental awareness and build our school community as well. I attended some of these PTA evenings as a teacher and parent in the US and the meetings were usually led by a town Police-tech officer who presented horror stories followed by ways to lock down tech in your home. More effective and positive is holding evenings for parents that educate and inform parents of the wealth of opportunities that tech provides, while also sharing age-appropriate guidance and resources that allow safe use. I have seen evidence of this approach on Kim Cofino’s blog, Always Learning, describing the plan for their parent coffee mornings. When visiting a school’s blog I always look for ways the school reaches out to the community in this regard for positive ideas and approaches. Providing hands-on workshops for setting search parameters in Google or other search engines, etc will be appreciated by parents and a great way to build relationships within the parent community.

Lastly, it’s a good idea to have a school-wide plan for digital safety and citizenship. By this I mean an active curriculum of topics to introduce at certain grades and times of the year. Due to rapid growth in communication technology, this should be reviewed and revised at least once a year, or as needed. One great place to start is with the curriculum established by CyberSmart. Orientation for new staff, ongoing workshops or in-school newsletters and quarterly PTA meetings will be beneficial. Adopting a mascot figure for the school, such as the BBC’s Dongle rabbit, will also provide a focus for everyone and a common vocabulary that encourages awareness daily throughout the school.

Two of my grade 3 gardeners in New Hampshire

I suppose I’ve always viewed digital awareness as a separate, but related, subject. The more we see tech as something that provides tools and opportunities for many kinds of learners, the easier these topics will be to embed into a lesson or teachable moment. It’s like learning to garden and learning which tools are best for different tasks, how to care for the tools and use them safely, as well as the many other skills and concepts we need to grasp in order to sustain and enjoy an abundant garden.

CyberSmart free online K-12 curriculum
CBBC Dongle the Rabbit Be Smart video and rules
Netsmartz Videos and lessons for kids aged 6+
NetNanny Inexpensive, effective Internet Protection software
ISB Parent Technology Coffee Mornings
Beyond Digital Workshops from John Mikton- great resources

This is about my latest ideas and reflections as a student in my virtual PD course, Global Collaboration102. I am not taking this course alone, but with my PLN and my “professors” are those I wrote about recently as my inspiration. On our campus, we’ve launched and successfully completed/continued two global collaborations so far, Digiteen, which was led by our pioneer tech teacher Melissa in the Middle School (I had nothing to do with it aside from making the introduction), and a continuing collaboration by ELL teacher Kris with Global e-Learners Connect!.

Stating that there are just 2 “successful” collaborations is not intended as a negative critical comment towards anyone, including myself. I consider these two successful because they are established, ongoing learning activities or completely implemented projects, they motivate students and reflect classroom concepts, skills and student learning. We also have other whole class continuing collaborations we established since the fall. These collaborations are successful to a degree but I feel the need to reflect on how I can help these become a regular, authentic part of the classroom and more meaningful for the students. Perhaps my job title next year should be Global Collaborations Conductor as these projects all can fit easily into the current curriculum and learning 21st Century skills. I would choose “Conductor” over “Coordinator” as I would create long-term plans to make the collaboration more meaningful and also be present each time a related activity was implemented with the class. This would be a better planned and organized co-teaching, co-planning, modeling and support project and I imagine I would eventually see myself happily demoted to the Coordinator.

I plan a continuation of support for the other ongoing collaborations for the remainder of this school year, however this week I will implement 3 new collaborations differently from the others. The idea began when I read invitations on Twitter and blog posts for the Sounding Board which is part of Net Generation Education Project. Students in grades 5-8 were needed and I have a willing team of grade 5 teachers so I ran the idea by them to introduce the project to their students and ask for volunteers to give it a try. After all, it’s a 2-4 hour time commitment and I pointed out to students that when they are in Middle School next year, they can seek out Melissa to participate in one of her collaborations. I ended up with one whole class and a bit more than a handful each in the other 2 classes. I then arranged the times with the teachers and we’ll start and complete the project next week!

So then I thought, why not apply this experience to other elementary collaborations?  Here is what I started last week that can continue through the remainder of this school year:

1001Tales with 4th grade volunteers from 3 classes. I have the plans made for the length of the project and Monday morning will introduce it to the students and get volunteers to meet at recess (the weather forecast is not good this week and should work in my favor ) for an overview and to start.

Around the World With 80 Schools: For this I plan to introduce the collaboration at a staff meeting and outline what is involved in participating in each video-conference “school visit.” I will seek out teachers each week by visiting personally and posting in the Monday staff newsletter. With the focus on the collaboration as a Lower School project planned and implemented by me, I hope to get more teachers on board to try out the waters. These visits will be celebrated through posting on a bulletin board display with a world map and shown on a slideshow containing audio and video of visits via the LCD monitor in the LS foyer.

Progress is a cycle of reflection, planning and implementation and relies heavily on building trust and positive relationships. How are collaborations (local and global) working in your school?

After Ewan McIntosh’s keynote at the London ECIS IT conference I attended recently, I decided to attend all his workshops. His views on the use of technology make so much sense to me- we have these technological advancements in our world and why not harness their power to create better schools and communities? In my notes from one of his workshops I wrote a quote, “It’s not about technology, it’s about changing someone’s life a bit.” That really summed it up for me. It’s all about joining the conversation, contributing, engaging our students in meaningful learning experiences.

Here are a few inspiring examples from Ewan:

• Tim Ryland teaches writing through use of PC game, Myst
• GuitarHero across the curriculum and throughout the school
• Nintendogs project- collaboration, cross-curricular activities
• Punctuation Pyramid, Wordle and Visuwords

Most of what I’ve learned and applied regarding tech use in education are from these sources of inspiration:

Bit by Bit and Seedlings blog and podcasts:
After my first taste of digital audio recording and editing for publication, I found Bob Sprankle’s class blog and podcasts. I’ve been following Bob, Alice and Cheryl ever since.

Chris Chater- Elementary music teacher extraordinaire and very nice guy. We connected years ago and collaborate and have become friends over the years.

Kim Cofino, Siliva Tolisano and Julie Lindsay- Tech Educators who inspire me. I think they are super-human as they seem to have more hours in the day than the rest of us based on their capacity to share and organize collaborations.

Who inspires you?

In a perfect world, the tech integration specialist is meeting with grade level teams and individual teachers frequently, co-planning and co-teaching in the classroom and/or lab, and providing ongoing planned and spontaneous professional development. This person is curriculum-based and collaborates, inspires and facilitates growth within a school. And eventually, that position is no longer needed. In a perfect world.

I have observed that there are two basic approaches to this position.  One approach is where the specialist co-plans and co-teaches with classroom and specialist teachers as well as provides related general support and professional development. In other words, an open schedule that is filled with planning, meeting and co-teaching with classroom teachers, as well as fulfilling other tech and curriculum related tasks.  Teachers are encouraged and nudged into thinking and approaching the curriculum in a more progressive manner.

Another approach is for the tech specialist to lead weekly tech lessons for all classes in the lab and also provide support in the form of professional development and planning with teachers. This means the Tech specialist has less time for meetings and PD with staff, but all students are engaging in relevant curricular activities using tech tools at least once a week.

I can see benefits and negatives in both approaches. Is there a best approach, given that schools differ and vary in their levels of development? What is your experience? What are the best and poorer aspects of your environment?