One of the district goals this year is: Teachers will increase student engagement and improve student achievement by focusing on instructional practices. This blog entry is a review of the work we have done at YES this year to post more student work online by using teacher web pages and blogs.

In a conversation with Betsy Lane before the school year started we talked about efforts I might make to increase the use of teacher web pages to display student work and communicate with parents. The goal was to engage students in presenting learning to an audience of parents and family members. Specifically, I wanted to increase the number of teachers using class web pages and the involvement of students in creating content to display online. This year there has been an increase from 50% of classrooms displaying student work online to 80%. In addition to classroom teachers the Art and Music teachers have expanded the student presence on their web pages this year.

The initial impetus for this increase came from a faculty meeting dedicated to setting up and managing teacher web pages in September, 2008. Mike came over from HMS and worked with a group who wanted to set up blogs and I worked with teachers who needed assistance with their FirstClass web pages. We left that meeting with all classrooms having an initial page established. Since then I have met with teachers before school, after school at lunch and during a few minutes of a schedule lab period to assist them with the web pages and blogs.

At each grade level the majority of teachers have posted photos, movies and student-created presentations of their learning. Some of the examples include:
• Voicethread descriptions of Student Art are an example of postings Cam is doing with each grade
•Audio clips of student songs for each class to support Music practice at home.
•A Voicethread on Laura Skowronkis’s page describes their Arctic Sculptures
•Stephanie’s photos, movies and voicethreads at the bottom of the page as are Kim’s .
•Elke’s first class Voicethread on Arctic Animals and she has photos with commentary as well.
•Carli’s class read their Arctic poems and posted a recent play as well as photos of the year.
•Richard’s everexpanding class blog has been going all year.
•Chris used her class blog to share plans with parents and she scans student work for display.
•Karin’s class created biographies that are posted online in addition to an informational web page.
•Nicole started a blog this year to send home newsletters and information about the class.
•Gabe uses a blog to send home information on various pages.
•Nancy’s student photographers made a Sugaring Time movie last week and they have been using an Observation Blog this year.
•Mary Jo has used her web page for the past two years to list upcoming events and curricular links.
•Renee’s class created slideshows about inventions that created a freedom and they have maintained a class blog.

Many of these links will not stay active as teachers will take them down to make room for next year’s classes, but for now they are wonderful audiovisual representations of student learning. The pride students exhibit when they hear that their work is on the Internet is palpable in the room and it is fun to hear them talk of sharing it with their families.

Next year I would like to work on moving some of the static content that is consistent across the classes into a grade level wiki that could be linked to each teacher page. I would like to continue to expand the multimedia projects that students post online. A couple of teachers and I are looking at possibilities for expanding student communication and collaboration by sharing blog entries across classes and possibly in other countries.

The timing of the session coincided with the publication of the Literacy 2.0 edition of Educational Leadership. We started the meeting by reading the Perspectives introduction to the article. I asked the faculty to use the prompts of, “What are you noting as you read?” and “What do you want to read more of?” I chose this as the group reading because it mentions bits of several of the articles in the issue and it also makes the point that our students need the literacies of reading and writing more than ever in our world of expanding literacies. After the reading I asked the faculty to turn and talk to each other.

We followed this introduction with a slideshow I had prepared with several breaks for more conversation. Listening to the conversations I heard many questions and explanations about various explorations teachers are doing with their studensts. In all I was pleased that the information I was sharing seemed to be welcomed and there were many teachers who were excited to talk about the topic.

The presentation I used is posted on slideshare.net.

We have passed the midyear point in the school year and although I missed most of the first four months of school I am thrilled by the technology-related learning I am seeing going on at the Elementary School. One big addition this year is that we now have four carts of laptops which means that there is one available for every four or five classes in a wing, with an additional one that seems to be used regularly by third and fourth grade classes in the blue wing. We were able to purchase one more projector and cart so now fifteen classrooms are sharing seven projectors.

Students in second grade are writing and editing in Clicker 5 in the lab. They love the fact that it reads their work back to them for editing and revision, and the teachers have made good use of online learning grids which serve as templates to support writing about the weather, frogs, Chinese New Year and other topics. Classes have learned to use Clicker Paint to illustrate poems and other pieces of writing for display in the hallways and online. Teachers have used the lab for Math practice and as an introduction to Math concepts. Two classes have created Voicethreads that can be viewed from their class web pages that display student work and voices. Several Quicktime movies of classroom presentations are also available on class pages. One class is about to join a daily weather recording activity on a blog started by first grade. We will be the NorthEast region class that is recording the weather for one week each month and comparing it with other regions. Students will record each other during the classroom morning meeting and then we can post their voices as podcasts on the blog.

In third grade students have been practicing addition and subtraction facts and doing some math problem-solving activities all year. Two teachers have class blogs, one has individual student blogs within the classblogmeister blog. The blogs are being used to communicate student work to parents, for students to comment to each other and we have plans to use them to communicate with other schools. In support of Science units classes have researched rocks and minerals, watched some movie clips from our Safari Montage collection and one class did Bugscope online in the fall. The Bugscope home page lists a Virtual Microscope interface that can be downloaded to view images of minerals and other items from their site. Most classes are using AppleWorks to write reports as well as creative writing assignments, adding images from the Internet or their own illustrations using a Paint box added to the wordprocessing page.

Fourth grade classes are using the iBook carts consistently for writing and students are becoming proficient at saving work to the class file server folder so they can continue work on any laptop or lab computer. One class had a Publishing Fair to share folk tales written in AppleWorks or EasyBook. Other classes have increased the volume and quality of student writing using conferencing on the iBooks to help students with  editing and revision. One class is currently working on putting an essay project online as a class Voicethread. All classes have introduced keyboarding and some students are finishing the lessons offered at BBC Dance Mat Typing. A big focus at the moment is teaching students to use our Internet resources and databases (primarily WorldBook Online & MARVEL) to support the process of inquiry. Once students have gathered information about a topic of interest, classes will be using different applications to prepare a report and some of these will be in a format that can be shared on the Internet when they are completed. All the fourth grade classes are using web pages and/or blogs to share student learning online and some are in formats that incorporate feedback or collaboration.

In all, I am thrilled by the work the teachers are doing to offer our elementary students access to technology tools that support creative expresssion of ideas and learning in a variety of formats. What I know if that new things will be happening in the coming months that I haven’t even envisioned yet. One thing that is making this possible (especially during my long absence) is the collaboration teachers have offered to each other and the shared learning that is going on between classrooms in all grades.

I learned about the rights of users that are protected by copyright laws from Kristin Hokanson’s session which will be useful as I work with our 4th grade multi-media projects this week. Then I participated in a chat with 60+ other educators in a conversation about what should stay and what should be changed in our ideal school of the future facilitated and recorded by Will Richardson. His Google Notebook for the session offered a list of related current writing. I listened to Gary Stager review his not so humbly titled “Best Ideas in the Educational World”. They are a good list to keep in mind; I especially like the thought, “Document success wherever you can…,” as I need to remember to share and publish what we are doing that demonstrates the creativity and learning of our students. While in the chats I recognized some participants and communicated with others I didn’t know. Will Richardson included those in the chat as a discussion group in his session and checked in with us online to connect us to the room. I found some new people to follow on my Twitter network and found new blogs, nings and student projects that gave me ideas for our schools. In all, a fun way to learn on my own terms in my own time.

Tomorrow I will change it up a little and participate in the two afternoon sessions with my K-12 colleagues Alice & Mike so we can have a conversation about what we see and hear. I would have loved to be there in person for the sessions and the times in between, but this new technology allowed me to take part in a stimulating professional learning experience from several hundred miles away.

Thanks to the organizers, the student videographers and all who made this experience possible!

Yesterday I sat down and sent out an email to classroom teachers (grades 2-4) describing what I hope will help us focus our work:
1. Creativity of expression using many forms of media — writing, drawing, photography, video, voices, etc.

2. Audience — as our students use these various forms of media to create, I’m looking for ways we can share their work with audiences within the classroom, within the school, connecting to homes & families and possibly connecting to students around the country or around the world.

I’m hoping addressing these two goals will help to define what we do with classes and students. To me, it is the 21st Century skills and preparation for lives as creative communicators and innovators. For teachers and students I need to break it down into what we can do on a given day, at a given age within the learning goals of the curriculum.

Professional Development Activity, Date, Credits/Hours, Documentation
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 06, 8 hours, Certificate
NECC Conference, Atlanta, June 2007, 36 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 07, 8 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference, October 08, 8 hours, Certificate
USM Course: The Read/Write Web, July 07, 3 graduate credits, Transcript
K-12 Online Conference07, 10/07-8/08, 3 graduate credits, Transcript
Yarmouth Writing Course, 07-08, 3 credits, Certificate
NH Tech. Education Conference, 12-08, 20 hours, Certificate

I plan to attend:

NECC Conference, Washington, D.C.,  June 2009, 36 hours, Certificate
ACTEM Conference (Presenter), October 09, 8 hours, Certificate

Also, courses I taught each summer at USM and in the Yarmouth School District.

I took this course because I knew I wanted to view many of the K12Online07 sessions and I had just been introduced to the many possibilities of web 2.0 tools at NECC07. I am completing this course late in the summer of 2008 as the K12Online08 sessions are looming on the horizon.

My responses to the sessions are reflections about how I might use the resources and ideas in my practice. An illness delayed my progress in the course, but now that I have been able to complete it I can say that I have found each session a rich source of new or consolidated learning and I look forward to using what I’ve learned in the upcoming 2008-09 school year.

Final Project

I have worked with learners in K-4 classrooms, computer labs and university courses for teachers for over two decades. My latest title is “Instructional Technology Integrator” in a school district of 1400 students in southern Maine. This year I continue to work with our elementary school students and teachers three days a week and those at the high school two days a week collaborating with Alice Barr.

The goal of the project that I will be taking on to utilize the learning from the K12 Online Conference is to increase the number and effectiveness of our classroom web pages that link to our Yarmouth Elementary School website. Specifically, I want all fifteen classrooms and the specialist teachers to have a web presence, ideally an interactive one. While some teachers have had static web pages for a few years I would like to explore the educational advantages of moving to blogs that are directed toward parents and encourage feedback to students. The focus of the blogs will be to showcase classroom learning and give students a way to share online with family members so they see that others can comment and leave responses to their learning

Teachers at the elementary level have long created weekly newsletters and other ways to send home a digest of learning activities, but there isn’t a connection to students and student work. A print newsletter is a one-way communication that may prompt more questions than it answers for a parent. Every teacher has had an iBook for five years now, it is beyond the time to move from limited email uses to tools that support online interaction.

I viewed several sessions by presenters that specifically addressed classroom blogs (John Pearce, Jeff Utecht, Anne Davis), while other sessions I attended gave tutorials and ideas for podcasts (Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle & Alice Barr) and other student-created media that can be posted to blogs (Clarence Fisher, Brian Crosby, Alan Levine et.al.). Many of the sessions remind us to plan for the pedagogy not just the technology (Sylvia Martinez & Sharon Peters) so that the focus is on increasing learning by changing our practices.

When I viewed Derek Wenmoth’s movie for his session one of the most memorable slides was the graphic included here:

If we are to keep moving along to the “Assimilation” stage of this graphic he has some very clear ideas and suggestions for what needs to change so we can continue on past the “Integration”stage. I see classroom blogs as important in moving in this direction.

I have already met with the elementary school principal about my action research for this year and we have agreed that this goal of teacher interactive web pages will be one that we will support with help sessions during faculty meetings and team meetings. Teachers who have experimented with blogs will be important instructors for those who are just starting. Indeed, just today I had a phone call from a teacher who was exultant in telling me that since I am not at school these days she taught a new teacher how to set up a classroom blog and was thrilled she knew enough to do that!

Teachers who have created classroom blogs (examples) have reported that they have many fewer questions and emails from parents as the blog posts allow them to view student work and access the whole class in a new way. Kathy Cassidy is one example of this at the close of her K12Online06 session. Is it scary and threatening for teachers to “go public” in this way? Indeed I can understand that it is, I felt the same way at one time. Change can be difficult, but given the right reasons for change teachers will move and learn.

Image attribution:

Image: ‘DWenmothK12online07′
http://k12online.wm.edu/K12_Keynote_3web.mov

The sharing among the six participants today seemed to flow from one project and set of ideas neatly into the next as we worked on qualities of design, engagement by students, facilitation of student work with coaching from teachers, rubrics, quality indicators and the fun that can be part of exploring and creating in new ways. We recorded the sharing to the class wiki at http://yarmouthspring08.wikispaces.com/Final+Day+Sharing.

I will be developing a feedback query for course participants in the coming week and I will put it out in draft form on email.

I leave this day warmed by the collaboration between and among the teachers involved, regardless of grade level or subject matter. Each teacher exceeded her/his goal set at the beginning of this course and I know the learning and questioning will continue.

Cathy