Learning, Teaching & Technology

I am migrating this blog to http://yestechchat.blogspot.com/. See you there!

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The day has come when using a 2001 Mac in the Lab at the elementary school isn’t working. We have been fortunate that up until very recently we were able to use these computers to access online sites and create student products using older software. This spring we have run into several realities related to the age of these machines. They are running OSX.3 (Tiger) as they have limited RAM and processing capabilities. This means that we are unable to use the current version of iWork that is owned by the district. Students are creating multi-media presentations using Keynote and they are unable to work on them in the lab if they have ever used a G4 iBook and a newer version of Keynote.

We refer students to http://pbs.org/cyberchase for learning activities, but that site is only one of several where videos and the newest learning games posted online aren’t available in the lab. Google Earth is a wonderful learning tool as we introduce our students to world geography, but it is not available in the lab. There are online sites like http://wordle.net that we have used with older students to view their writing in this visually enhanced way, but the plugins in the lab don’t work with the site.

We have been incredibly fortunate to be able to use the equipment no longer needed at the middle school or the high school for as long as we have. Now it is time to upgrade the lab so that our youngest students can explore multi-media posted online and create their own projects that dislay their learning and introduce them to being knowledgeable consumers of our multi-media world.

Today I attended sessions at Educon 2.1 held this weekend at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia without leaving my living room. Using the wiki that was compiled by the organizers I read about sessions and then linked to live sessions using mogulus to view the live stream of the sessions with a chat in an adjacent window.

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!

Everyday I open my computer(s) and am bombarded by input, ideas and possibilities. My rich personal network of Twitter contacts, Ning memberships, Diigo messages and more add to the noises in my head about ways to move our teachers and students forward by using technology to excite learners and provide opportunities for success in their endeavors. A three day weekend brings even more torment as I have time to take in podcasts, work on my Images4Education class and join live webinars. Sometimes I have to stand back from the influx of new learning and options to carve out a direction that feels manageable and allows for the developmental process of our setting.

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.

http://www.nhcmtc.org/ is the link to the New Hampshire “Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference” with Richard Sellinger. We went to some great keynote sessions by David Warlick and Yong Chao. Their focus was that we need to change what we are teaching in our schools if we want students to be prepared for the future. I tested my new flipcam to record some of Yong Chao’s talk and I was impressed by the qualilty of the audio and the video. Richard and I attended some sessions given by teachers, but we didn’t learn much that we weren’t already aware of. We had some good chances to talk and work with each other and I went to a good session on SCRATCH from MIT Media Lab. I plan to set it up in the lab and teach it to fourth graders.

Final Reflections:

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