Learning, Teaching & Technology

This week I have been teaching 4th graders to use Scratch from the MIT Media Lab. It’s GREAT! I can’t remember when I’ve had this much fun teaching and the room has been full of kids who are empowered, active and creating. I used the videos from the Scratch site to introduce the concept of the program to the students and gave them a few starter commands from the Scratch Cards. Within twenty minutes the students were recording their own voices, “whirling” sprites, adding sound effects, creating speech clouds, and creating iinteractions between sprites. It has been fascinating to see some students focus on sounds, others on motion and others on looks and paint features. Doing this with several classes has given me the opportunity to see teachers who have supported creativity and innovation in their classroms and are cheerleaders as their students explore this entirely new realm. Where does this fit in the curriclum? To me it teaches thinking, problem-solving and feeds the “dessert brain” referenced in Edutopia magazine by Hugh Osborn.

As I work to get my strength back I am returning to swimming. The half hour in the pool reminds me of what a great space it is for meditating and reflecting.

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.

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.

This past weekend I was reading E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” to my nieces. At two and a half and five they have had it read to them before and of course they have watched the DVD many times. They were attentively listening and I was enjoying the deliberate language and word choices that make it so worth reading. Inevitably we needed to stop for a bit for a bathroom break. When all was done and we returned to the book, I picked up the book and said I remembered where I had left off. My younger niece looked at me with all seriousness on her face and asked, “Did you pause it?” Yes, I wonder about the range of media and technology that will be available to her in ten years… twenty years…

Over the past year there have been many changes in the software we use and the ways we can access the Internet at Y.E.S. Each week I work with each teacher and class to provide a learning experience that connects to classroom learning. While I collaborate with the teacher in the planning, this year I am finding that there are so many new possibilities that I am often introducing tools and lessons that didn’t exist a year or two ago. During their weekly team meetings grade level teams share the new adventures with each other and often there is interest across a grade level for an interaction or project. I participate in nings, listen to edtechtalk shows online, and read educator blogs as I spend hours each week corresponding with other integrators. This collaborative professional development and attending state and national conferences are both important to ways for me to find ideas, support and learning for myself.

There are abundant examples of our students engaging in activities indicated by the NETS•S in grades 2 through 4 at Y.E.S. I find that we don’t need to spend time on the standards technology operations and concepts as they are best learned as part of using technology tools for expression. I introduce 2nd graders to the computer environment via. drawing programs so that they start off as creators of content. We then add writing, often accompanied by illustrating (esp. using Clicker 5 & Clicker Paint). After a few weeks of using the computer to create we begin to use interactive Internet sites in support of language arts and math skills being learned in the classroom (Educational Resources). Some classes have used voicethread.com to record aloud the text of books they have created and illustrated. These books have been posted online for comments by parents. Now at midyear 2nd graders are accessing information about the Arctic online and using various sources to create text and pictures describing the adaptations of an animal. They are beginning to address the areas under the standards research and information fluency and critical thinking, problem-solving and decision making as they use digital tools and resources.

Students in 3rd and 4th grades expand on the skills learned in 2nd grade. This year they have:

• interacted with entomologists manipulating an electron microscope online using “bugscope“
• recorded folk tale puppet shows on voicethread.com
• planted tulips as part of Journey North
• recorded
  Download as geologists
• posted videos of class plays online
• added content to a “100th day” wiki,
• created class blogs to review books they have read
• presented a Class Mystery on voicethread.com
• created multimedia group slideshows using ezedia
• accessed encyclopedias online
• used “safe-search” tools
• learned Internet safety guidelines as digital citizens

In addition to accessing information students are analyzing and making meaning of their own learning. A challenge is to explore taking part in international collaborations for classes learning about culture in other continents and to increase awareness of our global community. In the last year there has been a huge increase in the tools for sharing online and these may support new ways for us to or communicate and collaborate with other classes anywhere in the world.