My kids have been presenting this week.


I’m not sure what I expected. But it wasn’t what I got.

They had written persuasive essays on topics of their choice, ranging from poverty to animal treatment to global warming. But I wanted to see what they could do with visuals, so I asked them to also persuade using a multimedia presentation. The guidelines were vague: use any application, tell your story any way you want. I was curious. Would they live up to the hype of being members of this visual generation?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I was absolutely floored. Without any instruction, students used Adobe Premier, FinalCut, PowerPoint, or PhotoStory to put together powerful, persuasive slideshows. If they didn’t know something, they asked a friend or me. If something didn’t work, they figured out how to go in the back door. Some used background music; others recorded their voices. One used only large blocks of text, another inserted a youtube vide at the end. Some took videos of other students to make a point, supplementing with still photos. I was impressed. Not a bullet anywhere!
But–my mistake– Not talking to them about copyright. I was banking on Fair Use for only using the slideshows in the classroom. They are so good, I wish I could share them. But I can’t.
So I explained the next time we would be sure to use Creative Commons images and sounds and attibute them properly so we could post the final work online.

The upside? I have a new tool in my toolbelt,  AND I don’t have to teach them how to use it. They are there.

And speaking of persuasive videos…

 

Listen to John Dewey at the end.

 

Photo by Meredith_Farmer
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Though some days I feel like I am running around in circles, I have found a way to catch up with my podcasts.

I listen to them while I run!

One has become more meaningful now that I have met one of the podcasters. This morning I tuned into Alex Ragone's and Arvind Grover's EdTechTalk "21st Century Learning," and I was totally able to dissociate from the run and enjoy listening. Alex, a teacher from the Collegiate School in NY, and I met at our PLP's first face to face meeting here on Sept 8. What a pleasure to touch base with another thoughtful teacher from my "network."

At one point in the podcast, one of them mentioned a recent NY Times article and quoted the last lines about the impact of participating in social/educational networks:

Laura Fitton, the social-media consultant, argues that her constant
status updating has made her “a happier person, a calmer person”
because the process of, say, describing a horrid morning at work forces
her to look at it objectively. “It drags you out of your own head,” she
added. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly
is yourself.

This comment resonates with me as it is one of the reasons I worked to include our school in the Powerful Learning Practice year-long professional development opportunity this year. My own learning, both about myself and teaching in general, is enriched by various social media in which I participate. Writing about what it means to prepare our students to work and live online helps me see more clearly and share with others. Participating in Twitter, Nings, and Diigo gives me instant access to what others are thinking about similar issues and "drags me out of my own head."

As we all struggle to define 21 century literacy skills, I often look to my new friend Elizabeth Helfant at MICDS, who articulates her school's vision so well. One of our PLP team goals is to participate fully in our online virtual network, sharing our thoughts about this shift in learning. Elizabeth points to this research:

Early evidence (Labbo, 1996; Labbo & Kuhn, 1998), as well as
logical deduction from current trends, suggests that the new literacies
will be ever more dependent on their social construction than
traditional literacies.  It will be impossible for every child to
become expert in every new technology for information and communication
that appears. As networked information resources become more extensive
and complexly structured, and as ICTs continue to change with some
frequency, no one person can be expected to know everything there is to
know about the technologies of literacy; these technologies will simply
change too quickly and be too extensive to permit any single person to
be literate in them all.  Each of us, however, will know something
useful to others. 

This is why I stay (sometimes it feels like living) online, trying to collaborate and connect. I have the opportunity this year to practice what I've been preaching, and I hope to post more about moving my English 9 class forward with NCTE's Literacy Skills in mind. Perhaps I will be able to share something useful to other English teachers forging ahead toward this exciting but capricious future.

In the meantime, our PLP team is off to a great start this year. I have been watching and hearing about:

Carey's students flying around Google Earth and creating Voice Threads in Spanish
Katie's students discovering that their political blogs aren't really "blogs to nowhere." (Can you lend a hand with a comment?)
Jennifer's students learning to voice their opinions and reflect as they work on a new style of writing.
Susanne's students presenting in AP English using a variety of tools to enhance their learning.

This is an exciting time to be a teacher.

 

Photo by Piero Sierra
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

It's exciting to see two of my colleagues embrace blogging in such a thoughtful way. I highly recommend you take a look at Susanne's and Jennifer's blogs, especially if you teach English. You will be glad you visited.

 

I’ve been having some great discussions about teaching and learning lately.

Our Head of Upper School and I did some planning for fall recently, and we talked about what we want teachers to think about before they begin to use technology in their classrooms. This was a natural follow-up to our end-of-year discussions about essential questions and curriculum, but it led into how to teach writing. And we realized quickly we had very different visions of “good writing” and how to teach it.

And then there’s Jeff, one of our AP history teachers who often responds to articles I send out to the faculty, and I love it. He emails with thoughts, questions, and mostly challenges to my thinking. We talk about student-centered vs teacher directed learning, rigor, creativity and collaboration, along with how technology can seamlessly enhance (or get in the way of) what happens in the classroom.

I am a big-picture person, and I love nothing better than reflecting on these ideas.

But after these discussions, I often find myself wondering whether my colleagues think my thoughts about education are out in left field. If I were to collect a stack of my favorite authors and thinkers, the names would include Dewey, Kohl, Kohn, and Holt. Am I a progressivist? A constructivist? I promote Understanding by Design and Problem-based Learning. And if I were able to live my life over again, I probably would have home-schooled my sons, giving them flexible learning opportunities.

And yet I love the classroom.

I don’t want to be the kind of person (reference to the image above!) William Brody discusses in his Johns Hopkins Commencement speech. Yet, I am passionate about wanting students to be engaged in the learning process, and I am always looking for opportunities to learn more about how to make that happen, even if the ideas make people (and me) uncomfortable. I like the way Michael McKinney ends his post:

Keep an open mind. He adds, “It’s OK to question ideas and beliefs other people insist are true.”

In the end, it’s all about the conversations and what we take away from them. We need to keep pushing and questioning each other as we search for best ways to help our students learn.

Image: ‘believe‘
www.flickr.com/photos/12023334@N02/2052931999

 

Re-thinking how students learn and how teachers teach is not a new subject. Piaget influenced us to move toward student-centered learning in the 1970's and 80's. I remember taking education courses in the early 70's and also being heavily influenced by Ivan Illich, John Holt and Jonathan Kozol among others. I wanted my students to be self-directed, and I wanted to be the kind of teacher that created learning opportunities that meant something.
The reality is, though, my classroom management often took precedence over my teaching. Having to ensure 30 students were "getting it," I often fell back on tried methods of control: seats in a row, teacher in the front, "let me tell you what you need to know." And as educators, we all made many mistakes–remember open classrooms that changed the design but not the pedagogy? Sad.
Journalism, however, was a different story. With real-life application, student editors serving as mentors for other students, a monthly product (the newspaper), and an audience, the class became for me a vision of what learning and teaching could be. We took great pride that in 1988, our newspaper staff designed our paper with Pagemaker on one of the first Macs, long before our local paper moved to computer-assisted design!
I would constantly ask myself–how can I move this practice of learning to my English classes? I had moments that worked, but overall, I ended up back in the traditional role of teacher directing her students, and students spitting back whatever information I deemed important.
Fast forward to 2002, and my role as Director of Technology at an independent school about to embrace a 1:1 program, and suddenly I could see putting into practice all I believed about teaching. I believed the laptops would truly enable this paradigm shift that I had been unable to accomplish myself in a traditional classroom.
Ah, if only it were that easy.
Time management, differing philosophies, and lack of professional development all played into why our success was spotty. In classes where teachers saw the technology as transformative, the laptops enhanced student learning. In classes where teachers had little time to learn how to teach with technology or simply viewed the laptops as distractions (or had no laptops), fewer changes were seen.
This year, our Head of School asked me to resume my role as instructional tech coordinator, but he asked that I do it full time–with no distractions of other classes, managing of budgets, or technical hardware support.  With his support, I wanted to approach technology in terms of 21st century learning, as this was also the year the internet exploded with a wealth of opportunities for sharing and connecting for teachers and students.
What a year it has been. I've outlined many of our successes in earlier posts, and with teachers willing to take huge leaps of faith using some of the tools of student engagement, we've seen strong examples student-centered learning. I've learned much from our great faculty.
I hope next year's Powerful Learning Practice with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson will help take us to the next level. As Sheryl says, "the pace of change is going to demand us to unlearn and relearn."
Our school is also undertaking a shift in our schedule, one that will allow time between classes for students and teachers to meet, share, plan, work, and think. More reflective time for all–if it works as it should.
I am encouraged by discussions from Carolyn Foote here, Patrick Higgins here, and Antonio Viva here, and I am filled with a new enthusiasm, a belief that we can help students face a future of rapid change.This is a long post, but I also want to share some suggestions Viva lists in his post to "catapult innovative teaching and learning in the 21st century":

1. Design rooms that are properly equipped and can function as
   flexible spaces to support different teaching modalities. Rooms should
   not focus on one method of teaching versus any other. Create rooms that
   are designed to meet different purposes.
2. Rethink traditional scheduling practices - Rooms should be signed
   out and used as they are needed by a group of students and their
   teacher. Rather than continue to schedule classes as we currently do,
   consider creating teaching clusters where groups of teachers have
   access to these different rooms when they most need them.
3. Create comfortable, well equipped and contemporary faculty work
   rooms. A teacher who has their own classroom finds it very easy to
   become isolated and close their door and teach. Making spaces available
   to teacher groups/teams where faculty can collaborate, obtain resources
   and materials, make phone calls and get snacks and good coffee, cold
   beverages and talk with one another can encourage colleagues to design
   and create innovative curriculum and teaching strategies with one
   another.

Much to think about. I love ending the year on a positive note.

Image:www.flickr.com/photos/44124472651@N01/47169667

 

I was getting somewhat discouraged the weeks before break.
There was that student editorial in the school newspaper asking that teachers stop assigning so much work with technology. Then a few random comments about tech overload from teachers frustrated me. Finally, because exams and grades were around the corner,  people seemed too busy to even answer emails. I wondered if I had been taking the right approach in trying to motivate and encourage people to use technology as a strategy in their teaching.
But a break is a wonderful thing.
Today, our second day back, brought several teachers to my door asking for help with Voice Thread and Google Earth. An email I sent today announcing a PD opportunity for RSS and Google apps was answered with 5 teachers signing up –two weeks ahead of time. I had a great meeting with the student I am mentoring for senior exhibit. And the discussion I had with the head of our upper school about teaching and integrating technology left me feeling supported, excited, and energized.
Ok, then. Back to work everyone. We are on track!

Powered by ScribeFire.

 

I recently started a ning network for Virginia independent school teachers, and within hours, my friend HIram pointed me to another network for independent school teachers in general. Demetri has done a great job that satisfies a clear need. I may end up spending more of my time there, as discussions about technology in teaching and learning are beginning.
Yesterday, someone talked about what we call ourselves, what our title means to other teachers. She advocated for taking  "tech" out of the title. I understand her thoughts, as I’ve been grappling with similar feelings at my school. How do people perceive technology coordinators? Sure we can fix printers and help find cool projects, but is there more?
I commented with this:

I still prefer teachers to see me as kind of teaching "coach," one who
advocates for using technology to improve the way we all learn. I try
to model the concept of lifelong learning; I know I’ve learned more in
the past few months than I’ve learned in a long time, thanks to the
connectivity of the internet and the proliferation of tools we use to
learn.

That being said, I don’t consider myself the expert. When I visit other teachers who are using technology so effectively, when I hear them engaging students, I am envious. I want to be a student in their class! I hope I model what I think works best–all of us learning together, working together, creating together.
So what’s in a name?

 

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Because we are so limited by time constraints at my school, I decided to invite teachers to "conversations" every Thursday and Friday during lunch.
I envisioned a time to discuss broad topics such as: how do we learn? what role does technology play? what can we do to prepare our students for the future?
Thursday’s group seemed to go well. Because the network was down, I couldn’t show the video I wanted. Instead, we chatted about middle-schoolers who can’t seem to focus for more than 5 minutes. On Friday, I had prepared an article and the network was back up, so I wanted to show the video, too. Instead of leading into the discussion, I tried to force a discussion about the article,which no one had had time to read. And then, I played the vid (Michael Wesch’s latest). With barely 3 minutes, left, I tried to get feedback.
Arrrgghhh. Why do I feel the need to control? I want this to be a relaxing time, a few moments in the day for teachers to just talk, share ideas, learn something new.
Thanks to my friend Jennifer, who reminded me of my original intent for the group, I realized what had happened.
We’ll start again next week.