A 21st Century Learning Space

What does that look like and what does it "do"?  I believe our 5th grade students at GSIS benefit from a 21st century learning space.  Although a late add-on to our existing building, it facilitates the learning we desire in students.  We have walls that can open to create more open space and combine the 2 classrooms.  The setup is very flexible for collaboration and interaction between the 5th grade sections.

Within the classroom, students can collaborate, produce, create, present, etc. We have a cart of Macbooks that are accessible to students to create a 1:1 opportunity. We have interactive whiteboards. We have teachers planning and collaborating together.  The physical space facilitates many different learning activities and options for students.

It's exciting to have such an excellent learning space where students are engaged daily.  The space supports the curricular goals and the engages students authentically in an inquiry-based learning experience.  As a whole, I wish we had more spaces like this in our schools...

Be Contagious

"good educators share useful tools with each other."

Several weeks ago, during a PD session with MS teachers, I shared a Web 2.0 tool called Wallwisher.  It wasn't the point and just happen to be a small tool that I used during the time together.  I used it in that specific session because I wanted participant-to-participant interaction, rather than participant-to-facilitator interaction.  It worked well for my purposes.

From there, one of the administrators attending went on to share it with our school leadership team and use it in a meeting.  One of our coordinators then proceeded to use Wallwisher with MS and HS staff during PD days.  From there, some teachers took and applied it to their classrooms and students engaged this tool for learning.

When I first introduced this tool, I had no idea it would spread in this manner.  I'm sure that others may have heard about it from other sources than just inside our community and my original introduction.  However, good educators share useful tools with each other.  I love it when students say they know what we did in professional development because their teachers all tried it out on them the following week.  It means the PD was useful and applicable.

If you are a technology leader (formal or informal), share useful tools with your colleagues.  And don't just share a link, share how you used it to enhance learning.  With many tools or technology integration activities, you can do this in a 5-10 minute casual conversation.  When other educators see how it impacts learning and your enthusiasm of the impact it had on your lesson, they are much more likely to implement it for themselves.    Be intentional in your leadership, regardless of your formal position.


Oh, and by the way, this applies to much more than just technology.  Be contagious.

No More Excuses

It may not be comfortable, but educators have to be savvy enough to quit buying the 2.0 version of the dog ate my homework.

A blog post by Alain Meyer entitled "A New Era of Homework Excuses" caught my attention.  He talks about how students take advantage of teachers and their ignorance when it comes to technology.  Technology becomes the excuse for whatever a student has failed to deliver.  I think he has a point.  We allow students to take advantage of us in our attempts to extend some grace.

CC Aaron Jacobs

I recently sat down at lunch with a student who had failed to give a presentation the previous day for the teacher sitting next to her.  She forgot her laptop that day.  Really?!?  We are 1:1 laptop school.  How do you forget your laptop?  I questioned her further.  I asked her if she really had the presentation done.  Of course, she said, yes.  I questioned her further about what the timestamps on her files might tell me.  She dodged the question and we had a laugh, moving on to other conversation.  I have no doubt that she took advantage of the extra time to work on her presentation to say the least...and probably didn't have it ready to begin with.

While in college, I've worked for hours on a paper and then lost a half day's work.  Did that change the due date?  Nope.  Work faster, stay up later, and make it better the second time around. The other day I was working on a document and lost it (due to my own user error).  That work did not suddenly go away. I had to redo it and still make my deadlines.  It's the real world and although grace is nice, we need to push students away from excuses and toward responsibility.  I suppose having them take responsibility for their own learning is a major goal here.  Life doesn't always wait for the planets to align.  Sometimes we get curveballs at the worst possible times.

As educators, we continue to integrate more technology in the classroom.  We need to hold students accountable.  I'm not advocating losing all understanding and graciousness with students. We just need to use it a little more sparingly and hold ourselves accountable for some learning in this area.  It may not be comfortable, but educators have to be savvy enough to quit buying the 2.0 version of the dog ate my homework.

An Apple & Google Partnership

In our schools, we have implemented both Apple and Google Apps for students and faculty.  I see these two companies offering extremely valuable tools for education.  Apple integrates education-focused software seamlessly together in easy to use ways.  It provides a fantastic platform to demonstrate understanding and learning.   Apple provides a creation tool, which is at the top of Blooms revised taxonomy. It is also built to readily share these creations.

Google adds a component of communication and collaboration.  Although largely text-based in many aspects, the power of collaboration comes out in this suite of applications.  The opportunity to be a learning community and share the learning can have dramatic impacts on a classroom.

In my last post, I talked about being overwhelmed.  Although we have many more tools available at our schools, these two companies provide the core for using technology to enhance learning.  I continue to see huge benefits as both an Apple school and as users of Google Apps.  Teachers can start at this core and develop a foundation for technology integration in their classroom.  So much of what we want students to do can be accomplished with this core software without chasing the ever-changing Web 2.0 apps.  I'm not opposed to Web 2.0 options and their are some great ones out there.  I just advocate going deep and learning the core of what you have at your fingertips to increase the depth of learning taking place.  In technology, it is hard for people to know what they don't  know and as a result, they can often move to new things without accomplishing the full potential of what they already know or have started to learn.  Wherever you focus, do not lose sight of the learning and the student benefits.

Overwhelmed?

The more I know, the more I realize I don't know.  The world of technology resources is vast and seemingly endless.  I see many people just overwhelmed by the technology available and it comes out as frustration and a feeling that it's hopeless to even try getting up to speed.

Steven Anderson wrote a nice blog post focused on beginning teachers and those that feel overwhelmed.  He rightly points out that teaching the first few years is vastly different than having a few years of experience under your belt.  Can you imagine walking into many of our schools just out of college with no experience and encountering many of these technology resources for the first time, particularly coming from a teaching program that fails to prepare you for this reality in schools?  And first year teachers are not the only ones overwhelmed.  Experienced teachers can have these exact same feelings in technology.

Some teachers give in and do nothing, resigning themselves to irrelevancy and hopelessness.  I see some tech savvy teachers and professional developers reinforce this by overwhelming teachers with what's available.  It is important to get outside our limited perspectives but those responsible for professional development also need to know their audience.  Sometimes less is more.  For many teachers, focusing on 2-3 things that can powerfully impact their classroom is sufficient for a year of growth.  The depth of use by the teacher can really help students learn and benefit the classroom instead of a surface glaze of many different "cool" tools.

We have to exercise the same discretion and information literacy that we need to be teaching our students.  We need to filter out what is most important in a digital world and determine how to leverage it for learning.  As technology leaders, we also have to help others find balance so teachers are not overwhelmed.  In the midst of our push to move people forward in their journey, we need to do so responsibly so we don't undermine ourselves with a lack of depth.

If you are an overwhelmed teacher, model the goal-setting you ask your students to do.  Don't give up!  Make some manageable strides forward and seek a true learning community that enlists the help of your students!

GSIS21 Cohort

I have been trying to look for ways to build capacity and expand our knowledge base of "experts" at both our campuses. For GSIS, we have decided to take a small group and go deeper with content than we can with a larger group. In consultation with division leaders, we invited some faculty to participate in a series of PD sessions stretching from September to March 2011. We want to create a cohort of learners that can share a common experience and take their knowledge to the next level. We have so many teachers that are interested and desire this sort of training that is hard to select just a few.

Kathleen Ferenz's 2nd day of PD was spent with this group. We focused on what she called the visual and audio channels. We had a great day of understanding how to construct learning by starting with visuals. We spent a lot of time with iPhoto in the morning. Then we moved to podcasting with GarageBand in the afternoon. Like the previous day, we had fun and learned skills that had immediate applications to classrooms. We also embarked on a larger journey of transforming our perspective to create truly effective 1:1 classrooms. I'm looking forward to continuing our learning together!

Fun PD

GSIS was privileged to have Kathleen Ferenz come in for 2 days of professional development for faculty. She is an Apple Professional Developer that has worked extensively in many areas of technology integration including both the Apple, Google, and Library of Congress worlds. She was a great resource to have and a pleasure to learn from. For me, it was thrilling to see faculty engage in PD that was fun and brought smiles to their faces. Teachers walked out the door with something they could use in their classroom next week and apply to unit development in coming months to transform their classroom. Immediate engagement, short term applications, and long term impacts. I like this model for PD and have sought to implement it with sessions that I lead.

Transformation. It's about taking a classroom and making a vibrant learning environment that embraces the tools available as a 1:1 classroom. 1:1 classrooms are different. It's not just doing some tasks digital instead of on paper. I'm not sure the education community gets this point. I see many people think they are excellent tech integrationists because they do the best paper based tasks on laptops. It's so much more than that...

Thanks, Kathleen, for a great couple days of PD with our faculty!

A Container for your Classroom

What's your container for your classroom? Now, let me first say that I think Jeff Utecht writes articulately about this with examples in his Thinking Stick blog post titled What's your container? That being said, he has probably helped popularize this terminology and idea in the region more recently but the concept and term has been used for some time.

I've been in many conversations here at the beginning of the year with teachers trying to decide what they are going to use as a container for their classroom. The meaning of container is how they are going to contain or hold together the content for their classes. This idea of a container brings coherency to instruction that may point to links all over the web, Google App files, or digital interaction just to name a few. It becomes one place where important materials related to instruction can be located.

CC Sealand Florida by Louis Vest

For some people, I think the term hub is more fitting. A hub is a centerpiece where other things spiral out. For some, all they need is one place to get students and then they point them all over the web to other resources. They need a location to store and organize all their links. They have no "stuff" because everything is on the web somewhere else with various Web 2.0 sites. Containers can act as hubs but in some ways imply more substantial content being posted on them.

To give an example, Moodle could be a container. It can link to whatever you like on the web but it is extremely useful for interaction such as discussion forums, dividing the class into groups, and posting files. Google sites or one of the wiki services can act as a container to hold files and "stuff" in a similar way. At the same time, a wiki can just be a hub with links and embedded code from other sites. A diigo list or a Google doc with hyperlinks might just act as a hub. A blog may act as either one.

So why is it important to distinguish the difference between a hub and a container? It's probably not. It is important is to clearly know your purpose and what you want to accomplish before you select a tool. Doing a blog because "everybody's doing a blog" is hardly a good reason. How will your container enhance, support, and engage students in learning? Think through what you want to do with your container/hub and consider how it can interactively engage students in your content. Then, select the best tool for the job.

Do you have suggestions for a container that you'd like to share? Post them in the comments.

Newness

August brings with it a sense of newness in schools. We like new-ness. It is part of the reason people buy so much stuff. Used stuff just isn't nearly as much fun or enjoyable as something new. The newness of the school year brings excitement and anticipation. As educators, this cycle of newness and growth (both physically, spiritually, and academically) in our students is rewarding to watch.

As we enter the 2010-11 school year, I anticipate an exciting year at both our campuses. For TCIS, the future of the new DTV campus is getting closer as the buildings are beginning to take shape. We continue forward with great momentum in effectively integrating technology into our learning environment, although it will mostly be with our existing equipment this year. At GSIS, the school continues to complete the outfitting of teachers and students in a technology-rich environment that rivals the best in Korea. The growth of technology integration into classrooms is amazing to watch and shows in the digital media constantly being displayed on the web by both staff and students.

As we embrace the newness of the school year, may we also reflect on how we can invoke new strategies to improve learning. No matter how many technology gadgets, bells, or whistles we have, it is the learning in the classroom that is the focus. We have to keep the main thing the main thing. (Don't let the new look of my blog distract you from the journey we are on.)

Plugging Freetech4teachers Blog...and the Google Guide for Educators

I have found the Freetech4teachers Blog to be a bit overwhelming with the amount of content posted there regularly. However, I suppose information glut can be a good thing at times and the key is to skim and read sporadically rather than hitting every post. At least, that is my advice.

Richard Byrne has really done a good job of compiling resources. I particularly like his work to put together a guide to the Google tools available to teachers. With so many schools running Google Apps, this is a great resource for educators around the world.

I encourage you to peruse this blog. Tons of helpful resources are there. For example, Freeology offers printable resources like graphic orgnizers for teachers (see Byrne's blog post for more details). You can find virtual field trip resources and even links to tutorials like Mac for Beginners.

Make sure you are taking some time to explore the many tools available on the web to help students learn and make this type of professional reading part of your regular diet.

Relevant Learning

School must find ways to engage students in relevant ways. A colleague recently pointed out this website which turns a variety of topics among many core subjects into rap music. It is called Rhythm Rhyme Results. Not only does it take concepts and information and put it to lyrics that can be recalled more easily, but it actually has different versions of songs at different paces and with blanks to allow the learning process and scaffolding to occur. You do have to pay for the service but the website says much of the music is available for download via iTunes or Amazon. I didn't listen to all the music but it seemed like a neat concept and innovative way to engage students. Perhaps it is worth checking out for something you are teaching...

Extending Math with Technology Tools

Math continues to increase its presence on the web, particularly for educational purposes. The advantage of many of these tools allow students to access differentiated skill practice and improve at their own rate. It also allows students to make some of the more abstract manipulations and concepts more real.

One such site I recently ran across was GeoGebra. It has an entire wiki devoted to educational uses. The website claims it seeks to go beyond some of the geometry manipulations and directly link algebra to some geometry concepts. It seems to have an array of options and ways for students to manipulate objects. In just a couple minutes I was able to take a screencast of this example:

Reuters reports on an Oxford professor who has developed a subscription service of video games that engage students in real world problem solving and fun. He calls his site Manga High. I checked out some samples and the site definitely looked pretty good at challenging students in engaging ways.

One of our elementary schools uses Mathletics.

The point is this: tools available if you want to look for them. And the quality and benefit of these tools is increasing. Regardless of subscription services or free tools, accessing some of these resources can be a great asset to students.

Wordle

I have digressed into more philosophical topics lately and I want to take a few posts and get back to some tools that some might find useful. Wordle (http://www.wordle.net) has been around for a while. One of its greatest strengths is its simplicity. Copy and paste some text in and let it generate a word collage for you. You can also put in websites. I put in this blog and got the following collage.

You can manually emphasize certain words (with a ~). You can also paste in a list and it will automatically resize words based on their frequency. This is a nice feature if you want to see results of feedback or adjectives from a group. For the next sample, I just copy and pasted in the mission statement from one of our schools.

You can also edit the colors and direction of words. I made this last Wordle from our school ESLRs.

Whether it is decorated your blog or classroom walls or measuring the frequency of responses, Wordle provides a nice graphical way to share text.

21CHK Quotes & Reflection #2

As I near the end of my journey home from the conference, I am tired yet reflective. It was enjoyable to see colleagues and catch up in person with some people that seem only "virtual" for much of the year. I also like reflecting on our schools and the ideas of the conference. We are in the midst of major efforts to transform our schools into the 21st century models that we talk about. As I return, I want to really look at that guage and apply my reflections and new ideas to our strategic plan to make us more effective in our efforts.

In the second keynote address on Friday morning, Bruce Dixon talked about the 21st century and its impact on education. He said...

What we teach much change

where we teach much change

when we teach much change

how we teach must change

He continued on to discuss the need to transform our classrooms, not just translate the current modus operandi to a digital medium. I think this is something for some continued reflection.

Google Lit Trips

I recently ran across Google Lit Trips. It utilizes Google Earth to enhance a literature lesson. I have not used this specific website and idea, but I really like the theory. It takes one technological tool and applies it to enhance and invigorate another area of study. Although cool in engaging students, the reason I particularly like this concept is that it takes this integration and allows teachers to share templates and lessons with each other. The concept is good and becomes better and more attainable for a wider group to use with students when it is shared and they collaborate.

That is 21st century thinking and implementation.

It takes us beyond our 4 walls of our classroom or the colleagues down the hall. It gives us access across the world to share excellent resources for the good of students. If you are interested in more info, you might check out this article on Edutopia.

When I tried to go to the Google Lit Trips page, it said it was down due to too much traffic. Perhaps I am not the only one that sees this as a good idea...

Learning with video games

I have recently seen more and more educational tools that are integrated within video games. 360Ed is just one of the recent ones I have seen. This 360Ed game focuses on US History. The Economist recently featured an article about Quest to Learn, which is a video game that totally redefines the educational paradigm of students. It integrates subjects into domains that combine math and English, English and social studies, and game design and digital literacy. As education seeks to engage students, the application of video game and multimedia technology to interactively engage students is reaching new heights. While research is still being conducted, the root of hands on learning and engaging students in ways that motivate them to learn for themselves continue to lie at the heart of these initiatives. What are you doing in your class to engage your students in innovative ways? How do you make learning fun and make students want to know more?

More than just computers...

As we partner with Apple, it is a partnership. Unlike our Window vendors, we are getting more than just computers delivered to our door step. Apple supports our school with training and professional development for teachers and for the IT staff. The IT support includes on-site support for our students and staff as well.

Professional development for teachers has several different avenues to impact teachers in the classroom. Some involve attending conferences with other educators. Other options include having educators that specialize in effective technology integration visit our campus and work with teachers. I have attended Apple Professional Development (APD) training sessions and the facilitators are quality educators that can demonstrate classroom uses. Actually, these trainers are required to also be in the classroom at least part of the time with their full-time job assignments. By utilizing Apple training opportunities, we are able to screen out professional development opportunities and participate in high quality, strategic sessions that move our school forward. These training events do more than just focus on Apple applications. Training includes the use of many Web 2.0 tools that can be used with either platform.

In addition to specific professional development, we are connected with other Apple schools that are implementing similar 1:1 laptop programs. The connections to other schools is a powerful way to network with similar schools and build from each other. We are already connected through associations with Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) and the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools (EARCOS). Although Apple is not a specific association, the network and facilitation of Apple to share ideas between schools acts in similar ways. As a result of our exploration of Apple, we have already begun to build partnerships in other areas like IB with 2 others schools running similar programs.

Call Graph

Have you ever wanted to record a Skype call for broadcast in a class at a later time or for other blocks of a class. For international schools with often significant time zone issues in reaching people live, perhaps recording Skype conversations would prove beneficial. If this sounds interesting to you, check out Call Graph for a tool to allow you to do it.

The initial cost is free but as with many services like this, the level of service changes with levels of payment.

For more info, check out this link as well.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a popular term but what is it? Well, the word social can be a little inaccurate in the strictest sense. It's not just social as in informal or in the personal realm. It refers to linking communities. The concept is relatively simple. I may like the same sites and topics as my friends. Additionally, I may like the same sites as my friends' friends, even though I may not know them. Social bookmarking leverages relationships to point you to things that may interest you. It can access bookmarks through relationships, categories, or interests.

I'm fairly new to social bookmarking. I don't particularly like to share all my bookmarks. And I don't always bookmark everything that is of interest to me. However, I have found some value to this concept. I have been able to leverage it to find new information on particular topics. Within my PLN of professional educational technology educators, I have run across many new sites that I see as valuable and helpful to my professional growth. It has become a way for me to expand my community and find new sites that expose me to new things.

Social bookmarking really steps into the beginning stages of the semantic web, or Web 3.0. It is "smart" and helps you find places that are of interest and value to you. Some social bookmarking applications learn and tailor themselves to your preferences on what you like and don't like. The concept is really not foreign. Do you use iTunes? The genius feature of iTunes recommends music to you according to what music you have in your library and the particular song. It is tailored to you. Social bookmarking is really just making the same types of recommendations, just in a different sense. iTunes is not the first to use this idea...Amazon has been doing it for years.

Social bookmarking works largely off of tags. Users "tag" keywords to sites so they can be searched or are associated as relevant to certain topics. Tagging is a common term and commonly used on many photo sites. It has many uses and makes accessing relevant information easier. Tagging is great when people work together. Instead of waiting for me to tag 1,000s of sites, I can leverage others to help me tag good sites and be able to search and categorize them effectively based on the wisdom the collective group. Tagging is often associated with images because the only way to search the content is through tags. However, it is also helpful in something like this blog to reference ideas. (This concept also links to Wesch's video of The Machine is Us/ing Us.)

Examples of social bookmarking sites might include del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Diigo, and Ma.gnolia.org just to name a few. I even noticed that Foxmarks, my Firefox add-on, is becoming a social bookmarking application. Wikipedia has a fair list of the many bookmarking tools available.

Google Notebook

Google has lots of applications to peak educators' interests so I suppose it is no surprise this company makes one of the the early posts here. I recently ran across Google Notebook. Like many Google tools, it is entirely web-based although a browser plugin can be installed for most browsers which is a nice enhancement. (If you don't know what a plugin is, don't worry about it.)

What is it?
Google Notebook allows you to store websites and "clips" from anywhere while you are surfing. Sure, bookmarks can store web addresses, but Google Notebook allows you to classify them into folders and "clip" relevant parts. If you select a part of a website, it will store that clip with the web address. Later, I can go back and easily reference the part of the website I found useful and click on the link to see the whole page if I want. Additionally, I can also write comments about the site and whatever notes I care to make regarding my clip.

So why is this so great for myself or my students?
The cool part comes in because not only can I store things in my notebook with relevant material and notes, but I can also share notebooks.

To give a real life application, I am currently working with some colleagues to research and develop some resources on digital citizenship and what we should be teaching our students about online behaviors. We have created a shared notebook to store our research and resources. We will be able to go back later and coherently put the ideas together. Think of it as compiling research resources or a bit of research brainstorming.

If you have students working in groups on a project, perhaps they could use Google Notebook to collaborate together and even write notes to each other about the sources they find. For example, if ES students are preparing for their PYP Exhibition project, they could use it to collect resources and share them among the group and their teacher. A great benefit is that is stores the link automatically which is often needed for proper citing.

I can even publish these notebooks on the web. So not only can I collaborate and store up this information, but I can share it via a weblink to those that may want to access it.

Other resources such as Evernote are around and may offer some additional features. I can't comment on other programs because I haven't used them myself, but I found Google Notebook to be easy and intuitive with few bumps on the learning curve so far. It follows my principles of user-friendly and reliable. Check it out...