Thinking About Learning

This was my 2nd year to attend UTC.  Last year I presented, but this year I just wanted to go as a sponge and absorb.  I must say that I was very impressed and pleased with my experiences!  The Greenville County School District provides this conference free to participants.  Obviously their main target audience is their own teachers, who receive a trade day for attending.  But at the same time, the conference is open free to anyone.  What a gift!!!  In my opinion, this conference is much better than the state-wide Ed Tech conference held in the fall, because most of these presenters are teachers, people who are sharing what works in the trenches.

The keynote speaker was Chris Craft, a Spanish teacher from Crossroads Elementary in Irmo, SC.  Chris has done some phenomenal work with a global project, Life Round Here, and is currently working on completing his Phd.  His informative, entertaining presentation, “Superpowers for Everyday Heroes,” shared great tips of ways he incorporates technology in the classroom.  Chris is an expert at preparing interesting presentations.  During this presentation, he had an entertaining “dialogue” with his computer, “Maria.”  That same day, our governor, Mark Sanford, admitted to an affair with an Argentinian woman named Maria.  Just an ironic coincidence, but a little humorous!

The sessions I attended were great!  I got some wonderful ideas for assessment that I plan to share with my faculty.  One is a free web-based interactive program called Hot Potatoes.  This tool includes templates for crossword, matching quizzes, and cloze activities and provides instant feedback.  Michelle O’Malley led this great session.  Another session that focused on assessment was a session called “Creating Online Polls and Self-Grading Quizzes” by Kim Pauls. Kim demonstrated how to use google forms to create quizzes and how to set up formulas for the quizzes to be automatically scored.

Some of the other awesome sessions included:

• In “Using Collaborative Tools,” Cathy Jo Nelson and Fran Bullington had a great dueling showdown between wikis and google docs.
• My friend and colleague, Mike Edwards, did a terrific presentation on “Augmented Reality.” This has been a cutting-edge, personal exploration for him, and I have been privileged to delve into this a little with him.
• Amanda LaBlanc did a useful hands-on session on Flip Video Cameras.  Each grade level at my school is getting one this coming year, so that was a great training session.
• Ellen Gordon did a fabulous session, “Goodbye Overhead…Hello Doc Cam.”  In the new school year, my district is providing a doc cam for every classroom, and I left this session with lots of ways to use it in various curricular areas.

Another fun experience was a “Tweet-up” held at Wild Wings Wednesday evening.  It was so cool to meet people face-to-face who are part of my PLN.  Twitter is one of my best sources of professional development, and the people in my PLN are very helpful to me.  It was fantastic!

Thanks to Greenville County School District and all the presenters!  It was a very valuable personal growth experience.

Several weeks ago the Washington Post reported that 46 states have agreed to the establishment of common core standards.  I knew before I even finished reading that my state, SC, would be one of the states not participating.  Our governor has a history of grandstanding in an effort to make his name well-known before the next presidential election, and this was another opportunity for him.  Outrage at Gov. Sanford is nothing new for me!  He has never been a supporter of public education, as evidenced by his push for tax-dollar vouchers for private schools.  His last big grandstand was his refusal to accept stimulus money for schools, and I participated in a protest rally at the state house over that issue.  Now he doesn’t want the federal government telling us what our students should learn.  Okay, it might be different if our state was leading the pack in achievement, but it seems like a no-brainer to me that we could benefit from some collaboration.  Common standards could raise the bar nationally for what students are expected to learn.  In order for our students to be globally competitive, it’s imperative that we raise the bar.

After reading Clay Burell’s post about Secretary of Education Duncan, I’ve been questioning the methodology for determining these standards.  Burell identified the groups that have been selected to write the standards from an article from Education Week:

Achieve, a Washington-based group made up of state policymakers and business leaders; act Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization that runs the college-entrance exam of the same name; and the College Board, the New York City-based sponsor of the sat admissions exam and the Advanced Placement program.

State policymakers, business leaders, and college entrance exam creators…hmmm, there is no mention whatsoever of educators participating in this process.  The same article reveals that subject-matter groups such as the NCTE and NCTM have expressed concern about being excluded from the “Common Core” process.  I, too, have some major concerns about this.  It would be so disheartening to have such a much-needed initiative go awry due to standards being determined by non-educators.  With ACT and the College Board writing the standards, it’s easy to see the next step could be that they would create (and profit from) a national test.  It’s not that I’m opposed to a national test.  I just don’t think that the same entities should determine the standards and write the test.

States have already poured lots of money into developing standards and tests.  Although SC is still at the bottom of the barrel in performance, we have some of the most rigorous standards and testing in the nation.  That’s one reason we rank so low nationally.  Our tests more accurately demonstrate student proficiency (or lack of) than other states.  The same Washington Post article I referenced earlier said:

In Mississippi, for instance, 90 percent of fourth-graders passed the state reading exam in 2007, according to U.S. Department of Education data. But only 51 percent had at least “basic” or “partial mastery” on the test known as the Nation’s Report Card.

SC has many obstacles to improving student achievement.  A large number of our students live in poverty, and our current level of unemployment has reached 12.1%, one of the highest in the nation.  We have a state legislature that is satisfied with only mandating that each child in our state has the opportunity to receive a “minimally adequate education.”  Our governor has demonstrated at every turn that he disdains public education.  We have school buildings in the Corridor of Shame that are a hundred years old and would not be seen fit as a prison facility, but our state has been unwilling to take action.  President Obama raised awareness of the situation in his inaugural speech when he invited Ty’sheoma Bethea, an 8th grader from J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, S.C., to sit with his wife and then told her story.  Even still, help for her school did not come from within our state, but from a furniture supply company in Chicago.

I recount these educational and political woes as evidence that we are in desperate need of change.  Common core standards won’t solve the above mentioned problems, but could at least put us on a more level playing field for measuring academic success.  I was encouraged to read our state Superintendent of Education, Jim Rex’s, comments in the Spartanburg Herald Journal about the movement towards common core standards:

Although South Carolina is prevented from being an “official” participant due to Gov. Mark Sanford’s refusal to sign on, I have been assured by the effort’s leaders — including the National Governors Association — that we can participate unofficially.

That’s good news!  The people of SC continue to fight for progress, in spite of a governor who spits in our faces at every turn.  We have a long way to go, but as an educator, I’ll never give up hope all of our students will one day receive the kind of quality education they deserve.

Research shows that collaborative planning and the use of common formative and summative assessments are key factors in improving instruction and achievement.  I observed this first-hand in my own school this year as my principal led change to transform our faculty into a professional learning community, based on the concepts in DeFour’s On Common Ground. Our students made a dramatic improvement in achievement due to this culture change, so much so that we were specially recognized by our district office.  Since collaboration is so effective within a school, it only makes sense that national collaboration for the development of a core curriculum has the potential to yield great results.   If the development of national standards is handled correctly and if educators are given the opportunity to participate in the process, this initiative could be a first step in molding our educational system into one that will prepare our students to be globally competitive.

I’ve had one week of summer vacation, and I’ve now had enough mental rest to objectively reflect on the growth of technology integration in my school this year.  This was the first full year that every classroom had a SMART Board, projector, and audio system.  That was a huge catalyst for change for teachers in instructional practice.  Additionally, my school experienced phenomenal gains in student achievement this year, which was hugely due to the increase in teacher collaboration and common assessments through the PLC model.   But as indicated by Marzano’s research, I also partly attribute the increase in achievement to the increased use of interactive whiteboards.

As part of my self-evaluation process, I conducted a survey of my teachers to gain some insight into their perspective on growth. (View the results here.)  I was impressed that over 70% of the teachers felt that their use of technology had grown between 50%-100%.  Even more eye-catching was that 97.6% tried something new using technology with their students this year.  During the 2 years I have been a TIS at my school, I have been so impressed with the openness of my faculty to new ideas for technology integration.  Every time I asked a teacher to participate in a project, each one has always agreed!

One example is that this year my 2nd grade team really branched out with PBL.  Every 2nd grade student in my school learned about using the Internet for research (I got to teach that lesson!), used Open Mind 2 mind-mapping software to organize research findings, exported OM 2 to PowerPoint, refined the PPT, and then presented an oral multi-media project.  It was an amazing leap in technology growth for our 2nd graders.  I can’t wait to see what these students will accomplish in the future!

I know that all of my teachers had tremendous growth in the area of technology this year.  I had 15 teachers who were new to our school and district.  Many of these came from districts that did not have the technology resources we have.  They were required to take the TTCA, our district’s level 1 technology competency test.  After some tutoring, they all successfully passed the test and have made great personal gains in their use of technology.  It was a great year at my school, and I’m already beginning to think about how to guide growth next year!

I recently had a conversation with my district Director of Technology, a TIS friend, and my former Global Horizons teacher partner about the merits of Twitter and the possibilities for the educational use of Twitter.  Here are some of the links that have helped shape my perspective:

9 Reasons to Twitter in Schools (Tech & Learning)

Tech Crunch: Impact of Twitter on the world

Times article: Great Britain considers Twitter for the  primary curriculum

Twitter as a District Communication Tool: School district in New Zealand uses Twitter to disseminate information to parents, students, and staff (Chris Dawson)

Teaching with Twitter: 10 great instructional ideas for the classroom from Steve Wheeler

Best Practices in a Twitter-enhanced High School Classroom: Practical explanation of how to manage Twitter use in a classroom along with ideas for using Twitter as an instructional tool from Teaching Paperless.

Can We Use Twitter for Educational Activites?: Presentation by Gabriella Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu

A Twitter Code of Conduct: An article from BusinessWeek about Twitter’s impact on the business world

My own 2 blog posts about Twitter:

Changing the World, Can Twitter Change Education?

Twittering Teachers and PLN

Here’s a link to all of my DIIgo bookmarks about Twitter.  The list includes Twitter apps, news articles about Twitter, lists of Twittering teachers, and Twitter in education.  This doesn’t even scratch the surface!

As digital educators, we’re always looking for new ways to engage our students through technology-enhanced learning opportunities.   At this point, Twitter is blocked in my district, so I’m always on the lookout for other options for student collaboration and “realtime” conversations.  On Twitter today, Chris Webb did some “thinking out loud” and wondered about using a backchannel for student interactions while they watched a video.  He had previously blogged about how a teacher in his school, Pat Gerding, had used Today’s Meet as a backchannel during class.  This looks like a great way to engage students in conversation about learning in a somewhat private format.  All you do is go to the Today’s Meet website and create a room.  No account is necessary.  Once you create the room, you share the url with your students so they can enter it.  Can’t wait to try it out!

It’s amazing how something so simple as a 140 character reply to the question, “What are you doing?” could have such a huge global impact on society. Tech Crunch reports,

Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million.

Businesses use Twitter as a source for free advertising.  Politicians use Twitter for campaigning.  Celebrities use Twitter to increase their celebrity status. (Can anyone explain why Oprah felt a need for this?)  Twitter is having such an impact on the corporate world that according to  BusinessWeek,  some companies are developing social media codes of conduct for employees:

To prevent sensitive information leaks, blemishes on a reputation, and other potential liabilities of a Twittering workforce, companies are drafting new employee codes of conduct and educating workers about what they should and shouldn’t say on the site. The basic rule: Don’t be stupid.

Why is Twitter taking the world by storm?  Clive Thompson sums it up:

Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter … is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse. And this, as it turns out, suggests where the Web is heading.

So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it’s experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can’t explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends… It’s practically collectivist — you’re creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

I love the phrase, “creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.” I have been Twittering for about a year and a half, and I only follow educators.  My primary purpose is personal professional learning.  Twitter is my best source for professional development.  I’ve been slow and selective about choosing people to follow, but I have developed a wonderful network of like-minded professionals around the world.  As I interact with these people in ongoing short phrases, we have a shared understanding of what it means to be passionate about the role of technology in education.  We share great ideas, our successes, our frustrations, and things we’ve learned in the midst of the sprinkled tidbits of our personal lives.  Teacher collaboration has been identified as a key factor in raising student achievement, and through social networking tools like Twitter, I can collaborate and learn from the best around the world.

So my question is this: since Twitter is such a powerful learning tool, how do we go about harnessing that collective learning energy for use in schools? Great Britain is considering recommendations for updating the primary curriculum,  suggesting that children should be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter by the time they go to secondary school.  They may consider dropping traditional content in favor of emphasizing informational technology, according to the Times.  Although my district is very proactive in the area of providing technology equipment for schools, it still has a very conservative stance on blocking many useful social networking tools like Twitter that enhance learning.

Imagine a classroom where differentiated instruction results in students using MP3 players, cell phones, laptops, and gaming devices to pursue individual learning goals.  They interact with students around the world via Twitter, Ning, or other social networking vehicles to ask questions, collaborate, share resources, and share learning in real time.  Immediate response, immediate feedback, immediate dialogue about learning.  Twitter is changing the way the world communicates.  Why should our students be the last to benefit?

Last week someone shared a link to Myebook on Twitter.  This is a cool, free application that allows you to create a digital flash book with pages that “turn.”  There are 2 ways to create: upload from a PDF (fast & easy) or create from scratch (which allows you to customize your pages with color, backgrounds, frames, templates, etc).  I decided to create one from scratch to get a feel for how it worked.

Then I tested the PDF option with a student project:

There are so many ways this could be used in school, not only for Language Arts, but in every content area.  Primary teachers could use it to create class books, and older students could create individual books.  Teachers could create an end of the year memory book for their class.  Content can be uploaded from your computer, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Bebo, Photobucket, and more.  Books can be designated as public or private.  Each book has its own URL, and embeddable code is also provided.

Recommendations:

• Make sure you have Flash 10 loaded.
• Don’t allow students to go to the Myebook main page.  People post a variety of books, and some content is definitely not suitable for students.  I plan to share and manage by using the URL links.
• For most elementary students, the easiest option would be to have them create their content in Word or PowerPoint and save as a PDF.  Then you upload the PDF, and the ebook is quickly created.  Older students would enjoy creating their own and customizing.

I’ve been working with a fifth grade class to create an online interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” story.  I first tried this several years ago using Tony Vincent’s templates from his Learning in Hand site.  The first time, I had students from 2 different classes working in pairs to write the story on a wiki.  That ended up being a lot of stories to manage!

This year I tried something a little simpler.  I met with a class several times and we brainstormed/planned the story using Open Mind 2, a mind-mapping program.  OM 2 lets you attach text or other things to its branches.  Attachments are indicated by the paperclips at the end of some branches.  We wrote the text for the beginning of the story together as a group and planned an outline of how the story would progress.

Then students worked in pairs to write the story parts for the remaining branches.  Each pair then created a PowerPoint slide of their part of the story, and I hyperlinked them together.  The plan was to save the PPT as a single web page, but when I did this, it created an mht file, which will only work in Internet Explorer.  Then I used iSpring to convert the PPT to html, and this seems to work.

During the project, I received an email from Ms. Hughes that said, “I am so excited!  Most of my groups in my homeroom have finished their first drafts and have started revising.  They are doing such an awesome job of writing, working together, and having great discussions about their writing.   I am really impressed with them … it has been a great learning activity.”  Six state ELA standards were addressed during this project.

Here’s the story:
The Mystery of the Old, Abandoned House (When reading, click on the refresh button to return to the beginning of the story.)

Teacher collaboration has been a strong push in my district this year with an emphasis on Professional Learning Communities.  We’ve had a district focus on DuFour’s book, On Common Ground.  As part of that effort, quarterly “On Common Ground” meetings have been held with elementary administrators, instructional coaches, TISs, and interventionists to promote a data-driven, results-oriented culture.  At the school level, grade level teams have been meeting weekly to plan instruction and common assessments and to analyze results.  We’ve just completed the spring administration of MAP testing for reading and math, , and I’ve had teacher after teacher come up to me, beaming about their great scores and how many students met or exceeded the anticipated growth index.  After such an intense year of hard work, teachers are able to see the great results that can be achieved through collaboration.

In an effort to carry collaboration another step further, I worked with a small group of TISs to create a district-wide database of teacher-created lesson materials.  Our district web master took our recommendations and created a searchable database.  Teachers can upload interactive whiteboard lessons, PowerPoints, WORD docs, spreadsheets, handheld activities, and many other files.  The database is searchable by subject, content strand, grade level, and keyword.  We’re excited about this project because it will enable teachers to share and find resources from other people in our district who teach the same standards.

Over the last several months, however, I have come to realize that collaborating within the district is still too narrow of a vision. Through my own PLN, I have been amazed and delighted to discover that there are excellent educators around the globe who are willing to share their resources and knowledge, and sometimes I can receive an answer faster than if I sent an email to a colleague.  A month ago, I was experimenting with Ustream, and I was running into a playback issue.  Not knowing anyone in district who was using it, I posted a question about it on the Classroom 2.0 Ning, I had received a reply with a checklist of steps to try.  This list helped me narrow down my issue to reach a solution.  And from where did my speedy assistance come? From Carlos Ferrer in Rykjavik, Iceland!  Recently I was preparing a lesson on folk tales for 5th grade, and I had already spent a lot of time searching for resoures.  I posted a query on Twitter and quickly received 3 good leads, including a great link to video on an interesting New Zealand legend from allanahk in Nelson, New Zealand.

Yesterday morning, ironically, Wes Fryer posted a link on Twitter to an article he had written on the ISTE blog on iTouch and iPhone apps for Education, and his opening sentence was “The power of Twitter and personal learning networks continues to amaze me!”

I’ll close with these words from a post on Twitter by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach: “It is time to end the practice of solo teaching. Today’s teachers must learn in collectively built, widely shared, cohesive networks.”
That’s what I want for my teachers, because I’m convinced that it’s a vital element in raising student achievement.

My TIS friend, Mike, has been exploring the educational use of the iPAQ Travel Companion, a GPS-enabled Windows Mobile device.  He invited another TIS friend, John, and me to join him.  This GPS device also allows you to upload video, audio files, and html files.   Using mscape software, we prepared instructional content based on the Pacific Theater of World War II.  There were lots of great film clips from Discovery Streaming.  After several months of planning and preparing, we were finally ready to test it with a small group of 5th grade students.  As is always the case when exploring new technology, there were a couple of glitches, but overall things went very well!   Mike inserted a map of our school playground into the devices and set the GPS coordinates.    As students began, only the first location, Pearl Harbor, was visible on the screen.  Students began to walk to that location.  When they reached the “hot spot,” the content about Pearl Harbor automatically began to play.  When that content had finished playing, the next location popped up on the screen.  I had prepared questions that students had to answer as they moved through the content.  Each student had a role: device manager, reader, or recorder.  The roles rotated for each new location so that everyone had a turn to be the device manager, which was obviously the most fun! This picture shows what students saw on the device after they had visited all 7 locations.

On of the advantages of using these handheld devices for learning is that this activity provides for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.  We were especially pleased with our students’ enthusiasm about this learning experience.  They enjoyed being outside and walking to find the next hot spot with the GPS.  One of the greatest benefits of the use of educational technology is the high level of motivation and engagement it produces.

We are working on other content as well.  John created a lesson using a cell diagram for a map, I created another WW II lesson on the European Theater, and Mike created a high school activity on energy choices.  We see a lot of potential for the use of augmented reality for learning!

To view a short video of students using the handhelds and of them talking about the experience, visit our school website, iWarrior.