Thinking About Learning

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.

With the recession and incredible budget cuts to education, I was asked to make a list of what I do as a Technology Integration Specialist.  My district has worked so hard to protect personnel and jobs, but limited funding requires change.  The literacy coach program has already been reworked, and half of them have been sent back to the classroom.  Now it’s our turn.  We currently have a TIS in every school, with the exception of our 2 new schools that have .5 TIS positions, due to last year’s budget restraints.  I love my job!  I sense that I have had a positive impact on my faculty’s interest and willingness to try new ways of integrating technology into the classroom.  I have 2nd graders who have learned to use the Internet to research this year.  They used Open Mind 2 to organize their information as they researched, and then exported their mind maps to PowerPoint so that they could prepare an oral presentation of their work.  These same students have used Writers all year to learn keyboarding skills.  I can’t help it…I want to see what these students will be able to do as 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders!

Nevertheless, change is inevitable.  I don’t know what I’ll be doing next year, but here’s what I’m doing now:

1. Staff Development
Meet monthly with grade level teams during planning to address topics of their choosing or something I want to introduce.
Hold after school training sessions as needed.
Provide training for TTCA.
Provide training for the completion of Technology Competency Level 2 Portfolio.
Train new teachers on use of IGPro, Lex-Connect, Groupwise, and district software.
Provide training on use of equipment such as SMART Boards, student response systems, and document cameras.
Lead sessions in district-wide staff development venues.
Provide 1-on-1 tutoring for teachers who need extra help.
Provide training as needed for instructional assistants and student interns.

2. Curriculum Support for Teachers
Be familiar with state curriculum standards (quickly and easily accessed through SMART Tech’s lesson plan site)
When possible, attend team collaborative planning sessions to be aware of current instructional objectives.
Ask teachers individually what they are teaching and make suggestions of ways to use technology to enhance instruction.
Locate and share Internet resources that support instruction.
Make suggestions about project-based learning activities that relate to topics of study.
Collaborate with teachers to plan standards-based PBL objectives, activities, and assessment.
Co-teach with teachers  to model technology integration.
Suggest technology-enhanced alternatives for classroom assessment.
Create instructional materials such as SMART Notebook lessons for teachers.
Maintain a school blog to share student learning with families and the community.

3. Provide “Just in Time” Assistance (Examples)
Inability to log in.
Laptop won’t get on the network.
Laptop won’t connect to projector.
SMART Board tools won’t work.
IGPro gradebook problems.
Email issues.
Printer won’t work.
Diagnosis of computer problems to make work order referral for technician.
Answer immediate “how to” questions.

4. Personal Professional Learning
Develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN) with other educators around the world by reading blogs, Twitter, and social networks like
Ning.
Collaborate with other TISs to learn together about new opportunities for technology integration such as the use of iPods in the
classroom or Augmented Reality.
Make use of a social bookmarking tool to collect useful resources that can be shared.
Attend workshops or conferences.

What have I left out? Please share your thoughts!

Our governor is insisting that he will refuse to accept federal stimulus stabilization funds for education.  His children attend private school, and one of his big agenda items during his tenure has been to push for tax-payer funded vouchers to help families pay for private school tuition.  Our legislature has refuted his efforts, so now public education is being held hostage.  It’s his revenge as he tries to make his name known nationally to aid his future bid for the presidency.  Last week over 1000 educators rallied at the state house to protest his refusal to accept funds for education, and I’m proud to say that I participated in my 1st protest rally!

Finally! Scientific research from a reliable, respected source about the effect of technology on student achievement!  I have been heavily engaged with educational technology for more than 6 years.  For 4 years I taught fifth grade in a technology-infused classroom, and I’ve been a technology integration specialist for the past 2 years.  I knew from the beginning that the use of technology had a positive impact on student learning, but most of the benefits I observed were non-measurable with a test: higher motivation, increased engagement, improved student focus, development of problem-solving skills, more collaborative learning, improved student behavior with fewer office referrals, growth in digital literacy, and increased student efficacy.  While all of these effects are significant gains for 21st Century learners,  the bottom line comes down to student achievement, and up until this time, I knew of no data-rich research that documented the impact of technology on student achievement.

Dr. Robert Marzano, one of our nation’s leading scholars in the field of educational research, has begun studying this issue and recently presented his findings in the keynote speech at CUE. Using 85 teachers across the nation who taught one class using an interactive whiteboard and another “control” class without the technology, he examined the effect of the use of an interactive whiteboard on student achievement.  He discovered 4 variables that affected results: overall years of teaching experience, length of time in months of experience in using a whiteboard, percentage of time the whiteboard is used in the classroom, and teacher’s confidence level in ability to use the technology effectively.  The research showed that optimal student achievement gains (the “sweet spot” according to Marzano) are possible with these conditions: a very experienced teacher who has at least 2 years of experience using an interactive whiteboard, uses it about 75% of the time, and is confident in his/her ability to effectively use the technology.  According to Marzano, such a teacher may expect up to 30 percentile point gains in student achievement.  Marzano admitted that all research is equivocal, and that ultimately the most significant factor in student achievement, with or without technology, is teacher quality.

His suggestion for effective use of technology was to focus on content, not the bells and whistles.  He also gave a reminder of the importance of keeping track of which students are getting it and which are not.  That point led Marzano into commentary about formative assessment and the use of technology for record-keeping.  He asserted that assessment should be an instructional technique, not a labeling technique. It’s important to examine lots of data over time to get the best picture of a student’s progress.  The most significant acievement gains came from tracking student progress over time using a rigorous rubric-based model.  The implications are that teachers need professional development in both effective teaching and the effective use of technology to maximize growth in student achievement.

I first learned of Gcast last summer at the Upstate Technology Conference in a session led by Elizabeth Kohut. When you’re at a tech conference, you always learn more than you have time to explore, so although I was intrigued with the idea of creating a podcast with a cell phone, it was one of those new ideas that got put on the back burner.

This year I’ve seen a growing interest in podcasting by my teachers.  Only several of them have iPods in their classrooms.  Usually when a teacher has a podcast idea, they will schedule a time for me to come into the classroom with my iPod, and I help record and publish.  As I was preparing for this month’s technology staff development grade level sessions, I was considering what new technology tools I might introduce to them.  This is how GCast resurfaced for me.  Every teacher has a cell phone, and GCast is so simple to use!

• Sign up for a free GCast account and create your PIN.
• Call the GCast number from your cell phone and enter your PIN.
• When you are ready to record a podcast, call the same number and enter your PIN.  You will be prompted to push # to begin recording and push # again when you have finished.  Then you have options to listen to your recording, discard your recording, or publish your recording.
• Within a few minutes, your recording shows up on your account page on the GCast website.
• You then have the option to publish your podcast.  GCast has it’s own little podcast player that can easily be embedded in a blog or web page by copying and pasting the code.

This is another fast, easy way to connect our students with the world, to give them an opportunity to have their voices heard, and to provide them with an authentic audience as they express their learning.

Last week I listened to a Discovery Education webinar with Tony Vincent, “I Didn’t Know You Could Do That with IPods.” One of the best things I learned was a great tool for converting YouTube videos into MP4, FLV, AVI, MPG, and other file formats. It was exciting to discover an easy way to be able to use YouTube content in the classroom.  YouTube is blocked in my district, so I previously haven’t spent much time exploring and searching, but I have been amazed to see how much good educational content is out there! My math coach and I recently received an iTouch through a grant, and we’re working on finding and creating math content that would be useful to students.  I’ve downloaded over 30 videos in a short amount of time. It’s so easy!  All you have to do is type in the word kick in front of the word youtube in the video URL.
Example: http://kickyoutube.com/watch/?v=skX6RnnIkuM#VQsQj1Q_CMQ

Here are a couple of my favorite YouTube finds:

Multiplication Tables: Created initially in the computer lab at the juvenile detention center in Portland, Oregon, these catchy, rap-style videos will be very helpful for students needing help learning multiplication facts.

Learning Upgrade: This company offers online courses in reading and math, but they have loaded a few of their professionally done videos to YouTube.

Just saw this on Twitter: 100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers

My friend, John Geanangel, shared this original quote yesterday:
“Give a child an answer – you have solved their immediate problem.
Teach a child to Google – you‘ve taught them to solve their own problems.”

I think this phrase beautifully sums up the necessary shift in pedagogy that needs to take place in our thinking, in our planning, and in our classrooms.  When I was a child, the focus of education was simply memorizing math facts, memorizing sight words, or memorizing important dates in history. Now, there is simply too much information available to memorize it all.

George Siemens reports in elearnspace:

IDC offered a report in 2007 on information growth, and now provides 2008 edition (.pdf): “In this companion to last year’s EMC-sponsored white paper, IDC again calibrates the size (bigger than first thought) and the growth (faster than expected) of the digital universe through 2011″. The main website also allows people to calculate their digital footprint.
The field of informatics (i.e. study of information) is not very developed. We are all impacted by information growth and development – in fact this is one of the areas that most impacts us – and yet we have at best a rudimentary understanding of the nature of information. Sure, we have people telling us information is exploding…that it’s overwhelming…and so on. But that’s a bit like saying the patient has a fever. I’d like to know more. I’m surprised at how little we actually understand of information itself, especially when considering the tremendous impact on our lives.

The study, The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe, predicts that between 2006 and 2011, digital information will grow ten-fold in five years, from under 200 exabytes to 1800 exabytes. So what does this mean for educators?  There’s already so much information available that I can’t take it all in, and neither can our students.  Our focus as educators must strongly shift to teaching our students how to research, explore, and find the informational resources they need.  We need a greater emphasis on conceptual learning and application of learning strategies.

All of the second graders in my school learned the definition of the word research this year, and they have continued to learn throughout the year through research projects. They understand that research is finding needed information and that sometimes they have to search again and again to find what they need.  They have made connections to see that finding the location and time of the movie they want to see is research.  One little girl came up to me in the hall one morning and proudly told me that she had done “research” at home last night to find out about her baby sister’s rash. She has begun her journey to become information literate.

Yes, John has it right…“Teach a child to Google – you‘ve taught them to solve their own problems.”