Thinking About Learning

I finished analyzing the results of the technology survey that I posted for my teachers with Survey Monkey. Following the example of a TIS friend, I posted the survey results on a web page so I could easily share them with my staff. I was pleased that 48 people took the time to respond. It was a short survey with only 8 questions, but it gave me a barometer reading on the local attitudes toward technology. Honestly, there weren’t any surprises. Most teachers reported that the level of technology integration in their classrooms is not very high, but they have a very strong interest in learning more about how to use a SMARTboard. As part of our district’s technology roll-out plan, every teacher in our school received a laptop and projector last semester. Our SMARTboards have also arrived, but they are still sitting in boxes in a storage room. It may be months before the contracted company gets around to mounting them. (That is a huge frustration and another story.) My teachers are eager to get their boards and want to be prepared to use them. This eagerness is an open doorway for me, and I hope to use this momentum to help my teachers see that using technology is not just “one more thing to do.” Instead, it’s a way to teach students in ways that engage and motivate them. It will also make their jobs more fun, and it will prepare students to be successful in the world in which they live. The survey results encouraged me as a new TIS. My faculty has demonstrated good receptivity to me and my ideas. I’m excited about my work, and I look forward to good things happening in my school this semester!

Curriculum Connections:

Third Grade Social Studies: Research key battles of the Revolutionary War that were fought in South Carolina. Use Google Earth to plot the locations of the battles. Use Excel to create a graph of the casualty numbers for each battle. Write a “from the scene” news report of each battle and record them for podcasts. Resource: Diigo bookmarks of battle websites.

Literacy: Post Children’s Book Award nominee books on Shelfari to encourage students to read those books and post comments. It’s an online book discussion! Check out our bookshelf. We’re just getting started with this in our media center.

One of the highlights of my week has been to have the privilege of getting two more 5th grade classes started on student blogs. We are using 21 Classes. It’s exciting to expose students and teachers to the possibilities of blogging! The potential for the expression of student learning and literacy development through blog writing is virtually an untapped resource in elementary schools. Students love to blog. It gives them a real world audience for their writing. It also allows them the opportunity to express their opinions and interact online with peers in meaningful ways. Blogs can enhance instruction in every content area. These students are excited about blogging, and it’s a great way to motivate them to write.

Curriculum Connections for Blogs:
Science: Write lab reports for experiments, discuss the application of the scientific method to various science activities, post research findings.

Math: Describe new math processes learned, post answers to word problems.

Social Studies: Commentary on current events, post research findings, compare and contrast events in history, summarize historical events, write biographical information about key historical people.

ELA: Book talks; describe specific story elements such as character analysis, setting, or plot; write poetry; personal narratives; demonstrate reading skills such as fact and opinion, cause and effect, compare and contrast, or figurative language; write biographies or autobiographies.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a SMARTboard Users Group in Charleston. There were over 100 people there, teachers, technology integration specialists, media specialists, and district level personnel. Prior instructions had been provided to bring a SMART Notebook lesson(s) to share with the group. After a large group introductory session, participants were divided up into small groups, about 15 participants each, based on self-determined user ability. In our small groups a facilitator shared some new information from SMART Tech, introduced us to some new tools, and then opened to floor for participants to share the lessons they had brought. At the end we were able to save a copy of all the shared lessons to a flash drive to take with us.

This was one of the best professional development events I’ve ever attended! Other educators are the best resource for teachers. We’ve all known that for years. When I attend a conference, I avoid sessions conducted by vendors and seek out sessions led by people in the trenches. So I’m asking, “How can we capitalize one all the experience that surrounds us, but seems inaccessible?”

Too often teachers feel isolated behind a closed door, struggling to create and use meaningful instructional materials in the midst of a day already packed with too many responsibilities. Collaboration is a buzz-word in education today, but when do teachers really have time to collaborate? Even when a monthly afternoon is set aside strictly for that purpose, other issues beg for the time.

The SMARTboard users group really got me thinking about the need for teachers to have a forum for an online professional learning team. Unfortunately, teachers who are trying to embed the use of technology as an instructional methodology within the curriculum are still in the minority. It’s easy to feel isolated when your beliefs about pedagogy are not shared by those around you. It only makes sense that an online professional social network community could be a possible solution for a more intentional approach for collaboration and continued professional growth among like-minded educators. I believe that educators have only begun to taste the value of social networking Web 2.0 tools. I’ll be seeking others to join this quest!

Technorati: smartboard collaboration PLT usergroups

It’s less than 2 weeks until I officially begin my new job as a technology integration specialist. I’ll be at a new school with a whole new faculty to get to know. I have so many questions! How can I be effective in leading and assisting my teachers in the use of technology? What are the most important things I need to teach them? There are so many great technology tools available for the classroom. Web 2.0 has been embraced by a few people in my district, but it’s still a mystery to most. Where do I begin?

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading, looking for some answers. I was reading a Thinking Stick entry that contained Skype notes of a NECC session by Will Richardson. One of Jeff’s comments was “Learning is about conversations, not tools.” A simple statement, but so profound! That was exactly what I needed to read and where I need to begin…conversations. Building the relationships and making connections will be the root of any kind of growth I might be able to encourage.

George Siemens, author of the connectivism theory, offered another take on tools in his blog entry entitled, “It’s not about tools. It’s about change.” He questions whether those of us in education who are caught up in Web 2.0 are using the right approach. “We are at a point of transition - will our tools be absorbed by education systems, and then become part of the problem? Or do our tools result in real change? … Will the change come only from conference-tour academics that adopt current trends and present them without passion for change to an audience seeking to hear what’s new in tools, but not what’s new in process, knowledge exchange or society? I’m concerned that the current tone of talk about read/write web tools in the conference circuit is one of shoring up an approach to teaching and learning that is fundamentally at odds with how people learn and interact.”

People learn by making connections. That’s why “making connections” (text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world) is such a valuable strategy in literacy instruction. Bringing about change in the educational realm won’t happen because of the next best tool. It will be a result of teachers making connections between the curriculum, their personal lives, and the digital lives of their students. Maybe that’s where I need to begin…with conversations and connections, not tools.

That being said, I still love cool tools! Check these out:

Shelfari: This site is connected with Amazon. It allows you to set up an online bookshelf of the books you’re reading, and if you want, you can interact with others who have read the same books. I have posted a shelf of my summer reads.

wikiHow: We’re all familiar with wikipedia. Now there’s a collaborative online how-to manual! Who knew? I found it by doing a Google search on how to use trackback.

Technorati: thinkingstick, connectivism, Siemens, cooltools, learning

I was first introduced to the concept of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) last October on Jeff Utecht’s Thinking Stick blog (one of my faves). It seems that this idea is finally taking hold in our corner of the world. There’s a lot of research to support this practice as a strategy for improving student achievement. Here’s a link to some supporting online documentation that I located regarding PLCs. My understanding is that generally a PLC is a group of teachers at the same school who are involved in an inquiry-based study of a specific educational topic or practice. Collaboration among teachers has been proven to improve teacher quality. As I have continued to ponder the need to change the way we provide education and how we might go about doing that, I would be very interested in being part of an online PLC that focuses on using web2.0 tools in the classroom. A cool tool that I learned of from Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day is Xpanity. This application evidently provides a way for users who are reading the same web site to have conversation about it. I’m still trying to work with it, but this potentially seems like a fantastic way to facilitate an online PLC. (I discovered Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day in Widgetbox and have added it to my Pageflakes online learning page.)

Some other cool tools:

Seterra: This is a free download geography game. You can study or take quizzes to learn countries, capitols, and flags of the world. It seems to me that we should be placing a greater emphasis on teaching geography as our world gets flatter and flatter. A great use of time when you have a few minutes left at the end of class!
Slideshare: This application allows you to upload your PowerPoint slides and podcast to create a “slidecast.” This tool be used by teachers to make a lesson available online. It would also be a great way to share professional development presentations.

Technorati:plc thinkingstick elearning edtech cooltools

We can discern…a transformation of human personality in progress which is of evolutionary proportions, a shift of consciousness fully as epoch-making as the appearance of speech or of the tool making talents in our cultural repertory. ~Theodore Roszak

The more I become immersed in Web 2.0, the more convinced I become that we are on the front edge (or perhaps even in the midst) of a cultural revolution of mammoth proportions that will affect every corner of the globe…both in the educational realm and in the lives of individuals.  As I expressed in my last post, it can be a little discouraging to try to move forward when so few people in your immediate world share the vision.  That’s one of the wondrous benefits of the ability to be involved in a world-wide learning community like the K12 Online Conference.  That conference with its live discussion components was an effective demonstration of the  quote by Roszak.  I believe that Roszak fears this cultural change, but as an educator, I can see how the ability to interact with anyone on the planet opens the door to unlimited potential for learning, creativity, and bridge-building.   I was so encouraged by Wes Fryer’s comments about our presentation, Cultivating Digital Educators.   It’s very affirming to know that your voice has been heard and validated!  Thanks, Wes! 

Technorati Tags: k12online Web2.0

Yesterday was such an awesome day with my fifth graders! Thinking, technology, collaboration, collective problem-solving, and learning were playing a symphony in our class. My students have been working on creating digital stories. After using Open Mind to plan and write, they’ll use PowerPoint to put the stories together before using Photostory to narrate and create the video. They have finished the writing and have been working on the illustrations. They had a choice of drawing their pictures in Paint, Smart Notebook, or on paper. (Yes, paper! Some of my more artistic students felt like they had better control over colored pencils than a mouse.) The 3 types of illustrations required different methods of insertion into PPT, so they had to learn some new tech skills. The pencil and paper kids used a digital camera to take pictures of their drawings. The room was quietly humming as they helped each other learn how to insert their images. After they finished, they edited and peer edited some short paragraphs they had written after researching some inventions of the late 1800s. They have begun to post them on their individual blogs and comment on each other’s posts. We are slowly beginning to utilize Web 2.0! I was so proud of the ways they were interacting with each other to learn and generate products. It was a good day in our Global Horizons classroom.

Technorati Tags: edtech fifthgrade classroomreflections