There are lots of motivating videos about 21st Century Learning, such as “Engage Me.”  There are certainly more flashy ones, but I like this one because it features elementary-aged students.

I am now on a quest to discover the answer to my question.  My first step is to think about some key ingredients in a  21st Century Learning environment.  Here are 5 that I’ve adopted so far.

1) NETS: All curriculum should be framed by the National Educational Technology Standards.  The 6 strands are: Creativity and Innovation; Communication and Collaboration; Research and Information Literacy; Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making; Digital Citizenship; and Technology Operations and Concepts.  All content areas should be taught within the context of these standards.  The NETS-S 2007 Implementation Wiki contains some great resources for the application of these standards.

2) Student-centered learning: Teachers need to gain a new vision of their role in the classroom as they shift their focus from “teaching” to becoming  “facilitators of learning.”  Students need to take greater responsibility for their learning and become more self-directed.  This will only happen as they have greater freedom to make choices within their learning environment.

3) Differentiation: This is really just an extension of student-centered learning.  We have long known that students learn at different rates in different ways.  The use of technology tools is a fabulous way to provide differentiation.  Tracey Hall’s research about Differentiated Instruction provides a very informative overview, including a diagram of the learning/planning cycle.

4) Problem-based learning: In this type of learning, students explore possible solutions to “real” problems and work collaboratively to determine the best solution.  Through this process students learn “how to learn” by focusing on authentic issues.  This approach is very student-centered and open-ended.  IMSA’s PBLNetwork is a fabulous resource.

5) Online collaboration: To establish a 21st Century learning model, it’s important to base it on the foundational understanding that classrooms today are not contained within 4 walls or even within a single building.  Today our classroom is the entire world, and we can learn from and with people around the globe.  Cultivating collaborative partners from various corners of the world will broaden our educational resources and will help our students learn what it means to be a global citizen.

I’m still searching for a road map! Obviously Alan November has done ground-breaking work in this area, but his resources are all commercial products.  By far the best “grass roots” resource that I have seen is Kim Cofino’s work at the International School Bangkok.  The ISB 21st Century Literacy wiki sets forth a clear vision of the 21st Century Learner and a framework for planning instruction.  An ability to translate theory into practice is crucial!  I hope that as my district moves further into this ambitious technology roll-out plan, that our leaders will develop a similar framework that will provide structure and guidance in empowering our teachers to make the pedagogical shift necessary to prepare our students for the unknown world that awaits them.  These are exciting times to be an educator!

Here are my initial thoughts:

1. Promote Greater Collaboration
Collaboration is a research-based best practice that generates improvement in student achievement (Schools as Learning Communities).  In addition to the research, I had first-hand evidence this past year when my school embraced Professional Learning Communities and experienced phenomenal growth in student achievement.

A. Teacher Resource Center
After spending the past 2 years working with a small group of TIS colleagues on the development of a district-wide Resource Center, it’s finally ready for debut this year!  It is a database of teacher-created instructional materials, including SMART Notebook lessons, PowerPoints, spreadsheats, lesson plans, units, hand-held activities and more that is searchable by keyword, content area, and grade level.  The TRC will allow our teachers to move beyond collaboration within their own building to collaborating across the district.

B.  Social Bookmarking
I have set up a Diigo account for use by my school which is fairly well accessed by students and teachers.  We also have a prominent link on our school web page so that students can access resources from home.  Unfortunately, up until this time, teachers usually send their links to me, and I post them to Diigo.  This year I intend to make sure that the Diigo toolbar is on each teacher’s laptop, and I hope to train them to bookmark their own great finds instead of just saving them to “Favorites.”

C.  Grade Level & Individual Planning Meetings
Regular communication with teachers is the only way I can provide support for instruction.  They many more responsibilities than there are hours in the day, so it’s important that I take the initiative to find out about their units of study and the standards being taught.  This means that it’s important for me to schedule regular visits to grade level collaborative planning meetings.  As I hear what they are teaching, I can make suggestions of ways technology can be used to facilitate the learning.  One of the most success strategies I’ve used to encourage technology integration is to individually approach teachers with ideas for project-based learning activities.  I have never had a teacher say, “No.”

2.  Instructional Support

A. Assessment
My faculty made great leaps last year in learning how to create and use common assessments.  Using common assessments is one of the best ways to measure growth in student achievement.  There are lots of ways that technology can be very assistive in the administration of common assessments.  Here are some tools I plan to share with teachers:

• Hot Potatoes: free online assessment tool with crossword, matching, and cloze activities; great for formative assessment.
• Google Forms: with the addition of a little html code, you can create self-checking quizzes in Google Forms.
• Quia: a reasonably priced “subscription” service that is tried and true with multiple quiz types available.
• iQuiz: create quizzes that can be used on iPods
• SMART Response Sysytems: (formerly known as Senteo): this year each grade level will have 2 sets, and this will be fabulous for instant feedback!

B. Differentiation
I’m still convinced that the use of iPods in the classroom is one of the most motivational, effective tools available for differentiation, so I plan to continue to locate and create instructional content in mp3 and m4v formats.  Student blogs offer another path for differentiation.  We will also continue to use Riverdeep (Destination Reading & Math) , First in Math, and Ticket to Read.

C. Project-Based Learning
During my 4 years of teaching in the 21st Cenury Classroom, I learned that project-based learning motivates student learning and addresses multiple standards in a time “cost-effective” way.  As I collaborate with teachers, I will actively make suggestions of PBL activities to address targeted standards.

3. Teacher Productivity

A. Outlook
Our school email has switched from GroupWise to Outlook.  Besides the basics, teachers need to learn how to create distribution lists and use the calendar. (Love the calendar features!)

B. PowerSchool / PowerTeacher
As part of the big migration, our district has moved from using IGPro to using PowerSchool.  PowerTeacher seems fairly easy to use.  At our initial introductory session, teachers were favorable about the interface.  Some features can’t be accessed until school actually starts.  This will be a continual learning experience for a while.

C.  Google Docs
I’m going to make an effort to go more “paperless” with my training materials.  As part of my beginning of the year training I’m making sure each teacher has a Google account, and I’m sharing technology “cheat sheets” this way, hoping they will see the value in online collaboration.  So far, so good!

D. Document Cameras
Our district has adopted an ambitious 5 year technology roll-out plan based on a bond referendum.  This year all classes in the district are scheduled to receive an Elmo Document Camera.  I’m already collecting resources to help train teachers on the many ways a doc cam can enhance instruction.

E. Teacher Blogs
About 12 teachers have indicated that they are interested in having their own class blog through our district iWeb server.  That is evidence to me that they are beginning to see the power of Web 2.0 tools for the classroom!

It’s going to be an exciting and busy year!  I look forward to observing growth in students, teachers, and myself!

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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

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.”

• Book talks
• Reader’s Theater
• Oral reading/student self-evaluation
• Maintain a digital record of reading progress over the course of the year
• Biography “living history” presentations
• Weekly class news report
• Demonstration of science experiment
• Character education development: take photos of students expressing various emotions (Source: iLearn Technology)
• Grammar dictionaries: when studying verbs, take pictures of students acting out verbs
• Digital poetry portfolio
• Social Studies “You Were there” newscasts
• Point of view debate over historical events such as Trail of Tears or Hiroshima
• World language conversations/skits
• Stop motion animation (claymation)
• Infomercial (nonfiction informational writing)
• Commercial (persuasive writing)
• Writing prompt: Something has just happened to you that has caused you to go through some drastic physical changes.  Take five pictures of yourself using Photo Booth where you show the progression of your drastic changes, from the beginning stages to the end result.  After you take the pictures write a narrative or a news article explaining what happened to you. Be creative! ( Source: Stepping Forward: Personal and Digital Learning in the 21st Century)

On a different note, I just completed a survey Sue Waters is conducting about Your Top 5 Web Tools for Managing your Workload.  She’ll share the results on her PLN Yourself wiki.  Check it out!