Thinking About Learning

It’s finally spring break! Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and I went hiking with my mom. Every so often, I need a strong dose of nature to keep myself balanced and connected. I believe that connections are what matter the most…our connections to ourselves, to others, to the Divine, and to the planet.
Ramsey Falls, Chau Ram Park
I was reflecting on the past week and some small successes I experienced in my efforts to facilitate changes in pedagogy in my school regarding teaching from a 21st Century perspective. After a 3rd grade teacher had a fantastic podcasting experience, another 3rd grade teacher wanted to give it a try. She asked me to get their habitat podcasts posted quickly because it would be a good way for students to study for the test. Right then she had a 21st Century “aha!” moment, and she said, “Hey, I don’t have to give them a test. I can use the rubric and grade them on their podcasts.” Authentic assessment for authentic work products…I love it! Making a connection between old expectations and new practices helped her realize that a new way of doing things would save her time and still generate the desired results.

A third grade student in another class made an awesome connection this week as well. When I use my iPod to record student podcasts, I explain to them that if they goof up, I can use Audacity to edit the recording and remove the boo-boos. That seems to relieve their nervousness about speaking into the microphone. After a recording session with me, a girl went back into her class and told her teacher that I could edit their recordings just like they edit their written work. Connections between old ways and new ways… change will happen! I hope that I’ll continue to be an agent for change in both thinking and learning…one teacher, one student at a time!

It’s pretty amazing to think of all the changes that have taken place in the past 5 years in my district.  Five years ago at this time, I was working with my TIS to plan a pilot 5^th grade class that would have a laptop for each student along with all the other basic equipment necessary to implement a technology-infused learning environment.  Our “21^st Century Classroom” was the first of its kind in our district.  I taught in that class for 4 years and loved every minute of it!  It invigorated my teaching life and provided some incredible opportunities for both professional and personal growth.  Now I am a TIS myself and working in a different school.  My district is within a year of completing a  five year technology equipment roll-out plan that will put a laptop, projector, and SMART Board or Airliner in every classroom.  District personnel are now contemplating a new five year technology plan.  Some of the things I hope will be included are multi-layer filtering for Internet access so teachers can have greater access than students, a specific technology staff development plan for teachers, and a greater emphasis on the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom.

As I think about my own school, I see a great need for the development of a school-wide shared vision regarding the integration of technology as a seamless embedded component of  instruction.  Are there any tools or websites out there that provide a guide to facilitate this sort of visioning process?  Some of the questions that need to be answered are:

• What are our broader school goals?
• How can the use of technology help us accomplish these goals?
• What strategies will we use?
• What tools do we need?
• What training do we need?
• How will we  monitor/evaluate our progress?

I need to find some resources to help with this visioning process and identify a small core of teachers who will be willing to assist with the process.  It will be a huge undertaking in a setting where teachers feel so overwhelmed already with more responsibilities than is humanly possible to manage.  I’m always hesitant to add “one more thing” to anyone’s plate, but I think we are at a critical juncture.  Real progress requires a plan, because “without a vision, the people perish!”

As I have been catching up on my professional development blog reading, I have noticed a common thread. First I read David Warlick’s excellent post, “A Path to Becoming a Literate Educator.” It was affirming to realize that my own personal professional growth matched up well with his suggestions. As I continued to read through my Google Reader, I noticed a transition from personal growth to a collective consciousness.

Weblogg-ed » Changing Ourselves, Changing our Culture
I think Will hit it right on the head. For several years, the question for me has been, “How can I get more teachers interested in using Web 2.0 tools with their students?” Now I’m beginning to see that the question needs to be much larger. In order for real change to occur, there needs to be a buy-in from a larger audience such as a school or district.

My friend, Ron, recently attended 2008 Learning Summit: Learning By Doing. In his latest blog post, A Real Shift is Happening, he says, “Since that time as a school we have started to have some really good conversations about the purpose of our school and the direction we want the school to go and some action has started to take place. One of the best things that has happened is that teachers are starting to truly collaborate and use each other as a valuable resource….It is funny how all of us have come to the realization (it seems so obvious now!) that working together makes us more effective teachers and holds great potential for impacting the learning of ALL students.”

As I sort through all these thoughts, I have come to the conclusion that it will take both components: a personal commitment to continued professional development and a collaborative environment where teachers hold a common vision, share, grow together, and support one another. We CAN make a difference, and I think it’s well worth a long-term investment.

I love new experiences! Over the weekend I participated in a walking half marathon at Myrtle Beach. Before my friend, Valerie, talked me into doing this with her, I didn’t even know there was such an event. I love to hike and walk, but in the past several years 4 or 5 miles was the most I had done in one stretch. Val and I trained together by walking about 45 minutes 3 times a week. That was some serious training, huh? We had big intentions, but between schedules, after-school meetings, and illnesses, we never got quite as in-depth with our training as we had planned. Even still, steady and persistent, we successfully completed the half marathon in 3 hours and 39 minutes. Our knees and hip joints were aching, but we were quite proud of ourselves!

Being a lover of metaphor, I couldn’t resist this one. Sometimes we have the greatest intentions at school to plan and create ideal lessons, but there are always things that get in the way: meetings, phone calls with parents, behavior issues, paperwork, more meetings. When we find ourselves overwhelmed, we have to just make the best of the circumstances at hand. High expectations are necessary, but beating ourselves up over unmet expectations is very counter-productive. Often we must simply just take our best shot and do the best we can within the circumstances that surround us. Determination can carry us a long way as we seek to give our best to our students.

Curriculum Connections:
Literacy: Poetry links; study poetry and poets; write poetry; podcast student poems, post them on blogs, or make digital poetry books.

Over the weekend I went to see the movie Bucket List. No deep thinking was required; it was just a “feel good, appreciate life” kind of movie. The premise of the movie is that 2 old guys find out they have less than a year to live, so they make a list of all the things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”

This was not a new concept for me. About a year ago, I read Kris Radish’s book, Sunday List of Dreams. This book has a similar premise, but the main character is a middle-aged woman looking to live a meaningful life after years of fear and disappointment. After finishing the book, I composed my own list of dreams and came up with a top five list. Since that time, I’ve actually fulfilled two of them and have added a couple more.

After watching the movie this weekend, I started thinking about my work. My first year as a TIS is half over. What dreams do I have for the remainder of the first year? Here’s my list of dreams or my “bucket list” for the rest of this school year (not in any particular order):

1. To have several teachers from each grade level regularly contributing to our school’s Diigo social bookmarking site as a tool for collaboration.
2. To get all 5th grade students regularly blogging.
3. To see all our Smartboards hung and teachers using them daily.
4. To engage more teachers and students in podcasting.
5. To continue monitoring the needs of my teachers and provide whatever support is needed to enhance and improve instruction.

It’s easy to lose focus when entrenched in the pressing needs of each day, but I heard in church yesterday that in order to live fulfilled lives, we must organize our lives around the most important things. I’m going to try to focus on my list of dreams.

Curriculum Connection:

Literacy/Science: Research volcanoes (Diigo volcano bookmarks). Use Open Mind 2 to collect and organize data such as location, size, history, and volcanic activity. Export to HTML to create web pages for sharing. In my opinion, Open Mind 2 is one of the best graphic organizer tools available.

Yesterday I went to Lynch’s Woods to hike. There’s a trail there that is a small section of the Palmetto Trail. I had never been there before, and I ended up on a trail that wasn’t the one I had intended to hike. Even though I had a trail map, there were times when I was pretty clueless about where I was. In many places the trail was covered with a crunchy blanket of fall leaves and was only discernible because the trail was slightly more indented into the earth than the leaf-carpeted forest floor. The trail I was on intersected with several other trails, and there were times when I was unsure of which direction to take. I had the awareness that since I’d never been here before, even if I always took the correct path, I still wouldn’t really know where I was going. It was a lovely experience of silence and solitude, but I had many concerns. According to the map, my trail was 7 1/2 miles long. Was I going the right way? Would I get lost in these acres of woods? Would I get out before it got dark? Would my husband have to alert a search team to find me?

While I was hiking, I also thought of how my uncertainties mirrored some of the current uncertainties in education. There are so many unanswered questions about the future! Will the next president really understand the needs of public education? Will No Child Left Behind be revised to provide a fairer, more balanced system of accountability? Will lawmakers ever “get” that the current framework of the education establishment is decades behind the educational needs of our students and that we need to be preparing them for the 2020’s, not the 1980’s? There’s no way to know for sure if we’re on the right path; no way to know where we’re really headed, and if we’ll find our way. All that I know to do is the same thing I did on the trail…keep moving forward, make the best decisions we can along the way, and head in the direction that our hearts and minds lead us. Hopefully we’ll eventually find our way in the midst of this changing world, and we’ll make a difference in the lives of our students.

Curriculum Connections:
ELA (Word Study): SpellingCity.com is the best online word study tool I’ve seen. I found it on Rambling Reflections. Teachers can create spelling lists, and the 3 components are Teach Me, Play a Game, or Test Me. The voice used is very pleasant and natural sounding. In Teach Me each word is read aloud and a sample sentence is given orally. This website could also be used for sight word recognition. This could be a great intervention for RTI!

Math: Teach using money with Learning to Use Money. This interactive site teaches about the history of money, using coins and bills, and has practice activities.

Technorati: hiking , NCLB, education

The year 2007 is nothing but a memory now! It was a year of many changes for the women in my family. My daughter graduated from college and began a 5 year PhD program. My sister graduated from divinity school and began a new job. It was also a year of change for me. After 20 years of teaching, I left the classroom to become a technology integration specialist. I actually love my new job, but I still feel like I’m “learning the ropes.” It has taken time to get to know a whole new faculty and to learn where they are in their comfort level/use of technology. Just today I posted an online survey for my staff about their technology needs so that I can determine what direction I need to take next.

I’ve decided that 2007 was the year of changes and that 2008 will be a year of letting go. This year my daughter will be getting married, and my son will graduate from high school and move away to college. There are some other things in my life that I need to learn to let go of as well. When I think about school, I think about some ways of thinking that I need to let go. I need to stop expecting all the teachers around me to jump on board with technology my way. Everybody has their own approach and comfort level. After a conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded that I also need to let go of thinking about Web 2.0 applications in terms of “cool tools.” We were talking about what it means to have technology embedded in the curriculum as opposed to just using technology tools. I have decided to let go of the phrase “cool tools” and instead focus more on the curriculum. In keeping with that thought, instead of listing the new technology tools that I explore, I’m going to try to share some curriculum ideas and ways technology can support them.

ELA Curriculum Ideas:

• Use Shelfari to post the 2008 Children’s Book Award Nominees. Encourage students to post comments and opinions of the books online.
• Do an author study by posting multiple books by a single author on Shelfari. Have students make comments to compare books, identify common details of author’s craft, discuss favorite book and tell why.
• Videotape sample model RTI Intervention lessons to be used for training.

As the Internet becomes increasingly more of an instructional tool in the classroom, school districts are facing the important question of how much open access students should be allowed to the Internet.  Controlling the content of text in the classroom has been a controversial topic for years.  School boards have had bitter arguments over the banning of literature with mature content, health curriculum materials with varying perspectives of sexuality, and the more recent issue of whether or not to include the theory of Intelligent Design in science curriculums. 

Internet filters are a bane to educators.  It is so frustrating to try to access an excellent instructional website and find it blocked.  Filters seem to weed out as many good sites as inappropriate ones.  Something that is here today may well be gone tomorrow.  Internet censorship is a two-edged sword.  Adults have a responsibility to protect the innocence of childhood which is a why a rating system was developed for movies and video games.  Schools must provide a healthy, safe learning environment for students, and that necessarily includes limiting exposure to inappropriate content.  At the same time we have a huge responsibility to teach our students to be responsible digital citizens.  Many of them digitally roam free at home with no guidance about making wise choices related to Internet usage.  Digital citizenship may be one of the most compelling tasks facing educators today.  As the world becomes more digitized everyday, our students need to develop the higher level thinking skills needed for information literacy and decision-making.  How can they develop these skills without some opportunity to put them into practice in a safe, supervised setting?  

I always spend a little time during the Thanksgiving holidays reflecting upon my many blessings. This year in addition to the traditional thoughts of family, friends, good health, an appreciation of the Divine, and meaningful work, I also found myself feeling very thankful for the gifts found in nature. Enjoying the beauty of our world has always been an important part of my life. Staying connected with Mother Earth somehow helps me stay connected with myself in a deeply profound way.

Yesterday I spent Thanksgiving Day at my parents’ home with the rest of my family. After recovering from over-partaking of the family Thanksgiving feast, I decided to take my nieces and nephews out for a healthy dose of nature. My parents live on 15 wooded acres. There’s a natural spring, a pond, an unused pasture, and more woods. Out at the back edge of the property is a small clearing surrounded by trees. Several times a year I like to go back there and camp alone, enjoying the silence and solitude. My nieces and nephews, ages ranging from 8-15 years old, had never been out as far as my campsite. In a rare occurrence, it had rained the day before. My dad said that the pond area would be too muddy to walk around, so we’d need to drive around the road and go in the back way. I loaded the kids into his old fishing van, along with some dry fire wood, some home-made marshmallow skewers, and all the makings for s’mores.

As we drove through the pasture, headed into the woods, and went up the little hill that led to my campsite, I saw an amazing Thanksgiving gift. Perched on a bended branch in the middle my woodland wonderland was a huge wild turkey! I put on the brakes and called my nieces and nephews to crowd to the front windshield to view this amazing sight. They had never before seen a wild turkey, and we were all genuinely filled with awe. Knowing that resuming the drive into the woods would break the magical spell of the moment, I reluctantly shifted from park to drive and stepped on the gas. Immediately, the turkey took flight, and to our complete surprise and delight, four more turkeys had been standing on the ground, hidden from our view. In the span of a minute, one by one, they took to the air. Five wild turkeys taking flight on Thanksgiving Day! It was a gift of nature that we will never forget.

Our spirits were soaring just like those wild turkeys, but as is always the case, reality has a way of pulling us back down. As I accelerated up that muddy hill, my front tires began spinning in the mud. Realizing that I was unable to go up, I shifted to reverse thinking that if I could roll back down to the level pasture, I could restart up the little hill and probably make it if I didn’t pause half-way up this time. I was only able to roll back about two feet, when suddenly my back tire was spinning, and once again I was stuck, unable to go forward or backward. When I got out to investigate, I saw that one of the rear tires was jammed against a tall stump, and the bumper was lodged on top of the stump. We were close enough to the campsite to get out and walk. Refusing to let circumstances ruin our plans, we gathered our supplies, walked to the fire ring, roasted marshmallows, ate s’mores, and laughed about our adventure.

Later, as I was reflected on the experiences of the day, I was struck by a comparison of the place we sometimes find ourselves in as educators. The view of the world ahead of us is an awesome, rapidly-moving thing, just like my wild turkeys. We see the potential of technology integration and Web 2.0 tools to empower our students to become information-literate, problem-solving, 21^st Century learners, who have the ability to soar at their own initiative. But often when we try to move forward and bring others along with us, we find ourselves mired in a 20^th Century educational paradigm. The more we rev our engines, the more we find ourselves just spinning our wheels, going nowhere, mired in frustration and disappointment about our inability to affect change.

Sometimes there’s wisdom in stepping outside of our expectations, and just taking a few baby-steps forward toward the goal. Remembering our vision and not allowing ourselves to get derailed by our current circumstances, we have the power to continue walking forward. As we are purposeful in our actions, persistent in our commitment to the vision, and mindful of the need to sometimes just laugh at the absurdities of resistance to change, we can make a difference in the lives of our students and fellow educators.

After we ate our fill of s’mores and our fire began to wane, I used my cell phone to call my dad and report our dilemma. (Yes, sometimes there is a place for technology in the natural world!) He laughed and said, “It sounds like you could use a tractor!” Shortly he arrived and used his tractor to dislodge the van’s bumper and push it on up the little incline. That old tractor was just the right tool at just the right time. I continue to cherish the hope that eventually a tractor will appear on America’s educational horizon, just the right strategy, at just the right time that will propel us forward toward a new paradigm of education. One that will be fluid, not static. One that will embrace 21^st technologies while teaching an appreciation of the world around us. Let’s keep taking baby-steps while keeping the vision ever before us!

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