I continue to be amazed by the affect that blogging has on my thinking. Everything I do and see and experience is filed away as a potential blog post. I make meaning of my world in ways I never did before. I am constantly composing posts in my head. It makes for some incredible learning experiences, but can also make it hard to sleep.
I haven't posted in a while. I've been finishing up the school year and just ended 4 days of teaching a professional development class for teachers. There are lots of things bouncing around in my head that I plan to blog about. I thought I would give you just a taste of things to come and, in doing so, force myself to follow up on my ideas.
I have a new job! I just accepted the position of Director of Academic Technology at The Belmont Hill School in Belmont, MA. I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to help define and lead this extraordinary school in a quest to prepare students to succeed and excel in the 21st century. I am honored by the confidence in me that the leadership team of this school has expressed. It is truly an exciting new adventure that I can't wait to start.
Top Down or Bottom Up? Should every teacher in a school have a basic technology proficiency? Is it more important to focus on complex and creative technology projects with a few teachers and let the excitement and rewards spill down through the faculty, or should the focus be on making sure every teacher is at least proficient in using a mouse, a browser and setting up a Web page? I think there is a choice to be made, because I don't think there is enough time to focus on both.
Professional Development that works. I just finished teaching a 4 days professional development course titled Using 21st Century Technology Tools to Improve and Inspire Student Writing. I co-taught this course with an English teacher with whom I have worked a lot this year. I think our model overall really worked. We focused first on the learning goals and then on how different technology tools could help teachers achieve these goals and objectives. It was wonderful to have a teacher working with me who could really speak to the realities of using these tools in the classroom.
Professional Development Meme. I haven't forgotten that I was tagged for this meme a while back. I have a lot of things on my list - one of them being working on this blog. I do plan to dedicate an entire post to laying out my professional goals for the summer.
Trying out a new tool. In just the last two days I have been playing with a new Twitter like tool called Plurk. I'm not sure yet what I think of the tool, but I have been loving learning to use it. For me it has been a true constructivist experience. Together with my network, we've been working out how things work. Plurk may or may not be the hot new tool, but just learning to use it has been a great experience for me.
Here is a screencast of what I have learned so far.
So stay tuned for more on at least a few of these topics (let me know if you have a preference for where you would like me to start).
OK - now I just have to figure out when I'm going to take a vacation...
I have been working at a grassroots level to help teachers find ways to incorporate 21st century tools into their curriculum. I've made great progress with many teachers and they are spreading the word to their colleagues. The movement is growing and at the level of teacher and student we are making a difference. That is where it matters and slowly change is happening.
I think it is now time for administrators to come on board. To truly make a difference, superintendents, principals, and department heads need to start blogging, podcasting, and participating in social networks like Twitter and Ning. We need to gear some of our technology professional development to the needs of administrators. Andrew Torres wrote a great post about Why School Leaders Should Blog. He articulates well the benefits that blogging brings to the entire school community. Dennis Richards is an excellent example of a school superintendent who is leading the way for his district.
How do we get school leaders to see these benefits? Are your district leaders using these tools? Do you have ideas about ways to make this happen? Please share them here.
As some of you may already know, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) is one of my favorite TV shows. It is basically American Idol for dancers. This show features talented people who excel in a variety of dance genres including hip-hop, lyrical, jazz, and ballroom. And no, I am not a fan of Dancing with the Stars. As Andrew Wallenstein puts it in his NPR piece, Why 'Dance' is Hotter than Idol, "watching Dancing with the Stars is like watching a Ferrari pulling around a golf cart".
SYTYCD features strong dancers in their own area of expertise and pushes them to step out of their comfort zones into different genres of dance. Some of these dancers have been trained by dance teachers and others have never taken a dance class. We watch these people struggle as they go from being an expert to being a novice. The ones who succeed are learners at heart and truly love dance. They push themselves and don't give up. And, if they don't make it to the top 20 this year, many go home and get more training and come back again and again. They attribute their "failure" to their strategy and not to their ability. This is a message that I have blogged about in the past, so I'm sorry if y'all are tired of it. But I believe so strongly in a growth mindset that I just have to keep coming back to it.
We as educators can learn so much from watching these dancers grow and push themselves and work hard to overcome their weaknesses. As experienced teachers we are used to being good at what we do. When we come to a challenge, like using new technologies in the classroom, it can feel very uncomfortable. We don't like to look "dumb" in front of our students. Stepping out of your comfort zone while others are watching makes it that much harder to do. These dancers inspire me to keep working, not give up and continue to try different strategies when things don't go the way I had hoped.
I often talk about this as a goal. Lately, I've been trying to articulate what this really means. It is easy to say, but what does a school look like that is actually preparing students for the 21st Century?
Preparing students to interact in a global economy. In order to prepare students to work with an international community of colleagues we need to provide them with opportunities to interact with people from around the world. Teachers also need experiences collaborating globally. Online social networks, such as Ning, Twitter, and even Facebook, provide teachers with a way to meet colleagues from around the world and around the country. These Online relationships provide opportunities for classrooms to connect.
Preparing students to navigate and sift through an excess of information. In order to prepare students to search for and evaluate information, we need to provide them with opportunities to do just that. We need to ask students to find answers to questions and then have them not only share their answers, but also describe their search processes and defend their sources.
Preparing students to contribute to and consume in a media rich market. In order to prepare students to consume and create multi-media messages, student should be both evaluating and creating Online video, podcasts and blogs. Students need to learn to be both educated consumers and producers of these messages.
Preparing students to tackle new innovations. In order to prepare students to face and conquer new technology tools, we need to provide them with opportunities to solve their own problems. We can't provide them with step by step directions, but instead encourage them to seek out new tools, figure them out and communicate their learning with classmates.
Preparing students to think creatively, take risks and come up with new ideas. In order to encourage students to discover new ideas, we need to create learning environments that encourage and support failure. Students must be provided with challenging questions to tackle that don't have obvious answers.
Preparing students for digital citizenship. In order to teach students how to interact Online, we must openly discuss issues of privacy, copyright, and Online behavior. Students need to understand the difference between private and public spaces and how to behave in each place. They also need to learn how to interact Online in responsible and ethical ways. Students need to be given opportunities to share information with a larger audience. They need to be given opportunities to interact Online with classmates in a public space where their behavior and contributions to the community are an important part of how they are assessed.
What else? What does it look like in your school? What are students and teachers doing to prepare for success in the 21st century? What have I missed? I welcome your ideas and suggestions.
Beth Knittle tagged me for the This I believe meme started by Barry Bachenheimer. I blogged a while back about my Common Principles for 21st Century Schools. I think I lot of what I came up with encompasses what I believe, but here is my latest articulation of those ideas. Thanks Beth for tagging me!
I believe that risk taking is essential to learning.
I believe in a growth mindset - failure is not a reflection on the learner, rather a reflection on the strategy.
I believe that learning to effectively and efficiently discover, evaluate and synthesize information is more important than the information itself.
I believe that teachers must be given the opportunity, the time and the resources to experience and assimilate new technologies for themselves before we can ask them to share their understanding with students.
I believe that we need to constantly and consistently ask ourselves why we teach what we teach.
I believe in the power of educational technology to improve learning, create communities and inspire new thinking (had to include this one since it is the subtitle of my blog :)
So there you have it. I believe in lots more, but that is all I can pull together tonight. Now I have to tag some more people.
I have created tutorial documents for several Web 2.0 tools and have posted them all on this Wiki: http://21ctools.wikispaces.com/
Please feel free to link, share, or download any of the materials on the Website. I will continue to add to the site and welcome feedback on the tutorials (let me know if anything needs to be edited or changed).
Teachers and students are doing some amazing work with technology atWellesley High School!
This is my first year working as the technology integration specialist at Wellesley High School Most of the projects we have been working on are in their infancy. We are experimenting with tools and learning from our experiences. I am sure that next year these projects will increase in number and in effectiveness. Some departments have been more active with technology than others. This year I am building relationships and working on spreading my resources throughout the building. I am confident that over time I will be able to make more of an impact across the curriculum. I feel very proud of what we have accomplished so far this year. There are exciting things happening here.
Online Educational Networking Many teachers are using www.ning.com to create Online networks where students can reflect through blogging and interact through discussion forums. These sites have been very successful. Teachers report that students are engaging online in ways that they have not engaged in class. The network is providing a voice for students who are not as vocal face-to-face. Students are motivated to write by a larger class audience and to be more careful with their writing. Subjects such as racism are being discussed in greater detail than they had been previously in class. These networks have been embraced particularly in the English Department. In addition, I have a Spanish teacher who has created a site for her Spanish class. Ning allows you to change the language of the site itself, so that all of the links and directions are in Spanish. At the moment these are private Websites are only visible to the students within each class. I am hopeful that we will be able to open some of these up in the future.
Podcasting One of my English teachers has been using podcasting extensively in her level 3 Freshman English class. Her students are very engaged in the project and have produced some excellent work. Much of it is very personal, and so is not being shared outside of the classroom. The teacher reports that the experience helped students think about voice, language and grammar. Students realized they could hear grammatical mistakes when they recorded their work that they had not caught when writing. Students also considered word choice and added details that they realized were lacking. Recording also helped students see the benefit of incorporating dialogue. It also becomes clear very quickly if the piece does not have a beginning, middle and end. Often she has to ask students, with personal and analytical essays, the "so what?" question. With the GarageBand project, students were able to determine whether they had provided the necessary substance to give the writing meaning.
I am currently designing a podcast project with a math teacher for her level 3 freshman geometry classes. We will be starting this in the next few weeks.
Wikis Many teachers are using Wikis as classroom websites and for class projects. One of our Physics teachers created a wiki for his senior physics classes. The purpose of this wiki space was to provide an alternative forum for students to participate in class discussions on topics related to energy and on lab reports (exchanging ideas or discussing common problems). The teacher had moderate success with this project and attributes it to the need to encourage or require participation in the future. He is planning to try it again next year.
On of our English teachers did a wiki research project on Mythology earlier in the year with all of her freshmen English classes. Students researched different gods and goddesses and posted their research on the Wiki. She felt that the wiki was a great way to get student work published Online quickly and easily. Students engaged with the visual nature of the project and used the Website to learn about all of the gods and goddesses (not just their own). These sites were used to study for a test on the subject.
One of our History teachers uses a wiki in her AP History class. She posts resources and assignments for students. She also uses it for reference materials during class. Students use the space to write summaries of the different chapters they are reading. Each student is assigned a chapter to summarize. These summaries are posted on the wiki and are used to study for the AP exam. Britta reports that she finds the wiki very easy to use and it has been a very useful tool for both her and her students.
iMovies The language department, humanities and science departments are all working (or beginning work) on iMovies. In the language department Seniors are working on a Spanish video to demonstrate their knowledge of the language. They are creating commercials and music videos which give a message of peace or promote useful products for teachers. This is a great project for Seniors, especially at this time of year. They are engaged and are using the target language in authentic ways.
In Humanities class, Seniors are working on a movie project which reflects on their community. Students define their own ideas about community as they complete the project. The video aspect of the project allows them to discover their definition of community in ways that no other medium could do. It facilitates this kind of study and reflection.
Social Bookmarking One of our Spanish teachers has been using the social bookmarking website del.icio.us to share links with her students. She has found this site extremely useful for the ease in which she can point students to Online resources. It also works really well for teachers who work at multiple computers.
Blogging Students in the Bradford newspaper class have started blogging this year. Thus far the blog has not gone public, but students have been writing and responding extensively with each other. There is a level of engagement with these students that we had not seen previously. We hope to open up this blog to the Wellesley Community next year.
This year we created a Sophomore Author Thesis blog where students can share their reflections about the authors they studied for their Sophomore Author Thesis paper. We are collecting student responses so that sophomores in future years will be able to draw on the blog as a resource when deciding which author to study.
Internet Safety I have been meeting with groups of Freshman during their guidance seminars to discuss issues of Internet safety and cyberbullying. One of our guidance counselors and I have also met with parents to discuss issues of teens and technology. These meetings have been very well received by parents and we hope to continue them next year in the form of a parent drop-in group. We hope to meet monthly to discuss issues of Internet safety and cyberbullying. Both projects have been piloted this year. Next year we hope to roll out this out to more students and parents.
I continue to be amazed by the affect that blogging has on my thinking. Everything I do and see and experience is filed away as a potential blog post. I make meaning of my world in ways I never did before. I am constantly composing posts in my head. It makes for some incredible learning experiences, but can also make it hard to sleep.
