Article for Alumni Magazine

I just finished writing this article for the Belmont Hill Alumni magazine.

What I've been up to for the last year and a bit...

"Respecting tradition yet alive to innovation..." These words from the Belmont Hill mission statement illustrate the unique way that Belmont Hill marries technology with pedagogy. In a school where face to face relationships are primary, the faculty at Belmont Hill seek out technologies to support this mission, while remaining true to the traditions that have been at this school for decades. In my second year at Belmont Hill as the Director of Academic Technology, I have been thrilled and inspired by the energy and excitement both the faculty and boys show for using technology in their classrooms. Each department has found a way to bring in 21st Century technology tools to their subject matter. We strive to use the technology, not to replace teaching, but rather to take the material to another level, to inspire the boys to see things in a new way and to bring the subject matter to life.

In the Science department the boys created their own Wikipedia like website of information about a variety of genetic disorders. The boys first learned essential information literacy skills to determine if a website is a reliable source for their research. After gathering information about each of their disorders, the boys used Wikispaces (www.wikispaces.com) software to create a website with pages for each of the disorders. Using technology allowed them to include images and video as part of their report. In Geology, the boys are going on a "Virtual Roadtrip," visiting different parts of the United States and blogging about their geological discoveries. Science teachers are also using Google Documents to share lab data with classes.

The English department is using blogging and an online discussion space to scaffold discussions in the classroom. Sharing insights through a social media application called Ning (www.ning.com), is proving to enrich the dialogue that students are having in their classes around the Harkness tables. In addition to blogging, the boys are also using media to express their creativity by recording podcasts of their poems and creating video commercials to sharpen their persuasive skills.

Powerpointlessness no longer plagues the history department, as the boys have learned to use visual media to enhance their presentation skills. The boys discovered the average person reads silently at a rate of 240 words per minute, and aloud at a rate of 140 words per minute. Thus, when you put words on a slide and read them to your audience you actually teach them less than if you included simply an image. The number of bullet points has decreased dramatically. Technology is also helping us teach about plagiarism. Using an application called Turn it in (www.turnitin.com), students are able to check their work to ensure that they haven't taken anything directly from an online source and fix their mistakes if they have.

Online flashcards are proving to be a great help in the Classics department, where the boys are using Quizlet (www.quizlet.com) to help them with their Latin vocabulary. The Modern Language department is using a Lingt (www.lingt.com) to record and listen to boys speaking in their target language. The Language Lab is set up to improve the speaking and listening skills of our boys. Language faculty also use SMARTboards to record and share their notes from class and post them on our website.

SMARTboard notes are also a staple in the Math department where faculty regularly capture their notes from the board and upload them to our school website. Last year we added two new technology projects to the Math curriculum. Students are using a visual programming language created at MIT called Scratch (www.scratch.mit.edu) to program their own video games. The application forces students to use problem solving and logical thinking to build and debug their working games. Geometry classes used Google Sketchup (sketchup.google.com) to design and build 3D models of buildings for the campus. The boys first create blueprints for their models and then use the software to implement their vision.

Finally, in addition to all of the technology being integrated into each academic department, 3 new technology courses, Digital Video, Music Technology and Digital Journalism make their debut this year. In Digital Video students learn how video affects the way we communicate and form opinions. The boys write a scripts, create a storyboards, operate a camera, and edit their films. Music Technology mixes science, history and music and provides students with an understanding of digital keyboards, MIDI technology and computer music programs. The changing face of news meda is the focus of the new Digital Journalism course. The boys explore the essence of journalism and the effect that new technologies have had on how we as citizens are informed.

The campus is indeed alive to innovation. The technology landscape is ever changing here on the hill. The 21st century has brought many opportunities and many changes to our school curriculum. We are all learning to find the balance between the core of the Belmont Hill academic experience and what new technologies have to teach us.

9 Common Principles for 21st Century Schools

I've been reading and talking about "21st Century Schools" lately and just remembered this post I wrote on a wiki a while ago. It is based on Ted Sizer's Common Principles for the Coalition of Essential Schools. I thought it was worth reviving here.

What do you think? Do you agree with these? Am I missing something? Are these really "21st century" principles or principles for/from all time?

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9 Common Principles for
21st Century Schools

1. Build Community - The school should bring all learners together into a supportive community that nurtures both the individual and the group. The community should permeate all possible spaces, in the classroom, in the home and Online.

2. Encourage Critical Thinking - The school should actively encourage learners to think critically, continually asking the question, "Why do we teach what we teach?"

3. Reward Risk Taking - The school should actively encourage learners to risk failure in the pursuit of understanding.

4. Focus on all Learners - The school should surround the learner with ideas and information, encouraging the learner to pursue a wide variety of paths to knowledge, and supporting the personal growth for all who inhabit the community.

5. Value Diversity - The school should actively encourage and value the input of those both inside and outside the community with a diversity of opinions and experiences. The school should consistently check that it is inclusive and supportive of learners from diverse backgrounds.

6. Nurture all learners - The school should provide opportunities and encouragement for all members of the community including teachers, students and parents to learn and grow.

7. Pursue Innovation - The school should actively explore, pursue and assess new ideas and technologies, while always keeping the learner at the heart of the pursuit.

8. Teach Empathy - The school should actively and explicitly teach learners to think beyond themselves, encouraging students to value kindness and generosity.

9. Break down the walls - The school should provide access and opportunities for learners to reach outside the walls of the school to the neighboring, national and global community.

Letting Go...

Change is hard. Change is painful. Change is frustrating. Change takes time. Blah Blah Blah...

You have heard it all before. We humans get attached to things. We don't like to let go. In many ways this serves us well, especially when we are married with young children. At times my children are very lucky that I am so attached to them, but I digress...

Teachers can get attached to certain technologies, certain email clients, certain ways of word processing. Moving from one application to another application can be a very painful process that involves a fair amount of anxiety, fear and whining. At the rate that the world is moving, switching technologies is happening more and more often.

We have to learn to let go. We have to learn to trust in the skills we have and know that they will transfer. We need to trust our ability to adapt and change, not fear it. We need to let go, breath and move on, reassess and potentially move on again. When the tide is coming in it is better to swim with it than to fight it. We do better to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride than to drown.

Image source: Big Wave from Tom Plunkett's Photostream on Flickr

The Power (and Peril) of the Retweet

Back in the olden days (2006 ;-) when I first started using Twitter, we didn't have the Retweet. If I liked something someone said or shared on Twitter, I would pass it along with a comment like "Check out @xxx's great post" or Thanks @xxx for sharing... or I might reply @xxx great point, but I think... Now if someone posts something interesting people "retweet" it by adding the letters "RT" before the persons @username and then their original post (preserved as well as possible). Click here to learn how to Retweet.

I have mixed feelings about the Retweet...

POWER:
On the positive side, the Retweet spreads your message much farther than you could spread it yourself. I just recently blogged Ten Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers and it was retweeted 42 times. My unique visitor count spiked to almost 400 unique visitors in one day (compared to 200 for my last post). And my post generated 25 comments. Clearly, the retweets helped to bring people to my blog (Thanks to everyone who took a look and took some time to comment). Retweets allow certain tweets to float to the top. My August post was not as strongly Retweeted and must not have resonated with as many people as my September writing. In the same way, when I follow my Twitter stream, retweets point me to posts by other bloggers which I might otherwise have missed.

PERIL:
The problem with the Retweet is that it sometimes stops the conversation. Rather than replying to what a person has tweeted, we simply pass it on. Rather than turning back to the person and replying, we turn away and repeat what they have said. While there is power in repeating, it does sometimes cut off interaction. I appreciate the passing on of my ideas, but I would also sometimes like to engage in a conversation, a back and forth that takes my idea a step further than I could have taken it myself. (Granted - the comments on my blog do continue the conversations.) Retweets are like a pat on the back. I appreciate the sentiment, but sometimes a hug is much more satisfying.

What do you think about the Retweet? Do you use it? Did you get to this post because of a retweet? Did you retweet this post to someone else? I look forward to reading your thoughts (here or on Twitter).

P.S. I just found this interesting analysis of the Retweet: Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter

10 Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers

I have been working with teachers to learn to integrate technology into their teaching for almost ten years. Here are a few of the things I have learned - in no particular order (number 10 is probably the most important).

Please share your thoughts and suggestions!

1. It isn't really about the tool it is about how you use it: It isn't the word processing software, it's the skills and usefulness of word processing. It isn't the presentation software, it's how to create a meaningful and effective presentation.

2. Differentiate: Provide lots of different avenues for teachers to learn. Create visual handouts, offer group training, create video screencasts and provide one-on-one instruction.

3. Don't be the only teacher: Encourage teachers to work together and coach each other. Get students involved, let the kids be the teachers and provide opportunities for them to help their teachers out.

4. Ask lots of questions: If you are working one-on-one or with a small group try to get to the pedagogical goal for the tool.

5. Enlist your PLN: Reach out to your PLN for support and ideas, read blogs, follow folks on Twitter, ask questions, share your frustrations.

6. Remember there is great teaching without technology: There are many ways to teach and many great lessons that do not use technology. Respect the expertise of your colleagues.

7. Acknowledge your teachers' anxiety and expertise: When I'm working with a teacher who is having a hard time with something I find easy, I always remind myself of all of the things that person knows how to do that I don't know how to do. Teachers are not used to not knowing, looking "dumb" or feeling out of control. I often hear teachers tell me "I'm bad at this." Remind them how they respond when their students tell them they are bad at something. They aren't bad at it, they just haven't learned how to do it yet.

8. Start with the early adopters: If you are new to a school and are trying to make change, start with the easy folks, the ones who want your help. Once they are successful, word will spread and you will be able to get to some of the more resistant teachers. Don't beat yourself up about the hardcore resisters. There are some people that you just can't change - see number 6.

9. Observe your colleagues: If you can, try to get in and observe classes at your school. Go in without an agenda, just watch your colleagues teach. You will gain a greater appreciation for their skills, it will give you some ideas of ways you can support them and you will get to know them a little better. This is also really fun to do.

10. Don't touch the mouse: Tie your arm behind your back if you have to, but try not to take over mousing for your teachers. This is one of the hardest things for me to do, but also one of the most important. When people mouse they learn to do things themselves, when I do it for them they learn to watch me do it.

Commercial Influence at Edubloggercon East

We had a great day at Edubloggercon East just before the Building Learning Communities conference. Thanks again (and again) to the November Learning team for donating space and for all of their help with the event. You can find links to our sessions here.

We had about 50 participants which included some folks associated with a variety of vendors. At the end of the conference, I brought up the concern I have with keeping Edubloggercon free of commercial influences. Andy Pethan of Alight Learning sent me a very thoughtful and thought provoking email in response to my comments. I asked Andy's permission to reprint his email here and allow the community to respond. He graciously agreed to open up his comments to all of us. I look forward to reading your thoughts. I'm just back from vacation and am still gathering mine.

Liz,
My name is Andy Pethan, a student at Olin College and one of the people working on the software startup Alight Learning. As someone who is interested in K12 ed-tech both personally and professionally, I wanted to clarify your perspective on the commercial influence at events like EBC.

Near the end of the conference Tuesday, you mentioned your concern about the purity of the event. Though you did not ask anyone to stop coming, it seemed clear that there was some kind of line that was being pushed. At one extreme, there may be something like the Pearson influx that I heard had happened a year or two ago, representing the attempt of a company trying to turn the day into a sales pitch (this story is all hearsay for me, but if this is not what happened one could imagine something like this). At the other extreme would be asking anyone who can increase their revenues by learning from and contributing to the event to stop coming. Since these entrepreneurs, developers, consultants, and salespeople base their livelihood around making better products, positioning products more usefully, and training teachers and administrators on the use and large scale implementation of these products, it would seem silly to cut them off from the educators who care most about getting good products into schools with a useful and meaningful application. Assuming that either extreme is bad for the community, where does the line get drawn? As a software developer and eventually a salesman (when we have a product done enough to sell), what behavioral guidelines should I be considering?

I want to reiterate my interest in attending events like EBC and EduCon. From only two of these events, I personally have learned more about the real problems faced in introducing change to schools and the strong and weak points of the tools teachers are starting to use. Small insights at these events may lead our team down very different development paths, and in fact does (we started yet another redesign of a significant portion of our app yesterday, partially from problems recognized at EBCE). I can guarantee that our product will be much more useful to schools as a direct result of listening to and asking questions of all the different people that attend these events, and that someday our team will be able to make a significant impact on the challenges schools face. The perspective I want to hear from you, and eventually all the teachers/ed-tech specialists/admins/employees, is where are the lines between co-design, empathy, and beneficial marketing vs. product hawking and spam?

If you have time to give your thoughts, I am very interested in hearing them. If I attend future events like this, I want to be a fully contributing teacher and learner, not an unwanted pest or someone afraid to talk openly. This message was sent preemptively in the hopes that the issue would be more of a discussion right now instead of becoming a much larger problem in the future, and I think we both recognize the potentially bad path things are heading down if left unaddressed. Thanks for your time,

Andy Pethan

Alight Learning / Olin College

Counting Down to Edubloggercon East!

Only two more days until the second (annual) Edubloggercon East conference. On Tuesday, July 28th at 9am at the Arlington Room of the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, MA we will kick off our free unconference where the participants create the program.


Some History:
I attended my first Edubloggercon at NECC in Atlanta in 2007. It was an amazing experience and I was determined to bring it up the east coast. As my Twitter network began to grow, we had a New England Tweetup in Newburyport, MA in 2008. There we talked about running our own Edubloggercon and discussed asking Alan November if he would give us space to hold our Edubloggercon before his Building Learning Communites conference.

I had attended my first Building Learning Communities conference in the summer of 2006. It started my journey into the Web 2.0 world. I joined Classroom 2.0, started blogging, and then Tweeting. I decided what the heck, I would email Alan's people and ask them if there was any space available for us before BLC. At first they responded no, they didn't think so. I was dissapointed, but not overly surprised. At least I had tried.



But all was not lost. A day later I got an email that Alan would like to talk to me about my proposal. He was on the way to the airport and asked me to call him on his cell phone (how cool is that). I was kind of terrified, but I called and before he got to Logan he had agreed to give us some space on the Monday before the conference (which started officially on Wednesday).

The rest, as they say, is history...
It was a great day. We had about 30 people and a lot of wonderful conversations.

This year we are meeting on the Tuesday before the conference starts, we have 42 participants signed up to attend and 9 sessions on the agenda. I'm very excited about the event. If you plan on attending please add yourself to the list here. If you can't attend in person, stay tuned to the wiki for links to the Ustream. We will try to stream as much as we can. We will use the Twitter hashtag #EBCE09. Hope to see you there in one form or another!