always learning

Slowly but surely I’m getting my mind around these wonderful web 2.0 apps… This week I began my adventures into the world of wikis. As if I wasn’t already inspired enough by Will Richardson’s book, Jeff over at The Thinking Stick has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of wikis with his TeenTek project. So, I decided to take the plunge and start with my study skills class:

My first class wiki

We started a class wiki to document what we have learned this quarter. I was so excited to tell them about the project that I actually had goosebumps! How amazing is it that we can all share together what we have learned in a dynamic format that requires no special skills or software?! And that we can share that with anyone in the whole world. Hard to believe that it’s so easy…

As soon as I showed the class how it works they were bouncing out of their seats to get started. I always like to see what they really think by having them close their eyes and take a quick poll of the class. This time I asked “Who is just as excited as I am to start this wiki?” 9 out of 12 raised their hands and were literally jumping in their seats. The last three raised their hands to “Who’s excited to start this wiki, but maybe not quite excited as me?” Talk about motivated. The kids are just as excited as I am whenever we start these types of projects.

Another side benefit of this wiki is that I can more accurately assess their collaboration and group work skills. We spent quite a while going over this collaboration rubric. We discussed what each level of each criteria means and I came up with some good examples to describe each one. By the time we were through I wondered if it was too much for them, that maybe I should just let them work on the wiki and not worry about assessing their group works skills. But, just to be sure I took the “eyes closed” poll. Every single student raised their hands when I asked “Who would like me to use this rubric to determine how well you work in a group so that I can tell you?” Works for me!

After taking a look at the rubrics and the basic introduction to wikis, we decided as a class that we would work in small groups to finish this project. The goal is to put everything we’ve learned this quarter on the wiki so that grade 6 students around the world (or even within the school) can improve their own study skills. As of yet I haven’t shown them anything too technical. I’m curious to see what they figure out on their own. I am amazed at how much they have already accomplished and I can’t wait to see where they go from here…

My first professional wiki

A few days before we started the study skills wiki, I started developing a middle school IT integration wiki to help support our tech integration initiative. I am still in the process of testing out the tools and learning what works best, but I am just so amazed at how easy it is. I hope that the site becomes a real, working resource for our teachers at the middle school level.

After looking around at a few others, like this one and this one, I realize that I need to add more text, more descriptions of what each resources is about and how it can be used in the classroom. I also realize that I need to add more concrete descriptions of why we should be using these tools in our classrooms. I had a very eye-opening day this week when I realized that many of our teachers still don’t understand the benefits of technology or the reasons that we would even bother to teach these skills in the first place. I think reading all of these amazing blogs has lulled me into a false sense of reality where everyone acknowledges the validity of of these tools. I forget that my real world (as opposed to my virtual one) is a few years (at least) behind. I’ll just have to work that much harder to get them up to speed…

Today in a tech training seminar, a faculty member asked this question:“Why do we teach these technology skills? Aren’t they just fun and games? What are the students learning?”

Since I was not the one running the training session (and was rendered quite speechless by the question) I didn’t respond as I should have (or, in retrospect, as I would have liked to). But now that I’m at home, surrounded by the entire world of information at my fingertips, I realize that answering questions like this is part of my job. I have been reading so much lately, but I haven’t stopped to take the time to compile, analyze and share what I’ve learned with others. This is an essential piece of the puzzle. I can, and should, be a representative of the tech-savvy educators to share what I learn in order to help other teachers learn about the future of education.

So, I’ve started by spending several hours of working on my wiki, especially this page. All of which was inspired by the following events…

A few weeks ago, this post popped up in my RSS reader, which, of course, prompted me to watch this video. Then I found this amazing PowerPoint presentation by Karl Fisch and this video from Bionic Teacher. All of these multimedia presentations are so powerful and compelling, yet so simple, clear and hard to resist. This is the message we need to be sending to educators that are scared of something new. We can’t simply turn our backs on the future just because we don’t really know what it is. I know how I feel when I am faced with adamant tech-resistance in meetings. I imagine if this were my teacher:

• What if they determined what I learn?
• What if they determined how I can share what I learned?
• What if they determined how I can grow and develop as a learner?

As an adult, I’m responsible for my own learning. But as teachers, we are responsible for our students’ learning. I feel a responsibility for educating all of these students. I want them to be able to experience these new tools in as many classes as possible. I want us to be reaching all of our students. I want us all to be on board. But how? I’m just another teacher. Yes, I am the tech integration specialist for the middle school, so I feel like I do have some responsibility, but I’m just not sure how much.

I read things like this post about how entire schools are instituting blogging. And posts like this, and this, from another international school in the same region that I’m in. Posts and comments like this from the US. And this, and this, also from the US. How do I get my school to look like these?

Today I read this post from Quentin D’Souza with many familiar points. And Susan Sedro recently wrote an entire post (based on one of my posts) about how to get started integrating these new tools. But how do I reach these other teachers? Is it even my responsibility? I know where my responsibility starts – at the students – and I am extremely excited and enthusiastic about what I am doing in my classroom – but, where does it end? How far can/should I be going? How do you do it?

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending an EARCOS workshop on Understanding by Design with Jay McTighe at ISKL (as part of the Educational Leadership certification program I am doing through SUNY Buffalo). It is always so rewarding and motivating to attend these types of events where I can learn how to do my job better.

Sometimes I feel so wrapped up in technology that I can forget about other aspects of teaching and learning. This weekend was a great opportunity to work with colleagues from my own school, as well as people from around the South East Asia region. And, of course, to have the author of the book present his own methods – it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

I really enjoy working on aligning standards and assessments (that sounds strange when I read it over, but it’s true). I like the idea of making assessments and standards transparant through essential questions and big ideas. Why do I always try to cover more than I need to? If I focus on my standards and ensure that there is alignment, both the students and I will have an easier time.

This weekend was a clear reminder of that process. We did an activity where we created a UbD unit plan in small groups. When our plan was done, we joined 2 other small groups and shared only our assessment tasks (which used the GRASPS model). The other groups had to determine what our essential understandings were just by reading our assessments. That was an excellent way to see if we are really aligning our assessments. I only wish there was more time to be able to do these kinds of things on a regular basis. I know that schools understand the value and benefits of working together, but it seems like we never get dedicated time to things like this in the schools I’ve worked at. What are your schools like?

OK, I know I said I was going to move on to wikis next, but I got so inspired by the ideas posted on Google Maps Mania that I’m going try that next (but I’m still learning how to use my wikispace in the meantime).
Peggy would like her students to do a very short research project (1 or 2 lessons) to introduce the concept of geography. They need to find out basic information (like population, per capita income, political structure, etc,) about one country each – every student has a different country – using various web resources. In the past she has had students present a poster with a regional and country map and the information color coded around the edges of the images.

Instead, we’re going to try this:

• Students will research about their assigned country. As they research, they need to keep their notes in a Word document for later transfer onto the blog.
• Once they have found all the required information, they will use the “thumbtack” feature on Google Earth to label their country. They will also put all the required info in the “info” section of the thumbtack (color coded into the 5 themes of geography).
• When they are finished we can watch the slideshow view so the students can see the world view zoom into regional and local for each country they’ve researched (plus, of course, all the information they have all compiled on each of their Google Earth files).
• Then they will write a consise paragraph about what they learned on their blog and upload their Google Earth file.
• Peggy and I will compile all the individual files into one sixth grade geography file so the students can see all the research in one slideshow and post on our blog.

What do you think? Could this be better?

I know that I’m catching on to this whole web 2.0 phenomenon a bit late, but I couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities it holds for my classroom, and my life. I just finished Will Richardson’s book (so much to learn!) and I was so inspired (and awed) by the epilogue, that I want to do everything. Now. The only problem is, I’m not quite sure where to start…

A few weeks ago, I read Vicki Davis’ post about the power of newbies, which inspired me to write more about each step I learn as I go along. For a while there I was feeling so far behind that I didn’t want to demonstrate my “late-adopter-ness” by posting things that everyone knows already. And then I found this post, which made me realize that there are so many other teachers out there, just like me, that want to jump in feet first, but are just as overwhealmed. And I realized, we all have to try together. Post what we’ve learned, share what we try, and build on what we’ve read elsewhere. There’s no place else to go but up.

With that positive thought in my mind, I figure I should write down all the things I’d like to try to do in the coming months:

First stop: Wikis

It seems like the next natural step after blogging and something that other teachers in my school might be interested in doing. Plus, since this is an edublogs account, I have a free wikispace already set up. I’m thinking I will use that space to create an online classroom for the middle school IT classes I teach (despite the fact that I spent ages last year making this wonderful middle school IT website, which needs to be password protected because of the student work posted there).

Also, since the Social Studies Meets IT blog also has an attached wikispaces account, I’m hoping that Peggy and I can start using that as well.

Since it always helps me to test out new tools before I share them with the students, I am going to test this out right now. Any advice?

Next up: Flickr

I’ve been looking at photos on Flickr for ages, never did I realize all the implications for educational use until I read the Flickr chapter in Will’s book. Talk about an eye-opener! I would love to get started using Flickr in English lessons by having our students write some “Flicktion” (Richardson pg. 109). I love the idea of using images to inspire creative writing. And I love the idea of using Flickr for math, or geography, and of course, art! I’m realizing now that the possibilities are endless!

After that: Podcasting

Our school is just about to invest in some extensive IT equipment – MacBooks, to be specific. I’m so anxious to get those laptops so we can start creating podcasts about what we’re learning. I’m thinking that our middle school online newspaper could add an audio, or even video, section. Or our social studies integration class could podcast about what they did that week. And if I was really on the ball, I could set up an RSS feed for the parents so they could listen whenever anything new is posted.

See, if I just get thinking about how all these things are interconnected, and how many things I should be implementing right now, I find myself overwhelmed. How do you start? How do the amazing edtech gurus out there learn about all this new stuff and incorporate it into their daily routine? Help!

Hmm… It seems that this wonderful presentation template that I love so much makes it kind of hard to comment. And now that I know “How to comment like a king (or a queen!),” I really don’t want to miss out on this feature.

When I chose this template, I didn’t really realize that the “comments” link is actually a number right next to the title of each post (but I like everything else about it so much that I’m reluctant to change now). Once you see it, it’s hard to miss, but until then you might think that I have comments turned off. In the picture below, the gray number 2 next to the title of the post is the comments link.

Please feel free to comment! Offer advice, suggestions, ideas, critiques! I’m anxious to learn and start a dialogue with other like-minded educators! Thanks in advance for reading and commenting!

It has taken about 5 lessons for Peggy and I to get the students up and running with their blogs and the larger concept of current events. In retrospect, there are quite a few things I would do differently.

First of all, I would have actually started with the IT tools first (which goes entirely against my gut instinct, by the way). Just one lesson — set up the blog, learn how to do basic formatting (which we just did on the 5th lesson), and post something fun like this assignment. The reason we didn’t start the unit this way is because we wanted the students to focus on the content first. However, they ended up having more trouble understanding the content because they were learning two new concepts at once. I also think we might have been asking a bit too much of them at the start.

Secondly, I would have thought more carefully about the username for our blog at edublogs because about halfway into the project, we realized that we broke our own blogging rules. So, this weekend, I spent hours creating a new blog and re-posting everything, one post at a time. If anyone knows a more effective way to do this, I’d love to know (although I hope to never ever have to do that again).

Third, I would have had the students comment on our blog less, and post on their blog more. The fact that formatting a comment is virtually impossible if you don’t know any html, means that our students didn’t really have the chance to learn how to properly format a post until they set up their own blogs. Which, this time around, took us about 3 lessons. Far too long. We needed to get them going on professional looking posts much earlier.

And now some things I would like to do (keeping in mind everything I’ve learned):

I want the students to set up an RSS reader so they can more easily keep track of all the blogs. I was reading Will Richardson’s RSS Guide and Quentin D’Souza’s RSS Ideas for Educators. How amazing would it be if my sixth graders were able to use RSS to track news stories about their current events stories? Harnassing the power of technology to learn social studies content — that’s what it’s all about, right?

So, I’m trying to figure out how I can set this up for the kids. On the one hand, I’ve tried Bloglines and I don’t like it. I know that’s what “everyone” uses, but I find it user-unfriendly, so I’m using Google Reader, which I like very much. I find it especially convenient because it’s linked to my gmail account, but I can’t force all of my students to get a gmail account. On top of that, not all of the students even have their own e-mail account because the school does not provide one for them. Right now a few of them are using my school account for their blog, but I think that’s going to have to stop. Any ideas?

And the more important thing I would like to start doing is getting all of the other sixth grade teachers on the blogging bandwagon. Why not? We’ve already set the whole thing up. The kids can blog in their sleep now. They love the idea and they’re clearly excited about it. Wouldn’t it be great if their Sixth Grade Social Studies Blog became just their Sixth Grade Blog? For me, this is always the challange with integration. You have one teacher that’s so willing and enthusiastic, but it stops there and then the kids don’t really get the chance to understand what integration really is. It’s not enough just to integrate these tools into social studies. What about English? And why not math and science too? They must do some sort of writing in all their classes. This is going to be my challenge to myself for the year. Getting those blogs completely cross-curricular. Wish me luck!

Boy am I excited! The Social Studies Meets IT blog was actually read and commented on by someone outside of our school community!

He writes:
“Hi, I’m a secondary Social Studies teacher in Missouri. I have just recently started utilizing blogs in my classroom, and was very impressed by yours. I was wondering how you get all of your students blogs listed on your home page along the sidebar. Any help or tips you could give me would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a ton for the help.”

As Vicki A. Davis advises in 10 Habits of Bloggers that Win, I’m going to use pictures to describe these steps, just as I would in the classroom

Here you go:

1. From the Dashboard, choose: Links, Link Categories

Add as many categories as you need (one at a time) for your classes. I have 3 blocks, so I sorted mine into Block D, Block E and Block H.

2. Once you have all your categories added, you can start adding a link for each student in each class. Go to Links, Add Links.

Include a link name for each link (one at a time), then choose which category (i.e. class) the link should file under.

When you’re done, check your site to make sure they all fall under the right categories and are linked properly. If you have a problem, you can always go to Links, Manage links to make changes.

How great is this?! Working in international schools often means that we can be isolated from professional development opportunities like this. I’m so excited to see that it will be online (and hopefully at a time when I’m awake).

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Announcing the first annual “K12 Online 2006″ convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 with the theme “Unleashing the Potential.” A call for proposals is below.

There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday – Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in podcast or screencast format and released via the conference blog (URL: TBA) and archived for posterity.

THE FOUR STRANDS ARE:

Week 1
Strand A: A Week In The Classroom
These presentations will focus on the practical pedagogical uses of online social tools (Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers are using the tools in their classes. They will also show how teachers plan for using these tools in the delivery of their curricular objectives.

Strand B: Basic/Advanced Training (one of each per day)
Basic training is “how to” information on tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers.
Advanced training is for teachers who have already started using Web 2.0 tools in their classes and are looking for: (a) advanced technology training (eg. how to write your own blog template or hack existing ones), (b) new tools they can make use of in their classes, (c) teaching ideas on how to mash tools together to create “something new,” (d) a pedagogical understanding of how technologies such as Weblogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds and others can deepen learning and increase student achievement, or (e) use of assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of Read/Write Web technologies in their personal practice and with their students.

Week 2
Strand A: Personal Professional Development
Tips, ideas and resources on how to orchestrate your own professional development online; the tools that support Professional Learning Environments (PLEs); how to create opportunities to bring these technologies to the larger school community; how to effectively incorporate the tools into your personal or professional practice; or how to create a supportive, reflective virtual professional community around school-based goals.

Strand B: Overcoming Obstacles
Tips, ideas and resources on how to deal with issues like: lack of access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district concerns for online safety, and other IT concerns while trying to focus on best practice in the use of Web 2.0 tools.

CONVENERS & KEYNOTES
For organization purposes, each strand is overseen by a conference convener who will assist and coordinate presenters in their strand. The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a well known educator who has distinguished his/herself and is knowledgeable in the context of each topic. This year’s conveners and keynote presenters are:

A Week In The Classroom
Convener: Darren Kuropatwa
Keynote: Bud Hunt

Bud Hunt teaches high school language arts and journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado. He is a teacher-consultant with and the Tech Liaison for the Colorado State University Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project, a group working to improve the teaching of writing in schools via regular and meaningful professional development. Bud is also the co-editor of the New Voices column of English Journal, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. A consumer of copious amounts of New Media, Bud blogs and podcasts about his practice and larger educational issues at http://www.budtheteacher.com.

Basic/Advanced Training
Convener: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
Keynote: TBA

Personal Professional Development
Convener: Will Richardson
Keynote: Ewan McIntosh

Ewan McIntosh is an educational technologist and teacher of French and German. Based in the Edinburgh area of Scotland he frequently works around the UK and Europe, leading student and teacher workshops and conferences. He is an experienced workshop facilitator in the area of Web 2.0 technologies in education across stages and curricular areas. Ewan blogs at http://edu.blogs.com

Overcoming Obstacles
Convener: TBA
Keynote: Anne Davis

Anne is known for seeing the educational possibilities in the use of weblogs with students in classrooms, having implemented wonderful ideas and weblog projects with students and teachers in K-12 classrooms and at the university level. She currently works at Georgia State University in the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education as an Information Systems Training Specialist. Her weblog, EduBlog Insights is a co-winner of the Best Teacher Blog in the second international Edublog Awards, a web based event that recognizes the many diverse and imaginative ways in which weblogs are being used within education.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
We’d like to invite you to submit a proposal to present at the conference. If you have something you’d like to share with the community, both people who are new to blogs and/or experienced bloggers please email the appropriate conference convener above with your ideas. The deadline to submit a proposal (just the proposal, not the finished product) is September 30, 2006. One of us will contact you to finalize the date of your presentation. Your presentation may be delivered in any web-based medium (including but not limited to…podcasts, PowerPoint files, blogs, websites, wikis, screencasts, etc.) and must be emailed to your assigned conference convener one week before it goes live, (see above strands) so that it can be uploaded to the server.

The conference organizers are:
Darren Kuropatwa

Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice and for “child safe” blogging practices. He has more than 20 years experience in both formal and informal education and 13 years experience in team building and leadership training. Darren has been facilitating workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for the last 10 years. Darren’s professional blog is called A Difference (http://adifference.blogspot.com).

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach

Sheryl is a technology/education consultant for the National Education Association (NEA), the Center for Teaching Quality, SRI International, the Virginia Community College System, the Virginia Department of Education, the Miami-Dade Public Schools, the Alabama Best Practices Center and adjunct instructor in the School of Education at The College of William and Mary. She has had several journal articles and book chapters published, been featured on public broadcasting television and radio shows, and is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences speaking on topics of homelessness, teacher leadership, virtual community building, and 21st Century learning initiatives. Sheryl blogs at 21st Century Collaborative (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/).

Will Richardson

Will Richardson is known internationally for his work with educators and students to understand and implement instructional technologies and, more specifically, the tools of the Read/Write Web into their schools, classrooms and communities. A public school educator for 22 years, WillÂ’s own Weblog (Weblogg-ed.com) is a primary resource for the creation and implementation of Weblog technologies on the K-12 level and is a leading voice for school reform in the context of the fundamental changes these new technologies are bringing to all aspects of life. Will is the critically acclaimed authour of the best-selling book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms (March 2006, Corwin Press).

Conference Tags: k12online, K12online06

If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:
Darren Kuropatwa
Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach
Will Richardson

Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we’d really like people to do that ) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs).

Tags: k12online, k12online06

I see this term everywhere, and I understand what it means, but something prompted me to do a little research this weekend. I found this article, this one, this one, and of course the Wikipedia entry. Although not all of them are entirely enthusiastic about the term Web 2.0 (and they focus more on the business side than education), I enjoyed reading all the different descriptions and examples of Web 2.0 vs. 1.0. My favorite quote is from the first article though: “Technology without participation is not in the spirit of the next generation web.” I think that pretty much sums the concept up in a nutshell.