always learning

When I went home for vacation last summer I spent a small fortune on a selection of books about technology in education. There were a few extra special books that had a major impact on my teaching and learning this year so I thought I’d make a list of my top 3 books for the 21st Century teacher:

My first purchase was Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. I think I read this one in one afternoon and it was so inspiring and practical that I started our students with blogging as soon as we returned from summer vacation. We’ve been quite successful with wikis in recent months and I’m just about to start working with podcasting. I feel extra lucky because this year my job has changed slightly and I’ve been given 40% release time to work with other teachers on integrating technology into their classroom – this book has been invaluable as an introduction for them, and also for practical ideas and advice on how to implement the technology.

I’m just finishing Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century by David Warlick this weekend. What a powerful book – everything I’ve been saying to teachers and administrators is all right here. To me, this is the quintessential book for the 21st Century teacher. For the last seven years, my philosophy of education has been to teach students how to learn, because we never know what will be coming next, especially in the area of technology. To read this book and see everything so clearly laid out is the perfect resource in my opinion. I am definitely going to recommend this book to every teacher I work with in the future.

Another favorite: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I read this one a while back, but I am part of a book club (made up entirely of teachers) here in KL and we just had our discussion about this book. Much of our conversation was focused on whether or not teachers are doing their job if they do not utilize technology in their classroom. This is the kind of discussion we need to be having in schools so that we all have a common understanding of how to prepare our children for a future we can not imagine (to paraphrase David Warlick).

What else should I be reading? What’s on your list?

Image 1 from:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/1586831305.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SL160_.jpg

Image 2 from: http://www.pacifica-group.com/images/World%20is%20flat.jpg
Image 3 from: http://grfriesen.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/richardson.jpg

I’m a bit of a late starter with this one, but I am currently reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo and I was struck by this statement:

“Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi’s and Nikes, grab their caps, backpacks, and Sony personal CD players, and head for school.” (p. 119).

Despite the fact that the items they are grabbing are quite dated, these are our kids. From Germany to Malaysia, every single student I’ve worked with in the last 5 years has an iPod, they all love McDonalds, they watch the same TV shows, wear the same clothes, idolize the same stars. No matter what country you live in, whether they are locals or international students, they are today’s global youth.

I am finding No Logo an excellent companion to The World is Flat. Sure, we need to prepare our students for an increasingly globalized, flatter world, but they’re clearly already living it. I think they might understand even more than we do that they’re all part of the same “global village.” I guess all we’re doing is catching up…

Image from:

http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/NoLogo/images/film_box

I was recently complimented on my writing, which, although I have a humanities background and spent most of my university years writing loooong papers, came as a surprise to me. At the time I didn’t really realize it, but upon reflection, it’s the blogging that has made me a better writer.

Not only do I have an actual audience for my writing (all 3 of you out there), but blogging requires that I write much more frequently than I naturally would. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be writing much at all if it wasn’t for the blogging. The practice of writing has naturally and organically improved my writing over the past six months. Now, I’m not saying I started from scratch, but even I can see a marked difference in my writing ability over the past semester. That’s a pretty powerful tool.

When I think about the experience our students will have writing and interacting with their audience at such a young age I am so excited for them! I see how empowering and motivating this tool can be for me as an adult and it must be even more so for the students. Even if we are reluctant to include technology in our teaching, we must want our students to be better writers, better communicators, and more reflective learners. If blogging is a tool that can enable this to happen in a completely natural, yet exciting and new way, shouldn’t we encourage all teachers to take advantage of it?

Image from: http://www.imaginethatstudios.com/writing/images/writing.jpg

I have just finished 2 consecutive weekend workshops with Bill and Ochan Powell. If you ever have the chance to take a course with them, either as part of the PTC, or with EARCOS, or from their consulting company, I highly recommend it. They are dynamic team and their workshops area always jam packed with the latest research and teaching methodology. Going to a class with Bill and Ochan always inspires me to try new things in my own classroom and gives me a foundation from which to work from – exactly what I want from quality professional development.

This is my second course with Bill and Ochan over the past 2 years as part of the Ed Leadership certification program I started last year. The first course was on Cognitive Coaching, which was fantastic as well. This time around we were looking at Educational Change. We focused mostly on leadership styles and how to implement educational change successfully – starting from leadership at the individual level, to teams, to whole schools. As someone who has often been put into a leadership role without any formal training, it was so interesting to read about various leadership styles and to see where my “default” behaviors lie. The whole course really made me take a look at what leadership is actually about. We read tons of great articles and had some great discussions about personal experience. What it all boiled down to for me is trust.

It’s interesting to think that even when you are hired for a leadership role, you still need to earn the respect and trust of those you will lead. It’s not enough to just have the title, you need to build personal relationships and demonstrate that you are not only capable of the leadership position, but that you are trustworthy. Without the confidence of your staff, you will never truly lead. People will always look for (and most likely, find) a way to work around you if they don’t trust that you can handle the situation. I’m curious though: How do we determine that a leader has earned our trust? And as a leader, how will we know when we have earned the trust of those we lead?

In international schools, where we are very often moving from country to country, this must become a huge aspect of our jobs. Just getting hired at the job fair doesn’t automatically put you in a position of authority – you have to earn it, in every school you work at, almost as if starting from scratch every time you accept a new job. We discussed different ways that international school administrators handle coming into a leadership role at a new school. One especially effective method we talked about is spending a period of time just getting to know your staff before you make any effort to institute major changes. For me, that was an important lesson – in order to effectively lead in any situation, you need to take the time to get to know your staff, and equally important, to give them time to get to know you.

Image 1 from: http://www.reedleyschool.com/logo_earcos.gif
Image 2 from: http://us.inmagine.com/168nwm/creatas/cr15150/cr15150055.jpg
Image 3 from: http://images.asme.org/ASMEORG/
NewsPublicPolicy/Newsletters/METoday/4663.jpg

It all started this past summer – incidentally my first summer since 8th grade when I did not have anything “official” (like working, moving to a new country, going back to school, or getting married) to do – when I read Will Richardson’s book. I had an inkling that blogs were pretty interesting (I had been reading Dooce for some time, which is still one of my favorites) and I was thinking that I might be able to use them in the classroom, plus I knew there were some other cool tools out there that I should be using, but I didn’t quite know where to start.

As I’ve mentioned before, often times, as an international school teacher, you are working in isolation, PD can be limited and not always the most relevant to your specific subject, and you certainly don’t have any institutionalized structure in place to push thinking forward. So, as of last summer I was very happy with my middle/high school IT curriculum. We were doing amazing things with Photoshop, building intricate websites, creating fun movies, learning how to create animations in Flash, and solidifying PowerPoint techniques. Sounds fun, right? It was, but, after the first chapter of Will’s book I realized it was not enough. And then began my transformation to a “next generation teacher.”

Over the course of the semester, I have started to build an understanding of what it means to be an educator in the 21st century. I have struggled here and there trying to help other administration and faculty members realize how important 21st century literacy skills are, and I’ve reached quite a few over the past six months. I have realized the power of web 2.0 tools to transform my teaching, and to help me transition to a new school and meaningfully connect to other middle school technology teachers through the Tech in the Middle wiki. I have been reading, reading, reading, nonstop. I can’t get enough. My aggregator is always overflowing with information (especially now, after vacation. I don’t know how I will ever catch up). The process is endless, but so exciting.

One of the best parts about this experience has been meeting so many like minded educators. One group I am especially proud to be working with is the Next Generation Teachers. The group was founded by Chris Craft and has grown to include Jeff Utecht, Doug Belshaw, Julie Lindsay, Tom Barrett, Aaron Smith, and Justin Medved. We’ve been discussing what makes a “next generation teacher.” I think it links back to something I’ve said here before – a next generation teacher is not necessarily one who knows everything there is to know about technology (who can even claim to be that person?), or even one who’s tried everything at least once. A next generation teacher is someone who has that “next generation” mind set: the technical know-how is nowhere near as important as the willingness to learn, adapt and grow. For me, this is the future of education (for both students and teachers): learning how to find, evaluate and contribute to the world of knowledge that is very quickly becoming at our fingertips. Let’s hear it for the next generation!

After a whirlwind of travel through Vietnam, up to Bangkok and back to KL just in time for an excellent weekend workshop on leadership in international schools, I’m finally back in action!

This semester I’ve decided to try to focus on having our students collaborate with as many other students as we can manage (I’m hopping on the “Flat Classroom” bandwagon). Our first project will be an “International Teen Life” media production. The project was initiated by Clarence Fisher, who describes the project as:

“The purpose of this project is to have teenagers from different locations around the globe exchange their thoughts and perceptions of what their lives are like. By viewing, reading, and listening to the perspectives of others from around the globe, they will gain a greater perception of the similarities and differences of people’s lives around the world. I DO NOT want to do an international project where kids learn about the holidays, foods, etc, of another nation. I presume we have all been through enough of these already. I am looking to dig deeper, to have kids dig, read, write, etc. I want them to explore issues, and work intensely to gain a clearer understanding of concerns that people have in a global world.”

We will be collaborating with students in Cartagena, Columbia (Jamie Hide); Snow Lake, M.B., Canada (Clarence Fisher); and Virginia, U.S.A (Lee Barber). For our students, this will be the first time they are directly collaborating with students outside of the school, and they are really excited. We are approaching this project through the upcoming Poetry unit in English class. In addition to authoring their own poetry, students will be asked to present their poems in any multimedia format. We’re thinking digital video, podcasts, slideshows, soundtracks… The possibilities are endless!

I am so excited to begin connecting with other teachers and students around the world. As international school students, our kids have a world of experience in travel and life abroad, but I don’t think they often get to reflect on how their lives are different than other students that stay in their home country, or how living in a third culture influences their lives from childhood to adulthood. During my teacher training, I did a lot of reading about Third Culture Kids (I was in a special program for international school educators) and there is so much research and information about how living in a third culture can impact children, but this is not something we readily address in international schools. I would like to try to take advantage of this opportunity and bring some of this information and research to the kids. I think it will also be an interesting slant for the students in the US, Canada, and Columbia (even though it’s an international school, I think many of the students are also Columbian). I’m really looking forward to delving deeper with this particular group of students because they are so articulate and thoughtful already. This will be an excellent area of growth for them, and the perfect place to integrate technology in a meaningful way.

Image 2 from: http://www.webhosting.umd.edu/images/globe.gif
Image 2 from: http://www.bangkokpost.net/education/images03/my27cv8.jpg

(Taken from Dangerously Irrelevant):

Hear ye! Hear ye!

All education bloggers are hereby invited and encouraged to…

1. complete the short and completely unscientific, but hopefully interesting, education blogosphere survey;
2. forward the URL of said survey to all other known education bloggers to ensure decent representation of the education blogosphere; and
3. publicize said survey URL on their own blogs to foster greater participation in this most noble endeavor.

Survey results received by Sunday, January 14, shall be posted in the town square on Wednesday, January 17.

Those solicited who choose not to participate shalt be labeled both publicly and widely as dastardly scoundrels, notty-pated hedgepigs, or beslubbering, doghearted, maggot-ridden canker-blossoms!

[photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/phildowsing/274027373]

Technorati Tags: blogging, mcleod, survey, technology leadership

Well it seems that my last post (item #4) has sparked another meme! How exciting! And completely unintententional – the best kind of inspiration, I say. In the interest of easy visual representation, you can also make a “visited countries” map to show where you’ve been in the world. Here’s mine:

Create your own visited countries map here.

I’m very excited to see almost all of South East Asia filled in on my map. That is one of the best things about teaching abroad – not only do you get to live in another country and experience an entirely different way of life, but you also get to travel so easily to the neighboring countries. In just the year and a half that we’ve lived here, I’ve been able to travel to Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. What a wonderful adventure!

Technically speaking, I’m still on holiday, but I also happen to be in an extremely comfortable and surprisingly chic Bangkok hotel with free wifi, so now I can finally get down to the important business of responding to the “Five Things” meme everybody’s been talking about these last few weeks. Way back in December, just a day after we set off for Vietnam, I was tagged by Graham Wegner, and just recently I was tagged again by Silvia Tolisano, Susan Sedro and Chris Craft (update: sorry it took me so long to figure out who tagged me! Internet was spotty, to say the least, in Vietnam) I guess that means I really have been much too slow in posting this sure-to-be-thrilling list of 5 things you may not know about me. Hold onto your socks folks, here it comes:

1. Ever since I was old enough to walk, I was a dancer. I started out at the Steffi Nossen School of Dance in White Plains, New York and , after we moved to Connecticut in elementary school, moved up to the Newtown School of Dance. At the tender age of about 5 I started with ballet and added jazz and tap when we moved to CT. In addition to the dance, I often performed in small professional musical productions in New York (no, not Broadway… yet…) One of my favorites was a performance of the Pied Piper when I was around 8 years old. Unfortunately, I stopped the lessons when I got to college for lack of a dance school in the nearby Storrs, Connecticut area (home to both the University of Connecticut, and a lot of green farm land with cows and sheep).

2. Along with the dancing, I was a cheerleader in high school. This is perhaps my most surprising “secret” for people who don’t know me, because although I am quite vocal and high-spirited, I’m not your typical “American cheerlearder” girl. I definitely enjoyed the dancing aspect of it, and cheerleading camp was certainly an experience I will never forget. I liked it so much that I eventually ended up coaching pop warner cheerleading for our neighboring town, Wilton, CT.

3. As you may have guessed from my last name, I am of Italian descent. Both of my parents are Italian American and both sets of their parents were born in Italy. That makes me 3rd generation Italian American. Growing up all of the food, celebrations, holidays, and experiences I had with my family were centered around my Italian heritage. In fact, I had never eaten a burrito or any other sort of non-Italian ethnic food (aside from Chinese, I think Chinese may be unescapeable in the greater NY area) before I went to university. My husband Alex often comments on the interesting family traditions we still keep, especially those centered around food. One of my favorites is the “7 fishes” on Christmas eve. I still wish I had learned how to make my grandmother’s white baccala because it will always mean Christmas to me! During my sophomore year in college, I studied abroad in Florence; and I knew as soon as I stepped off the plane that I was home…

4. During my first international school posting, I met a teacher whose parents had challenged her to visit 30 countries before she turned 30. The idea intrigued me, and so I adopted it for myself. I am proud to announce that I achieved my goal last year, with about 11 months left on the clock! I have been to:

1. Ireland
2. the United Kingdom
3. the Netherlands
4. Denmark
5. Sweden
6. Finland
7. Estonia
8. the Czech Republic
9. Hungary
10. Turkey
11. Austria
12. Germany
13. Switzerland
14. Liechtenstein
15. Spain
16. Portugal
17. France
18. Belgium
19. Italy
20. Vatican City
21. Monaco
22. Greece
23. Malta
24. Morocco
25. Egypt
26. the United Arab Emirates
27. Thailand
28. Indonesia
29. Malaysia
30. Cambodia
31. Laos
32. Mexico
33. Vietnam
34. the United States of America

I’m tempted to challenge myself to another list, perhaps 50 before 50, but I’m not sure it’s healthy

5. And, lastly, although I absolutely love being a technology teacher, I always thought I was going to be an international human rights lawyer “when I grew up.” During university, I spent a summer internship working for an international NGO called the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization where we focused our work on the Ogoni people of Nigeria, the Karen of Burma, and indepdence for East Timor. I enjoyed the work so much that, upon returning to UConn in the fall, I started the university’s first Amnesty International student chapter and was the student area leader for the Connecticut region. After moving to Munich I started the AI student group at MIS, and founded the (then) only English Speaking AI chapter in Germany, which I chaired for the following 5 years. I have loved working with Amnesty, and recently discovered a few new similar organizations: Witness, which uses mobile technology (like video phones) to capture human rights abuses around the world and bring them into the light; and Global Voices, which aggregates blogs from around the world to share first hand perspective and experiences from all walks of life.

And there you have it. 5 absolutely scintillating facts about me. I wish I could have come up with something a little more interesting, considering I had so much time to think about it all. And since I’m so late to the game, I’m going to excuse myself from tagging anyone else (and as I have a look through my aggregator, I see that’s probably not going to be a problem at all).

Update: I’ve been caught. I guess I’m not allowed to get away with not tagging 5 other bloggers, so let’s hear from: Jennifer Cronk, Chrissy Hellyer, Aaron Smith, Ed Warkentin, Konrad Glogowski. I hope I’m back in the good graces of my fellow edubloggers (sometimes, just sometimes, I try to break the rules – it doesn’t always work out).

Image citations:
Pointe shoes from: http://www.ballet.co.uk/images/thumb/pointe_shoes_on_black_mini.jpg
Pom Poms from: http://www.discountcheerleading.com/pages/images/poms/poms_main.jpg
Map from: http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/World-Map-Poster-C10086838.jpeg
Florence image from: http://70.86.208.146/images/guides/italy/travel/florence.jpg
Amnesty logo from: http://schema-root.org/region/international/
non-governmental_organizations/amnesty_international/amnesty_international_logo.gif