always learning

For the past year, we have been working on laying a solid foundation for our technology integration program here at M’KIS. This is the second international school where I have developed an integrated program from scratch (with the IT team, of course) and I think we’ve done a much better time this time around.

A major factor in our success has been the use of a middle school technology integration wiki to collaborate across departments, grade-levels and administration. Everything that we’ve done is totally transparent, easy to find and of course, easy to edit. Plus it has the added advantage of exposing teachers to web 2.0 and requiring them to become competent in at least one technology tool for learning. In the end, we’re hoping that this integration wiki will become our curriculum mapping resource for the whole middle school – lesson plans, resources, and completed student work all in one place!

Here’s what we did:

Step 1: Pilot the program

This year I worked closely with our sixth grade social studies teacher to fully integrate technology into the sixth grade social studies curriculum. We selected a teacher that had previous experience with technology and that was keen to start using more in her classroom. Our schedules were arranged specifically so that we had common planning and common teaching time. We co-planned every unit and co-taught every lesson for the first half of the year and she is now working almost 100% independently to integrate tech in her classes. The key to success for our pilot was the common planning time – without it we would have been stopped before we started.

Step 2: Publicize success

Over the course of the year Peggy and I have shared our successes with parents and colleagues. We both maintain a blog and I’ve run quite a few PD courses to demonstrate how to properly utilize technology while still focusing on core curriculum. Slowly, but surely other teachers have voluntarily come on board with the integration process. We had grade 6 science, grade 7 English, grade 8 English, middle school Art, and of course grade 6 social studies. Now we have every student in the middle school with a blog, every student has participated in at least one integration project and one international project.

Step 3: Formalize goals

Over the past few months we’ve been working closely with our Principal to determine exactly what we want our integration program to look like. We compiled tons of resources to support the integration of technology and to introduce the concept of technology integration to the teachers. Our starting point was an adaption of Karl Fish’s Did You Know presentation. Once we had a concrete grasp of what we wanted to accomplish, we started identifying exactly what had to be in place for integration to be successful. We also outlined the expectations and responsibilities for everyone involved – teachers, facilitator, grade-level teams, Curriculum Coordinator, IT Director, and Principal.

Step 4: Mandate change and inform teachers

We have spent the last week formally introducing the goals to all middle school teachers. After a year of somewhat informal work, publicized successes, and increasingly enthusiastic teachers, this was not too hard to do. We had a formal professional development session on Monday to discuss the mandate and to clarify expectations. This was the perfect time to answer questions and ensure that all teachers are on board.

Step 5: Transparency

The best part about this whole process has been that it is totally transparent. We demonstrated the wikispace to all of the teachers in the middle school so that every teacher can both see and edit everything. We’ve posted all of the “back-end” information, as well as all integrated projects that have been completed this year.

How have you implemented a technology integration program at your school? Do you have any advice for us?

Over the past few weeks, several people have contacted me to ask how to go about starting an international, collaborative project. I was even asked to be a guest presenter (via Skype) at the Connecting and Collaborating Conference in Michigan (which I did – from home in KL, while lounging in my PJs).

To be honest, I hadn’t even realized that I have been doing quite a bit of international collaboration with my students until I started getting these requests. The projects have seemed to evolve so naturally that the fact that our students are working with students all over the globe didn’t even surprise me any more. But all of this has really only come about in the last few months. So, I thought it might be helpful to write a list of tips on how to start creating a global classroom for yourself.

Tip 1: Set up that aggregator

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already done this step, but I still think it’s the most important one. This is how I got started. Back in August I realized that I needed to start investigating the whole “blogging thing.” I had read Will Richardson’s book over the summer and I knew that he was describing things that I should be doing in my classroom, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get started. When I arrived back in KL in August, I set up my Google Reader account and started reading what other teachers were doing in their classroom. Over time this has become my professional development. I learn about new tools (like YackPack) through reading blogs, I find out about exciting projects, and I get to read about what other teachers do in their classroom. If something seems interesting or appropriate for my students, I will leave a comment or send the author an e-mail. It’s that simple!

Tip 2: Author a blog

Also back in August, I started this blog. I had absolutely no idea where it would go, but I knew I would be asking my students to maintain a blog and I always like to test out the tools I use with my students. I may not have the largest audience going, but I have met so many amazing people through the comments on this blog that I simply can’t imagine life without it. Many of my international projects have started because someone left a comment on this blog, or they read my blog and knew I would be interested so they sent an e-mail. By opening myself up to a wider community, I am allowing others to help me be a better teacher.

Tip 3: Join a social network or online group

There are lots of ways to meet people online, and by joining a group of like-minded people you may find just the right person to start a new project with. Back in December, I joined Women of Web 2, and started helping Chris Craft with the NextGen Teachers group. Just recently I decided to join Ning (thanks to Steve Hargadon for the invite) and already I have connected with quite a few educators that I know I will work with in the future. All I had to do was sign up, join an interesting group, and introduce myself. Even something as simple as networking on del.icio.us can help you find like-minded teachers.

Tip 4: Contact an expert or use a company

I met one of my current collaborative partners through Jennifer Wagner’s Online Projects 4 Teachers. Both of us signed up for a similar type of project and Jen connected us. There are also organizations like ePals that connect classrooms. These may have the added benefit of being well-organized and provide some infrastructure for a first international collaboration. Meeting one person connects you to all the people they know, and all of a sudden you have a whole network of people to collaborate with!

Tip 5: Start putting your students work online

Just by utilizing web 2.0 tools, you will start to meet others using the same tools. I’ve had almost all of our middle school students working on wikis at some point this year and just by having their work online linked to my own account, other teachers have contacted me to work on collaborative projects. You can also look through interesting projects and contact those teachers directly as well.

Overall, my best piece of advice is just try it! Be adventurous and explore! You can’t do any harm by testing out these tools and seeing what you find. Once you start you won’t be able to stop!

These are just a few of the ideas I’ve come up with. Do you have anything to add?

Clearly I’m enamored with YackPack. As I was walking to work the other day I was thinking about all the different ways I can either use it myself, or encourage our faculty to take advantage of this cool new tool (my walk is about 5 minutes door-to-door, so it was a quick think). Here’s what I came up with:

Idea 1: Student to Student Chatting
The original reason I started using YackPack was to allow our students to collaborate on a joint project between KL and New Zealand. The time difference is five hours so there are only a few school days a week when I have my class at just the right time to be able to Skype conference with Chrissy’s class in NZ. With YackPack they can carry on an actual voice conversation through recorded messages at any time of the day. Plus, if they both happen to be online at home or on the weekend, they can live chat – without having to download any software. This way they can actually talk about their project without having to worry about waiting for full class (or just in-class) Skype conferences. Text chatting and e-mail are great, but they’re not conversation.

You could even use this for cross grade-level projects or cross subject-projects – any time that the students aren’t going to be able to be in the same room at the same time. Earlier this year our entire class of 70 sixth grade science students (in 4 different class blocks) produced one wiki in collaboration – it would have been great for them to have a way of leaving private notes for each other or to chat as specialist groups to more effectively produce their wiki.

This might also be fun for the younger students – kind of a mini-podcasting project. They can collaborate and chat with students all around the world, just by clicking one button. You can even put students from multiple schools together in different packs to start communicating.

Idea 2: Sub Plans or Student Notes
My fantastic colleague, Mr. R., recently posted his sub plans as a podcast. He recorded everything he wanted to say to his class, edited it, and posted it on his blog. I’m thinking YackPack is a great way to do that – but without having to worry about anyone, anywhere hearing what you have to say to your class. You could even leave private voice comments for certain students by selecting them out of the pack and leaving them a message directly.

Idea 3: Opening up another line of communication with parents
In order to communicate more effectively with parents, I would love to have all the parents in each of my classes join a pack – different packs for different classes. I could then send out group announcements about exciting class happenings or carry on virtual parent teacher conferences (or just quick chats) with those parents that aren’t able to come into school – especially those that are frequently away on business. Considering that very few people seem to have answering machines here in KL (or in Munich, for that matter) just being able to leave a parent a message would be a huge advantage. And, of course, all the parents would be in the pack together so they can leave messages for each other too – a great way to foster a community environment for the whole class.

Idea 4: Chatting with students after hours
Being able to actually talk to my students outside of school hours – either via the pack or just the widget on my blog – would be a quick and easy way to resolve small questions or issues from home. Plus, the parents could participate in the conversation if they wanted to. Students could also easily chat with each other about school projects using the space. We’ve identified YackPack as our virtual classroom – only ideas, language, and topics that can be discussed within our classroom can be discussed within our YackPack.

Idea 5: Supporting tech integration
We’ve just started really working towards full technology integration at our school and we will start with a core group of “catalyst” teachers – teachers who are excited about tech and interested in taking a leadership role within their department in terms of tech integration. A pack just for that group of teachers could be a great way to get questions answered, ideas percolating, and generally stimulate conversation – we don’t have to be at school to get our ideas out to each other and we wouldn’t be cluttering up an in-box. The same type of idea could be set up for teachers who feel they need a lot of support with tech integration – kind of like a support group.

Idea 6: Networking
Over this past year I’ve been building up contacts with teachers all over the world to do collaborative projects. Some I’ve been able to work with right away, others may have to wait until next year – but we all have the same age-range students and similar ideas of what we want to accomplish. Making a pack to bring everyone together would be a great way to get new and different ideas flowing between all the people in the group and would allow more interactions between people that might never have met.

Idea 7: Keeping in Touch
As we are winding down to the end of the year I’m already starting to miss some of my favorite colleagues. People I work with on a regular basis will soon be in Taipei, Doha, Brussels, Saudi, and still here in KL while I’m off to Bangkok. A great way to keep our teaching community together would be to set up a pack just for us.

Overall
I guess the key ideas that I really like about YackPack are that it’s so easy to set up, anyone can be invited to participate as long as they have an internet connection and an e-mail address, the group is private, individual conversations can be one-on-one or to the whole group and they don’t have to happen in real time. It seems like a really nice way to foster a community environment without having to actually be in the same place at the same time.

Keep in mind, though, that YackPack is not the only tool that can do these types of things. Julie just posted a great overview of four different options for online collaboration – all with distinct advantages and disadvantages. No matter what tool you use, the key is getting people communicating and collaborating whether it’s across town, across the country, across the continent or across the globe. Let’s get yakking!

Just a few days after I posted about the wonders of YackPack (and a few small disadvantages), I received a very nice (unsolicited) e-mail from their Chief Technology Officer, Michael. He had read my post wishing for multiple administrators for YackPack and offered to test it out on our current project. Within 24 hours we had multiple admin set up and were ready to roll. Now that’s what I call service!

My wonderful collaborative partner shared this very cool new tool with me today. Basically, YackPack allows you to set up a private (real-time and asynchronous) audio chat group using only an internet browser. By the time I had arrived at work this morning, Chrissy had a chat widget set up right on our wikispace. So, I registered for an account, created a “pack” and we were audio chatting in a matter of seconds. Considering that she’s in New Zealand and I’m in Malaysia, anything that brings us closer together is fantastic.

Now, I know this sounds a lot like Skype, but I think this is going to provide some huge advantages for us because:

• No additional software or downloads are required. Students can access our YackPack from any computer with an internet connection. Plus it’s directly embedded into our wikispace so there’s no extra web address to remember. How easy!
• In addition to chatting live, you can leave voice messages for any of the users (one, several, or all of them at once). Our 5 hour time difference makes it somewhat difficult to set up Skype conferences, so this will allow us to have “conversations” whenever we have the time. If I wanted to, I could leave a voice message for every student collaborating on this project to receive whenever they log in.
• Students can chat and leave messages with each other individually. So far we’ve only been using 1 Skype account per class – meaning everyone had to be in on the discussion at once. Now we can have many conversations happing in real-time or asynchronously whenever we want.
• The group is entirely private – you have to be logged in and invited to the group to see our “pack.”
• It feels like a community – the visual set-up of the group makes it feel like an actual group – instead of just a list of people.

It’s not perfect though… So far I can tell that I don’t like:

• There seems to be no way to have multiple organizers – it would be much easier if each of us could manage our own class.
• The visual appearance of the “pack” is small – we have so many members that I had to reduce everyone to the outer edges to be able to see them all without overlapping – and I haven’t even added my class yet!
• Even though I love audio chat, it would be nice to have a text chat option embedded in the same window – instead we’ll probably have to use Meebo or another text chat widget.

Even with these minor drawbacks, I would have loved to use this tool for our International Teen Life project or for the 1001 Flat World Tales project – hearing a voice definitely adds that personal touch. I can imagine students narrating bits of their story, asking for feedback and hearing their collaborative partner in Serbia, Canada or the US respond – no concerns over time differences or software. Hello YackPack!

After a week of this view from our own little balcony, it takes a few days to get back into the swing of things… I’m still envisioning:

the beautiful Boracay sunsets,

amazingly huge sandcastles,

and absolutely stunning beach….

Give me a few more days to settle back in to reality.