always learning

Earlier this week, I posted a monster list of 20 ideas inspired by the Learning 2.0 Conference and now I’m starting to take the time to really flesh out those ideas, make some good contacts and get the ball rolling…

The first big idea I’d like to tackle is the concept of creating a “global communications center” in your classroom as described by Alan November. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and am really excited about.

Ideally, I’d like to have one classroom at each grade level (PK – 5) with this type of global communications center in their classroom. To keep things a bit more streamlined, I have created a wiki to help centralize communication and facilitate collaboration on this project. Please let me know if you’re interested in participating!

For convenience, here’s a brief recap of the idea from my earlier post:

Thanks to my wonderful colleague, Jennifer, from my previous school (who was also at Learning 2.0), we came up with the idea of using YackPack to set up mini-personal learning networks for each student in a class. YackPack is a web-based audio communication service that allows students to share and exchange ideas in a user friendly graphical interface that requires little to no reading skills. I used it extensively with my middle school classes last year when we collaborated with Chrissy’s class in New Zealand, and loved it!

Each teacher will create a YackPack for each student in your class, each student will have 4 partners in other schools around the world, for a total of 5 students in each Pack. This will enable the exchange to be more constant, more flexible and sometimes involve just a portion of your pack and other times all of your pack (depending on curricular needs).

The Pack can be used for: storytelling, practicing reading with emotion, share their favorite book, talk about the author, reflecting on learning and the process of learning (metacognition), collecting “data” (for ex: for graphing activities). Students will use inspiration / kidspiration or an online mind mapping software to brainstorm ideas about what they will talk about so students are not reading from a script.

This project could be extended by creating a collaborative Ning or Imbee for the classes for a place to share pictures, videos, etc and/or video conferencing with Skype or TokBox (video e-mail) where video would be required to enrich the experience.

My first step is start this project with one of our fabulous second grade teachers, Susan, who also attended Learning 2.0 and is totally inspired and ready to start. Right now I’m struggling with the management issue of setting up 20 different YackPack accounts – one for each member of the second grade class I’m working with. Because second graders don’t usually have their own e-mail address and since the school doesn’t provide them I have to figure out how to set them up and maintain them for the kids. After working in middle school for the past seven years, I’m really not used to doing all these little things for the kids. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Are you interested in participating in a project like this?

Tags: learn2cn, elementary, 21stcentury, globalcollaborations, internationalschool, flatclassroom, yackpack, alannovember, globalcommunicationcenter

This Friday, September 21st is International Peace Day and one of our fourth grade teachers, Scott, would like to bring a global perspective into his classroom. We hope you and your class can help!

Scott has written a post on his classroom blog requesting that students and teachers around the world comment on what peace looks and feels like in your country.

We would love it if you could allow your students some time in your day today (Thursday for students in the US, since Thailand is about 12 hours ahead) to leave a comment for Scott’s class. In the name field, please have students write their name and the country they are writing from (for example: Kim from Thailand). All students, no matter what age group, are welcome to comment, along with their teachers!

This will be the first time that our fourth graders have had a chance to experience the power of the web, please take a moment to show them just how connected we all are! Remember, the first step toward peace one day is intercultural understanding – let’s get our students together, thinking about how we can take action for peace!

Interestingly, I started this post a few weeks ago and never managed to get it finished, but just this week Carolyn Foote (in a clear show of some sort of mind reading ability) actually tagged me to find out what’s on my bookshelf, so here goes…

I have a confession: I love buying books, but sometimes it takes me forever to read them. Case and point: Before we left Malaysia in June I spent a few hours ordering dozens of books from Amazon for my trip back to the US this summer, even though I already had a huge pile of unread books already packed away in my shipment. My intention was to read them while I was lounging leisurely by the pool during my summer holidays. Somehow the time slipped away (read: I spent far too much time shopping) much too quickly and by the time we were packing our bags for the flight back to Thailand, I realized I hadn’t actually read any of the books I bought! Thankfully, now that I’m back in the thick of things, learning every day (instead of just vacuously wasting my summer away), I’m back in reading mode.

Here are some of the books currently on my shelf that I have yet to read:

• Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger (well, I finished this one last week and I loved it!)
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• Linked by Albert-Lazlo Barabasi
• Emergence by Steve Johnson
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
• Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Re-Imagine by Tom Peters
• Millennials Rising by Neil Howe and William Strauss
• Growing up Digital by Don Tapscott
• Not on Our Watch by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• Incendiary Circumstances by Amitav Ghosh
• Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

And, of course, now that I’ve been to Learning 2.0, I want to buy these books:

• Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience
• Teaching for Understanding with Technology
• Building Online Learning Communities
• Wired Shut: Copyright and the Digital Culture
• The Culture Code
• Generation Digital

Plus I still have dozens of unread books in my shipment that should arrive any day now…

What’s on your bookshelf?

We had our first Coffee Morning session for our parents today and it was a total hit! This is the first time I’ve actually done something like this, so I have to admit that I’m very pleasantly surprised with how things worked out. I’m very comfortable with teacher concerns, but I’m really not used to presenting in front of large groups of parents…

Basically, we invited all of the parents to an open dialogue session to discuss what we’re doing with technology in the classroom. We advertised it in the weekly “Panther Paws” bulletin that goes home to parents via e-mail, I posted it on the new Learning Hub blog, Connect 2.0, and we asked our very well connected parents to spread the word. In the end we had about 30 parents show up for our hour-long session, which was perfect.

We started off the session with a short introduction by our fabulous Principal and Vice Principal describing their experiences at the Learning 2.0 Conference and how they have come to realize just how important 21st century literacy skills are for our students. They did a great job emphasizing how quickly technology changes and how intimidating it can be for all of us to keep up, but that we believe it’s just as important to educate the parents as it is to educate the students so that we can maintain a strong school-home connection.

Next, Justin and I showed the Did You Know 2.0 video:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/pMcfrLYDm2U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

After the video was over, we asked the parents to turn to their neighbor and discuss something that struck them as they were watching. We gave them about 5 minutes to chat and then asked them to share.

The response was amazing. Just this one 8 minute video encapsulated everything that Justin and I wanted to express, and the message got through loud and clear: the world our students are growing up in is radically different than the world their parents grew up in. One group of parents shared that they noticed a key date in the video was 1995, and that was the year they stopped working and became full-time mothers. They realized that, had they still been working full time, many of these ideas would not be so “out there,” but now that they’re out of the working environment, they really feel that technology has passed them by. This is exactly why we are hosting these sessions!

I then shared a little story about my personal experiences with blogging and told them about how I spent my day off on Monday to give them an idea what an average day for a globally connected educator looks like – the key point being that if this is how I spend my days today, imagine what our students days will be like when they’re my age (I’m 29).

We talked about blended learning and our philosophy that technology is just another tool like a pencil and paper. Classroom management came up so we explained some simple things like having students “lower their lids” when the teacher is speaking and they have the laptops out. We shared our web-based learning portals where all the “teacher approved” web-links are bookmarked for students so that they have a safe and welcoming entry page every time they go online.

We shared the Connect 2.0 blog with the parents and invited them to actively participate in the discussion online via the comments section. Each time we have a session like this, we will post a recap on the blog, with links to key information that we shared so that parents can review key points and share the information with the rest of their families and other parents that were not able to attend.

By the end of the meeting, parents were asking for the coolest things:

• free, lifetime e-mail address provided by the school to ensure that they are always part of the ISB network of learners.
• online resources to help their children learn about American history because we don’t cover it in every grade, but they want their children to be prepared when they return home.
• links to all the teacher and student blogs so they can follow what’s happening in the classroom on a regular basis – and an easy way to track all that information.
• if they can come to our extensive teacher training sessions on technology so they can learn along with the teachers (we offer flexible PD every afternoon after school).
• help setting up their very own family blogs! We even had one parent that had already set up her own blog!

This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to be doing – and it’s exactly the kind of stuff that parents should be asking for!

We are going to run these sessions once a month for now, but I’m thinking they can definitely grow into something more. If our parents are willing to be involved and active in this aspect of their child’s learning, just imagine what kinds of great conversations can be going on at home about using these tools appropriately. It’s going to be like I can be teaching them all the time! How exciting!

We all know that you only get out of a conference what you put in. So, I did my best to make the Learning 2.0 unconference sessions work for me by moderating 2 of the 3 sessions (during the third session I was totally wrapped up in Alan November’s amazing presentation on Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning).

Both sessions had enthusiastic groups of educators from all over the world, all of whom are eager and ready to get started on some globally collaborative projects. We ended up having a great balance with our first session focused more on lower elementary ideas and the second session focused on upper elementary. All the ideas we brainstormed only require web 2.0 tools that are free and available online.

So many great ideas came up that I thought it would be appropriate to start a new wiki to allow everyone interested to take ownership of these projects. As much as I would like to participate in every single one, I know that realistically it’s not possible. With this Global Collaborations wiki we can begin to connect individual schools together on projects that truly enhance the core curriculum units. Please feel free to contribute anything and everything to this new space!

For convenience, I have listed all of the projects that we brainstormed here, along with a number of collaborative projects that I’m already working on or have already initiated with colleagues over the past few weeks. Now comes the hard part: actually getting started on all these inspiring ideas!

Lower Elementary Ideas

Partnering on YackPack or TokBox for Early Elementary: Connect students in several international schools to create a “global communication center” as Alan November suggested in the roundtable discussion. Each teacher will create a YackPack for each student in your class, each student will have 4 partners in other schools around the world, for a total of 5 students in each Pack. This will enable the exchange to be more constant, more flexible and sometimes involve just a portion of your pack and other times all of your pack (depending on curricular needs).

YackPack is an audio e-mail service that allows students to share and exchange ideas in a user friendly graphical interface that requires little to no reading skills. TokBox is a slightly more complex video e-mail/live video chat service.

The Pack can be used for: storytelling, practicing reading with emotion, share their favorite book, talk about the author, reflecting on learning and the process of learning (metacognition), collecting “data” (for ex: for graphing activities). Students will use inspiration / kidspiration or an online mind mapping software to brainstorm ideas about what they will talk about so students are not reading from a script.

This project could be extended by creating a collaborative Ning or Imbee for the classes for a place to share pictures, videos, etc and/or video conferencing with Skype or TokBox (video e-mail) where video would be required to enrich the experience.

Global Village: One of our grade two classes will be working with Alecia Dry’s teachers on the Global Village project to connect elementary students around the world. The goal is to merge our two classrooms into one global village by conducting joint activities or projects once a month. We are going to focus on intercultural understanding and making connections between or different lifestyles.

Upper Elementary Ideas

Book Club / Literature Circle: Use Ning or Imbee to share our thoughts on our reading – create literature circles with students from a variety of schools – each group would have a community on a collaborative Ning/Imbee.

Connecting ESL students: Discussing common books that our grade 5 ESL student read using podcasting or YackPack. Please share some of the books that you would like your students to start a discussion around – we are confident that there will be at least some overlap between schools if we’re working at the same grade level.

Weather: Drawing conclusions from data – collaborate to both collect and present data on weather

Blogging: Connecting grade 5 classrooms – individual student bloggers connecting about their learning, areas of interest, creating a community of learners. It might also be an interesting idea to connect our younger students with some more experienced middle or high school bloggers. I know Clarence Fisher had a great experience with this last year and several middle school teachers have expressed an interest in partnering up: Jabiz Raisdana, Annabel and Jennifer Cronk.

Life ‘Round Here: An excellent international digital storytelling project designed and initiated by Chris Craft, designed to introduce students to different cultures and lifestyles around the world. Deadline to join Sept 21st.

Cross Grade Level Ideas

Great Book Stories: Listen and See: A great (new, but existing) digital storytelling project based on book reviews produced by students using Voice Thread to integrate audio and visual elements. Find an overview and two samples on Wes Fryer’s recent post.

1001 FlatWorld Tales: A wonderful collaborative storytelling project developed by Clay Burell, using wikispaces to create a never-ended story based on a central theme. I worked on this project last year with my middle school students and we loved it! This year Jeff Dungan and I will co-coordinate the elementary section. We’re hoping to encourage students to see stories within stories so that students all over the world can build on each other’s idea. We would also like to see use of audio and visual elements to the stories, so there is lots of room for growth with this powerful project.

PodPals: Students use podcasting tools to connect on social issues, curricular integration can develop as the year continues. Jamie Hide has already expressed an interest in participating.

Online Art Exhibit: Using Flickr and/or Voice Thread to post an international art exhibit from a variety of international schools. Also, allowing students to discuss each other’s art by posting pictures and allowing others to comment on areas that interest them by audio, text, and drawing on the images.

Exploring Our Communities: Use Voice Thread to share drawing of the different communities that each student is a part of and describe those communities. Share among schools.

Learning About Local Culture: Representing art in the culture you live in teach students about local art – students teaching students

Social Networking : Open Ning or Imbee network just to connect and communicate – starting with more casual conversation, exploring our likes/dislikes, culture, school experience and build as the school year goes. Jamie Hide has already expressed interest in starting a social network with his students in Canada.

Voices of the World: An existing project created by Sharon Tonner to connect children from around the world using their voices. All too often we ask children to communicate at a distance using text rather than voice. Voices Of The World will hopefully prove that we can unite and learn from one another using our voices in the simplest way possible. I am looking forward to this challenge ahead of us which will surely motivate our children to learn about other cultures through the use of the voice.

Exploring Digital Citizenship: A collaborative VoiceThread project to explore what it means to be a digital citizen – a critical issue discussed by many of the presenters this weekend. Joe Dale, Jamie Hide, Lisa Durff, PJ Higgins and Alex Savage have already expressed an interest in working on a project like this.

Flat Classroom Project: Flatten the walls of your classroom and partner up with another class around the world. Collaborative learning at it’s best. Check out the teacher Ning for more details.

Youth Radio Collaborative Podcasting : YouthRadio is an existing project that Kevin Hodgson shared with me earlier this year. From their site: “We are hoping to transform this site into a space where young writers and voices can connect with news stories about their communities, their schools and their interests via audiocasting (and podcasting). Our sites will include Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Massachusetts; Butler Elementary School in Sacramento, California; and the Odyssey School in Denver, Colorado; and we hope to have other partners along the way.”

Next Vista for Learning: An online library of free videos for learners everywhere – find resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. And Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs! An excellent opportunity to help students teach student initiated by Rushton Hurley.

Global Virtual Classroom: The Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) project is a collection of free, on-line educational activities and resources. It aims to complement the efforts of governments and education departments around the world to integrate technology into their classrooms and curricula and to link their schools to the information superhighway. Jeff Dungan introduced me to this great 21st Century resource.

Known Issues:

• Each student may need an e-mail address to access web 2.0 tools – how do you organize this for lower elementary? Thanks to Susan Sedro for one solution: Scholastic.com. We could also try gmail accounts.

Ideas for Teachers

Join an existing network of educators learning together:

• Clasroom 2.0 Ning
• The Global Education Collaborative Ning
• NextGen Teachers Ning
• Support Blogging Wiki
• Ning in Education
• Tapped In
• K12 Online Conference

Of course there’s always room for more participants! Please let me know if you’re interested in participating in any of these projects or share your thoughts on the collaborative wiki!

Anything spark an idea for you? Please share your ideas here or on the collaborative wiki!

Tags: learn2cn, elementary, 21stcentury, globalcollaborations, internationalschool, flatclassroom

Because Monday was a school holiday here at ISB, I was able to spend most of the day online, which, due to the time difference, meant that I had time to connect with some wonderful colleagues during hours that I would normally be at work:

6:00 am:

As usual, I woke up way too early and raced upstairs to check my e-mail, twitter, comments, etc. This morning I found an e-mail invite from Lucy Gray to join the Global Education Collaborative YackPack group. Once I accepted the invitation and opened up the Pack, I saw that Silvia was online in Florida. We ended up having a great chat about the ups and downs of being an elementary technology facilitator. We firmed up some plans to start a collaborative project after she gets back from her amazing school trip to Egypt.

8:00 am:

Tweeted about my great conversation with Silvia, which prompted Lucy to invite me to join her FlashMeeting with some other members of the Global Education Collaborative. It was my first time in a FlashMeeting session – what a great tool, so easy to use – and I got to “meet” Sharon Peters, Lucy, Westley Field and several other members of GlobalEd. Plus, Lucy gave me the heads up about one of her colleagues in Philadelphia who’s doing great things with tech, so now I can follow her on Twitter too!

10:00 am:

Started checking blogs and commenting – there never is enough time in the day for just reading and communicating… Plus a few tweets here and there with other edubloggers in this region of the world – a real treat since posting to Twitter seems to be blocked at work.

3:00 pm:

After a late breakfast break, and a much-needed nap, I got back online and saw Chrissy online on Skype. We haven’t had a chance to really catch up since I moved to Bangkok in August, so it was great to have some time to chat. Chrissy is taking a course at the WebCast Academy and asked me to do an interview with her for next weekend (local times here).

I wish I had one weekday every week to spend some time online, just connecting with colleagues when they’re available. Imagine how powerful it would be for your classroom to have a global communication center open all day when they can connect with other students around the world during their “work day”…

What a weekend! I’ve barely been able to sleep since the Learning 2.0 Conference started because my brain has been in overdrive – just being around so many like-minded people in one place was absolutely the most inspiring experience I’ve had in years. Over the summer I was jealously following the tweets from NECC and BLC bemoaning my decision not to go to any conferences (due to our move from KL to BKK), but now I finally feel all caught up and back in the swing of things – just in time for the K12 Online Conference!

The presentations were amazing, of course (more on that later), but the best part of the conference for me was connecting with past colleagues from other international schools and online colleagues that I’ve been working with for about a year now, and meeting some of my edublogging heroes. Who would have thought that I’d be sharing a glass of wine with Wes Fryer, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will Richardson, Clay Burrell and Jeff Utecht this weekend? Definitely not me!

What a gratifying experience to meet someone face to face who you’ve been conversing with online for almost a year (or in some cases, after you’ve been lurking on their blog for ages). Friday night I was chatting with the wonderful Susan Sedro, when, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a very familiar face… Just a second passed and I turned fully around to see the 1001 FlatWorld Tales creator and edublogging superstar, Clay Burell. At exactly the same instant I say “Clay?” he says, “Kim?” And, thus begins our first face to face interaction, after working together on a variety of projects over the last year. What’s that they say about not being able to develop real relationships online?

There was so much going on at each presentation and unconference session, it’s going to take me days to digest, but there were a few big nuggets that really made an impact on me:

Blended Learning:

I’m not sure how I missed this specific term in my reading, but clearly it’s the phrase of the times and I am definitely going to start using at ISB. Blending online learning with face to face interaction is somehow very nonthreatening, it feels more like a term teachers can understand and relate to, like another facet of differentiation, which most teachers have already accepted and adopted as an essential method of instruction. Wes described how to blend learning in his Inventing the Future session on Sunday: allow for differentiated models of learning and creating work, create multiple paths for learning and assessment, and utilize multiple modalities of instruction – basically allow students the opportunity to learn and create in they way that they enjoy.

In his Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning session on Saturday, Alan November talked a lot about the core values of a school and how so many schools claim a core value is face to face interaction – but then they send students home to read for homework. How does that embody the core value of face to face interaction? Alan said “it’s not about the loss of f2f – it’s the shift of control.” Online tools deepen the f2f relationship because you can connect with kids when they’re not f2f (just like Clay and I were able to develop a relationship, never having met until this weekend). Powerful stuff, but clearly intimidating for anyone entrenched in an old school perception of a face to face core value.

The Importance of Teacher Modeling:

This is something that I’ve been saying for the past year only because I didn’t realize before how much blogging (reading and writing in collaboration with others) would change my life – not just enhance my professional development like reading a journal article, but change my life – the way I think, the way I interact with people, the way I work, the way I look at the world. It’s impossible to understand the impact of these technologies unless you are using them yourself.

As Will said in his The “Big” Shifts in Learning session on Saturday, “Educators must model learning in a networked world. Teachers must be learners too, they need to implement these practices in their own learning.” It doesn’t matter what topic they choose, but they must start utilizing these tools as tools for learning themselves. “My teachers are everywhere. Learning is 24/7/365 and it’s global. Everyone who comes to my blog has the potential to be my teacher.” Imagine that environment compared to a class environment (no restrictions, no time, space, or teacher frame to it). I totally agree with Will when he says, “This kind of learning is much more powerful than any classroom learning I’ve ever done.”

Will and Sheryl co-presented the Overcoming Obstacles in a Web 2.0 World / It’s Their Future: Making the Case for “Problem” Technologies in Schools session on Saturday and explained it’s essential to understand the environment that our kids are experiencing – teachers need to model appropriate use. We use scissors in the classroom, we teach them how to drive – if we can manage those tasks, we can certainly figure this out.

Doing New Things in New Ways:

This idea came up in the Apple seminar I attended last year in KL, and I was so excited to hear Alan November reference it during his Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning session on Saturday. He gave the great example of a teacher blog, with ideas, pictures, and topics posted by the teacher just being an online version of a teacher produced bulletin board. What we need to be doing is new things, new ways: giving every student a blog and then feeding their posts into the teacher’s blog. So many things that Alan said just resonated with me, and I love having quotes to share with teachers and administrators that so eloquently express exactly what I mean:

• The technology is relatively insignificant to your ability to apply and solve problems
• I would rather teach my students the courage to create their own community around the world for presenting their work to an authentic audience than for me to correct their work
• I believe my students should walk out of my classroom with relationships all over the world
• Being overwhelmed is part of the deal – you have to learn how to manage information
• There’s too much to unlearn. If you can’t unlearn DON’T GET IN THE WAY.
• People who understand how to manage information and deconstruct it, will have more power than those who don’t.

Developing a Culture of Creativity:

Whether or not they will admit it to us, or to themselves, we know that a huge portion of our teachers see technology as a passing fad. We have all watched the experienced teachers that have been through plenty of other educational trends pass them by, sit back and thinking “I’ll just wait this one out too.” During Wes Fryer’s Inventing the Future session on Sunday, he made crystal clear why we all have to understand that this is not a passing fad. The Read/Write web is not just a trend in education, something affecting on our line of work, these tools are affecting every level of society. Our culture is changing and we have a choice: to participate or to fall behind.

“We have a tremendous opportunity for students to share their voice on the global stage, to receive global feedback, not to just be receivers of knowledge, but to be active creators of global knowledge and thoughts.” Meaningfulness and learning comes from connectedness – we need to allow our students to share and connect. We need to create a supportive educational climate for creativity, failure and sharing – it’s OK to fail and to safely share our thoughts and ideas and build upon the ideas of others. Our kids can’t wait – they need for us to be making changes today, the world has changed. These technologies are their world – why would we want to completely separate education from the world they live in?

Teacher as Advocate

Every presenter emphasized the need for teachers to see our role as advocates. It is our responsibility is to prepare students for the future, so we need to be able to show people why these tools are worth it. As Sheryl said in her Virtual Learning Communities of Change session on Sunday, “in the future it won’t be what you know, it will be what you can create – ideas and storytelling. The new economy will be who you know and what you know – building relationships.”

We need to be visionary as educators because we are the first generation of teachers who don’t know what our students’ future looks like. Clearly, it will be essential to know how to create relationships, team-building, being able to work in teams with people you’ve never met before, and to understand that out of diversity and conflict come innovations.

During the roundtable discussion, Wes Fryer asked every teacher to:

1. Blend the opportunities for learning that you give your students.
2. Invite students to create knowledge projects with media, which creates a different dynamic when their audience changes fundamentally – students are no longer producing just for their teacher.
3. Change your identity as teacher – view yourself as a connector – meaningfulness comes from connectedness.

In all honesty, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I will post my session notes here as well (so I can selfishly have them all in one place) and I really hope the conference Ning will continue to grow and become a true learning community for everyone – not just those of us that were lucky enough to attend. The combination of the momentum of this conference and the global scope of the K12 Online conference next month will be unstoppable!

Technorati Tags: learn2cn, k12online07, k12online, Will Richardson, Wes Fryer, Sheryl NussBaum-Beach, Alan November, Jeff Utecht, Clay Burell, ning

I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for this year. I’m in a new position (21st Century Literacy Specialist – cool title, huh?), in a new school (International School Bangkok), in a new country (Thailand), working with a new age group (elementary instead of middle), based out of a new resource area (the library instead of a lab).

Of course, with this exciting new title comes the daunting task of truly defining the role within the school community… At this point I think there are three main pieces to my position:

Puzzle Piece #1: The Students

My first goal is to bring globally collaborative projects to our students and teachers. Until last year, ISB did not have a tech facilitator, so whatever teachers did in their classes, they did on their own. Enter, the fabulous Justin Medved and this year I’ve arrived to teachers maintaining class blogs, using the Smart Board, and looking for ways to bring a new perspective into their classroom.

To me, the logical next step and the most crucial aspect of 21st Century Literacy is taking classroom learning global. It doesn’t matter which tools we use, as long as we are communicating with a wider audience and learning from our peers around the world. Our students need to learn how to learn with new technology tools, so that they can be self-directed learners as technology continues to change.

This year I want to make sure I successfully implement one globally collaborative project at each grade level in our elementary school. I want our students to realize that there are other means of communication, of learning, of collaborating. I want them to feel the authenticity of learning from someone just like them on the other side of the planet. I want them to understand that they are contributors to global knowledge – equally as able to share what they know as anyone else. I want them to realize that they are in charge of their own learning, and that they can do this anytime, anywhere, with anyone. I want them to feel as connected to the world around them as I do.

We may live here in Thailand, but our day-to-day life is very similar to what most people would experience back in their home country. Our students, although they may be very well traveled, are still just as isolated in their classrooms as students who have never left their home country. For me, utilizing technological tools is a way to connect, to find my personal space, my network, my colleagues. I may be spending every work day with a group of people at school, but I spend more time learning and reflecting at home. Why shouldn’t our students have the same kinds of connections?

Puzzle Piece #2: The Teachers

So many of our teachers are so excited about using technology in the classroom. They’ve just gotten started over the course of the last year with Justin and they’re itching for more, but as of yet, not all of them have had a shift in mindset to learning in a globally networked environment. Over the last week or so I’ve had teachers tell me, “The kids aren’t ready for that yet” or “I don’t think the kids can handle it.” One teacher told me that she doesn’t believe that our kids are hypercommunicators, multitaskers or goal oriented, that instead they must take things linearly, one at a time, and focus on each task separately. Clearly, part of my job will be to find ways to get teachers to set aside some of our stereotypes about the students, and let our 21st century students demonstrate just what they’re capable of, and what they’re comfortable with…

One stepping stone in this sea of differing opinions, ability levels, and stages of adoption will be routine after school professional development sessions. Justin started these last year and I’ve already benefited from attending his. Now it’s time to add my two cents. An even more in-depth form of professional development is actually co-teaching on a project with another teacher – being that “security blanket” for those new to the game and providing a model for how to best work with technology in the classroom.

Another focus is our technology team leaders who are working together to come up with a set of best practice expectations when utilizing technology as a tool for learning. The first issue that came up in our introductory meeting was that all teachers need to accept that “we are not these learners” (meaning we do not learn like they learn) and adopt a mindset of facilitation and flexibility in the classroom, and a willingness to be open-minded about how we use technology tools for learning. One more option is to bring new ideas and inspiration to team meetings – a good way to get teachers thinking about how technology can enhance and support their curricular goals.

Puzzle Piece #3: The Parents

I wrote about this piece last week when I had several interesting conversations with some more traditional parents. One informed me that he grew up without the internet and he turned out OK, so why should his child use it? An easy question for me to answer, but a very hard concept for many parents to grasp. So, I’m going to start with bi-weekly training sessions for our parents. The PTA has graciously offered to provide us with coffee, and of course we have the perfect place to meet. These sessions will be open dialogue, initiated by some form of multimedia ice-breaker or “hook” at the beginning. I’m planning to show the new “Shift Happens” at our first meeting. I’m sure that will start an interesting discussion…

What other pieces am I missing?

Image 1: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/img/missing_piece_puzzle.jpg
Image 2: http://www.tourismtrade.org.uk/Images/Wales%20-%20stepping%20stones_tcm12-12554.jpg

Until Silvia tagged me for this multilingual iPod meme, I never really realized just how international my little red iPod nano really is! For those interested in participating, here are the rules:

The question is “What languages are on your iPod?

1. List the languages that are represented in music, video or podcasts in a post on your blog.
2. Add your favorite song and artist of each language. (Maybe someone else will use your suggestion)
3. See how diverse your list is.
4. Reflect on how global you are.
5. Check out some World songs in a language that you normally don’t listen to by following someone’s suggestion from step 2.
6. Tag as many people as you wish

After a quick scroll-through, I have songs in:

• Yiddish: The Klezmatics
• Spanish: Shakira
• German: Mozart
• French: Stereolab
• Japanese: Pizzacato Five
• Italian: Carmen Consoli
• Bahasa Malaysia: Traditional music by various artists
• Yoruba (a local dialect in Nigeria): Babatunde Olatunji
• Icelandic: Sigur Ros
• Gaelic: Sinead O’Connor

It’s hard to pick a favorite song because, honestly, all of the albums I have by these artists are great, and these are my top choices in each language I’ve listed. I really had no idea how international my playlist was until Silvia asked. I guess I tend to pick up music from the countries I live in or visit and the songs become part of my memory of that place. Every time I listen to my tracks in Italian I am thrown right back into my semester abroad in Florence and The Klezmatics always reminds me of Germany.

As I think about it, I’m an auditory learner, so I love listening to music and language just adds another complexity to capture my attention. When I first discovered Pizzacato Five in college, it just blew my mind – Japanese pop! I feel like even the pop music of a country can really provide a glimpse into local culture. Alex and I have started to listen to Thai music too… I guess I need to add some to iTunes now!

This meme actually brings to mind a novel I read last year called Tokyo Cancelled. The story is about a group of airline passengers that get trapped overnight in a desolate airport so they tell stories reflective of their individual culture to pass the time. Although it was quite fantastical, each story really captured the stereotypical essence of the storyteller’s culture. It seems that my iPod is like my very own, portable, airport departure lounge!

If you’re interested, please play along! I’m ready to add a few more new languages to my iPod’s repertoire!

My Chinese visa has arrived, Thai re-entry permit has been secured, tickets are in hand and paid for, and only 5 more wake-ups before I get to travel to Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 conference! I have to admit, I always get excited about conferences, but this one looks especially amazing. I took a quick look through the conference schedule and here are my some of my top choices (I can’t seem to narrow it down to just one presentation per session yet…):

Session 1:

• The Instructional Technologist: Next Generation Tech Coordinator
• The No Time Slam Dunk Digital Lesson

Session 3:

• Teaching Media Literacy in an Age of Wikilobbying, Spin, Tabloid Journalism and the Photoshopping of Reality
• The Big Shifts in Learning
• Media Producers and Consumers in the Web 2.0 Classroom

Session 4:

• Way Beyond Web 2.0
• Best Practices in 21st Century Library Media Centers

Session 6:

• Building Learning Communities
• It’s Their Future: Make the Case for Problem Technologies in Schools

Session 7:

• A New Literacy Landscape – Multiple Literacies vs. the Narrow Agenda and Wal-Mart Curriculum
• Inventing the Future: Safely Empowering Learners in the Read/Write Society

Session 8:

• Creating globally connected, rigorous and highly motivated assignments
• Virtual Learning Communities of Change
• Global Voices: Distributed Learning Projects with Interactive Podcasting and VOIP Tools

And these are just my top choices from just an initial read-through of the schedule. Susan is right: there are way too many exciting sessions on the schedule to be able to make it to all of them on my own. Who’s got the cloning machine?

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