always learning

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:

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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!