always learning

We had two absolutely fantastic grade 5 classes participating in the Life ‘Round Here project over the last two months. Not only did our two teachers, Jennifer and Sandra, jump on board with more energy and enthusiasm than I’ve seen in a long time, but they also made sure to keep their classes learning and engaged with the project every week – not always an easy task on a long term project.

Despite the fact that I started this project within the first week of school, not knowing much about ISB – the technology infrastructure, the curriculum, the teaching styles, past student experiences with technology – we really had a lot of fun and turned out some excellent projects. Having been away from elementary school for the past two years (I did teach grade 5 IT in Munich for five years, though), I wasn’t sure just how much they could accomplish – especially given the relatively short time-frame we had for the project. But, I have to say, these kids blew me away!

We had some pretty thought provoking guiding questions:

• What is life like here in Thailand?
• How have we adapted to life in Thailand?
• How have Thai people adapted to the influence of Western culture?

And very few of the students had ever used iMovie before, so this was an entirely new experience for them. Plus, we started individual student blogs as a component of this project before we “officially” got started, so they had two huge new learning goals to explore.

After our initial lesson introducing the project, the students spent a lesson or two searching for pictures on their own (we used Google Safe Search, which was perfect for us), then an additional few lessons writing a script based on the pictures they found. Next, we spent at least 3 50-minute lessons creating the videos – importing the pictures, adding titles to organize, citing sources, and recording the narration. Finally, we spent some time reflecting with each class, to give them a chance to think about their learning.

Here’s what they had to say:

• We learned to work in a group, share ideas, pictures, and work on a long term project
• It took team work (we had to work together to get it set up and completed)
• It was easier to work in teams than on our own and we could split up the tasks and responsibilities
• Teamwork is also challenging because we can get distracted by our friends (chatting, etc.)
• Some of our friends’ ideas were better than our own and we can combine everyone’s best ideas to make a better final project
• If you have trouble with part of the project your friends could help you
• We would like to do this kind of project again because now we know exactly what would produce an even better final project (i.e. write the script before the pictures)
• Sharing projects gave us ideas for how we might do it next time to improve it
• Focusing in a group can be difficult b/c people start chatting
• Distributing/sharing responsibilities helps you work faster
• Things that will help us focus: groups need to be made up of people who we work well with (not necessarily our friends), start it earlier and have clear steps for when parts need to be finished
• Script MUST be written first and pictures pulled to match it after
• Small chunks of time every day, instead of long chunks all at the end
• Teacher could create a calendar of what gets done and when it is due
• Keep track of our sources when we pull pictures from the internet
• Sources MUST be cited

After our class discussion, we spent 2 lessons helping students write individual reflections about the project on their own blog with their movie embedded into the post. What an amazing artifact of their learning!

As the final icing on the cake, so to speak, we ended the project with a video Skype conference with Tod Baker’s students at the International School Tanjin, who also participated in the project. This was the first time our students had the chance to actually video conference with another school. Again, they blew me away! We had over 40 fifth graders in one (albeit, large) room, all overexcited about Skyping with another school, and they were so quiet and well-behaved, it was amazing. We followed my standard “4 Steps to a Skype-tastic Video Conference” and structured the furniture in the room so that students would be able to easily move up to the “hot seat” and back with a minimum of fuss. As a result of this “first contact” we will be continuing a learning relationship with Tod’s students from IST – do I sense the beginnings of some Personal Learning Networks for our students?

Although we didn’t do everything perfectly this time around, Jennifer, Sandra and I just met to discuss how we would structure the project for next year (hear that, Chris? We want a Life ‘Round Here 2008!). Ironically, this is exactly how I knew I should have run the project this year, but I guess I got caught up in “new school syndrome,” not wanting to force my teaching style onto anyone else’s classroom experience. Live and learn, right?

Here’s how we plan to run the show next year:

We’ll follow the MYP Technology Design Cycle, and I’m in the process of developing a clear Understanding by Design unit planner for the entire project. We hope to propose this project as the common assessment for the grade 5 Adaptation unit which starts the year. Currently, their unit focuses solely on Native Americans, but I’m thinking we could study how different native cultures around the world (maybe Australian Aboriginal, Thai Hill Tribes, Native Americans and Taiwanese Aboriginals) adapted to changes in their environment, and then take those concepts and apply their learning to how they have adapted to life in a foreign country? How amazing would it be to give the students the chance to construct their own learning about adaptation at a personal level? And then to bring it back to a global collaboration with the involvement of other schools around the world? I’m excited already!

Following the MYP Technology Design Cycle, we will:

Investigate:

• Watch a sample movie from the previous year
• Pre-Assessment on Adaptation and iMovie to gauge skills and knowledge
• Run a quick iMovie test session – explore the tools with some sample pictures, just try it out
• Clarify the goal of the project – ultimate expectation of a multimedia slideshow
• Define guiding questions as a class
• Brainstorm ideas in groups on how to approach answering the questions
• More in-depth research about adaptation or Thailand
  • Language Arts integration: understanding compare and contrast as a strategy and writing structure
  • Social Studies and Information Literacy integration: developing good questions and conducting quality research
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with a collaborating class to discuss the first steps

Plan:

• Write script based on the research questions (Language Arts)
• Find pictures → research, citing sourcing, how to save images, organize images
• Bring in music for video
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with collaborating class to discuss planning stage

Create:

• Create movie
• Peer Review movie before final posting & make necessary changes
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with collaborating class
• Post-Assessment on iMovie – as a reflection of what students have learned

Evaluate:

• In-class discussion of what could have been improved

Now all we have to do is propose this idea to the team and the Curriculum Coordinators. What do you think? Do we have a chance?

Anyone interested in participating in this project with us next year? Maybe we can all convince Chris to run the project again!

Tags: 21stcentury, global, elementary, globalcollaborations, LifeRoundHere, ChrisCraft, adaptation, MYP, TechnologyDesignCycle, UnderstandingbyDesign, integration,

This Friday I am heading down to Singapore to present at the Teach IT! Conference for all Singapore international schools. The conference is being held at Singapore American School, workplace of the fabulous Susan Sedro! I am really looking forward to visiting the school and spending some quality time with Susan and her partner, Kent. We’ve been quite close ever since I moved into her old condo in KL when she left to go back to the US for a year. In fact, Susan is the first person I ever became friends with online before meeting face to face, she’s also the person who introduced me to blogging, and the person that inspired me to start working with web 2.0 tools. Basically, Susan rocks!

It’s also thanks to Susan that I’m even attending and presenting at this conference, considering that I don’t actually work in one of the many international schools in Singapore, I feel lucky to be part of this event. I spent a lot of quality time with the SAS team during the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai in September, and with Susan’s good word to the Technology Director (and my official proposal, of course) I was in!

I seem to be kind of a glutton for punishment, so instead of just proposing one session for the conference, I proposed two:

Developing the Global Student: Practical Ways to Embed 21st Century Literacy Skills Into Your Classroom

Overview: This session will focus on utilizing web 2.0 applications, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis, to develop 21st century literacy skills within the core curriculum. Metacognition, research skills, and online awareness help students find what they need, learn at their own pace and safely share with a wider audience. How can we incorporate these exciting, motivating skills and technologies into our classrooms? Examples of completed student projects, along with teacher materials and resources, will be shared.

and

The 21st Century Educator: Embracing Web 2.0 in Your Professional Practice

Overview: What exactly do RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking and VOIP have to do with your professional practice? How can web 2.0 technologies change the way you learn, communicate, collaborate and teach? This session will focus on practical ways to utilize free web 2.0 tools to develop a personal learning network that will transform your professional practice and open your eyes to new possibilities in the classroom!

In my humble opinion, these two presentations go well together and I hope that some of the participants from the first session also opt to attend the second. This is the first time I’ve presented internationally in a few years (I inadvertently went on a little hiatus at my last school) and I’m really interested to see how much the average international school teacher knows about web 2.0 tools. I created a wiki for each presentation (linked to the titles above) and I hope that the participants will see those spaces as a resource beyond the duration of the conference. Right now the resources pages are a little “bare-bones” so please feel free to add anything that you think would benefit the participants – I would love to be able to say that my PLN added to my presentation!

I was initially thinking of Ustreaming my presentations, but alas, I found out this weekend that presenters will not have internet access during the conference. It’s amazing how quickly you can get used to ubiquitous wifi access – our entire campus here at ISB (including my house) is wifi. I haven’t seen an Ethernet cable since I plugged in our Airport Express the day after we moved in…

I guess that means a quick Twitter hello from my PLN is also out, and definitely no friendly Skype guest-speakers, either. I’ll just have to tell some animated stories about all of our previous adventures instead! Actually, I’m thinking of having my husband attend my workshop (poor guy) to video it so I can upload to Ustream later. I’ve always wondered what I look like teaching and presenting. This may be my very first chance to find out!

Tags: network, PLN, Twitter, 21stcentury, learning, TeachIT!, SusanSedro, global, educator, slideshare, PD, Singapore

After just about three months in my new position as 21st Century Literacy Specialist, I was curious to see exactly how much time I spend doing the different aspects of my job. Considering this job title and description is completely new, and I’m actually taking over a Librarian position, I’ve been kind of making it up as a go along. So, I took about a half hour one day to total up all my appointments in my Entourage calendar, and here’s how it ended up:

• co-teaching:49%
• meetings: 20%
• co-planning: 12%
• communication (e-mails, community blog, staff and parent newsletters): 6%
• making the Hub work (our new learning space is definitely in “transition” right now): 6%
• organizing and planning for myself: 1%
• reflection: 0%
• learning, reading, testing: 0%

Which looks like this:

I was really happy to see that I spend just about half of the average day co-teaching in the classroom or the Learning Hub, and another 20% co-planning with the teachers. For me, that is the most critical part of my job – modeling how to use 21st century tools appropriately and authentically in the natural learning environment.

However, even though I spend the majority of my day either teaching in the classroom or planning, I’ve still only managed to work with 10 out of our 60 elementary classrooms. Yikes! That’s not even 20% of our classes!

Plus, all this time in the classroom, planning and teaching, while extremely worthwhile, means that I have very little time for my own learning, reading, testing and reflecting – which I think is the second most important part of my job. If I don’t have time to develop my skills, how am I going to continue to model best practice in the classroom?

My problem is that I’m a little too excited about all these things the students and teachers can be doing. I hear about a teacher’s interest, and I’m racing up to the classroom to get something started. I read about something cool on Twitter (thank goodness for Twitter – no time to read blogs, but Twitter is constantly in my face) and I jump on board.

We have so much great enthusiasm here at ISB, and so much energy about new ways of learning – especially after the Learning 2.0 conference (we had 25 teachers attending), that I just can’t say no. How can you watch a teacher talk about her ideas for a project and then just tell them that you don’t have enough time to help?

On top of all that, I tend to jump right in when I start at a new school. I like to get my feet wet and see what people are doing in their classroom to get a good idea of how I can help them embed technology. Often this means that I sacrifice reflection time at the beginning so that I can establish myself and really get to know my colleagues.

But, now that we’re three months in and I don’t see any signs of stopping – if anything more and more teachers are interested in doing more exciting and in-depth projects – I have to figure something out.

I know I’m not the only one grappling with this idea – especially due to the overwhelming amount of information coming at us all the time – so how do you keep all of that in check for yourself, filter through to only the most relevant stuff for yourself and your teachers, still keep in touch with your network, and continue to promote a high level of  enthusiasm among your staff?

To add even more overwhelmedness to it all, I feel like I need to be one step ahead all the time – wrapping my mind around the constant stream of incoming information is just the first step. Every day I need to know what’s best for each of the teachers I work with – not just best in terms of technology either, I need to know what makes sense pedagogically, and what’s specifically relevant to their curricular and classroom needs.

All in all, it seems like a pretty good problem to have (too much, as opposed to too little), but there are still only 24 hours in every day.

How do you handle it? How do you prioritize your time? What does your day look like?

Tags: network, PLN, Twitter, time, 21stcentury, learning, schedule,

How cool is this:

Last night, Jeff Utecht invited me to Skype into his presentation on online professional development at the EARCOS administrators conference in KL, Malaysia today at 9:30 am. Of course, I said yes!

So, this morning, I strolled upstairs in my PJs, opened up the laptop at about 8:45 am and saw on Twitter that Jeff was about getting ready to go live with his presentation on UStream.

There I was, watching Jeff give his presentation in KL, following along with his thinking and the dynamic of the group, for about a half hour (along with about 40 other people from around the world). Just before our appointed time, Jeff Skyped me to see if I was ready (btw: good Skype etiquitte is to text a message asking if the person has time to video/audio chat, before calling) to join the group.

Because I had been a participant in the presentation for the last half hour, I was able to build off of Jeff’s thoughts and jump in right where he left off – as if I was in the room with him! Except, of course, I was in Bangkok in my PJs and Jeff was in KL in a tie…

As if that wasn’t enough, once the presentation was finished, a few people from my network told me that they recognized my voice as I was speaking in Jeff’s presentation (that they were watching from home in the US, Australia, New Zealand, etc) even though they didn’t hear the part where I was introduced! Have I mentioned, that none of us have ever met F2F?

The best part is that this is pretty much an average Sunday around my network! I love technology!

Tags: professionaldevleopment, PD, jutecht, network, EARCOS, onlinepd, PLN, Twitter, Sunday