always learning

Thanks to our wonderful and supportive Principal & Vice Principal, this past Tuesday, Tara, Jeff and I had the opportunity to present to the ES Faculty about the work that our ISB21 Team has been doing over the past few years. We were thrilled to be given the chance to present to the full staff (a total of around 70 classroom and specialist teachers) not only because we are so excited about what we’ve been doing, but also because we felt that a full-staff meeting is the best way to build excitement and ensure total transparency.

Considering our meetings are relatively short (45 minutes) we spent some time getting the planning and timing just right – not wasting anyone’s time and (attempting, at least) to keep it interesting. In order to model the use of essential web tools, we shared our agenda on a wiki and made sure to include lots of great links for staff.

We started our meeting off with a quick Think, Pair, Share focused on the question: How are students today different than when we were kids? This is always an interesting conversation starter, helping bring forward legitimate concerns about balance and social interaction, and also giving us a good picture of where the mindset of our ES faculty is on the topic. I also love the possibilities for facilitating a longer discussion on this topic, modeling open-mindedness and allowing all different perspectives to be heard. Of course, we only had about five minutes for this quick intro!

Next we watched a short video together, called A Vision of PK-12 Students Today by Barbara Nesbitt:

What a great discussion starter that video can be – for teachers and parents alike (we showed it at last month’s Parent Tech Coffee Morning and had a 45 minute discussion!) After watching the video, we asked the teachers to share their thoughts about the video at their table groupings, and then had a few share back to the group. It was interesting to see which parts of the conversation changed after watching the video and which areas were still a major concern (balance and social interaction again).

Once we had a basic common understanding of the needs of the 21st century learner, we shared our ISB21 vision along with a little bit of history about how we came to this understanding. It was fantastic to be able to say that we’ve shared this same vision with our leadership team as well as our board and that both have approved our work. This really helped give us a sense of legitimacy at the meeting, as well as enable us to emphasize that this type of learning is (will be, and should be) happening here at ISB.

The longest section of the meeting was spent showcasing teachers that have already implemented these values into their classroom. We had 10 different table groups, all with mixed groups of teachers from different grade levels and specialist departments. One teacher per table group was asked in advance to share some of the work they’re doing with their students. We had the following teachers lead a table discussion:

• Patty V: Ms. Patty’s Class Blog: How a Pre-K teacher uses her class blog to involve both the students and the parents in the learning experience.
  
• Sandy, Akiko & Heather: Kinder Kids Draw! How kindergarten uses VoiceThread and wikis to reflect on learning and collaborate globally.
  
• Erin & Jessica: Global eLearners: How grade 1 ESL uses VoiceThread and wikis to practice oral language fluency with global partners.
  
• Susan: Window to Our World, Bangkok Room With a View: How grade 2 uses a Ning and a wiki to connect and collaborate around classroom learning from intercultural understanding to weather.
  
• Sonja: Merrellzone Blog: How grade 4 uses a class blog to reflect on their learning and connect and collaborate with global partners.
  
• Mary: Bellone’s Learning Blog: How grade 4 uses Garage Band and iMovie to create digital storytelling based on Writer’s Workshop pieces.
  
• Louise: PantherNet: How grade 4 uses Moodle to increase school-home communication and go paperless.
• Chrissy: Room 202′s Blog: How grade 5 uses Skype, blogs, wikis, VoiceThread and other web 2.0 tools to engage and motivate students while connecting them to the world.
  
• Robin & Ali: Room 227, Room 229, Room 227: How grade 5 uses blogs and podcasts to share their learning about reading and writing with global partners.
  
• Diane: Grade 5 ESL Blog: How grade 5 ESL uses a blog to practice written language and connect with global partners.
  
• James: Student Portfolios: How grade 5 spanish uses a class blog as student ePortfolios.

After sharing all of these ideas at individual tables, Tara, Jeff and I explained our roles in the school and clarified how we can support our teachers based on differing expertise and passion (of course I also shared my Collaboration Cycle as the focus of my role).

Finally, we closed with a quick feedback form, asking teachers to respond to the following three questions:

What sparked your interest?

Overwhelmingly the feedback showed that teachers loved watching the video, that it gave them a new perspective on reaching our students. Many were inspired by the concept of enabling our students to make global connections, seeing this as a very powerful facet of learning in the 21st century. They also enjoyed being able to hear from practicing teachers exactly what this looks like in the classroom. Many responses also requested more time for showcasing current projects here at ISB.

What concerns do you have?

As we expected, concerns focused around time – time to learn, time to experiment and time to implement in the already rushed school day. Interestingly, another concern was that Tara, Jeff and I couldn’t possibly have enough time in the day to help all of our 70 ES teachers (so true!). There were mentions of balance, research to show how beneficial this kind of learning is, as well as questions about how developmentally appropriate it is for the primary years.

How can we best support you?

The biggest support needed is in the area of professional development, not only how to use new tools, but actual classroom support (modeling, and practical implementation). Teachers were also looking for project ideas already planned out that could be readily implemented in the classroom. Concerns were raised about whose responsibility it is to embed these new skills into the curriculum and the obvious need for continued training for our classroom Instructional Assistants.

Contact Me?

We also added a little note on the survey for teachers who would like to be contacted by us on a specific topic and actually had around 15 teachers leave their names! Considering we are already working closely with at least 15 other teachers, that was an excellent response!

And that was it! An overview and introduction to 21st century learning in 45 minutes! Judging from the feedback we heard, it went over pretty well. Personally, I feel so excited and energized by being able to share all the thinking that we’ve done as a team over the last few years. This feels like a crucial starting point for really beginning interesting conversations with teachers and for spreading new ideas throughout our division.

It was such a pleasure to be able to showcase all of the amazing work that so many of our teachers are doing, and I hope we have the opportunity to continue to do so over the course of the year. I love that taking a risk is seen in a positive light, and discomfort or failures along the way are merely steps in the learning process.

As a quick follow-up to our meeting, I sent out an e-mail with the recent MacArthur Foundation report,  Living and Learning with New Media. I’ve already had a few teachers asking me questions about the report and wanting to sit down and have a conversation about what they’ve learned (in addition to the teachers who left their name on the survey).

So, what do we do next? Does anyone have an advice about how to keep the ball rolling without overwhelming teachers? This really feels like the start of something powerful to me, and I want to make sure I keep up the pace juuust right!

Bowling 1250 by trimmer741

I’m having a little problem with my MacBook. Maybe you can help!

First of all, I can’t complain too much because this is a school-provided laptop. If it dies entirely, they’ll just give me a new one. Even so, my little problem is definitely not helping my productivity at school or at home.

Here’s the story:

I upgraded to OS 10.5 at the beginning of the school year (along with everyone else at ISB) and over the last few months I have been experiencing some annoying sleep-related problems. It seems that at least 50% of the time when my MacBook goes to sleep it somehow wakes itself up (I can see the Apple icon light up on the closed lid if I’m near the laptop). Once it’s woken itself up during sleep (without opening the lid) it can’t seem to go back to sleep.

So when I come back to the computer ready to do some work, it doesn’t wake up. I just end up with a black screen and a non-pulsating, bright, sleep light. I am then forced to hold down the power button until the MacBook shuts off, and then restart. I know this is not good for my shiny white friend, but I can’t seem to get it to wake up no matter what I do.

Previously I had experienced a similar problem that seemed to have something to do with the power connection. If I put the MacBook to sleep and either unplug or plug in the power before it’s “officially” asleep (the pulsating white light), it won’t wake up from sleep unless I replicate the power status of the computer before I closed the lid. Now I just make sure to remember to unplug before I close the lid, or wait until the sleep light starts pulsing. An inconvenience, but one I can definitely live with.

This new problem seems entirely unrelated to the power issue and it’s gotten increasingly more common very rapidly. I’ve checked on various forums, gotten lots of excellent advice from my Twitter pals (see below), repaired disk permissions, tried resetting the SMC and changing sleep and display preferences, but it just keeps getting worse.

I’ve started ensuring that I shut off my airport before I put the MacBook to sleep, have disabled Bluetooth and don’t have an devices connected to the computer (aside from the power). I’m even starting to try to remember quit out of Twhirl and Skype before I put the computer to sleep, just in case they can somehow wake it up.

On Thursday alone I had to do a hard reboot 5 times in just one 12 hour period. One of our wonderful technicians tried to fix it on Friday, but it’s still been a problem all weekend. I read a little bit about the possibility that “safe sleep” may cause this problem, and that can be disabled in Terminal but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not.

Either way, now I don’t really want to put the computer to sleep at all (not that I need any more excuses to be online)…

Anyone have any advice?

Light #2 by blakie
Untitled by thejbird

This has been an interesting week. On Tuesday, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), began protesting at Bangkok’s international airport, Suvarnabhumi, which resulted in the closure of the airport when they “stormed” the airport control towers and stopped allowing planes in and out. It’s now Saturday morning and both Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang (the older, domestic airport) have been closed for days. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are now stranded in destinations around the world while this major hub of travel in Asia is non-functioning.

Oddly enough, life seems to be going on entirely as normal here in the city. The streets are calmer than usual – less traffic, less people out and about – but that’s about it. We continue to go to school and work every day, ride the BTS, and enjoy living downtown. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that something critical to the county’s future is happening just on the outskirts of the city, but having absolutely no effect on our daily life. And all this happening at the same time as these horrifying terrorist attacks in Mumbai makes it even more bizarre.

I wonder when all this is going to end? Technically, I suppose I’m stranded in Bangkok, but if Bangkok is home, does that really count as stranded?

Treasure Island by Aaron Escobar

Two recent articles in the New York Times have brought this question to the forefront of my mind this week.

The first: Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing by Tamar Lewin:

“…their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.” – Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.”

The second: Becoming Screen Literate by Kevin Kelly

“When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book.

Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.”

Along with an older article from the New York Times,

The Future of Reading: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading by Motoko Rich:

“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

It’s interesting to see more established publications trying to document and understand this shift in literacy, especially considering that many people still believe that literacy is solely being able to read and write in printed form.

This is something I would like to bring to our discussions of reading and writing at ISB. Although I make an effort to bookmark everything I come across, I’m sure I’ve missed quite a bit.

Do you have any resources, especially from more “established” or “traditional” media outlets, to share? I’m looking specifically for concrete, research-based (like this BECTA report or this recent MacArthur Report), examples or articles that would help people outside the educational technology field better understand this shift.

What are your thoughts on the concept of literacy? Does your school have a definition that reflects our changing and expanding understanding of literacy?

One of my favorite things about working in international schools is the consistent, quality professional development on offer. Because we are, in many ways, isolated from the wealth of PD offerings available in our home country, we get to pick and choose exactly what we want and bring it to us!

This year ISB is offering a very exciting Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy course through Buffalo State, State University of New York (SUNY). Not only is this course a direct reflection of the work we have been doing on our ISB21 Team, but we get to teach it as well!

The course will be a direct reflection of our vision of the 21st century learner:

Here’s the general outline of the 5-course certificate program:

Course 1: Information Literacy and Ourselves as Learners:

A foundation course, introducing learners to the methods of information literacy in the 21st century. Independent learning requires that students and teachers are able to evaluate the authenticity, relevance and bias of information that inundates us. Tools and strategies for teachers and students for accessing, filtering, evaluating and applying information will be addressed. This course will address meta-cognition and an awareness of how we learn in a digital landscape. Students will be provided with strategies for reflective practice and using prior knowledge to build understanding and deal with new technology will be incorporated in the course.

Course 2: 21st Century Literacy Ideas, Questions, and Issues:

The 21st Century learner has been bombarded with new technology, access to wide ranging global communication, and a plethora of information. Accompanying this new world of learning are ethical, moral, social, and emotional considerations that are changing the way in which our students are interfacing with the world. This course will explore current issues inherent in our technological world.

Course 3: Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators:

The curriculum of design and attention to aesthetics has always been the property of the visual arts, however as so much our media is now consumed and created electronically a new set of visual literacies have emerged. Awareness of how an audience interacts with that medium and how to take advantage of this to strengthen their message or purpose for communication will be addressed.

Course 4: Technology: A Catalyst for Learning

Research based best practice for the embedded use of technology for learning will be shared and practiced. The focus will be on the habits that provide students with the ability to use technology for its greatest learning advantage. The best use of laptop computers, Smart boards, etc will be addressed as embedded tools to foster optimum learning of the curriculum. The optimal use of communication tools such as podcasts, blogs, nings, wikis, and voice threads will be addressed with tips for management and strategies to promote maximum learning in classrooms.

Course 5: Alive in the Classroom: Applied Web 2.0 Technology for Learning

The course will be about the classroom application, and reflection on the use of web 2.0 technology in the classroom. Participants will be asked to create a plan for the embedded use of technology to foster learning, share with the group and offer feedback on their cohorts’ embedded use of technology for learning. Did the use of technology lead to deeper learning?

Each course will focus on specific ISTE NETS For Teachers as they relate to our Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions for the 21st century learner.

Jeff and I will be teaching the first course starting in January 2009 (more details here). We’re looking at running 3 face-to-face Saturday sessions between late January and the end of February, and also offering several evening sessions via Elluminate to bring in some experts in the field and to make authentic use of online professional development tools.

Dennis and Chad will be teaching the second course from March – April 2009, and then we’ll most likely pick up again with the third course in the fall of 2009, with the goal of finishing the full certificate program by the end of the 2009-2010 school year.

We had our first introductory meeting with staff last week to see how many teachers would be interested in participating and the room was packed! It’s exciting and inspiring to see how many of our teachers are ready to jump into this kind of course. It will be very interesting to see how this course further develops our growing grassroots professional learning community. I can’t wait to get started!

Have you ever taught or taken a course like this? What advice do you have for us?

After the success of our last K12Online LAN party, we have another one coming up this week! If you are in town, or even if you’re not, we would love to have you join us!

Our teachers absolutely loved experiencing the power of global connections firsthand. As Diane said to me last week, as often as we hear about the potential of these tools, it’s hard to truly understand until you experience them for yourself. So, if you have a few minutes to connect with us, we would absolutely love to connect with you!

Here are the details:

Dear Fabulous Colleagues,

We had a fantastic time learning together last weekend at our very first K12Online LAN party! Not only did we watch 2 excellent presentations and share some inspiring ideas, but we also had a lively discussion with another amazing educator, Silvia Tolisano in Florida via Skype. Check out a few pictures.

We found the event so worthwhile that we are planning to continue these casual sessions on a regular basis. Of course, we would love to have even more of our wonderful colleagues there as well!

Our next party will be on Thursday, November 20th from 3:30 – 5:30 (check your time here), with a plan to head to the River Tree House afterwards for a delicious dinner.

What: A mind-bending, inspiring, and energizing conversation about new teaching and learning practices based on a variety of K12Online presentations
When: Thursday, November November 20th from 3:30 – 5:30
Where: ISB Teacher Housing, Nichada Thani
Why: to get geeked! And to enjoy being among a community of learners so enthusiastic and excited about using new tools!

Please feel free to pass on this invite to any other teachers you know in the Bangkok area.

Please let us know if you’re planning on coming so we can prepare

We hope to see you there!

I’ve been thinking a lot about professional development lately, especially about its critical role in shifting a school or shifting a community of teachers within a school, and then sustaining that change.

I’m thinking about how to support the vastly different needs of my colleagues across the school, but also to build in opportunities for connection, collaboration and communication across, between and among all of those different teachers. I’m thinking about professional development as a self-sustaining opportunity for learning – based on individual need and interest, but also allowing for cross-pollination of ideas and experience. I’m thinking about modeling professional development after my experiences with a personal learning network.

There are two models of professional development I’ve been delivering throughout my career, individual and whole school:

Individual PD

This is the type of support I offer on a daily basis:

• Working one-on-one with teachers who are ready and willing to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess units of inquiry in their classroom.
• Setting up one-on-one meetings with teachers to help them learn new tools, or figure out how to work best with the ones they already have.
• Casual conversations in the hallway that turn into inspirations for ideas to use in the classroom.
• After school technology support for tasks that have to be done, but could be made even easier through the use of technology.

This model of support helps deepen learning by providing enough time on a regular basis, grounded in curricular needs, to build individual understanding.

Although this is great way to support an individual teacher’s personal professional development, it can sometimes feel very disjointed. Having enough time to work with all of the different individuals in one school can be challenging, and/or discussing the same ideas with several different people or not being able to cross pollinate ideas because it’s always a “private” discussion can be isolating.

School Wide PD

This is the traditional model of PD we’re all used to:

• Whole-school or divisional presentations where a message is mass-marketed and delivered in one session (or if you’re lucky one or two day workshops).
• When you bring in expert voices to build enthusiasm, share ideas from the “outside world” and kick start a new initiative or support a teaching and learning goal.
• Sending a group of teachers to a conference and expecting them to share their new learning with the rest of the school when they return to campus.

As valuable as these experiences are, they are often a “one off”- offered once and never heard from again.

Keeping both of these models in mind, I’m thinking that there might be a place for something in-between. Something that taps into the power of community, but also supports the individual.

Group PD

This is, I think, the next step to building a community of learners in an institution, and one that can be especially enhanced by new web 2.0 tools like social networking. I feel like I’m at the verge of understanding how to help facilitate this experience, but I’m just figuring things out as I go.

During yesterday’s K12Online LAN party with Heather, Sara, Ali, Chrissy, Silvia (via Skype), Diane, Susan and Joanie, here in my apartment, we discussed how empowering it was to be with a cross divisional group (elementary and middle schools represented) where we could all share ideas, ask questions and receive needed support. It felt like something more than just the one-on-one meetings where the ideas are limited to just the two brains in the room.

Being able to tap into a diverse group of experiences, knowledge and imagination means that we can learn even more, and everyone feels both needed and supported. We’ve already agreed to have another LAN party because this one was so useful! There goes that feeling of being a one-off. That’s the energy and enthusiasm I would like to tap into, and to spread throughout the school.

We also talked about adding an online component to our group – to help facilitate discussion, share ideas and inspiration, and to provide a repository for information. We talked about setting up a Ning so we could encourage outside educators to join to help continue and expand our discussions (just like Julie is doing in Qatar). Plus this would give us the added advantage of having a welcoming space to demonstrate what we’re doing to other interested colleagues across the school.

We want to make the group open to any and all that are interested, centered around a common purpose. We want to tap into each individual’s desire to learn, but also their desire to be part of a group, to be supported and to be needed.

I just watched Seth Godin give a talk about his recent book, Tribes (thanks to @roybot for the link), and one of his points was that it is human nature to want to belong to a group and to be identified as a member of that group. If there are groups of people at your school who want to learn about technology, why not create that group? Why not help facilitate a place/time/space for coming together and learning together?

This is all going to be an opt-in experience – only the people that are interested will join, but I honestly can’t wait to see how far we can go when we’re all working together.

Just being able to have a number of people (perhaps shifting and changing over time) to look to for support and inspiration makes it feel more sustainable (no longer reliant on the individual PD model). Plus, knowing that a group can continue to exist beyond the tenure of specific individuals at a specific school means that PD will be “just in time” whenever it’s needed, instead of a “one-off” experience. Finally, spending regular time communicating and connecting, and knowing that only those that are truly interested will invest their time means that the learning will be deeper than your standard afternoon session of PD.

We’re only just getting started, but I have that positive feeling, those excited butterflies in my stomach, that there is something to this idea. That, especially in conjunction with the other two types of PD we regularly experience, this could add a whole new dimension to our professional learning and that it could be just what we need to shift our school.

What do you think? Have you had any experience with this kind of PD? What are the critical factors to think about while we’re in the begining stages?

I love technology. I love learning new things. Any time an initiative is introduced in the various schools I’ve worked in, I’m always one of the first to jump on board. However, having said that, I’ve been noticing a little something lately.

We’re always introducing something.

There’s always something new with technology, that’s one of the reasons I love working in the field of educational technology so much. But the problem is that as the new things come quicker and quicker, we are introducing them to our colleagues quicker and quicker.

And for some reason, we seem to forget that not everyone loves technology the way we do. And perhaps that last initiative went by so fast, they didn’t even catch what they were supposed to do with the tools. And now we’re already on to the next one.

It seems quite easy to fall into this tech trap. Introduce something once or twice, assume that everyone understands how they can use the tool to improve instruction, and then move on to the next thing.

But, here’s the problem. Most of our colleagues are still working on figuring out the initiative from the week, month, or year before.

It’s not enough just to introduce a new tool, run a training session or two, and then expect that everyone (or even the majority) has picked it up – or that they have the motivation or confidence to “figure it out.” This is why we need ongoing, “just in time” professional development. Not just for the tools we’re introducing this week, but for all of the tools we have at our disposal.

Maybe that means we’re still talking about SmartBoards years after they’ve been installed, or document cameras months after they’ve been distributed, or blogging almost a decade after it’s been developed. Because, sometimes it’s hard to remember in our tech-focused world, that the rest of our colleages may not operate this way.

I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t introduce new things (that is a big part of our job, after all), I’m just thinking that maybe we should be more thoughtful about how we do so. Just because a tool is no longer new, cool and trendy in the edtech world, doesn’t mean that it’s no longer relevant to teaching and learning. And just because we have new, cool and trendy tools in the edtech world, doesn’t mean they should replace something that’s working well, just because it can. We need to find an approachable and comfortable balance between supporting existing infrastructure and tools and introducing new ideas.

What do you think? How do you avoid the tech trap?

Segway Tourists by runneralan

At the very end of last year our (very generous) Parent Teacher Association donated ten iPods to our Learning Hub to house our audio book collection, video resources (like United Streaming downloads), and student-produced multimedia content (book reviews, commercials, podcasts, Student Council information, etc) and archives of events at school that have been recorded.

Earlier this year we went through the process of barcoding each iPod, setting up a charging station (inside an old server rack so they can be displayed in the Hub), and entering them into our library catalog so they can be checked out by students.

Next, in order to ensure that all of the iPods have the same resources, we have set up one dedicated iTunes library on one desktop machine in our Learning Hub. All of the iPods are synced through the same library whenever we have updates to our collection.

The final step in the process is a written permission slip that both parents and students must sign before checking out the iPods. Thanks to Paula White and Paul Wood, we had an excellent starting point to work from, but it’s still a work in progress and we would love your feedback.

We want to make sure the permission slip is clear, but also easily understandable by our very diverse population, especially considering many of our parents speak English as a second, third or fourth language (or not at all).

Here’s what we have so far (please disregard formatting):

iPod Permission Slip

The ES Learning Hub now has 10 iPods for checkout, graciously donated by our PTA. In order to check out an iPod from the Learning Hub, you must return this permission form, signed by both you and your parents.

Please note: You will only have to sign this form once. Your records in our database will be updated to show that your child may check out an iPod whenever one is available and requested.

By signing this permission slip, you are agreeing that any damage or loss of the iPod (and it’s accessories) is your responsibility.

• If the iPod is lost, you agree to pay the entire replacement fee.
• If the iPod is damaged, you agree to pay the entire repair fee.
• If the iPod is damaged beyond repair, you agree to pay the entire replacement fee.

The replacement fee is US$200.

Please note: The following terms and conditions apply:

• I am responsible for any damage to the equipment while it is in my possession.
• I will maintain physical control of the equipment at all times while it is in my possession at the location stated below, except during transportation to and from the school.
• I will return the equipment in the same condition as it was at checkout.
• I will follow all rules of the ISB Acceptable Use Policy I signed at the beginning of the year.
• I will promptly report to ISB Elementary School all damage to, or failure of, the equipment while it is in my possession.
• I will pay for the costs of all required repairs to the equipment, which arise from damage, misuse, or failure of the equipment while it is in my possession. All repairs will be conducted through ISB.
  
• I will return the equipment to the school by no later than the due date for return stated below.

Student’s Name (print):
Signature of Parent:
Location of Equipment While Checked Out (address):
Phone Number Where Equipment Will Be Located While Checked-Out:

What do you think? Easy enough to understand? Are all bases covered?

Does anyone else check out iPods from their library? Are we missing anything? Any advice?

Inspired by Silvia, Johnathan and Simon, Chrissy and I will be hosting a K12 Online LAN (local area network) party this Saturday morning at my apartment in downtown Bangkok. Unfortunately we’re a little late getting started because of the way our October break fell on the school calendar this year, but we are no less enthusiastic!

Already we have some of my amazing colleagues joining us: Heather, Sara, Ali, Tara, and of course Chrissy and I. I was fortunate to also attend a meeting of Bangkok international school librarians yesterday afternoon and hope to see a few of those familiar faces Saturday morning. I wish I knew more of my fellow teachers here in the city – given that there are over 90 international schools in Thailand, I would guess that we have a captive audience. It’s just a matter of getting the word out!

So, earlier this week, I sent around the following e-mail to all of my colleagues at ISB and to as many fellow international school teachers as I know here in Thailand:

Dear Fabulous Colleagues,

As some of you may know, there is an amazing (and totally free) conference happening online right now! It’s called the K12Online conference and it features digital presentations (videos, podcasts, wikis, VoiceThreads) by some of the leading minds in 21st century learning.

Topics range from project-based learning, to using video conferencing in the classroom, to connecting students through global projects, to dealing with the rapid pace of technological change as a classroom teacher, and more.

All of these presentations are described and posted online at the conference website: http://k12onlineconference.org/

But wait, there’s more!

Chrissy Hellyer (grade 5 teacher) and I would like to invite you to a K12Online Local Area Network pot-luck brunch party on Saturday, November 8th from 10:00 – noon to watch the best of the best presentations and discuss how we can use these new ideas in our teaching.
What: A mind-bending, inspiring, and energizing conversation about new teaching and learning practices based on a variety of K12Online presentations
When: Saturday November 8th from 10:00 am – noon (and now you’re already downtown for a day of shopping and dining in the city!)
Where: Kim’s apartment, downtown Bangkok
Why: to get geeked! And to enjoy a delicious pot-luck brunch!

I will download all of the presentations so that we can watch as many as we want and everyone can walk away with all of the presentations to watch when you have time.

We would also love to open this up to other international school teachers here in Bnagkok, so if you know any other teachers that might be interested in attending, please pass it on!

Please let us know if you’re planning on coming so we can prepare

Kim and Chrissy

So if you’re teaching here in Bangkok, or just happen to be in the city (it’s amazing how many people come through Bangkok on a regular basis), or even if you’re not, we would absolutely love to have you join us – either in person or via Skype!

Anyone have any suggestions for how to host this kind of party? I barely even have any wall space to project the presentations on to… I definitely need to start thinking logistics!