always learning

Waaay back in September, I read the book Presentation Zen, thanks to Jeff (who insisted I read it before designing my presentations for Learning 2.008). Since then I’ve created and delivered six presentations.

After each one, I received compliments about the style and lots of questions about how I found the right pictures. So, I thought I’d share my steps here (apologies to Garr Reynolds for any misinterpretation of his work – this is only meant to be a reflection of how I’ve used his ideas).

Finding Great Pictures: Kim’s Secrets

OK, here’s the deal. It’s not really a secret. I spend a long time looking for pictures.

First, I flesh out my presentation ideas on paper, following Garr’s suggestions. I start with the big picture, then break it down into 3 sections, then each section gets broken down into individual slides that tell a story.

Each image needs to represent an important aspect of this story. So I start thinking about exactly what type (or types) of images will creatively represent each idea and leave a lasting memory for the audience. Something that might resonate with a bigger concept and not just directly represent the words on the screen. Usually I have a few ideas to fall back on if I can’t find one that works within a reasonable amount of time.

Once I have my picture ideas (one for each slide, I seem to usually have around 40 slides), I head to Creative Commons Search to find pictures that have been licensed for sharing (there are tons of other options for searching CC photos, but I like this one the best). If you haven’t heard of Creative Commons, check this out!

On the search bar, I always make sure to check off “Search for works I can modify, adapt or build upon” to ensure that I’m following the licensing for the images I use.

Next, I click on the Flickr tab, and once the pictures have loaded, I click on the “most interesting” link under the number of results found. This will find me the pictures that have been favorited by flickr viewers the most.

And, that’s when the fun begins. I almost always have to look through several pages. I’m looking for images that:

• represent my idea clearly and interestingly
• are creatively shot
• fill the shot so the image can fill the slide
• are properly in or out of focus, depending on what I’m looking for
• provide enough space to write the words I’m planning to show on screen (usually this means a solid background or appropriate depth of field)
• are unique

Once I find the picture I like, I head straight over to that Flickr image page, download the photo and copy and paste the source URL for proper citation at the end of my presentation.

A Few Little Extras

Along with finding the right pictures, I have also found a few other extras that have improved my presentations:

I almost always include at least one video, usually two. Videos are great conversation starters and can give the presentation relevance in the wider world. They’re also a great way to get background information across without having to cover everything yourself. Feel free to check out my video bookmarks too!

I try to provide ample amount for participants to talk to each other. I add a little stop sign image at the bottom of the screen when I plan to ask participants to “turn and talk” so I don’t forget. I always start with one of these talking breaks at the begining of my presentation, usually inspired by an image or short video. I hope this is helping the audience engage with the content instead of just passively watching.

I always provide a wiki with the full presentation, all resources I used to create the presentation, and recommended resources for the teachers to utilize the information presented. I make sure to share this at the very begining of each presentation so that no one feels like they must take notes. I would much rather have people engaged in a dialogue than writing down what I’m saying.

Thanks to (I think) Scott McLeod Dean Shareski (thanks for the correction, Scott), I’ve started using quotes from the Flickr pool: Great Quotes About Learning and Change. What an amazing and powerful resource – talk about inspiring conversation starters!

Update: Thanks to Andrew Churches, I have just discovered another excellent pool of thought provoking images in Will Lion’s photostream on Flickr. Definitely one to bookmark!

And that’s about it! What other strategies or advice do you have for creating eye-popping presentations?

Apparently I am embarking on a very modest consulting career.

Last year, Julie Lindsay invited me to spend 2 days at her school, Qatar Academy, working with the Primary School teachers on 21st century learning. Amazingly, that visit went so well that she invited me back again this year, this time to work with the Senior School (middle and high school) teachers on the same topic. I was truly flattered to be asked back and have really enjoyed the experience.

I never would have expected when I started teaching that anyone would invite me to their school to work with their teachers, but now that I’ve had the chance, I know I would like to continue building these skills.

One of the things I really enjoy about these visits is the opportunity to really consolidate my thinking. Every time I make a presentation I take the time to really clarify what I need to say, what background needs to be covered for it to make sense, and why it’s important to teaching and learning. This time around a few topics from the three presentations I gave jumped to the surface:

Using technology in the classroom is a mindset, not a skill-set.

This is something I’ve been saying for a long time, but I feel like it’s becoming more and more important as technology continues to change more and more rapidly. The feeling of being overwhelmed by new information, of not being able to catch up, of needing to know more than your students, can end up leading teachers down a path of avoidance instead of adoption. Focusing on the attitudes and mindset of a teacher who successfully uses technology in the classroom helps make the shift more approachable.

Teachers who use technology in the classroom are: flexible, willing to take risks and try new things, not afraid of failing, able to learn from their students, adaptable, and comfortable with the fact that they are not the smartest person in the room. Cultivating this kind of mindset is the first step to understanding how to use technology successfully in the classroom.

Unfortunately, this is also a paradigm shift for many teachers. What do you mean I’m not the smartest person in the room? Isn’t that why I’m the teacher and they’re the student? Which brings me to the next key point:

It’s not about the technology, it’s about the pedagogy.

It’s so easy to focus on the tools. Teachers are very comfortable being shown the power of a new tool and figuring out how they can make it work for their teaching style. It seems like the “how to” is what most teachers like to hear, see and test first. Unfortunately, it’s just too easy to make the tools fit the old paradigm. If we’re not talking about pedagogy, if we’re not talking about changing the classroom environment, if we’re not talking about students learning how to learn, there’s really no point to talking about the tools.

In the end we all want our students to be successful, but there are certain pedagogical approaches that will help them become independent learners, who can survive and thrive in the constantly changing, media rich, content saturated world we live in. Classrooms that are project based, inquiry driven, and student centered not only help us reach our goals as teachers, but they also very naturally lend themselves to successful technology integration. If a teacher is using the same worksheets s/he has used for 10 years, or teaching one individual lesson one day after the next, or leads an activity-based classroom, it’s going to be awfully hard to authentically embed technology into that environment. No matter how easy and quick it might be to look at the tools first, we have to start with the pedagogy and the “why.”

We need to learn with technology the way students live with technology.

In the end, this is about making school relevant. We may not like the changes in our society, we may not appreciate the constant media bombardment of our children that ends up in something like this (which, personally I find rather horrifying), but the reality is, this is our world. We made it this way. Now we have to find ways to ensure that our children learn how to live in this world, how to stay safe, how to lead balanced lives, how to use all of these many tools at their disposal for appropriate and authentic purposes. We can’t do that by ignoring technology. We also can’t do that by making those tools fit our preferred style of learning. We have to tap into the energy our students bring to class to find ways to learn with technology the way students live with technology.

This is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s about finding ways to authentically use the appropriate, relevant and pedagogically sound tools to enhance the learning experience for our students. It doesn’t mean all the time, but it does mean in different ways that we might be used to. I love Marc Prensky’s statement about doing new things in new ways. This is what we’re looking for. No need to retro-fit a new tool to an old project. How can we get to our curricular goals in a new way, in a way that engages our students? As Chrissy likes to say: we’re still going to the same place, we just might need to drive a different vehicle.

Conversation Starter

In the end, these visits are about starting conversations, promoting new thinking and questioning just about everything. Everything is not going to be resolved in a two- or three- or even ten-day visit. All we can hope to accomplish is to get people talking, to stir up the pot a bit, to snap some out of their comfort zones and to promote the work of others, to bring in relevant information from the “outside world” and to kick start the change process.

The absolute best thing about my visit this time around was having the chance to talk to some of the Primary School teachers I worked with last year. Every single one of them said to me: “You changed me.” Wow. I’ve never, ever had anyone say that to me before. To be able to come in for a short visit, share some new ideas, help inspire and empower people, and then to hear about your success from those very people only a year later. Yes, that is definitely something I would like to do more often.

Now, this is not to say that everything went perfectly during both visits. There are challenges, problems, disagreements and, to be honest, a little bit of anger and fear, all to be expected. But in the end it’s those conversations that get things started. And, as we all know, there’s always room to grow. A few things I want to think about well in advance next time around are:

• What has been the school’s history with technology (or any other) initiates?
• What is the general feeling of the staff? Are there members who are supportive? Those who will challenge anything?
• What success can we share from the school itself? How can we promote success internally?
• Where are the administrators? How visible will they be during the visit?
• What are the practical issues specifically relevant to the school, student body, parent population and culture?
• What is the culture of the school in general?

As usual, everything is a learning experience. Anyone have any other advice about consulting?

Over the last two months I have been privileged to teach the first graduate-level course in ISB’s new 5-course SUNY Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy along with Jeff Utecht. It has been an excellent experience and I am truly flattered to have been asked by the school to lead such an important program in our professional development offerings.

Building Our Network

Amazingly, we have 50 current ISB teachers in the course and 5 newly hired ISB teachers participating virtually! Considering we have a staff of about 200 teachers, this is a very impressive number of faculty to be spending their weekends and evenings learning together about the impact that technology can have in the classroom. It’s a little intimidating to be leading such a large group (thank goodness there are two of us) but it’s so inspiring to see so many of our teachers so committed to their own professional development, willing to try new things, to have challenging conversations and to reflect on their practice. I am truly fortunate to be working at this school with these teachers.

Expert Voices

One of the most fantastic things about this course has been our guest speakers. On our first full-day face-to-face session we spent an hour with Clarence Fisher and another hour with Chris Betcher. Both speakers were just the perfect way to introduce the class to this new model of learning. Clarence’s practical examples of how his students learn with technology at the middle school was exactly what teachers had been asking for. Chris’ engaging hands-on presentation about truth and bias far exceeded anything I would have done with our teachers.

Yesterday, for our final full day face-to-face session, we had a  presentation from the authors of one of the books we’re using: Reinventing Project Based Learning, Suzie Boss & Jane Krauss, as well as an eye-opening presentation from Julie Lindsay. Suzie and Jane were the absolute perfect example of the power of the network. Who would have thought we’d be talking to the authors of our textbook in class? And Julie’s presentation really helped our teachers understand how important globally collaborative projects are for teaching our students critical life skills.

In retrospect, I’m also really pleased to see that we have an a very nice balance of men and women sharing their expertise with the class. All too often we only see male speakers leading the way, this was a great way to model (at least gender) equality in our learning.

Always Learning

Considering that this is my first time teaching a graduate-level course, I’m not sure I knew exactly what to expect. Sure, I’ve taken quite a few in my day and even completed a similar certificate (of Educational Leadership) through the same university at ISKL while I was living in Malaysia. But being a teacher is definitely a very different experience than being a student. I’m so thankful to have had the experience and I know I have learned so much in the process.

Finding Conversations

For starters, it may sound basic, but planning this course and each individual lesson was a pretty much exactly like planning for my classes. I’m not sure I really thought about that before we started so I don’t think I really got the hang of it until our second face-to-face lesson (and after getting lots of feedback at the first session). Providing time for teachers to talk to one another, to digest what they’re reading and thinking about, to bounce ideas off each other, and to question and collaborate is so important. Breaking the class into small groups, specifically asking teachers to “turn and talk” like I do in the classroom, and rotating those groups or setting up jigsaws were by far the most popular ways to spend our face-to-face time according to our anonymous feedback surveys. Seems obvious now, but I don’t know that we initially planned to organize the class that way.

Finding Community

Given that the class is so big, we really do need to think about how to break up into smaller groups. It’s hard to discuss anything in a group of 55 and we all know teachers who know each other tend to flock together, unintentionally creating clusters of teachers who already know each other instead of getting to know new people (especially in a school as big as ours). A few teachers provided feedback in our last session yesterday with some good ideas to think about for the next course. I really like John’s idea of having groups of teachers contribute to a group blog (instead of each teacher authoring their own blog) – thus giving teachers less peer-reading to get through every week and also building in small communities of learners among this larger group. Although I feel strongly about the experience of building your own digital footprint and understanding this new medium of communication through practice, a group blog would be an easier entry into the world of blogging.

Finding Voice

It’s been so interesting to see how many of our teachers are reluctant bloggers. I totally understand that feeling. I can remember starting this blog and being panicked about other people possibly reading what I write. Fortunately for me, I didn’t actually know anyone at the time that had a blog that other people read. So I never really thought anyone would ever read mine. I knew they could, but it didn’t feel really real to me. I had plenty of time to find my voice here in this writing space without an audience, but our teachers can see the comments on this blog, Jeff’s and Chrissy’s – so they know people are reading. I wonder if this added another layer of pressure to the initial fear of publishing your thoughts to the world?

Finding Balance

Another conversation that comes up time and time again with both teachers and parents is the idea of balance. It’s something we all struggle with, but I think those of us that are already immersed in the web 2.0 world can forget how overwhelming everything was at first. We know we need to find balance, we know we need to use technology when it’s relevant, appropriate and authentic for our learning purpose. But sometimes we’re so zealous in our sales pitch of just how great things are, we forget to mention some of the drawbacks. Finding your own individual comfort level with technology is a process. There is no miracle one-size-fits-all answer, but we each need to learn what the right balance is for us. And we need to pass on that ability to our students.

Finding Communication

As we say to the parents that attend our Monthly Technology Coffee Mornings, finding balance and learning when and why and how to use technology appropriately is about conversations. Open and honest discussions between teachers and students, teachers and teachers, and parents are their children are the only way to find out exactly what will work for each individual. Sometimes adults are afraid to open the door to these kinds of conversations because they worry that their children will notice how much they don’t know, but that doesn’t matter. It’s life experience that teaches us how to find balance in our lives – not our skill level with technology.

Professor Cofino?

It has been such a pleasure to work with such a diverse group of teachers (and just to teach adults in general). The amazing life experiences we had in the room brought such an exciting dimension to our disucssions, their blog posts, and their completed work. Just listening to these various conversations and seeing the depth of thought and connections being made helped me realize that I would really love to do more of this level of teaching. It’s a different challenge than classroom teaching, with different rewards, and so far, I love it!

Last week, Jeff, Tara and I were on a mission to find a video for our elementary faculty meeting next week, so I sent out a Twitter plea for great videos:

And thanks to all the wonderful folks on Twitter, we found quite a few excellent videos! I thought I’d share a few of them here combined with a few others I’ve bookmarked over the last few weeks (along with a few old favorites from a previous post: Viral Video):

A Nokia ad: The 4th Screen Revolution:

The Essay:

An elevator temporarily becomes stairs:

Cathy Fiorina on the Dynamics of Change and Fear:

This one, called Truth Happens, was actually shared by one of our CoETaIL participants, Jim Fitzgerald. Although it’s an ad for Linux, the message is clear and definitely relevant for those of us advocating for change in our schools:

I think we found this Kaplan University ad a few weeks ago – it’s absolutely perfect for starting conversations about our current school-system model:

Julie and the team of 21st Century Learners in Doha, Qatar made this video (modeled after the Learning to Change, Changing to Learn video I showed the faculty the day before) while I was visiting QA last week:

And an old favorite, Epic 2015:

Looking at my Delicious account, it looks like I have 229 bookmarks tagged video! It amazes me just how much material is available and how easy it is to find!

Do you have any favorite videos you’d like to share?

One of the perks of being an Apple Distinguished Educator is being able to represent Apple at their educational events around the world. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting a session on Garage Band at Apple’s Think Ahead Roadshow (at my very favorite hotel, The Metropolitan) here in Bangkok.

Wow. I’m still a little bit speechless. The Roadshow was so well-organized, so clearly grounded in sound educational practices, and so totally focused on what we need in the classroom and in our schools. Honestly, I’m still a little surprised that all of this was being presented by a vendor. The one-day session was a lot better than many educational (and edtech) conferences I’ve attended.

Now, we all know I’m already sold on Apple, but if I wasn’t, this would have convinced me to head straight over to the Apple store and pick up a new MacBook. For starters, Adrian Lim (one of the regional managers for Southeast Asia) gave an absolutely fantastic keynote presentation that actually brought tears to my eyes.

Everything that Adrian said was something I have thought, said or heard at one time or another as a teacher in the field of educational technology. His explanation of the stages of technology integration, implementation and professional development in schools was stated so clearly and so accurately it’s almost unbelievable that he’s not actually teaching right now. The background information and research about our 21st century learners described exactly what I’ve been learning and thinking about in my PLN, and the approach for how to engage those students to create a 21st century classroom was almost word-for-word what I was planning to share in Doha the following week.

On top of all that Adrian shared Apple’s vision for the 21st century school, their revised Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Today program, and of course all of the easy-to-use and innovative software that Apple is known for. All I could think as he was presenting was that we need him in our schools, presenting this to full faculty and the parents. This was more powerful than so many keynotes I have seen delivered by “big names” in education and technology. And it was delivered by a vendor, who’s not teaching, and in fact, not working in schools at all.

Following Adrian’s keynote were two hands-on sessions. I delivered the one on Garage Band and a fellow ADE, Michael Koronkiewicz, presented a session on iMovie.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous to present on a software package in front of the people who work for the company that designed the software. Um, who’s telling who how the software works again? But, it was by far the easiest presentation I’ve ever had to give. All of the materials were provided for me (scripts for my “students” who recorded their own podcasts, research on a wiki already prepared, 15 MacBooks and iPods all ready set up and ready to go, and even some prizes to hand out to the “best” group project!). Plus, I had at least one tech support person in the room at all times. Oh, how I wish that was the case on a regular basis in the classroom. What a breeze!

The best part about the presentation (for me) was how much it reflected my philosophy and classroom practice. Each piece of material provided by Apple was almost exactly (but usually a little bit better than) how I would do it in my own classroom. The “project” my “students” completed was very similar to something I’m doing with grade 5 right now, and I never felt like I was “selling my soul” to present on behalf of a vendor. In fact, I learned quite a few new things that I’m planning to put into practice over the next few weeks. How often can we actually say that about technology vendors?

In addition to the one-day session, I just have to share how supportive, friendly, and approachable all of the Apple staff are. I never once felt pressured to do or say something I didn’t believe in, I was consistently encouraged to share my voice and my opinion on the tools. There were plenty of times in my presentations when I recommended web-based services that would accomplish the same tasks (but are not sold or provided by Apple) and this was encouraged.

If I wasn’t already convinced that Apple is the best choice for education, I certainly would be now. Tools designed specifically for education, with software that could not be easier to use, and support personnel that actually understand education and are as passionate about the changes we need to see in schools as I am. Why wouldn’t we want that in our classroom?

Images by Kelvin Kong