always learning

A little over a week ago I was honored to be invited to Qatar Academy, workplace of the amazing Julie Lindsay, as a consultant for a 2 day 21st century literacy training.

While I’m there, not only do I get to spend some quality F2F time with Julie, but hopefully I will also spend some time with my good friends Jabiz and Mairin from my last school!

Here is my proposed outline for the two days of training:

Day 1:

Introductory session: Developing the Global Student: Practical Ways to Infuse 21st Century Literacy into Your Classroom (75 – 90 minutes, full group with Q&A)

Breakout sessions:

2 options (60 – 90 min sessions – conducted in small groups, either grade level teams or subject area groups):

• Globally Collaborative Projects: best practice examples and how to get started.
• Web 2.0 trainings – groups for blogging, wikis, social networking, RSS, etc – curriculum/standards based, practical and hands on in a lab setting

Closing session: The 21st Century Educator: Embracing Web 2.0 in your Professional Practice (75 – 90 minutes, full group, with Q&A)

Day 2:

Introductory session: The 21st Century School: Making the Shift Happen – an overview of what current best practice in international schools looks like, the roles of technology facilitators, curriculum coordinators, classroom teachers, and administrators. Sample facilitation structure shared from ISB, MKIS and MIS.

3 options (60 – 90 min sessions – conducted in small groups, either grade level teams or subject area groups):

• Curriculum planning to authentically embed 21st century literacy – practical questions, successful framework, examining current standards and topics and developing ideas to embed technology (60 – 90 minutes per grade level/subject team).
• Developing a framework for successful technology integration with tech team
• Mobile computing – the changing classroom, facilities management, practical tips

Closing session: ???

I would love to hear your opinion! What do you think I should cover? What’s missing from this list? What would you like to see presented at your school?

Tags: julie lindsay, qatar academy, 21stcentury, consultant, professional development, training

Given some time to reflect over the holiday break, I’ve been thinking about the essential structures that must be put into place for a successful technology integration program (or, as I would prefer to call it, a 21st century school). I started really thinking about this last year, when my then-tech director, David Sinclair (now at Taipei American School), and I started building a framework for our integration program.

This is now the third international school where I have helped institute a fully integrated technology program, and between my experiences in Munich (before the blog), my work with David at M’KIS and the planning that we’ve put in place here at ISB, I’ve realized that schools need:

• to take away the typical barriers to success
• a vision and essential understandings for 21st century literacy and technology integration,
• supportive administration that is willing to change and make a leap into the future
• a mandate for change (and clear expectations for teachers, administrators, and facilitators)
• a framework for embedding technology and 21st century literacy
• a transparent process for documenting success
• consistent communication with parents
• a technology facilitator and/or 21st century literacy specialist that has enough time (and resources, and support) to work with each of these teachers on an individual level.

And then of course, there’s the teachers…

Clearly there are so many pieces to this puzzle that it’s no wonder that those of us truly excited about the possibilities are feeling alone, frustrated, exasperated, discouraged, even if we are learning from our mistakes. We try to bring change to our schools, often at the individual level, only to see those ideas fall apart at the seams. We try to push departments froward with curriculum redesign, only to become overwhelmed with the differing factions. We try to mandate change at an administrative level, only to see certain individuals find a way around the standards set. Clearly we need all of these pieces working together to institute any real change. But we can’t forget about supporting the teachers. They are, after all, the linchpin to our success. We can change curriculum and document new ideas until we’re blue in the face, but the teachers are the ones that have to actually change.

One of the things I’ve realized after trying to get this ball rolling in three very different schools with three very different approaches to 21st century learning, is that, when it comes to teachers, you have to start out by working with the willing. Sometimes it’s hard for school leadership to accept that you can’t get everyone on board at once. Even if you set out a mandate clearly detailing that every teacher must change their classroom practice, it doesn’t mean it happens instantaneously.

When I came on board at ISB, I was so over-enthusiastic about my position, the direction the school was heading, and the amazingly supportive leadership, that I had have a hard time reining myself in. Why can’t we get everyone on board in one year? Why can’t we have an expectation that all teachers have classroom blogs by the end of the year? Why can’t we update and adapt all curriculum plans to embed technology in one year? We really don’t have any time to waste, so it’s full steam ahead – no matter what the cost.

Unfortunately, the reality is that teachers are bombarded with expectations for all areas of their profession every day. Sure, they all know they need to “keep up” with technology, but it’s mixed in with all those other expectations we all know and love – from grading to parents to classroom management – and who has time for something that may not end up making the job any easier? And we can’t forget that every teacher has their own specialty, their own personal interests and expertise that they bring to their classroom. Do they all have to bring technology? Ultimately, I think they do – I just don’t think it all happens at the drop of a hat.

So, I recognize that I have to be a better salesman, to parade my wares more tantalizingly, to suck as many people in with my exciting and alluring advertising strategies (this perky blog included), but frankly, I’m not really sure that’s the only issue. I think teachers need to be ready, and willing, to change. Because 21st century teaching is not just about turning on the Smart Board and plugging in the laptop. It’s about changing the way you do business in your classroom. It’s about flattening those walls, taking a deep breath and jumping in – feet first. And the only way to really sell that adventure is to find a teacher who wants to buy.

Back in August, when I arrived here in Bangkok, we had a great team meeting about how to embed 21st century literacy into our classroom instruction – specifically how to change the way teachers teach. I advocated for a 3 step process:

Year 1: Work With the Willing

In the first year, connect a small cohort of teachers that are personally interested and invested in changing their classroom practice. A group of people that want to do new things in new ways, who want to try and who aren’t afraid to fail. This could be one teacher per grade level, or one per department, depending on what works best for your school. These teachers would then work very closely with the technology facilitator to embed 21st century skills into their classroom practice – not on just one project in the year, but in their daily interactions with students. They would begin to explore how multiple pieces fit together because each new project they begin will build on the previous learning. They would see how different tools can handle different tasks and how bringing all those tools together, along with thoughtful planning, higher level thinking and creativity, and engaging teaching makes a truly 21st century classroom. As a group these teachers can meet together to discuss strategies and ideas, they can be a support structure for this new adventure, and they can start planting seeds in other teacher’s minds.

The work that these teachers in these different classrooms do then becomes an example for other teachers. They showcase their projects at faculty meetings, they present at conferences, they bring new ideas to department or grade-level meetings. And the key is, because these are actual classroom teachers doing this (not just the technology facilitator who just knows how to do this stuff), their voice is so much more powerful.

Year 2: Mentor the Willing

In the second year, the teachers that changed their classroom practice in year one will become mentors to a second group of willing teachers. The same idea applies only now the teachers from year one are leading the way. Now, because there are multiple teachers adapting their classroom practice, they can work together to develop official curriculum planners, to start institutionalizing the changes they have made in their individual classrooms.

Plus, this opens up a second group of teachers for the technology facilitator to work with. Now you have 3 teachers per grade level: a teacher mentor who went through the process the year before, the teacher they’re working with, and the teacher the facilitator is working with. In most schools, that would be the whole grade level. At some schools it’s only half, or less. Either way, you have classroom teachers inspiring change in other classroom teachers.

Year 3: Bring the “less than willing” on Board

In the third year, teachers from year 1 and year 2 will now be mentoring a new teacher (again, those that are willing). The facilitator will mentor another group of teachers (can be a group of willing teachers, or perhaps a group that are mandated to change classroom practice by admin). Given that you now have 5 teachers per grade level doing new things in new ways, building off previous years work, collaborating with their other 21st century teachers, you can now begin to change common assessments, and to formalize the projects that have been developed over the years.

I’m still working on pushing this 3 step process through. I know it’s frustrating to see something so close yet so far, and I know it seems like if we could just get the technology authentically embedded (and we don’t need the teachers on board for that, do we?) into the curriculum in one fell swoop, we’d be done before we started. But teachers are special folk. If they don’t want to change, they won’t. We have to show them, we have to prove why they should. And there’s no better way to do that than with other classroom teachers sharing their success. And those successes aren’t going to happen with a technology facilitator forcing a teacher to change (as if they could, given that they’re never going to be a supervisor to other teachers). It’s going to happen when a teacher wants to change and asks for help.

So, I wonder, if we had all those initial pieces in place, and we started working with the willing, could we do it in three years? Could you change an entire school (or school division) from the ground up in three years. I think you could. In fact, I wonder if any school already has every piece in place…

Tags:  21stcentury,  internationalschool, flatclassroom, classroom, 21st century literacy, globalcitizens, collaboration, learning, creating, vision, philosophy, understanding, framework, embed, technology, curriculum, planning, development

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

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

Here in east Asia, the big regional conference for teachers is the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference. It’s usually sometime mid-March and all of the schools from this part of the world are invited to attend. ISB is a longtime supporter of the conference and the school actually pays for the flight to the conference, along with the conference fees (but not the hotel room), for all ISB teachers interested in attending. Considering this year’s conference is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (where I lived for the past two years – ironically last year it was here in Bangkok), I figured it was the perfect year to apply to present. A great experience plus trip back to one of my favorite cities in the world!

Although it’s still a work in progress, I thought I’d share my presentation here as well:

Workshop Title: Developing the Global Student: Practical Ways for Infusing 21st Century Literacy Skills in Your Classroom

Workshop Description: 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.

I just started a wiki for all of the resources I want to share, but there’s not much up there yet… I’m actually presenting the same topic in Singapore in November (thanks to Susan Sedro for getting me involved) so I will have all my resources posted by the 16th.

What do you think? Feedback? Suggestions?

Update: I forgot to mention that I’ll be presenting using Google Presentations and I would absolutely love for my PLN to be there so I can “pull back the curtain” at the end and give the audience a glimpse into the authentic learning that’s we’re engaging in every day! Time, date and URL to be announced here (and on Twitter just before the  actual presentation).

Tags: 21st century literacy, globalcitizens, collaboration, learning, EARCOS,

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

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

Now that our first few weeks of school are over and things are beginning to settle into a more manageable pace, I am finally starting to work with our individual classroom teachers to get the technological ball rolling.

One of my major goals this year is to continue with the sort of global collaborations I was doing last year in KL. Of course, just as I was really starting to develop a great middle school personal learning network and an awesome set of same-age-group collaborators, I had to go and switch myself over to elementary. Hence the somewhat sparse blogging as of late. But, I’m starting to find my groove here at the PK-5 age group and some exciting things are starting to take shape.

In the last two weeks or so, I’ve worked with a few of our willing classroom teachers on developing exciting new projects that infuse authentic use of technology at a global level. Here are our current projects:

Grade 5:

Two of our five classes are going to work with Chris Craft on his Life ‘Round Here digital storytelling project. Our students are starting the year with a unit about culture, which is the perfect introduction to this project because it will allow us to adapt the concept for each student’s individual ability and interest. For the official project, we will only need six completed videos that fit Chris’ original paramenters, but since we will have around 50 students participating, we are hoping that we can differentiate both the content and the skill level for each individual student.

We’re thinking that a multimedia presentation about life in Thailand might be a bit tough for some of our kids, because most are expats and only spend a short time in each country. Therefore, the actual “official” submissions for the project might come only from those students that are ready for more of a challenge. Another group of students may make a video about their home culture, still another group may make a video about the school culture of ISB. I love that there’s plenty of room for growth and adjustment with this global collaboration so that we can make sure it suits the needs of our learners.

As an added bonus, both of the classes participating in the Life ‘Round Here project have decided to start blogging. Over the course of the next two weeks, each student in these two classes will start setting up their own blogs through Learnerblogs. We are seeing these blogs as a place for individual learning and reflection, metacognition, a personal journal of growth over the course of the year. We are conscious of keeping away from the “blogging as homework” dilemma in order to allow them to be the leaders in their own learning. Each teacher will have a class blog where students may be asked to comment, and we’re sure to have some writing prompts or guiding questions throughout the year, but we want to make sure that these blogs are a place for personal reflection, more than just a place to post homework.

Another third fifth grade class has just started learning about Native Americans and will be collaborating on a wiki to share what they learn. We’re looking at this as an opportunity to learn about research as well as presentation and collaboration skills. It would be great to find another grade 5 class that’s interested in participating with us!

Grade 2:

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. Because second graders are so young, I’m hoping we can set up a Ning with this group to let them learn and explore in a “walled garden” setting. I would love to see where they can go with all the easy to use embedded features that Ning has to offer!

I’m also hoping to set up blogs with our grade 4s and maybe start a podpals (like pen pals, only with podcasts instead of letters) in grade 3. I would also love to continue the 1001 Flat World Tales project with a grade 3 or 4 class if possible. Anyone interested in joining in? As always, I am open to all sorts of ideas, so if you’re interested in starting something new, let me know!

Summer vacation is officially over! For the last week I have been constantly engaged in new teacher orientation activities at ISB. We’ve been wined and dined and orientated to every possible aspect of the school imaginable from culture, to banking, to technology. Although it’s all been very interesting (and extremely thorough), I’ve been anxiously awaiting my chance to get to work in our absolutely stunning new library media center.

Back in January, when I was hired, we started talking about how we could completely and totally re-design the existing (dark, crowded, and old) ES library to bring our school into the 21st century. As I viewed (from KL) the architect’s plans and watched various slide shows emphasizing certain design elements for the space, I honestly could not imagine that the school would be able to accomplish such an amazing change in just two months (during summer vacation). I was wrong. We still need to put in the books and add some finishing touches, but the new library is finished exactly according to expectations and it is definitely the jewel of the elementary school! I am beyond excited about developing this new, fully equipped, resource – the possibilities are endless!

Right now our main goal is to make the library media center the hub for all forms of literacy in the elementary school. We have four beautiful spaces that flow together to combine a truly unique learning environment. We have a full computer lab area with relatively new iMacs, a project area with tables and chairs (both spaces have a SmartBoard and fixed data projector), a soft seating area with snazzy hanging bubble chairs, and a rainbow colored, stepped amphitheater with round window seat portals. Every aspect of the design aesthetic is exciting, inviting, and eye-catching.

Given my technology background, my goal is to help merge emerging and traditional forms of literacy within this one space. We are going to make use of the computer lab area as well as a set of laptops when we’re in the library, along with the multiple sets of laptop carts that are distributed to every elementary grade level for use in the classrooms. I’m going to continue my collaborative, project-based style of teaching and learning and start expanding that to include the wide variety of resources available in the library.

Along with the technology piece of the puzzle, we have a fantastic librarian (who has been at ISB for the last 19 years) to continue the literature connections with our students. Our plan is to start the year leading with our strengths to get the space up and running and then learn from each other as we go along. Hopefully by the end of the year we’ll have two librarians well versed in both emerging and traditional forms of literacy enjoying a simply spectacular learning hub!

Does anyone else have any experience in a library like ours? Any advice or suggestions on how to operate our program? Where should we start? What mistakes should we avoid?