always learning

Our sixth grade IT students had a very exciting day today:

Not only was it the first day of a new quarter, (the first day of IT for this year), but they also got to meet a group of Year 7 students in New Zealand (and their fantastic teacher) without even leaving the classroom!

Thanks to our lovely new iMacs (with iSight built in), and Skype, we were able to video conference with our new partner class in NZ this morning.

For many of our students this was the first time they had ever participated in a video conference – and certainly the first time they have ever done so as part of a school project.

This group will be collaborating together to create a multimedia presentation – here in KL we will be using iMovie, the students in NZ will be using Movie Maker. Part of their responsibility will be to teach each other how to use the software they are learning about. I love the idea that students in an all Mac school can learn how to use Movie Maker, and vice versa!

Throughout the project we will be communicating via our blogs, our wiki, e-mail, Skype, and any other other method we can find! We will be keeping track of our conversations on the wiki, and, after we return from break, will link all of our blogs to the wikispace to open a more direct line of communication for the students.

When I was sharing this story with my colleagues at lunch, one teacher described her first international project when she was teaching French in Canada. She set up a pen pal class with students in France – they would write a set of letters, wait about 2 months, and then get a set of letters back from the class in France.

In comparison, today was the first day that our students heard about the project, minutes later they had joined the wikispace set up for the project, brainstormed questions to ask their new friends, and got to meet them – all within 1 class period!

My colleague at lunch said it perfectly: It is amazing to think about the speed of communication today. What used to take months, now takes minutes. How lucky our students are!

Image 1: http://www.danieljmalone.com/images/1/news/technology/2006/07/skype-logo.jpg
Image 2: http://www.podpodpost.com/photos/ist2_557799_air_mail_envelope.jpg

MissProfe is reflecting on her role in the classroom after reading Kelly Christopherson’s post about the same topic. Although I left a comment for MissProfe I wanted to post it here because I realized that I’m not just a teacher, I’m three teachers: I’m a technology teacher, an international school teacher and a middle school teacher. All three roles are wrapped up into one position, but they can have different objectives. It’s all about the balance.

From a tech teacher’s point of view:

I always like to say that I teach students how to learn with technology. It doesn’t really matter to me if they become the all-time expert on whatever tool we’re working with at the moment – after all, what are the chances that they’ll be using the exact same tool, same version, 5 years from now? All that matters to me is that they can learn how to use the next tool that will be developed, and the tool after that, and the ones we never dreamed would be possible.

From an international school teacher’s point of view:

We have so much transition in the international school classroom, both students and teachers rotating in and out. All I want is for students that leave my classroom to feel comfortable and confident with technology. They don’t have to be the best, they just know that they can tackle the next challenge that comes along – with the next teacher, in the next school, in the next country.

From a middle school teacher’s point of view:

I want students to have fun, to be excited, to be interested in learning more, to enjoy technology as part of their daily life. To me, middle school is about exposure to new skills and possibilities, about enthusing students in areas they may not be naturally interested, and showing them different ways to learn and have fun. I’m a cheerleader for technology.

I realize that pretty much everything I’ve written here is already stated in my teaching philosophy. Everything I do in the classroom is shaped by my understanding and my belief in my role as an educator, but I rarely think about that philosophy – I just do it. In fact, just about the only time I really think about my philosophy of education is during recruiting season.

We international school teachers go recruiting quite frequently, sometimes as frequently as every other year. Every time we attend a job fair we are meeting with administrators from around the globe that only have a few days in which to process our potential for their school. We are anxious to share everything there is to know about our teaching style, philosophy, objectives, experience and interests in a short (usually 20 minute) interview. I think next time I should just say I’m the best value: hire one, get three!

Image 1: http://www.bolton.ac.uk/learning/images/hand_globe.jpg
Image 2:

http://www.mousememories.com/images/eksuccess/BUY-SIX-DWARFS-GET-ONE-FREE-md.jpg

I have taught web design for 7 years now, and every year it gets easier – for me and for the students. The more practice I get with teaching them, the easier it is for me to see exactly what they need, and when. I love the feeling of making a new technology tool accessible to all students by consistently improving my teaching based on their feedback. But something even more interesting happened this year…

All of our middle school students now have their own blogs. We have set them up through integrated units in social studies and English over the course of the semester. As we all know, maintaining a blog is much easier than designing a website from scratch, even if you are using the design view in a software application like Macromedia Dreamweaver. But, I have seen something change in our students this year. Usually they are intimidated by Dreamweaver, and struggle with setting up a functioning page, even sometimes struggling with the concept of linking (even though they do it every day when they navigate the web). This year, though, things were different.

As soon as I explained the concept to my 6th, 7th and 8th graders, the ideas started percolating. The designs for a masthead, the organization of the page, the external pages to link to, etc. Before we even started creating their electronic portfolios, they had a vision in their heads of what they wanted. They were ready to tackle the challenges of Dreamweaver because they already had the basics of linking, inserting and aligning images, and organizing pages and links from their blogging experience. And that blogging experience was so smooth and easy to understand that they felt much more comfortable building on those skills to design their own website.

The transformation of our students in such a short period of time just boggles my mind. Since I have arrived in Malaysia, I have found that our students on the whole are a bit weaker in terms of technology than my students in Munich, and I have been working to increase their confidence each year. This year, with the integration of technology into the core curriculum, and the use of exciting new web 2.0 tools has shot us forward by several years.

The electronic portfolios the middle school students have been able to produce this year are outstanding. Many of them have designed their own mastheads and created buttons and thumbnails with Photoshop, and they have all inserted Flash animations and QuickTime files directly into the page, and utilized good web design skills to make their pages easy to read and understand. I can see clearly that this transition has come from their increased comfort level with these skills, through the use of IT in the core classes.

As I explained to my sixth graders yesterday, my goal as a technology teacher is to help increase each student’s level of confidence with technology. I want my students to be able to sit down in front of any computer, Mac or PC, Linux or Windows, or whatever comes next, and feel like they can accomplish their goals – even if it involves using an application or tool they’ve never seen before. I know first hand what it feels like to be faced with new technology every day, and that feeling of satisfaction and success when you have accomplished your task with a new tool under your belt.

Image 1 from: http://www.actacenter.com/IMG/jpg/dreamweaver.jpg
Image 2 from: http://www.nof-club.de/toto/fairnews/thumbs/photoshop_icon.jpg

In addition to middle school IT integration, I also teach discrete IT exploratory classes for all middle school students. These exploratories run for 9 weeks (1 quarter), and are intended to expose students to new ideas in a fun and relaxed way. Due to the nature of the class, we usually only manage one or two projects following the MYP Technology Design Cycle. I try to make the projects as fun as possible (don’t we all?) and I very rarely give homework. My sixth graders learn how to create movies using iMovie, seventh graders create personal logos in FreeHand, and eighth graders create e-cards using Flash. All classes finish by creating e-portfolios using Dreamweaver. Last year these projects took the entire 9 weeks. Going through the Design Cycle – Investigate, Plan, Create, Evaluate – is such a valuable process, and really helps clarify for the students how to design a successful technology project, but it takes some time.

Even with the time crunch, I knew I had to add a web 2.0 element to my classes this year and I am so happy with how well it turned out (and how little time it took). Just after the students finished creating their movies/logos/e-cards, I showed them my Middle School IT wikispace and gave a (very) short lesson on wikis. Their next project was to create a tutorial wiki on the software application we studied. I used the UbD GRASPS model to design the task, giving the students an authentic goal: an online tutorial, a real audience: first time users of this software anywhere in the world, and a realistic role: software developers at the appropriate company. As a class we developed the pages that needed to be created and decided on: introduction, skills/tools, finished products, tips, glossary and supporting external links. I asked the students to select a group based on their comfort level with the technology and personal interest and we were off! Each class took about 2-3 lessons (a total of 3 – 4.5 hours of class time) to complete their tutorial. Once all the groups were finished with their individual pages, we rotated through so that each group was able to review, revise and perfect every other groups work.

I am so impressed with how well they were able to complete the tutorials, how fast they were able to finish (compared to designing a site from scratch using Dreamweaver) and how much knowledge they were able to demonstrate within the structure of the project. Take a look if you’re interested:

• Grade 6: iMovie
• Grade 7: FreeHand
• Grade 8: Flash

I think the most exciting part for me, though, was the authentic collaboration that using wikis allowed and how easily students were able to focus on the content not the technology. I was genuinely concerned that I would not be able to add a third project into an already jam-packed course, but the simplicity of wikis made everything a breeze! The students were able to grasp the tech skills in about 10 minutes and the rest of the time was spent working, sharing, learning and collaborating. I am so impressed with how focused the students were, how easily they took to the task, and how well they worked together. Groups were set up loosely based on skill and ability level (and personal interest) which really helped keep each student engaged as they worked. Needless to say, this project is my new favorite part of the course!

Image from: http://www.myptechnology.com/sitefiles/DesignCycleQuestions.htm

I am really starting to get the hang of this whole wiki thing this week. Yes, last week I posted a link to the page on my wiki where I try to convince all teachers that we need to embrace new technologies, but I didn’t really understand how much this technology would change my teaching and learning. But, now it’s starting to clear up:

I spent most of today working on my Middle School IT Integration wiki for my students. I teach 9-week exploratory classes for grades 6-8 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The sessions are so short that we don’t often get to more than one or two major projects following the MYP technology design cycle (which I started using when I was teaching in Munich, Germany). But today, as I was working on this wiki for the students, I realized that the tools are actually so simple that I could incorporate a collaborative aspect to my courses just by letting them post what they learn on the wiki. Nothing so in-depth as Jeff’s amazing TeenTek project over in Shanghai, but a little something to pique their curiosity about this new tool.

After being away for a lovely long weekend on the Malaysian island of Redang,

I came back to my RSS aggregator full of amazing wikis (that I will, of course, dutifly post on my page about wikis for the staff at school). Here are some of the really amazing ones:

Educational Technology that Works Wiki

Classroom Blogging Wiki from Tom Barrett

Classroom Google Earth Wiki also from Tom Barrett

One Laptop Per Child Wiki

Teaching with Technology Wiki

And, of course, the wiki for the K12 Online Conference

This got me thinking about something else… I remembered reading Vicki Davis’ post a few weeks ago about the effect that Wikipedia will have on textbooks given the rapid pace of technological and scientific change we are experiencing. I remember thinking that was a very interesting idea. And really, how can textbook authors, editors, publishers and manufacturers keep up with these developments? And today, I found David Warlick’s 2 Cents and Christopher Craft’s post about the same topic which reminded me of the original post. And then I remembered something else interesting:

Many of you may not know, but we in Malaysia (and Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia) experience something called “the haze” annually (during the dry season) due to slash and burn agriculture on Sumatra.

I was curious to find out more about this year’s haze, since it wasn’t quite as bad as last year, but was still prompting us to turn on the aircon rather than have the doors open in our condo. I did a search on Google and found only articles related to the 2005 State of Emergency that was declared here in Malaysia. Nothing on 2006. Interesting. I then did the same search including the date and look what came up as the first article in my search (at the time). Wow! CNN and BBC haven’t posted a thing, but Wikipedia had detailed reports by date and time for everything about this year’s haze almost up to the minute.

I shared that story with my sixth grade study skills class on Tuesday and they got it right away: textbooks are great for historical references, but not even scientific “fact”, and certainly not current events. They were really excited because we had just finished making our own class wiki and this really helped them see the relevance of the project. In fact, several of them commented on their blogs about how they could use a wiki in their other classes. If only the other teachers were as excited about this as they are…

Haze image citation:
Beawiharta “Haze brings misery, health problems in Indonesia.” Reuters.co.uk. Fri 6 Oct 2006 12:09:34 BST.