Over the last semester I’ve worked with several groups of students on a variety of globally collaborative projects, and each time we complete a project, I ask for student feedback.
Interestingly, as I looked back at all of the feedback, there was quite a bit of overlap. Even though these projects were completed by different students in different grade levels, many of them shared the same takeaways.
We learned:
how easy it is to communicate with people in different time zones and in other countries using technology.
writing feedback for other students makes you think and helps you practice your Writing Workshop skills - it’s like using Writing Workshop in real life.
to accept other people’s ways of working and how to put our ideas together through cooperation.
to work together with partners better to complete our goal even if we were making mistakes.
we have a lot in common with our global partners.
sharing our work online made me aware of what we were saying.
We liked:
that we got to work with different people from other classes that we didn’t know how to work with, so we learned how to work with them and adapt to their way of working.
getting to know my international partner by reading their introduction and feeling like I know my partner even though they’re not in my class here at school.
how we could write about what we wanted to because it’s more fun to have your own choice for what to write about. I’m more of an expert on what I like.
that because it’s online we can watch it again and show it to our family.
that we were able to be creative with a partner.
Suggestions for improvement:
It would be nice to go on the wiki regularly and leave discussions to communicate with our partners.
I would like more practice being a peer-editor, especially on revising writing instead of just spelling and grammar.
I’m wondering if we’re going to use another wiki next year because we already know how to use it. I would like to do the project again next year because we’re experts (whole class agrees).
Final Thoughts
When I look back over this compiled feedback (and others from earlier this year), I am so happy to see that these students are becoming 21st century learners, as we have defined here at ISB. They are actually noticing and discussing their opportunities to collaborate and communicate globally, to be creative, to use a variety of technology tools in real life situations, to learn from their mistakes and to share their learning with others. These are the kinds of experiences we want all of our ISB students to have!
One other commonality that really stands out is that all of the students would like more opportunities to participate in similar projects. They feel a sense of accomplishment and growing expertise in these new modes of learning and would like more classroom experiences which include global collaborations. It seems that our students are ready for these kinds of experiences to be embedded throughout the curriculum at all grade levels.
What do your students think about their experiences with global collaborations?
One of my first tips for any teacher wishing to authentically embed technology into their classroom experience is always to start small. It’s easier to build on a simple, achievable idea, than it is to trim down an all-consuming tech monstrosity.
So, with that in mind, one of our amazing grade three teachers, Rebecca (who is also a member of our SUNY CoETaIL cohort), began a small, achievable project for the FOSS Science unit Structures of Life with her students in early April. Rebecca’s goals were to:
have her students experience tracking and sharing their developing understanding about their hands-on science experiments in a way that would be easy to manage and very student focused.
visually document the stages of growth in the life cycle of a seed.
utilize student “class experts” to ensure that the project was completed as independently as possible by the students.
In order to meet these goals, and provide a very simple start, we decided to use VoiceThread. Because this was the first time Rebecca had done a project like this, she wanted to make sure that the technology portion of the project was manageable. So, we decided to create class experts who would be responsible for different aspects of the project, which would allow Rebecca to focus on the science, instead of the technology.
Here’s what we did:
First, we selected a group of 4 (volunteer) student photographers to be responsible for documenting the daily changes in their seeds, over a period of 7 - 10 days (to capture the full life cycle). These students would take pictures of their own seeds, as well as help other students use the cameras to photograph their seeds. Once all of the pictures for the day were taken, the camera experts were responsible for uploading all of the pictures onto Rebecca’s computer.
When all of the pictures were taken, Rebecca and I chose which ones to put on the class VoiceThread. When had all of the pictures in a VT, we then showed the class and had them choose which ones they wanted to describe in partners. They spent some time working with their partners to write a script for their selected picture.
Once they were ready to record, I worked with 2 groups at a time to record their scripts. Each student had their own identity in Rebecca’s VoiceThread account with a hand-drawn self-portrait scanned and uploaded to VT as their avatar.
After the students completed their recordings, I shared the completed VT with my PLN via Twitter to show the students how many people would be enjoying their work.
Finally, we had a class discussion about what we’d done well and what could be improved. Among the things the students noticed were the need to speak loudly and clearly, to sound professional, and how drawing and labeling the photo really helped the viewer understand the topic. They were amazed and thrilled to see comments from so many other teachers around the world, thanks to you!
Here’s the completed VoiceThread:
After we reflected with the students, Rebecca and I realized that students learn best from seeing their own work (as opposed to samples) after having experienced the entire process from beginning to end. They are then able to focus on sharing their learning, instead of the ins and outs of the technology tools. So, we decided to repeat the basic process of the project with the next part of the unit, studying crayfish.
We also wanted to add more opportunity for student input, so this time around, we asked the class to choose which pictures to include in the VoiceThread, to select which picture they would describe and give it a title, and to agree on a title for the entire VT.
Here is our second completed VoiceThread:
As you can see, the students applied all of the ideas they generated during the first reflection: improved clarity and volume in their speaking, and increased use of the drawing tool to label the photographs.
Ideally, if we had more time in the school year, we would have repeated this process once more, this time with each student (or partnership) completing their very own VT from beginning to end.
Teacher Feedback
After the success of these two projects, I asked Rebecca to share her experiences in our SpeedGeeking faculty meeting. Here’s what she had to say to our 4 prompts:
What was the impact on student learning?
The most valuable impact was the gain I saw in students’ use of specific language to describe their observations.
Observing students’ initial attempts to tell what was happening in the picture was a formative assessment.
When the words “stuff” and “thing” were banned and students had to generate the description using the scientific vocabulary taught in the FOSS investigation, it became clear where they were lacking understanding. This gave me the opportunity to clarify or re-teach points.
When students later wrote an assessment response about what was happening with a sprouting seed, I could see more exact language and explanations.
Having to express themselves orally and fluently was also a learning experience for most students.
What was easy?
Once Kim met with the classroom “photo experts” and taught them a few pointers about using the camera and how to download the pictures to iPhoto, the picture taking was easy. Now the students are teaching each other and helping each other become better photographers.
Kim orchestrated the recording for the voice thread, but this seemed easy since the students had worked out their scripts in advance.
Uploading the photos and individual student identification portraits took time but was also easy to do.
What was challenging?
Making detailed observations and clearly using the correct words in the descriptions was challenging for many students.
Careful planning was needed to keep students on task on recording days.
Steps to complete the project:
Students viewed a sample of a voice thread. (Kim)
Photo/Camera experts (4 students) were taught camera basics: photo tips and downloading pictures. (Kim)
Student online identity pictures (self-portraits from the beginning of the year) were scanned and uploaded to voice thread. (Khun Kob, Rebecca, Kim)
Students photographed the sprouting process while making their daily observations. (Students)
Photos were selected for this project. (Rebecca)
Students picked a picture to describe and worked with a partner to write a script describing the picture. (Students)
Students recorded scripts for their respective pictures. (Students & Kim)
Students viewed and critiqued the final project.
Total classroom time: 4-5 class periods (not counting the picture taking during seed observations). While recording was being done outside the class with Kim (2 periods), other class work could continue in the classroom.
Final Thoughts
It would have been easy to develop a large-scale project using a variety of tools for this unit (I’m seeing a wiki, with the life cycle of a seed mapped out, VTs, pictures, and videos embedded on each page, links to external sources and global partners collaborating), but starting small enabled both Rebecca and her class to enjoy the project, see the potential of the technology, and build the confidence to try it again only a few weeks later. Establishing a successful and positive first experience with technology is a surefire way to encourage teachers, students and parents to keep building those skills and to continue using new tools to enhance learning.
All too often, teachers think that they should use a tool only once and then move on to something else. On the contrary, I have found that using the same tool a number of times not only helps deepen student understanding of both the power and limitations of that specific tool, but it also helps them focus on their learning instead of just the technology. The first time students use a tool, they are focused on all of the bells and whistles, the second time they’re more focused on sharing or presenting their learning using the new tools, the third time they’re “old pros” at the tool and can focus entirely on the information they’re sharing.
What do you think? What are the pro’s and con’s of using the same tool more than once (if it’s the right tool for the task)?
Last week, our ISB21 Team had a long discussion about posting student pictures online. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have quite a few of our teachers embrace web 2.0 tools, especially our school-provided FlickrPro account.
We have teachers at almost every grade level regularly posting pictures for our parents. We know they love having a window into the classroom on a regular basis, but we haven’t determined specific guidelines for teachers about which pictures can be posted and which can’t.
So, during our meeting, I posed the following question on Twitter:
We had tons of responses back (thank you!):
It is great to see the different ways that so many schools deal with such a common issue (yet another reason to love Twitter). Now that we have some ideas, I think it’s worth discussing whether we need to standardize our expectations for posting student photos online.
Right now we have teachers on both ends of the spectrum: some posting pretty much every single thing that happens in their classroom to others never posting pictures that show student faces. I’m guessing that can be confusing for students when moving from one teacher to the next.
In order to model safe behavior for our students, and help build understanding of what is appropriate to share online, I think it’s important that we have a standard set for the whole school. This will also help us be clear in our expectations for teachers, and allow us to embed the guidelines in our AUP for all grade levels.
Another benefit of actually creating and implementing a set of guidelines would be starting a conversation about sharing images online with our colleagues. Personally, I’m pretty shocked at some of the pictures I see teachers (and other professionals) post on their Facebook (and other photo sharing) accounts. I think this will provide an opportunity not just to model appropriate behavior for the students, but also to help teachers build their own understanding of what should (and should not) be public information. In my opinion, starting that conversation is part of my job.
Whatever we decide, I hope it will be simple and easy for teachers to follow, but also not so restrictive that classroom and field-trip experiences can’t be shared publicly online. Here’s what I’m thinking right now:
These guidelines would become part of our AUP, and parents and students will sign off on the policy at the beginning of the school year after a lesson and discussion about the content of the AUP with students. Signatures would be acknowledging that the following guidelines are acceptable to both parents and students:
Classroom and field-trip experiences may be published in public spaces online (for example our school Flickr account).
When student images are posted, only first names or nicknames will be referenced.
No identifying characteristics about students (beyond first names or nicknames) will be published in public spaces online.
Work produced for education purposes may be published in public spaces in order to encourage global collaboration among students and teachers.
Comments on student work will be moderated by the teacher to ensure only appropriate information is shared and received.
Online safety and appropriate behavior will be emphasized whenever sharing student work online. Online spaces will be treated as classroom spaces.
What do you think? Does that cover the basics? Is this easy enough for teachers to follow without stress? Are we modeling appropriate and safe online behavior?
In January, I shared a list of international school teachers (those teaching outside of their home country in a school catering to expatriate families) on Twitter (or blogging). In the last few months, even more teachers have added themselves to the Google Form, so I thought I would do a recap with all of the names currently on the spreadsheet, organized by country.
If you’re not on the list yet and you’re teaching outside of your home country in a school for expatriate children, please feel free to add yourself! I’ll do another recap soon!
Note: I linked the names of teachers to their blogs (if listed) and their Twitter @username to their profiles (if listed):
Kathy Epps, @k_eepps, International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations
Will Kirkwood, @wkirkwood, Zurich International School
Austria
Chris Rolfe, @cmrolfe, American International School Vienna
Serbia
Jennie Scott-McKenzie, @jennieteacher, International School of Belgrade
Looking at this list, it’s interesting to see where most of the teachers are working. Can we make the assumption that those schools are the ones that are really moving forward with technology? Or is this list more representative of schools in Asia because that’s where I’m currently working?
Either way, if you’re considering going overseas, or just moving on to a new school, these are the people that can give you the greatest insight into life in a new country and working at a new school. There’s nothing better than actually knowing people at the schools you’re interested in to make an informed decision about where to go.
Please spread the word! I know there are many more international school teachers on Twitter and blogging!
One of the quotes from the panel session at the Hong Kong Summit has really stuck with me:
We look at technology as a tool, but our students look at it as an environment.
(Btw, if anyone can remember who said it, I would love to know!).
I often say that technology is just a tool to use when it meets our needs (like a pencil), but hearing this sentence made me re-evaluate my own perceptions. After all, what is a tool?
something I use when it suits me
something I control
something I don’t need or want around me at all times - only when it’s necessary
something small, manipulated by it’s user
Maybe we use this phrasing because it’s less intimidating, because teachers can see the direct comparison or evolution between a pencil and technology, because it helps us feel like we already know what to do with it (the technology, that is).
OK, so then what’s an environment?
something that’s all around us, in use all time
something we can not directly manipulate or control
something necessary to live, and ubiquitous, like air
something we are immersed in, even if we’re not specifically thinking about it or intentionally “using” it
That’s a big difference. What does this say about the different ways that students and adults might be perceiving the world around them? What does this mean for education?
Maybe it would help to think about other things that probably started off as strange new tools, but now are inescapable parts of our daily environment, for example: the alphabet, books, electricity, running tap water, etc. These tools are behind everything that we do, they are part of the fabric of our lives.
Although these tools started as something new and different, we can not simply choose to use them in one situation, but not in another. A math teacher wouldn’t say we don’t need to use the alphabet in this class because it’s math. An English teacher wouldn’t say we don’t need to know how to switch on the lights, because this is English, not science. So why do so many of us still think of technology that way?
As Greg Whitby pointed out during the same panel session: “You never send a changed individual back to an unchanged environment.” I think Greg was referring to teachers, but now I’m wondering: what if our students are the one’s who’ve changed? And what if our schools are the unchanged environment?
Tom Kelley got me thinking at the Hong Kong Summit: Where’s the innovation in our schools? Where’s the risk taking? Where’s the abundance of ideas? Who’s seeing things with fresh eyes? How are we taking the best ideas from other industries and applying them to education?
Generally speaking, schools are excruciatingly slow to change. Even when schools are making a concerned effort to be innovative and re-think traditional modes of learning, it often ends up being a variation of what’s already in place. I’ve been on countless curriculum review committees where one pre-packaged program was chosen over another in an effort to “modernize” the learning experience, but in the end all we ever seem to get is a new coat of paint on what we’re already doing. Sure, we’re moving forward, but it’s at a snail’s pace.
So how fast should schools be adapting and changing? What should the pace of innovation be?
Unfortunately, as Tom eloquently described, if we have any hope of staying ahead of the curve, we need to be moving even faster than the other innovators in our field. It’s not enough simply to be an innovator, you need to stay ahead of everyone else who’s innovating - even if they appear to be outside your field.
Tom refers to this as the “Red Queen Effect” after a scene in Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, where Alice is shocked to be standing in the same place after running quite fast for an extended period of time and the Red Queen explains, “if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”
This isn’t a question of schools choosing to stand still or not innovating at all, because I do believe we’re all trying to move forward in one way or another. This is about the dangers of slowing your pace of innovation just enough for others to out-pace you - not necessarily other schools, but rather other modes of learning. Interestingly, Tom also mentioned that resting on your laurels is usually the time when others outpace you innovatively (something I think many good schools are very much in danger of doing all too often).
Another Hong Kong presenter, Stephen Heppell, was also careful to emphasize that the biggest challenge today is the pace of change: exponential. With this rapid pace of change there is no time for the “staircase mentality” (pilot, review etc). He reminded us that we didn’t value tech in the 80s - what are we mistakenly not valuing now?
Why does this happen?
Tom explained that innovation falls squarely in quadrant 2 of Steven Covey’s matrix: it’s “Important”, but “Not Urgent”. For example, we absolutely have to have a new math/science/reading/social studies program. The teachers can’t teach without one, so picking a new one is going to fall in quadrant 1, and ultimately, innovation gets put off until tomorrow. However, innovation has an urgency all its own and those that don’t place innovation as a priority will find themselves displaced.
As innovators, Stephen mentioned that we need to be critical about what’s convenient for us versus what’s good for learning, for example, our assumption that ringing a lunch bell means that a thousand students will suddenly be hungry at the same time, or that students are at the same stage in their learning (in same grade) because they happened to born between two Septembers, etc.
Another problem is that radical change is often thought of as expensive. On the contrary, as Stephen, observed: “It’s more expensive to make or maintain schools and add bits of exciting 21st century around than to just skip to a much cheaper 21st century model model of community learning.” This is a good example of the difficulty people face in conceptually realizing the advantages of bold innovation: we naturally assume that slow steady progress will be best (as we are taught from an early age, when the tortoise wins the race).
How do we make innovation a priority in our educational institutions?
Tom discussed the 10 Faces of Innovation from his recent book of the same name, explaining that we need 10 different types of people to bring all the facets of innovation to the forefront of our organization:
The Hurdler: this is the person who says, “of course there will be obstacles - that’s my job, overcoming obstacles.”
The Storyteller: data is not that powerful. Stories carry messages farther.
The Anthropologist: this is the person who focuses on seeing with fresh eyes (or “vuja de”). People get immersed in their own environment and simply stop seeing it for what it is, it becomes “just the way things are,” for example the turnstiles at CDG airport, which are impossible to carry luggage through, despite the fact that they’re between the airport and the subway. Yet airport employees see them day in and day out and they haven’t been changed. We need to observe objects in use in their natural environment so that we can design with empathy
The Experimenter: this person gives permission for failure, knowing that innovation involves risk. To innovate, we must to be able to fail in a safe environment by creating an idea-friendly organization where we have the ability to “squint” and see the “shape” of an idea.
The Cross Pollinator: the ability to share ideas, to take inspiration from other cultures and enhance, thereby gaining in translation. Examine other ideas cross continents, cross countries, cross industry, cross age (”reverse mentors”) to be able to build upon other ideas and transform and improve them.
The Experience Architect : The Experience Economy - book (commodity, product, service, experience)
The Collaborator: brings people together to get things done.
The Director: enabler of great creativity around them
The Set Designer: approaches from people standpoint then looks at business & technology elements to create effective designs. Building engaging, seductive, delightful learning is also a design task.
The Care Giver: have empathy and work to extend the relationship.
How do you structure for innovation?
Tom shared several criteria for successful innovation:
A flat leadership model to enable anyone to have their idea heard by the “boss” no matter where you are in the organization. He also pointed out, however, that after many years of experimentation at IDEO, the company found that 100 people is the limit for a flat leadership model, and any larger organization will unfortunately need to have a “boss’s boss” and so on.
Must have an abundance mentality, the goal is to share as many ideas as possible, knowing that only a very small percentage will work. He cites an example of a game-design company which had 1000 ideas but only 6 patents in one year.
The need for good humor, an environment where it is OK to make fun of the boss.
Workspace design must focus on building collaboration, for example, the stereotypical office design of cubicles actually look a lot like voting booths, which are specifically designed to prevent collaboration. What about our set-up of each teacher in their own classroom? I’m not sure you could design anything so physically non-collaborative if you tried!
What does this mean for education?
The time for innovation is now, as Stephen described (and Marco Torres’ slide below emphasizes), “learning is at a crossroads:” we’re looking at a choice between productivity and new approaches, those new approaches being:
student portfolios;
making huge leaps in our model of education, not tiny steps forward;
working to produce ingenious, engaged, inspired, surprising, collegiate students;
and developing learning experiences that are open-ended, project-focused, multidisciplinary.
By innovation, I don’t mean just adding more technology to the classroom, I mean thinking differently about learning in its entirety. For example, I still find it hard to believe that many schools have not fully implemented a project-based learning approach. This was all the rage when I was in teacher’s college 10 - 12 years ago, but even now it’s still marketed as something “new” (maybe that’s why I like the MYP so much). How is it possible that, 12 years after learning about a model of education being the best thing since sliced bread, only a few schools really excel at this approach?
It’s not technology alone that makes us innovative, it’s looking at learning with fresh eyes. It’s asking ourselves: if we could start from scratch, what would our schools look like today? I can’t remember who said this first but, “technology is just an amplifier” - technology doesn’t change the quality of teaching or learning, it will only amplify it, either in a positive or negative way. What we need to be looking at is changing our approaches to learning, not modifying our curriculum to a “newer” version of what we’ve already had for the past 20 years.
We could start by taking a step back and looking at the whole experience of teaching and learning, as if we were aliens from another planet or anthropologists studying a remote tribe, as Tom described the role of the Anthropologist in his 10 Faces of Innovation. It’s only through observing learning in its natural environment today, wherever it’s taking place, that we can understand how to build schools that meet the needs of today’s learners. As Tom quipped, “I don’t know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn’t a fish!”
What do you think? Is your school innovative? What are you doing to encourage innovation? What can schools do to focus on innovation despite the daily urgencies of our profession?
If you were an alien who knew nothing about our education system and you arrived on our planet today, how would you design a learning community for today’s students?
It’s that time of year again. The time when all fifth graders start worrying about moving up to sixth grade. The transition from top of the elementary school to bottom of the middle school is not an easy one to make, as I so clearly remember.
So, as part of our CoETaIL course 2, Chrissy, Diane and I have developed a fun, quick and simple project to help ease the transition to middle school for our grade fives. Last year Diane and I did a very similar project with her ESL students and it was a huge hit!
One important facet of the project is to realize that all fifth graders around the world are going through the same challenges, so, as one aspect of the project, we have created a very simple VoiceThread (and wiki) and would love to have other students contribute and share their concerns:
We would absolutely love it if you and your students would be willing to share their thoughts about moving on to sixth grade with us! If you’re interested, please add your info here or leave a comment on this post and we’ll contact you directly.
There are a few things I particularly love about this project
The emphasis on natural conversation, which is really difficult for grade 5 students when working from a script and recording themselves (as you can hear when listening to our excellent, but very scripted grade 5 podcasts).
The focus on bringing in our students’ individual cultures and personal experiences by asking them to reflect on a specific inspirational saying in their first language. I have this vision of the conversation our students are having with their parents when they ask them about inspirational sayings and how this can help them deal with the challenges they might face in life.
The looks on the students faces when they realize kids all around the world have the same concerns as they do, that we’re all the same in so many ways.
Just in case you’re interested, here’s our UbD unit planner for grade 5 core classroom and ESL pull-out:
Established Goals
ESL specific
Extend oral language through conversation
Build confidence with oral language, especially in a conversational format
Grade 5
Retain natural fluency during presentations and/or recording
Build confidence to engage in spontaneous dialogue based on focused topics
Both
Develop and uncover strategies to cope with life changes, through the lens of transitioning to sixth grade
Enduring Understandings
Conversational language is crucial to efficient and clear communication
Conversational dialogue requires all participants to be responsive
We all have cultural teachings to draw upon when facing difficult situations
Essential Questions
Why is conversational language important to communication?
How can we improve our conversational language?
How can the words of wise people help us discover changes we can make within ourselves?
GRASPS Task
Goal: You will produce a podcast that showcases strategies, teachings, inspirational sayings and experiences to help fifth grade students succeed in sixth grade around the world.
Role: You will work in teams to research, author, record and broadcast your podcast
Audience: Students moving on around the world though iTunes, class blog, and the internet.
Situation: You are moving on to sixth grade and need a variety of strategies, teachings, inspirational sayings and experiences that will help you succeed.
Product Performance: Your podcast will be posted on the class blog and on iTunes. A successful podcast will include:
Strong, clear speaking voice
Modulated voice with emotion and emphasis
Teachings or inspirational sayings that can directly provide guidance for students transitioning to sixth grade
3 strategies linked to an experience that sixth graders will have designed to help fifth graders succeed
A written script with proper grammar
Engaging language, intro & outro, and audio enhancements.
Extension:
Video podcast
Adding still images to the podcast
Personal podcast
Six Facets of Understanding
Explain: After completing a self-assessment of your oral language (through GB recording), explain which areas you, personally, need to improve upon, why and how you will you have improved.
Interpret: Share an inspirational saying via the class blog (in translation if not in English) and describe a personal experience when this saying was beneficial. Sayings could include personal images, or audio recordings.
Apply: Collaborate with partner classes around the world to produce a VoiceThread describing the challenges and opportunities of moving on, as well as find commonalities among all students.
Perspective: Listen to a “real” podcast or book about a life change (anything that can be found and is appropriate). Discuss as a class, or in partners, how the broadcaster or author coped with the change using strategies, inspirational sayings or teachings.
Self-Knowledge: Personal Action Plan: Begin with a personal reflection of a similar experience to determine your successful coping strategies, develop an action plan to put those strategies, along with the new ones learned during this unit, into practice next year.
Empathize: In partners, role-play the first day of school – one person is the teacher, one is the student. Reflect on the experience with your partner.
Final Thoughts
We would love for you to join us in this project! Please feel free to leave a comment here or add your school to the wiki. We’ll be working on the VoiceThread during the last week of May, but please feel free to add your comments whenever you’re ready!
It’s all about connections. Links in the virtual sense, being able to go from here to here. But also in the physical sense, traveling here, thanks to friends you made here. Making friends there, that you can easily bring back here.
Here’s what some of my connections look like:
Twitter:
Facebook:
Skype:
If you don’t understand the power of these connections, you’ll be falling farther and farther behind. Probably without even knowing it….
Because, really, even if you all work here, sometimes you don’t have time to meet there, so you can just as easily meet here:
So, what I’m really trying to say is: embrace the power of the web and find your connections! You never know where they might take you!
Here at ISB we use the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop model of literacy instruction. We have been fortunate to have the wonderful Maggie Moon consult with us on a regular basis over the last two year.
One of the best things about working with Maggie is that she is open-minded about what literacy can mean and how to ensure we meet the needs of our students in today’s world. Last year we started on a path to define digital literacy and to see how we can fit (at least some) aspects of digital literacy into the Workshop model (which does not reference anything beyond the traditional view of reading and writing).
This year, with the addition of Jeff and Tara, we are continuing to push forward and have begun to develop a full Writer’s Workshop unit focused on digital literacy. Our plan is to implement this unit in September of 2009 in grade 5, with Tara, Jeff and I co-teaching in our 7 grade 5 classrooms (that’s going to be an interesting logistical nightmare, since they all teach Writer’s Workshop at the same time and there’s only 3 of us and 7 of them…)
We are only in the initial stages of the planning process, following the Understanding by Design format, and I would love to get some feedback from you!
Here’s what we’ve got so far (we’re using a Google Doc, so planning updates can be found here):
Personal Narrative with Blogging
Enduring Understandings
Students will begin to understand:
Purpose and audience for communication determine the appropriate media choice.
Design and layoutimpact the quality and effectiveness of communications.
reflect on, organize, analyze, interpret, and synthesize informationeffectively communicate and create ideas.
Students will begin to understand:
Writers attempt to have a story unfold in a show, not tell, fashion through well-chosen details that make a story come alive
Essential Questions
How do I effectively communicate?
GRASPS Task (still working on the wording here, essential the entire blog will be the task)
Build Understanding Through the 6 Facets:
Explain: Reflective blog post: After collecting entries: try various stories to see how it goes - select a story and improve it, why did you choose this story?
Interpret: personal narrative practice, once you’ve selected your story, what is this story really about?
Have Self-Knowledge: Author’s message - the way you write and present the story shows the significance of the story to the reader. Reflective writing after - why did you write this story this way, how does it reflect you? What was challenging for you? What do you understand about yourself from writing this?
Have Perspective: Reflection: who is your audience, why/how would you change this story for a different audience (how do you change the way you write based on your audience?) - during revision, write the same story for a different audience - how do you change your writing for different audiences.
Empathize: after the blog post is up, how do you respond via the comments (to something that you don’t have a connection with).
Apply: Design your blog post for your audience, choosing images, paragraph spacing, headings, etc (choosing an image that shows depth and connects to your post)
Practical:
Allow students the choice to either write in Writer’s Notebook first or directly on the computer
Have students write in MS Word before posting online (to avoid technical issues)
Mini-lessons:
Teacher models same sort of writing as the students are doing. Write a portion of personal narrative and then show how you would change it for a different audience. Give students the choice of who their new audience is.
What does good blogging look like? (synthesis, analysis - not just copy and paste)
Students link to other sites in his/her writing (for example, if you snorkeled on Phuket, link to a Phuket site)
Students reflect on why he or she is choosing this piece of writing.
Commenting and how to make it constructive. Set a minimum expectation of how many comments a student must write on someone else’s writing.
Students incorporate comments from others and make revisions to his/her own writing based on these.
Final reflective blog post linking back to prior drafts, comments by their audience that helped change their minds, and reflect on how the interaction with their audience helped improve their writing.
Choosing and inserting an image, citing sources for images
Timeline:
First 8 instructional days: brainstorming in the writer’s notebook, across those 8 days, choose 2-3 stories to post on the blog (reflect online why they chose those three) - these posts should be in draft form, then students will choose 1 to stick with and take through the writing process (reflect online why they chose the final story)
Final Thoughts
One of the reasons we’re doing this as a discrete unit is so that teachers can see how it will fit within the Writer’s Workshop model. We’re hoping to do it early in the year so that teachers and students can take advantage of this new model of writing throughout the year. Personally, I hope we’ll end up using these blogs as ePortfolios by the end of the year, but I don’t know if that will happen.
What do you think? How does this look? What are we missing? What needs to be revised?
Alex and I have always wanted to go to Japan and we finally managed to organize a trip there for our Songkran (Thai New Year) holiday a few weeks ago. We’re pretty well-traveled, so normally I wouldn’t think one of our vacations is worth a blog post, but this trip had something special: my PLN.
One of the reasons we decided to go to Japan this year was because I actually had quite a few friends living around the country. Not friends from college or high school, or former colleagues, in fact, I had never met most of them face-to-face. But we share ideas, collaborate on projects, and chat almost every day, thanks to Twitter, Skype, G-talk, and my RSS reader. Because of these virtual friendships, we were able to take a very unique tour of Japan, stopping in at three schools, staying with friends, and really experiencing a taste of life in Japan.
Brian and Genki shared every single detail about transportation (and the essential Japan Rail Pass) I could ever want, down to pictures of which trains we could take and which ones we couldn’t.
Rhonda organized a full day of visits all around Canadian Academy and Rokko Island so we could meet various teachers and even take a sneak peak into CA teacher apartments. What better way to get to know a school than to visit in person?
Of course, through all of this, I got to know my virtual friends so much better. It still amazes me how deeply we can connect online, and just how real my virtual friendships are. Meeting Leanne, Rhonda, Christine, and Genki for the first time wasn’t really like the first time - I knew them already from our many conversations!
This isn’t the first time I’ve met members of my PLN face to face, but it is the first time it hasn’t been at a conference or professional event (or on my own “turf” in Bangkok). I love that we originally connected based on our professional interests, but that we can build on that foundation to create a true friendship that extends beyond work.
Thank you so much, friends, for making our trip to Japan so absolutely fantastic! We never could have done it without you!
The best thing about holidays is spending time with friends, and thanks to my PLN, it seems like I have friends almost everywhere!
You can find out more about my professional experiences at my electronic portfolio, which I share with my husband, Alex, an ESL/English teacher. Or, if you prefer, you can visit:
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Please note: the views expressed here are my own and in no way represent the views of my employer.
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Hi! My name is Kim Cofino. 
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