I have been participating in this annual conference since its inception in 2006 and every year I am amazed at the quality of presentations shared by educators around the world. The opportunity to learn together over the course of the conference (and beyond) is one of the most inspiring and engaging experiences of the year for me. Of course, this year’s lineup is no different!
When I was asked to keynote this year’s event, I knew right away that I wanted my presentation to have a global focus. Thinking back over the course of my ten years of living overseas, I realized that in many ways my exposure to new ways of thinking about technology has been paralleled by some similar learning experiences in the real world. I wanted to explore those links between virtual and real-world perspective shifts, and in the process try to share what I feel is an interesting and unique perspective in the expat mindset.
I’ve also decided to try to practice what I preach and make this presentation a true global collaboration, and although I will be putting together and presenting the final product, I really wanted to make it based on group input. Thankfully, my personal learning network includes a number of outstanding international school educators who’ve been willing to help me in preparing my presentation (thank you!). Right now I’ve gotten a lot of great input and material from (in no particular order):
While these teachers have already sent me fantastic material, I would love to include other perspectives as well. Knowing that the deadline is just over a month away, I’m beginning to put the final pieces together, and would love to hear your thoughts, include your perspectives, and emphasize the power of global collaboration in the final product.
Here’s the presentation overview:
Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education
Everything I need to know about the future of education I learned, not from kindergarten, but from living overseas. Looking at daily life in foreign lands reveals a colorful spectrum of inspiring metaphors for the shifts we need to make in education. Featuring voices from students and teachers from around the globe, this presentation will start with a look through an expatriate’s eyes at some vibrant details of daily life in many lands. Often what we may find initially chaotic, disorienting and strange in other countries can actually spark new ways of thinking about teaching and learning.
Then, again through the voices and viewpoints of teachers and students from all around the world, we’ll examine the unique aptitudes which allow successful expats to thrive in any environment: adaptability, flexibility, the ability to understand differing viewpoints and constructs, and the communications skills to collaborate across cultural, religious and linguistic barriers. These are exactly the skills that future students and teachers will need to confidently enter the digital, global, converging, collaborative world of tomorrow – wherever they might be physically located.
What do you think? Does this sound interesting to you? Are you an expat or Third Culture Kid? Have you or your students participated in a global collaboration? What did you gain from that experience?
One of the things I’m enjoying most about being on our coaching team here at ISB is the opportunity to openly share our challenges so that we can all work together to improve our practice. This week we had our first book club meeting to discuss the first chapter of Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives edited by Jim Knight.
To facilitate our conversation, we followed the Final Word protocol. Each of us selected a particular section of the text which stood out during our reading, and following the protocol process, discussed what was so important about that statement in a round-robin format. Although we all selected different sections, they seemed to have a common element: how to move beyond simply supporting teachers to increase their comfort level within our curricular areas to implementing changed practices with all faculty members to improve student learning.
The section of the book that we ended up focusing on the most was about Coaching Heavy and Coaching Light. The author of this chapter, Joellen Killion
assert[s] that there are two kinds of coaching – coaching light and coaching heavy. The difference essentially is the coaches’ perspective, beliefs, role decisions, and goals, rather than what coaches do… Coaching light occurs when coaches want to build and maintain relationships more than they want to improve teaching and learning. From this perspective, coaches act to increase their perceived value to teachers by providing resources and avoiding challenging conversations. (p. 22)
Coaching heavy, on the other hand, includes high-stakes interactions between coaches and teachers, such as curriculum analysis, data analysis, instruction, assessment, and personal and professional beliefs and how they influence practice… Coaching heavy requires coaches to say “no” to trivial requests for support and to turn their attention to those high-leverage services that have the greatest potential for teaching and learning. Coaching heavy requires coaches to work with all teachers in a school, not just those who volunteer for coaching services. Coaching heavy requires coaches to seek and use data about their work and regularly analyze their decisions about time allocation, services and impact. (p. 23 -24)
Reading this section I realized that often times I am coaching light, but not always because of a decision I’ve consciously made. I am hyper-aware of the anxiety level most teachers have when dealing with technology, which often results in focusing more on making teachers comfortable with the tools than initiating difficult conversations about changing practice. I wonder if this issue is specific to those of us working in the technology area, or if it’s really just the same as coaches helping to implement a new math, reading or science program?
I do believe that those difficult conversations are much easier once you’ve developed a trusting relationship and that only happens when teachers feel supported. Killion mentions that it often takes coaches a whole year to move from coaching light to coaching heavy because of all the ground-work required to build trusting relationships, but that they can also get trapped into coaching light indefinitely if they are not careful.
I’m wondering now, how can coaches tell when it’s time to move from coaching light to coaching heavy? I’m also conscious of the fact that those deeper conversations don’t always have to happen in a formal setting, they can be quick snippets in the hallway that build upon previous sessions or discussions over lunch or even in a social setting. Do coaches keep track of where they are with each teacher, as you would with a class of students, so that you have a running record of what step to take next?
The other issue that jumped out at me was that coaches are required and expected to work with all teachers. This directly contradicts my long-held belief in working with the willing. Perhaps I simply need to adjust that to: we should start with the willing, but know that eventually we do have to work with everyone. I do still firmly believe that to work with everyone, with the focus on improving student learning (which may entail changing teaching practice), requires clear and transparent communication from administrators about our roles and purpose.
Perhaps the most reassuring sentence (for me) in this particular set of paragraphs is that coaching heavy requires coaches to say “no” to trivial requests for support in favor of more meaningful actions that will have a deeper impact on student learning. One of the biggest challenges for me has always been saying no. I like to believe I can do everything, and that I can make everyone’s job easier by supporting everyone, everywhere at any time. It’s important for me to remind myself that this only ends up diluting the impact I can make on both student and teacher learning. I need to remember that I am in control of my time and that I need to prioritize which tasks I undertake on a daily basis. Letting my day get carried away with the little things is not fulfilling my role, and it’s not helping my school move forward. (Maybe I should post this above my desk?).
Saying that a coach’s role is to support teachers misleads teachers. A coach’s primary responsibility is to improve student learning. (p. 27, point #3)
Reading this, I wonder what most teachers would think. I know that I have often been referred to as a “support” person or a “resource” person, and to be honest, I never felt the term was quite right, but I didn’t know why. Now I do. A “resource” is something to be used (or not) and then tossed aside. A “resource” is not something that might cause you to change deeply held beliefs or to re-evaluate your practice. A “resource” is not challenging. If teachers see us as “resources” or “support” people, they will not understand the work we are trying to do or how we fit into the school’s vision and purpose.
By making observations, stating their point of view, and inquiring into practice, coaches erode stagnant practice and unchallenged routines to spark analysis, reflection, and appropriate change. In this role, a coach is not about change for change sake, but rather for continuous improvement and fine-tuning to meet clearly articulated goals. (p. 13)
All too often it feels like teachers view technology as yet another swing in the pendulum of education, something they have to adopt because it’s the “cool new thing,” but not because they really believe in the impact it can have on student learning. It’s reassuring to me to see that other instructional coaches face this same dilemma.
One of the most difficult conversations that seems to come along frequently in technology is when teachers want to replicate what they always do (for example, a poster) “on the computer” because it will look cooler to the parents (or to their administrators) – not because of the potential that technology might have to offer. I’m thinking that effective questioning strategies, as part of coaching heavy, are what can move the conversation along from substitution to transformation. I’m also wondering if distributing a LOTI survey can help begin to plant the seeds in teachers’ minds about the different levels of technology implementation?
Final Thoughts
Once again, I am impressed by the value of looking at other, more established, fields in education to understand more deeply and improve my practice in the area of technology facilitation. Considering we’re only on the first chapter of the book, I’m sure coaching is going to provide a lot of room for growth!
Only one month into the new school year and almost every middle school student has their own blog hosted at ISB (plus all of our grade 5s, and quite a few high school students)!
Thanks to our fantastic middle school Humanities and Modern Language teachers, who spent their class time helping students create their own blog, we are off and running in record time! In fact, the process was so easy that almost all of our students had their blogs set up before we formalized our student blogging guidelines. So last week, I met with the Humanities department (and other interested teachers) to determine a set of basic guidelines for our students.
To get us started, we took a look at the blogging guidelines our elementary students developed last school year during their first experiences blogging. Interestingly, the guidelines our grade 4 students created last year were just as applicable to middle (and high) school as they were for elementary. We ended up using almost all of the guidelines from last year, with just a few minor re-phrasing issues and consolidation.
Given that the elementary students created these guidelines after a series of thoughtful lessons and meaningful class discussions, we see these them as prompts for deeper dialogue across classes, not simply a list of rules to follow. In order to help students make the best decisions, we’ve also followed each guideline with a question (also developed by our elementary students last year) they can ask themselves before they hit publish.
As a student blogger at ISB, you are expected to follow these blogging guidelines below. Use the questions in italics to help you decide what is appropriate to post on your blog.
1. Only post things that you would want everyone (in school, at home, in other countries) to know. Ask yourself: Is this something I want everyone to see?
2. Do not share personal information. Ask yourself: Could someone find me (in real life) based on this information?
3. Think before you post. Ask yourself: What could be the consequences of this post?
4. Know who you’re communicating with. Ask yourself: Who is going to look at this, and how are they going to interpret my words?
5. Consider your audience and that you’re representing ISB. Ask yourself: Do I have a good reason/purpose to do this?
6. Know how to give constructive feedback. Ask yourself: What will I cause by writing this post?
7. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Ask yourself: Would I want someone to say this to me?
8. Use appropriate language and proper grammar and spelling. Ask yourself: Would I want this post to be graded for proper grammar and spelling?
9. Only post information that you can verify is true (no gossiping). Ask yourself: Is this inappropriate, immature or bullying?
10. Anytime you use media from another source, be sure to properly cite the creator of the original work. Ask yourself: Who is the original creator of this work?
Commenting Guidelines
As a blogger, you will be commenting on other people’s work regularly. Good comments:
are constructive, but not hurtful;
consider the author and the purpose of the post;
are always related to the content of the post;
include personal connections to what the author wrote;
answer a question, or add meaningful information to the content topic;
follow the writing process. Comments are a published piece of writing.
Final Thoughts
I’m so impressed with the depth of thought shown by our elementary students! Being able to start this conversation with our middle school teachers using resources developed by 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students, clearly demonstrates that even our younger students really do understand both the power and the responsibilities of communicating to a global audience.
It’s also great to see that our ISB21 team vision of developing enduring understandings that are not grade-level specific, but rather provide a through-line for all divisions, has helped us focus on the bigger understandings and mindsets that students really will need to carry with them from year to year.
When discussing blogging safety and responsibility with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders last year, we did it in such a way that what they came up with were skills and essential questions that would help digital students no matter what grade level they’re in.
Once again, I’m reassured that elementary school is the place to begin this kind of dialogue so that we can provide a solid foundation for 21st century learning that students can continue to build upon year after year.
These guidelines have now been adopted by our elementary and high schools as well, so that we have a common expectation for all students at ISB, no matter what the age or grade level.
It will certainly be interesting to see what develops at all grade levels now that all of our students have their own blog hosted at ISB. We’re hoping that these blogs become their digital portfolio for their entire time with us. Being able to track their growth and learning over the years will be such a powerful tool for the students, teachers and parents.
Does your school have common guidelines for student blogging? What do they include? Are we missing anything here?
What is it about technology in education that makes it so difficult to define roles that everyone can agree on and understand? Even though we’ve had technology in schools for decades, it still seems like we’re making it up as we go along.
For the last few years I’ve been wondering if there are more established roles, that already exist (and are well-understood) in many schools, which could provide a model for this type of support position. Just because technology often deals with new ways of thinking about education, doesn’t mean that the process of supporting those new ways of thinking has to be different.
Looking at Librarians
When I first arrived at ISB two years ago, I realized just how much librarians have in common with technology facilitators. What impressed me most was the extensive research in the field of librarianship about the process (and effect) of collaboration among colleagues. Although the day-to-day tasks of a librarian versus a technology facilitator might be very different; the established, research-based process of collaboration, which librarians have been refining for decades, certainly provides an interesting inspiration for technology facilitation.
Considering Coaching
With the change in my position this school year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what another established educational role might have to offer technology facilitators: the Instructional Coach. This week, our fabulous visiting consultant, and experienced Literacy Coach, Maggie Moon, attended our Coaching team meeting. She shared an overview of her successes and pitfalls to avoid as a coach:
A coach’s 3 major tasks in order of priority are: in the classroom (with teachers & kids, 1:1 or with groups of teachers), out of the classroom (with teachers, 1:1 or with groups of teachers), prep & planning.
As a coach, begin with a vision of what you think teachers should/could do. What does the “ideal” teacher look like? How will we see the evidence that our teachers are meeting these expectations?
Teaching teachers is just like teaching students: always explain things clearly & succinctly, and remember to show not just tell.
Always focus more on the process of teaching well, rather than the content that needs to be taught. Let the content come through as you model best practice instruction.
Be sure to track teacher progress by using a conferring notebook with items you’ve been trying to teach, times you are going in to see the teachers doing it (checklist), quality of what teachers are doing – use this to plan more in-classroom work.
Have teachers bring student work with them during meeting time so there is evidence of what they are doing and students are learning.
Getting started: keep it small, cycle through grade levels (work with 2 grade levels a month, go into classrooms and check in 1:1 with the other grade levels). Sometimes it makes sense to start with groups to plant seeds, and then continue 1:1.
3 Phases of coaching (rotate through these phases – always possible to return to any of the previous stages):
1. Modeling: in the classroom, you’re teaching the class while the teacher is watching.
Pre-conference: Be clear about setting up, discuss with the teacher beforehand what you’re doing & what to watch for and notice. Strategy: use guide sheets which gives structure of how lesson will go and the main components to keep teachers active during lessons
In the classroom: Model best practice
Post-conference: You reflect at the end of the lesson on what you felt went well, what you would change, to model reflection – reinforcement & refinement. Then, ask teachers what they notice (what questions does this raise?). Then discuss: “how does what you saw me do, differ from what you do?” (what’s different?). Finally, ask “whatever you just saw, how will that change what you do in your classroom?”
2. Coaching: in the classroom, the teacher teaches & you watch (next to them) – give feedback in the moment
Start with a reflection with the teacher, ask them what they felt went well, always focus on the positive and be complimentary (any issues, record them and save them for later).
If there are content issues (incorrect information), share this right away; issues with methods should be saved for later.
3. Co-teaching (good when you’ve planned a unit over time, building relationships)
Looking over Maggie’s coaching suggestions, I can easily see how all of them are relevant to technology facilitation. From the goal of being in the classroom as a top priority, to focusing on the process not the content, to starting small; everything Maggie shared fit closely with my experience and understanding of technology facilitation.
It’s particularly interesting to me that the process of coaching can be expressed in such concrete steps, so no matter what the grade level or content, Maggie follows a clear process that results in quality collaboration and teaching.
Although I like to think I follow a “process” myself, I feel that, in practice, technology facilitation is often far less systematic. Because it’s so organic, technology facilition can tend to be more individualized – different for each project and teacher. Although I love the fact that everything I do is tailored for each teacher, it’s possible that, as facilitators, we end up re-inventing the wheel each time, simply because we don’t have a systematic approach.
In fact, as Maggie was sharing her tips, our science and math coaches were nodding along with the terminology and processes she described, demonstrating that instructional coaching across content areas shares a vocabulary and philosophy that is worth investigating.
Final Thoughts
Although I can appreciate how much both librarians and coaches have to offer technology facilitators, I still feel that there is something different about technology. When Literacy Coaches are helping teachers learn how to teach reading better, those teachers still know something about teaching reading, they know how to read a book, they know how to spell, and how to write, because the tools of the subject are familiar to them. Technology doesn’t share the same tradition in schools. So what happens when the content area is just as new to the teacher as the best practice teaching?
And then of course, the technological support has to be considered. It would be great to focus solely on the pedagogy, but who deals with the broken projector and the students that can’t log in? I’m sure these are some of the reasons why we have so many different job titles and descriptions.
Clearly, while we can definitely benifit from the extensive experience of librarians and coaches in schools, there is more to a technology support role that needs to be included. So, I’m left wondering:
What is still undefined in our conception of the role of a technology facilitator/coach/coordinator?
How can we start building consensus on our roles in schools?
What can’t we find that’s relevant to technology support when examining more established positions in schools?
It’s hard to believe that our summer holidays are officially over today and we start back to school bright and early tomorrow morning! I must admit, I’ve had a wonderful holiday: a week on Koh Racha in the south of Thailand, a few weeks in the United States spending time with family and friends – including a quick trip to St. Louis to lead a one-day session for MICDS Summer Learning (thanks to Elizabeth, Pat and Greg for taking such good care of me while I was there), and finally a luxurious week in the Maldives to celebrate my 5-year wedding anniversary. So, I can definitely say that I’m well-rested and ready to start the new year!
This school year is shaping up to be an especially exciting one for me. I’m still at the same school, but my position has changed in 2 very different ways.
First, I’ll be a Technology Coach in the elementary school, shifting my position from 21st Century Literacy Specialist to be part of a larger coaching team which includes our Math, Science, and Literacy Coaches. I could not be more excited about expanding this part of my job and working with such a knowledgeable group of people on a regular basis.
Secondly, part of my job will be the Middle School Technology and Learning Coordinator. These last 2 years have been my first working full-time in an elementary school and as much as I’ve loved the experience (and learned so much), I know that I’m a middle school teacher at heart. I’m so looking forward to spending part of my time working with the age group that I love and getting back into the middle school vibe!
Although I’m not sure what this configuration is going to look like in practice, I’ve been thinking a lot about the last two years and all that I’ve learned about starting a new job – not as a classroom teacher, but as a non-teaching support person. Having been both a subject-area teacher (e.g. middle school technology) and a support person (e.g. technology facilitator), I’ve realized that there are different challenges to each type of position.
In the interest of starting the year off right, here are the top five things I’ve learned about starting a new job in a non-teaching, support role:
It’s all about relationships! As my friend Chrissy likes to tell me, I’m a fixer. I like to solve problems, preferably on the spot, and get working on the solution immediately. Which can be great when you’re teaching your own classes and making improvements, but when you’re working in partnership with others (especially those you haven’t worked with before) it’s more important that you spend the early part of the year building a trusting relationship. It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) technology a teacher might be using in their classroom, what does matter is that they see you as approachable, dependable, collaborative, friendly, and above all, willing and able to support their needs. It those personal relationship that you form early on that end up leading to positive and successful collaboration later on. After all, it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job if no one is interested in working with you!
Start small! As tempting as it is to start the year off with a bang, developing large-scale, amazing projects with as many teachers as possible, it’s almost always more successful (and more sustainable) to start small and begin with simple, easy-to-succeed-at, projects that teachers and students will enjoy. Small successes breed continued risk-taking and trust. It’s better to leave teachers and students wanting more collaboration than finding themselves exhausted from an over-ambitious, all-consuming project, thinking “I’ll never do that again!”
Celebrate, praise and publicize! We all know our colleagues are doing amazing things in their classroom, but we rarely hear about it outside of individual grade levels or departments. Make the effort and take the time to find ways to celebrate and share those experiences across the faculty. Teachers will appreciate knowing what others are doing in their classroom and what their students are experiencing in other subjects or grade levels. Plus, the best way to spread the use of technology in the classroom is virally – once teachers see the success of others, they will be more willing to try something similar in their classroom, especially knowing that they will have a colleague they can count on for advice and assistance (thereby building their own support network).
Be there! Be visible: in the classroom, on the team, in the hallway. Teachers are busy people, they don’t always have time to find you to ask an emergency question, or they might not have a moment to spare to send an e-mail. If you’re always holed up in your office, you’re going to get a reputation for being unavailable, or worse, a slacker. The more time you spend with your colleagues and their students, the more you will learn about them, their curriculum, their needs and their experiences. A support person is not supportive if they’re invisible.
Don’t be a pusher! Everyone knows you were hired to spread the technology love, you don’t need to be ramming it down your colleagues’ throats every second of the day. Listen and learn what, how, when, and where you can help. Of course, you want to move your faculty and your school forward, but you can do that by supporting others and helping build their understanding of the power of technology. Sure, you will probably need to “sell” your ideas here and there (and everywhere), but it doesn’t have to be constant and it should never start with you – the students and the curriculum are the backbone of your success. When you can demonstrate how technology tools enhance learning by meeting the needs of the school, you won’t have to “sell” anything anymore.
Final Thoughts
One of the biggest challeges for me, when reading over my own advice, is how to balance my own needs (what I see as critical for student, teacher, parent and administrator learning) with being supportive of others.
I can’t assume that all of my colleagues will have the same passions, interests and beliefs that I do, so if my job is entirely to support them, how do I move forward with my own learning and meet my own personal and professional goals for the year?
One of the only drawbacks I can see to being a facilitator, coach, or support person, is that I don’t have my own group of students to try new things with, I can’t experiment or test out someting new without affecting another teacher. This makes it all the more important to try to find a balance between helping others and feeling that you’re moving forward professionally.
What other advice do you have for a new teacher starting this year in a non-teaching support role?
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 Jeff and I presented one of the final keynotes, entitled Moving A Community Forward, for the 2009 Webheads in Action Online Convergence. Not only was it a blast doing the presentation with Jeff, but it turned out to be a great reflection on what we’ve accomplished at ISB this year and what some of our next steps could be for the 2009-10 school year.
The goal of our presentation was to address the needs of the various stakeholders in a typical school community when attempting to effect change.
We covered 4 groups: Parents, Teachers, Students and Admin. As we looked at each group, we shared strategies we’ve been using here at ISB (both successful and unsuccessful) and also brainstormed some new initiatives we are thinking about for the next school year.
Although you can watch the whole presentation here (and below), I thought it would be worthwhile to post some of our key points here on the blog just in case you don’t want to watch the entire, hour-long, session. Hopefully this overview of what’s worked for us will also be helpful for others!
Moving a Community Forward Presentation Notes:
Parent Community:
Over the last two years, we’ve been working on building a strong home-school partnership around 21st century learning. We are making a concerted effort to involve more and more parents in both formal and informal events to support the exciting changes their children are experiencing in the classroom.
Parent Technology Coffee Mornings
We started with our Parent Technology Coffee Mornings early last school year. These are monthly meetings open to all elementary school parents, facilitated by me, Jeff and Tara. We usually show an engaging, short video about changes in society (I’ll put up a list of all the videos we’ve shown this year soon) and then spend about an hour discussing the impact on education. We have a group of dedicated parents who show up every month and we post the most interesting points of our discussion (along with a link to the video) on our Connect 2.0 blog.
Although these started out very informally last year, we’ve had requests to share the topics in advance and have started promoting the monthly sessions well in advance to encourage more parents to attend. We’ve already outlined all of our sessions for next year and have shared an overview with our parent community.
More and more of our teachers are choosing to share classroom events via a blog (instead of a Friday newsletter), and in order to make that communication as streamlined as possible, we’ve created a parent communication portal using WordPress MultiUser (WPMU). All of our teacher blogs can now be found on Inside.ISB for easy parent access.
Parent Trainings
Over this past school year, we’ve implemented PantherNet (our Moodle), PowerSchool, My.ISB (Elgg), and Inside.ISB. In order to help parents cope with the influx of digital environments that their students are regularly involved in, we’ve started running more formal parent trainings.
So far these have been scheduled during the school day with parents signing up in advance, but we’re hoping to also offer some in the evenings next school year. Considering that our school is in the suburbs, we’re also thinking of offering some sessions downtown so that parents don’t have to wrestle with Bangkok traffic in the evening.
Next Steps: Advisory Committee
During our Main Library External Audit visit by Doug Johnson and Ann Krembs, they recommended that we develop a Technology Advisory Committee comprised of several members of our ISB21 team, teachers, parents, students and administrators in order to ensure that all stakeholders have a say in the decision making process. There is no way we can truly meet the needs of our entire community without involving them at the ground level.
Student Community:
We’ve been working hard for the last few years to ensure that our students have the opportunity to interact with their peers both within school and around the world in a variety of authentic and engaging ways.
Developing a Global Audience
At almost every grade level (PK-12), our students are involved in projects that connect them with the wider world. Although both Jeff and I work at the elementary level, innovative teachers at all grade levels are incorporating global projects into their classroom curriculum.
Student Authored Blogs
Beginning with fifth grade, all students at ISB will be part of our student-blogging portal through Inside.ISB. With our new grade 5 Digital Literacy unit of study, blogging will become an integral part of our language arts curriculum. We’re hoping to use these student blogs as learning portfolios that can be continued from one grade to the next, as well as a forum to share, reflect, and communicate with a global audience.
YouTube Channel & Facebook Alumni Group
In order to take advantage of two of the most popular social media platforms, we have created both a YouTube channel and collaborated with the creators of the FB Alumni group.
Next Steps: Student Tech Team
Along with our parent community, we are looking to involve students more directly in our decision making process. We would also love to develop a student tech team to help support the entire school community in their technology needs.
After seeing the sucess of the LAN parties, we decided to create an Early Adopter Group for our super “techie” teachers at ISB. We wanted to provide a place for those teachers to collaborate and communicate across divisions (somewhat difficult at a school as big as ISB), and offer them the support they need to continue to innovate and assist their colleagues in each division. As part of this team, we created an Elgg group to encourage the networked learning to continue beyond school hours.
We’ve been extremely lucky to facilitate 2 ES faculty meetings this school year. One of our main goals at each meeting was to highlight and showcase the fantastic work of our amazing ES teachers. Both meetings featured a structured rotation, including Speed Geeking, for teachers to experience a sneak peak into some of the exciting projects our teachers and students are working on. Although these meetings are short (around an hour), they’ve been a great way to promote success and to spread new ideas throughout the faculty in a viral way.
SUNY Course
In another amazing stroke of luck, we have been able to offer a 15-credit, 5-course Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (CoETaIL) to our faculty as part of a longer (30-credit) Master’s degree through SUNY Buffalo. We have over 40 teachers involved in the certificate program, including 4 teachers newly recruited to ISB in January. Considering the extensive time commitment, we are so proud to have such a large percentage of our faculty dedicated to learning together.
Next Steps: IETPs for Teachers
In order to build on the groundswell that we have started in the last few years, and to formalize the changes we’re implementing, our next step is to develop Individual Educational Technology Plans for our teachers. We will start with all of our new teachers, as well as a group of volunteers (as part of the final course in our CoETaIL program) in the next school year.
Admin Community:
Present at Leadership Team (LT) Meetings
Over the past two years, we have been invited to present formally at the ISB Leadership Team meetings. These presentations are our change to share our learning and recommendations with the higher school administration.
Continued Conversations
Outside of formal meeting times, we make an effort to continue the process of relationship building through casual and frequent conversation with our school leaders.
Sharing Resources
We regularly share blog posts, articles, websites, videos, and a whole host of resources with our admin team. Often these items prompt further discussion in meetings or casual conversation. The goal is always to keep learning.
Present to School Board
As a result of our successful LT meeting presentations, we were asked to present to the school board this year, which ended up in a decision to modify our school vision to reflect our ISB21 philosophy.
Next Steps: Tie Parent Community to Admin Community
In order to continue moving forward we know that we will need more than just teacher voices promoting change. We would like to work closely with our parent community to enlist their help in pushing our school community forward. It is the voices of the parents that most often and most successfully bring about change in schools.
Final Thoughts
Of course, not everything we’ve done has gone perfectly, or according to plan. We are always revising, re-thinking, and reflecting as the year progresses. These are just a few of our favorite initiatives in order to give us something to think about as we begin to plan for the 2009-10 school year.
What has worked well in your school in your efforts to move your community forward?
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!
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:
Please feel free to contact me at:
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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