always learning

Thanks to our wonderful and supportive Principal & Vice Principal, this past Tuesday, Tara, Jeff and I had the opportunity to present to the ES Faculty about the work that our ISB21 Team has been doing over the past few years. We were thrilled to be given the chance to present to the full staff (a total of around 70 classroom and specialist teachers) not only because we are so excited about what we’ve been doing, but also because we felt that a full-staff meeting is the best way to build excitement and ensure total transparency.

Considering our meetings are relatively short (45 minutes) we spent some time getting the planning and timing just right – not wasting anyone’s time and (attempting, at least) to keep it interesting. In order to model the use of essential web tools, we shared our agenda on a wiki and made sure to include lots of great links for staff.

We started our meeting off with a quick Think, Pair, Share focused on the question: How are students today different than when we were kids? This is always an interesting conversation starter, helping bring forward legitimate concerns about balance and social interaction, and also giving us a good picture of where the mindset of our ES faculty is on the topic. I also love the possibilities for facilitating a longer discussion on this topic, modeling open-mindedness and allowing all different perspectives to be heard. Of course, we only had about five minutes for this quick intro!

Next we watched a short video together, called A Vision of PK-12 Students Today by Barbara Nesbitt:

What a great discussion starter that video can be – for teachers and parents alike (we showed it at last month’s Parent Tech Coffee Morning and had a 45 minute discussion!) After watching the video, we asked the teachers to share their thoughts about the video at their table groupings, and then had a few share back to the group. It was interesting to see which parts of the conversation changed after watching the video and which areas were still a major concern (balance and social interaction again).

Once we had a basic common understanding of the needs of the 21st century learner, we shared our ISB21 vision along with a little bit of history about how we came to this understanding. It was fantastic to be able to say that we’ve shared this same vision with our leadership team as well as our board and that both have approved our work. This really helped give us a sense of legitimacy at the meeting, as well as enable us to emphasize that this type of learning is (will be, and should be) happening here at ISB.

The longest section of the meeting was spent showcasing teachers that have already implemented these values into their classroom. We had 10 different table groups, all with mixed groups of teachers from different grade levels and specialist departments. One teacher per table group was asked in advance to share some of the work they’re doing with their students. We had the following teachers lead a table discussion:

• Patty V: Ms. Patty’s Class Blog: How a Pre-K teacher uses her class blog to involve both the students and the parents in the learning experience.
  
• Sandy, Akiko & Heather: Kinder Kids Draw! How kindergarten uses VoiceThread and wikis to reflect on learning and collaborate globally.
  
• Erin & Jessica: Global eLearners: How grade 1 ESL uses VoiceThread and wikis to practice oral language fluency with global partners.
  
• Susan: Window to Our World, Bangkok Room With a View: How grade 2 uses a Ning and a wiki to connect and collaborate around classroom learning from intercultural understanding to weather.
  
• Sonja: Merrellzone Blog: How grade 4 uses a class blog to reflect on their learning and connect and collaborate with global partners.
  
• Mary: Bellone’s Learning Blog: How grade 4 uses Garage Band and iMovie to create digital storytelling based on Writer’s Workshop pieces.
  
• Louise: PantherNet: How grade 4 uses Moodle to increase school-home communication and go paperless.
• Chrissy: Room 202′s Blog: How grade 5 uses Skype, blogs, wikis, VoiceThread and other web 2.0 tools to engage and motivate students while connecting them to the world.
  
• Robin & Ali: Room 227, Room 229, Room 227: How grade 5 uses blogs and podcasts to share their learning about reading and writing with global partners.
  
• Diane: Grade 5 ESL Blog: How grade 5 ESL uses a blog to practice written language and connect with global partners.
  
• James: Student Portfolios: How grade 5 spanish uses a class blog as student ePortfolios.

After sharing all of these ideas at individual tables, Tara, Jeff and I explained our roles in the school and clarified how we can support our teachers based on differing expertise and passion (of course I also shared my Collaboration Cycle as the focus of my role).

Finally, we closed with a quick feedback form, asking teachers to respond to the following three questions:

What sparked your interest?

Overwhelmingly the feedback showed that teachers loved watching the video, that it gave them a new perspective on reaching our students. Many were inspired by the concept of enabling our students to make global connections, seeing this as a very powerful facet of learning in the 21st century. They also enjoyed being able to hear from practicing teachers exactly what this looks like in the classroom. Many responses also requested more time for showcasing current projects here at ISB.

What concerns do you have?

As we expected, concerns focused around time – time to learn, time to experiment and time to implement in the already rushed school day. Interestingly, another concern was that Tara, Jeff and I couldn’t possibly have enough time in the day to help all of our 70 ES teachers (so true!). There were mentions of balance, research to show how beneficial this kind of learning is, as well as questions about how developmentally appropriate it is for the primary years.

How can we best support you?

The biggest support needed is in the area of professional development, not only how to use new tools, but actual classroom support (modeling, and practical implementation). Teachers were also looking for project ideas already planned out that could be readily implemented in the classroom. Concerns were raised about whose responsibility it is to embed these new skills into the curriculum and the obvious need for continued training for our classroom Instructional Assistants.

Contact Me?

We also added a little note on the survey for teachers who would like to be contacted by us on a specific topic and actually had around 15 teachers leave their names! Considering we are already working closely with at least 15 other teachers, that was an excellent response!

And that was it! An overview and introduction to 21st century learning in 45 minutes! Judging from the feedback we heard, it went over pretty well. Personally, I feel so excited and energized by being able to share all the thinking that we’ve done as a team over the last few years. This feels like a crucial starting point for really beginning interesting conversations with teachers and for spreading new ideas throughout our division.

It was such a pleasure to be able to showcase all of the amazing work that so many of our teachers are doing, and I hope we have the opportunity to continue to do so over the course of the year. I love that taking a risk is seen in a positive light, and discomfort or failures along the way are merely steps in the learning process.

As a quick follow-up to our meeting, I sent out an e-mail with the recent MacArthur Foundation report,  Living and Learning with New Media. I’ve already had a few teachers asking me questions about the report and wanting to sit down and have a conversation about what they’ve learned (in addition to the teachers who left their name on the survey).

So, what do we do next? Does anyone have an advice about how to keep the ball rolling without overwhelming teachers? This really feels like the start of something powerful to me, and I want to make sure I keep up the pace juuust right!

Bowling 1250 by trimmer741

Inspired by Silvia, Johnathan and Simon, Chrissy and I will be hosting a K12 Online LAN (local area network) party this Saturday morning at my apartment in downtown Bangkok. Unfortunately we’re a little late getting started because of the way our October break fell on the school calendar this year, but we are no less enthusiastic!

Already we have some of my amazing colleagues joining us: Heather, Sara, Ali, Tara, and of course Chrissy and I. I was fortunate to also attend a meeting of Bangkok international school librarians yesterday afternoon and hope to see a few of those familiar faces Saturday morning. I wish I knew more of my fellow teachers here in the city – given that there are over 90 international schools in Thailand, I would guess that we have a captive audience. It’s just a matter of getting the word out!

So, earlier this week, I sent around the following e-mail to all of my colleagues at ISB and to as many fellow international school teachers as I know here in Thailand:

Dear Fabulous Colleagues,

As some of you may know, there is an amazing (and totally free) conference happening online right now! It’s called the K12Online conference and it features digital presentations (videos, podcasts, wikis, VoiceThreads) by some of the leading minds in 21st century learning.

Topics range from project-based learning, to using video conferencing in the classroom, to connecting students through global projects, to dealing with the rapid pace of technological change as a classroom teacher, and more.

All of these presentations are described and posted online at the conference website: http://k12onlineconference.org/

But wait, there’s more!

Chrissy Hellyer (grade 5 teacher) and I would like to invite you to a K12Online Local Area Network pot-luck brunch party on Saturday, November 8th from 10:00 – noon to watch the best of the best presentations and discuss how we can use these new ideas in our teaching.
What: A mind-bending, inspiring, and energizing conversation about new teaching and learning practices based on a variety of K12Online presentations
When: Saturday November 8th from 10:00 am – noon (and now you’re already downtown for a day of shopping and dining in the city!)
Where: Kim’s apartment, downtown Bangkok
Why: to get geeked! And to enjoy a delicious pot-luck brunch!

I will download all of the presentations so that we can watch as many as we want and everyone can walk away with all of the presentations to watch when you have time.

We would also love to open this up to other international school teachers here in Bnagkok, so if you know any other teachers that might be interested in attending, please pass it on!

Please let us know if you’re planning on coming so we can prepare

Kim and Chrissy

So if you’re teaching here in Bangkok, or just happen to be in the city (it’s amazing how many people come through Bangkok on a regular basis), or even if you’re not, we would absolutely love to have you join us – either in person or via Skype!

Anyone have any suggestions for how to host this kind of party? I barely even have any wall space to project the presentations on to… I definitely need to start thinking logistics!

After spending a year getting to know elementary students and elementary teachers (it’s definitely quite a switch from middle school), I’m finally starting to feel like I know what kinds of projects are appropriate and achievable in the elementary classroom. All of the projects I completed with our amazing teachers last year really helped me focus and refine my goals for this year – keeping things simple is definitely the key.

For this year we’re looking at staying small and making consistent connections with global partners. Ideally, we would like to find classroom partners that are willing to connect with us on a regular basis over the course of the entire school year (Sept 08 – June 09).

We would like to develop personal learning networks for our students where we can deepen understanding of classroom curriculum while learning how to communicate authentically and appropriately online. We want to make sure that the use of web 2.0 tools deepens their understanding of classroom content and also helps them feel connected to the world around them. Sound interesting? Read on! And if you’d like to participate in one of these projects, please leave a comment!

Amazingly, I have a willing and enthusiastic teacher on almost every grade level ready to fully collaborate with me this year. We are planning to go deep with the students and to really focus on building 21st century literacy skills in a consistent and authentic approach.

Here’s what we’ve gotten started so far:

Grade 5: Students Teaching Students

The wonderful Chrissy Hellyer and her fellow new ISB teacher, Aly McAloon, will be kicking off the school with a classroom blogging project that will eventually include a regular podcast focused on the Lucy Caulkins Readers Workshop.

We’re starting simple with a whole class blog and students as contributing authors (like Betsy and I did last year in the Grade 3 BlogPals project). Once the students start feeling comfortable in their blogging as a class, we’re going to link Chrissy & Aly’s class to start making connections across the grade 5 quad, and eventually they will connect with other classes internationally (Jane Lowe’s class is already on board!).

Our next step will be rotating groups in each class podcasting about their reading strategies to help teach their younger classmates how to be good readers (Melanie Holtsman and her teachers are ready to connect with us, thankfully, since they are total experts in the world of Lucy Caulkins).

I love the idea of embedding multiple tools into one class project and developing a classroom routine where students are not only in charge of their own learning, but also sharing that learning with others.

We would love to connect with another grade 5 class (or two) that would be interested in becoming co-learners along with our students for the entire school year (Sept 08 – June 09)!

Grade 5: Student Portfolios in Spanish

Our Spanish teacher, James, has been experimenting with tons of fantastic web tools over the last school year and now that he’s on the report card committee, he’s looking to find alternate ways of assessing student learning. So, we’re piloting electronic portfolios (in the form of blogs, for now) with one of his grade 5 classes.

James has already been embedding multiple tools into the class blog he’s been running for a year now, and now he’s ready to let the students be the authors on some of those posts. The goal is to keep track of student learning throughout the school year by creating a category for each student. Each time the students have a piece of work for their portfolio, they will post it on the class blog (as contributing authors). By the end of the year, parents will be able to click on their child’s category and see the progression of their work over the course of the year.

Grade 5: Our Online ESL Classroom

Our wonderful grade 5 ESL teacher, Diane, began blogging and podcasting with her students last year. We saw such an amazing leap in their oral and written language as soon as they realized they had an authentic audience for their work that she wants to continue to provide that opportunity this year.

Although Diane only sees her students for short lessons every other day (we run a Sheltered Immersion ESL program), we have been able to organize specific collaboration projects that focus on issues ESL students are concerned about. We have set up a few open ended blog posts to get them writing and connected with other classes (including Anne Mirtschin’s) about moving on to sixth grade.

This will probably be a more infrequent collaboration, on a topic-by-topic basis, but it would be great for our ESL students to connect with other language learners (or native English speakers) on topics that are important to them.

Grade 4: BlogPals

My fantastic colleague Sonja Merrell, who participated in the 1001 Flat World Tales last year, is back for more 21st century learning this year! She has decided to start the school year off with a class blog, which she will use as a communication portal for her students and their parents. There are a few students in her class that participated in the BlogPals project with me last year, so they will make great student leaders as we venture further into blogging with Sonja’s class.

We’re going to start off the year using the blog as a discussion tool, to build the school-home connection and to get her students thinking about their learning in a more interactive way. Over time we will have each student as a contributing author to the blog, just like we did with BlogPals last year.

We are looking for one or two grade 4 classrooms that would like to participate in this type of year-long adventure with us!

Grade 2: A Window to Our World

Another amazing colleague, Susan, who took a huge leap with me last year when we had our grade 2 class connect to another grade 2 class in the US via a Ning, is back in action this year! She loved the idea of working with a Ning and found the  “walled garden” concept perfect for her second graders. It was amazing to see how quickly they took to this new learning environment – posting questions and answers, commenting on individual student pages, and sharing their learning as a class – all in second grade!

This year Susan would like to do something very similar, but preferably with another international school class, if we can find one. She wants to focus on intercultural understanding and connecting with class that would have a greater mix of nationalities (she’s not limited to an international school, but we thought we might have better luck at getting a very diverse class if we were able to find another international school interested). Last year she had 20 nationalities in her class of 23 students, so finding a class with a similar makeup would be ideal for her.

Grade 1: ESL Learners Speak English

Our enthusiastic grade 1 ESL teacher, Erin, started using VoiceThread in her classroom last year as a way for her begining ESL students to practice their English in an authentic environment. We had a great time connecting to another international school in Spain, thanks to Nancy von Wahlde, and we’re planning to re-connect again this year.

Erin maintains a class blog, mostly to communicate with the parents, where she posts her VoiceThreads that the students create based on their classroom units of inquiry. We’re planning to start out with an introduction to each student so that our partner class can really get to know each person as an individual. Over time the students share a bit about their lives in Thailand, the school, and other grade 1 favorites.

Ideally, we would love to connect with a classroom that is able to communicate with us on a regular basis – maybe once a month – and that would be willing to continue these conversations over the course of the year.

Kindergarten: Kids Draw!

We have one set of co-teachers in Kindergarten this year. Sandy and Akiko are team-teaching one class of 24 kindergarten students all year – and what a class they have! It’s amazing to see the way Sandy and Akiko build on each other’s streagnths as we begin working with these little students and technology.

We started out the year with a short unit on drawing, where the students were asked to draw a picture of themselves on paper (for a unit entitled “All About Me”) and then draw the same picture on the computer (using KidPix). We discussed what was the same and what was different about drawing on paper and drawing on the computer. Interestingly, although almost all of them though drawing on the computer was more difficult (we still need to work on those fine motor skills), most of them liked drawing on the computer better.

After this short unit, Sandy, Akiko and I realized we have lots of room to grow with drawing and technology. We’d like to revisit the concept of drawing on the computer over the course of the year and build in some thoughtful reflection, ideally with VoiceThread, where students can talk about the context of the picture, and the skills they learned while drawing.

It would be great to partner up with another kindergarten class that’s interested in sharing learning through drawing!

What do you think? Are you interested in collaborating with one of our classes?

Woo hoo! Only one week to go before I head out to Shanghai with Chrissy and Tara for the amazing Learning 2.008 conference! Check out the fantastic line-up of presenters:

I’ve basically been looking forward to this conference since the day I left Shanghai last year, so I’m a little bit over excited. I love getting to meet and see my virtual friends face to face, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a long weekend than talking with them (and all the new friends I’m sure I’ll make) about learning in the 21st century.

Plus, I get the added bonus of presenting three sessions (along with my amazing international school colleagues Julie Lindsay, Tod Baker, and of course, Jeff Utecht)!

Thankfully, my presentations are (finally) pretty much finished and ready to go, but I would love to get some feedback. I’ve made an effort to create them with a presentation zen attitude, so they will not be as meaningful without my narration (I definitely need to learn how to create a slidecast next). I can’t believe how different and how much more engaging my slides look with less text and pictures that bleed off the edge – a huge thanks to Jeff for loaning me the book!

Please take a look and let me know what you think:

What do you think? Am I missing anything?

Eureka! I think I’ve got it! Thanks to all of your fantastic feedback on my previous posts, I realized that the Collaboration Continuum I started this weekend isn’t really a continuum at all – it’s a cycle:

To me, the cycle idea makes much more sense than a continuum. For starters, I really didn’t like the idea that teachers would feel that they should be at one end of the continuum – the pressure to “figure out” where you are on the path and how you compare to others is just too tempting (and intimidating).  I also didn’t like the visual impression that it was a finite process, appearing as if once you make it to the mentoring stage you’re done.

So, I went back to the drawing board, and came up with the concept of a cycle.

I love the fact that there’s no definite beginning or end, which acknowledges the fact that all teachers come to a school with different history and different needs. Not everyone will need to start with “full collaboration” when they come to ISB because they might have already done something like that at a previous school.

I also like the idea that the cycle builds in a support infrastructure for continuing this process indefinitely – once a teacher has been through the process and reaches the mentoring stage, s/he will go on to be a fully collaborative with another teacher who’s ready on their team, and then that teacher will do the same for another member of the team. This way the learning and experience of one teacher turn into the learning and experience of many – especially important in international schools where we tend to have lots of staff turnover.

What do you think? Is this better? More approachable and less intimidating to staff? Any other ideas for improvement?

Just out of curiosity, could/would you use this at your school? Do you have someone who could be responsible for implementing this process and begin the collaboration cycle with a group of willing teachers?

After some very helpful comments on my last post, I have revised my collaboration continuum to reflect the need for some pre- and post-assessments, as well as consistent professional development and an emphasis on learning and assessment:

I still couldn’t think of different terms to define the continuum, although I don’t like the fact that “dependence” could have a negative connotation even though “full collaboration” is a good thing – we want to have more collaboration, more teaming, and more sharing of strengths. Any ideas?

What else is missing or needs to be revised? I’m definitely liking how this is starting to look…

Today Jeff and I also talked about the LOTI in relation to this collaboration continuum. Once we do a pre-assessment of where we’re at, we can look at using this model to help us move to higher levels of technology implementation. So, I made a nifty little graphic for that one too:

As I was browsing the site, I also came across this article about effective 21st Century leadership which I also plan on sharing with my admin team tomorrow.

What do you think? Do these work together well or am I off track here?

I just had a fantastic meeting with two of our wonderful grade 5 teachers, Sandra and Diane, to brainstorm ways to naturally embed 21st century literacy skills into our (Lucy Caulkins) Readers’ Workshop (RW) units of study for next school year (Reading is a school focus for next year). The grade 5 team is looking for easy ways to promote student discussion about reading strategies and to deepen their conversations about the content they are learning while they’re reading.

Here’s what we came up with (and I would love to hear feedback):

The grade 5 students will create a Students Teaching Students podcast focused on helping other students learn and use quality strategies for reading. This is an educational podcast teaching other students how to become good readers using RW strategies that they learn over the course of the year.

This strand will continue throughout the whole school year with different sections of grade 5 (we have 7 grade 5 classes) leading different units of RW. All podcasts can be uploaded onto a common 5th grade reading-focused blog and added to iTunes for parents and other teachers to subscribe. The podcasts can also be shared with the 4th and 3rd grades so we have a built-in authentic audience (and we help vertical articulation too!). The project will be started with our first RW unit and continue throughout the year.

To allow for new teachers (we will have 4 new grade 5 teachers next year) to get comfortable with the process, we can differentiate: some classes can start with just listening to the podcasts, then when ready, students come in as “guest stars/speakers” on the “show,” eventually we can have many facilitators from all classes.

The project can be broken into 3 stages:

Stage 1: Focus on strategies.

Students Teaching Students podcast begins with 1 or 2 of our grade 5 classes to develop strong student facilitators and provide a model for good student-produced podcasts at ISB. The first stage is to focus on what strategies they are learning in RW and teach other students how the strategies help them become good readers. This can be a regular, short, podcast focusing on the critical aspects of RW they learn each week – the podcast station can be set up as a “center” in the classroom.

Stage 2: Focus on the content being learned in RW.

Have “guest stars/speakers” from other classrooms on the “show” to talk about the content they are reading and how they use different strategies to learn through reading. Student facilitators from the first two participating classes will lead these discussions on a weekly basis.

For this to work well, we will need to develop common prompts, thinking strategies and questions so that students will have a “handbook” for excellent podcasts. Eventually this could be entirely managed by students.

Stage 3: Focus on building excitement about reading.

Add book talks, book reviews, etc, using these same tools (or perhaps VoiceThread and other tools) to deepen learning about content, to make connections to other student readers, and to share more about what we’re reading. Start regularly connecting with students in other schools around the world to discuss and improve reading skills and strategies.

What do you think? How can we make this idea even better? Has this already been done (which would give me a great model to start from)? All feedback appreciated!