Yesterday Tara and I had the pleasure of hosting a one-day workshop at ISB entitled Rethink: Inspiring School Library Spaces, led by Kevin Hennah, an exceptionally engaging library consultant from Melbourne. Not only was the presentation informative and inspiring (more on that later), but the story of how it all came to be is pretty interesting too.
Once again, the power of personal learning networks leads to amazing real life connections. Kevin was presenting at a conference in Cairns with Judy O’Connell last April, who, though she has never been to our Learning Hub, included a picture or two from my Flickr set in her presentation. When Kevin saw the pictures of our space, Judy connected us via e-mail, and Kevin, on one of his regular visits to Bangkok, was standing in our library a few weeks later!
As soon as we met him, Tara and I knew he would be a fantastic speaker (and have tons of crucial advice on adding the finishing touches to our Learning Hub), so, in the span of a few weeks we arranged a one-day workshop here in Bangkok and invited any and all interested regional librarians. Amazingly, despite the fact that we started our planning in early May (at the very hectic end to our school year) and the fact that the workshop took place during the first week of school for most people, we had quite a crowd. Over 30 librarians flew in from all over Asia: Taiwan, China, Brunei, Singapore, and of course, Thailand.
As we anticipated, Kevin did not dissappoint. His previous experience in retail sales and marketing gives him a unique perspective on libraries, and his endless suply of “before and after” images provided practical ideas that librarians can implement immediately. A few of Kevin’s points really jumped out at me:
Libraries have customers, not patrons: If libraries take only one thing from retail, it should be that their job is to attract and entice customers into their space by branding (think logos and bold signage), attractive marketing of books, and a welcoming environment. Kevin challenges librarians to see their library from the customer’s perspective – finding things should be breeze, customers should be able to pinpoint the resources they’re looking for without a map, and the strategic arrangement of resources should encourage “impulse” borrowing.
Think of your library like a monopoly board: When a customer walks in to the space, they should find themselves on “Park Place” or “Boardwalk.” The most popular, most interesting and most inviting resources should be front and center. Kevin recommends walking around your space to determine your “hot,” “warm,” and “cold” zones to ensure that whatever is placed in the hot zone is “paying the rent.”
Make the books the stars! Instead of thinking about creating complicated “displays,” focus on a marketing strategy to “sell” as many books as possible. Keep the covers front and center using a quick and easy strategy for high impact visuals, instead of something contrived that takes ages to construct. Think DVD or CD displays in a mall – the more covers a customer can see, the more likely they’ll be to pick something up. Take advantage of the ends of aisles like a supermarket, where browsing can lead to borrowing.
Kevin had some great quick and easy ideas for high impact marketing strategies that libraries can implement in no time at all:
Put a recent returns cart or shelf in front of a library with a big sign, capitalizing on easy of display as well as ensuring that high interest books are front and center.
Welcome your customers, don’t nag them. Why is the first thing we often see when walking into a library a (usually poorly made) notices not to eat, not to talk, and not to use your phone instead of a welcoming sign?
Use those glass cases to showcase books on hold, rather than books you actually want people to borrow. Tantalize your patrons with something they can’t get their hands on yet, to entice them to come back again.
Final Thoughts
If retail strategies have so much to offer libraries, I’m now left wondering, what do popular and “addictive” websites, like Facebook, have to offer schools trying to shape their online presence?
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?
This year, both the ISB21 team and the Learning Coaches team have decided to do something different with our team meeting time. Sure, we’ll still handle nuts and bolts, work on our team goals, and collaborate to move our school forward, but we’ve also added something new: a book club.
At the end of last year, we started realizing that we are all doing a lot of professional reading, but we weren’t spending a lot of time discussing what we were leaning in depth because we were all reading something different (and because our meetings were so jam-packed already). So, we’re going to streamline things a little bit this year.
Inspired by Lee Kolbert’s online book discussions using Shelfari and Scott McLeod’sannual summer book club, we thought it would be most productive to devote one meeting a month to our reading. Instead of trying to do everything every meeting, we’re going to rotate topics each week: one week focusing on nuts and bolts, one week on team goals, one week on our collaborative projects, and one week on our book club.
Each month we’ll read one chapter of the book and one member of the team will be responsible for facilitating a discussion about our learning. Hopefully, we’ll be able to:
reflect on our reading to help us apply our learning and deepen our understanding;
make connections as a group that might not have sprung to mind if we were reading alone;
have a common base of understanding, which may help propel us to action, instead of feeling isolated or overwhelmed;
practice what we preach in the classroom, we’re always asking our students to discuss their reading, now it’s our turn!
In addition to the offline reading, we’ve set up a common tag for our coaching team and we’ve all subscribed to the RSS feed (and posted it on our team wiki and Moodle course). Each book club we’ll spend a little bit of time sharing our thoughts on the resources we’ve tagged.
I’m really excited to get started. I love that we’ve prioritized learning during our meeting time instead of allowing ourselves to get bogged down with daily business (so much of which can be handled in other ways).I also think it’s great that we’re making sure to read both online and print material. I’m sure we’ll end up using the Moodle discussion forums to keep our conversations going outside of team meeting time as well. I must admit, I think this is the first time I’ve ever been on a team (or should I say two!) that is so devoted to learning.
Does anyone else spend team meeting time in a book club? What did you think? What made it work? What are some pitfalls to avoid?
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)?
Tara, Jeff and I host these sessions in the Learning Hub on the first Wednesday of every month in order to build parental understanding of the ways that technology is changing society, and therefore, changing education. Every month we watch a short video and then discuss the implications on education and learning, always with practical examples from classrooms here at ISB. Each of our sessions is re-capped in our community blog, Connect 2.0, for those parents that can’t attend face-to-face.
Each of these sessions gives us the opportunity to understand a parent’s perspective on technology, share exciting projects our students are engaged in, and help clear up any misconceptions about the use of technology in the classroom. We have been fortunate to build some lasting relationship with the parents who willingly spend one morning a month in the Hub.
Although our numbers fluctuate every month – usually depending on the topic and competing events at school – we are hoping that the positive experiences parents have had with us will spread throughout the elementary school.
In fact, the wonderful parents who regularly spend the first Wednesday of every month with us have shared some of their reasons for attending:
I want to thank Tara, Kim and Jeff for hosting us ES parents at the monthly Technology meetings this school year. WOW! It is so wonderful to be able to explore and discuss how technology is affecting us as parents, not to mention learning what our kids are doing on the IT front…or want to be doing…or shouldn’t be doing…or will be doing whether we want them to or not. I’ve learned that by understanding what is “out there” and being able to have open discussions with our children about these things (instead of ignoring it) is paramount on the parenting front! Plus it’s always great to gain insight that can help us with our daily lives…whether or not we are currently in the work force or plan to reenter it in the coming years. Thank you and I look forward to these opportunities again next year.
- D
These quick and friendly appointments have represented a valuable opportunity for me to
get more familiar with the most recent technological updates, realizing how easy it could be just trying (podcasting – I did it and now we are getting addicted to it !)
finally starting to use the various instruments we have at our disposal (Facebook – I do not hide my name anymore, just know how to use it protecting our privacy !)
get a bit of understanding of the new world into which our kids are born and immersed and have a first clue about how different their learning experience is compared with ours
I also enjoyed the formula (monthly, about 1 hour long, right after kids enter their classes) and hope you will continue offering us these useful updates.
- R
I attend the Parent Technology Meetings for the light, non-filling, breakfast items that complement the coffee. Just kidding…
I attend the Parent Technology Meetings to learn what my children’s world looks like and what their future holds in the realm of technology. How can we, as parent’s, help guide our children, if we are not familiar with their world. Today’s classroom (libraries, household, businesses)…today’s world is completely unlike the one I grew up with. It is continually changing.
These meeting give me a chance to become educated about technology. I am learning what my children are doing in school, with technology. I am learning how the technology works so that I can use and understand it. I am learning the benefits of technology.
These sessions give me a place to express my lack of understanding, my apprehensions, my thoughts. I share what I feel, I ask questions and I learn from others. We come from different points along the technology timeline, depending on our age. I am able to hear differing viewpoints. This allows me to evaluate and form educated opinions about technology.
The sessions are invigorating. I may not grasp everything that I learn, but I am trying. It will make things easier, because not just their world is changing, my world is changing as well. I don’t want to be left behind.
I feel privileged to be given the opportunity to learn more about technology through these eye opening sessions.
- R
In order to continue to promote these sessions, we’ve already organized a great list of topics for our monthly sessions in the 2009-10 school year, for those parents that like to plan in advance:
September 2009: An Introduction to the Ways Education is Changing in a Digital World: an introduction to the major technological changes that are currently shaping society and changing education. We will also give an overview of all of the sessions for the rest of the year.
October 2009: An Introduction to Blogging: What is a blog? How and why do people blog? How can parents get connected to all the teacher and student blogs being authored at ISB?
November 2009: An Introduction to RSS: What is RSS? How can it help me stay connected to learning happening at ISB, as well as more personal interests (like gardening or travel)? Bring your own computer and we’ll help you set up your own RSS account!
December 2009: An Introduction to Podcasting & iTunes: What is a podcast? How and why do people podcast? What are some great podcasts for students and parents to listen to and watch? Bring your own computer and we’ll help you subscribe (for free) to podcasts from ISB and around the world!
February 2010: An Introduction to Digital Literacy: What are the new literacies for the 21st Century? How is the understanding of literacy changing in education? How are ISB students learning and using 21st century literacy skills?
March 2010: An Introduction to Social Networking: What is social networking? How are your children using social networking both in school and outside of school? How can we use social networking strategies for learning?
April 2010: An Introduction to Wikis: What is a wiki? How and why do people use wikis? What is the controversy over Wikipedia? Plus, we’ll share some examples of wikis being used for learning at ISB.
May 2010: Summer Tech Activities With Your Kids! Some great tech-rich activities you can do with your children over the summer, like: starting a family travel blog, taking control of your summer vacation pictures, finding the top 10 kid-friendly podcasts for long car trips or plane rides, or making your own summer travel video for YouTube!
Final Thoughts
Overall, these sessions have been a big success! We’re actively spreading the word about new kinds of learning all students should be regularly experiencing in the classroom, we’re helping parents understand why this kind of learning is important, and we’re helping build a strong voice among our parents to share that feedback with our admin team.
One of the new things we started this year was having parents actually try some of these tools during our sessions. We had a hands-on Facebook training where parents were able to create their own Facebook account, which they really appreciated. As you can see, we’re planning a few more hands-on sessions for next year in order to help parents actively engage in these new media.
What are you doing to help your parents connect to the new ways of learning in your school?
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?
This past week we have been very fortunate to have two fantastic library experts, Doug Johnson and Ann Krembs, here at ISB to help guide us through our Main Library Review. While they were here specifically to share recommendations for our upcoming renovation of our Main Library (for middle and high school students), they also generously stopped down in the ES Learning Hub to give us some advice on how to improve our space.
It’s amazing what a fresh pair of eyes can see.
Within moments, Doug and Ann, had several easy, but very effective, suggestions for us. Interestingly, one of those suggestions was exactly what Silvia said about our Tech Zone when she was here in Bangkok a few weeks ago, but it didn’t really hit me until this week:
You have to give them something different. The Learning Hub (library) has to offer a physical environment that is different than other spaces teachers and students regularly use.
This hit me like a bolt of lightening. Of course! Why would they use our space, when they can continue to use their own, more private space, that has been customized to their specific classroom needs? Especially considering how well-resourced we are as a school, with laptop carts for every 2 classrooms and extensive classroom libraries.
In our efforts to make a 21st century learning environment, we had mistakenly recreated a standard, formal classroom space at the very front of the Learning Hub, assuming that teachers would want to use it as an expanded classroom:
Of course, that space was also back-to-back with our “computer lab” space, making it very difficult to have classes in both spaces at the same time.
Now, with the advice of Doug and Ann, we’ve redesigned the space to make it more of a “movie theater” look for story time, as well as open up the shelving to spread the tables throughout the library to allow more privacy in seating:
We’re hoping we’ve captured the “something different” idea with this arrangement. Who has a movie theater in their classroom with comfy chairs and surround sound speakers?
And just for fun we added some chess boards:
And rearranged our fiction reading nook:
Our next step is to tackle the “computer lab” area (called the Tech Zone) and transform it into a multimedia editing suite, with a green-screen and podcasting stations:
What are you doing to offer something different in your learning space? What other changes would you recommend we make in this space?
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?
After many years of blogging here at edublogs, I've finally taken the plunge and started blogging at my own domain (don't worry, all the old posts and comments have been transfered over), so please head over to the new and improved always learning!
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Yesterday Tara and I had the pleasure of hosting a one-day workshop at ISB entitled Rethink: Inspiring School Library Spaces, led by Kevin Hennah, an exceptionally engaging library consultant from Melbourne. Not only was the presentation informative and inspiring (more on that later), but the story of how it all came to be is pretty interesting too.
Hi! My name is Kim Cofino. 
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