always learning

One of the challenges of an integrated technology program is the fact that some responsibility for teaching essential technology concepts is placed on the shoulders of teachers who are not specialists in that field. Although adopting (or creating your own) technology standards is a step in the right direction, those statements are often general enough to leave room for uncertainty, especially for those teachers that don’t have a special interest in technology. This can lead to situations where classroom teachers feel that they lack guidance or concrete expectations about how to authentically and appropriately embed technology into their curriculum in a way that’s relevant to students and deepens their learning, which in turn leads to frustration and confusion.

In schools that are fortunate to have technology facilitators, often this kind of confusion is resolved through conversation and collaboration. However, even in those schools, usually there’s not enough time in the day for the facilitator to be able to support every single teacher. And even if there were enough facilitators to work closely with every single teacher, it’s simply not sustainable or advisable to place all of the essential knowledge about such a critical subject in the hands of one or two specialists. Although many teachers appreciate the personal support of a technology facilitator, it should be possible for individual teachers to get a sense of what they could or should be doing without having to go through a “gatekeeper.”

Having been a technology facilitator for 10 years now, I had always thought that individualized, personal conversations were the best way to help teachers embed technology into their classroom practice. While I still believe that collaborative planning and teaching is by far the most effective approach, I’m also realizing that having a clearly defined and readily accessible set of examples of classroom experiences, alongside a set of standards, would not only help teachers understand what’s expected of them, but would also provide an approachable starting point for conversations with teachers who may be unsure where to start.

So, here at ISB, we’ve decided to adapt and revise the ISTE Learner Profiles so that they reflect specific examples of units being done here at school. Currently, the general profiles provided by ISTE, which are broken down by division, provide basic examples of age-appropriate learning experiences (which meet the NET*S standards) that teachers can use to develop projects at their grade level. Of course, these examples are quite broad and don’t include samples of student work. So, we’re hoping that by documenting, on the ISB21 wiki, these types of experiences that are happening at our school, with links to completed student work, unit planners, and feedback from teachers, our faculty will feel they have a strong starting point for planning new projects (and implementing those that are currently part of our curriculum).

We’re just in the begining stages, but the ISB21 team will start this documentation process by linking and describing the projects we have collaborated on here at ISB, on the ISB21 wiki:

• PK-2
• 3-5
• 6-8
• 9-12

Next, we will ask the CoETaIL cohort teachers to share other projects that they may be working on independently. Finally, we will bring the profiles to the rest of the school community and ask them to contribute as well. In the end we hope to have an easily accessible, frequently updated, relevant and specific list of projects that meet our Technology and Information Literacy standards (TaILs) that all teachers can use to guide their planning, spark their interest, and start conversations.

Do you have these kinds of Learner Profiles at your school? Are they helpful? How do you build or clarify shared expectations for authentic, technology-rich student experiences with the faculty at your school?

signpost mage by will_hybrid
scaffolding image by kevindooley

The 2008 Flat Classroom Project is well under way in Australia, Qatar, Spain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the US! And they need your help!

Next week begins the first stages of the Sounding Board process, when students in classrooms around the world peer review the completed work to date and offer constructive feedback. There are so many fantastic projects to peer review, that as many classrooms as possible are needed to act as Sounding Boards. Any and all age-levels are welcome as peer reviewers!

Not only is the process of peer review a component of the new NETS standards, but it is an incredibly valuable way for students to connect and collaborate in a meaningful way. It’s also a perfect introduction to globally collaborative projects for classrooms that may not have had much experience like this before. Of course, for those who are active online collaborators, this project offers a perfect opportunity to experience a far-reaching, well-organized, and truly authentic global project.

For the past few years, students in my classes have acted as a Sounding Board for the Horizon Project and the Flat Classroom Project – the first year I worked with grade eight students, and the following year with grade five students. Both groups learned so much from the process of evaluating student work on such exciting and engaging topics, and both groups commented on how valuable this kind of real-world application of technology is for them.

I have volunteered to coordinate the Sounding Board classrooms and we would love to have as many classroom as possible participate. We will hold a planning session in Elluminate on Thursday Nov. 6 at noon GMT (convert to your local time here) to help coordinate this process so that it’s as easy as possible for all classrooms involved.

If you’re interested, please sign up on the Sounding Board wiki page today!

Many of us are the lone voice of change in our institutions. Some may be lucky to have the support of their administration, or to have a group of teachers ready and willing to change their teaching practice, or even to have a small team to work with, but very few seem to have a whole-school focus on changing the way we teach and learn (except for maybe one, of course).

So, if you don’t have a school-wide focus on changing practices, and you don’t have ongoing professional development offerings at the institutional level, and perhaps you don’t have the expectation to change from “the top,” where does the energy to change come from?

It comes from us, the lone voices. If we are not energetic and enthusiastic about moving forward, if we are not constantly offering ideas for how to engage students, if we are not tirelessly promoting new ways of thinking, who else will do it?

I worry about apathy, about giving up when the institution doesn’t value the same things we do. Or when the institution is so big that we know it will take years to reach the tipping point. I worry that when our lone voices stop bringing the energy and enthusiasm for learning in a new way, it will just fall by the wayside.

Why is it important to always keep institutional change in mind as the ultimate goal? Why not merely keep working for small-scale change on a daily basis, and hope that things will gradually improve? For one thing, the stakes are too high not to be thinking about the big picture. As Scott McLeod’s K12Online presentation points out, schools as institutions are themselves in real danger of becoming obsolete.

Referencing Dr. Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive innovations, Scott shows that institutions that don’t embrace change early enough will simply become obsolete and disappear once the change they have ignored happens. Similar to the old land-line phone companies who didn’t switch to mobile networks fast enough, unless schools start thinking about technological changes now and new types of learning that will arise in the near future, there might come a point when everyone decides that we don’t need schools as institutions anymore – and it may be approaching sooner than we think. Either way, it’s clear that most schools will not embrace disruptive innovations (in this case, technologies used for learning) until it’s too late.

As Scott points out, we can no longer make decisions based the assumption that people will always need schools. In fact, these disruptive technologies can and will become so much more useful than the current state of our schools, that the “customer base” schools have come to expect, may in the near future no longer exist, simply because there are so many more meaningful ways to learn outside of that institution. Think about the last time you used a public telephone booth – almost overnight, the entire infrastructure of public phone booths became irrelevant to its customers. Unless we (even as lone voices) keep working towards embracing and changing with these disruptive technologies, the school classroom may become the “public telephone booth” of the future.

So how can we, those of us who believe in these disruptive innovations, help influence the outcome of schools as institutions, before they become obsolete? And how can we find and implement the best approaches towards reaching that change? Something I’m worried about is repeating the same strategy or approaches to the point of diminishing returns, or in getting trapped using ineffective methods repeatedly and hoping for the best.

Jon Becker’s K12Online presentation discusses some recent research about the role and effectiveness of technology facilitators, specifically in the United States.  He contrasts two different styles of technology facilitation: the collaborator and the salesman. The collaborator is one that attends team meetings on a regular basis, continually sharing new ideas for how to embrace technology within the core curriculum that teachers are focused on. The salesman is one that sits in the lab or an office, waiting for teachers to approach him or her with an idea, and then sells the “wow factor” of certain tools based on that teacher’s needs. Based on Jon’s synthesis of the research, the collaborator approach is far more effective, meeting the teacher’s pressing needs of teaching the curriculum, while being a constant partner in the learning process.

In terms of thinking about how to work towards school-wide change, there’s no question that the collaborative approach is a step in the right direction. Working at the team level authentically embeds the facilitator into the schools infrastructure – albeit at a much smaller scale. Teachers will naturally be more receptive to suggestions simply by virtue of the fact that the facilitator is an informed, contributing member of the team. Not only will the collaborator get a better picture of all of the intricacies of a specific team, but they will be so much more knowledgeable about that particular team’s needs. This could be one way to begin to institutionalize change – by working through the school’s existing infrastructure, and consistently demonstrating enthusiasm and energy for new ways of teaching and learning that are directly relevant to the teacher’s needs at that level.

Along with the team approach, I love the idea of Viral PD that Jen has been talking about for ages – why wait for the PD you need to be offered by an institution that doesn’t realize they need it (or isn’t ready to provide it)? I love the fact that it is grassroots, but it’s organized, with a clear structure and focus and it allows for people to learn at their own pace without having to “wait” for help. Methods of professional development for educators should reflect the new ways we teach and learn, increasingly through online networks and user-created content, just like Julie Lindsay‘s E-Learning for Life Ning with her teachers in Qatar.

I especially love the idea of having a “home base” for this type of professional development. This is something I’m always promoting for the projects I conduct with students, why wouldn’t we use the same approach when teachers are learning? If we can start building an infrastructure now, a place where teachers can effectively share what they know, that infrastructure can be used when the broader shift begins to happen and the institution finally embraces the changed nature of professional development. Taking the time to thoughtfully implement this infrastructure now, can then become the foundation for a changed approach to professional development at the institutional level.

I understand that change is slow and that each small step we take is valuable, but I am a planner at heart, and I would like to find a strategic way to approach these small steps so that they lead to something more. I don’t mean “strategic” merely in the sense of being complex or clever. To me, it means an approach that’s transparently organized, with definite goals and a clear focus on the future. If you’re lucky enough to be working in a team, being strategic might also mean coordinating time to work together, or methods of cross-pollinating and sharing the team members’ insight. Being strategic in this sense would mean concentrating on deliberately putting structures in place in the present that could help bring about future systemic change. Whenever I plan a project, I always start with the end in mind, so why can’t we do this with teachers? Even if it is a small group of teachers, we can be thoughtful and coordinated about how we help build their understanding, right?

So I’m starting to think about how I can use the Understanding by Design process with my seedlings (or Tribes, if you prefer). Maybe taking the ISTE Standards for Teachers and designing “units of study” that would help build teacher understanding of one standard at a time? Developing authentic tasks and experiences for the teachers I’m working with that would demonstrate their understanding at a deeper level. Instead of letting the learning be hit or miss, dependent on totally arbitrary factors, perhaps I could use this approach to help coordinate the learning among the teachers that are already interested? Does anyone else have experience using their classroom unit planning methods as the framework for collaborating with fellow teachers? What methods get the best results? What extra factors need to be accounted for, and what needs to be modified, when thinking of teaching peers as a type of “unit planning”?

Without the energy and enthusiasm of even just one lone voice in the school (whether it’s a tech facilitator or a classroom teacher or a librarian or specialist), none of this will happen. As so many of us like to say, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world, but can we organize and strategize enough to provide an infrastructure for others to adopt and adapt to these changed perspectives, eventually, perhaps the whole institution? Is this one way to ensure that the changes, ideals and ideas brought by one lone voice can outlast their time at one specific institution?

What do you think? Is it possible to be strategic (in the sense that even small groups of learners outside of the institutional PD structure can be organized and focused) when you’re the lone voice?