always learning

Alex and I have always wanted to go to Japan and we finally managed to organize a trip there for our Songkran (Thai New Year) holiday a few weeks ago. We’re pretty well-traveled, so normally I wouldn’t think one of our vacations is worth a blog post, but this trip had something special: my PLN.

One of the reasons we decided to go to Japan this year was because I actually had quite a few friends living around the country. Not friends from college or high school, or former colleagues, in fact, I had never met most of them face-to-face. But we share ideas, collaborate on projects, and chat almost every day, thanks to Twitter, Skype, G-talk, and my RSS reader. Because of these virtual friendships, we were able to take a very unique tour of Japan, stopping in at three schools, staying with friends, and really experiencing a taste of life in Japan.

• Brian and Genki shared every single detail about transportation (and the essential Japan Rail Pass) I could ever want, down to pictures of which trains we could take and which ones we couldn’t.
• Brian and his wonderful wife, Alex, even welcomed us into their home, took us out to dinner, and let us stay overnight when we first arrived in Japan!
• Rhonda organized a full day of visits all around Canadian Academy and Rokko Island so we could meet various teachers and even take a sneak peak into CA teacher apartments. What better way to get to know a school than to visit in person?
• Christine organized an in-depth tour of Yokohama International School, including a delicious lunch off campus (with more fellow Twitterers, Brian, and Collin), and even a Japan educators Tweetup after work, where we got to make even more new friends (and visit Apple Japan HQ)!
• Leanne magically coordinated a full day of consulting for me at Tokyo International School, where I got to meet quite a few fellow Twitterers (like Allan, Matt, Michelle, Andrew, Lisa, and even a new ISB colleague) and of course, got to continue building my consulting experience.

Of course, through all of this, I got to know my virtual friends so much better. It still amazes me how deeply we can connect online, and just how real my virtual friendships are. Meeting Leanne, Rhonda, Christine, and Genki for the first time wasn’t really like the first time – I knew them already from our many conversations!

This isn’t the first time I’ve met members of my PLN face to face, but it is the first time it hasn’t been at a conference or professional event (or on my own “turf” in Bangkok). I love that we originally connected based on our professional interests, but that we can build on that foundation to create a true friendship that extends beyond work.

Thank you so much, friends, for making our trip to Japan so absolutely fantastic! We never could have done it without you!

The best thing about holidays is spending time with friends, and thanks to my PLN, it seems like I have friends almost everywhere!

How have you connected, in person, with your PLN?

I love learning. I used to love professional conference too – mostly because they were a great place to learn. But, last weekend, at our regional teacher’s conference (ETC), I made a realization, well two, realizations:

1. I get more relevant, interesting, and informative information via my PLN than I could hope to get at even the best professional conference experience – and without having to leave the country or spend a cent.

Therefore:

2. For me, conferences are no longer primarily about learning, at least not in the traditional sense of attending lectures, doing activities and taking notes.

Yikes! I guess I probably could have seen this coming. I mean, you can’t get as much exciting and engaging material as I do from my PLN without raising your expectations for a professional learning experience a little bit. But, somehow, before I left for ETC, I was still in the mindset that this conference would be a place to push my thinking, to expose me to new ideas, to put my learning on hyper speed.

What I realized is that I often get better information through my RSS reader and Twitter than I do via more traditional, formalized educational experiences like a conference. While I learned something new from every session I attended, there were a few sessions where I was glad to be able to sit within range of the wifi and go through my reader, finding exactly what I needed at that moment. This wasn’t because the presentations were lacking, it’s just that I’m starting to realize that there’s a limit to what I can gain from a pre-constructed session, devised for a broad audience, about something that might only be indirectly related to my learning needs.

Now, this is not to say that this particular conference wasn’t useful (I did learn a lot about teaming – although I probably could have learned all of that from a book – and saw a fantastic session on developing a classroom community led by my new friends Sam and Chad), or that I don’t think conferences in general are useful. In fact, quite the opposite. Last weekend I realized that conferencing is all about people: connecting, building relationships, finding new paths and solidifying old (or virtual) friendships.

At this particular conference, I had the absolute pleasure to meet and spend some quality time with Keri-Lee, Ryan, Adrienne, Sam, and Chris; as well as see Steve, David, Kendra and Debbie again. I had some great conversations with my wonderful colleagues Jeff and Chrissy that we may not have had the time or the energy for at school. I discovered connections with Jeff and Eduardo, and I’m sure I crossed paths with quite a few more familiar “usernames” as well.

I might not have gotten something new from every single session, but I did meet at least a dozen people who were already in my personal learning network.

I may not have attended every session, but I participated in deep, thoughtful conversations with people I had just met, about ideas we found relevant and important to our learning.

I didn’t find myself in awe of any specific presentations or the information I learned from them, but I reveled in the power of my personal learning network to help me make connections, push my thinking, and expand my horizons.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m looking at conferences differently now. Like Jeff, I don’t like learning alone. But, I think we can make our conferences all about learning together – we just might not want to follow the pre-determined program… I guess we’ll have to make our own.

Has your perception of conferences changed now that you’ve built a PLN? What about our students? Is this how they feel while they’re in school? As educators, should we expect that students can learn more from their PLN than they can from us?

Over the past few weeks of organizing and hosting K12Online LAN parties, reading about Seth Godin’s new book Tribes, and following the various blog posts from the Connectivism & Connecting Knowledge course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes, I have made a bit of a realization:

As much as I love working with students and teachers, and being at the center of 21st century learning at ISB, what would be most useful for our teachers is actually being connected to other teachers at school that share their interests, and can help them learn and grow in the direction they want.

It’s not that I can’t do this with and for our teachers, but if I want this growth to be sustainable it can’t be about me (or about any individual at the school). It has to be something that teachers can do themselves. They have to know who they can reach out to, who has the knowledge or information they need, and who can help them move to the next step.

So, really what I need to be doing is figuring out how to connect our teachers to each other. As odd as this may sound, considering that we all work in the same physical structure every day, many of us don’t know teachers in other divisions (I hardly know any high school teachers, even though this is my second year at ISB) and we most certainly don’t know who is interested in which aspects of teaching and learning in a digital world. Because our days are so jam-packed and busy, we actually need a way to connect asynchronously – even though we are in physical proximity most of the day.

I’ve known for many years just how powerful a network can be, but I seemed to always focus on making those connections with individuals outside my day-to-day work environment, the benefits of being able to find a like-minded colleague without having the fortune of physically sharing a teaching space. But, over the last few years, we’ve planted enough seeds around the school, spread out throughout each division, that we actually may have a network of learners right here, working together every day, and we just haven’t realized it yet.

At our last ISB21 Team meeting, we talked about this and Jeff and I came up with an idea: start a social network at school using our Elgg install. We can create a group, Jeff and I will populate it with relevant information, videos, images, etc before inviting other teachers, and then share it with our dedicated early adopters so they can add even more. Eventually we can share the group with the whole school to see where it goes. Even if we only connect a small group of teachers that wouldn’t otherwise be connected, it will be worth it!

Here are the benefits we’ve thought of:

• It’s hosted at school, so it’s fast and we don’t have to rely on an outside connection (often tenuous at best in Bangkok) – a better choice for us than something like Ning.
• It’s private, just for ISB staff, which may help teachers feel safer sharing and learning in a new environment.
• We’re planning to run a survey using ProfilerPro in January (Chad’s brilliant idea) which will graphically represent areas (and individuals) where the school is strong in their use and understanding of technology. This survey would allow teachers to find other individuals in the school that have the skill set their looking for and the social network would provide a place for them to connect outside of their extremely busy school-day schedules.
• By allowing teachers to learn from each other we’re enabling them to be self-directed and independent, while still providing a basic structure for how to get started. This could be a gateway to developing a more international personal learning network once they see the value of connecting this way.
• By connecting our various seedlings around the school, we’re hoping more will grow. The “look what she’s doing – I want to do that too” mentality.
• By using this tool for their own learning, teachers will be more likely to see how relevant appropriate it can be for classroom use.
• By connecting peers to each other, we’re taking away some of the dependence on us, allowing individuals to continue to sustain their learning beyond our tenure at the school.
• We could invite incoming teachers into the group before they arrive, allowing them to get a first-hand look at what teachers are learning about at ISB.

What do you think? Are we onto something? Is something important missing? Has anyone else tried this at their school? What were the results?

Marietta Diner by The Rocketeer
Interlocking (fins) toy #2 by Ctd 2005

Having been a middle school teacher for most of my career, I have to admit the littlest kids were my biggest fear when I accepted this elementary-focused position. But, oh, they are just so adorable! No matter what happens during the day, the moment I walk into the kindergarten classroom, or they come into the Learning Hub, I can’t stop a huge grin from spreading across my face. There’s nothing quite like a knee-level hug from 10 five-year-olds at once!

After working with one of our fantastic pre-Kindergarten teachers last year and getting a little bit of an idea of just what the youngest of our little darlings can do, I was anxious to try another project this year.

I heard a lot of talk before I started about how the younger kids “can’t” use computers and how they “don’t know how” to work a laptop. So, those of you that use technology with your kindergarten classes will know just how pleasantly surprised I was to see just what they can do, and for those of you that don’t – they can do a lot more than you would expect.

Certainly you have to break each step down into manageable chucks, of course you can only do short bits at a time, and for sure, they need a different type of support than middle school students, but they absolutely can use technology – and a lot quicker and more independently than I was lead to believe.

This year I’m working with two amazing ISB Kindergarten teachers (and 8 other teachers around the world) on the KinderKidsDraw project. Basically, we started from the idea that the kindergarten students used to go to the computer lab (which no longer exists) to “learn” KidPix once a week with the technology teacher. After thinking about the fact that once a week, for 20 minutes each time, and often extended breaks in between, may not be the best way for kids to build their understanding of new concepts, and maybe KidPix isn’t something we want them to “learn” since we’re looking to enhance core content not teach software, we came up with a new idea:

Use KidPix to enable students to draw their understanding about the new concepts they are leaning in class. Spend perhaps 20 minutes a day for 3 days in a row breaking down the drawing steps into small chunks so that they can create a finished drawing every few weeks. Then, taking that finished drawing, upload the picture onto VoiceThread and have the students record what they learned that is represented in the picture. Over the course of the year, these VoiceThreads can become an electronic portfolio of their developing understanding in various subjects.

We started with the “All About Me” social studies unit by having students draw (first by hand, to be able to compare later) a picture of their face, and then record an introduction to themselves on VoiceThread. It was interesting to see just how many of the students preferred drawing on the computer, even though they said it was much harder than drawing on paper.

Each class has now posted their completed VoiceThread on our collaborative wiki so that we can help students find connections with their peers all over the world.

On Thursday we watched the VoiceThreads from Spain, the US, and Canada as a class. As we were watching, we paused every now and again to ask how many students in the room have a common interest with the students in another country. It was fascinating to see their looks of surprise when they realized that kids all over the world love Ben 10, cupcakes and the color yellow.

Once they had an introduction to each class, I worked with our students (one-on-one) to select one specific student from another class, and then record a comment on their VoiceThread introduction. They were very quick to choose which ones they wanted to leave a comment on and they absolutely loved hearing their own voice play back through the VoiceThread.

Next up we hope to do something around the topic of weather and seasons. It will be interesting to see which of our students have actually seen snow previously and sharing the pictures of our different seasons should be a real eye-opener for those that have lived in southeast Asia all of their lives. The plan is for these connections to continue throughout the school year so that our students can begin to have the experience of create an (age-appropriate) personal learning network with their peers in other international and public schools around the world.

We are definitely proceeding slower than I would in the intermediate and middle grades, and I am doing a bit more facilitation than I would with older students, but it is working. The students are enjoying the experience and they are totally ready and excited to “talk” to other students around the world. It’s still pretty amazing to me that a five-year-old in Bangkok can get to know a five-year-old in Spain with just a few quick lessons and audio recordings!

What do you think? Can kindergarten students “do” age-appropriate technology-rich projects? Or should I be focusing my attention on the upper grades?

Chalk by onlyalice
A Puzzle of Paint by brentdanley