always learning

Cross-posted on the K12Online Conference blog

I could not be more honored to be the pre-conference keynote speaker for this year’s K12 Online conference!

I have been participating in this annual conference since its inception in 2006 and every year I am amazed at the quality of presentations shared by educators around the world. The opportunity to learn together over the course of the conference (and beyond) is one of the most inspiring and engaging experiences of the year for me. Of course, this year’s lineup is no different!

When I was asked to keynote this year’s event, I knew right away that I wanted my presentation to have a global focus. Thinking back over the course of my ten years of living overseas, I realized that in many ways my exposure to new ways of thinking about technology has been paralleled by some similar learning experiences in the real world. I wanted to explore those links between virtual and real-world perspective shifts, and in the process try to share what I feel is an interesting and unique perspective in the expat mindset.

I’ve also decided to try to practice what I preach and make this presentation a true global collaboration, and although I will be putting together and presenting the final product, I really wanted to make it based on group input. Thankfully, my personal learning network includes a number of outstanding international school educators who’ve been willing to help me in preparing my presentation (thank you!). Right now I’ve gotten a lot of great input and material from (in no particular order):

• Jabiz Raisdana in Qatar
• Sara Patterson and 3 of her fabulous students in Korea
• Susan Sedro in Singapore
• Julie Lindsay, Jeff Plaman (and several of his fantastic students) and Tod Baker in China
• Clint Hamada and one of his wonderful students in Vietnam
• Maria Gomez in Saudi Arabia
• Steve Katz and 2 of his amazing students in Costa Rica
• Brandon Hoover in the Philipines
• Justin Hardman and Ryan Skardal in Hong Kong
• Brian Lockwood, Genki U. and Christine U. in Japan
• Darby Sinclair in Taiwan
• Dennis Harter in Thailand

While these teachers have already sent me fantastic material, I would love to include other perspectives as well. Knowing that the deadline is just over a month away, I’m beginning to put the final pieces together, and would love to hear your thoughts, include your perspectives, and emphasize the power of global collaboration in the final product.

Here’s the presentation overview:

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education

Everything I need to know about the future of education I learned, not from kindergarten, but from living overseas. Looking at daily life in foreign lands reveals a colorful spectrum of inspiring metaphors for the shifts we need to make in education. Featuring voices from students and teachers from around the globe, this presentation will start with a look through an expatriate’s eyes at some vibrant details of daily life in many lands. Often what we may find initially chaotic, disorienting and strange in other countries can actually spark new ways of thinking about teaching and learning.

Then, again through the voices and viewpoints of teachers and students from all around the world, we’ll examine the unique aptitudes which allow successful expats to thrive in any environment: adaptability, flexibility, the ability to understand differing viewpoints and constructs, and the communications skills to collaborate across cultural, religious and linguistic barriers. These are exactly the skills that future students and teachers will need to confidently enter the digital, global, converging, collaborative world of tomorrow – wherever they might be physically located.

What do you think? Does this sound interesting to you? Are you an expat or Third Culture Kid? Have you or your students participated in a global collaboration? What did you gain from that experience?

Last weekend I had the honor of co-leading the Flat Classroom Workshop (pictures here) with Julie Lindsay at the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong. I have to admit that although I knew it would be amazing after everything I had heard about the Flat Classroom Conference in Doha earlier this year, I had no idea just how amazing the whole experience would turn out to be!

Workshop Structure

The flat classroom workshop is a 2.5-day project-based learning experience for both students and teachers. We had about 30 high-school students and 10 teachers participating face-to-face, and about 20 registered virtual participants. The goal of the workshop is to allow participating students and teachers to experience a flat classroom project in a condensed amount of time. Basically, in the 2.5 days of the workshop, the students and teachers go through almost the entire process of a flat classroom project that might normally take six to nine weeks.

The students and teachers in the workshop are given a challenge (in this case, to develop and propose a solution to the problem of the digital divide). Students and teachers worked in separate teams of 5 (i.e.: teachers worked with only other teachers, and students worked only with other students). All teams had members from a variety of schools, including official virtual participants.

Over the course of the 2.5 days, teams had to research the digital divide, propose and pitch a solution to a small group of conference participants, present more formal pitches to all workshop participants and a virtual uStream audience at the end of the first full day, and then finally the three most-likely-to-succeed ideas were presented to the entire 21st-century learning conference as the final plenary session.

What was amazing to me about this process was the fact that not only did the teams have little to no understanding of the digital divide before the conference started, but most had never met their team members, and most of them were working in a different school with different equipment than they were used to, and they had to work together with virtual participants as team members, yet they jumped in with both feet, producing finished presentations that were absolutely outstanding.

Here’s what really stood out to me over the 2.5 days:

Project-Based Learning Works

It is absolutely amazing what students can do when you give them an authentic and achievable task and then get out of their way. We provided several focus sessions on pitching an idea, a basic overview of the digital divide, the power of visual imagery, and an introduction to digital storytelling, but for the most part the teams were on their own. Of course, Julie and I were facilitating the process, but watching students learn how to learn together and seeing the results of their cooperation was a great reminder for me that this is the way a classroom should be run.

Third Culture Kids

When the students first met each other, it was interesting see that they started their introductions with their ethnic background first. Once they established their cultural history they were able to bond about similar experiences (most of them were 3rd culture kids and many of them had never lived in their “home” country)  and work together in an open and accepting environment. It was interesting for me to see how important it was for them to acknowledge their cultural history and experiences before beginning the process of working together.

These Tools Are Still New

I’ve been working with web 2.0 tools for a few years now and they are starting to seem “old hat” to me, but for most of these students (and teachers), even though were particularly interested in technology, many of these tools were new or they hadn’t used them in this way. Of course, they all have Facebook accounts  and they regularly Skype with their extended families, they really didn’t have an understanding of how to use these tools for an academic purpose, and it was exciting to them to discover new ways to use them. It was a good reminder that the use of web 2.0 tools in education is nowhere near as prevalent as it can seem here in the edublogosphere.

Learning to Listen

One strong difference Julie and I noticed when we were presenting was that I will occasionally ask students to close their laptop lids to listen, while Julie doesn’t. I don’t think that one way is better than the other, but it’s made me wonder: do we need to teach (and model for) students how to stop and listen? I know when I’m working on my laptop and listening to something else at the same time, I am able to stop and listen when I need to, but I wonder if that’s a skill that needs to be taught and learned (not an innate ability that all people just naturally have). Can some students naturally pay attention while others are distracted by the laptop? I know that many of our teachers in the CoETaIL course find it very distracting to have their laptop lids open throughout our face-to-face sessions, but it didn’t bother the students at all, could it be a generational thing?

It’s all about Inquiry and Individualization

When I think of the digital divide, I automatically think about those who have access to technology versus those who don’t. What was interesting to me was that while watching the students try to develop a solution to this global problem, almost none of them tackled the issue of the haves and have-nots. They almost all chose to work on the problem of the “analog” generation versus the “digital” generation. They drew on their own experiences, for example: their grandparents who have difficulty communicating with them online. They focused on the problems of one generation not communicating the same way as another generation.

I was impressed to see that they were not only concerned about the older generation staying in touch with their families, but also about learning from their elders and valuing the input and perspective they have on the world in a format the younger generation understands. The fact that the topic and project given them were broad enough that they were able to find a perspective on it that they were passionate about clearly helped them to be motivated to find solutions that could actually be implemented in their lives.

The Power of Peer Grouping

When Julie organized the groups, she made sure that students and teachers were in separate groups – there were no mixed groups. At first, I wasn’t sure what I thought about that grouping, because I was interested to see how students and teachers might work together to use media, collaborate and find solutions. However, on the final day, when a little more than half of the participants (students and teachers) were working together to produce the final plenary session for the conference, it was amazing to see how quickly the traditional student-teacher dynamic returned. Literally the instant the student and teacher teams were mixed, the students stopped talking and the teachers took over.

After a few minutes, we split the groups, and the teachers and I debriefed for a few minutes about what had been happening and how quickly it happened. Although none of us were surprised to see it, all of the teachers had been consciously trying to step back and not take control, but it happened nonetheless. It was almost as if it were involuntary.

Process Over Product

I started out in an MYP school, and perhaps that’s why my approaches to teaching and learning have usually tended to match that philosophy. Seeing the MYP Design Cycle in action again at the Workshop (after working in Elementary for the last two years) really reminded me that students can tackle almost any technology project, even when starting with little or no previous knowledge, and work their way through it following that process. All the teacher needs to do is provide the framework for the students to lead them through that process of learning. It isn’t about the content, but about the process of learning with technology, and that process can be adapted to fit any content.

Virtual Audience and Virtual Team Members

The authentic task and opportunity for choice were great motivators, but it was especially interesting to see how the students reacted when we emphasized our virtual participants. As soon as a virtual team member was in the chatroom, students would jump in and talk to them, when they presented in front of their virtual audience on the uStream the students seemed to sit up straighter, and when we announced the global (online) vote the students wanted to watch the percentages changing in real time. It seems like this generation is so used to sharing so much of their lives with a (potentially) global audience that doing things without public interaction might not be worth it for them. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but it certainly makes me wonder what they must think when faced with a pencil-and-paper task to be read only by the teacher – when they’re already used to sharing their lives and their work with the world.

Participant Feedback

We’ve asked all of the participants to share their thoughts via an anonymous survey and their blog on the Flat Classroom Conference Ning. You can read all of their blog posts on the Ning, but I thought I’d include a few highlights here as well.

Chris Smith was also very generous with his time and spent quite a while with our participants recording their thoughts and experiences with his handy Flip. All of the videos are available on the 21st Century Learning Conference Ning – they’re all short clips and well worth watching.

From Beatrice (student):

It was a life-changing experience to connect, communicate, and cooperate with people from various cultures. I interacted with people I’ve never met before, and even spoke in front of a large audience; if you know how shy I am, you will understand how meaningful it was to me.

I think that the ultimate goal of Flat Classroom wasn’t to learn about technology, or to bridge the digital divide (although those were very, VERY important objectives!)– It was to Flatten the World.

I believe that when we broke down the walls of the classroom, a small crack was made on the walls of the world. Starting from flattening the classroom through technology, we shall flatten the whole world step by step.  I’m looking forward to the day I’ll be attending a “Flat World Conference.”

From Saundra (teacher):

The flat classroom project is not about creating a flat sameness from the peaks of diversity. It is about recognizing diversity and weaving it into a shared vision of how a problem can be solved. It is learning what it means to be even in understanding and experience and use that to create something new and uneven.

From Toby (student):

Our team has bonded over the past few days and we’re über tight. The tasks have been challenging yet rewarding. What we learned about our cultural differences will stay with us always. Hopefully we’ll be visiting Seoul soon! XD The time limits tortured us yet brought out the best in us. It was the first time we learned the concept of digital divide and we learned much about this through the workshop. We also learned a lot of teamwork and collaboration skills, as well as the secrets to creating a creative, memorable presentation.

From Sara (teacher):

The process that we engaged in over the last 48 hours at the 21st Century Learning Conference Hong Kong is what happens in reality. It’s not a lecture, it’s not passive (nor is it aggressive, thank goodness), it’s a genuinely tangible manifestation of real life. It’s a real problem, it’s a real solution, and it’s real time.

From Wu Ming (student):

This is my first time participating in some activities with someone from foreign countries and international schools. I found my language skills not as good as my teammates. My English is not fluent enough to fit the pace of the conference. I spent most of the time catching up with my teammates but not thinking of ideas. Though, I am glad that I was allocated into a team with friendly mates. They gave chance for me to try presenting and improve by time. I am comparatively bad in speaking English, but I am gaining confidence in speaking English after this activity.

On the other hand, the activity is fascinating. This is my first time (again) to attend lessons with a notebook all along. I enjoy computer lessons before since I can use the computer, not just sitting in the classroom and listen to what the teacher say. This activity provided a great chance for me to use computer without the need to worry about the timing due to the insufficient amount if computer. Other schoolmates from our school enjoyed this activity too. There are also many snacks provided so that we wouldn’t get too bored or sleepy. This is a nice learning environment for me, and I like to have this at my school.

Finished Products

If you’re interested in seeing the final products, check the Workshop wiki for embedded multimedia on each team page. You’ll also find the video archieves for our uStreamed sessions, including the final plenary.

Final Thoughts

I’m still on cloud nine a week later! The students and teachers that participated are absolutely amazing in every way. Seeing such a large group of students and teachers so passionate about learning, communicating and collaborating, and so committed to making a difference was a life changing experience. I sincerely hope that our FaceBook group, and our various Nings and wikis, will keep us connected – I, for one, want to keep learning with everyone who participated!

I owe Julie and Vicki a huge thank you for continuing to push boundaries, for connecting me (and so many others) through the Flat Classroom project so many years ago, and for giving me the opportunity to co-lead this workshop with Julie. I can not wait to do it again!

And I must admit, I’m kind of wishing I was still seeing this stunning view every day:

Once again, this school year is shaping up to be my busiest yet! (Seriously, how is it even possible to be any busier?)

In addition to moving into a slightly new role and continuing to teach courses for our SUNY Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy, I’m also very excited to be involved in a number of EARCOS weekend workshops around the Asia region.

All of these workshops are open for registration now and we would absolutely love to have participants from schools all over the region (and beyond!). We’re just starting to promote them (with the exception of the Flat Classroom Workshop) so please spread the word around your school!

The Flat Classroom Workshop at Hong Kong International School: September 16 – 19, 2009
Workshop Leaders: Julie Lindsay and Kim Cofino

The Flat Classroom Workshop is a 2.5 day strand of the 21 Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong. The aim of the workshop is to bring together geographically dispersed teachers and students with a view to learning about Web 2.0 communication and collaboration tools in a flattened learning environment while working on a project theme that can be transplanted back into their home school. The selected theme will inspire unity and action as well as fostering continued connections after the event in Hong Kong.

It is envisaged this will improve global understanding and cement friendships for ongoing collaborations. It is also envisaged that this will provide an opportunity for students and teachers together to “create the future” of education by employing best-practice use of emerging technologies, including mobile computing. Through exploration of a global or social issue and developing an “action” plan to work globally to overcome this, participants, both local and virtual, will model “flat classroom” modes of learning.

Garage Band for Beginners at the International School Bangkok: November 14 – 15, 2009
Workshop Leaders: Vincent Bullen and Kim Cofino

This hands-on workshop is geared toward teachers who have little or no experience working with Garage Band and will be ideal for elementary classroom teachers and music specialists. We will highlight classroom projects and upon completion you will walk away with the skills and knowledge necessary to integrate Garage Band with your class.

Garage Band is a powerful and user-friendly software program that allows you to create soundtracks, accompaniments, podcasts, and much more. During this course you will learn how to

• create musical projects (even if you don’t play an instrument),
• involve and inspire your students creativity,
• create podcasts,
• add effects,
• how to export and share your projects.

Create the Future: Become a 21st Century Learner at Beijing (BISS) International School: January 16 – 17, 2010
Workshop Leaders: Julie Lindsay and Kim Cofino

Embrace Web 2.0, 1:1 and online learning in conjunction with multimedia for your classroom through this project-based workshop. A hands-on approach is emphasized with opportunities for learners at all levels to explore, discuss and model 21st Century pedagogy using digital tools. Break out sessions will include personal learning network and digital portfolio development, digital citizenship best practice and Web 2.0 toolbox. Participants will also work in teams on “flat classroom” objectives including Web 2.0 skill building, global collaboration and project management. This workshop is designed to open doors to new modes of teaching and learning and focus on the learner (teacher an student) as communicator, collaborator and creator.

TechTrain 2010: Beginners Learning Technology Together at the International School Bangkok: January 30 – 31, 2010
Workshop Leaders: Tara Ethridge, Kim Cofino, Chrissy Hellyer, Dennis Harter

TechTrain 2010 is an EARCOS weekend workshop hosted at the Interantional School Bangkok, Thailand on January 30 – 31, 2010. The goal is to bring together beginning technology users to help build their understanding of digital tools and how they can be used to enhance the learning experience in the classroom. We are hoping a workshop at the beginning level will appeal to those teachers that want to get started using technology in their classroom, but don’t really know where to start. We want to make sure that the weekend is focused on actually producing something that can be used in the classroom on Monday, and that most of the sessions are hands on, allowing teachers to actually use these digital tools with support.

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’s annual 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.

The coaching team is reading Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives by Dr. Jim Knight and the ISB21 team is reading Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn.

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?

Two weeks ago, while co-presenting a keynote with Jeff for the WIAOC, I made an off-hand statement about our after-school PD offerings that got me thinking.

For the last 3 years at ISB, we have had open PD sessions 3 days a week, every week of the school year, some sessions more successful than others. We’ve tried a variety of different formats from topic-specific sessions (SmartBoard, Podcasts, RSS, etc), to general “thought-provoking” conversation and videos in our Wired Wednesday sessions, to simple walk-in personal tech support.

We are so happy to see just how many of our very busy teachers are interested in our variety of tech offerings, but we also know we can continue to improve our repertoire of support. So, every few months, in an effort to serve our teachers better, we reflect on which sessions are most popular and which might need to change, but we always end up offering something on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, every week.

As I was describing these different formats during the keynote, I happened to mention (partly in jest) that perhaps they would be even more successful if they weren’t offered on such a frequent basis. Maybe if there were fewer offerings, we’d have even more teachers attend because then, the sessions that we do offer would be perceived as more “special” and “worth” attending….

It just so happens that the very same week was also our last week of after-school PD support, which was clearly stated in Jeff’s regular e-mail. Interestingly, that week we had a larger group of teachers vying for our attention than we had had all year. Now, that could be due to the very busy end of the year stress, or maybe, it could be because it was clear that these were the very last times for our after school tech support.

I also happen to be reading The Paradox of Choice, in which the author, Barry Schwartz, claims (and I’m paraphrasing and simplifying here) that the more choices we have, the less likely and able we are to make a decision.

So, now I’m wondering: could it be, that by offering more PD opportunities, we are actually making it harder for our teachers to decide to attend?

What do you think? Should we offer sessions once a month? Once a fortnight? Rotate sessions so that we’re not doing the same three format every week? Offer certain sessions once a month and others once a week?

I <3 Jelly Beans 09 by NightRPStar on Flickr
Paradox of Choice cover on Baltimore BookWorm

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.

Inside.ISB Communication Portal

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.

Teacher Community:

LAN Parties

Earlier this year, Chrissy and I started hosting Local Area Network parties around the K12Online08 presentations. We held several of these sessions in various teacher’s homes throughout the city, watching one or two presentations each time, along with hosting a special guest via Skype for each session. At each session we had about 10 – 12 ISB teachers excited to learn something new about technology.

Early Adopter Group & Elgg Network

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.

Regular PD

As part of our professional development opportunities for all teachers at ISB, we offer informal tech support sessions 2 – 3 days a week, after school. We’ve tried a number of formats, from discussion-based Wired Wednesday, to walk-in/walk-out Personal Tech Support, and are always willing to adapt to the needs of our teachers. We have also worked hard to ensure that each of our grade level teams (in the elementary) includes a member of the ISB21 team.

Faculty Meetings

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?

Full Presentation:

Moving a Community Forward by jutecht on Flickr

One of the quotes from the panel session at the Hong Kong Summit has really stuck with me:

We look at technology as a tool, but our students look at it as an environment.
(Btw, if anyone can remember who said it, I would love to know!).

I often say that technology is just a tool to use when it meets our needs (like a pencil), but hearing this sentence made me re-evaluate my own perceptions. After all, what is a tool?

• something I use when it suits me
• something I control
• something I don’t need or want around me at all times – only when it’s necessary
• something small, manipulated by it’s user

Maybe we use this phrasing because it’s less intimidating, because teachers can see the direct comparison or evolution between a pencil and technology, because it helps us feel like we already know what to do with it (the technology, that is).

OK, so then what’s an environment?

• something that’s all around us, in use all time
• something we can not directly manipulate or control
• something necessary to live, and ubiquitous, like air
• something we are immersed in, even if we’re not specifically thinking about it or intentionally “using” it

That’s a big difference. What does this say about the different ways that students and adults might be perceiving the world around them? What does this mean for education?

Maybe it would help to think about other things that probably started off as strange new tools, but now are inescapable parts of our daily environment, for example: the alphabet, books, electricity, running tap water, etc. These tools are behind everything that we do, they are part of the fabric of our lives.

Although these tools started as something new and different, we can not simply choose to use them in one situation, but not in another. A math teacher wouldn’t say we don’t need to use the alphabet in this class because it’s math. An English teacher wouldn’t say we don’t need to know how to switch on the lights, because this is English, not science. So why do so many of us still think of technology that way?

As Greg Whitby pointed out during the same panel session: “You never send a changed individual back to an unchanged environment.” I think Greg was referring to teachers, but now I’m wondering: what if our students are the one’s who’ve changed? And what if our schools are the unchanged environment?

What do you think?

I am incredibly honored (and quite flattered) to be part of an amazing line-up of speakers at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) this summer, thanks to Elizabeth Helfant and Patrick Woessner. Plus, as if it wasn’t exciting enough to be billed on the same event as Will, Karl, Alec, Darren, Dean, Chris, Jeff and Matt, my session is scheduled the day after Kevin’s so we get to meet up for dinner before he flies out!

In reflecting back to the SUNY course I taught with Jeff earlier this year; the faculty meetings Tara, Jeff and I have facilitated this year; my 2 trips to Qatar to consult at QA over the past two years (thanks to Julie); my recent visit to TIS (thanks to Leanne); and the various conferences I’ve attended over the past few years; there are a few things I want to make sure I do in my workshop:

• Ensure that the session is participant-driven and focused on actually producing something that can be used in the classroom in August.
• Provide lots of time for discussion, reflection, and metacognition by asking participants to work in small groups.
• Create groups based on participant need – either ability groups (self-determined) or curricular/grade level groups.
• Focus on the practical, remembering that the how is just as important as the why. Break the session down into stages (the way I would in my classroom) so that participants can work through the entire planning and creation of a global project.
• Model quality curriculum planning and authentic technology integration by using the Understanding by Design method and following the MYP Technology Design Cycle while using a selection of digital tools that teachers might want to apply in their own project.

Here’s how I’m thinking I might organize the day:

9:00 – 9:15: Warm-up, get to know participants and their experience with this type of project. Use pre-assessment survey to determine teams and grouping.

Clearly state the goal that participants will develop and plan a global project to be used in August, based on their curricular needs following the UbD process and using the technology design cycle.

9:15 – 10:30: Share a revised version of the Connecting Classrooms Across Continents presentation which builds understanding of the value of global collaboration, focuses on practical tips on how to develop a global project, and shares examples from a selection of classrooms and grade levels.

The rest of the day is structured hands-on work time following the MYP Technology Design Cycle, with opportunities for participants to work in groups, but come back to the larger whole at the beginning of each stage of the cycle for tips, strategies and introductions to the various tools needed.

10:30 – 11:30: Investigate: Start with a round robin or “final word” activity (in groups) with an article that really highlights the benefits of global collaborations. Then, provide participants with a wiki with links to authentic global collaborations to explore to get some ideas/inspiration. Next, have teams brainstorm (maybe using inspiration or one of the web-based mind mapping tools) a global project that would enhance a current unit in their curriculum.

Lunch

12:00 – 1:00: Plan: Start with an intro or overview of the UbD process (depending on what participants already know) to help design the project with the end in mind. Begin to build a unit planner using the same wiki, with template provided.

1:00 – 2:00 Create: Create the “home base” for the project – a wiki, Ning, blog, whatever. Demo some tools teachers might want to use to learn some tricks for how to use whichever tool is best for the task. Begin connecting with other teachers that might be interested in participating around the world through sharing on a Ning or Twitter (or anything else that we can think of). Focus on actually creating the online space that students will use in August.

2:00 – 2:30: Evaluate: Share projects with the larger group, reflect on process so far & what needs to go next

2:30 – 3:00: Feedback survey for me, links to all projects on the wiki, any final questions answered.

What do you think? Would you want to attend a session like this? What else would you do to make it a positive experience for the participants?

Tom Kelley got me thinking at the Hong Kong Summit: Where’s the innovation in our schools? Where’s the risk taking? Where’s the abundance of ideas? Who’s seeing things with fresh eyes? How are we taking the best ideas from other industries and applying them to education?

Generally speaking, schools are excruciatingly slow to change. Even when schools are making a concerned effort to be innovative and re-think traditional modes of learning, it often ends up being a variation of what’s already in place. I’ve been on countless curriculum review committees where one pre-packaged program was chosen over another in an effort to “modernize” the learning experience, but in the end all we ever seem to get is a new coat of paint on what we’re already doing. Sure, we’re moving forward, but it’s at a snail’s pace.

So how fast should schools be adapting and changing? What should the pace of innovation be?

Unfortunately, as Tom eloquently described, if we have any hope of staying ahead of the curve, we need to be moving even faster than the other innovators in our field. It’s not enough simply to be an innovator,  you need to stay ahead of everyone else who’s innovating – even if they appear to be outside your field.

Tom refers to this as the “Red Queen Effect” after a scene in Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, where Alice is shocked to be standing in the same place after running quite fast for an extended period of time and the Red Queen explains, “if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

This isn’t a question of schools choosing to stand still or not innovating at all, because I do believe we’re all trying to move forward in one way or another. This is about the dangers of slowing your pace of innovation just enough for others to out-pace you – not necessarily other schools, but rather other modes of learning. Interestingly, Tom also mentioned that resting on your laurels is usually the time when others outpace you innovatively (something I think many good schools are very much in danger of doing all too often).

Another Hong Kong presenter, Stephen Heppell, was also careful to emphasize that the biggest challenge today is the pace of change: exponential. With this rapid pace of change there is no time for the “staircase mentality” (pilot, review etc). He reminded us that we didn’t value tech in the 80s – what are we mistakenly not valuing now?

Why does this happen?

Tom explained that innovation falls squarely in quadrant 2 of Steven Covey’s matrix: it’s “Important”, but “Not Urgent”. For example, we absolutely have to have a new math/science/reading/social studies program. The teachers can’t teach without one, so picking a new one is going to fall in quadrant 1, and ultimately, innovation gets put off until tomorrow. However, innovation has an urgency all its own and those that don’t place innovation as a priority will find themselves displaced.

As innovators, Stephen mentioned that we need to be critical about what’s convenient for us versus what’s good for learning, for example, our assumption that ringing a lunch bell means that a thousand students will suddenly be hungry at the same time, or that students are at the same stage in their learning (in same grade) because they happened to born between two Septembers, etc.

Another problem is that radical change is often thought of as expensive. On the contrary, as Stephen, observed: “It’s more expensive to make or maintain schools and add bits of exciting 21st century around than to just skip to a much cheaper 21st century model model of community learning.” This is a good example of the difficulty people face in conceptually realizing the advantages of bold innovation: we naturally assume that slow steady progress will be best (as we are taught from an early age, when the tortoise wins the race).

How do we make innovation a priority in our educational institutions?

Tom discussed the 10 Faces of Innovation from his recent book of the same name, explaining that we need 10 different types of people to bring all the facets of innovation to the forefront of our organization:

• The Hurdler: this is the person who says, “of course there will be obstacles – that’s my job, overcoming obstacles.”
• The Storyteller: data is not that powerful. Stories carry messages farther.
• The Anthropologist: this is the person who focuses on seeing with fresh eyes (or “vuja de”). People get immersed in their own environment and simply stop seeing it for what it is, it becomes “just the way things are,” for example the turnstiles at CDG airport, which are impossible to carry luggage through, despite the fact that they’re between the airport and the subway. Yet airport employees see them day in and day out and they haven’t been changed. We need to observe objects in use in their natural environment so that we can design with empathy
• The Experimenter: this person gives permission for failure, knowing that innovation involves risk. To innovate, we must to be able to fail in a safe environment by creating an idea-friendly organization where we have the ability to “squint” and see the “shape” of an idea.
• The Cross Pollinator: the ability to share ideas, to take inspiration from other cultures and enhance, thereby gaining in translation. Examine other ideas cross continents, cross countries, cross industry, cross age (”reverse mentors”) to be able to build upon other ideas and transform and improve them.
• The Experience Architect : The Experience Economy – book (commodity, product, service, experience)
• The Collaborator: brings people together to get things done.
• The Director: enabler of great creativity around them
• The Set Designer: approaches from people standpoint then looks at business & technology elements to create effective designs. Building engaging, seductive, delightful learning is also a design task.
• The Care Giver: have empathy and work to extend the relationship.

How do you structure for innovation?

Tom shared several criteria for successful innovation:

• A flat leadership model to enable anyone to have their idea heard by the “boss” no matter where you are in the organization. He also pointed out, however, that after many years of experimentation at IDEO, the company found that 100 people is the limit for a flat leadership model, and any larger organization will unfortunately need to have a “boss’s boss” and so on.
• Must have an abundance mentality, the goal is to share as many ideas as possible, knowing that only a very small percentage will work. He cites an example of a game-design company which had 1000 ideas but only 6 patents in one year.
• The need for good humor, an environment where it is OK to make fun of the boss.
• Workspace design must focus on building collaboration, for example, the stereotypical office design of cubicles actually look a lot like voting booths, which are specifically designed to prevent collaboration. What about our set-up of each teacher in their own classroom? I’m not sure you could design anything so physically non-collaborative if you tried!

What does this mean for education?

The time for innovation is now, as Stephen described (and Marco Torres’ slide below emphasizes), “learning is at a crossroads:” we’re looking at a choice between productivity and new approaches, those new approaches being:

• student portfolios;
• making huge leaps in our model of education, not tiny steps forward;
• working to produce ingenious, engaged, inspired, surprising, collegiate students;
• and developing learning experiences that are open-ended, project-focused, multidisciplinary.

By innovation, I don’t mean just adding more technology to the classroom, I mean thinking differently about learning in its entirety. For example, I still find it hard to believe that many schools have not fully implemented a project-based learning approach. This was all the rage when I was in teacher’s college 10 – 12 years ago, but even now it’s still marketed as something “new” (maybe that’s why I like the MYP so much). How is it possible that, 12 years after learning about a model of education being the best thing since sliced bread, only a few schools really excel at this approach?

It’s not technology alone that makes us innovative, it’s looking at learning with fresh eyes. It’s asking ourselves: if we could start from scratch, what would our schools look like today? I can’t remember who said this first but, “technology is just an amplifier” – technology doesn’t change the quality of teaching or learning, it will only amplify it, either in a positive or negative way. What we need to be looking at is changing our approaches to learning, not modifying our curriculum to a “newer” version of what we’ve already had for the past 20 years.

We could start by taking a step back and looking at the whole experience of teaching and learning, as if we  were aliens from another planet or anthropologists studying a remote tribe, as Tom described the role of the Anthropologist in his 10 Faces of Innovation. It’s only through observing learning in its natural environment today, wherever it’s taking place, that we can understand how to build schools that meet the needs of today’s learners. As Tom quipped, “I don’t know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn’t a fish!”

What do you think? Is your school innovative? What are you doing to encourage innovation? What can schools do to focus on innovation despite the daily urgencies of our profession?

If you were an alien who knew nothing about our education system and you arrived on our planet today, how would you design a learning community for today’s students?

Miguel Guhlin quote from Clarence Fisher, Literacy as Battleground, image source
Chris Lehmann quote image source: Flickr user Ali K.

Over the last two years I’ve been fortunate to attend quite a few conferences (thanks to my wonderfully supportive admin at ISB). One of the things I’ve noticed at these conferences is that the attendees seem to be almost the same group of people over and over again, which I love, because it gives me a chance to connect with my virtual colleagues in person on a fairly regular basis. It feels like we are really building a community of learners among the various international schools in the Asia region, and I know the group is continuing to grow year by year.

However, as I realized last year, that group of techies is actually few and far between. We’re well connected online, but are often only a very small number in our own individual schools. And of course, it’s usually our job to help our colleagues learn with technology. So we come together, get new ideas, and then head back to our individual schools to spread the exciting news. It’s up to us to move our colleagues forward, to meet them where they’re at and help them take the next step.

What this usually means is that tech conferences tend to cater to those that are already knowledgeable about technology in education. Again, great for us, but not so great for our colleagues in our individual schools that may want to learn but don’t know where to start.

So, my lovely colleague, Tara and I, were brainstorming a few weeks ago about what we could do to help our teachers here at ISB (and elsewhere in the region) that might not be ready to attend a very tech-savvy conference.

We know that many schools in this region are making technology a priority. We know that there are plenty of teachers who want to learn, but might be intimidated by a big technology conference. We know that there are lots of teachers who would be willing to try something new if it were presented at their level. We know a tech-focused conference wouldn’t really be able to meet their needs as well as the needs of the educational technologists they work with.

And, thus, the idea of TechTrain 2010 was born! TechTrain 2010 is an EARCOS weekend workshop hosted at the Interantional School Bangkok, Thailand on January 30 – 31, 2010. The goal is to bring together beginning technology users to help build their understanding of digital tools and how they can be used to enhance the learning experience in the classroom. We are hoping a workshop at the beginning level will appeal to those teachers that want to get started using technology in their classroom, but don’t really know where to start. We want to make sure that the weekend is focused on actually producing something that can be used in the classroom on Monday, and that most of the sessions are hands on, allowing teachers to actually use these digital tools with support.

We’re just in the beginning planning stages, but we’re pretty excited. We really want to make the workshop a comfortable, safe and open environment where everyone can learn together and we can all walk away with something concrete and tangible to give participants a specific next step to take in the classroom.

Tara and I passionately believe that everyone can be successful using technology in the classroom. This is a place for those that consider themselves to be beginners with technology can start!

I know that pretty much everyone reading this blog is already tech savvy, but I’m hoping that you can pass on this post, and the workshop wiki, to anyone you think might be interested in attending. We have a short Google form for interested participants to complete so we can get an idea of what people would be interested in learning about in an effort to tailor the sessions to our participants needs. We know that the workshop is many months away, but we also know that sometimes PD expenditures need to be planned well in advance, so we wanted to get the word out early!

Of course, we’re open to any ideas and suggestions too! What do you think a beginner technology conference should include? Any thoughts or advice on how to organize and run a weekend workshop like this?

Original Image by Dan Kamminga, Creative Commons License