always learning

My wonderful new teaching partner, Tara, and I have had a number of conversations about a recent trend I’ve seen within my personal learning network to remove the word “technology” from our discussions about teaching and learning in a digital world (see, there! I just did it!).

We’ve developed all sorts of phrasing and terminology that seem to deliberately avoid using the word technology: 21st century, integration, eLearning, school 2.0, mLearning, digital literacy, etc. In fact, we seem to be coming up with words to describe what we’re doing with technology much faster than the general teaching population can catch on.

How many teachers in your school know what the term “21st century literacy” (or any of the above terms) means? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it’s not too many people.

It seems that we’re developing this terminology for several reasons (in my opinion):

• We don’t want it to be all about the technology – of course, that’s the change we’re talking about, but it’s still all about the learning, right?
• We don’t want to scare teachers off – and we all know “technology” can be scary, so let’s just take it out of the conversation.
• We want to avoid the “oh I’m not responsible for teaching technology” phenomenon, we want to make it clear that teaching these skills are everyone’s responsibility. If you teach safety with scissors and safety with strangers, you should also be teaching safety online.

But here are the problems:

• We seem to go through these terms quicker than anyone else can catch up, coining phrases and dropping them, saying they are passe already. To the general teaching population, I’m not sure that’s true. We’re just making it harder and harder for teachers to stay current by moving faster and faster in our shared language about teaching and learning.
• If the terminology is too vague or not transparent enough, it’s easy to say “I’m already doing that” – even when you’re not doing it in the way that reflects new methods of learning. What teacher doesn’t work on communication or collaboration or creating in class?

I believe we are all technology teachers because of the very fact that technology is so tightly woven into the fabric of our society, but does everyone feel that way? And if they don’t, are we helping them build their understanding of that reality if we’re constantly removing the critical facet of the terms and then changing them so quickly? I think it’s great to have online discussions about terminology, but I’m wondering about the link between the philosophical debates educators might have among themselves, and then bringing something useful back to the institutions we work in.

And here’s the thing, in the end, what we’re asking teachers to do is different than what they’re already doing. Even though I believe digital/visual/media literacy is just literacy, and even though I would love if every teacher understood that shift, the reality is that is not the case. So, we do need a commonly understood label or a term or a name that will help teachers understand that we are asking for different teaching and learning experiences. We are expecting changes in the classroom that reflect the changes in society.

So, how can we ask them to make changes if we’re not describing that change in our everyday language? Is there a way we can find some terminology that both represents this constantly changing learning landscape, but also is meaningful for our colleagues that aren’t as involved in the world of educational technology?

What do you think?

One of the most interesting aspects of my job is figuring out how to best support teachers – everyone is at a different comfort and experience level with technology, and most are uncomfortable admitting what they don’t know. Building individual relationships with new colleagues, as well as getting to know team, department and faculty dynamics are a critical factor to my success as a 21st Century Literacy Specialist (or as a Technology Facilitator, for that matter).

Over the past few weeks, one thing has really stood out for me: Just like I believe I need to get to know a class and their teacher when working on a collaborative project, getting to know the team is essential to deeper, more authentic and appropriate support, for both the curricular needs and the needs of the individual teachers on the team.

Towards the end of last year I realized that I was able to make connections with a number of individual staff members, and therefore help shift those teachers through projects at every grade level. But, I realized I still wasn’t starting the shift with any groups of teachers.  Most of the teachers were at different grade levels and didn’t regularly cross paths with the other teachers I was working with. The momentum was with individuals only.

As powerful as that momentum had been, I started to realize that teachers truly appreciate support and common goals with their team. If they can try something new with their team members, they have a built-in support structure that fits easily into their daily practice of teaching and learning that also conveniently slots right into the existing infrastructure of the school. Plus the added benefits of a safety-net: everyone participates, everyone helps, everyone agrees that this is the path to take. Convenience, comfort and accessibility are all be strong benefits to working through the process as a team.

So, this year I started my quest to find a team at ISB that would allow me to be a mostly-silent, but always willing to help, member. Luckily the wonderful and welcoming grade 4 team allowed me to join, sit in on their weekly team meetings, and offer my two cents when appropriate. It has truly been a valuable learning experience.

Working with an entire team has helped me understand each individual member of the team better through their interactions with others. I also have a deeper understanding of their needs for curricular support, as well as the challenges they are facing in their classrooms. I hope that, by being there for them, they also see me as a productive and contributing member of their team. I try to offer ideas that will streamline their daily tasks, help engage their students, and add a digital literacy component to their units of study.

One of the most powerful experiences has been over the past week and a half while the team has been discussing their current social studies unit, Influence. The team had previously decided on their Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions, but were not sure how they wanted to assess student learning.

As a member of the team, I was part of all of the discussions about how the unit went last year, struggles and successes, ideas for improvement, concerns and how it all fits into the bigger picture of student learning in grade four. Because I had all of that background, I was able to share an idea for a final assessment that (hopefully) will meet the needs for this unit, adding in a 21st century-style approach, and also take into consideration time factors, other units of study that need to be completed, technical resources, and teacher and student comfort level with technology tools.

Without being a participant in all of those discussions I would have only had a one-sided view of the need at hand, and certainly would not have been able to put the curricular needs of the unit into the context of the entire grade level. Just stepping in to offer my ideas for a quick 10-minute discussion once in a while would not have prepared me to truly meet the needs of the team. I have also been able to spend dedicated time with some of the team members and our Curriculum Coordinator to fully flesh out this unit so that it meets the needs of the teachers and the students. Now this unit will be part of the grade 4 curriculum for years to come.

To truly collaborate with teachers, I am starting to believe that we, as resource people, need to be part of their team environment. I can certainly work individually with teachers to help them with their specific classroom needs, but to make any major shifts in the thinking of the school or to effect change in the curriculum, the collaboration needs to come at the team level.

What do you think? How are you best supporting your teams or departments at your school?

Move Over Clematis by neon.mamcita
Seedling from twenty-questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What sparked your interest?

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

What concerns do you have?

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

How can we best support you?

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

Contact Me?

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

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

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

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

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

Bowling 1250 by trimmer741

Two recent articles in the New York Times have brought this question to the forefront of my mind this week.

The first: Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing by Tamar Lewin:

“…their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.” – Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.”

The second: Becoming Screen Literate by Kevin Kelly

“When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book.

Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.”

Along with an older article from the New York Times,

The Future of Reading: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading by Motoko Rich:

“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

It’s interesting to see more established publications trying to document and understand this shift in literacy, especially considering that many people still believe that literacy is solely being able to read and write in printed form.

This is something I would like to bring to our discussions of reading and writing at ISB. Although I make an effort to bookmark everything I come across, I’m sure I’ve missed quite a bit.

Do you have any resources, especially from more “established” or “traditional” media outlets, to share? I’m looking specifically for concrete, research-based (like this BECTA report or this recent MacArthur Report), examples or articles that would help people outside the educational technology field better understand this shift.

What are your thoughts on the concept of literacy? Does your school have a definition that reflects our changing and expanding understanding of literacy?

I’ve been thinking a lot about professional development lately, especially about its critical role in shifting a school or shifting a community of teachers within a school, and then sustaining that change.

I’m thinking about how to support the vastly different needs of my colleagues across the school, but also to build in opportunities for connection, collaboration and communication across, between and among all of those different teachers. I’m thinking about professional development as a self-sustaining opportunity for learning – based on individual need and interest, but also allowing for cross-pollination of ideas and experience. I’m thinking about modeling professional development after my experiences with a personal learning network.

There are two models of professional development I’ve been delivering throughout my career, individual and whole school:

Individual PD

This is the type of support I offer on a daily basis:

• Working one-on-one with teachers who are ready and willing to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess units of inquiry in their classroom.
• Setting up one-on-one meetings with teachers to help them learn new tools, or figure out how to work best with the ones they already have.
• Casual conversations in the hallway that turn into inspirations for ideas to use in the classroom.
• After school technology support for tasks that have to be done, but could be made even easier through the use of technology.

This model of support helps deepen learning by providing enough time on a regular basis, grounded in curricular needs, to build individual understanding.

Although this is great way to support an individual teacher’s personal professional development, it can sometimes feel very disjointed. Having enough time to work with all of the different individuals in one school can be challenging, and/or discussing the same ideas with several different people or not being able to cross pollinate ideas because it’s always a “private” discussion can be isolating.

School Wide PD

This is the traditional model of PD we’re all used to:

• Whole-school or divisional presentations where a message is mass-marketed and delivered in one session (or if you’re lucky one or two day workshops).
• When you bring in expert voices to build enthusiasm, share ideas from the “outside world” and kick start a new initiative or support a teaching and learning goal.
• Sending a group of teachers to a conference and expecting them to share their new learning with the rest of the school when they return to campus.

As valuable as these experiences are, they are often a “one off”- offered once and never heard from again.

Keeping both of these models in mind, I’m thinking that there might be a place for something in-between. Something that taps into the power of community, but also supports the individual.

Group PD

This is, I think, the next step to building a community of learners in an institution, and one that can be especially enhanced by new web 2.0 tools like social networking. I feel like I’m at the verge of understanding how to help facilitate this experience, but I’m just figuring things out as I go.

During yesterday’s K12Online LAN party with Heather, Sara, Ali, Chrissy, Silvia (via Skype), Diane, Susan and Joanie, here in my apartment, we discussed how empowering it was to be with a cross divisional group (elementary and middle schools represented) where we could all share ideas, ask questions and receive needed support. It felt like something more than just the one-on-one meetings where the ideas are limited to just the two brains in the room.

Being able to tap into a diverse group of experiences, knowledge and imagination means that we can learn even more, and everyone feels both needed and supported. We’ve already agreed to have another LAN party because this one was so useful! There goes that feeling of being a one-off. That’s the energy and enthusiasm I would like to tap into, and to spread throughout the school.

We also talked about adding an online component to our group – to help facilitate discussion, share ideas and inspiration, and to provide a repository for information. We talked about setting up a Ning so we could encourage outside educators to join to help continue and expand our discussions (just like Julie is doing in Qatar). Plus this would give us the added advantage of having a welcoming space to demonstrate what we’re doing to other interested colleagues across the school.

We want to make the group open to any and all that are interested, centered around a common purpose. We want to tap into each individual’s desire to learn, but also their desire to be part of a group, to be supported and to be needed.

I just watched Seth Godin give a talk about his recent book, Tribes (thanks to @roybot for the link), and one of his points was that it is human nature to want to belong to a group and to be identified as a member of that group. If there are groups of people at your school who want to learn about technology, why not create that group? Why not help facilitate a place/time/space for coming together and learning together?

This is all going to be an opt-in experience – only the people that are interested will join, but I honestly can’t wait to see how far we can go when we’re all working together.

Just being able to have a number of people (perhaps shifting and changing over time) to look to for support and inspiration makes it feel more sustainable (no longer reliant on the individual PD model). Plus, knowing that a group can continue to exist beyond the tenure of specific individuals at a specific school means that PD will be “just in time” whenever it’s needed, instead of a “one-off” experience. Finally, spending regular time communicating and connecting, and knowing that only those that are truly interested will invest their time means that the learning will be deeper than your standard afternoon session of PD.

We’re only just getting started, but I have that positive feeling, those excited butterflies in my stomach, that there is something to this idea. That, especially in conjunction with the other two types of PD we regularly experience, this could add a whole new dimension to our professional learning and that it could be just what we need to shift our school.

What do you think? Have you had any experience with this kind of PD? What are the critical factors to think about while we’re in the begining stages?

I don’t know about you, but I often feel like I’m on fast forward. I’m always planning ahead, thinking of the next steps, ready for action. What this usually means is that I often want things to happen yesterday, when the reality is that they will take several weeks, months or even years.

So, I have to admit, it was a little difficult for me to “take it slow” last year (on the advice of my admin team) when I really wanted to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible. But time has proven them to be very smart people…

Last year I felt a bit like a door-to-door salesman (to use my colleague, Chad’s, analogy). Our school had never had a 21st Century Literacy Specialist before, and in fact, had never even had a Technology Facilitator.

Just one year before I came, we still had a traditional “computer lab” set up with scheduled classes which were, in essence, prep time for the teachers. So I can safely say the majority of the teachers really didn’t have any idea what my job was – or that they had a role in the embedding of technology into the curriculum.

I spent most of the year demonstrating what my role was by building relationships with individual teachers, helping them with their technology and literacy needs, and sharing exciting and engaging projects which I could co-plan and co-teach with them. Most times I had to do a little bit of convincing to get the teachers excited, but once we started, I could see them understanding the process more and more each day.

On the whole, I spent the year convincing, in every possible way, as many teachers as I could conceivably work with, that technology can be fun, it’s really not an add-on, and that I am here for support.

It wasn’t always as easy as I have a tendency to make it sound (I try to stay positive), but you can imagine my surprise when I came back this year to find:

• teachers clamoring for my time (instead of running the other way when they see me in the hallway)
• teachers asking me: “what’s my next step?”
• teachers starting their own projects without my help
• teachers helping their colleagues try something new
• teachers anxious to build in technology-rich projects as they continually develop their curriculum

Surprise, surprise, it may have taken a year, but I’m not so much of a door-to-door salesman now. The teachers that I worked with last year are ready to continue and kick it up a notch, those that I didn’t have the chance work with last year have heard a bit about what I do through the grapevine and are asking for support, and as the new teachers get settled in, I’m already starting to advertise and promote new ideas.

I guess my little seedlings are starting to grow.

Even though I like to move at lightening speed, I wonder if “taking it slow” will help bring about more authentic change. Will these individual relationships I have formed help garner more buy-in from those teachers than having a school-wide focus or commitment to 21st century learning? Is the grassroots approach more beneficial in the long run, or would school-leadership directed change be quicker and just as meaningful? What do you think?

Update: Here are some more questions that came to mind as I was reading your thoughtful comments:

Is this type of change more authentic or more long lasting than systemic, institutional change? Will it lead to systemic, institutional change, or will it always be the domain of individuals? How do you build a grassroots movement, yet at the same time institutionalize it, so that if the different seedlings go and plant themselves somewhere else, it will continue to grow here?

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by nwardez
Seedlings by nzgabriel