Amazingly, I found this perfect place in Malaysia (Redang Island) on our first vacation when we moved there in 2005. Unfortunately, it’s a little too inconvenient to get there from Bangkok and part of the “perfect beach” experience is only having to undergo one flight (maximum) to get there. Plus, I figured Thailand, the land of beautiful beaches, must have something even better!

Normally, I would ask around at school for tips from my colleagues that have been living in Thailand for many years, but all I got was the same old, same old: Koh Samui, Phuket, Koh Samet, Koh Chang. Not that those places aren’t beautiful, but I really wanted something different, something only the local resident would know, yet of course, would meet my needs as an emerging “fancy pants” (as my husband would say).

Now, I realize I shouldn’t really spill the beans here on how I’m doing my super tech savvy undercover exploration of stunning Thai islands, but I figured, despite this being slightly off-topic for this blog, you guys are the only ones who would really understand how cool this little web 2.0 planning experience really was.

So, here’s what I did:

1. I knew I wanted to stay in Thailand, but I wanted to make sure it was one of those perfect beaches (not like some of the other places we have stayed, where the websites looks stunning, but when you get there it’s really nothing special). So, I figured the best place to start was a search of “real people’s” photos: Flickr.

2. I remembered that a friend of mine had recommended a specific beach in Phuket, but I couldn’t remember which one, so I searched on Flickr for “white sand beach Phuket.” A beach that looked suitable was the very last picture of the first page of search results.

3. Once I clicked on that image, the picture description told me that it was taken on “Koh Racha Yai island [which] is located 30 minutes south by boat from Phuket, Thailand.” Aha! This was the kind of place I was looking for, close but not too close, easy to get to, but still isolated.

4. With my new found destination in mind, I headed to my old and trusty friend, TripAdvisor to see what hotels were listed on this island.

5. The top rated hotel looked pretty spectacular, so I checked out their website, and then of course went back to Flickr for more realistic photos and found this picture with this description: “Racha Resort is a luxurious 5-star resort built in 2004 after Tsunami.” Plus, there was even a comment from another Flickr user enthusing about this island and hotel with even more pictures posted! Yes, this was exactly what I was looking for!

6. Just to get all the facts, I opened up Google Earth, and checked out the beach from above (well, I guess from space, technically) and all the embedded images around the island, thanks to Panoramio.

7. Seeing as all the evidence points to an especially stunning, and quite private, beach on a lovely tropical island, I booked our flight and hotel right away.

Now all that’s left is to actually take the trip!

How do you use your techie skills to plan the perfect holiday?

Once again, the goal of my visit was to start conversations around the changing nature of teaching and learning in the 21st century, and to provide an introductory-level look at the main trends and issues in education, over the course of their 2 days professional development entitled “Creating the Future.” I was asked to give three full-faculty presentations focusing on three facets of education: the learners, the educators and the classroom. In the interest of sharing, I thought I would post them here (more thoughts about the outcome of the visit to come soon):

The 21st Century Learner

Session Overview: Looking to engage your students through the use of new technologies? Wondering about the key skills and attributes they will need for their future? Ready to start adapting your classroom to the needs of the 21st century learner? In this presentation we will focus on strategies for helping students learn with technology the way they live with technology. Bring the engagement and excitement students have about connected learning into your classroom by embracing the new technologies and skills students are experiencing outside of school. All resources and materials used in this presentation can be found on the presentation wiki.

The 21st Century Educator

Session Overview: What exactly do RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking and VOIP have to do with your professional practice? How can web 2.0 technologies change the way you learn, communicate, collaborate and teach? This session will focus on practical ways to utilize free web 2.0 tools to develop a personal learning network that will transform your professional practice and open your eyes to new possibilities in the classroom! All resources and materials used in this presentation can be found on the presentation wiki.

The 21st Century Classroom

Using the backwards design process, learn how to embed authentic use of technology into a project-based learning experiences for your students. With a focus on pedagogy, explore the use of several web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts and collaborative multimedia in various classroom examples from around the world. Ease of use, accessibility, and authentic audience make these simple tools an engaging and motivating facet to any classroom. From project design to classroom management, enhance your students’ learning through a redesigned look at the 21st century classroom. All resources and materials used in this presentation can be found on the presentation wiki.

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?

For this year we’re looking at staying small and making consistent connections with global partners. Ideally, we would like to find classroom partners that are willing to connect with us on a regular basis over the course of the entire school year (Sept 08 – June 09).

We would like to develop personal learning networks for our students where we can deepen understanding of classroom curriculum while learning how to communicate authentically and appropriately online. We want to make sure that the use of web 2.0 tools deepens their understanding of classroom content and also helps them feel connected to the world around them. Sound interesting? Read on! And if you’d like to participate in one of these projects, please leave a comment!

Amazingly, I have a willing and enthusiastic teacher on almost every grade level ready to fully collaborate with me this year. We are planning to go deep with the students and to really focus on building 21st century literacy skills in a consistent and authentic approach.

Here’s what we’ve gotten started so far:

Grade 5: Students Teaching Students

The wonderful Chrissy Hellyer and her fellow new ISB teacher, Aly McAloon, will be kicking off the school with a classroom blogging project that will eventually include a regular podcast focused on the Lucy Caulkins Readers Workshop.

We’re starting simple with a whole class blog and students as contributing authors (like Betsy and I did last year in the Grade 3 BlogPals project). Once the students start feeling comfortable in their blogging as a class, we’re going to link Chrissy & Aly’s class to start making connections across the grade 5 quad, and eventually they will connect with other classes internationally (Jane Lowe’s class is already on board!).

Our next step will be rotating groups in each class podcasting about their reading strategies to help teach their younger classmates how to be good readers (Melanie Holtsman and her teachers are ready to connect with us, thankfully, since they are total experts in the world of Lucy Caulkins).

I love the idea of embedding multiple tools into one class project and developing a classroom routine where students are not only in charge of their own learning, but also sharing that learning with others.

We would love to connect with another grade 5 class (or two) that would be interested in becoming co-learners along with our students for the entire school year (Sept 08 – June 09)!

Grade 5: Student Portfolios in Spanish

Our Spanish teacher, James, has been experimenting with tons of fantastic web tools over the last school year and now that he’s on the report card committee, he’s looking to find alternate ways of assessing student learning. So, we’re piloting electronic portfolios (in the form of blogs, for now) with one of his grade 5 classes.

James has already been embedding multiple tools into the class blog he’s been running for a year now, and now he’s ready to let the students be the authors on some of those posts. The goal is to keep track of student learning throughout the school year by creating a category for each student. Each time the students have a piece of work for their portfolio, they will post it on the class blog (as contributing authors). By the end of the year, parents will be able to click on their child’s category and see the progression of their work over the course of the year.

Grade 5: Our Online ESL Classroom

Our wonderful grade 5 ESL teacher, Diane, began blogging and podcasting with her students last year. We saw such an amazing leap in their oral and written language as soon as they realized they had an authentic audience for their work that she wants to continue to provide that opportunity this year.

Although Diane only sees her students for short lessons every other day (we run a Sheltered Immersion ESL program), we have been able to organize specific collaboration projects that focus on issues ESL students are concerned about. We have set up a few open ended blog posts to get them writing and connected with other classes (including Anne Mirtschin’s) about moving on to sixth grade.

This will probably be a more infrequent collaboration, on a topic-by-topic basis, but it would be great for our ESL students to connect with other language learners (or native English speakers) on topics that are important to them.

Grade 4: BlogPals

My fantastic colleague Sonja Merrell, who participated in the 1001 Flat World Tales last year, is back for more 21st century learning this year! She has decided to start the school year off with a class blog, which she will use as a communication portal for her students and their parents. There are a few students in her class that participated in the BlogPals project with me last year, so they will make great student leaders as we venture further into blogging with Sonja’s class.

We’re going to start off the year using the blog as a discussion tool, to build the school-home connection and to get her students thinking about their learning in a more interactive way. Over time we will have each student as a contributing author to the blog, just like we did with BlogPals last year.

We are looking for one or two grade 4 classrooms that would like to participate in this type of year-long adventure with us!

Grade 2: A Window to Our World

Another amazing colleague, Susan, who took a huge leap with me last year when we had our grade 2 class connect to another grade 2 class in the US via a Ning, is back in action this year! She loved the idea of working with a Ning and found the  “walled garden” concept perfect for her second graders. It was amazing to see how quickly they took to this new learning environment – posting questions and answers, commenting on individual student pages, and sharing their learning as a class – all in second grade!

This year Susan would like to do something very similar, but preferably with another international school class, if we can find one. She wants to focus on intercultural understanding and connecting with class that would have a greater mix of nationalities (she’s not limited to an international school, but we thought we might have better luck at getting a very diverse class if we were able to find another international school interested). Last year she had 20 nationalities in her class of 23 students, so finding a class with a similar makeup would be ideal for her.

Grade 1: ESL Learners Speak English

Our enthusiastic grade 1 ESL teacher, Erin, started using VoiceThread in her classroom last year as a way for her begining ESL students to practice their English in an authentic environment. We had a great time connecting to another international school in Spain, thanks to Nancy von Wahlde, and we’re planning to re-connect again this year.

Erin maintains a class blog, mostly to communicate with the parents, where she posts her VoiceThreads that the students create based on their classroom units of inquiry. We’re planning to start out with an introduction to each student so that our partner class can really get to know each person as an individual. Over time the students share a bit about their lives in Thailand, the school, and other grade 1 favorites.

Ideally, we would love to connect with a classroom that is able to communicate with us on a regular basis – maybe once a month – and that would be willing to continue these conversations over the course of the year.

Kindergarten: Kids Draw!

We have one set of co-teachers in Kindergarten this year. Sandy and Akiko are team-teaching one class of 24 kindergarten students all year – and what a class they have! It’s amazing to see the way Sandy and Akiko build on each other’s streagnths as we begin working with these little students and technology.

We started out the year with a short unit on drawing, where the students were asked to draw a picture of themselves on paper (for a unit entitled “All About Me”) and then draw the same picture on the computer (using KidPix). We discussed what was the same and what was different about drawing on paper and drawing on the computer. Interestingly, although almost all of them though drawing on the computer was more difficult (we still need to work on those fine motor skills), most of them liked drawing on the computer better.

After this short unit, Sandy, Akiko and I realized we have lots of room to grow with drawing and technology. We’d like to revisit the concept of drawing on the computer over the course of the year and build in some thoughtful reflection, ideally with VoiceThread, where students can talk about the context of the picture, and the skills they learned while drawing.

It would be great to partner up with another kindergarten class that’s interested in sharing learning through drawing!

What do you think? Are you interested in collaborating with one of our classes?

I’ve basically been looking forward to this conference since the day I left Shanghai last year, so I’m a little bit over excited. I love getting to meet and see my virtual friends face to face, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a long weekend than talking with them (and all the new friends I’m sure I’ll make) about learning in the 21st century.

Plus, I get the added bonus of presenting three sessions (along with my amazing international school colleagues Julie Lindsay, Tod Baker, and of course, Jeff Utecht)!

Thankfully, my presentations are (finally) pretty much finished and ready to go, but I would love to get some feedback. I’ve made an effort to create them with a presentation zen attitude, so they will not be as meaningful without my narration (I definitely need to learn how to create a slidecast next). I can’t believe how different and how much more engaging my slides look with less text and pictures that bleed off the edge – a huge thanks to Jeff for loaning me the book!

Please take a look and let me know what you think:

What do you think? Am I missing anything?