Moving Forward

This is hot off the press….

On the Facebook blog this morning says Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Arata (link to his FB page):

Allowing our audience — including our soldiers — to connect and communicate through social networking is still considered risky business by some, and we do face unique challenges. The risks to operations security felt by some, or the fears that our soldiers will post “unbecoming” information, are outweighed by increased communication and sharing.

This is so insightful of the Army. What about our k-12 institutions? I’m currently working on my dissertation towards my doctorate in educational technology. My interest lies in using social networking as an informal learning place for teachers. Does it make any difference? Does it connect today’s life with changing what our teachers do with students? If the Army sees this as a valuable tool for our soliders, then wake up educators and get on the bus. Otherwise you’ll be the one left behind by your students.

Check out the iTouch Apps for primary students that Wesley Fryer shares from NECC 09.

I Can Write, Etch A Sketch, and Comic Touch. Adding a few iTouch iPods to your classroom can make the day come alive.

And at the App store from Apple you can find more apps for toddlers.

This year I’m not at NECC. Sessions are being shared online in innovative ways for those of us who lost travel budgets. I just listened to a session that Wesley Fryer attended. He shared his notes from Scott McLeod’s session on “Effective Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation” which was based on two books from Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilmena and Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learn.

The presentation, using audio and visuals, carries the listener through McLeod’s explanations and makes connections to education. I found it quite interesting and pertinent to what is and is not happening in k-12 education today.

I realized today how long I’ve gone without writing. So to catch up…I decided to retire, accept a new job and move to Austin, Texas all in the course of 2 weeks. I’ll be going to work for Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, an honor society  for key women educators, as the Communications Service Administrator. I have been a very active member of this organization for 15 years but never dreamed I’d take on a position at international headquarters. I’ll be working with the website, print publications and a social networking site designed for members only. I’m very excited about this new opportunity.

So my time has been filled with packing, cleaning, packing and writing some on my dissertation. I’ll be looking at participation in Classroom 2.0, a Ning community, and the relationship that participation has on new instructional practices for those community members.

I’ll continue my series, Schools, Instruction, and Technology, with my next post.

During the past week, I’ve have the pleasure to visit several schools in other states. Our task was to discover how technology is being using in instruction. A team visited two schools in Gwinnett County, Georgia to see what differences modernized language labs make in Spanish and French classes. It was truly amazing. We visited classrooms at Meadowcreek High School and Mill Creek High School. In both schools students have rich experiences speaking the target language being studied through a system that practicing the language, recording the practice, and listening back to what one says. All students have headsets with microphones as does the teacher. The teacher can speak to one student individually for encouragement, to help with pronounciations, and individualized instruction. Students are paired easily from easy to use software that the teacher controls. With a click pairs can be changed, interactive games can be shared on a large screen and students are engaged during the entire class.

At Meadowcreek High we visited Pamela Gibson’s French class, Dr. Steven DuPony’s Spanish class, and Joel Sisson’s French class. Thanks for sharing your class and time after school with our group.

At Mill Creek thanks go to Jason Smith, the department chair, Shelley Pickens, and Gillian Bradley for sharing their classrooms and insight to the improvements in language learning they have seen.

These classrooms have found a unique manner of integrating the use of new technology based tools to help students become better language speakers. We plan to install some systems with our language teachers.

I just ran across this Google docs presentation I thought was worthwhile to share. It is filled with 39 ideas of how to use video capture in the classroom. It shows easy ways to get students involved in what they are doing and recording their experiences. Take a look. You might find something new to try.

39 tips

Here’s an update on our three schools beginning the merge to technology as a seamless instructional tool.

All three schools have an their initial week of training where they were introduced to Nettrekker and Discovery Streaming, which are district sponsored applications. Google docs was also introduced. We love Google docs and want to share this invaluable tool with others.

Teachers began learning about the Read/Write/Web during the last few weeks and are now working through applying new tools to their work. They have a  wiki where we have developed courses for review on social bookmarking using Delicious., collaborating with Google Docs, using Netrekker as more than a search engine and a technology integration activity. We add to the wiki as we introduce more content so they have one place to find what they need.

On April 4th teachers attended their second day with the Discovery Education team.  Teachers had six sessions to attend, rotating from one computer lab to another. The sessions included: Creating Videos, Interactive Writing Prompts, Integrating Google Earth and Discovery Streaming, Using Web 2.0 tools with Discovery Streaming, Peer Review with Voice Thread and creating projects with Photo Story. It was a full day. Teachers left with ideas they could use right away.

During the next few weeks teachers and students will be immersed in preparations for spring testing so their professional development will pause for a short time. In May we will return for more fun. Schools started receiving new computers and other fun tools so we can do lots of hands on experiences breathing excitement into teaching with technology. It’s an exciting time.

Earlier this school year my friend and colleague, Cindy Putnam, and I shared a pleasant lunch and had great conversations about teaching any content area in a project or integrated format. We talked about the American Revolution and connections with literature, history, and geography. We moved from that to how to design a unit or project around the book, The Giver by Lois Lowry ( who also wrote Number the Stars- a novel that works well with WWII).

Our conversation lead yet again to getting things started in designing a project based unit of study. So I began with the topic of the Middle Ages. While I was teaching 5th grade preparing to loop to 6th with my students, I gave them a choice about in depth studies about world history. They had a keen interest in learning about the Middle Ages. Our text at that time had a paragraph. So over the summer I developed a concept unit on the Middle Ages. It was one of the best experiences of my 23 years in the classroom. I learned as much as the students did. We had authentic evaluations including model construction, medieval dances, technology presentations, and collaborative work. There is no doubt this is hard work prior to student involvement- intensive and detailed development on the part of the teacher. The payoffs are incredible.

Here’s an overview of the planning. Perhaps it will spark other ideas:

Title :   Life in the Middle Ages            Grade 6

Language Arts:

• indicate sequence of events in print and non-print texts.
• use context clues, dictionaries, thesauruses, electronic sources, and glossaries as aids in determining the meanings of unfamiliar words.
• select questions to clarify thinking.
• choose the correct meaning of multiple meaning words in context
• draw inferences from selected texts.

Literature to connect with Middle Ages:

Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray

The Castle of Llyr (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander

The Book of Three (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Llyod Alexander

The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Llyod Alexander

Taran Wanderer (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Llyod Alexander

The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Llyod Alexander

Social Studies

• Governance and Civics:
  • Describe the purposes and structure of governments.
  • Identify written laws handed down from ancient civilizations.
  • Explain and apply concepts such as power, role, status, justice and influence to the examination of persistent issues and social problems.
  • Recognize the relationship between a place’s physical, political, and cultural characteristics and the type of government that emerges in that place.

Guiding Question: How do governments of the Middle Ages (feudalism) and democracy compare?

Vocabulary: feudalism, democracy

Activity 1: Simulation with Government: Whole class activity where students act as rulers and peasants in the fuedalism system.
To Introduce government of long ago.
Students will actively participate in a role-play activity.
Activity 2: Life in the Middle Ages
Discovery Streaming Video clips-Short video clip about Feudalism.
Web Address 1 :  From Discovery Streaming- must have subscription

Activity 3: Research: Use websites to discover more about Middle Ages. With partner find 5 -10 facts and record in a table in Word or Google docs. Build content with other groups in the class on the class wiki for sharing globally.

Activity 4: As you read The High King by Lloyd Alexander, participate in discussions in the class blog section for the Middle Ages. Post your impressions on the literature blog after chapters 3,6,9.  Respond to other classmates thoughts.

ISTE technology standards:
Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
d. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.
Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:
a. plan strategies to guide inquiry.
b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
d. process data and report results.

Well, I’ve been absent a bit. I’ve been reading and writing on my dissertation and then I was sick for over a week. Now I’m back at it. Here’s a site that helps teachers build checklist for project work with students. It’s free, easy to use and available in English and Spanish. It’s called PBL Checklist. Give it a try.

Today was our second day of training with the teachers at Georgia Ave. Elementary. Jason Parrish and I were the instructors today. We started the session with a short video from Common Craft showing the benefits of using such a collaborative tool as Google Docs. We shared what fun work can be using

We provided some examples on uses for word processing and the presentation tool in docs. We looked at the structure after logging into Google docs and the simplicity of use. We had some questions and the beginnings of interest in using this kind of tool with students. Cindy Putnam and Scott Holcomb were morning support and back up for Jason and I. We have such a great team. It makes work so much fun and interesting everyday. I feel very lucky to be part of such a collaborative and complimentary group of educators.

Dr. Jess Feldman and Wanda Woodruff took over in the afternoon. They were available to help all staff check usernames for Discovery Streaming and to verify that teachers meeting this afternoon could log in correctly. Their first day of training with Discovery was in February. Our goal is to help these teachers move to new ways of looking at learning and thereby begin the journey in changing practice.