Well, this will be my final post on my NECC 2009. I'm not going to cover content from the conference, although there was other great sessions out there and interesting news from vendors and ideas from poster sessions. Instead, I'm just going to share a quick reflection.
I thought this was a great way to share information from a conference. Too often, teachers in the last two districts I have worked at have gone to a conference, come back, and had no impact on any professional outside of their classroom. I think this is a shame. There is a lot of money spent on teachers attending these professional conferences. My trips always impact the professional development that I offer teachers as well as the equipment that I purchase for my primary building. But there should be a standard of sharing information and this seems like a reasonable way to do that. Most teachers take notes at conferences anyway. If this is the case, what is the difficulty of taking an extra 10-15 minute per post and adding links, commentary, and polishing up the writing? It actually seems like a great way for the teacher to revisit their notes anyway.
Also, there were a lot of other blogs out there, much better than my first attempt, that gave great resources from the conference and interesting perspectives from these individuals. While this was a technology based conference where blogging might be more prevalent, I would wager that all major conferences today have someone blogging about their experiences and perspectives.
I'll be sharing this blog with teachers at my district, suggesting it as a great way to share with others, and providing support, if requested, to set up a blog for their own sharing.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Here Comes Learning!
This presentation was by Will Richardson from Collective Learning (check out his blog) & Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. It went in several different directions although the idea was to sell everyone on the idea of Virtual learning communities for teachers. I was trying to take down lots of commentary and ended up with a lot of short blurbs that aren't directly connected, but I'm going to leave this pretty much as is. There will be several areas that just read "check this out". I intend to do just that, but think it would be valuable for anyone to do the same, so I'm not going to go too in depth in this blog since I haven't gone to all of the links or articles mentioned below.
Making significant shifts in our classrooms takes significant shifts for us as learners (not teachers).
YouTube Video (help with bowdrill set)
See how this kid is showing his learning and then asking for comments/help from the viewers of the video – he shows what he knows, what he did, what he doesn’t know, what he failed with and how he knew he failed. And he asks for help and that is his primary purpose for doing this – to get feedback.
Notice that he didn’t say his name, show his face, or give indications of who he was. He’s using some sophisticated security measures.
How did he know he would get a response? How did the responders find him? How did he connect his needs to the experts who could provide him information?
Virtual learning community/virtual community of practice
Allows teachers to ask for help, to show “weakness” to someone outside of the face-to-face community within the district.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (book to check out)
It’s what happens after we publish that becomes powerful, collective action. Raw data can be posted, examples can be given by others.
Example, presenter put up a tweet on twitter complaining about Orbitz. Shortly after he gets a call from customer service call from Orbitz completely based off of his tweet.
Online publishing allows for more complex ideas behind the learning of reading and writing.
Hundreds of people negociating to what the entry for the Michael Jackson would be on Wikipedia after his death. (and are probably still doing s0)
Cnet article: survey: teens ‘sext’ and post personal info - check out article (despite the article title, it says that teens are often MORE safe online than we would think)
Kids are using the technologies in way to socialize, and are connecting with adults outside of their physical spaces – sounds bad, but it is teachers that they can connect to – not actual teachers but to connect to people who will teach them.
“new study shows time spent online important for teen development” Macarthur article – check it out
Many students have no one that is showing them how to use these web 2.0 tools for learning and teachers can’t learn how to do that with traditional pd, a three hour “sit and get”. Teachers have to immerse themselves in the technologiy to understand it, understand it, meld it with their own knowledge of content and more importatntly, pedagogy, to start to understand how teachers work with students where students LEARN to use these tools for learning.
What does job embedded professional development look like? Does it look like the Lab classroom Teacher program that they’re putting together? (professional question based on something we're doing in our district)
Partnership for 21st century learning: best practices in 21st century pd - check this out
NSDC’s definition of professional development –and- their rationale for learning communities
Socoial communities of practice need to be designed in such a way that they evolve over time
What develops is co-created and collaborative with multiple opportunities for member feedback and ownership.
You have to take a whole team through the process, not one or two people (wondering: what are the different ways that we can define “team”)
Need to ask ourselves, where are the tools, ideas, and resources to really implement change at a building, in a classroom?
Making significant shifts in our classrooms takes significant shifts for us as learners (not teachers).
YouTube Video (help with bowdrill set)
See how this kid is showing his learning and then asking for comments/help from the viewers of the video – he shows what he knows, what he did, what he doesn’t know, what he failed with and how he knew he failed. And he asks for help and that is his primary purpose for doing this – to get feedback.
Notice that he didn’t say his name, show his face, or give indications of who he was. He’s using some sophisticated security measures.
How did he know he would get a response? How did the responders find him? How did he connect his needs to the experts who could provide him information?
Virtual learning community/virtual community of practice
Allows teachers to ask for help, to show “weakness” to someone outside of the face-to-face community within the district.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (book to check out)
It’s what happens after we publish that becomes powerful, collective action. Raw data can be posted, examples can be given by others.
Example, presenter put up a tweet on twitter complaining about Orbitz. Shortly after he gets a call from customer service call from Orbitz completely based off of his tweet.
Online publishing allows for more complex ideas behind the learning of reading and writing.
Hundreds of people negociating to what the entry for the Michael Jackson would be on Wikipedia after his death. (and are probably still doing s0)
Cnet article: survey: teens ‘sext’ and post personal info - check out article (despite the article title, it says that teens are often MORE safe online than we would think)
Kids are using the technologies in way to socialize, and are connecting with adults outside of their physical spaces – sounds bad, but it is teachers that they can connect to – not actual teachers but to connect to people who will teach them.
“new study shows time spent online important for teen development” Macarthur article – check it out
Many students have no one that is showing them how to use these web 2.0 tools for learning and teachers can’t learn how to do that with traditional pd, a three hour “sit and get”. Teachers have to immerse themselves in the technologiy to understand it, understand it, meld it with their own knowledge of content and more importatntly, pedagogy, to start to understand how teachers work with students where students LEARN to use these tools for learning.
What does job embedded professional development look like? Does it look like the Lab classroom Teacher program that they’re putting together? (professional question based on something we're doing in our district)
Partnership for 21st century learning: best practices in 21st century pd - check this out
NSDC’s definition of professional development –and- their rationale for learning communities
Socoial communities of practice need to be designed in such a way that they evolve over time
What develops is co-created and collaborative with multiple opportunities for member feedback and ownership.
You have to take a whole team through the process, not one or two people (wondering: what are the different ways that we can define “team”)
Need to ask ourselves, where are the tools, ideas, and resources to really implement change at a building, in a classroom?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
NETS T and Integration Awareness
I attended a session titled " Differentiating NETS*T: Moving Teachers Toward Transformative Technology". It focused on the NETS T that came out last year from ISTE. If you buy the short book that goes more in depth on the NETS T, you'll find a rubric showing a teacher's progression with labels ranging from Beginning to Transformative. The speakers did a decent job demonstrating how they analyzed the rubric to differentiate teacher's levels when it came to the NETS T.
What I wanted to share though was an additional rubric using the same language, but looking at Integration Awareness. The descriptions below the words in bold are a combination of the speakers and my own. There seems to be an ongoing disagreement within my district that teacher's need training or support that addresses integration. I am of the thinking that you have to show them more than the technology tool and a couple ways to use it in the classroom. That is somewhat based off of the TPaCK framework as well as 12 years in education and using technology as an educator. This rubric gives some language to that thought of integration awareness as well as expands my own thinking.
Nets*T and Integration Awareness
| | Beginning | Developing | Proficient | Transformative |
| Unaware | Beginning awareness “I’d like to integrate technology” | Aware Not planning themselves, co-planning/ co-teaching w/ ET; no spur of moment thinking of integration | Active awareness Teachers can pull out technology tools and plan for technology use on their own; initial thoughts may not always be best choice | Flexible awareness Constantly reacting and adjusting to outside needs; possibly in constructivist classroom |
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Alan November Session
Alan November is a great speaker and author. I highly recommend his book, Web Literacy for Educators which I've ready with my building technology committee. He also hosts a yearly conference in Boston which I hope to go to in the next couple of years. I have some coworkers who have attended and spoke very highly of it.
I will say that he goes in a few directions, so my notes below do as well. I've cleaned them up a little, but didn't want to over-do the work-over. I am going to put all of my thoughts in italics. All of these points refer to something specific going on within my school or school district.
Alan started by speaking about a pattern with pioneering educators who are transferring management of class to students who are creating content, doing research, etc.
Social engagement gives students a let up on understanding information that they don’t understand from a class.
5 ways to shift ownership of learning to students. (This is the big point of the talk.)
Screencasting: every teacher should have a screencasting tool in their toolbox. (jingproject.com)
What about a math wiki with math screencasts of students doing problems to demonstrate understanding of the concept?
A different voice explaining the same content has an impact on student understanding.
The digital content should be available online, iPod, dvd and in as many digital boxes as possible
Rich Curriulum Review:
Podcast planning has a team leader where he/she uses a chart of parts of podcast: title and description, people responsible, written, recorded, mixed to track progress of the podcast. This is created and posted weekly by students as an overview of curriculum from the previous week. It was unclear, but I think the planning took place throughout the week and the recording took place the following Monday.
Used a mixer and microphones? That seems a bit over the top and $$$.
Search Engine Design Team:
Create Custom Search Engines for searching for younger students. What if you created a search engine for each topic, subject area, general resources. What if you had one just for Captain? Aligned to curriculum. (I've created one of these and the thought of what it could do if I could get teachers to let me do more, let students do it, or just make the tool be used more often blows my mind!)
Official researcher: (kids find their own quality content and this teaches kids to search with mini teachable moments put in here.)
One kid a day is the official researcher for the class and will use a machine to find the resources . Use this to grow that search engine since questions will be based on the curriculum.
Collaborative Note Taking:
Why aren’t kids taking collaborative notes when taking notes in class? Teacher assigns headings and students fill out parts; then we come back at the end and ask the whole class: What’s missing?
(homework, when done incorrectly, reinforces errors, because they don’t get feedback quick enough so the incorrect thinking is reinforced through the doing of homework)
But what if they do the tutorials at home (see above) and homework type work is done at school and gets immediate feedback to redirect thinking.
Social Responsibility:
www.kiva.org
Allows you to be a microlender. You can research and invest in someone’s business venture for as little as a $25 investment. You can follow them with an RSS feed.
Kivapedia.org to look up info on kiva groups, who has invested, etc.
I love this concept. Much better than the general fundraisers that I see happen ALL the time at our school.
Add to global knowledge:
Write an article on a local location/event, etc. through research & field trip and then write up for wikipedia. Find something that doesn’t yet have an entry.
Teach children to find the work of other children:
Searching book titles through youtube often shows student work/blook trailer, etc. Why are we not looking for these for further understanding if we’re not creating these (and of course we should be creating these)
They use that work from kids to base their work off of. Children become curriculum researchers in a sense when we teach them the research tools to do that. Can be motivating to do their work and shape the quality of their work (and may enhance what teachers are assigning) When students show a piece of work that they want to emulate, they own it. That’s powerful.
Okay, somehow I have seven things here, so I don't know if he just threw two in for free or if I'm missing connecting two of these together. Regardless, there are some great "guiding forces" to move a school or classroom forward and focus them in their use of technology. I personally want to make sure at least one class or group uses Kiva next year and at least one class or group puts an entry on Wikipedia next year. I'm definitely going to work on the others because I can see the power they can contain if they are done on a regular basis in a classroom.
I will say that he goes in a few directions, so my notes below do as well. I've cleaned them up a little, but didn't want to over-do the work-over. I am going to put all of my thoughts in italics. All of these points refer to something specific going on within my school or school district.
Alan started by speaking about a pattern with pioneering educators who are transferring management of class to students who are creating content, doing research, etc.
Social engagement gives students a let up on understanding information that they don’t understand from a class.
5 ways to shift ownership of learning to students. (This is the big point of the talk.)
Screencasting: every teacher should have a screencasting tool in their toolbox. (jingproject.com)
What about a math wiki with math screencasts of students doing problems to demonstrate understanding of the concept?
A different voice explaining the same content has an impact on student understanding.
The digital content should be available online, iPod, dvd and in as many digital boxes as possible
Rich Curriulum Review:
Podcast planning has a team leader where he/she uses a chart of parts of podcast: title and description, people responsible, written, recorded, mixed to track progress of the podcast. This is created and posted weekly by students as an overview of curriculum from the previous week. It was unclear, but I think the planning took place throughout the week and the recording took place the following Monday.
Used a mixer and microphones? That seems a bit over the top and $$$.
Search Engine Design Team:
Create Custom Search Engines for searching for younger students. What if you created a search engine for each topic, subject area, general resources. What if you had one just for Captain? Aligned to curriculum. (I've created one of these and the thought of what it could do if I could get teachers to let me do more, let students do it, or just make the tool be used more often blows my mind!)
Official researcher: (kids find their own quality content and this teaches kids to search with mini teachable moments put in here.)
One kid a day is the official researcher for the class and will use a machine to find the resources . Use this to grow that search engine since questions will be based on the curriculum.
Collaborative Note Taking:
Why aren’t kids taking collaborative notes when taking notes in class? Teacher assigns headings and students fill out parts; then we come back at the end and ask the whole class: What’s missing?
(homework, when done incorrectly, reinforces errors, because they don’t get feedback quick enough so the incorrect thinking is reinforced through the doing of homework)
But what if they do the tutorials at home (see above) and homework type work is done at school and gets immediate feedback to redirect thinking.
Social Responsibility:
www.kiva.org
Allows you to be a microlender. You can research and invest in someone’s business venture for as little as a $25 investment. You can follow them with an RSS feed.
Kivapedia.org to look up info on kiva groups, who has invested, etc.
I love this concept. Much better than the general fundraisers that I see happen ALL the time at our school.
Add to global knowledge:
Write an article on a local location/event, etc. through research & field trip and then write up for wikipedia. Find something that doesn’t yet have an entry.
Teach children to find the work of other children:
Searching book titles through youtube often shows student work/blook trailer, etc. Why are we not looking for these for further understanding if we’re not creating these (and of course we should be creating these)
They use that work from kids to base their work off of. Children become curriculum researchers in a sense when we teach them the research tools to do that. Can be motivating to do their work and shape the quality of their work (and may enhance what teachers are assigning) When students show a piece of work that they want to emulate, they own it. That’s powerful.
Okay, somehow I have seven things here, so I don't know if he just threw two in for free or if I'm missing connecting two of these together. Regardless, there are some great "guiding forces" to move a school or classroom forward and focus them in their use of technology. I personally want to make sure at least one class or group uses Kiva next year and at least one class or group puts an entry on Wikipedia next year. I'm definitely going to work on the others because I can see the power they can contain if they are done on a regular basis in a classroom.
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