So…just to let you know what I am thinking that hopefully I will get to think about more…I am publishing my blog to do list (or rather the list of half written blogs I have in my All Posts categories) I will get to them…I am just not sure when.

How many of you have a blog todo list?

TO DO:

Leading from the Middle – Admin. needs to get on the tech ball…or at least understand enough to participate in the conversation.

Creating a Visiting Scholar Program

Connecting Digital Citizenship to 1:1 implementation rollouts

Reflecting on Learning 2.0 (Seriously…I have not done that yet?)

Standards Based Grading and Reporting…Learning from Me, What not to Screw Up

The Importance of Looking for Meaning in Things You Have to Do

Back in the Middle Again

END OF TO DO LIST.

What I really need is a plan…but I like to think that by even having a blog and thinking about what I would put on there and what I have to say…that even this process helps me to be more reflective.  No, I am not sharing in a way that I would like to, but I am finding value and benefiting by the fact that I am even thinking through what I have to say and how I want to say it.

So…give yourself a break, blog when you can, but keep thinking about what you want to say. I think you and I will get to the point where we can put words to blog and get those thoughts out there.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

An essential first step in our Curriculum Review process is revisiting the vision and beliefs of departments. Thought this is always difficult (getting everyone’s thoughts captured, the word-smithing), it is always valuable and essential to moving forward together.

It is interesting to me, that as a school in a widely-used and comprehensive manner we have not articulated a vision for technology or, for really what I would rather call the future of teaching and learning to help inform our decisions and communicate to stakeholders why we make the decision we do.  Though this is not a new realization for me, it has become increasing clear just how remiss we have been in “skipping” or delaying this step. #beyondlaptops really helped me to see this as schools were talking about their visions and how important they were.  I think the different sections in my school are doing what they need to and even creating their own visions to share with their staff, but we need to do this for everyone.

This has been an interesting start to the school year for us as we have a lot of new technology and systems that have come into the building. We have moved entirely to Google Apps with Gmail now for email, we adopted a new student management system, went 1:1 iPads in the MS, brought in hundreds more iPads to the ES and gave each teacher an iPad to explore.  We also are beginning a platform switch over from PC to Mac, so in the high school each teacher was given a new Mac Book Air.  We are swimming in new technologies and systems and I am sure it is understandable the the overwhelming feeling is well…overwhelmed.   But we are asking also critical questions of ourselves, why did we do this?  Have we made the right choices and what is missing is a vision to really help us look at our choices or to guide them in the first place.  Are they the right ones vis a vis our vision and with no vision articulated is the striking how difficult it has been to have these conversations.

To the credit of the school we have decided it is time to address this situation and in early November we will pull together teachers, admin, parents, board members, and students to engaged in a half day visioning session. Furthermore we have scheduled a whole faculty opportunity to share the vision and have some foundational experiences around the changing nature of technology, teaching and learning.

I would love to hear from others either on this blog or through Twitter what the process was for creating their school vision regarding the future of teaching and learning.  What were key moves you made, what did you learn as you went through the process, and what best tips and advice could you share as we move down this very important road?

Photo Attribution:

coincoyote via Flickr

I do my best work with others and collaboration is a key aspect of my professional life. 

We are dealing with many complicated educational issues and I think the most pressing question is the ‘how’ we best move forward to integrate technology meaningfully into the curriculum and you have to be talking to people to figure this out.  I have been so lucky to attend two great conferences this year Learning 2.011 and 21st Century Learning @Hong Kong), and I am so impressed with the thinking and strategies people have to integrate technology into the curriculum.  I have been most taken by the TPACK model espoused by Punya Misra and Matthew Koehler.  In this model the three critical areas of pedagogy, content, and technology are represented in such a way as to make clear the connection and interdependence of the three.

The intersection of the 3: the TPaCK is…as Mishra refers to, the “sweet spot”. The place where it all comes together and we see teaching and learning transformed and the learning process amplified through strong pedagogy, content expertise, and technology integration.

This is why we desperately need collaboration between the people in the building to represent these areas: the teachers, the technology integrators, and the curriculum experts.  When you look at the TPACK website you notice something very important:

Help Needed : The section on Developing TPACK is in need of heavy development, and needs your help. If you know of any approaches to developing TPACK for pre- or in-service teachers, consider becoming an editor. TPACK.ORG needs you!

When I look at TPACK I immediately think, well of course this is so obvious. But really, what is obvious it not necessarily easy.  Thus far TPACK is a theoretical framework that needs to be developed and implemented by leadership and teachers in schools.  The only way I can see this happening in a meaningful way is through collaboration.  There needs to be open communication and dialogue with all key players in this formula, but all too often it is the curriculum people with the curriculum people and the technology people with the technology people.  The schools that will be able to do something really special are the schools that “get” TPACK and get to collaborating on the “how”. Until that happens, there might just be a lot of lonely people out there.

Photo Attribution:

SarahO

I am really not sure that is true. So here are the facts. I was planning on doing PD this summer and a family situation necessitated canceling said professional development. Not doing the PD was absolutely the right thing for me to do for myself and for my family, this I have no doubts about.  However the reality is, without engaging in any PD over the summer I feel a little lost and rudderless about how to start the new school year.  My lack of PD over the summer has made me realize just how critical professional development is for us as educators not only for our professional learning, but as a professional reboot.  Personally, I need to have some time to break away from the wanderlust of summer and begin to refocus my mind on the task that will face me when I return to school. I need to come back from a little time and space with renewed energy and fresh new ideas that make me so excited to start a new year again.
I am starting to get back into the swing of things, but it took a little longer this year than in years past, what I know for sure it that I am anxiously awaiting that first new PD opportunity of the year. Visible Thinking…bring it on!

Right now blog is a FOUR letter word to me and you know what, it is to a lot of our students, because they too are overwhelmed with blogs.  Last year I taught an 8th grade Humanities class.  This year I am working with a 9th grade teacher for one class and I have one student in the 9th grade course I had in 8th grade.  When we presented a current events blog assignment to the class she commented the best thing about HS was  no one was having them blog. She said blogging was overrated, overused, and a waste of her time.  I was shocked, yet somehow not surprised. Now in our defense, we have one blog assignment for the entire semester, the students will blog and comment a total of 8 times about current events connected to essential questions, I think it is a good use of blogging…but I totally get her point. Last year as an 8th grader she was blogging in so many classes. I, as her Humanities teacher, was the worst offenders. She is so over blogging.  And so am I. This year, I have very purposefully decided not to have the students in my current class blog as much.  I didn’t think I was using blogging as effectively as I should last year so I limited myself to one solid and relevant blogging assignment.  I don’t keep a blog for this class to post work like I did last year, this year I have moved over to Google Sites for all of the class info and calendars. I have set up a discussion section there for short assignments to encourage conversation in a quick and easy way but using Google Groups.  Just like my student, I didn’t want to blog for my class this year.

In fact, this past week I did a PD session with Dana Watts called, “Blogging is Not a Four Letter Word”, because frankly is it becoming one to teachers who are overwhelmed by the task of assessing blogs, students who are blogging in all of their 8 classes, and to parents who are just trying to sort out what all of this blogging is about.  When we consider the issue of excessive blogging it really comes down to using blogging at the right times and in the right ways. Kids do not need to blog after every class.  In fact they shouldn’t be.  Blogging should be about deep reflection and give students the opportunity to connect the dots, come to an understanding, and support their thoughts and ideas with evidence.  It should be about showcasing great work and ideas.  However, I think a great deal of the blogging going on in schools is not about reflection on work or thoughts, I think for some blogging is becoming an online notebook and this is not what blogging is meant for, so of course, you get eye rolling when you ask them to blog.  We need to be careful not to overdo the blogging and ruin the power of blogs have to promote student learning and reflection.

We found some great readings for our staff to remind people why we blog and it starts with an idea that has nothing to do with technology or a computer…reflection. This article from Educational Leadership on Reflection as a Habit of Mind by Art Costa and Bena Kallick was a great refresher to us all. As teachers we know how important reflection is, yet some how despite our best intentions over time we  also let good practices slip.  This reading was a timely reminder about the important practice of reflection. We coupled this reading with two other readings:

1. Wired for Reflection from Educational Leadership by Meridith Stewart

2. High Tech Reflection Strategies Make Learning Stick from Edutopia by Susie Boss

Both of these article use classroom studies to show how blogging is used effectively with students to enhance their learning and the focus is on the use of blogging to promote student reflection.

Blogging is like any good thing we find, however we have to be careful not to do it to death and ruin the fun (and in this case the relevance of the work). If students are rolling their eyes at the mention of blogging, you need to look at what you are asking them to blog, how often, and how pervasive the use of blogging is in your school or you are in danger of blog becoming a four letter word.

On an end note…the irony of this post is nobody forced me to write it, it is not on my “to do blog list”. I was in the midst of blogging for something I did not want to blog about and reflecting on the PD we conducted for our staff, and that here I was doing what I felt to be unnecessary blogging for the sake of blogging.  I was fired up, and I needed to express this in a way and in a place that meant something to me.  I have made my personal professional blog meaningful to myself  (and I hope others) and that is ultimately what we want from our students. We want them passionate about blogging and the things they are blogging about.  We want them to be fired up and reflective; to really have something to say rather than just writing what amounts to a written eye roll…yeah right, another blog, awesome, here you go,  look I did it, was it enough? Whatever, it’s done.

Photo Attribution:

Straitic

Hallmarks of strong formative assessments are:

1. High quality feedback that assesses the work, not the student.

2. Regular and descriptive feedback to students on how to improve.

3. It involves extensive self and peer assessment.

4. Teachers adjust their teaching based on the information gleaned from the assessment.

5. This type of assessment should not play much, if any role in determining the students final grade, because it is about the process of learning, not an assessment of learning.

6. Students should be assessed in a variety of ways: oral, written, and through performance assessments.

I was asked to create a workshop for staff on formative assessment, the purpose of this session was to build understanding of the practice of formative assessment and to give teachers strategies and ideas of how to increase the amount and types of formative assessment they use.  I went back to, as I often do…how can I link this to what we are trying to do at AES in terms of technology integration?  I have spoken about this before in a previous post, as AES  tries to purposefully link and connect technology integration to curricular outcomes through the work of both the curriculum and technology facilitators, so I started thinking perhaps the iPad is a good place to look for some applications to support formative assessment.  AES is currently piloting iPads throughout the school and the demand far outstrips the supply.  Clearly teachers see them as a relevant tool for learning and they (teachers) as well as students are excited to explore learning with the iPads.  I am always looking to get a lot out of what we do with technology and thought perhaps what teachers needed was a menu of sorts. A menu of technology tools they could use in order to facilitate formative assessment.

I created the document below as a menu of choices between iPad apps and Web 2.0 applications that can be used to employ types of formative assessments. It is organized to encourage a balanced approach to formative assessment so that teachers can easily see the various options they might have to encourage Write, Do, and Say in the classroom. Some of these tools can obviously be used in other categories as well.

If you like this and it might be useful in your work, you can find it here in PDF format. If you would like to modify it to meet your needs and programs available on an iPad, just email me and I will send it along in Word.

A few people deserve credit for brainstorming, design advice, troubleshooting, etc.  Dana Watts, Greg Clinton, and David Beaty were all very helpful in identifying real and relevant applications to assist teacher in creating more formative assessment opportunities for students. They were also invaluable in terms of troubleshooting and design suggestions.

I would like to point out that the organization of this document is critical to what we know about best practice in assessment.  If all you do is blog, are you giving all of your students the best chance to show what they have learned? We believe in differentiated assessments (well, at least I hope we do) and often students are given a variety of ways to demonstrate their understanding of learning. We need to give student the ability to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways formatively as well.

1. When we surveyed staff regarding issues related to teaching IB courses, time was identified as one of the most significant limiting issues in the IB program.

2. 43% of staff identified lecture as one of two primary modes of content delivery.

3. 63% indicated they had little to no knowledge regarding the concept of the Flipped Classroom.

4. We are actively looking for relevant ways to engaged teachers with technology and explore the benefits of technology to their teaching.

We had several concerns about presenting this strategy to teachers. First, it seems so many people in terms of blogging and articles seem to approach the Flipped Classroom concept as THE way of teaching your class, which we simply to not believe (for pro and con articles, blogs, and responses go here).  Personally, I am skeptical of the Khan Academy and especially the use of the videos by schools in San Mateo County (TED Talk by Salman Khan)  to deliver their mathematics instruction, the Khan Academy simply does not meet what we know to be best pedagogy regarding mathematics instruction, so really, do we want to use the Khan Academy as our model of the Flipped Classroom?  To do so limits the potential significance of this strategy.

Also, there is the issue of lecture.  Do we really want to promote and use technology to enshrine the use of the lecture as strong pedagogy?  I have taught IB and AP, and yes, I have certainly lectured, but I worried showing people a way to just lecture their students via screencasting would not push people to think about ways of delivering content beyond the scope of the lecture.  But I also think based on our survey results that at our school, lecture is treated as one of many instructional strategies and is not the only way teachers are delivering content in the high school.

In the end we really felt the best way to deal with some of these issues was to confront them head on and be sure we presented a balanced perspective on the Flipped Classroom. We accomplished this in two ways:

1. Flipping your classroom is an instructional strategy, not a way of teaching.  It is simply one option among a multitude of options teachers have to deliver instruction and if for those times you lecture, it is one way of doing it in order to free up time in your class for more processing and activity.

2. Flipping your classroom is not just about moving lecture outside of class via videos, but rather looking at what you do in class to  see what might be able to be done more effectively outside of class. For example, students working on a presentation in class on a specific topic (e.g. Militarism as a Cause of WW1) can use collaborative technology like Google Docs presentation to do it at home collaboratively rather than in class as a group project. The time in class they would have spent putting the presentation together, can be spent doing peer and self-assessment of their work or engaging in a Socratic Seminar about what was the most important cause of WW1) Flipping your classroom is about using technology to move something you used to have to do in class into the realm of homework, it does not need to be about video used as a substitute for lecture  and then just doing your homework in class with peers and teacher support.

As the presentation unfolded it was clear teachers were taking note of the potential the Flipped Classroom strategy offers and I think they were more receptive because the approach to considering the Flipped Classroom was presented as a strategy and not a philosophy of teaching and learning.  Nothing is one size fits all and so many of the readings, newspaper articles, etc, regarding this concepts seem far too rooted in one way of doing something.  The Khan Academy is one way, probably not the best way and it is far to limiting a way to consider and present an instructional strategy that has potential and merit.  Attention on the Khan Academy and its process and philosophy of the Flipped Classroom should not be the only way of viewing this instructional strategy.

Photo Attribution:

JB London via Flickr

Well, let me tell you how what went:

1. I used Today’s Meet: For the most part, people got on and did what we asked them to do, but some…well let’s just say some thought they should replicate what kids would do with such a tool.  Now, I have used this tool many times in my own class and my students have only used it to do what I asked them to do.  So that was fail #1.

2. Google Docs:  Seemed like a good idea at the time, but wow, getting 50+ people on 18+ documents in groups of 3 took a lot more time than I thought it would. We found out several good things though: some people have accounts that are set in German and some just flat out could not get on. In the end, most people were able to get on the document to process a reading and then share their reading with others who had a different reading, but holy unnerving as I watched my precious PD time slip away! Fail #2.

3. Over-planned and inflexible: Maybe you should be prepared throw out parts or slow other parts down mid-stream. What I really saw in the end was people needed time to explore with support and others around them to help them navigate and understand the potential of a tool.  But no, I was determined to finish my presentation, and I must admit I think some of the message might have been lost in the rapid fire delivery of stuffing 35 mins. of planned discussion and presentation into 20 mins. The big take away was supposed to be about assessment and I am worried it might have been about why not to use Today’s Meet as an instructional strategy. Potential Fail #3.

Conclusions:
Wow, it was hard, frustrating, and as I stated before, unnerving.  I realize I am quite the control freak when it comes to planning a presentation. I am always planned down to the minute, you never get out late (or early for that matter), and the technology…well using it really made me nervous.  I am generally quite calm for a presentation precisely because I am so prepared, but the technology, the learning curve of using the technology for staff, and the constant adjusting left me thinking on my feet more than I am used to in a professional development session.  My co-presenter Dana Watts was cool as a cucumber, maybe that is why she is the Tech Integrator and I am the Curriculum Facilitator

Walking the talk…it is still my goal in presentations, but I have to plan for the disruption and potential drag on my time.  I think under-planning is key, but time is so precious in schools for professional development it is hard to see doing less, but I know that having less and making sure it is powerful will have a greater impact down the road.  Patience Grasshopper.

Photo Attribution:

Here’s Kate from Flickr