This past Fall, our Upper School (grades 6-8) Division Head decided to incorporate some Web 2.0 tools into her administrative repertoire. Rather than passing out the thick 3-ring binder with paperwork at our August division meeting, she created a series of Google Docs which she updates monthly. Before each Division Meeting she sends us an iGoogle tab with the Google Docs front and center, and features widgets on the tab that teachers might find useful and interesting (Spanish Word of the Day, This Day in History, NASA Image of the Day, etc.)

She has also been asking us to bring our laptops to each division meeting, where we have been taking the first 10-15 minutes of meeting time to leave comments on a blog she set up for the division, in part to address inevitable technical issues on the spot, and partly as a way to ensure that everyone contributes. Several colleagues immediately balked, asking “why are we taking valuable time away from our meetings to type our thoughts instead of talking face-to-face with the people here in the same room?!” She persisted.

This month she posted a series of questions on the blog ahead of time about some Fall professional development events we’ve participated in. She asked us to leave comments on the post PRIOR to our division meeting. Here’s a comment I just noticed this evening:

“I must confess that my initial reaction to the blog requirement was not especially favorable because I couldn’t quite see the advantages of pecking away at my keyboard instead of sharing oral comments in a face-to-face setting. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that this served a need for which I have long advocated: some sort of a public forum for colleagues to share their thoughts about guest speakers and large-scale meetings. For example, I was disappointed in certain features of J’s presentation (e.g. she rushed through the more nitty-gritty material in the second half of the talk and she passed out 22 pages of hard copy to each individual while espousing sustainability at all levels.) On the other hand, I am encouraged to hear through the blog that many of you felt inspired and well informed by what she shared (which has modified my own reaction to the presentation.)”

And here’s another:

“I think this is a great process (the blogging) because it frees up time for other things in meetings. I will defer to the teachers about what those things should be, but it seems like a good use of time to prethink and communicate with each other and not rehash all this in a meeting setting.”

Alas, yet another example of one of the most important personality traits an administrator ought to possess which I sorely lack…patience with the process.

(image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulphoto/365740316/)

1. iGoogle – Our tech-savvy Upper School Division Head has made the radical decision to go paperless with her fall teacher “notebook” at our upcoming division retreat. Rather, she has put all of the important parent letters, schedules, meeting agendas, etc. into Google Docs. She will then send each of us an iGoogle tab with the Google Docs gadget front and center. Also on the tab will be a variety of gadgets she wants to highlight as possible teaching tools. Each month she will send us a new tab with new gadgets, always keeping the Docs front and center. As we’ve been playing with this idea, I’ve been creating my own personal tabs to keep track of my favorite new gadgets and an aggregator for my favorite blogs.
2. Ning – On the heels of the fabulous Building Learning Communities conference this past July, two of our 7th and 8th grade teachers have decided to set up Ning Learning Communities for their students. One teacher is an English teacher and looks forward to giving each of her students their own blog space through the Ning, and hopes that it will become a safe place for her students to experiment with their writing. A math teacher plans to use his Ning as a place for students to discuss homework, work on group projects together, and to show their step-by-step work somehow. Can’t wait!
3. Scratch – My Ed Tech partner-in-crime, Jen Cronan Flinn, and I attended a full-day seminar at MIT this summer and had the opportunity to learn how to use Scratch, the latest educational programming software to come out of the MIT Media Labs (home of Logo.) We are excited to pilot Scratch in several grades, and one of our goals is to come up with ways beyond math to integrate this fantastic program.

Over 2 years ago, I had the opportunity to be a part of a monthly Critical Friends Group, a professional learning community made up of 10 or so colleagues with two fellow teachers facilitating. Twice a month different teachers had the opportunity to formally present a teaching dilemma to the group, and we used highly structured protocols to help the colleague think through possible solutions, get to underlying issues and expand their thinking around the dilemma.

I remember in particular our 8th grade Spanish teacher struggling with ways to authentically assess her students’ oral skills without it being the tremendous time-drain her current system required. I vigorously suggested some technology solutions, including GarageBand, mp3 recorders, etc. as something that would benefit both her and the students, and while she was intrigued, she simply wasn’t ready. Last year we touched base about voice recordings again, but it still never went anywhere. Still not ready.

This year, something shifted. We installed an LCD projector, document projector and interactive whiteboard in her classroom over the summer, which she’s been using with great relish and success. My colleague and I expanded our roles this year, and are now directly supporting our 6th-8th grade teachers rather than focusing exclusively on K-5. And she’s ready. Simply put, she’s ready.

She approached me two weeks ago wondering about a project she does each year with the kids writing and reciting Spanish “pickup lines” or piropos. She asked whether I had any cool technology tools that might enhance this project, and indeed I did! I suggested teaching Voicethread to her kids, which would allow them to both say and write their piropos, and would provide them with an opportunity to comment (in Spanish) on each other’s work. I showed her a few examples I had collected on my new MCDS Ed Tech Wiki and she was completely sold on the idea.

Today we launched the project with her first 2 sections of 8th Grade Spanish students. Predictably, the kids were thrilled and had a blast doing the work. But most exciting for me was seeing this teacher taking so many risks, figuring things out on her own, learning alongside her students, and the lightbulb going off in a big way. She reminded me that this was the very first time she had ever even used one of our mobile laptop carts in her classroom with students, and told me about two more ways she intends to use Voicethread before the end of the year. I will post about those later.

At the same time, one of my Ed Tech partners-in-crime sat in on an incredibly frustrating grade-level meeting today. One of the grades she works with is about to start a big Social Studies unit and asked her for a way to integrate technology into the mix. She researched and prepared a suite of delicious choices for them to look at, chock full of examples, simple ideas and marvelous rich connections to the content. They couldn’t have been less interested in the ideas she was pitching, and she left feeling frustrated, confused, and sad for the students.

So what’s the take-away lesson for me? That integrating technology is, of course, a process that takes time. That we are planting seeds that may not take root right away, but that eventually will. That we need to shift our emphasis away from making changes this year and look realistically at the next three to five years or even longer. Which, of course, is impossible. Voicethread wasn’t even around nine months ago!

At a recent meeting our Head of School referred us to an image described by Jim Collins in his wonderful book Good to Great — that of the flywheel. The concept reminds us that with consistent effort over time, pushing and pushing will eventually build momentum until there is finally a breakthrough. Click here for a nice description of the buildup-breakthrough flywheel. I found the wonderful flash animation illustrating this concept at http://jimmyzimmerman.com/blog which I have embedded below:

(Snake image from http://flickr.com/photos/cpstorm/158374275/)

• Loose Parts: Our twin sons’ preschool teacher recently launched this fantastic blog, where he intends to explore issues pertaining to Early Childhood Education, anti-bias curriculum, communication between teachers and parents, professional development, etc.
• The K Files: Our next-door neighbor (and close friend) is documenting her school search for a kindergarten for her daughter. She is tackling some rocky terrain, including the San Francisco USD lottery system, public school vs. private school, school readiness, language immersion, etc. Her blog is already receiving a fair amount of traffic and is stimulating some lively debate in the comments sections.
• Abby & Jon’s Pregnancy Blog: Abby, a friend and former colleague, attended my CAIS presentation last spring and decided to make her first blog about her pregnancy & and new parenthood experiences.
• Kindness Mural Project: Armed with successful blogging practices, Abby used a blog to document an amazing global elementary art project she piloted at The Phillips Brooks School last Spring.
• MCDS Book Corner: One of the MCDS Librarians, Anie S., launched a blog this Fall, highlighting what’s going on in our school’s library.

http://k12online.wm.edu/its_elementary/player.html

While several committee members felt excited about exploring peer observation, feedback and mentoring, others hesitated and indicated that for some colleagues, the concept of an open-door policy would be intimidating, inhibiting and uncomfortable. If we do decide that we value a culture of sharing, does it need to be an official “sanctioned” program with parameters and expectations? Or would it work better as a grass-roots “drop in whenever you feel like it” type of thing? Hmmmm…

The concept of “teaching in private” simply wouldn’t work for me in my role. By very definition, a Technology Coordinator must partner with classroom teachers and uncover what’s going in the classroom in order to create meaningful connections to technological tools, skills and projects. My new adventure with teaching kindergartners right in the K classrooms is having the fringe benefit of allowing me to observe my colleagues in action on a weekly basis. When I hear Doug teaching a new Letter of the Week song with his banjo, or see Richard explaining how the classroom spider will eat the cricket he’s about to feed it, or look around the walls of Janet’s room and see classrom documentation showing how they are incorporating math concepts into their morning meetings, I am growing and learning as a teacher.

The other fun PSE4 thing I’ve been experimenting with a lot this summer is digital scrapbooking, especially utilizing some of the wonderful premade pages and album kits available out there. My all-time favorite 2 resources for digital scrapbooking files, inspiration and resources have to be The Shabby Princess and Scrapbook-Bytes. (By the way, my new blog banner is from The Shabby Princess’ wonderful Shabby Shoppe.)

I always had a basic aversion to this concept, holding tight to the idea that teacher training is highly customized and personal, and is best performed by fellow teacher-types rather than by someone with a product to sell. Even though I have spent various parts of my career making a living as an educational technology consultant and as a technology speaker at a larger company, I still always saw myself as a teacher of teachers rather than as a vendor pushing a product.

At Macworld this year, I was struck by how many of the big vendor booths featured dynamic, engaging software trainers who did an excellent job of showcasing the various products and their features. While this type of training is obviously sales-oriented, perhaps there is a place for it in schools — especially if it is free-of-charge. My thinking is that once in a while it might be exciting for teachers to be dazzled by what’s out there, and to be given an opportunity to check out the latest and greatest stuff without attending a trade show.

Since Macworld, we invited our local Apple rep to host an “Introduction to Podcasting” workshop afterschool in our computer lab. This 2-hour presentation was not hands-on, however the presenter provided the teachers with an excellent overview of some of the terrific school and classroom podcasts out there, a list of rationales for podcasting and a very thorough step-by-step interactive presentation of how to use GarageBand in conjunction with Keynote, iTunes and a .mac account to easily publish podcasts. And Apple even provided the soda, pretzels and cookies! We invited colleagues from several neighboring schools, so the added benefit was the opportunity to build connections with other teachers in the area. Yes, it was a little bit “commercially” at times, but the good will created by the Apple folks, and the excitement they generated with the participants made it a real win-win situation.

On Friday, I attended another Apple-sponsored event at Del Mar School in Tiburon, CA, to hear about their 5-month old 1:1 laptop program for 6-8 graders. The focus was entirely on student learning, faculty innovation, parent excitement and the nuts and bolts of how to get a 1:1 program off the ground. Apple provided a beautiful lunch at an upscale Italian restaurant, the event provided a glimpse into a neighboring school demonstrating what’s possible, and attendees were given a fantasting networking and brainstorming forum free-of-charge. Teachers at Del Mar spoke glowingly of their participation in an every-other-year intensive Vanguard training program they can attend through Apple as well.

Next up, Gateway. Around 10 of our faculty members (including me) have been piloting the latest Gateway tablet pc laptops. We have invited all of the technology leaders from local independent schools and our neighboring public schools to come to an afternoon presentation from Gateway about teaching and learning with tablets on March 16th. I’ll report back after the presentation. The agenda looks great, and so far the only difference is that while the Gateway reps have offered to pay for the snacks, we have to go out and buy them!

But I think one of the biggest points we managed to drive home had to do with how teachers only typically provide parents with a tiny glimpse into their classrooms and the students’ learning process. The rare times parents come to the classroom to see student work it is for the final product — the PowerPoint speech, the Winter Concert, Spring Art Show, Portfolio Day, etc. Rarely are parents exposed to the process of learning, and rarely are students and teachers asked to reflect about what they are learning as they are learning it.

I used an example from my own life as the parent of preschool-aged twins. One of my sons brought home yet another painting from school several weeks ago. When he showed it to me, I thought “that’s nice, honey” and planned to add it to the growing pile of preschool art we already have.

Later in the week, however, the teacher stopped me in the hallway to tell me how excited my son had been about their recent experimentation with color mixing, and upon learning that blue+yellow=green and red+blue=purple, he asked “but how is black made?” The class proceeded to experiment with paints until they came up with black, and his artwork was the end result of the discussion. Suddenly that “nothing” painting became a treasure to me. A glimpse into his development.

A quick note on the back of the painting, a typed caption, or better yet, an audio recording or digital photos and transcription of the class discussion would have allowed parent, teacher and even student to understand the process of learning so much more deeply.

How to set up the projector:

• What equipment you’ll need
• How to reserve a projector
• Step-by-step hookup demonstration
• Troubleshooting
• You may check a projector out for multiple days and can get a tech coordinator to come with the projector to help them teach a lesson

What to prepare ahead of time on your laptop:

• Shortcut to the website or Word/PPT document with links
• Writing or visual prompt
• Use a KWL or Venn diagram template in Inspiration, PPT template, etc.

Hints about presenting with an LCD projector:

• How to change the view size in Internet browsers
• Word: Play with zoom and font sizes for easier viewing
• Inspiration: Setting default “look,” using fit-to-page, arrange and rapid fire
• Mac OS X Tiger: Using the zoom feature (Apple-Option-8, then Apple-Option-+)

Using an LCD projector to:

• Present student work (PPT, movies, etc.)
• Introduce a unit
• Introduce/reinforce writing skills (how to write a letter)
• Review tech skills
• Look at pertinent websites (virtual Japanese house)
• Watch DVDs

Other examples:

• Online math explorations
• Library of Congress images
• Volcano videos
• Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia
• Google Earth

Show movies, movie clips and audio (don’t forget the speakers!)

• Listen to read-aloud audiobooks by the author in iTunes
• Play video/audio clips
• Poetry jukebox
• Prelinger film archives
• Listen to iTunes radio
• Listen to Talking History or foreign language podcasts
• Keep in mind “cognitive load” when using text, audio and graphics!

Using the LCD projector with a tablet:

• General
• If you write faster than you type, try inking a class discussion
• Pass tablet around the room to have different students fill things out
• Certain software and websites (KidPix, painting software, virtual manipulatives) lend themselves to using a stylus

• Microsoft Office
• Install the MS Office tablet feature, which lets you add ink annotations to Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Create slideshow of pictures/photos to compare & contrast, then ink on them

• Journal and OneNote
• Go to Print menu and send any document or web page to Journal or OneNote.
• Once a file’s in OneNote you can write on top of diagrams, highlight text, circle sections of a map
• Send a copy of class notes to Outlook, OneNote or Journal
• OneNote allows you to add voice record feature to notes
• In OneNote, Windows-S does screen capture and adds to notes
• Notes can be shared, group edited, saved to server folder and/or Sharepoint

“Portfolios and documentation in the classroom are used to tell a story of a child’s life at school. This story is told through multiple perspectives (teacher/child/family), and is supported with a variety of work samplings, transcriptions, and other documentation types.

Several goals are attained through the thorough, thoughtful, and successful use of a well-planned portfolio and documentation process. These are:

• A child’s developmental progress is charted over time, and this aids in revealing their quality of thinking and skill level. Documentation is an authentic assessment tool that aids our assessment of the child’s experiences, and provides an opportunity for each child to self-assess their involvement and goals.

• Parents become more connected to work of their children. Documentation reflects the classroom experience to the outside observer, and shows the respect we hold for this work. Further, it gives parents and others a glimpse of the child’s involvement in project work, social relationships, and their use of the classroom environment.

• Documentation, portfolio development, and work sampling help us to make more informed curriculum decisions. It highlights activities that provide successes, and helps us to identify needs and areas to develop. It reflects accountability on all levels.”

Debra goes on to enumerate the different types of documentation that can be used for student portfolios, including narratives, transcriptions, photographs, observations, products and work samples, self-reflections, webbing, video and tapes.

I have seen Debra and her colleagues employ technology to help document their classroom experiences through extensive use of the digital camera, voice recordings, daily emails home to parents encapsulating that day’s activities, scanning student work, videotaping big events, and using word processors to type up enormous amounts of hand-written and recorded transcripts from student interviews.

I think that once most teachers learn about classroom documentation, they clearly see the value in it and would love to send their students home not just with completed “products” (research papers, artwork, etc.) but with a description of the process used to arrive at the product. But the inevitable question is how exactly are teachers supposed to find the time and wherewithal to pull it off?

I’ve been experimenting with using a combination of a digital camera and a PowerPoint template on my laptop to try to capture classes in the Computer Lab as they are happening. The template has a variety of ready-to-go slides with 1, 2, 4 or 6 picture placeholders and text boxes underneath them. I run around during class, capturing students at work with my camera. Then I put my camera aside and move around the room with my laptop and template. I interview kids as they work, asking open-ended questions like “how did you decide how to make this?” or “what is the hardest thing about this project?” while I type their responses into the template. After class I bring the photos in to the template, matching up the kids to their quotes. Then I can print out the documentation to display on the wall or email the whole thing home to parents. But I have to say, it takes a lot of steps and I couldn’t pull it off without other teachers in the room.

There’s always voice recordings or video cameras to help with this process of classroom documentation. But again, who has time on a regular basis to pull the sound into a movie or to edit the video into iMovie during their regular teaching life?

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the various ways teachers and students can use Web 2.0 tools to document the process of student (and teacher) learning. Blogs and podcasts seem like excellent ways for learners to reflect, experiment and to evolve in front of a larger audience. I hope to work with some of our teachers in the coming months to begin experimenting with these newer forms of documentation.

An administrator once gave me some great advice, saying that not every classroom endeavor has to be a “gourmet meal.” That if you have one or two gourmet meals every once in a while, you’ll appreciate them more. Most of the time classroom “meals” end up being nourishing, healthy and perfectly fine, but nothing too fancy. Maybe the goal of using different documentation techniques should be to showcase an occasional gourmet meal that shows, rather than tells what is going on in our classrooms and inside the heads of our students.

For a long time, I’ve been arguing that the days of the “computer teacher” are over, and that teachers will never become comfortable, self-sufficient or see the computer lab as anything more than another “specialty class” (like P.E., music or world languages) until tech coordinators stop enabling classroom teachers by enouraging the “come to the lab and I’ll put on a show” technique. And yet…sigh…I’m deep into my second year at MCDS and I fear that I’m guilty of setting up that exact dynamic. The majority of our weekly Mac Lab classes are planned on the fly in the cafeteria, then I scramble back to the Lab to set up a template or launch a website, and the teacher spends the first half of class in the role of another student while I teach the lesson. Stand and deliver. Despite every bone in my body telling me that it’s exactly the way NOT to teach this stuff. Sigh…

The conundrum, of course, is time. Time to meet ahead with teachers and grade level teams to plan out our projects properly. Time to work with individual teachers to help them explore, experiment and become more self-sufficient. Time to unshackle myself from the Lab and head into the classrooms with a projector, a mobile lab, a digital camera, to be where the authentic learning and natural fit for technology truly comes.

Yes…I know…there are computer skills to learn. Technology standards we want our students to meet. But when/where/how and by whom should these skills and standards be taught? How is your school doing it?

I used my commute to listen to the EdTechTalk#25 podcast with guests David Warlick and Terry Freedman. While much of the conversation was similar to the recent MacWorld presentation I had just heard David give, there were some great impromptu moments during the conversation. At one point, Terry spoke about an initiative in the U.K. where, he fears, great resources are being put into designing state-of-the-art classrooms for yesterday’s students. There was also great discussion about the current obsession with standards and with students learning discreet skills and bodies of information right at the very time where learning how to learn and what is important factual information is more important than having amassed a set of knowledge predetermined by educators and politicians.

The phrase “shallow standards” came up during the podcast. It really struck a chord with me and reminded me of our wonderful visit to Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA last Spring, where we were able to observe their wonderful concept of “Central Subjects” for each grade level. By focusing on one, unifying, cross-curricular subject for an entire grade level, teachers had the freedom to go deeper with their essential questions, to take their time, to understand each unique group of learners and teacher they had each year. What a wonderful model they provide, free from the shackles of standards, coverage of a huge amount of content and from the old “but I’ve always done it that way.”

Thursday and Friday, we attended MacWorld. Our Tech Director, Library/Media Specialist and I wandered the trade show floor and saw various ways to dress up an iPod, ranging from rubber to quilted to Burberry to gold lame (pictured below.) I settled on an adorable $18 kimono for my own iPod mini.

The highlight of the day (for me) was hearing about the new iMac with Intel chip and built-in iSight camera, and watching a demo of the FANTASTIC new iLife 6. The product presentations left me practically drooling.

Friday brought us to the daylong K-12 Seminar, co-hosted by CUE and Macworld. The day consisted of some wonderful speakers and presentations, including David Warlick (keynote, podcasting and blogging), Hall Davidson (digital storytelling), Carol Ann McGuire (accessibility), and Rae Niles (1:1 student laptop programs.) My head is brimming with new ideas for implementation and experimentation back at school. Woo hoo!