I was in a district meeting recently, and a teacher shared with the group how she is using Edmodo with her students. I didn't know that teacher, but I was thrilled to discover that she is having success with Edmodo. This semester, I've included Edmodo in many of my staff development workshops and the word is spreading. I've also been sharing Lodge McCammon's great ideas for creating paper-slide and one-take music videos. DI coaches in our district have worked with their students on videos and posted them to our Edmodo group.
These two easy to use tools have given many teachers a great way to have their students share and collaborate. If you want professional development to go viral in your school or district, follow these steps:
Pick one amazing and easy to use tool to share. I shared Edmodo as a first step in getting teachers to collaborate online. They were also able to easily create groups for their students. Simplicity is the key. If you can attend a 45 minute session and walk away feeling comfortable with the tool, then you're more likely to use it with your students.
Provide time in your session for teachers to share and brainstorm ideas for using the technology. Continue the discussion online.
During the second session, extend the use of the tool by sharing a great curriculum integration idea. I've been working with teachers on creating paper-slide videos using Flip cameras. Students just need a few directions, and they can produce great videos that can be used to teach concepts to other students in the classroom.
Model the use of technology by giving the teachers a chance to work in groups and create a product. This gives them the confidence to go back to the classroom and work with students on a similar project.
Ask the teachers to post their work, and schedule a time for them to share their successes. Once the work is posted, other teachers in the school and district are able to see examples. They're motivated to begin using a new tool or idea in the classroom if they can see student work samples.
Follow these steps and you're sure to have successful professional development that spreads throughout your school or district. Let me know what is working well for you.
In a June blog post, I told you about my summer plans to read books on the iPad and Kindle and decide on a favorite tool to use for reading. I have to tell you that I began my summer reading experiment thinking that the iPad would easily win over other e-reader hardware. I was wrong!
The major problem that I have reading on the iPad is the back light and the screen glare. On vacation in Mexico, I found a great spot on our ocean view balcony and discovered that I couldn't see a thing on the screen except for myself. The iPad makes a great mirror if you're outside! I would like to see someone invent a clip-on hoodie for the iPad that would minimize the glare. Amazon got it right with their latest commercial featuring a man reading an iPad by the pool next to a lady with a Kindle. He asks, "How are you reading that in this light?"
I've been trying many of the iPad reading apps including Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and iBook. All of them fall short for one reason or another. I spend a lot of time adjusting screen brightness, changing the background color and changing font size. I experience a lot of eye strain when I read a back-lit screen for an extended time. I also find it hard to fall asleep at night if I've been reading on the iPad. A final problem with the iPad is definitely the weight. There are ways to prop it up while reading, but sometimes I can't find a comfortable reading position.
What I do like about reading on the iPad is the color and graphics. The iPad does win for me as a news, magazine, and textbook reader. I want color photos and nice graphics for that type of reading. It also works well for many nonfiction books that feature charts and images. I love the fact that I can bookmark my page and go right to the Internet to find other information. This can be a plus and a drawback. Many days I find myself surfing the web for an extended period of time instead of reading.
On summer vacation, I finally gave up on the iPad and went back to reading a book on my Kindle 2. I could read at the beach and didn't have any eye strain. About a week ago, I walked into a store and tried out the Kindle 3 for the first time. It was love at first sight! I went home and immediately placed an order. The smaller size, light weight, and improved screen contrast make the Kindle 3 a wonderful e-reader. The Nook has a lot of followers, but I think the new low price for the wireless Kindle 3 is going to be very appealing to many people. Even more amazing is the fact that the Kindle 3 can hold 3,500 books. That's a lot of books for a tiny device!
I know many people who like the smell and feel of a book in their hands, but I have to say that I haven't missed it very much. The fact that I can take this small device with me everywhere and choose from hundreds of books makes this the perfect device for me. Our physical bookshelves may be slimmer in the future, but our minds will be full from the many books that we read.
This summer has gone by so quickly! It seems like I was just blogging about my summer plans to attend ISTE and the DEN LC symposium. In the middle of all my summer activities, I was hired to be the Technology Integration Coordinator in my district. I began work last week and have jumped right into projects and staff development workshops. I'm excited about the upcoming year, and I'm already planning how I can use everything that I learned this summer. It was great to see so many of my Twitter friends at the Upstate Technology Conference, the ISTE Conference, and the DEN LC symposium. I also made many new friends who have shared valuable advice with me. I will be hanging on tight to my PLN as I encounter new challenges this year.
Here are a few photos from summer adventures that illustrate how much I need my PLN:
This photo was taken several weeks ago on my vacation in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico. My husband and daughter convinced me to go on a cavern dive in one of the nearby cenotes. This was a #fail! The reason that it was a failure for me is that I was not able to swim next to a buddy. I did have a guide ahead of me and my daughter behind me, but I felt very alone. I wasn't able to see very much and really needed a hand to hold onto to give me courage to go under all of that rock. I gracefully bailed out of the dive and let my daughter and husband see the wonders of the cavern.
The photo above illustrates a different sort of adventure. While ziplining in Jamaica last summer, my daughter and I were told by the guide that we wouldn't make it to the end by ourselves. Our individual weights were not enough to get us to the end, but our combined weights would give us a great ride. We went together on this adventure, and it was faster and more fun to have a companion! #success
On the Mexico trip, I swam into the midst of enormous whale sharks. The guide told us that we would need to jump into the water in pairs. When the guide saw a whale shark and yelled, "Go," we had to jump in together without any hesitation. I'm pretty sure that I would have been more worried if I had been alone. Having a companion to go overboard with me was fantastic. We swam beside huge whale sharks and shared our enthusiasm with each other. This was one of the top adventures of my life! Jumping right into a situation that is larger than life really made me think about how I should approach all of the challenges coming my way. I hope that I can keep this image with me every time that I face a new situation.
As I begin the school year and face new challenges, I plan to lean heavily on my PLN. I hope that I can also be a support to you as you jump into new situations. Let's stick together, have a great time, and see the wonderful results of our learning and growing. The cavern at the end of the dark tunnel is stunning!
I just arrived back from the Discovery Educator Network 2010 Leadership Council Symposium at Bentley University. The trip to Boston was a fantastic opportunity to network with other educators, share best practices, and hear thought-provoking speakers. Here is a summary of the ideas that I came away with:
Paperslide Videos and Music Videos with Lodge McCammon:
Lodge gave the group an opportunity to have hands-on with creating a paperslide video and a collaborative music video. You can see his presentation here: http://sites.google.com/site/denlcfizz2010. These are both great project-centered activities to implement in the classroom and will help students understand concepts.
Chris Dede on 21st Century Learning:
Day two of the symposium was an opportunity for us to hear Dr. Chris Dede from Harvard University speak about transforming education for the 21st century. He challenged us to think about what transformation looks like in the classroom. He shared information about new literacies for the 21st century based on the Framework for New Media Literacies. Dr. Dede also shared his EcoMUVE project and discussed how he hopes to develop a way for assessing student work in a MUVE. He stressed that we must have sophisticated performance assessments based on rich observations. My favorite quote: "Plan needs to be a verb, not a noun."
Unconference Day:
On Wednesday, we had the chance to organize ourselves into sessions for an unconference day. Twenty teachers agreed to lead sessions and the other participants could attend sessions of their choice. The only rule was that you must be passionate about your topic. I hosted a session on one-to-one computing with Genevieve Kahlweiss. We were able to spend the entire morning talking about issues with one-to-one computing and sharing ideas and resources. I also attended sessions on augmented reality and cell phone use in schools. Check out ROAR (Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality Project) to learn more about augmented reality in education. All of the groups created documents that could be shared with everyone in attendance. I'll be exploring the documents for a long time!
Building Learning Communities 2010:
The DEN team outdid themselves this year by taking us into Boston on Thursday to attend Alan November's BLC (Building Learning Communities) 2010 conference. Michael Wesch, the creator of the viral video, A Vision of Students Today, talked about how we need to move our students from knowledgeable to knowledge-able. His main point was that we need to engage students with real problems and harness the relevant tools to solve the problems. I was also able to attend a session by Bette Manchester from the Maine International Center for Digital Learning. She talked about the lessons learned from the one-to-one computing project in Maine. I came away with a wealth of information that I can share with teachers in my district.
My Network:
I feel honored that I was able to attend the DEN LC Symposium. The highlight of the week was networking with great educators from around the US. The theme of the week was summed up by Peter Reynolds. We visited Fablevision studios and heard Peter Reynolds talk about the books that he writes. He emphasizes in his books that we need to make our mark (The Dot) and have a great journey as we go (The North Star). I feel certain that I can do that with the great network of people who will be walking alongside me.
Thanks to the DEN planners for putting together such a great week!
I just returned from the ISTE 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado. I was privileged to be with a group of wonderful teachers from my district who challenged me to think deeply about the reasons why we use technology with out students. I took some time to pick out sessions that would show me new approaches to teaching and learning. I'm sure that I will be reflecting on the conference for a very long time, but here are some of the big ideas that I want to spend more time developing in my own educational practice.
Developing, Designing and Delivering Presentations: Ken Shelton and Robert Craven provided me with food for thought about creating presentations which use visuals to communicate a message. They provided great resources and my take-away is that I want to encourage students and teachers at my school to use cameras and create a comprehensive library of images that we can share with each other. I also want to eliminate those bullets from my presentations and continue to look for ways to involve my audience through interactive activities.
Matching Teachers and Technology and Birds of a Feather sessions: Rushton Hurley had a great interactive session which engaged the audience. He has a list of things to do and things not to do to provide effective staff development for teachers. He emphasized not teaching in a computer lab, but instead using staff meeting time for teachers to share student work and ideas for projects. I started that process this year with a faculty Ning, but I need to provide teachers with more opportunities for sharing in teams. I experienced the power of teamwork at ISTE while meeting with four other teachers from my district. We had impromptu sharing sessions and inspired each other with great ideas. The Google Certified Teachers Birds of a Feather session also made me think about ways to improve sharing at my school. GCTs came to the front of the room in this smackdown and shared one thing that they were doing in their classroom or school. There were so many fantastic ideas shared in that one hour session! We need to provide our teachers with this sharing time in school and then great things will happen in the classroom. Teachers need to be given opportunities to inspire each other.
1-1 Computing and Designing Learning Spaces: I attended a few sessions about 1-1 computing environments and am very excited that so many states are looking at ways to provide each student with a learning device. There are a variety of research studies coming out providing valuable data on how to make 1-1 projects successful. I have had some experience this year working with a teacher in our state digital textbook pilot. Just from that small pilot, I have seen some of the same results that are being reported in research studies. Students do communicate more with the teacher and are more engaged in assignments and projects. I definitely want to continue learning more about what works and what pitfalls to avoid. I also attended a session on learning spaces by Chris Johnson from the University of Arizona. He emphasized the need for building spaces that allow us to interact with each other. He said that the best social interactions come from sitting around the fire. This is definitely true for me. I love the chance to meet with small teams and work in an environment that facilitates collaboration and communication.
The Tools: A conference wouldn't be complete without attending sessions about new technology tools. I loved Leslie Fisher's presentation on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad apps. She shared a great list of resources, and I can see many great uses for educational applications. Sometimes you just need to attend a session to get a new idea for something that you've been doing for a while. I work a lot with students and teachers on Google Earth projects. I attended the Google Earth Web 2.0 Mashup and came away with some great ideas. I had never though about embedding a timeline in a Google Earth placemark. Now I'm going to be taking more time to look at ways to embed content in my GE placemarks for more interactive activities. In the vendor hall, Dan Russell from Google shared his top favorite search tools with me. He had some great educational uses for Google News Archive and Google Sets. I can't wait to share his curriculum examples with my faculty.
Wrap Up: I'm thrilled that I had the chance to meet so many new people and learn so much in a short amount of time. If you didn't have a chance to attend the conference, follow the tweets on Twitter by searching #ISTE10 and join the ISTE Ning to find presentation links - http://www.iste2010.org/.
Now that my summer break has started, I'm finally able to find a little time for my e-reader experiment. I received my iPad about a week ago, and I've loaded it with lots of e-reader apps. I want to try them all out and evaluate them based on the quality of books available, ease of use, notetaking and bookmarking capability, and customizable features such as font size and screen colors. Some of the apps I've started using include iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kindle. Other apps I've downloaded include Stanza, Free Books, and CourseSmart. The book club I participate in has provided me with a great list of books for my summer reading.
I also want to explore the differences between using an e-reader device like a Kindle vs. using a netbook, iPod, phone, or iPad. I've been using a Kindle for about nine months now and I like the fact that it has a single purpose. My biggest problem with the iPad is that I get distracted by all of the apps, tweets, and e-mail. It's just too easy to bookmark my page and move on to something else.
So, what's the point of my summer project? I believe that schools will soon (if they're not already) be looking at ways to provide each student with a netbook or tablet for home and school use. We will need electronic books and textbooks, productivity software, and wireless access so that students can have anytime, anywhere learning. I want to be ready!
Wow! This year has been fantastic for me because of all the great professional development activities that I've participated in. The very best include:
Attending the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, DC in December and becoming a Google Certified Teacher
Taking a recertification course with other ITS in my district with a focus on learning new Web 2.0 tools and collaborating with a teacher on the use of the tools
Participating in our SC State Department of Education Digital Textbook Pilot with a chemistry teacher at our school
Participating with our magnet director in our district iPAC initiative to infuse technology into the classroom and develop problem and projected-based lessons
Piloting the use of Kindles in an English classroom
Attending SMART Notebook 10 certification training and becoming a certified trainer
Becoming a SMART Exemplary Educator
Participating in and coordinating great Discovery Education events
I've talked about some of these activities in previous posts, but I want to take a little time to reflect on the great things that have happened this school year after I attended the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, DC.
Attending the GTA gave me the opportunity to network with so many wonderful teachers from around the country. I feel connected to this group and love having these experts available whenever I have information to share or questions about implementing new technologies. Being a part of this group encourages me to learn new things each day and to share that knowledge with my colleagues.
I posted an earlier blog about beginning the implementation of Google Apps in Education with our magnet students this year. Since that post, I've rolled out Apps to our faculty and added more students and groups. I'm amazed at how easily the teachers and students have transitioned to using Apps for collaboration and sharing.
The ability to create and share resource calendars has transformed how we schedule events at my school. All of the key people who schedule events have access to our master calendar and are very excited about having the events appear immediately on our school website.
I've also been able to integrate Google Apps into all of my staff development that I've offered since January. We've talked about Google Apps as a way to go paperless, share resource calendars, and create online classes. The most amazing thing is that new additions to Apps come out all the time. We're loving the easy access to Aviary, Survey Monkey, and Google Wave.
Becoming a Google Certified Teacher has reinvigorated me this year because I was able to take time out for my own professional growth. I spend so much time providing staff development for others, but I don't always take enough time for my own learning needs.
As you end the school year and make plans for the summer, remember to build in time for your PLN and take time to attend conferences, webinars, and workshops. Take time to explore all the great Google tools available and think about ways to incorporate them into your classroom. Enjoy your summer!
Nicole Walker, the Ridge View literacy coach, and I have been working on a presentation for the SCASL conference. We're sharing two digital projects that we've been piloting at Ridge View this year. One of the projects is the S.C. Dept. of Education Digital Textbook Pilot and the other is our school pilot using Kindles in the "Reading as a Writer" class that Nicole teaches.
This has been a very long, rainy and cold winter here in Columbia, SC. I've been waiting long enough now for warmer weather and sunny days. Spring is a time when I can replace the batteries in the GPS receivers and take students outside for a little GPS fun.
My favorite activity that I've developed over the last three years is a slope activity. This idea came about from a discussion with a middle school geometry teacher who wanted to find out if the slope of a hill outside of the school could be landscaped. A slope that is too large can cause serious problems for landscapers. We took her geometry classes outside and asked them to figure out how they could use a GPS receiver to get the slope. I loved watching them as they became completely engaged in discovering how a GPS receiver could be used to determine slope.
Since then, I've created a slope activity that I use with the Algebra classes at my high school. I start out in the classroom by showing the students how to use the GPS receivers to record elevation and distance. Google Earth is used to show the students the location of the hillside that we will be investigating. We can use the tilt feature in Google Earth to view the terrain. We also look at the elevation of each part of the campus.
We review the data that they will need to collect and then the teacher and I take the students outside to our soccer field. Pairs of students spread out along the top of the hill and mark a waypoint. They also record the elevation. Then they go to the bottom of the hill, mark a waypoint there, and record the elevation. The last step is to determine the distance between the first waypoint and the second waypoint by using the find feature on the GPS. After the students have all of their data, they go back to the classroom, calculate the slope, and graph the slope.
This has been a very successful activity, and the students are required to use higher order thinking skills to find the slope. The activity also reminds the students that determining slope is very important in the real world.
Try the activity out with your students and let me know how it works.
I started reading Drive by Daniel Pink this week. Daniel Pink states that the three most important things we need to achieve Motivation 3.0 are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Today's workers are required to perform many creative tasks, and the old reward system just doesn't work.
In my professional experience, my most rewarding jobs have been where I have been given autonomy over my time and my tasks. On many occasions I have gone above and beyond the call of duty because of the inner reward and purpose that I experienced from the task. I've also been in the "flow" zone where my best work is done. It's a great feeling to accomplish something because you want to do it and not because you have to do it. I have also seen great results in classrooms where teachers have provided their students with an environment that allows them some autonomy. I believe this is why Montessori education is so successful.
After my great experience at the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, DC in December, I came back excited about implementing Google Apps at my school. Google Apps offers a full package of tools for students and makes it possible for teachers to have some control but not be in control.
In the past, we have had several options for teachers to use when posting information for classes, but none of them give the students a full range of collaboration tools. Blackboard is great for posting assignments and handouts, but our students are not able to share documents with each other. We do have blogs and wikis in Blackboard, but the sharing options are very limited. Teachers also use their personal web pages to post information for parents and students. Some of our teachers have created class Nings which have more of a social networking feel to them. Students can join Ning groups, but are still limited in how they can collaborate. All of these applications are teacher centered - not student driven.
Google Apps for Education has filled a large gap that we had in what we can offer to students. Before implementing Google Apps, we did have teachers asking their students to sign-up for g-mail accounts and share documents, but everything was a little disorganized and out of the teacher's control. Now with Google Apps, our students can easily share documents, presentations, calendars, and e-mail with the group, the teacher, or individual students.
We're just getting started with implementation at my school, but we have already seen successes. The group feature makes it very easy for students to communicate with classmates. Students are able to share class presentations or work with other students on the same presentation from remote locations. The great thing about all of this is that the teacher is in on the action and can keep track of student progress by using the revision history. We love having a standardized, professional e-mail account for the students. In a few weeks, our magnet students will begin working on their electronic portfolios using Sites. Our vision is that the students will be able to share these portfolios when they begin completing college applications.
The possibilities are endless, and I'll share more successes as our implementation of Google Apps continues.
