NextGenTeachers

This weekend I along with 49 other educators from around ASIA have been invited to attend the Apple Distinguished Educators institute in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be a chance to be indoctrinated immersed in all thing Apple through the lense of education.

What really excites me about the institute is that it is project based. All participants will be placed into groups and given themes and questions to explore using the variety of Apple products available to us. Lots of advanced workshops and new stuff to try out.

Some notable edu-bloggers (Kim, Clay) will be there along with MAC guru Steve Clark of Shanghai Community International School.

I’m psyched!

 Check out all the action here

………………..the students will play, or so the old adage goes.

Last week the verse when something like this.

When the teacher is away the students don’t know it because he checks in and leads a class by SKYPE!

One of our teachers did just that while at a Partners in Learning conference in Madrid Spain.

His class has been exploring similarities and differences between cultures and he saw a great opportunity to share some on the ground experiences as they were fresh in his mind. He as able to share some art he bought and the students were able to ask questions on the fly.

Its about making connections.

Minimal planning with huge learning rewards.

When teachers are willing to take risks and they know they have support on the other end to make thing happen, great teachable moments emerge.

A few observations:

Classroom management needs to change a little so questions can be addressed one at a time to allow for any delay.

A brief mention to the students that although the medium is different nothing much has changed, this is still their teacher and the same behavior expectations apply.

Projecting the picture engages the students and immerses them in the experience.

Elevate the camera so the speaker can see the maximum amount of room space.

Just a quick note to say thanks to Dan Meyer and Silvia Tolisano for blogging about us! We’ll have another episode out shortly after Thanksgiving!

Have you seen episode 1 and subscribed to the feed? You oughtta…

www.teachjeffspanish.com

So remember I mentioned that my students and I came up with a great idea to help Jeff Corwin learn Spanish? Well, it’s come to fruition.

Don’t walk, run over to TeachJeffSpanish.com and check out the first episode!

We’re going to offer a few different things that I think will be fun for a lot of folks to be able to learn Spanish along with us! We’ll offer a word of the day post directed to Jeff as well as a weekly episode of Scavenger Hunt for Spanish. This idea was totally done by my students, with only minimal coaching on some of the more technical details. I handed three students (actually, three girls) my MacBook Pro (yup, my personal computer), a Panasonic GS-300 3CCD camera and a tripod and they went to town. The young lady that did the editing had not really ever more than played with iMovie and I think she did a jam up job.

I’ve got the iTunes link working, so feel free to subscribe to the episodes! Also feel free to leave a comment on the episode 1 post (comments are seriously moderated, as you might imagine) to tell my students how you like it!

I actually really could use the comments, because without an act of Congress, I’ll lose these students in January and have to either ditch the project or start over with new students. Then, I’d get new students at the beginning of April. I need these same ones for consistency, but let’s see how you like the project.

So if you like it, blog it, would you? This is all student-made work here, and these are sixth graders. Help me show my school these kids are as great as I keep saying! If you do blog it, please use blog tag teachjeffspanish.

My favourite web based tool I am using in my classroom at the moment is Visuwords. It is a dictionary/thesaurus/etymology visualisation tool which uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. It works wonderfully with a SMARTBoard as you can move the nodes about and shift things around to help clarify a connection. There are many many applications for this in the classroom and here are just a few I have been pondering.

Define key vocabulary from learning objectives.
So you have shared with the children the learning objectives for the session and now you want to clarify any vocabulary they should/need to know. You could even have a link directly from that word to the site. For example you could explore the meaning of “significant” from the Y5 Literacy Framework objective:

• Read and compare stories by significant children’s authors.

Search for the word and ask your children to explore what they can see, can we find any synonyms that will help us define it. Roll the mouse over a connected node to see a pop up definition. Relate it back to your objective - this would work well in a plenary session too.

Explore new vocabulary that you find.
I love exploring new vocabulary with my children. They see my enthusiasm and it becomes infectious, we have a Wow words board where they can put up interesting words they find in their reading books and elsewhere, this changes all the time. This week we were doing some work on an extract from A Christmas Carol and as we read it we noted some words we wanted to find out about. Ruddy, intimation, mourner. I ran the searches in Visuwords as a plenary.

Explore word derivation.
Visuwords does a great job of showing the children how interconnected words are and one part to explore is the derivation of vocabulary. The link you are looking for is the dashed line (you will see from this explained in the key) which shows the roots of the word you are exploring. Not quite as good as a full blown etymological dictionary but you can see the connections.

Play a word journey game.
This is a favourite in my classroom at the moment and is similar to a word association game. The children are given a starter word and they take it on a journey, thinking of a connected word and recording each step. You ask for where they ended up - “So you started with GIANT and ended up with FACTORY.” This sits nicely with Visuwords as you can expand the visual network by double clicking on a node. Run the search for “Fairytale” and see if you can get to “Fake” - lots of possibilities to explain and discuss these connections.

Experience the links between words.
There is a clear difference between the various links that are displayed and the graphical key below the map area explains these connections. There are 19 different types of links that may be displayed and I certainly wouldn’t expect to use them all or to ask my children to understand them. But the key links I would be interested in are: “is a word for”, “is similar to”, “derivation” and “opposes”. Try running a search for “style” for a broad map straight off the bat.

Show the depth and complexity of meaning.
Sticking with the results for “style” - you can very easily display how some words in the English language have a broad range of meanings and possible uses. So in these results you could highlight to the children how many different shades of meaning there are for this simple word. Another good example of this is the word “say” - very simple on the outset but if you run the search you will see it is complex in it’s meaning and usage.

Explore different word types.
Visuwords uses 4 colours to display the 4 main word groups. Green - verbs, Blue - Nouns, Orange - adjectives and Red - adverbs. This proves to be a very effective visual aid to writing as children can quickly generate adjectives from a search. So if you punch in “happy” there is displayed a wondrous tangle of synonyms the children could use in there writing. Of course they can roll over these and see the meaning of the new words if they wish. The combination of data and the way it is presented makes this a very powerful tool to support writing.

Discover more information than you expect to.
Do a search for “banana” and now double click “edible fruit” - Wow, all of sudden you and the children are exploring topic related information. From the original node you have the definition, the plant group it belongs to, other banana plant types. Following the other links you have this great web of edible fruit of which our initial search obviously belongs to. I just learned of breadfruit and jackfruit and pitahaya! Cool! I just did a quick search for “puma” and followed the “wildcat” node and you get a similar result. This could prove to be an interesting research tool if used in the correct manner.

Just enjoy it!
Dictionaries are never this much fun! There is something strangely hypnotic about the way the word nodes splurge outwards and the network stretches and skews. As connections are made, new pathways and relevance is shown. Drag the background screen around to move around the word map. Don’t forget the scalable version that can fill the browser window or to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out as you work. The latter point is good to focus the children’s attention on one specific part of the map. See if the children can find a word with the most nodes, the most links!

It has been great exploring some of these ideas in more depth as I have been writing this post and consider this as an excellent addition to my online classroom toolkit.

What successful experiences of this tool have you or your colleagues had? How have you used it in your classroom? 

Wow!

No one told me how time could fly when you have kids…………

That’s not true. Everyone told me, I just didn’t believe them.

The last month at work has been all about “SHIFT HAPPENING” and over the next few posts I will take you though that journey. I hope to provide insight on how one school is moving forward to creating a shared understanding of what it mean to be literate in the 21st century.

In the mean time…………

Have you leveled yours?

Thanks so Doug Johnson for digging this one up. 

The first thing I thought of was……….I wonder how this is calculated?

An algorithm that scans vocabulary and language and assigns a score to based on the level?

Try yours and then try your favorite blogger.

Cool.

We had two absolutely fantastic grade 5 classes participating in the Life ‘Round Here project over the last two months. Not only did our two teachers, Jennifer and Sandra, jump on board with more energy and enthusiasm than I’ve seen in a long time, but they also made sure to keep their classes learning and engaged with the project every week - not always an easy task on a long term project.

Despite the fact that I started this project within the first week of school, not knowing much about ISB - the technology infrastructure, the curriculum, the teaching styles, past student experiences with technology - we really had a lot of fun and turned out some excellent projects. Having been away from elementary school for the past two years (I did teach grade 5 IT in Munich for five years, though), I wasn’t sure just how much they could accomplish - especially given the relatively short time-frame we had for the project. But, I have to say, these kids blew me away!

We had some pretty thought provoking guiding questions:

• What is life like here in Thailand?
• How have we adapted to life in Thailand?
• How have Thai people adapted to the influence of Western culture?

And very few of the students had ever used iMovie before, so this was an entirely new experience for them. Plus, we started individual student blogs as a component of this project before we “officially” got started, so they had two huge new learning goals to explore.

After our initial lesson introducing the project, the students spent a lesson or two searching for pictures on their own (we used Google Safe Search, which was perfect for us), then an additional few lessons writing a script based on the pictures they found. Next, we spent at least 3 50-minute lessons creating the videos - importing the pictures, adding titles to organize, citing sources, and recording the narration. Finally, we spent some time reflecting with each class, to give them a chance to think about their learning.

Here’s what they had to say:

• We learned to work in a group, share ideas, pictures, and work on a long term project
• It took team work (we had to work together to get it set up and completed)
• It was easier to work in teams than on our own and we could split up the tasks and responsibilities
• Teamwork is also challenging because we can get distracted by our friends (chatting, etc.)
• Some of our friends’ ideas were better than our own and we can combine everyone’s best ideas to make a better final project
• If you have trouble with part of the project your friends could help you
• We would like to do this kind of project again because now we know exactly what would produce an even better final project (i.e. write the script before the pictures)
• Sharing projects gave us ideas for how we might do it next time to improve it
• Focusing in a group can be difficult b/c people start chatting
• Distributing/sharing responsibilities helps you work faster
• Things that will help us focus: groups need to be made up of people who we work well with (not necessarily our friends), start it earlier and have clear steps for when parts need to be finished
• Script MUST be written first and pictures pulled to match it after
• Small chunks of time every day, instead of long chunks all at the end
• Teacher could create a calendar of what gets done and when it is due
• Keep track of our sources when we pull pictures from the internet
• Sources MUST be cited

After our class discussion, we spent 2 lessons helping students write individual reflections about the project on their own blog with their movie embedded into the post. What an amazing artifact of their learning!

As the final icing on the cake, so to speak, we ended the project with a video Skype conference with Tod Baker’s students at the International School Tanjin, who also participated in the project. This was the first time our students had the chance to actually video conference with another school. Again, they blew me away! We had over 40 fifth graders in one (albeit, large) room, all overexcited about Skyping with another school, and they were so quiet and well-behaved, it was amazing. We followed my standard “4 Steps to a Skype-tastic Video Conference” and structured the furniture in the room so that students would be able to easily move up to the “hot seat” and back with a minimum of fuss. As a result of this “first contact” we will be continuing a learning relationship with Tod’s students from IST - do I sense the beginnings of some Personal Learning Networks for our students?

Although we didn’t do everything perfectly this time around, Jennifer, Sandra and I just met to discuss how we would structure the project for next year (hear that, Chris? We want a Life ‘Round Here 2008!). Ironically, this is exactly how I knew I should have run the project this year, but I guess I got caught up in “new school syndrome,” not wanting to force my teaching style onto anyone else’s classroom experience. Live and learn, right?

Here’s how we plan to run the show next year:

We’ll follow the MYP Technology Design Cycle, and I’m in the process of developing a clear Understanding by Design unit planner for the entire project. We hope to propose this project as the common assessment for the grade 5 Adaptation unit which starts the year. Currently, their unit focuses solely on Native Americans, but I’m thinking we could study how different native cultures around the world (maybe Australian Aboriginal, Thai Hill Tribes, Native Americans and Taiwanese Aboriginals) adapted to changes in their environment, and then take those concepts and apply their learning to how they have adapted to life in a foreign country? How amazing would it be to give the students the chance to construct their own learning about adaptation at a personal level? And then to bring it back to a global collaboration with the involvement of other schools around the world? I’m excited already!

Following the MYP Technology Design Cycle, we will:

Investigate:

• Watch a sample movie from the previous year
• Pre-Assessment on Adaptation and iMovie to gauge skills and knowledge
• Run a quick iMovie test session – explore the tools with some sample pictures, just try it out
• Clarify the goal of the project - ultimate expectation of a multimedia slideshow
• Define guiding questions as a class
• Brainstorm ideas in groups on how to approach answering the questions
• More in-depth research about adaptation or Thailand
  • Language Arts integration: understanding compare and contrast as a strategy and writing structure
  • Social Studies and Information Literacy integration: developing good questions and conducting quality research
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with a collaborating class to discuss the first steps

Plan:

• Write script based on the research questions (Language Arts)
• Find pictures → research, citing sourcing, how to save images, organize images
• Bring in music for video
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with collaborating class to discuss planning stage

Create:

• Create movie
• Peer Review movie before final posting & make necessary changes
• Student and teacher reflection (on process and learning) – blog, Ning, classroom discussion, or whatever works
• Skype conference with collaborating class
• Post-Assessment on iMovie - as a reflection of what students have learned

Evaluate:

• In-class discussion of what could have been improved

Now all we have to do is propose this idea to the team and the Curriculum Coordinators. What do you think? Do we have a chance?

Anyone interested in participating in this project with us next year? Maybe we can all convince Chris to run the project again!

Tags: 21stcentury, global, elementary, globalcollaborations, LifeRoundHere, ChrisCraft, adaptation, MYP, TechnologyDesignCycle, UnderstandingbyDesign, integration,

Discovery Education Streaming has a monthly newsletter that (I’m assuming) they mail out to all the DEN members. This month’s newsletter seemed rather brief (perhaps I’m just confusing it with a different monthly email from Discovery - one that had Steve Dembo’s picks in it), but the thing that got me was a survey question near the end:

1. Which statement best matches your relationship with Educational Technology?
*I have it working right now, so don’t touch anything.
*Blogs, RSS, Web 2.0, Wiki - that’s what I do before school starts.
*My VCR still flashes “12:00,” but it works just fine.

There you go- that was the only question, those were the only answers.

When I’m teaching, I’ll often have kids ask me “Can I go to the bathroom?”

My answer is usually along the lines of “I don’t know. Can you?” Then in response to their confused expressions I tell them “You have to ask the right question to get the right answer.”

Granted, there’s a big difference between a 3rd grader who doesn’t know the difference between “can” and “may” and Discovery Education - but in both cases I don’t think they’ve asked the right question. Or, more accurately, I don’t think they’ve provided the right answers.

I know a lot of teachers who could look at that survey, answer it, and move on without wondering about it at all. Four(?) years ago, I would have proudly selected the second answer. (At the time I didn’t think it was a good idea for students to be given blogs as school assignments. How wrong I was!)

But I’ve gone beyond that. I do have students using wikis, blogs, and all kinds of cool stuff in the classroom. When new ideas come out, I want to hear about them and try them out. I’m not saying this to pump up my already over-inflated ego, because I know there are others like me who are pulling it off even better than I ever could. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Eric Langhorst! Let us know how those new iRivers work out.)

So you see, my problem with the survey question is that there’s no answer I can pick that fits what I do with technology, and I know a lot of people who are in the same boat.

Maybe I’m not Discovery Education Streaming’s target audience, I don’t know.

I wouldn’t think this was worth a whole blog post, especially one as long as this one’s becoming, if I wasn’t seeing this all the time in education. I’ve had more than one employer over the years, and in most cases they were more than happy to get you up to a level that allowed you to copy, paste, and find Microsoft Office on your hard drive. “Advanced” classes showed you how to input pictures into a word document. (I actually attended one of those, and will speak no more about it other than that the presenter asked me how to open PowerPoint.)

And true, a lot of digital immigrants need classes like that - but that’s just the starting point and if we don’t go on then our students will surpass us in the “how-tos” without ever learning the “whys” or “shoulds.”

I suppose that’s another reason why I’m looking forward to this weekend’s Powering Up With Technology conference. There I’ll find educators on every level of the technology spectrum, but we’ll all have one thing in common.

It won’t matter if our VCRs are flashing 12:00, our current tech is working, or we love to use blogs, wikis, rss, and more outside (and inside!) the classroom.

Every single one of us at that conference will be there because we want to do more.

This Friday I am heading down to Singapore to present at the Teach IT! Conference for all Singapore international schools. The conference is being held at Singapore American School, workplace of the fabulous Susan Sedro! I am really looking forward to visiting the school and spending some quality time with Susan and her partner, Kent. We’ve been quite close ever since I moved into her old condo in KL when she left to go back to the US for a year. In fact, Susan is the first person I ever became friends with online before meeting face to face, she’s also the person who introduced me to blogging, and the person that inspired me to start working with web 2.0 tools. Basically, Susan rocks!

It’s also thanks to Susan that I’m even attending and presenting at this conference, considering that I don’t actually work in one of the many international schools in Singapore, I feel lucky to be part of this event. I spent a lot of quality time with the SAS team during the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai in September, and with Susan’s good word to the Technology Director (and my official proposal, of course) I was in!

I seem to be kind of a glutton for punishment, so instead of just proposing one session for the conference, I proposed two:

Developing the Global Student: Practical Ways to Embed 21st Century Literacy Skills Into Your Classroom

Overview: This session will focus on utilizing web 2.0 applications, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis, to develop 21st century literacy skills within the core curriculum. Metacognition, research skills, and online awareness help students find what they need, learn at their own pace and safely share with a wider audience. How can we incorporate these exciting, motivating skills and technologies into our classrooms? Examples of completed student projects, along with teacher materials and resources, will be shared.

and

The 21st Century Educator: Embracing Web 2.0 in Your Professional Practice

Overview: What exactly do RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking and VOIP have to do with your professional practice? How can web 2.0 technologies change the way you learn, communicate, collaborate and teach? This session will focus on practical ways to utilize free web 2.0 tools to develop a personal learning network that will transform your professional practice and open your eyes to new possibilities in the classroom!

In my humble opinion, these two presentations go well together and I hope that some of the participants from the first session also opt to attend the second. This is the first time I’ve presented internationally in a few years (I inadvertently went on a little hiatus at my last school) and I’m really interested to see how much the average international school teacher knows about web 2.0 tools. I created a wiki for each presentation (linked to the titles above) and I hope that the participants will see those spaces as a resource beyond the duration of the conference. Right now the resources pages are a little “bare-bones” so please feel free to add anything that you think would benefit the participants - I would love to be able to say that my PLN added to my presentation!

I was initially thinking of Ustreaming my presentations, but alas, I found out this weekend that presenters will not have internet access during the conference. It’s amazing how quickly you can get used to ubiquitous wifi access - our entire campus here at ISB (including my house) is wifi. I haven’t seen an Ethernet cable since I plugged in our Airport Express the day after we moved in…

I guess that means a quick Twitter hello from my PLN is also out, and definitely no friendly Skype guest-speakers, either. I’ll just have to tell some animated stories about all of our previous adventures instead! Actually, I’m thinking of having my husband attend my workshop (poor guy) to video it so I can upload to Ustream later. I’ve always wondered what I look like teaching and presenting. This may be my very first chance to find out!

Tags: network, PLN, Twitter, 21stcentury, learning, TeachIT!, SusanSedro, global, educator, slideshare, PD, Singapore

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ll be presenting at next weekend’s Powering Up With Technology conference. My topic of choice this year involves using cameras in the classroom.

Any classroom.

Now I’ve used cameras to help me teach all kinds of subject areas, and I have ideas for even more ways to use them, but I also know a lot of you have used digital cameras in your classrooms in ways that I haven’t.

So I would like your input. If you have a moment, please check out my Digital Photography in Any Classroom wiki and see what I’ve left out.

I’m not asking for you to complete everything, of course, but if you have a lesson idea that worked well I’d love to hear about it. Hey, if the results of that lesson (or at least an example) are posted online, why not just add in a link to wherever they are?

I fully intend to continue editing this wiki up until (and including) (and past) the day of my presentation, but I would love to stand up there and tell my audience that the resource I’m providing was not just written by myself.