Milobo’s Musings

Much to my delight and surprise, I’ve been asked to serve as an “expert voice” for the New Jersey Powerful Learning Practice (NJPLP) virtual community. Powerful Learning Practice is a program designed to impact instructional methodologies and beliefs by using a combination of real and virtual experiences to build knowledge within a community of teachers, principals, university faculty and state level administrators.  Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson have done an excellent job of designing a plan that can meet the needs of all these diverse individuals as they work together to create positive change. 

As part of the program, participants have the opportunity to learn from and share learning experiences with experts in tools and pedagogy. Bud Hunt, blogger extraordinaire, is leading the NJ virtual community and sent an email my way about a week ago asking if I’d be interested in being an expert voice for the New Jersey cohort.

Tag, I’m it.

I have to admit I’m a little intimidated by the thought of being looked at as an expert.  Sure, I’ve had lots of experiences during my 20 years in education and experimented with many different technology tools over those years, but what is it that makes someone an expert?

Here’s what I’m hoping Bud and the rest of the PLP team are looking for:

• Someone willing to risk failure in order to find success.   One of the most important things I’ve learned is that no great thing comes without risk.  Learning how to fail is a skill I wish were taught to students, because it’s one they need to master if they want to grow. For many years in my Algebra class, I spent time after every test teaching students how to learn from their mistakes. They learned that by analyzing their errors, they’d figure out where their weaknesses lay and then could work to improve them.  My goal was to have them see risk and failure as an opportunity for learning, which would ultimately lead to success.  I’ve certainly taken my share of risks, including my current job.  Who would’ve imagined a K-8 teacher would be hired to help a high school faculty learn to integrate technology and redesign their learning environment to become more engaging?
• Someone with more questions than answers.  I’m still a learner at heart and part of learning is asking questions.  Lots of them. It’s that curiosity and need to understand that help me when I’m guiding teachers through the process of building units of instruction.  I don’t claim to be an expert in most of the subjects taught by the teachers I work with every day.  What I can do is ask the right questions to help them define their outcomes, decide what practices would help students meet their goals, and then determine what method will be used to measure achievement. Good teaching and learning practices are universal across all disciplines.  It sometimes just takes the right questions to help teachers find them.
• Someone who believes the best learning comes when all believe they have something to learn. I truly believe that there’s something to learn from every person I encounter. I learn from my fellow teachers and from my students. I learn from those with more experience that I’ll ever have and from those who are just starting out. That’s one reason I’m excited about the opportunity to join the NJPLP. Because while I’m sharing what I’ve learned, I hope to learn from those who are participating.

So here it is, 3 weeks after Halloween and a bowl of leftover candy still sits on my counter. I’ve picked through the remains now and then and what’s left behind is the stuff that makes “junk food” sound like a compliment. Stuff that’s full of sugar and artificial flavors and tooth-rotting, chewy goodness.  Stuff that would make a dentist’s early retirement dreams a reality.

Stuff that makes Halloween a fun change from the regular routine but wouldn’t do much to provide for a healthy, balanced diet.

Good thing it only happens once a year.

Looking at that bowl of candy, I think about what sometimes happens when teachers think about adding technology to their regular classroom routine.   “It’ll help make learning fun,” they think as they usher students into a computer lab with little thought to the outcomes and goals they’d normally employ to design a learning activity.  Sometimes, there’s a new web tool or site they’ve seen that looks like it might hold a student’s interest. Even more often, it’s the end of a unit and there’s a day or two to be filled, so using technology to create a brochure or slide show seems like the ticket.

Like the empty calories contained in my leftover candy, this type of use doesn’t give much thought to the nutritional balance students need to grow into strong and healthy learners.  Playing games or throwing images into a slideshow doesn’t necessarily translate into learning.  Sure, it’s fun, but unless it is backed by an understanding of the intended outcomes, it won’t hold you or your students over for long.  And that’s part of the challenge I meet every day in my job. Helping teachers move past the quick fixes it seems technology can provide to thinking about what they really want their students to understand.  Making a little sugary tech-goodness into a four course meal where dessert is part of the package, but isn’t the main focus.

So, what’s the secret to a perfectly seasoned technology lesson?  When I co-plan with teachers, I ask them to use these three basics:

1. Begin with the end in mind. It’s rare when a good lesson begins with the technology.  If you identify the tool before you are clear on your outcome, you’ll end up with a lot of fun, but not much learning.  I often ask teachers to share with me what they hope students will learn or be able to do as a result of their activity.  I listen for specific words that cue into their goals (see Bloomin’ Web Tools for an explanation) and then pick a tool that matches that goal.  Having teachers document their outcome makes for a much better match between activity and tech tool.
   
2. Make sure the curriculum drives the process. Once you’ve matched outcome and tool, the real work begins.  Next, comes defining the process students will use and the benchmarks that keep students on track.  I’ve seen the best ideas come to a dismal end when teachers don’t clearly define their vision to their students.  Share with students what your goals are and let them know what you see as an acceptable end product by using a rubric or defining a S.M.A.R.T goal.  Most importantly, make sure your standards focus more on the curriculum than on the esthetics.  While good design is important, unless you’re teaching a design class it’s more important that students show clear understanding of the content.
3. Reflection is essential. What a shame it is when students spend a significant amount of classroom time creating a product, only to have it turned in, graded, and returned without any peer feedback or culminating reflection.  Any time you use technology, you should plan in time for students to reflect on their learning.  Give them a chance to publish or post their products.  Ask them to rate and comment on the work of their peers. Let them share what they learned.  Without this final step, they’ll leave the table without feeling fully satisfied.

In short, make sure your technology integration efforts turn into more than an empty snack.  A love of learning blended in with a dose of curiosity is what we’re trying to awaken in students.  Not mindless entertainment, but mindful purpose. And if it happens to be a little fun at the same time, then that’s really sweet.

42.

If it were the number of students in your class, it might seem like an impossibly large number.  If it were the amount of minutes you spent per subject each day, it might seem a bit rushed.  But what if you knew that 42 is the average number of people who respond and react to a student’s work from the time they enter Kindergarten until they graduate from High School? The following video created by Barry Bachenheimer really brought the point home for me:

So, after 13 years of schooling, a student’s perception of their ability as a writer, thinker and communicator has been influenced and shaped by an audience of fewer than 4 dozen people.

Makes you think doesn’t it?

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has defined Communication and Collaboration as one of the key elements students must master to be successful in the 21st century workplace. This includes:

• Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing
• Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams
• Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work

Most importantly, students need to be able to accomplish these goals within a global community.  It’s not enough for students to be able to work effectively with the person who sits next to them.  Now, they’ve got to be able to work well with the person who sits around the globe from them.

We’re giving students the tools to take their learning out into the world through the CHS 1:1 laptop program.  Now we’ve got to take those tools and help students learn to use them to collaborate within our school community and within the global community.  How? How about starting small within your classroom and then going global when you’ve got the hang of it:

• Start Small: Create a classroom gallery of work that can be rated and commented on by student peers. Celeste Bell is doing this now with her students by creating a Studywiz Gallery of their “Jesus Moments” photographs.  While she’ll tell you that the students enjoyed taking the pictures before she created the gallery, she’ll also tell you that creating the gallery has motivated students to respond to and appreciate the work of their peers.
  

 
• Go Global: Create a project that is published and posted on the web. Marilyn Stefani is doing that now with her student’s Earth’s Composition Wiki and Google Map.  Marilyn paired her students across two classes and asked them to collaborate to create one page with background information on an assigned topic.  She then challenged the students to identify current environmental issues related to their topic and create a collaborative map that gives a brief overview of the issue and links to more information on their wiki. It’s been a challenge to teach the students to work asynchronously on a common goal, but the payoff has been that students are learning how their actions (or inactions) affect others while appreciating the knowledge and talents of their fellow students.



 

 

 

Do people really pay attention to these efforts?  The answer is yes, and sometimes in a big way.  Last year, Nancy Collin’s class created a wiki project on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I wrote about it in a Scholastic article along with Christine Day’s Google Doc project.  It’s still out there for others to see and on a whim, we decided to use Google Analytics to keep track of how many visitors we have there.  In the last 6 months, there have been visits from exactly 42 locations. Not 42 visitors, or 42 cities, or 42 states, but 42 different countries sent over 1600 visitors to the site. How’s that for a global audience?

So, we can close the doors to our classrooms and give our students an audience of 1, or we can find strategies to give our students a global audience.  Their future will include the challenge of living and working in a connected world.

Are we preparing them for this challenge?

I’d like to say we’re giving it a good try.

Bloom’s Taxonomy. It’s one of those things we know we should think about when planning lessons and activities, but matching it with the right tools and activities can be tough.  In this post, I thought I’d share with you one favorite tool that matches with each level of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Remember
Memorizing isn’t a bad thing – it’s often the first step to higher order thinking.  If you don’t know the vocabulary, you can’t join in the discussion with real meaning.  Quizlet (http://quizlet.com/) is a website that helps students practice and memorize vocabulary by creating flashcards and playing games.  You can create groups of students and share your card sets with them or they can create and share sets with the rest of the class. Want to hear more about Quizlet?  Listen to the podcast created by CHS students last year as they interviewed Anthony VanGessel about his use of Quizlet.

Understand
Summarizing and outlining content to emphasize the important ideas is an effective way to demonstrate understanding.  Glogster (http://www.glogster.com/edu/) allows students to create virtual posters that include video, audio recording, images and text.  The templates are engaging and interactive and allow students to show their creative side while demonstrating content understanding.  Take a look at an example from Cyndy Murphy’s class where students outlined information about the history of atomic research.

Apply
Sticking facts into your brain isn’t that tough, it’s trying to use those facts to make meaning that can be a big challenge.  Why not try a web simulation?  You’ll find lots of them linked at this simulations site from the Kent ICT website.

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Technology is Hard. That’s the mantra that keeps many teachers from reaching out and really exploring technology tools in their classroom.  It’s hard to manage 30 students when they all have a laptop in hand. It’s hard to integrate it meaningfully because the activities need to have structure and guidance to be successful. It’s hard to step aside and hope that your goals are met when you no longer are on center stage in the front of the room.

This week, Mathew Needleman’s post entitled “Five Reasons Why We Aren’t Integrating Technology in School” listed the reasons technology often isn’t incorporated into the learning cycle. It’s a good list and one that will resonate with many technology coaches, teachers, and administrators.  But like any list of reasons, it could quickly become a list of excuses that lead down the road to inaction.  Matthew asked for solutions to his reasons and I know there are great ones out there, but I’m going to take a different turn.  I’d like to turn the tables and use his list to rationalize why we should stop using textbooks in the classroom.  I’ve already argued previously about the dangers of allowing students unfiltered access to paper.  This seemed like a natural follow-up…

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