Professional Development

It is immensely frustrating to know that actual research has been done relating to the efficacy of the professional development models. If research has shown that “neither importing experts nor sending teachers to conferences has shown itself to be particularly effective in improving instruction,” why then is this the model followed so often?

Particularly with a large and talented faculty like the one at ISB, it would seem to be a more effective model to allow teams to truly select goals, develop expertise through shared research, and then work to improve practice. As mentioned in my first post, context is everything and the ineffective model described by Powell robs professional development of context.

A recent consultant had to be reminded many times that the grade 6 team is not new to using computers extensively in the classroom. She is/was a tremendously talented educator with tons of expertise but, robbed of the context in which we work, she was not as effective as she could have been in meeting the needs of the people she was supposed to be helping. It is important to note that she was invited without input from the teachers she was to work with and a fairly significant effort had to be made to have her visit in any way tailored to the needs/requests of the faculty.

In the interest of being productive, I will stop ranting. This has been the model I have seen in just about every school in which I have worked. I also know that ISB has been making an effort to get away from this model, as evidenced by the recent PD day in which many teachers led workshops and, perhaps more importantly, conversations about teaching. When there is time, teachers seem to come together around issues they find in teaching; we are lucky to have so many teachers who love what they do and care about doing it better.

All complaining aside, I know that I tend to work in isolation in some ways. I get immersed in the tasks I have to do and rarely leave my classroom. This leaves few opportunities for the casual and organic conversations that are often the springboard for much more in depth conversation. I have been lucky in teaming with great people in the IS grouping of my Humanities classes, but I also know that both of my partners were, like me, always rushing to finish class related tasks. Within my team, I am active in working to make our curriculum and practice relevant and vibrant, but this tends to happen within meetings.

I am particularly interested in the model of cognitive coaching. In the Powell course here at ISB, we engaged in short practice coaching conversations and I found the model to be very effective. I saw, both as coach and coached, how the focus on one student had me examining my practice in the classroom. I visualized my actual movements in the classroom and re-enacted key moments with individual students and with the class as a whole. I was actively reflecting on better meeting the needs of individuals and the group.

This seems like a powerful way to achieve what we are seeking with looking for learning while also developing the kinds of relationships between colleagues that will create a learning community. I have been lucky to have a wife with whom I have this type of conversation frequently and several colleagues with whom it seems like a natural next step.

Coetail Final Project: 11 March 2010

Digital Native: Part 2

Anyone from the Coetail class will know that I have a strong reaction against the term digital native AND the notion that our students somehow have an innate understanding of the digital world and digital tools. To summarize, I believe that most of our students entering our classrooms have an understanding of a narrow section of the digital world and only a surface level understanding of digital tools. This is one reason that I believe I/we should incorporate them into my/our teaching. The immense potential will go untapped unless we use them/teach them/explore them.

[This is changing/improving all the time as more and more teachers integrate technology in meaningful ways.]

Anyway, grade 6 students recently wrote memoirs relating to their trip to Kanchanaburi. To give the memoir more depth and especially to help students begin to realize the potential of online publishing, I asked that they include photos and links to related topics (much like a slate.com article providing background).

I had taught students how to insert links and photos many times between August and February. For most it was a simple, easy process. One student, however, had not added either element 2 weeks after the deadline. I showed her at school privately, but still after two weeks both elements were missing. Finally, one day I saw that she was online (through her gmail status) and started a google chat.

One thing that this student was quite adept at was chat (and chat spelling, but that is another story). She was very excited to chat (even about her project) and I began to talk her through the process of adding the photos and links. In order to guide her and to imagine the windows and prompts, I asked if she was using Mac or PC. To my great amusement, she replied, “i dont no.”

After I stopped laughing, I asked if there was a big Apple somewhere on the computer. “Oh,” she said, “it says samsung.” After all her time using computers at school, elementary and middle school, PC lab and Mac lab, this little concept had escaped her. That was in addition to a basic element of blogging that had been covered many times before this year and probably last as well.

Thankfully, I was able to talk/chat her through the process and it worked. Problem solved and, with luck, lesson permanently learned.

This was the first time I had given a student online tech support (though I had done it with my family). It was a great reminder for me that my students are really learning about technology’s application and potential at school. This is so important for me because I really strongly believe that they will only begin to explore what they can do if they see it in action somewhere. For most of them, school will be/needs to be that place.

The most basic example of all is facebook. Only because of Green Panthers, CarrotMob and a teacher (Kerry) did students see that there was a power to facebook. This is why I want computers in my students’ hands.

If digital native is anything like being a native of a country and not knowing who your Prime Minister is, maybe I could come to love the term.

Tech and Talk in the Classroom

Holidays are always fabulous. This holiday, however, offered a unique professional opportunity. We saw about 65 former students, all of whom have started university or are finishing high school. This provided us with a chance to do some informal yet invaluable field research on education and on technology in education.

Before detailing our findings, it’s important to describe the ‘subject group’. They actually form two groups. The first is made up of my grade four/five students from an urban charter school in Los Angeles. This school is a successful public school in a neighbourhood and district of many unsuccessful schools. Students at the school do not have to pass any kind of entrance exam but do have to maintain a decent academic and attendance record to stay in the school. Some of these students were part of an accelerated program so that they enrolled in university as second year students. These students are all in university now, most of them in large public universities in California.

The other group of students is from the small private school in Pasadena where we were first middle school teachers and later heads of the middle and high schools. This school is small in both total numbers and in class sizes and would be characterized by most people as a liberal institution. Its methods aren’t radical, but the politics and attitudes of most students and families would be considered liberal. There is no entrance exam at the school and, compared to most private schools in the area, it takes a very wide range of students of different abilities. The students we reunited with from this school are either finishing high school or have started university. They attend a wide range of schools including community colleges, public universities and small liberal arts schools.

Both groups of students would likely be considered quite technologically literate. In most cases, much of what they do using computers grew out of their own interests and mastery occurred through practice on their own. Some of the teachers they had through high school embraced digital tools in education and some had little interest in them.

In discussing what school is like for them now, we asked our students many questions about technology use in the classroom. We were very surprised by the strength of their reactions against digital tools being used in the classroom. In almost every case, students lamented situations in which they could not engage in discussion (as is the case for those at University of California schools where introductory classes are large). In the case of those students in small schools with small classes, students heaped scorn upon the idea that they should be using computers in class. They were overwhelming in their desire to talk.

They saw talk as an essential underpinning of their understanding and as an essential way of working with their peers. They embraced classes in which teachers lead good discussions and complained about those in which their means of expression of ideas was primarily electronic.

We described images of university classrooms that we had discussed in our courses in which students were all sitting with their laptops open. Virtually unanimously, their reactions were negative and included the following points:

· They know they would not pay attention in such a situation.

· They want to talk and discuss.

· They want to hear what their professors/teachers have to say.

· Multi-tasking meant incomplete attention to each task.

Though I have to confess that I am happy to hear their responses since they reflect some of my own beliefs, I also have to admit that I was quite surprised at the forcefulness of their reactions. Some students were actually quite passionate about the need to talk as a group in class. Others found some of the uses of digital tools to be needless intermediate steps that postponed important discussion.

I know that for me, this reinvigorates my commitment to discussion and talk in the classroom.

NETs and Good Teaching (week of 15 Nov)

The NETs on teaching and administration set admirable goals and describe good teaching. There is no question of that. Congratulations to the authors.

Subtract the 'digital tools' from them (or any permutation of the term) and you are still left with good teaching. That leaves us with two big questions: 1. Do we need NETs?; and 2. Can you be a good teacher without using digital tools?

The answer to number 1? No. I have known great teachers who do not use computers etc. in their classes. Nonetheless, their classrooms resemble in every respect the environment that the NETs evoke (minus the digital tools). Creativity, originality and collaboration do not begin with any particular tools or format. Good teachers find good ways to use good tools. They find ways for students to express themselves and to work together.

I have also known lousy teachers where little of value takes place with or without a digital tool. Their students' work does not reflect analysis, collaboration or introspection. Once again, but in a not so positive way, the tool does not matter.

The NETs serve as guidelines for the kind of work students and teachers should be doing. Of that there is no question. Good teachers will find ways to work with digital tools in great ways whether or not the NETs were ever written. If the NETs serve a purpose it is to guide people to the good pedagogy WITH DIGITAL TOOLS. Shouldn't we just guide people towards good pedagogy? PERIOD - NO QUALIFIERS.

Can you be a good teacher without digital tools? Duh. Do I want to use them in my classroom? Sí. Am I constantly looking for new ways to use them? Definitivamente. Could I go to another school that didn't have a wide array of digital tools available for classroom use? Claro. I would be sad at first, but I know that, just as it always has, my pedagogical practice would adjust to the demands of my environment.

Irony

As we watch the very idea of political debate in the United States devolve into theatrics and anarchy, we work patiently to develop the skill here at ISB. As teachers we search out appropriate research texts, and we guide students to find additional information independently. We create opportunities for our students to work collaboratively to identify key information and synthesize that into cogent arguments. We help them develop the confidence and poise to give voice to those arguments in a reasonable but impassioned way.

Simultaneously, in the world's most influential country (whether I like it or not, it is), in the country which the largest number of our students identify as home, the Super Bowl of Freedom shapes the 'debate' on one of the most important pieces of legislation in the country's history. For the first time, I hope my students don't watch/read the news.

7 October 2009: The Explosion of Video

The availability of video has indeed exploded. Just the venues of finding videos are hard to keep track of, let alone the videos themselves.

It seems that, with a bit of patience, one can find just about anything needed for the classroom. A perfect example is an old resource the Grade 6 team has used in the past - The Voyage of the Mimi. Originally an old PBS show (Ben Affleck way back in the 1980s) about archaeology, the school purchased a copy on VHS back in the day. As VHS players became scarce, the tapes were transferred to disc but with poor quality. When we discussed it in our team meeting I looked it up on youtube and, not surprisingly, someone has uploaded just about every episode.

Because of the web, the Mimi (and tons of other potential resources) are available world wide. What's more, with a bit of effort I can get my very own copy of the video by kicking or zamzaring. This is usually the case for just about any curricular idea. The challenge may be coming up with the perfect search query (or wading through tons of annoying video) but the material is out there.

Perhaps most importantly, as teachers we can easily capture moments, speeches, events etc. for classroom discussion and analysis. We can view them repeatedly without a whole other intermediary device other than the one already on our desks. Most importantly we can USE those same things to create something new. Converted to .mov format, students can import video clips, add audio tracks, additional footage, subtitles to become story-tellers or documentarians.

The web also gives the opportunity to share work with a global audience. It can be shared for evaluation, for an audience or for collaboration. The biggest obstacle to this kind of work is time and tools. Working with video is, to my mind, still the most cumbersome technology related task in education. Anyone who can streamline that process will be a hero to millions.

Digital Storytelling: Reflections (Week of 28 September)

I have been using digital storytelling since coming to ISB. As a language teacher (previously in the ES and now in the MS) it offers excellent opportunities for students to put vocabulary and language structures to use in realistic and creative ways. Students can demonstrate mastery and, even more importantly, to extend their use of language in new and creative ways. As a teacher, I can create many opportunities for language use, but a truly open-ended activity (such as digital story-telling) allows students to combine language in truly original ways. This is the heart of language development.

In my Humanities class, digital storytelling offers similar opportunities for language development. With many English language learners in the classroom, this type of project provides a different kind of challenge for students learning to express their ideas. For all students, a digital story about an artifact or about looting is a different but valuable opportunity to build on one of our core Grade 6 skills - the support of an argument with evidence.

The precision of language necessary to both be convincing and entertaining is essential for all students and transfers well to written work. Though digital storytelling does not replace academic writing, there is great value in linking ideas and images. It shows a students interpretations of the connections between concepts in a multiplicity of ways.

9 February

The Planning reading provides useful guidelines for integrating technology into classroom activities.  I feel, for example, a pressure (pretty much entirely internal) to use tech tools in my classroom activities.  With the number of students I have, however, sometimes using those tools will drag me away from more important issues of curriculum or learning outcomes.  The reading both suggests types of projects and a framework for evaluating their efficacy.  

That said, I am really torn in my interests in the course.  On one hand I am intrigued by the ideas raised by the Connectivism reading.  What is knowledge?  What is the role of content when facts are so readily obtainable?  What implications does that have for our roles as teachers and learners.  These are huge intellectual issues to grapple with as we come to understand the role of new communication tools in our teaching.  At times I think that is what we need to really grapple with during class time since it forms the underpinnings of any new directions we take.

Fundamentally it is the ease of communication and the ease of finding information that are driving change.  The two help to generate the big questions and inform all aspects of the day to day questions.

Aaaaaa, that four hour log-in thing at housing just made me lose my last paragraphs!!!!!  I was writing about the other side that I feel we/I need to explore and that is the actual implementation of these types of learning strategies.

Anyway, to try and re-create, the practical side of it is harnessing the tools productively both for students and for me.  The reading on Planning helps to provide a useful framework for evaluating both tools and plans.  Careful planning helps one focus on the desired result, but these guidelines also help to evaluate the tools involved.  To paraphrase a previous reading (and Marshall McLuhan) the pipe is the message, so choosing the right one merits some thought and consideration.  With collaboration as a given for a desired goal, choosing the most appropriate tool is important.  At the same time, if content is important or conceptual understandings, planning appropriately to make the most effective use of time must be balanced.  

I often find that in my desire to achieve authentic assessments.  With performance tasks and video I have a great opportunity to capture students' real language acquisition progress.  I would also like to have them work with the video more and have more personal involvement in the editing and posting process.  As an archive of their progress there are obvious benefits if they are doing the archiving.  The reality, however, is that the need to be using language as much as possible overshadows that and I often prepare and upload video for this purpose.  It's a worthwhile endeavour but given that I see my students approximately 90 times per year for 40-45 minutes at a time, I often take on that step to enable more language oriented activities.

As I said, the Planning article provides helpful guidelines but I would also be interested in creating a companion to the ISTE standards that charts a progression of important skills and concepts for our students.  It could start with basic skills such as logging on (the early grades), progress to choosing appropriate collaborative tools (middle elementary?) and evaluation of content (upper elementary).  Along with skills, there would be important concepts as well ('where' is a webpage, what place do facts have, what is knowledge).  

As a document it would have to be fluid in order to accommodate changing technology adoptions (e.g. will ISB use fingerprints in future?) but it would chart a course for our expectations of students' ability to understand and use technology.  

In the end, I suppose I hope that we get time to dabble in the theoretical while we try to put all of this into play.

Hoping to...

ISB is the first school in which I have had regular access to all the new collaborative tools of our wonderful modern age. Being a Spanish teacher, I have made them a regular part of my classroom teaching because I believe that they afford students unique opportunities to use language in multiple contexts.

Being the only fluent Spanish speaker in the room, I am always searching for new ways to foster Spanish communication between students. I seek to break down the triangle dynamic in which a student only uses Spanish with me. Through blogs, video (embedded in a blog), wikis, ning etc. I have found that students use target language more AND deepen their understanding of language structures.

All that said, many of the potential applications of these tools are not applicable to my students because of their language level. They cannot read/research using most sites in Spanish and spontaneous communication in Spanish is somewhat difficult. Next year, however, I will be teaching humanities and am THRILLED THRILLED THRILLED at the prospect/possibilities of collaboration, research etc. I hope that this course deepens my understanding of those possibilities and connects me to additional collaborative partners.