The year has progressed quickly and due to great anticipation to integrate new technologies into their classrooms, teachers have hit the ground sprinting. Blogs, wikis, websites, and alternative assessments riddled with tech savvy ideas are the norm. For me all of this means work; work of the solid, student motivating, raised achievement kind. I like that.
This year has provided quite a few surprises as well. Teachers who have decided to tackle technology and prioritize their instruction with some digital flair have mostly been those who simply refused to integrate any in the previous months – the laggards. Matt Singley, a fifth grade teacher, however, was a great exception. Last year, Matt was the very tech-capable teacher with tremendous ability in writing who didn’t touch any of the website or Web 2.0 options that would certianly bolster his instruction. Frustrating for me? Sure. I knew how quickly he would become excellent in these areas and I felt that his refusal to integrate tech was a sign of laziness or stubborn protest. I was right in that Matt would be excellent, and although we disagree whether it was protest or not, one thing it was not was laziness. What I found with this teacher was that Matt simply needs time to, not only understand tools, but to master them. This is was an important lesson in patience for me. And so, after a year of thinking, planning and playing, Matt developed a great website, a stellar wiki and a blog that might become a great tool for his writing. And like that, this teacher was able to amaze this tech preacher with his efforts.
Last year, in an effort to create a layer of equity across the district, I worked to refine all of the hundreds of kid links on teacher sites. There were hundreds, but these resources were not equally shared on all websites – teachers didn’t have equal numbers of links. Some teachers had a few and others had the lion’s share. Websites were duplicated across classes, grade levels and sometimes on the same resource page for the same teacher. Needless to say, many teachers seemed to have a resource page because they likely felt they needed to have one and significant research or thought didn’t go into the content of those links. Strange? Actually, no. In my research and collection, I traveled to websites across the globe and saw the most amazing teacher resource pages, but most of those pages shared my colleagues need for bulk and often had dead links, inappropriate advertisements on their resources, or just an overwhelming lack of focus in their work. Certainly there were exceptions, and from those sites, I gathered many links, but it was eye opening and task-affirming to see the need for my task.
After all of this, I whittled down the sites and left room for additions, I added grade levels and categorized by subject and sent the wiki online.
Months have now passed and a new year has begun. Last week I revisited the site. Now, at the end of last year and a few months of the wiki published online produced a hundred or so hits and a few different CA based visitors (says my Clustrmap), but revisiting the site the other day, I was astonished to find over 600 visitors and dots covering the entire US and other scattered visitors around the world! Wow. Even better, checking the site just a few days later, I found that the hits jumped to over 800 visitors! The wiki is a hit.
In reflection, this site must be something that was urgently needed. My goal of adding equity accross my district seemed to travel farther than Solana Beach and it speaks volumes to the point that teachers don’t need to work separately and harder to best teach our kids, they need to work together. I see this in many areas and continue to see teachers that need their own resource page instead of just adding to this one! Maybe it’s professional pride and maybe it’s just insecurity, but with technology there is just too much to tackle alone. Hopefully with a raised proficiency among my peers, they will realize how no one needs to be the expert (even me) and instead, take the help that is available and work together.
Text the Mob. Just the title suggests technology meshed with civil disobedience – what’s not to like. This software allows you to poll your audience for questions with their cell phones as well as create bulletin boards for your audience/class to post questions and comments. Simple and wide open for creativity.
For simple polling (like my colleagues and I will do for coming professional dev.) Text the Mob works fine and serves a novel purpose. In our classrooms, more importantly, you turn cell phones or computers into simple collaborative tools and by using a high interest technologies, as phones and computers, teachers can accurately check the pulse and opinions of the class. I can imagine this in writing, as prompts and fuel for discussions and certainly the coming political election can provide some divisive prompts to poll.
So, try it. Like most “Web 2.0″ tools, this one will certainly not take the world by storm. But it is fun and can serve a small purpose within a well constructed classroom. That’s the trick, isn’t it, to coordinate and juggle all of these small tools of high interest in order to stay fresh and keep things moving and offer breath to our curriculum and our careers.
Upsetting the summer bliss of the Johnson household means going back to work. For those who don’t know me, I’ve recently had a new daughter and so my oldest and I have spent the summer break un-plugged and non-digital (it’s possible. swear.) visiting Shamu and local parks and just loving the freedom that breaks in work allow. And so, this post is a warm-up. It is the writing that simply publishes something and directs me back to a functional member of my district.
Not that I’m promising little now that school winds down and the days get longer, but with my pending child on the way (that’s two for who’s counting), I’m guessing that the technologies I’m most going to be appreciating come in the form of diapers and pacifiers. This blog may very well get some attention, but very likely, I will spend my summer a willful observer of life and not my RSS feed.
Having said this, I am currently looking back at my year and vigorously aiming forward to plan my coming year and my district’s vision of what technology needs to be/could possibly be for the next year. Exciting really, but for anyone in this dynamic area of work knows, planning for what is best practice in a year is nearly wasted time. And so, with trepidation, I have been looking back at our success in order to create goals who’s success will depend on tools that can be decided later.
This year has been very successful for my district and my work. Teachers have become willing to create and maintain websites, try podcasting, endure my varied trainings, and they have become conversant and aware of a handful of great applications that are driving educational technology and our lives in general. I’ve said it before, my district here in Solana Beach is beyond willing to adapt, and quite good at doing so, and they’re making me look pretty good with their efforts and confident that no matter how lofty we raise the bar next year, they will rise to meet it.
This year has also helped our district to approach the subject of Internet safety. My research and initial podcast on the topic alerted me to the importance and urgency to this topic, but this year, with the help of Cindy Palmer from Microsoft, we have started the conversation with our students and parents, and in conjunction with the San Diego Police Department, will be offering more information and community leadership in this area next year and those to come.
Planning for the future then, becomes the delicate balance of continuing what has been done and proven successful and continuing to read the future and respond to the demands of our curriculum, the mood swings of this technological age, and the interests of teachers. Today offered an added kudos to my planning this far. Apparently, a local university has been talking up Solana Beach and our ability to get student working with technology. The teaching program at this university talked at length about the ability for kindergarten and first grade students (as well as all other grades) to become familiar and comforatable with such things as podcasts and Garageband. GREAT! How flattering and what a wonderful support to my work this far and the work of my collegues. When planning for the coming year I could just keep on keeping on since we’ve turned a few heads, but surely we won’t. Funny, but although we admit that we have succeeded in many ways, it’s the knowledge of areas where growth is possible that continues to push us beyond doing well and restricts us from really appreciating significant praise.
Alright, most of you have likely heard about the following technology coming from Japan. I think I first heard of this in October, and because I’m not the most connected guy out there, I’m guessing the news even then was slightly old. Timing, thankfully, isn’t much of an issue with this chunk of tech, because it’s just amazing and the possibilities here are worth the post and the possibility of discussing something that may indeed be common knowledge.
The technology is this computer seen below. In different forms, this tech is the size of a pen or PDA and provides it’s own monitor and keyboard though projection and Bluetooth technology. Imagine how obsolete your laptop is suddenly!
The other day I realized that Clustrmaps could be integrated into iWeb sites. This was a significant find because prior to the latest version of iWeb, someone who wanted a map needed to purchase iWeb Enhancer for about 15 bucks and run that program just after each publish. It just seemed hokey. Now, with the use of HTML snippets, ClustrMaps are possible, and classrooms can utilize the world audience and track those views. Exciting!
The following map is from Mrs. Jara’s first grade website. The views are from the past month and likely represent the kids promoting their site and work to family members and friends of friends. And what’s wrong with that? It’s a great way for kids to develop ownership in their work and to interact with the world! Next year blogging and wikis will become a more significant part of our district and all classes will be able to utilize these maps. Imagine if kids created a podcast or blog and KNEW that the world was reading or watching? How powerful would each project be for our students? How concerned with editing, revising, collaboration, presentation would our kids become? I’m guessing that with the world watching, very concerned and very engaged! Good, bring it on. Good work, Mrs. Jara!
This project is one that is an annual event at the school I used to work in. It’s a fourth grade project on Abstract Expressionism and the artist Jackson Pollock. The video demonstrates a bit of what the day looks like, but it also shows how some music on CreativeCommons licenses, like the band @Posteriori from the site Jamendo.com can be used to help multimedia projects. The Artwork is up for auction this week to benefit the purchase of technology at the site. The movie is posted at the fourth grade website.
A portion of my work this year was lead by the goals I set in August. The purpose of these goals ranged from providing professional development days, website trainings, increasing tech proficiency among students and staff and creating a more equitable resource base throughout the district for students, parents and teachers. Easy? No, but my success was substantial, and I owe all of this to my capable colleagues who took on more than their share of “new technologies” and methods within their curriculum and, very bravely, took chances with their instruction. The following is the survey that I created on SurveyMonkey as an assessment piece to my work. Enjoy.
Interestingly, of those who responded in the above question, many who I would categorize as “advanced” placed themselves as Proficient. I imagine that in this case, those who are truly advanced, understand the magnitude of what they do not know and therefore underestimate their abilities.
This is a good result from an increased focus on technology. More specific filtering showed that those who used technology “daily” did so with their document cameras or LCD projectors – items not fully integrated throughout the district. Therefore, next year should see a significant jump here considering another large influx of new technology across the district.
Similarly to the last two questions, the above represents growth at differing levels. Those who increased their proficiency typically are early-ish adopters and those who set personal goals to increase their technology skills. Those areas of “significant” and “appropriate” growth tended to have individuals who worked well to increase their abilities as well as those who already work at a high level of proficiency, therefore having less room to make significant jumps. Finally, after filtering the results, those who demonstrated less than appropriate growth were those who don’t typically work with computers at all, didn’t come to any trainings, or didn’t set any appointments with me concerning goals or projects with their kids.
Awesome!
Interesting. This graph shows a significant increase in student use of technology. Looking closer to those who responded “no” here shows some results from those a bit more hesitant to adopt new technologies, but what is more present is the issue of lack of resources (LCD, document cameras) and time to figure out new technologies and how those technologies might work into the curriculum.
Finally, the comment or essay portion of the survey allowed participants to express specific areas of interest and specific strengths of the prof days. Those areas most frequently mentioned were:
Favored half-day schedule
Keynote training
Garageband/Podcasting
Grade level grouping
Time to “play” or work
TOSA available for follow-up training/ working with classes
Timely and free resources
Presentation of current research/ state of technology in education
Last month’s professional development marks the final portion of organized training for the year. Of course I remain busy with my schedule of teachers, school groups, committees and such, but as for the all day, time intensive, all staff training, well, that’s done. It feels good. The presentation below is an example of what iPaper can do as well as it allows teachers to recall the presentation and share it with like-minded tech folk. Enjoy!
And so, after a year of thinking, planning and playing, Matt developed a great website, a stellar wiki and a blog that might become a great tool for his writing. And like that, this teacher was able to amaze this tech preacher with his efforts.
