I’m always looking for ways to build a sustainable, job-embedded, professional development model for technology. As much as I love running after school sessions for teachers, and even with all of the fantastic opportunities we have at YIS, like COETAIL and the weekend workshops we regularly host (our next one is coming up this weekend with Andrew Churches!), I still believe the most successful PD is takes place during a regular school day. So, for the last few months, my amazing Middle School Vice Principal, Susie, and I have been working on ways that we can support our teachers at all skill and interest levels, in addition to regular coaching through the Collaboration Cycle.
Here are a few of the ideas we’ve developed:
Somehow it always seems that the technology leaders in a school end up with all the extra work – helping colleagues, leading professional development sessions, testing new tools – without a lot of the reward. Since we have a great group of very tech savvy teachers at YIS, this was the first group I wanted to start with. Basically, these teachers are highly independent in their use of technology in their classroom, and are always willing to try something new, so I wanted to offer them the opportunity to share, collaborate, and connect with their like-minded colleagues from other departments – during the school day.
My hope is that we’ll meet as a team at least once a month, if not twice a month (fingers crossed) for a double block (90 mins). The plan is to spend time sharing, exploring and discussing new ideas. We don’t want it to be extra work (that’s why it’s during the school day, and they’ll be provided with cover for their classes), but we do want there to be a bit of a reward for all the extra work that these teachers are doing already. I think the sessions will take on a life of their own, once we meet for the first time, and I can imagine us talking about creating a blended learning environment through our blogging portal, bringing in elements of challenge based learning, developing globally collaborative projects with other schools, and just generally taking advantage of all of the amazing tools we have available at YIS.
We just announced the idea last week and I’ve had 10 teachers sign up. In a staff of about 40 in our MS/HS, that was exactly the number I was hoping for. Ultimately, I hope this group can become a mini-professional learning community that supports not only the members themselves, but the other teachers within their departments.
Wired Workday
Although teachers can always make appointments with the Technology and Learning Coaches, or just drop-by the office, often they are busy and just need a question answered quickly. Even though our office is very close to the Main Building (where most secondary classes are held), we’re just far enough away to stop teachers from popping by in an emergency (especially if they’re rushed). Plus, because our office is shared, sometimes it doesn’t feel like a space where you can come in and chat for an extended time.
In order to make ourselves more accessible, and provide a little more privacy for extended support, we’re starting a rotational drop-in room schedule, where one of us will be available in a very central classroom for 3 periods a week (which ends up being at least 1 period a day). We’re going to start out with open, walk-in support, and see how that goes. If we feel like people are coming in with the same questions, or we feel like people aren’t sure what to do with the time, we’ll start running themed sessions – similar to what we would do during an after school technology training.
My hope is that the teachers who are less likely to stop by the technology office (for whatever reason), will feel more comfortable dropping in an empty classroom. I like that everyone will know which periods we’ll be there – they never have to worry about coming by and us not being there, plus they don’t have to make an appointment, or plan in advance. I’m also hoping we’ll get even more insight into what topics need support, and continue building quality relationships with all of our teachers.
Faculty Meeting Tech Tips
This is the first year of our Connected Learning Community (1:1 program), and the first year of using WordPress as our learning portal – both are going extremely well, but we do have lots of learning to do as a faculty. One way we’re making time for specific technology tips is to highlight an expected us of our blogs during faculty meeting time. Instead of expecting teachers to figure out how to use their blog in the most efficient way, we’re hoping to scaffold those skills, one at a time, during required meetings.
We started by developing a list of blogging expectations for teachers, in an effort to be as clear and consistent as possible. Once we had our defined list, we started walking teachers through one item in each meeting, so that by the end of the year teachers will have successfully implemented all of these foundational skills. At the moment, I’m leading these short sessions, but we hope that our Tech Pilots can start to be the leaders as the year continues. We don’t want the technology to become a burden, and we want to leave opportunities for teachers to discover the ways that the platform works best for them, so this one-by-one approach is working really well.
In addition to the faculty meeting time, we are also scheduling regular TechTidbits and SpeedGeeking time for teachers to learn from their peers who have already implemented these ideas. Earlier this year, we found that having a specific list of skills to master (and teacher leaders for each skill) was a really effective way for teachers to build their technology efficiency.
Final Thoughts
We’re hoping that these ideas will reach the advanced, beginner and intermediate level teachers in a way that feels most comfortable to them, along with providing a network of teachers who can support each other. Ultimately, my goal is that the school builds a collaborative, supportive and engaged community of learners who take risks and try new things with technology because they know they have both the resources and the support they need.
These are just the first three ideas that we’ve started implementing, and we’re always looking for more. How do you build technology learning into the school day for all teachers? What strategies have worked for you?
Image Credits
- Tech Pilots original image by Kemon01 on Flickr, licensed CC
- Open by Lucca Zappa on Flickr, licensed CC
- Probably the best checklist in the world by mistersnappy on Flickr, licensed CC
Mix and Match: Creating a Blended Learning Environment with WordPress and Google Apps
It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a year since we started using Google Apps for Education at YIS! Around this time last year we were still using FirstClass and just about to make the transition to Google, mainly for e-mail purposes, but in that time we’ve started to develop some great ideas for more efficiently communicating and collaborating with students, parents and teachers.
Along with Google Apps, this is the first year (starting in August) that we’ve required all teachers to have a blog on The Learning Hub (our school blogging portal). The previous two years have been voluntary, to give teachers a time to explore and see what works. Fortunately, we have a very enthusiastic staff, and they’ve seen lots of great opportunities for utilizing the blogs as a communication and learning portal for parents and students. By this time next year, we’ll be working towards blogs as e-portfolios for students, on the same platform.
Combining our use of Google Apps and our WordPress blogs on The Learning Hub has really started to create a dynamic and practical blended learning environment for our school community. Although I’m sure we still have lots of opportunity for growth, I’m really proud of what we’ve started to implement already:
WordPress Custom Menus & Categories for Efficient Blogging
Many of our teachers teach several different classes (Grade 6, 7, and 8 Humanities for example), which means that in order for a single teacher to maintain only one blog (instead of a separate blog for each class), categories are essential. We’ve been doing a great job of posting assignments in the correct category, renaming the category widget to something like “Choose Your Class” and then teaching students to always use the correct category when looking for updates. Even though this works, it’s not very pretty (categories widget being in the sidebar and all) so when the recent release of Custom Menus finally became available on our Edublogs Campus site, we were thrilled.
Now our teachers are able to achieve some consistency across all blogs with a custom navigation menu which includes the following:
- An about page with a short bio of the teacher, possibly a picture
- A Course Overview section with pages for each class, which include the course syllabus and basic information about the class
- A Choose Your Class section, with the dropdown menu items being the categories for each individual class
- An Assignments section with pages for each class, which include the larger assessment pieces and their rubrics
- A Calendar section with pages for each class which include an embedded Google calendar of assignment deadlines (see below)
- A Resources section with collaborative depart-based resources like MYP Criteria, helpful documents, and useful resource lists (see below)
It sounds simple, but the ability to mix pages and categories (and any custom links) into the menu bar (let alone being able to add a menu bar to any blog theme) really makes the blogs easy to navigate, and allows our teachers to use the natural organization structure of the blogging platform to it’s fullest. The one thing we’re really struggling with at the moment is that many blog themes on Edublogs do not actually show the full category in the category archives (so far we’ve tested about 50 themes and only 20 of them show the full category – frustrating).
Collaborative Google Calendars for Easy Communication
One of my favorite thing about Google Calendars is that they can be collaborative, so that more than one person can have the rights to create and manage events on a single calendar. Plus, that collaborative calendar can then be embedded anywhere on the web! Last week we took this to a new level at YIS by creating collaborative calendars for each grade level in the middle school.
Every teacher that teaches grade 7 for example, now has one single calendar to add assessment tasks. The homeroom teacher for the class (7A for example) creates one calendar and gives admin rights to all the other 7A teachers. Now everyone who teaches 7A can add their assessment events to this one calendar (plus, if the assessment description is online, they can easily attach or embed the assessment right there into the calendar event). From there, we embedded the calendar into every teachers’s class blog, so the students can view the assignments there, subscribe to the calendar themselves (or their parents), or embed the calendar into their own blog. Of course, this also provides the additional benefit of allowing teachers to get a birds’ eye view of assessment deadlines for a single group (always something I’ve seen schools try to do, but never seems to work out).
When students and parents subscribe to this calendar they can:
- see a model of how to effectively use Google Calendar to keep track of events and organize important assignments
- set up the type of reminders that are convenient for them (automated e-mail, pop-up or text message)
- always know what is due and when – for every class, from one central place
- with one click, see the attached assignment sheet for this particular event
Because this will only work for middle school (given the way our classes are scheduled), we hope this will provide a foundational skill for student to manage their busy course loads independently in high school.
Sharing & Collaborating with Google Docs
YIS started using Google Docs for curriculum mapping two years ago, and teachers are really starting to get into how they can use Google Docs with students. We’re starting to see teachers create things like:
- Student Resources Collections: Teachers create a collection for all related course documents. All students in the course are shared on this collection in “view only” mode. Any time a document is needed, the teacher can just organize it into any (or all) of the collections for their classes. If it’s an assignment students need to complete, they can make a copy, re-name it and start editing. This means that documents are always updated, always available, and in multiple places at once (no need to make several copies of the same document any more).
- Student Drop Boxes: Each student creates their own collection for the course, then shares with the teacher. All assignments for the course are then placed inside this collection, as soon as the document is placed in this collection, it’s shared with both the student and the teacher (no extra e-mails needed).
- Collaborative Resource Collections within departments: When an entire department collaborates on resources for students, they are choosing to share the whole collection with all the students, organized by grade level and subject area. The math department has an entire set of documents to support learning in grades 6 – 12 which is shared with the entire secondary school. Talk about organized!
- Collaborative Resource Collections across departments: Often resources from one department can be useful in another, those documents can be shared with multiple departments from one place. For example, resources on how to cite sources properly can be shared from the Library, but available in every subject area’s resources.
- Published, Linked or Embedded Documents: Once documents are created and shared with students, teachers are also setting them to be publicly viewable and then linking them on their blog – this allows the parents (and wider audiences) to see what students are learning too. Of course, students are also creating documents and sharing them on their blogs as well.
- Collaborative Notes: Instead of asking every student to take notes in class, teachers are starting to ask several students to collaborate on one document for the day’s notes, then sharing and linking (or embedding) on their blog for the whole class to use.
Google Sites to Organize Resources
Even though I really prefer wikis (and especially wikispaces) for easy website creation, we’ve been making good use of Google sites to create effective and easy to navigate resource sharing websites for students and teachers. We have a site for all of our curriculum documents, our upcoming CIS/NEASAC accreditation, PD opportunities and appraisal process. Our amazing administrative staff have built Google Sites for our school handbook and policy documents. Several departments have built Google Sites as a way to collect, collaborate on and share all relevant resources for their classes in one central place (which of course can now be linked in the custom menus on their blogs). Of course almost all of these documents are actually created in Google Docs, so just making them public, and then organizing and linking them on a Google Doc makes them so easy to find.
Google Reader Bundles
Although we can’t seem to get Reader to show up in the top menu on our Google Apps (anyone know how to edit this?), we have taught all of the students and teachers how to use Google Reader to manage all of the blogs they are reading. To be even more efficient, we’re going to:
- Have all homeroom teachers create a bundle for their class that any teacher who teaches the same group can subscribe to.
- Have all students create a bundle for all of their teachers that their parents can subscribe to.
- Teach parents how to use Google Reader (on the agenda for next month’s Parent Technology and Literacy Coffee Morning)
This is the first step in helping teachers and students more efficiently access the work being shared on the blogs, but eventually I’m going to need to figure out how to get RSS for categories working properly – that way teachers and students can subscribe to only the posts they want (and not just everything new from that blog).
One-Stop-Shop
We’ve worked really hard to take the best from both of these core platforms that we’re using to develop a blended learning environment for our community, but we want to make the implementation as seamless as possible for everyone. So, we are streamlining everything into one central space: The Learning Hub. From the main page, students can access every single web-based service that we provide (from logging in to their student blog, to their GApps, to VoiceThread, to our CLC Handbook). We hope that this makes it easier for students to make effective use of all the tools, and that it helps cut down on confusion of “where do I go to do X?”
Final Thoughts
We are well on our way to creating an effective, easy-to-navigate, collaborative learning environment that makes the most out of the two core platforms that we’ve chosen to use at YIS. But what’s really exciting is that there’s still so much more to learn. While Chris Betcher was recently here for our EARCOS Weekend Workshop, The Networked Educator, I learned about Google Moderator, some of the amazing ways that you can collaborate with Google Maps, and some fantastic search features that I never knew existed. I know there are tons of other fantastic tools that we can be using, I’m so glad that we’re taking the time to really understand how these two rich platforms work. Whenever I get the complaint that a teacher doesn’t like the blogs or Google Apps and I ask why not, that feature is always there, just waiting to be discovered.
Image Credits:
Last year, YIS implemented a Visiting Scholars Program, which basically means that YIS is willing to host educational researchers looking to conduct research in an international school context. Naturally, our very first visiting scholar was Dr. Mary Hayden, the leading expert, author and researcher on international schools. (Can you tell I’m a big fan? I have all her books – which I did, embarrassingly, tell her the first time I met her. Yet another geek moment, for sure.)
It was wonderful to have Mary at our school, not only because she is so knowledgeable about international schools and offered several sessions for our community (notes and resources), but also because she was always willing to stop and chat, and offer her excellent advice. I had several great conversations with her while she was here, and one, more formal, meeting with our Connected Learning Community team that I think is worth sharing here.
Tips for Measuring Success
At the end of last year, which was when Mary was at YIS, we were just in the final stages of planning for our Connected Learning Community implementation, and foremost on our mind (once the practicalities were out of the way) was how we could evaluate the success of the program. Mary’s extensive experience in research gave us a great foundation to start from, and our conversation produced several key ideas to implement:
- Create a list of goals/desired results in practicalities, based on our Vision for the CLC (here’s how we developed our vision). Remember to focus on not just technology, but habits, including: social and emotional wellness, and digital citizenship.
- Create an audit or survey to determine if we’ve met those goals, consider running this at the beginning, (middle?) and end of the year to see where we’ve started from, as well as where we’ve gone.
- Create a form/format for all stakeholders to regularly record what they’ve seen based on the desired results – basically a way for us to continually gather evidence about our successes and challenges through multiple perspectives.
- Develop a case study group, to ensure regular reflection and feedback with a specific group composed of students, teachers and parents (similar to the team that worked together to develop our program).
- Add software to image that tracks when students are online and what they’re doing – we can ask students to run the software during orientation. (What does this mean for student privacy?)
- Use student blogs as a record of their development, interest and use of technology tools to connect, communicate, share and collaborate.
- Try some experiments: for example: run parallel classes: same class – one with tech, one without – to see the impact that technology is having on a day-to-day basis. Or use text messaging to see how students are using text messaging (What are you doing now? What do you think about what you’re doing?)
At this point, we haven’t implemented any of these ideas yet, and I’m sharing them here as a way of reflecting and reminding myself of what’s important while we are in the early stages of implementation. We are two weeks away from our mid-semester break, and I hope to bring together a case study group after we return, refreshed and relaxed for the second half of our first semester. Ideally, this group can not only provide much-needed feedback from multiple perspectives, but also act as a mini-steering committee for the program as we continue.
I’m sure our planning team would have come up with several of these ideas on our own, but we wouldn’t have known which would be most effective, where to start or why they are so important. Having a chance to sit and discuss these plans with someone as experienced in successful research as Mary was priceless for us. And, I know she was excited to learn about the ways that technology connects us, and how the use of technology is changing the international school experience.
This is why the Visiting Scholar program is so amazing: it brings respected and brilliant researchers and educators into our school community, enabling us to push our own thinking forward and open new doors to authentic conversations and learning opportunities within our broader community; plus it gives researchers who may not otherwise have an opportunity to spend an extended amount of time in a school like ours to see things from a slightly different perspective, exactly that.
Final Thoughts
It was so exciting to plan for the implementation of this program, that I’ve just been enjoying how smoothly things have gone since we started. I haven’t forgotten the importance of the evaluation stage (how could I, after all these years of teaching MYP Technology?) but I did need a little bit of time to get my head around the finer details of the program that we’ve been working out for the last few weeks (more on those later). So, the more advice, the better: How have you evaluated the success of your school’s 1:1 program? How would you recommend we start?
And of course, if you’re a researcher, or you know someone who is, and you/they would like to work in an international school context, please take a look at the program and submit an application.
Image Credits
- CLC Handbooks by superkimbo on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed
- Pinboard by midiman on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed
It’s hard to believe another Learning 2.0 conference has come and gone. Yet again, the organizers created an innovative and engaging learning environment. It’s fantastic to watch how this conference has evolved from year to year, and just continues to get better and better. Personally, I thought this year was the best yet. Here’s why:
Cohorts of Learners
This is the second year in a row that Learning 2.0 has followed a cohort model for part of the conference. I love the idea of spending a set chunk of time with a set group of participants. To me, this adds another layer of learning, connections, and conversations to an already very learner-focused event.
Last year the conference was organized so that we had just cohort time and unconference time, which was a little tricky. I felt, as a cohort leader, that I was responsible for teaching all the things that participants could have possibly learned in a presentation session, and I think the participants felt a bit like they didn’t really know what to do with the unconference time. This year, the amount of time in cohorts was reduced, and additional presentation time was added, for a fabulous trifecta of cohorts, presentations and unconference time. It’s so important to keep that presentation time – not only does it encourage other participants to present, but it showcases the amazing things that are going on in schools all around Asia. I think this year was a perfect balance of all three formats.
The cohort concept is also fantastic because it provides a lens through which the participants can view the conference. This gives a focus to what participants are learning and allows dedicated time to discuss and reflect on everything they’ve seen. This year I was asked to lead a cohort called Authentic Assessment and Digital Media. Thankfully, I (once again) had a superstar partner, David Larson (last year I had the privilege of working with Darren Kurropatwa), because it was a challenging topic to facilitate. For starters, I read the title and thought: “Fun! Project Based Learning and Multimedia! We can share ways that we’re transforming our classroom to bring in the design process and authentic student-led projects!” But, on the first evening, when I asked participants what they were looking for, they said things like:
- Strategies for formative assessment
- Revising rubrics
- How to ensure that technology skills are being mapped and assessed
- How to assess technology standards
- How to map technology standards
Of course, all of these things are very important, but it wasn’t quite the vision I had for the cohort – especially given the fact that there were 50 people from at least 40 different schools, all at different places and with different standards and expectations. So, we did our best to share our ideas, allow others to share theirs, and to provide time to work together to answer some of the questions the brought with them to the conference. I think (hope) they walked away with something useful, and I certainly learned a lot.
A few highlights for me were:
- We need time to re-frame what we’re talking about. Why are we doing the things we’re doing? Finding a few really great articles and allowing time for participants to read, and then jigsaw back to a new group where everyone read a different article is a very effective way to do this.
- It was clear that participants really wanted (and needed) time to share what they are doing in their schools, challenges they face, and solutions or opportunities they could take advantage of (we did a SpeedGeeking session and a department-focused session to facilitate this)
- Formative assessment is a big challenge for teachers – we need some quick and easy strategies that teachers can implement, especially in a 1:1 environment (lots of good ideas about this for another post)
- The MYP Design Cycle (or any kind of design process) really does fit for any subject, but it takes time and teachers need help understanding that a technology-rich project that’s done thoroughly usually means more time, rather than less (we need to stop saying “make a movie about this for homework”).
- Almost every participant in the cohort was either in a 1:1 school, or their school was moving in that direction. Most had heard of the ISTE NETS standards and were applying them in some form at their school. Everyone had a positive story to share about the use of technology in their school – although they were all at very different levels.
- People still like to watch presentations. Some of the feedback from our session was that David and I didn’t do any formal presenting. I thought that was a good thing, but clearly I need to find a way to strike a balance between teaching directly (while modeling good presentation skills), and facilitating discussion.
- I need to remember to always, always, always highlight student work. I tend to get caught up in the abstract and big ideas, but teachers really appreciate concrete examples. In retrospect, I could have easily brought out student samples of work, rubrics I’ve used, and unit planners I’ve created and we could have deconstructed them (it’s not like I didn’t have them with me!). Then participants could have done the same with student work from their schools. It is so obvious, yet somehow I missed it. (Now I want to run the same topic again and do it better!)
- How to walk the fine line between focusing on tools and why we use the tools. Teachers seem to like being “wowed” with so many tools they couldn’t possibly absorb them all, but often are reluctant to talk about the bigger concepts of a changing classroom environment, or a media-rich world, or critical skills for the future, because those topics aren’t “practical”. I do believe teachers need to know what tools are out there, but I think knowing what they want to do with the technology and why they want to do it is so much more important. To me, just demoing a bunch of tools feels like eating too much candy, fun and sweet and exciting at the start, but after a while you get a stomach ache. Where’s the nutrition?
I love that feeling when you get to meet people you’ve been learning with for years online, in person. It’s amazing that you can kind of “skip to the good stuff” right away because you already know each other from so many different forms of communication. This conference has to be my absolute favorite for those kinds of connections. Walking into our cohort leaders planning session and seeing Wes Fryer, Rod Lucier, Darren Kurropatwa, George Couros, Alec Couros, Jess McCulloch, Kevin Honeycutt, Anne Mirstchin, Jeff Utecht, Julie Lindsay, Ann Krembs, Jabiz Raisdana, Jarrod Robinson, Toni Erni, Gail Lovely, Charlotte Diller, Sheldon Bradshaw, Michael Boll, and the amazing conference organizing team, is quite the buzz.
What’s even better is that when we did our mini-keynotes, all of our ideas built upon one another – and there was no collaborative planning for these presentations, no discussion of what we would do before we got on stage. We’re all thinking about the same things, and when we get together, we can get right down to talking about “doing bigger stuff” (as Jess likes to say). And on top of all that, getting the chance to see the wonderful people that are such an integral part of my personal learning network all together in the same place just can’t be beat! These connections are what it’s all about.
Momentum
It is amazing to come back year after year to this conference and see how teachers and schools are moving forward. Seeing former participants come back as unconference leaders, former unconference leaders come back as presenters, and former presenters come back as cohort leaders is fantastic! This conference has become a community of learners that connects and reconnects in many ways, and we’re all continually pushing ourselves and our schools forward. I love working in Asia because of this feeling of momentum we have, it’s contagious and it spreads from school to school as our teachers move around and share their learning.
I like to tease my good friend Jabiz about being my first protégé (sorry BZ), but all I did was give him a ball (in this case the ball was WordPress instead of Dreamweaver) and he ran with it. Same goes for Dana Watts (formerly at ISB), and Rebekah Madrid and Zoe Page (here at YIS). We had a few conversations here and there, and before I knew it, they were running with that ball so fast, doing new things in inspiring ways. It’s such a pleasure to come to a conference like this and see all of them together, knowing that there are groups of people all over the venue with the same kinds of stories and connections. We’re all moving forward together.
I’m especially proud to have brought a team of teachers from YIS to the conference this year too. Having a group of us at the conference, spending time thinking about these big ideas together, and then being able to share them back at school, is just one of the many ways the momentum continues to spread. Thanks for coming Zoe, Rebekah , Elif, Brian and Trevor! Looking forward to bringing this energy and enthusiasm back to YIS throughout the year.
Final Thoughts
Thanks Learning 2.011 team for inviting me back another year. It’s truly an honor to be part of the community that you have created. I’m already looking forward to Learning 2.012!
Image Credits
- Group Project Time by superkimbo on Flickr
- Authentic Assessment by superkimbo on Flickr
- #summercamp4life by Clint Hamada on Flickr
- Kim and the Protégés by Clint Hamada on Flickr
- YIS Crew 4 by Clint Hamada on Flickr
