As the middle school Technology and Learning Coordinator and elementary school Technology Coach, I work with core classroom teachers to authentically embed technology into the classroom experience:
2009 – 2010 School Year
Grade 8: Public Service Announcements in Humanities: Students use digital storytelling to raise awareness about consumerism and it’s impact on our environment, culture, and lifestyle. All digital stories are posted on YouTube and embedded into their individual student blogs.
Grade 7: Digital Storytelling in Humanities: Students create multimedia digital stories to reflect on their experiences on their Week Without Walls trip to rural Thailand. Student samples: Roni, Alex, Aim. After sharing their stories on YouTube and their individual blogs, students reflect (on their individual blogs) on the additional learning they gained from viewing their peers’ work. Student samples: Max, Sean, Jimmy, Aim.
Grade 6: Digital Storytelling as Final Assessment in Humanities: Students create multimedia digital stories to demonstrate their understanding of Early Humans. Through the use of Creative Commons images, basic photo editing, and PhotoStory 3, students organized and share their learning over the course of the unit. Once completed, stories are uploaded to YouTube and embedded on their individual blogs. Student samples: Arn, Jazz, Jake, Tina.
School-Wide
Student Blogs: All students in grade 5 – 12 have their own individual blog.
Teacher Blogs: All teachers have their own individual blog.
Middle School Technology News: A blog to help keep middle school teachers informed about important technology news relevant to teaching and learning.
As the 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School Bangkok, I worked with core classroom teachers to successfully embed 21st century literacy skills into the classroom:
2008 – 2009 School Year
Grade 5:
Students Teaching Students: Blogging and Podcasting to Deepen Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop Units of Study: Students in Ms. H, Ms. B, and Ms. M’s grade five classrooms at ISB connect with students in 4 other schools around the world using blogs and podcasts to share their reading and writing strategies as they learn to become better readers and writers with the Lucy Caulkins Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop program. Students collaboratively author class blogs, produce informative podcasts (distributed through the iTunes store) for both their age group and younger, and routinely connect and communicate with their global partners.
Spanish ePortfolios: Spanish Students Track Their Learning via Blogging: Students in one Spanish class are all contributors to the class blog in order to reflect on, and share, their completed work over the course of the year. Each student has their own “category” to group all of their work together.
Life ‘Round Here: Digital Video in Social Studies: A digital storytelling project initiated by Chris Craft. 11 schools around the world are participating, all focusing on the concept of adaption and culture.
Sounding Board for Flat Classroom Project: Wikis and Skype for Highly-Able Students: A mixed group of grade 5 students from all 7 classes join together to act as peer reviewers for the Flat Classroom Project. Students collaborate to offer constructive feedback on completed FC student work consisting of videos and wiki pages. As part of this project, students communicated via Skype with Flat Classroom participants to gain a deeper understanding of this kind of collaborative project.
Moving on Up!: VoiceThread and Wikis: Students in grade 5 classrooms around the world connect and share their hopes and concerns about moving up to middle school, finding connections and similarities among their global peers.
Grade 4:
Blogging Buddies: Authentic writing through blogging: Eight grade 4 classes around the world are consistently communicating about their learning with Mrs. M’s and Mrs. T’s classes via their classroom blog. All students are contributing authors to the blog and have the opportunity to comment on the other classroom blogs to develop personal learning connections with other students around the world. Regular curriculum-focused activities are planned to ensure that connections and communication is learning focused. Other opportunities to connect, via Skype, wikis, and other tools will be used as appropriate to our learning goals.
Team Bellone: Digital Storytelling via iMovie: Students in Ms. B’s class wrote and illustrated their Writer’s Workshop piece for publishing in digital storytelling format. The stories are now shared on YouTube for the world to see and comment. Authentic audience is one of the key factors in motivating students to write well.
Social Studies Influence Unit: Authentic Assessment via VoiceThread: All grade 4 classrooms are studying Influence as one of their social studies units. This common assessment will allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the Enduring Understandings using the multimedia tool, VoiceThread. Each class will complete the same final assessment with a different topic, and then student work will be shared accross classes to allow students to view and comment on other students’ work. Students have had the chance to explore with Google Earth to build their understanding of the various factors that influence the development of cities around the world.
1001 Flat World Tales: Collaborative writing using wikis: Students will collaborate with other children in 12 classrooms around the world to produce exciting and unique persuasive writing enhanced with multimedia.
Grade 3:
Sprouting Seeds: FOSS Science using VoiceThread: Grade 3 students collaborate to create a class VoiceThread by documenting each stage of seed growth for their FOSS Unit of Study using digital cameras, note taking, and script writing. Students worked in partners to document one stage of seed growth, incorporating science vocabulary. All student work is collected and presented in a whole-class VoiceThread.
Grade 2:
Window to our World: Social Networking via Ning: Two grade two classrooms are connecting on Ning to explore intercultural understanding and learn about the different cultures we have represented in our classes. The goal is to merge our two classrooms into one by conducting joint activities or projects once a month. We are going to focus on intercultural understanding and making connections between or different lifestyles.
Grade 1:
Global eLearners: ESL Students Present via VoiceThread: Students write and illustrate “small moments” for later narrating and posting on a VoiceThread. Our collaborative partners at other international schools in Madrid, Spain and Doha, Qatar also share their stories on our collaborative wiki so we can comment on each other’s work.
Grade K:
KinderKidsDraw: Kindergarten Students Share Their Learning via VoiceThread: As our kindergarten students learn new concepts in science, reading, writing, and social studies, they will produce whole-class VoiceThreads with oral reflections on their learning. Our collaborative partners in Spain, Canada, England, Australia and the USA, listen to our thoughts, leave audio comments, and produce their own VoiceThreads for us to listen to. All of our VoiceThreads are posted on our collaborative wiki so they are easy to find.
2007 -2008 School Year
Xtreme Learning: Social Networking via Ning: Highly able students in all grade 5 classes connect about reading using Ning as part of our current organizational goal to improve student reading. Similarly abled readers in grade 4 and grade 6 will be added as the year progresses. 8 other international and local schools are participating in our discussions on reading and literature.
Life ‘Round Here: Digital Video for Assessment: A digital storytelling project initiated by Chris Craft. 11 schools around the world are participating, all focusing on the concept of adaption and culture. This project is a perfect link to our first grade 5 unit of adaptation and will be completed by 31 October 2007. Our essential questions are:
- 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?
Personal Learning Blogs in Ms. R, Ms. T and Ms. H’s classes: Over the course of the school year, students will focus on reflection, metacognition, and understanding through personal learning journals (blogs). The first step to being able to write well, is reading therefore blogging improves both the ability to read and write. We will collaborate with other classes throughout the world to gain a deeper understanding of our own learning, our community, and global connectedness. Read more about this project here and about how we’re staying safe online here.
@manyvoices Twittory: Collaborative writing using Twitter: A quick and straightforward writing collaboration using Twitter, developed by George Mayo. Ms. R’s class will collaboratively write a creative story in partnership with 14 different classes around the world – each student in each class writing only a sentence or two to build upon the previous student’s work. The final story has been published and can be purchased or downloaded via Lulu.com
Native American Online Village: Collaborative Wikis in Ms. A and Ms. K’s classes: As students learn about Native Americans they will participate in an collaborative class wiki to research and share their learning with the rest of the grade 5 classes. Students will use this collaborative space to delve deeper into their learning and to contribute to the wealth of knowledge available online.
Grade 4:
1001 Flat World Tales: Collaborative writing using wikis: Students will collaborate with other children in 12 classrooms around the world to produce exciting and unique persuasive writing enhanced with multimedia.
The Connected Classroom: Social Networking via Ning: 8 international and local grade 4 classrooms are connecting on one Ning to teach and learn from each other. Students will share screencasts of classroom learning, digital stories, more book reviews, student-led forum discussions, and whatever else comes up. The goal is to connect students on a personal level, in a private and safe space, to begin learning from each other, teaching each other and collaborating on projects together. This is a year-long, always-on, global classroom.
Books Go Global! Developing a love of reading via VoiceThread and wikis: Eight fourth grade classes around the world use to VoiceThread to get them excited about their next big project. They are going to be creating book reviews on VoiceThread (inspired by Wes Fryer’s son, Alexander) and then sharing them with partner schools around the world so that their single book review can become a dynamic conversation around books.
Grade 3:
BlogPals: Authentic writing through blogging: Three grade 3 classes are consistently communicating about their learning via a classroom blog. All students are contributing authors to the blog and have the opportunity to comment on the other classroom blogs to develop personal learning connections with other students around the world. Regular curriculum-focused activities are planned to ensure that connections and communication is learning focused.
World Village: Two grade two classrooms are connecting on Ning to explore intercultural understanding and learn about the different cultures we have represented in our classes. The goal is to merge our two classrooms into one global village by conducting joint activities or projects once a month. We are going to focus on intercultural understanding and making connections between or different lifestyles.
Grade 1:
Small Moments: ESL Students Present via VoiceThread: Students write and illustrate a “small moment” for later narrating and posting on a VoiceThread (hosted on the classroom blog). Our collaborative partners at another international school in Madrid, Spain also share their stories so we can comment on each other’s work.
Kindergarten:
Kindergarten Connections: Connecting Students via VoiceThread: Two kindergarten classes connect for learning using VoiceThread, blogs, wikis, and digital imagery to share and discuss topics from the curriculum.
Pre-Kindergarten:
The Meaning of Friendship: Students as Authors via SmartBoards: Pre-Kindergarten students collaborate to write their own interactive book about the meaning of friendship in their class.
Weekly Newsletter: Students sharing via VoiceThread: Pre-Kindergarten students draw a weekly newsletter for their parents and then record their voices using VoiceThread to tell their parents about the week (hosted on the classroom blog).
Projects for Communication with Teachers, Students and Parents
Connect 2.0 Blog: Community blog documenting important activities, events and successful 21st century literacy projects. All ISB teacher and student blogs are linked.
The Learning Hub Wiki: Community wiki to share important information about the Learning Hub.
Connect 2.0 Wiki: Community wiki to share important information about 21st century literacy.
2005 – 2007
As the Middle School Technology Facilitator at Mont’Kiara International School I worked with the core subject teachers to integrate technology into the classroom:
Grade 6:
Social Studies Meets IT: Blogging in Social Studies: We started out the year using blogs to learn about current events. Since then, these student blogs have expanded into a one-stop-shop for all social studies work, as well as a place to post other core subject material.
Code Blue!: Wikis in Science: In order to develop an authentic assessment for a project about the human body systems, we decided to have the students create an online medical clinic in the form of a wiki. This was an exciting project because students were able to collaborate across class sections (even though they never actually sat in the same classroom at the same time, they were able to work on the same wikispace).
Are You Ready?: Wikis in Study Skills: As students learned about different study skills to make the transition from elementary to middle school easier, they collaborated on a wiki to help other sixth grade students at school and around the world.
Where in the World?: Google Earth in Social Studies: Students began their geography unit by researching different countries and marking them on Google Earth (still looking for a way to post this online).
Sixth Grade IT: Wikis in IT: Students as authors of the sixth grade IT curriculum. All students contribute to this space in order to record, describe and analyze everything they’ve learned in this 9-week exploratory course.
Grade 7:
Seventh Grade IT: Wikis in IT: Students as authors of the seventh grade IT curriculum. All students contribute to this space in order to record, describe and analyze everything they’ve learned in this 9-week exploratory course.
Current Events (Ms. N and Ms. S): Blogging in Social Studies: As students begin to explore current events around the world, they will share what they have learned with their peers through daily presentations and blog posting.
1001 Flat World Tales: Wikis in English: Students will collaborate with other children around the world to produce exciting and unique myths and legends about Malaysia as part of the 1001 Flat World Tales project.
Grade 8:
English Eight: Blogging in English: Students are ready to communicate with a wider audience by posting their writing online and commenting.
Eighth Grade IT: Wikis in IT: Students as authors of the eighth grade IT curriculum. All students contribute to this space in order to record, describe and analyze everything they’ve learned in this 9-week exploratory course.
International Teen Life Project: Blogging, wikis, and multimedia in English: In collaboration with 4 other schools around the world, our students will produce poetic documentaries about issues that directly affect their lives.
Cross Grade Level:
Strings Online: Wikis in Orchestra: A unique way to present personal projects on musicians. Students research their choice of artists and then post individual project pages online. The discussion tool is used to create an online version of classroom discussion.
Middle School IT: Wikis in IT: The course curriculum for each 9-week exploratory is posted here along with resource links and all assignments. Links to each student produced wiki on each grade level page.
Dragon Art: Wikis in Art: As students research, design and create their own personal dragon, they will document their creative process, along with their research on dragons, using this class wikispace.
Projects for Communication with Students and Parents
I would like to more effectively share what is happening in our IT classroom with a wider school community:
Middle School IT Blog: Blogs in IT: A place to communicate easily with students and parents about our classroom activities (a work in progress).
Projects for Teachers
I am working encouraging and motivating teachers to incorporate technology into their core subject courses:
Tech in the Middle Wiki: Collaborative Wiki for Technology Integration: A place for all middle school teachers to share resources related to the integration of technology.
Tech in the Middle Blog: Collaborative Blog for Technology Integration: A place for middle school technology teachers to share experiences and resources related to the integration of technology (a work in progress).