Monday, June 23, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Learning to Change, Changing to Learn
A colleague of mine shared this video with me today. It includes perspectives from Cheryl Lemke, Daniel Pink and Chris Dede among others. It is worth taking 5 minutes to watch. As an educator and advocate for 21st century classrooms, we need to keep these kinds of ideas in front of educational leaders and teachers to continue to promote the seamless integration of technology in the teaching and learning process.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
False Sense of Connection
We had an awesome summer thunderstorm near my house this evening. As I sat here and enjoyed watching the unpredictable weather from the comfort of my front porch, I reflected upon the fact that at the moment I was watching, my fun loving golden retriever kept wanting to connect to me, then the cat, then me, then the cat, to get someone to play with her. It reminded me of an old saying, "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog" which also made me think, if you're a dog, really, you can't connect with your owner or the cat via twitter on the internet. Some connections really just need physical interaction! It is human (and animal) nature to want to physically connect to one another.
Wes Fryer and Vicki Davis have both recently blogged about taking time to disconnect and refresh ourselves, connect with our family and stay positive. I wholeheartedly agree that all of these are very important to do. In fact, I think it is important to try to do these things more than once a year. Many of us take one vacation in the summer for about a week. The rest of the year we are connected with our colleagues, friends, family and significant others, via email, twitter, text messages, occasional phone calls (if we feel it's too much to type or text) and, if we're lucky, we meet in person. I am reminded of an initiative in our school district where we are educating the "whole child." As part of that, we were presented with the fact that to thrive, children, actually all humans need 6-8 respectful touches a day. There was no research on how many respectful twitters or emails equated to respectful touches.
Hmmmm....so I'm wondering...text connections without human interactions...do they give us a false sense of connection? As I begin to plan for a one to one initiative for my teachers this summer, I will pause to remember that the goal is not to disconnect but to strengthen connections. I will push myself to go the extra mile and not just send an email, text or twitter, but extend a hand and a friendly smile and hopefully create a human connection. Maybe even give a hug or two to those that have a special place in my heart. I urge you do to the same!
Wes Fryer and Vicki Davis have both recently blogged about taking time to disconnect and refresh ourselves, connect with our family and stay positive. I wholeheartedly agree that all of these are very important to do. In fact, I think it is important to try to do these things more than once a year. Many of us take one vacation in the summer for about a week. The rest of the year we are connected with our colleagues, friends, family and significant others, via email, twitter, text messages, occasional phone calls (if we feel it's too much to type or text) and, if we're lucky, we meet in person. I am reminded of an initiative in our school district where we are educating the "whole child." As part of that, we were presented with the fact that to thrive, children, actually all humans need 6-8 respectful touches a day. There was no research on how many respectful twitters or emails equated to respectful touches.
Hmmmm....so I'm wondering...text connections without human interactions...do they give us a false sense of connection? As I begin to plan for a one to one initiative for my teachers this summer, I will pause to remember that the goal is not to disconnect but to strengthen connections. I will push myself to go the extra mile and not just send an email, text or twitter, but extend a hand and a friendly smile and hopefully create a human connection. Maybe even give a hug or two to those that have a special place in my heart. I urge you do to the same!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Making Learning "Safe" for Teachers
In today's world of accountability, it is hard to find ways to allow for positive accountability without some kind of "evaluation" tied to it. However, I think this is what we, as educational technologists and advocates of changing pedagogy desperately need to do to support teachers!! If we do not make their professional development learning environments "safe" for exploration and free of negative evaluation, the willingness of teachers to try new things will be sorely diminished.
Safe environments invite exploration, creating avenues such as moodle sandboxes are just the type of activities that can begin to facilitate this type of professional learning. I have learned that people who are enclosed in walls for a long period of time have a very difficult time knowing what to do when the walls come down and they have opportunities for growth. I think we need to be cognizant of these feelings and make sure that we understand that while teachers may want to embrace change and new learning, they need support, hand holding and being told that it is OK not to know it all, or to have it all together as they explore these new frontiers.
We must also loosely structure their learning so that they have time to explore and but also give them small successes so that they get excited about learning more and take it upon themselves to continue to explore. These ideas may sounds simple and you may say to yourself that you are already doing these things and if so that's great. If you don't see teachers jumping on the bandwagon behind you, stop to talk to them and see how they are feeling. Safety for learning and exploration may be just what they need to get going. Try some structured facilitation and consistent support and watch them grow. Just like young plants, they need constant attention, at least in the beginning until they are strong enough and have a deep enough root and developed enough stem to survive a bit of drought and still stay strong and continue to grow!
Safe environments invite exploration, creating avenues such as moodle sandboxes are just the type of activities that can begin to facilitate this type of professional learning. I have learned that people who are enclosed in walls for a long period of time have a very difficult time knowing what to do when the walls come down and they have opportunities for growth. I think we need to be cognizant of these feelings and make sure that we understand that while teachers may want to embrace change and new learning, they need support, hand holding and being told that it is OK not to know it all, or to have it all together as they explore these new frontiers.
We must also loosely structure their learning so that they have time to explore and but also give them small successes so that they get excited about learning more and take it upon themselves to continue to explore. These ideas may sounds simple and you may say to yourself that you are already doing these things and if so that's great. If you don't see teachers jumping on the bandwagon behind you, stop to talk to them and see how they are feeling. Safety for learning and exploration may be just what they need to get going. Try some structured facilitation and consistent support and watch them grow. Just like young plants, they need constant attention, at least in the beginning until they are strong enough and have a deep enough root and developed enough stem to survive a bit of drought and still stay strong and continue to grow!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Reading and Thinking
Had some time this morning to work through some good Twitter and Blog links. Added a page to my wiki entitled "To Think About..." - sometimes it's just easier to add to my wiki! Happy Thursday...off to think! : )
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Web Tools Conundrum...
Yesterday I attended the first National Education Web Professionals Conference.
There was a wonderful diversity of educational professionals there. The conference wasn’t large enough for break-out sessions so we all were in the same room all day. It was a different but unique and rewarding conference experience. There wasn’t wireless internet access, which was a good and bad thing as we were a captive audience. The keynote speaker was Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch. What I thought was most interesting about his speech, was his idea that in order to identify what your district/organization needs from a CMS system, have people create narrative use cases to tell a story, that validates the needs, not just create a checklist of needs. Furthermore, the panels didn’t just present, they told stories about how their topic came to fruition in the district.
Many people in the educational technology world are struggling with blogs, wikis, podcasts, on-line courseware and content management systems (CMS) and how they all fit together. Some of the topics of conversation included Moodle vs. CMS, how do you make all users happy? What does ease of use mean? What content should be internal v. external?
They are hoping to grow the conference and the conversations, hope you’ll think about joining in!! :)
There was a wonderful diversity of educational professionals there. The conference wasn’t large enough for break-out sessions so we all were in the same room all day. It was a different but unique and rewarding conference experience. There wasn’t wireless internet access, which was a good and bad thing as we were a captive audience. The keynote speaker was Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch. What I thought was most interesting about his speech, was his idea that in order to identify what your district/organization needs from a CMS system, have people create narrative use cases to tell a story, that validates the needs, not just create a checklist of needs. Furthermore, the panels didn’t just present, they told stories about how their topic came to fruition in the district.
Many people in the educational technology world are struggling with blogs, wikis, podcasts, on-line courseware and content management systems (CMS) and how they all fit together. Some of the topics of conversation included Moodle vs. CMS, how do you make all users happy? What does ease of use mean? What content should be internal v. external?
They are hoping to grow the conference and the conversations, hope you’ll think about joining in!! :)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Digital Sharing and Engagement
A struggle with my Drexel students kept me thinking about what really is the difference between presenting and digital sharing? Again, we were stuck on semantics - traditional paradigms about presentations with PowerPoint. We came up with the term digital sharing to reflect what we were trying to do. Traditionally the last night of class we have everyone present their project to the rest of the class. A painfully long experience when there are 20 students in the class. We wanted to have students look at each other's projects in a more meaningful way.
What we came up with was this: the students would post to my Drexel Wiki page and then using the wiki discussion board section, they would share comments with their peers. I was amazed by how much more involved the students were this method. They were forced to make an effort to look at others projects and they had to share feedback. Because this was done in a way that made sense to them, via a Wiki, the web and a discussion board, they were engaged.
But that wasn't all...at the same time they were working on this they had learned how to post to my voice thread about Blogging in Higher Education. They were doing this with their cell phones! Now I know Marc Prensky has written about harnessing the power of the cell phone in the classroom, and I agree, but to see it actually in practice, engaging students, amazing!!!
They immediately got out their cell phones and began to call themselves to post their response, then they stopped. They realized that they wanted to script out their sentences and then collaborate with their peers to see who was writing what. The energy in the room was awesome!!! They took the time to have the voicethread call themselves in the hall so that their recordings could be quiet. It was engagement at it's finest!! Now if we can just harness that for K-12!! : )
What we came up with was this: the students would post to my Drexel Wiki page and then using the wiki discussion board section, they would share comments with their peers. I was amazed by how much more involved the students were this method. They were forced to make an effort to look at others projects and they had to share feedback. Because this was done in a way that made sense to them, via a Wiki, the web and a discussion board, they were engaged.
But that wasn't all...at the same time they were working on this they had learned how to post to my voice thread about Blogging in Higher Education. They were doing this with their cell phones! Now I know Marc Prensky has written about harnessing the power of the cell phone in the classroom, and I agree, but to see it actually in practice, engaging students, amazing!!!
They immediately got out their cell phones and began to call themselves to post their response, then they stopped. They realized that they wanted to script out their sentences and then collaborate with their peers to see who was writing what. The energy in the room was awesome!!! They took the time to have the voicethread call themselves in the hall so that their recordings could be quiet. It was engagement at it's finest!! Now if we can just harness that for K-12!! : )
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