Erasures

Konrad Glogowski begins his session sitting behind a teacher's desk in front of a freshly erased chalkboard. The significance of his choice of setting unfolds as the audience listens while he describes a novel approach to teacher development.


Viewing "Self-driven and Classroom-based: Professional Development in the 21st Century" brings about a bit of a shock. Wouldn't you be surprised if a keynote speaker at an online technology conference started off by telling you that teachers should be reflective practitioners and not allow themselves to be affected by online trends and buzz words? About the time I was wondering if I had lost my focus and missed a key sentence, he stated that PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) might be a bit too top-down and that we should first build a strong understanding of our own context of our daily work and experiences before we use technology to help us set up PLNs around the world.

Glogowski suggests that building this strong understanding will help us to determine who we are and what we need. He urges us to reflect within our own classroom and to make sure that we connect with a few key people to learn with--not to learn from. He feels that we need to listen to our classrooms first so that we will be able to focus on what's needed most for our students. This learning will in turn require that we focus on who we are and force us to reflect on our practice. Glogowski recommends that we build this knowledge with two or three colleagues.

Guy Claxton is quoted as having said that the key responsibility of the educator is to help students become confident and competent designers of their own tools as they go along, and that we need to engage students as critical thinkers, navigators and inquirers. Our practice should be reflective so that we focus on who we are and what we do when we're in our classroom. He feels that classrooms must become sites of inquiry where teachers engage in practice that is perpetually experimental because that is what the 21st century demands.

Claxton continues to weave in and out of Glogowski's musings. "Schools should become communities of practice where...the 'elders' of the community are themselves exemplary learners." The speaker believes that classrooms are a vital part of our professional identity and that they should be sites of professional development where we assess and reflect on our practice. These reflections and conversations will connect with our colleagues' reflections and conversations and their classrooms.

It is stated that classrooms are where we grow as professionals and as human beings. They're where teachers are the ones doing a lot of learning. We reflect, build knowledge, address problems, evaluate possibilities and learn. Conversations that grow out of our classrooms will help us focus on learning. We should build on relationships with students through conversations about teaching and learning. We need to involve students in classroom development of curriculum and learning and to realize that it will lead to meaningful action where we begin to observe and ask critical questions. Past practice taken for granted may need to change.

After reflecting and questioning the root of why we do what we do, Glogowski suggests that we reconstruct the areas of our professional practice that need changing. I feel that he is suggesting that we ERASE what it is that we do that is not working and live up to Claxton's suggestion that schools should become communities of practice where the predominate practice is "learning" and that classrooms are sites of inquiry where teachers themselves are lifelong learners.

Wanted: A Kickstart

During my freshman summer of high school, I went out with a guy who had a motorcycle. It was an old motorcycle with a kickstart. Forty years have gone by, but I can still remember sitting behind him as he started it. He'd lean the bike slightly to the left as he kicked down on the right, all the while twisting the right handle bar to give it gas. Then there'd be that slight jerk forward before we were on our way.

I woke up this morning realizing that the only way I was going to meet my goals for this class was to create a kind of kickstart for the rest of my digital learning. Otherwise, I'm afraid that I won't get back to it and really make it a part of my everyday routine. During this transition, I'll need to lean slightly to the left (basically just keep this shift going) while I kick down on the right (log onto social networking sites) as I twist the right handle bar (use digital tools in authentic ways in my classroom) to give it gas. The goal, of course, is to not stall out or give up when this motorcycle of mine slightly jerks forward in my attempts to be on my way.

I'd like to propose that my final project kickstart a continuation of my digital skills and social networking. It will need to be part group and part individual. The group portion begins Tuesday, December 1st when our staff will meet for a technology hour. Originally, we had planned for this meeting to be a time to unveil a mock-up of our proposed school wiki. As luck would have it, there is now a "consolidated" communication committee being formed that will attempt to create an online "consolidated look" for our new district. This makes sense though it has forced us to create an open-ended timeline and to acknowledge that we won't be able to create a new school wiki before the December 1st meeting.

Our group has used GoogleDocs to keep an updated list of school websites/wikis that we admire. At the end of the last USM class, we chose a wiki template and began to determine the number of pages we would need to include all staff and curriculum at our school. We want the wiki to be as inclusive as possible.

We've also used GoogleDocs to plan our one hour staff presentation. At this point in time, we will open with a showing of the "Did You Know? 3.0" YouTube video clip. After some discussion, we'll move onto sharing Morse Street School websites, wikis, blogs, Google Reader and Twitters. Next, we'll help an audience teacher-volunteer to create a blog in front of the group. We'll end with the YouTube video clip titled "21st Century Learners" and a brief discussion followed by a non-tech staff survey question such as "Where would you like to go next?"

Sometimes things happen for the best and I think that this particular line-up of activities may be more entertaining and informative for our staff than a simple wiki mock-up might have been.

The areas I'd like to pursue individually are in the form of setting up classroom podcasts and in becoming a consistent follower of Twitter for Educators.

I've never used a podcast but I think it'd be an effective tool to use in helping students hear improvements in their choral reading of poems and singing of songs during the holidays. Beyond the holidays, I'd like them to hear their individual reading of poems and scripts prior to performing in our end-of-the-year student plays. A weekly podcast on our blog would help us to chart growth along the way.

Last night I was checking out freetech4teachers.com and read about lists that can be created on Twitter. This helped me to realize that there was a way to organize my time and attention so that I wasn't all over the place on this tool. Despite the fact that I've been a member of Twitter for about a month, I still haven't USED it. I need to kick this start the hardest and get going. What better way than to make it a part of my final project?

Turkey Day Data

Everyday Math is a fairly wordy program for beginning first graders. Within the test given at the end of Unit 2 is a table of data for the number of teeth lost by children. The numbers are listed in the form of tally marks for those kids who lost 1 tooth, 2 teeth or 3 or more teeth. About 1/3 of my students were not able to gather correct information from the table despite the fact that I read the test item to them.

Comments on our classroom blog were at an all time low and my students obviously needed authentic practice in reading and interpreting tables. I decided to attempt to kill two birds with one stone and create my digital lesson around this topic. Click Activity Sheet for lesson plans.

I started prepping for the lesson at our last USM class by speaking with Janny who had shown me some online surveys for our families to fill out. The problem with every survey I viewed was that they were too involved. We needed to ask just one question and after mulling over the choices, I decided to make it simple and have the class create a question that families could answer in list form within the comment area of our classroom blog. That week I posted a heads up for families to let them know we'd be polling them soon concerning what they eat every Thanksgiving.

The next week I checked out the LCD projector that was purchased for our wing and learned how to run it. It was amazingly easy to use. The class was able to watch me post their question and insert a picture of a turkey. As usual, I made hard copies for my four families without internet so that their data was also available. I asked a mom of one of my students if she knew of any tables and tally fonts that were free and easy to use. She emailed me that GoogleDocs had a super simple table and also sent a link for a free tally font to download onto my computer's hard drive.

That weekend I created a table in GoogleDocs but was thwarted in using the tally font. It just wasn't possible. My daughter, Tara, was around and she explained that sometimes you can only use the fonts available in the program you're in. (Big news to me!) She sat with me while I cut and pasted the GoogleDocs table into word and then used the tally font there to create a mock up to make sure it'd work in class. I practiced uploading it into the blog and it seemed that I was good to go. Later that night, I got to thinking and decided that I might as well just create the entire table (font and all) in Word when I was in front of the class.

On Monday, I wheeled out the LCD projector and set up shop in front of the class. We read the comments online and on paper. We created a table with the tally mark font in Word. Rather than cut and paste it into the blog, I decided to wait until we had one more day of feedback.

On Tuesday, we set up shop again and updated the tallies on our table. A problem arose when I tried to copy it and insert it into my blog. The tally would not upload and instead numbers showed up on the table. I explained to the kids that I'd have to fiddle with it before it could go online.

During science, our tech support, Jim Grant, delivered a computer to our class. He asked how things had gone with the table. I explained the problem and he fiddled with the table until he was able to insert it into the blog. I think he used a screen shot though I did notice that my Seashore program was open so I'm not really sure how he accomplished the task. (I was in the middle of sifting rocks with first graders.) At any rate, as soon as I'm back to school, I'll stop by for a tutorial concerning exactly what it was that he did. This is not the last table that we'll be using, so I'd like to see it through.

Later, I called my daughter and explained the problem. She thought that it might have something to do with the fact that I created the second table in Word rather than stick with the GoogleDocs table. I had no idea that programs could be so finicky! Honestly, I've learned a lot and have had all kinds of new fun with my class along the way!

Picasso in 21st Century Education

Picasso didn't start out creating abstract works of art. His early expressions were traditional. I wonder if his transformation came about when he began to focus on his belief that all children are born artists and that the trick is to remain an artist as we grow up? My feeling is that if a talented artist can recalibrate his creativity, then talented teachers can do the same. After listening to Ken Robinson, I've come to believe it is possible to propose and implement a theory of educational change through powerful pilot programs with new technologies. We just need a Picasso-like program to jump start the effort that will be needed to gather individuals to bring about such a change. Teachers must look through Picasso's eyes to begin to determine how we might transform education. We must determine ways to rearrange the components so that children hold onto their divergent thinking.

Sir Ken Robinson comments on the need for a global revolution in education in "Creatively Speaking: Parts 1 and 2" and in "Schools Must Validate Artistic Expression." He feels there are actually two climate crises happening simultaneously: the crisis portrayed in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the human resources crises playing out everyday in classrooms worldwide.

Education needs to be transformed--not reformed. Robinson states that it is time to devote ourselves to reconnecting with creativity and intelligence and that everyone can reconnect with their creativity by working in school systems with teachers who meet the 21st century challenge to cultivate creativity across whole systems.

Robinson defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. Creativity is not a gift or a scattered wish but rather it is a process that can be learned. "I'm not creative translates to I don't know how." He wonders what education would look like if divergent thinking were taught as opposed to linear thinking? An assessment is shared that charted the decline of genius. In children aged 3-5, 98% were divergent thinkers. When the same children were assessed between the ages of 8-10, the percentage dropped to 32%. At 13-15 years old, the percentage of genius was 18%. The good news in examining this data is that we all start out with the ability to think in divergent ways.

Sir Ken goes on to note that current trends and standardized tests are narrowing our curriculum. He feels we need a new creative renaissance using expanding technologies to improve teaching and learning so that our curriculum, assessments and pedagogy are interdisciplinary and broad based. This causes me to wonder how he interprets the statistics coming out of China and India that offered a powerful punch in the "Did You Know? 3.0" video clip. Does this information work together or is there now a Linear Camp and a Divergent Camp?

PLCs for Kids AND Teachers

Marc Prensky's article, "Turning On the Lights" connects nicely with an article on Professional Learning Communities that our staff was asked to read during early release time yesterday. In a nutshell, PLCs offer teachers a chance to stop planning alone at home and in their classrooms. A PLC is given a common meeting time WITHIN THE SCHOOL DAY for like-minded professionals to collaborate around student needs through discussions on any part of a child's school day. I believe that if we agree with Prensky's premise that we must turn on the lights for our students in school, then we'll need a powerful first step in which to offer time for students and teachers to meet in PLCs to structure the overhaul that is indeed needed.

Prepping in isolation is similar to powering up at home alone. Both teachers and students benefit when they are able to "teach one another to actively participate as often as possible in the world--locally and around the globe." In a group, misconceptions become transparent and therefore easy to challenge and correct. Laptops, cell phones, mp3 players, social networking sites, Wikipedia and other technologies are merely tools. In his book, "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell presents a powerful case history of Bill Gates. There is no way to read it and not think that we (as teachers and parents) need to support our students in pursuing their passions.

I teach in a K-2 building and we do not have a technology policy. The closest we come to a policy is that we do not allow electronic games to be brought to school. Obviously, the lack of a policy meets no needs. I am intrigued by Prensky's suggestion of "developing after-school time for game and other computer programming classes that kids either sign up for or teach themselves." His principle of "keeping the computer lab open late and on weekends" would go far in our little Maine town.

It would appear that technology now changes by the hour and thus said, the desire for teachers and administrators to stay up-to-date is actually out-of-date. Perhaps a healthier attitude to adopt is one where teachers and administrators work hand-in-hand with their students so that all can use the techniques and technologies that best suit everyone.

A Crying Shame

It's a crying shame that Maine's Laptop Initiative didn't start at the primary level because much of what Will Richardson speaks to in his article, "World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others," is already happening in grades K through 2.

Primary classrooms are driven by a student-centered approach. On the first day of school, many of our children identify individual hopes for the school year. In my first grade class, we share these hopes and always end up realizing that just about everyone hopes to learn to read and to play outside. From this common view, we begin to collaborate on classroom rules. Our classes are guided by adults adept in connecting students to appropriate text and scheduling outdoor playtime. We listen and are guided by six-year-old versions of Laura Stockman. We join hands and ensure that our buildings are safe, effective communities.

Our teaching is transparent as evidenced by our read alouds and write alouds. We teach children to THINK aloud by modeling just that. We guide them in learning ways to ask questions when experience doesn't line up with their schema (knowledge of the world).

Last week a student asked why I had removed a slideshow titled "Recess" from our classroom blog. I mentioned that I had noticed a name tag on a classmate's shirt and felt it would be safer to pull the slideshow off the internet until I had time to rework it. This six-year-old nodded knowingly. Others asked what we were talking about and his simple question turned into the beginning of what could become a year-long class discussion about digital citizenship.

Little by little, digital skills and conversations are creeping into our primary classrooms. The next hurdle will be acquiring an inventory of working computers so that children at all levels of our K-12 continuum will be able to express themselves while networking with peers, families, and teachers from around the world.

Does managing a new gadget for your blog...

...ever make you feel a little crazy?