Desperate SBTS

The assumptions that Sylvia Martinez (President of Generaion YES) challenges are 1) that teachers do not use technology because they have not received enough and/or adequate professional development and 2) the way to get teachers to use technology is to offer them more and/or better professional development. Sylvia’s assertion is that if professional development is not working – then more professional development won’t work any better. She backs this claim with research that shows that teachers are offered and do participate in technology professional development. She believes that the professional development offered to teachers is not effective because of the gap between the time and place of training and the time and place of implementation. Teachers can be taught how to use technology tools in a lab with the guidance of a trainer and the support of colleagues, but they teach in isolation with no follow-up support so they loose what they had gained in training.

The model that Sylvia proposes as a solution for encouraging teacher implementation of technology is one that that includes students as allies, teachers and mentors to teachers.
Noticing that it is natural to have students helping out in the classroom she suggests that schools could use students to support teacher technology development. She describes the Generation YES (Youth and Educators Succeeding) project that helps schools adopt this model.Students receive training from the technology specialist in the applications and technology tools and also in communication skills, and they in turn collaborate with their teachers to suggest technology integration ideas and provide training and support for the use of the necessary tools as teaching and learning is happening in the classroom. This I an intriguing idea that I believe is getting some attention as I have heard it echoed in the two presentations from the SBTS tech 11/29 blog. How much easier would it be to teach student than teachers? Would your teachers be receptive to having students show them how to use technology tools? Would students learn better? Would your teachers be receptive to the constructivist teaching model this technology integration model relies on?

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I have young adult children.  My 27 year old daughter is just old enough to have missed the remix craze, so she is sometimes as mystified as I, but has greater appreciation for its inherent creativity than I.  My 24 year old son and his high school buddies have produced several amateur films and their experiences with editing naturally led them into this genre.  My 22 year old son lives at home and frequently shares interesting tidbits he finds on the internet with me!  So I am not completely unfamiliar with the remix genre. 

But – until I watched this presentation – I hadn’t thought of these videos as a genre.  I am not exactly sure why that matters – maybe I just realized that these videos are truly creative work.  If raising our awareness about this genre was one of Lessig’s objectives – then his presentation was successful for my part.  I will have a greater appreciation for the effort an consideration that goes into their creation.  If I agree that these remix videos are the literacy of the youth – and not merely entertainment – then the amount of time an effort that goes into creating them is a reflection of the earnestness of the message and the messengers, the video’s creators.  

A point of connection with the November presentation – Lessig speaks about how the remix genre is being forced underground by the refusal of the recording industry to loosen its control of “copyright” regulations an November speaks about how Ipods are worn by our children where every hour of the day – except when they are in school where they are banned.  It seems that in both cases the opportunity to foster, promote, and support creativity and the critical thing that goes with it is being lost because we are suspicious of a technology.  We could probably think of other examples.  As SBTS, maybe the most important part of our job isn’t to know how to use these technologies but to know how to promote them as the ne tools of creativity.  November tells us that the students will figure out how to use the tool.  It will be the teacher’s job to present students with situations and opportunities for using these tools in a creative process.

And I really liked the PowerPoint!  It was very interesting how the sides did enhance his words – and I thought he was a very good speaker.  Perhaps speakers who are less animate could benefit from this style of presentation. I am going to try to model my next presentation after his technique!    

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I was interested in the coordination of Web2.0 tools that November proposes. So far, I have only encountered these tools as they have been discussed in isolation. I attended a K12 conference in blogging. I’ve listened to explanations of how podcasting works. But I have not heard anyone explain how thewe tools could work together. It helps me to understand their power to think of them as a package, rather than seperate applications.
I also appreciated how he put them into the context of the global community and the necessity for developing students who are comfortable in the multi-cultural global economy that is developing.
I was interested in his comments that teachers need not be trained in these tools if students have the training. One of the conferences in K12 was based on this same idea. Teachers should not be afraid to experiment with Web2.0 tools because 1) the students will help the teacher, and may even be better at figuring out how to use them and 2) learning how use these would be a great problem solving opportunity of the kind November speaks of.
Finally, I took the Teaching with Geometer’s Sketchpad online course this summer and one of the comments from math teachers learning this software is that they didn’t see their students exercising the patience to figure out how to construct their own shapes or work through some of the constructing challenges. This analysis of student motivation agrees with November’s observation that American students are not taught or challenged to develop problem solving skills.

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The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology To Tell Stories
Kevin Hodgson & Bonnie Kaplan

Kevin and Bonnie use a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools to tell the story of how they developed and accomplished the ABC project This project asked the contributors to compose a personal digital story based on randomly assigned letters of the alphabet in any application they chose, post it in you Tube and use JumpCut to collaboratively edit the presentation, so the presentation itself employed many new Web 2.0 tools. I was not familiar with just about all of these tools. So the opportunity to participate in the presentation was an education, in addition to learning about the project. The opportunity to receive their information via different web based software programs allowed me to experience these different ways of conveying information for myself, make comparisons, and judge their effectiveness. I almost forgot that this presentation was under the Professional Learning communities banner – as it seemed as much about learning to use Web 2.0 technology as it was about professional community development.
I think this is an important observation. The purpose of organizing people into a community should not be the existence of the community . If we manage to come together as a community – then bravo for us – but if there is no purpose for our gathering, then our interaction will become very parochial and inwardly focused , and we will quickly tire of ourselves and go our separate ways. I think that coming together for mutual support is important, but if there is also not some other goal toward which the group is working, the group will soon collapse on itself. The people of the ABC Project community came together to help one another develop their stories using new Web 2.0 tools– and by so do doing, teach themselves how such a project might work out and to learn from their successes and difficulties. Their goal in so doing was so they could share this experience with others and also so they could become “experts” in this new area of communicating and collaborating – to better provide leadership for such a project in the communities that the work with and serve.
I thought it was interesting that Kevin reported some difficulty with some of the e]web based software that they tried. in particular he stated the JumpCut did not perform as ell as thy had hoped. I am wondering if this is because web based software is new – and the developers haven’t worked out all the kinks? If so – then will Web 2.0 software developers make modifications based on the experiences of user like Kevin and Bonnie? I guess I hope these tools will improve in the areas of users friendliness in the future, for the sake of those of us who will try to encourage teachers to use them in the classroom with children. Or maybe teaching students to deal with the promises as well as the pitfalls of using Web 2-0 tools is part of the lesson plan based on these tools.

As I listened to Kevin’s podcast describing the process of pulling this project together I was encouraged to know that he appears to be in the same boat we are in – just learning about these tools and being excited by them, yet wondering where they will have application in a school curriculum and how to implement them in the classroom. If either Bonnie or Kevin had attempted to implement this project in their own local settings, my guess is that they might not have been as successful. I work for a fairly large ES and I cannot imagine gathering enough people to participate in an experimental project such as the one they attempted. The connectivity afforded through blogging and the web allowed them to include participants from a greater pool of possible participants and accomplish the task.

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New Tools

Learn to Blog : Blog to Learn

Anne Davis

I chose this presentation because of the blogging requirement for this class and I am very glad that I did. If you are confused about the relevance of blogging in the classroom, what a blogging project would look like, or how to set one up – then I would recommend this session to you!  

The presentation includes a webquest that is used to teach students about blogging and a blog that teachers whom she was introducing bogging to had used.  Both of the resources were very valuable to me!  The webquest posted is what the teacher would use to introduce her class to blogging.  It includes an introduction to blogging, a description of the task (or the objectives) that includes links to a class wiki page for each objective , a description of the process or the lesson that would introduce blogging, a rubric for evaluation of their blogs, a conclusion and credits.  The lessons included several features that I found informative or interesting.  A book published by another class about their own experiences of blogging, a link to a wiki page for safe and responsible blogging, examples of actual student blogs, and comment prompts to get students started commenting on their classmates blogs.  I myself learned a lot about blogging from these resources.

This version of Anne’s webquest also includes a Teacher Page that includes her lesson plan for teaching with the webquest.  The lesson described is designed for fifth grade students.  A document named the Six Traits of Writing and Bloom’s taxonomy are the focal points of the blogging process.  Students are encouraged to think and blog about what they are learning in class.  They will improve their writing skills as they practice thinking and expressing themselves by writing for their blogs and posting comments for their classmates.

Also part of this presentation is access to a class blog that was used to introduce educators to Blogmeister (sound familiar?)  It was interesting not only to read the content and the educator students responses, but also to see another group of adults learning how to do this blogging thing.  Included in this blog in a very helpful document – Rationale for Blogging. The third part of her presentation is a slide show about blogging – that introduces beginners to the vocabulary of blogging and to Blogmeister – the software that she uses for her students’ blogs.  Again – very helpful to me.

Choosing this presentation my not have been very much of  stretch – but I am glad that I took the time to explore all three parts of the presentation.  I learned a lot!

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Design Matters by Dean Shareski

I chose this presentation to watch because I myself am interested in design and what goes into a good design. I found some very interesting concepts to consider in this presentation. Dean’s main idea is that design is an important element to teach. To support this premise he cites the work of Daniel Pink and Sir Ken Robinson (one reason I found the presentation relevant). From Daniel Pink he takes the concepts of utility and significance, and how enhancing an item’s significance can actually add to its functionality. He asks how many of us have intentionally included design in everyday learning?
Dean’s has 5 suggestions for teaching design:
1. He emphasizes the importance of planning when asking students to create any kind of digital presentation. This is important for defining the purpose of the project. He points out that writing projects always have a defined purpose. This is also important for the purpose of assessment and analysis. How well does the project satisfy its stated purpose? An interesting observation of his was that teachers who have less confidence in their understanding of the technology being used will feel that they are involved in the project by guiding the students in their planning.
2. Dean believes that visual literacy should be taught. Much of what he has to say on this topic is familiar as it has been shared with us by Karen, including putting cameras in student’s hands, the rule of thirds, the prohibition against clip art, and the use of Flickr for useable images.
3. Less is more deals with the concept of white space to create emphasis and highlight what is important. Less is more in the use of transitions as well – another familiar theme. Transitions can be used effectively to signal a change of pace or idea in a presentation.
4. The use of constraints is also a way of creating emphasis. By requiring students to edit down their work, the teacher requires them to focus on the main idea (another strategy used in writing)
5. Dean believes that we should have our students study good design, that our assessments should include consideration of good design presentation design, and that we can encourage this by exploring the advance features of our software and through the development of personal branding (an individually identifiable logo or technique).
In this presentation, I found further support for the ideas of technology supporting creative learning beyond the reproduction of teaching techniques with technology for the sake of presenting lessons in the latest and slickest format. He emphasizes that just because you can (add transitions or clip art for example) doesn’t mean you should. Dean shows us that how the technology is used to present the students ideas is as important as the ideas themselves. Good design enhances significance. Design matters!

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I think that it is interesting that so far I have said that we SBTS shouldn’t teach technology, but we should use technology to teach the content.  But the two articles that we read for this assignment seem to me to be taking another approach – the approach of using the technology to effectively present the students learning.  This approach puts less emphasis on the teaching and more emphasis on the learning or the product rather than the process.  It seems to me that a lesson that is focused on delivering content (as in SOL objectives) will not regard technology as part of a process but as a means to an end.  In this guise, technology’s principle attraction is its motivational power that we all keep talking about.  I don’t think that I see much of that kind of teaching going on.  Most of the value of technology integration lies in the “koolness” of the product (think a MapMakers Map instead of one colored in with crayons), or the necessity  of the skill (think word processing or spreadsheets and graphs).  Getting technology to be part of the learning process would require a learning process to be part of…hmmm.

So I am thinking about how to enhance a 2^nd grade lesson on poetry with technology.  In the lesson as I have seen it done students will read and hear different kinds of poetry and write their own poetry as the culminating activity.  I was interested in the evaluation toolkit’s emphasis on how technology is to used to present the product of learning.  Before reading these two articles, I was thinking of having the students illustrate the poems in Pixie and then exporting and importing into Photostory and then the students would record the poems.  This project does incorporate a lot of technology, but also requires a lot of scaffolding and outright direct instruction of technology techniques (how to export, for instance).  And there is no choice as to how the poem will be presented.  All the poems will be the same format.  The challenge for me is to create a lesson that allows students to decide what form the presentation of the poem will take place. 

The other thing I am thinking as well is that it is difficult to create a technology rubric for just one lesson because learning to use technology is a process– and any one lesson will provide opportunities to advance through a technology rubric as students explore and practice using different technology tools. 

Reading and writing poetry is included specifically under POS objectives 2.4 and 2.5  about beginning to use text organization to construct meaning and beginning to develop an appreciation for literature through a variety of oral, reading, and writing experiences with fiction and nonfiction.  There are two categories of objectives – those concepts and skills that are introduced and those that students will begin to own. So I have used these two categories in my rubric.  Then I tried to identify technologies that would support some indicators found in those objectives and other that concerned writing.  I am not sure that I ended up in a good place for technology integration, but I think it sis a good start.  rubric-for-2nd-grade-poetry-lesson.doc

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Literature Circle definition:

The literature circle is a strategy for teaching reading comprehension.  Each circle reads the same text and each member is assigned a role that corresponds to a specific comprehension strategy for analyzing the passage.  When the group meets, each student presents the results of his or her analysis for discussion.

Connection with Bloom’s Taxonomy:

By definition, a literature circle is a strategy that encourages critical analysis of read texts.  The objective of the reading circle is to provide students scaffolded practice in a variety of comprehension and analytical strategies.  The critical thinking levels that are the objectives of the student roles of a literature circle are Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. 

BTW – I looked up Bloom’s Taxonomy on Wikipedia – and found a diagram that arranged the levels in a different hierarchy than was used in class.  This arrangement was in three levels, the bottom being Level I – Knowledge, the second being Levels II and III – Comprehension and Application, and the third being Levels IV, V, and, VI – Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.  This arrangement seems to eliminate the need for thinking of these levels as stages (where the next necessarily follows the last and the order cannot be rearranged or any stage skipped).  I think it is helpful to think of the levels in this way – as there often seems to be confusion over where to place a strategy that may fit the description of more than one level. 

Connection with NETS-S:

As presented (minus the technology integration portion of the article), one general similarity that I found in the NETS-S and the literature circle strategy is the emphasis on helping students develop independence through controlling their own learning.  I think it is easy to see the influence of Bloom’s taxonomy in the 6 technology standards.  But beyond advancing throught the taxonomy levels, I find that the goal of literature circle and the technology standards is to give students the confidence and competence to be independent learners.

Taking each standard independently – even without a specific technology component in the literature circle, there is a definite correlation between the objectives of the literature circle and those of the technology standards 1-4, particularly with regards to communication and collaboration (standard 2) and research and information fluency (standard 3).  

Connections with Lesson Planning:

This article presents a very strong case for the utility of the literacy circle strategy in satisfying many critical requirements of a good lesson plan.  In addition to necessarily promoting thinking to the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy,  the literacy circle provides built-in opportunities for inclusion, differentiation, accountability and assessment.  It is easily adaptable to content areas other than language arts where reading takes place, or to different genres of literature itself.  It provides for the consideration and exploration of learning styles.  It provides a scaffolded opportunity to practice the techniques of cooperative learning and discussion. Really – I was very excited about this idea because it is so powerful and encompasses so many necessary lesson plan components.         

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1. …technology is only a tool.  A pencil is also a tool.  Each can be used to accomplish some of the same tasks.   Sometimes technology can accomplish some of those tasks faster, but in my experience, not always.  If you don’t agree with that last statement, then I am probably older than you. 
2. …instructional technology by itself will not save the world. Or you. Or me for that matter, although as an SBTS I am able to afford food and shelter because of it – so maybe it does rescue me from starvation and homelessness.  But I think that it is important to keep this limitation in mind.  Technology by itself is never the goal when considering instructional technology integration.  What technology is being integrated into – the instruction- is the goal.  Teachers do not plan lessons about writing because they want their students to use a pencil, or because they think using a pencil is so cool, or because using a pencil is the means of our salvation.  But teachers do plan lessons about writing where a pencil is needed to do the actual writing.  Technology is more or less a really fancy pencil.
3. We often identify many of the characteristics of instructional technology as it is experienced by students.  We talk and write about (no I have not read your posts) how it can help them learn by motivating (the “WOW” factor), expanding horizons (the internet), aiding in the acquisition of background knowledge (United Streaming), encouraging creativity (blank slate software) , and providing structure and organization (graphic organizers).  You could probably add to thsi list.  This is a perfectly appropriate conversation, because the students are the recipients of and participants in the instruction that instructional technology supports.
4. But maybe focusing on the intsruction part of instructional technology means also focusing on the instructor.  Technology is not always the tool of choice for teachers.  We all know this is true, because it is why they have given us jobs.
5. For me, what is most important, the accomplishment that I value the most, the motivation for showing up for work every day, is the opportunity that I have to help teachers cut that big, intimidating, real fancy pencil called technology down to size.  ”You are in charge,” I tell them, “don’t let this computer push you around!”  I have not met a teacher who would not admit that technology could do all of the things listed above for students.  I think teachers are not reluctant to use technology for instruction because they do not think that it works.  I  think teachers resist using technology because they are afraid that they cannot manage it and their students as well.  The art of my teaching is in convincing teachers that technology is a pencil that they can pick up.  I cannot yet articulate how , but I do believe that in the past two years, I have had some success. 
6. I believe that technology can do for students and for learning all those things that we have ever identified, but I also know that it cannot do anything by itself.  Technology is only a tool, and a teacher has to pick it up first in order for it to work.  I believe it is my most important job to encourage teachers to pick up the technology tool.        

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