Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I had the great privilege this winter to teach a group of pre-service teachers at the University of Regina an introductory technology course. I was also blessed with the flexibility to design much of the course. Having done it once before, I was able to tweak a few things and try some new stuff as well. With the university semester wrapping up I thought it best to take time and reflect on my class and my role in supporter my students.

We met 12 times, 8 online and 4 in person. You can see the course outline here if you login as guest you’ll have full access.

Students were evaluated in five areas:

• 25% on weekly Tech Tasks
• 25% on their blog
• 25% on a final project
• 10% on Blogging Mentorship
• 15% on Social Learning

Tech Tasks

These were simply assignments in using the various tools we explored in class. Podcasting, setting up various accounts, watching and responding to K12 online sessions and digital storytelling were a few of the task. There were 13 in total. We spent our synchronous time considering pedagogy and for many of them the struggle was in the technology. The challenge of distance learning means you have less control over things like what software students have and their ability to download plugins and troubleshoot. One student struggled for quite sometime until a friend of hers realized she didn’t have Service Pack 2 installed. Students were basically given 20/25 for completion of the tasks and the other marks were subjective to the quality of the work.

Many students commented on the challenge of this but it also provided something very specific for them to work on. The balance between desktop and online applications is important. I may change some of the tasks but the concept works well.

Blogging

As many remarked during their self evaluations, this was a big stretch. Forced blogging is never the best way, however in a distance setting, this becomes my window into their learning. I encouraged them not only to reflect on class discussions but to chronicle their learning in other areas. It was powerful to watch the growth of my students in this. I realize most will drop their blogs the minute the course ends but others have said they’ll likely continue. Obviously a big hook for them was the comments for others within the class but in particular from those outside. The really saw the power of linking as they reviewed the k12 sessions and a number of the presenters were led to their reviews and left comments. I’m also coming to accept the fact that blogging isn’t for everyone but sharing is.

I’ll likely not change much in this area. Perhaps some more deliberate mentorships outside the class as well as focusing more deeply on exemplary blogs.

Final Projects

While most are still out there, the struggle here was the open-ended nature of the assignment. I strongly encouraged students to combine this with the work in another class. This seemed to make the most sense. About half the students have choose this route.

Grading will be tough as it’s difficult to rubricize the varying projects. Everything from live presentations, videos, wikis, podcasts is challenging to assess. I need to do a better job developing the assessment up front. Perhaps I’ll steal a page out of Chris Lehmann’s approach to projects.

Blogging Mentorship

I wanted my students to gain some experience inside a classroom in a virtual way. I invited these teachers to open up their classrooms to my students:

• Maria Knee (Kindergarten, NH)
• Lisa Parisi (Grade 5, NY)
• Kathy Cassidy (Grade 1, SK)
• Sandi Kerney (Grade 6/7, SK)
• Erin Remple (Calculus, MB)
• Clay Burell (English, South Korea)

These teachers graciously introduced themselves briefly to my students after Vicki Davis provided a context for what a globally connected classroom might look like. The success rate of this aspect of my course had the most variance. Partly due to the students efforts but more due to the set up. Many students were disappointed that these students never responded to them. My continual nattering about blogs as conversations, led them to believe everyone, including 6 year olds, think the same way. In fairness, both Kathy and Lisa have a large number of mentors and it becomes difficult for their students to respond. However, there were some outstanding successes. One of my students had a skype conference with Maria’s class. The impact for her, will be long lasting. I had two other students who stepped out of their comfort zone and had some very positive results. Although none of my students had any experience in calculus, one of my students emailed Erin and ventured into her class and provided some very insightful comments. Clay was very clear he was not interested in any type of forced mentorship. Because of the nature of his student’s work I had a difficult time helping my students understand his intentions. Yet one of my students did venture out and again, had a very powerful experience with one of his. I also know that Clay emailed her to encourage her. I want to thank all these great teachers for participating. Your willingness to share will have long term impact on these young people.

I have lots to think through on this assignment. Certainly the concept is good but the execution might require a bit more planning. I really didn’t line up these teachers until shortly before we began. I also wonder about the more focus on tutoring/mentoring one or two students rather than trying to spatter comments throughout the class.

Social Learning

If there was one area I emphasized throughout this course it was the importance of social learning. More so than any course they’d likely take, the expectation was they would learn together. Whether they were asking questions, answering them, commenting on each other’s blogs, texting each other or visiting each other in person, I asked them to document the way in which they contributed and received help from each other.

Other than the format and details of how they assessed this, this was truly a critical component of the class. Even their commenting progressed from “nice post” to challenging each other’s ideas. Certainly most classes don’t require much in this way. Perhaps the odd group work project but not as running thread.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working with these young people. Most of them will make outstanding teachers because they already recognize they are learners first. My main themes continue to drive my class and I hope many of theirs as well.

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity

I have a Math folder in my Google Reader and it only contains two blogs: One is Darren Kuropatwa, whom I consider one of the finest models of using technology effectively with high school students. The other is Dan Meyer. Dan is a different cat (see this post to get the idea).  That’s part of his appeal but beyond his unique style he pushes my thinking.  I begin with this 30 minute podcast trying to learn Dan’s thoughts on assessment.  We had never talked before this so forgive any awkwardness which I’ll take the blame for but have a listen, leave a comment and hopefully Dan will agree to do a few more of these.

Show notes:

Dan’s Assessment stuff 

TMO’s blog

[tags]danmeyer,darrenkuropatwa,math,assessment[/tags]

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With the advent of digitalstorytelling as more common place in our schools, often we’re so elated to get them to produce anything that the quality of work isn’t always there. We’ve been down this road with powerpoint, but now most are taken in by the the wow factor. With video, there’s still enough mystery in production for many teachers and students that we accept work that is less than exemplary. I think at times, we’re letting kids off the hook.
Last year, I showcased the work of a couple of local kids who did a great job with the lego format. My son and one of the contributors to the other video had an assignment to create a movie trailer on the novel Life of Pi. This is a fairly common assignment and one that does require synthesis and should incorporate elements of good design. But there work does many of the things I think make for a great trailer.

Simplicity, planning, innovation, constraints and whitespace all are used. Yes, they use some green screen but really, it’s about storytelling. My son played director and  producer and his buddy did the editing. When asking about ideas, he said it came from watching movies, playing video games and tv.  This is why demanding students to talk about movies like we ask them to talk about books is critical. Students should be as fluent talking about video as they are about writing. We’re so text bias as schools, that it makes it difficult to even understand what is a well crafted, design piece of multimedia. And while I think we need more examples of student work, I think there are so many in the real world, but we don’t look deeply at what makes them work. That’s what these guys did.

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Social Capital has been a termed explored and pursued by two of my posse members, Heather and Rick. They both talk about it quite a bit. I may be butchering the definition so I hope they forgive me if I miss the purest definition or better yet, add to the conversation with some insights.

To me, social capital, or perhaps there’s a better term, is a quantifiable measure of contributions to one’s social network. So a few things have arose as of late that sparks an interest in this for me.

• Will’s recent post on Pocket Texting and the idea of “knowledge power” points. We have seen the use of ratings on sites like experts-exchange and other sites where the usefulness of one’s answers ranks them higher and in some cases produces economic benefits.
• Tweeterboard. I hadn’t even heard of this until this tweet a few days ago. So for the past few days I’ve tried to figure out how in the world this works and what’s the significance? First of all it appears to be a random sampling of twitter so that needs to be considered but the idea is basically a combination of quantity, shared links and exchanges with others.
  

  They’re calculated using some algorithmic mojo that resembles the link analysis algorithms used by search engines. Your reputation points are based on the conversations you’ve had over the last 28 days, which means your score can jump around a lot.

• A conversation I had with Ewan Mcintosh about a company, (maybe Ewan can add the link) that is developing their own algorithm that measures social capital within their business. He mentioned things like identifying writing and work that has been reused or tagged several times and looking at the usefulness, sharing,commenting of one’s work inside a company. Ewan’s thinking about how this might be used to measure the work and value of Scotland’s student bloggers.
• My continued pursuit of a higher commpost rating.

So while tools like Technorati provide some degree of measure, there’s so much more than comprises social capital. How might we assess, our total online portfolio? The fact that many are involved in dozens of communities from flickr, youtube,facebook,blogs,wikis, the whole sha-bang would require some fancy mathematical calculations. I’m guessing it would include things like: the number of communities you’re actively involved with (which means “active” must be defined) numbers of tagged pieces of content by others, number of other’s work you’ve remixed, comments, IM’s…the list goes on.

Teachers are excited when I show them simple things like the history feature of wikis that track student work. The sophistication of some of these tools to measure the depth of conversations and contributions seems to be increasing.  While in many jurisdictions the importance of standardized testing seems to preclude many discussions around the value of social capital I think there is some real ripeness for some of our schools to utilize tools that could measure social capital. I’m guessing that so would many businesses. Not that that is the ultimate goal but like Will watches his gas gauge on his Prius perhaps our kids could get excited about watching their social capital points rise. Or does that miss the point totally? I’m just wondering.

Technorati Tags: willrichardson, heatherross, rickschweir, edtechposse, twitter, ewanmcintosh

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A few years ago, I had the privilege of putting together a video on how assessment works in the real world. I interviewed local people who talked about how assessment for learning works in their world.

One of those I interviewed was Scott Schultz of the Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders along with defensive line coach and Hall of Famer Ron Estay. In the light of their recent victory, I thought I’d republish their interview. I did publish the entire video a while back but wanted to showcase this one in particular.

Not only is it entertaining (don’t forget to watch the blooper at the end) but in many ways helps bring assessment ideas out of a strictly educational sense and demonstrates its value in life. Congratulations Scott, Ron and the Riders on a great season and their contributions to our community in many ways including helping us understand the value of assessment for learning.

Technorati Tags: scottschultz, ronestay, saskatchewanroughriders, greycup, assessment

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Our school division has been focusing on Assessment for Learning for a number of years. In 2004 I created a video that was intended to illustrate how assessment is used in every day life. We found 3 teacher/student relationships and used the principles outlined by Rick Stiggins and applied them to an air force pilot, a potter and professional football player.

Our intention was to help teachers see the connection between the value of assessment and the involvement of students in the process. I’m particularly drawn to Claude’s perspectives on learning. Claude is a teacher by trade and reflects on how his experience learning pottery might be applied in the classroom. The final interview with Saskatchewan Roughrider, Scott Schultz also has some interesting insights about the value of assessment.

Feel free to use this as you wish…..you might enjoy the bloopers at the end.

Technorati Tags: assessment, students

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I had two interesting and challenging experiences the last couple of days. Experiences that cause me to consider my approach to supporting teachers and students.

I met with a small group of high school teachers who wanted to learn more about Web 2.0 and what they might be able to use in their classrooms. I was fully prepared to spend the day showing demos, and working through the technical issues of setting up a blog, wiki or whatever they wanted.What happened instead is we spent the first part of the morning grappling with the big questions of why. Why would we post students online? Why does it feel like asking us to change means that our current practice is all wrong? If this is so important, why aren’t we given time to explore and make change? To be clear, this group of teachers was not simply complaining or naysaying. They just wanted to be convinced and sure that investing time to use these tools would pay dividends. I’ve been telling teachers lately that if they have any hesitation, they shouldn’t bother to blog or use any tool because all it will do is add to the many “binders of guilt” that sit on the shelf labeled, “things I should really do”.I’m not sure that all these questions were answered but I know we moved forward on some. At lunch time, I fired up twitter and posed the question regarding posting online. Thanks to my network I received several key responses that I shared with the group after lunch. 

Again, not that those responses solved the conundrum but it clearly demonstrated that an online presence or network is a powerful thing. So we continued on and continued to deal with some tough questions but after providing some time for teachers to muddle on their own, they left the day feeling like they had some direction or purpose in using the tools. We’re moving forward in a positive way.I thank them for challenging me.

Thursday, I met with all our school administrators and shared our vision and focused on the idea of shifted learning. I showed Did you Know, used some of Ewan’s videos and ideas that focus on a shift in learning and challenged them to consider how learning is changing. In general they are a great bunch of leaders who truly want to make shifts that are good for kids but like many of us, are looking for a recipe, which although we know doesn’t exist, still want one. I challenged them to consider how they might support teachers and after some good discussion, felt like we have set the ground work for the work that lies ahead. The following are the slides I used with my notes embedded underneath…feel free to use this in whatever way you wish.

One school administrator approached me after and asked, “What is it we’re really trying to do?”He talked about an angst he feels about what he sees most kids doing with technology. Useless text messaging with the person right beside them, nothing seems to be interesting to them, jaded attitudes towards violence, and so on; all valid points. He was careful to say he didn’t want to appear to be out of touch but was truly concerned with kids who use technology in meaningless ways. I tried to share my feelings about our duty to .I’m glad he approached and challenged me and the kind of dialogue I had in these two instances does help us move forward. I’ve taught too many workshops where everyone comes happy and excited to be there and leaves happy and excited but never carry on with the ideas and never implement anything. They like new stuff but don’t deeply consider what the true impact of change might be.

I was further encouraged by spending time with two of our superintendents. Both men have been in education for over 30 years and recalled some of the reasons they got into education in the first place. As children of the 1960’s they were excited about the ideas of Summerhill and believed deeply in personalized learning. Somehow the system they entered took things into a more traditional model and my presentation triggered memories of the hope of what a quality, meaningful education can look like.

These conversations are what will matter. Allowing people to tell their stories, share their resistance and consider the change that’s necessary. I’m pretty good at telling my story and perspectives  but at times forget that others need to tell theirs as well. Chris Lehman has written lately about not forgetting the value of our teachers. Another great conversation ensues.  Again, this is not anything profound but once again, reminded me of the importance of those conversations. Conversations about change that lead to implementation.

Technorati Tags: blogs, assessment, prairiesouth, shifts, ewanmcintosh, didyouknow, summerhill

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I’m getting frustrated. As Canadians, we aren’t tied to NCLB or other testing requirements that restrict and enrage my southern counterparts. It’s not that we don’t believe in assessment, it’s just that we don’t think these measurements and demands help kids.

I’ve been asked to try and develop and build something that could measure student achievement in technology. Here’s my issue: First this idea of separating technology from everything is not ideal. We know technology isn’t “integrated” it’s just used. We know the real skills aren’t “the student can save a document” just as we don’t measure, “the student will keep their pencils in a pencil case”. We want to measure learning in deeper ways and to break it down to this, misses the boat.
I’ve developed what I think are the important skills, learning in our school division. It doesn’t break it down into grade levels but why should it? I’ve seen too many teachers who think showing someone how to use a word processor or spreadsheet accomplishes the goal of using technology.

If you look at places like ISTE, they are beginning to get it right. I have no idea our Americans are using this because it doesn’t appear to focus on the type of data (quantitative, simplistic data) that is typically desired.

There are still a number of places offering really specific tech outcomes. TechLearing sent me an e-book that offers assessments that once again target things like:

• know basic computer parts
• email
• web browser

and the list goes on. Reminded me of a video Alec discovered a while back:

I don’t know. Maybe we have to measure this stuff. I think we’re breaking this down too far and missing the real important skills. Do I need to break it down further or is our Big Ideas all we need?

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