prairiesouth

Project Based Learning Video

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Video 13 Comments

I’ve been working with several teachers over the years in our district on the using project based learning. We’re by no means experts but are doing some nice work. These three high school teachers have taken the bull by the horns and restructured the school day to provide some learning not easily done in our traditional 40-75 minute classes. This 5 minute video tells part of their story.

From a storytelling perspective, I struggled with this one. I have about 90 minutes of footage including about 65 minutes of interviews. Trying to edit that down to something that captures the essence of a story without leaving out any key ideas is challenging. I also had difficulty finding a style that would work.

As you can see, I decided to write a short narrative to provide some background at the beginning and also included another short description in between. After spending the hours I did on this over a 4 month period, it’s hard to tell if you’ve communicated the message you intended. I hope I have.

Advocating for more Transparency

Posted by Dean Shareski on in change, ecmp, rants 6 Comments

Everyone once in a while I read a blog post that gives me a bit of a shiver. When something resonates so deeply with me that I’m compelled to respond right away.

Of course I subscribe to Will’s blog but it wasn’t until someone tweeted it again, did I go back to re read it, or read it properly. As I read it I realized I needed all our administrators to read it too. We have a division weblog of sorts that gets used primarily by me but felt that’s the best place to post the idea.  I’ve been pretty gentle with talking to teachers and administrators about sharing. I’ve hinted at the idea that it might be their professional responsibility, but Will’s post made the argument more compelling.

…there is certainly much I could learn from them if they were sharing. But most of them are not.

In this same vein, I have more and more of an expectation of the teachers and especially the administrators in our schools to lead transparent lives. The fact that they are veritably “un-googleable” in terms of finding anything they have created and shared and perhaps collaborated with others on troubles me on a number of levels. First, I can’t see for myself whether or not they are learners. And, almost more importantly, I get no sense as to whether or not they are leaders of learners. Whether they are in the classroom or in the front office, I want (demand?) the adults in my schools to be effective models for living in a transparent world. I want my kids to see them navigating these spaces effectively, sharing what they know, teaching others outside of their physical space, and contributing to the conversation.

Demand. Strong word which Will puts in parenthesis and adds a question mark behind it. I realize it’s tough to demand people to share but when we toss our phrases like “life long learner”, “professional responsibility”, “modeling” and “learning communities” these quickly become catch phrases that have little or no substance.  Even with our small school division of 40 schools, there are almost 80 school administrators that could be highly connected and learning from each other every day. Instead they gather a few times a year, spend most of the time catching up, complain a little and then address the more important issues, with a select few only to have time run out. That’s fixable. Easily. These are smart, caring, innovative people who should be learning with and from each other every day.  That goes for teachers, students and central office people. It’s been rewarding to work with pre-service teachers and lead them to this idea. Some may say I’ve forced them to share. But others have come to embrace it.

I’m going to start stepping up the language and if not demand, strongly encourage us to be more transparent.

Connecting the World

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Classrooms, socialnetworks, wireless 7 Comments

A teacher asked me if I would be able to connect her to some people who could talk about where they are from and how they use wireless technology in their work and their lives.  You don’t have to ask me twice.

One email later to three people and the deal was done. Lee Kolbert was gracious enough to let us use their Adobe Connect as a platform which proved to suit our situation well. Tom Barrett would be able to chime in from England and Tim Lauer would have to grab an early Starbucks but was ready by 7:30.

Students asked questions, we gave some answers. Easy squeezy.

This is how classrooms ought to look. Learning from people.

If you generally think of the Internet as a place to look up stuff, you’re missing the best part.

This is not just about “wow is this ever cool”. This is about learning. Learning from someone who:

  • has a lemon tree and grows lemons
  • can see Mount St. Helens
  • lives in the city famous for Robin Hood

Do you see how this might make a difference in classrooms? Is there some potential here? Those of you who do this everyday in your classrooms know exactly what I’m talking about. 

This is my first attempt to do anything beyond a few basic edits in iMovie 08. It captures about 5 minutes of the 30 minute conversation. (the video may not be processed, if you’re one of the early viewers of the post)

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How it’s going

Posted by Dean Shareski on in change, Classrooms 2 Comments

It’s always interesting to hear from others how they promote and support learning in their school district. Here’s my story.

My district is 3 years old, an amalgamation of 7 small districts into 1. Building culture, unity and morale has been challenging but in many ways is going really well. The big challenge I have is that I’m the only person really focusing on technology, outside of our online classes, supporting 35 schools and 7,000 students. I’m good, but I’m not that good. 😉 We previously had some level of instructional support at the school level but staff cuts have pretty much reduced to zero at most schools. So how can I possibly help teachers make the shifts necessary to develop rich, relevant learning for students?

Although I’d love more support, I recognize that’s not likely to happen. What I do have is a group of administrators who for the most part want to push the envelope and provide teachers with everything they can to make them better.

We have a number of administrators committed to changing schools to providing authentic, relevant and connected classrooms. They challenge their teachers to become better, and are truly instructional leaders as opposed to paper pushers. They allow their teachers to try and explore. I’ve begun many great conversations with them and sense their desire for change.

These folks are the real key to the change. So every 6 weeks when they meet, I get some time to plant seeds of change and they’re taking root. The overall plan for our division likely doesn’t look like many strategic plans. We’ve resisted trying to get to specific but rather employ principles of learning that will last.  We are using the new ISTE standards as a guide and specifically this year we’ll pay attention to the second student standard of Communication and Collaboration.

Today I brought in 5 teachers who are on the right track, specifically in the area of social learning.  I asked administrators to move from station to station allowing teachers to share, for them to ask questions and try to learn more about what they do in their classrooms. I then invited any administrators to share with their schools and contact me about developing some ongoing support both face to face and online.

I immediately had some great conversations afterwards from a number of principals as they either enter into social learning or enhance what they have. I have no illusions in knowing there will be some who just don’t buy in, but I’m not worried about those as much as I am glad to have the vast majority looking forward and supporting teachers.

So our model has been to share, invite, support and learn together.  We don’t typically run workshops for blogging, or any other of the latest software. We count on teachers to make the changes and they are. If there is an interest in learning a new tool, we’ll try and find someone or I’ll do the work but we want to focus on big ideas of teaching and learning, “what are the shifts we need to make?” We are building capacity by holding up our champions and doing what we can to allow them to flourish and encourage others. Slow at times but it’s the model we’re sticking with.

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