Learning On The Job

No, not that March Madness…

I’m off to Mumbai today to attend ASB Unplugged 2010 at the American School of Bombay.

I’m back on Sunday and then off again on Wednesday to Beijing to lead a Category 2 MYP Mathematics workshop at Western Academy.

I’m back on Monday afternoon and then leave again early Tuesday morning to join our Grade 6 team on their annual trip to Cuc Phuong National Park.

Madness, I say… I better buy my lovely wife something pretty special for leaving her alone with 3 small children.

Image: My What Big Ears You Have by Frank Peters (CC BY NC ND)

When my principal approached me in November about organizing a technology-in-the-classroom showcase, I knew just what I wanted to do: Speed Geeking. I first heard about speed geeking from Kim Cofino (who I later found out learned about it from @FrznGuru).

First, I sought out seven volunteers willing to share something cool they’ve done in their classroom. By cool I mean creative, innovative, engaging and effective. It was pretty easy to come up with a list of teachers to approach since I’ve been trying to track who’s been doing what with Google Forms. The tricky part was finding new faces to act as presenters. One of the criticisms of previous sessions like this (rightly so, I might add) is that it is always the same people showing their goods. Instead of asking for volunteers, I strategically approached people from different departments who mightn’t have otherwised stepped forward.

Then I divided our staff (Middle/High School only) into 7 groups. This worked out to about 6 or 7 teachers per group. They were a mixed bag in terms of gender, department, comfortability with technology, age group taught, etc. I wanted the groups to be as diverse as possible.

On Wednesday each presenter gave a 7 minute presentation, including time for questions/discussion. I found this great online countdown timer to help keep track of the time. Then all the groups rotated through every other presentation. In under one hour all 50 teachers saw all 7 presentations and were able to ask clarifying questions to suit their own needs. Here’s what it looked like in practice:

(BTW, the music in that video was remixed by one our grade 10 students using ACID Xpress 7.0 and showcased in one of the speed geeking sessions.)

The feedback from teachers has been extremely positive. A quick sample of comments received:

• Timing helped listeners and presenters – 5-7 min was enough for brief questions and to pique interest to prompt a teacher to further investigation. Teachers were forced to ask only VERY pertinent management questions, and could go back to the expert later if interested.
• Loved it- enough time to see what some great ideas without needing to hear lots of detail that I can’t absorb quickly.
• I really enjoyed just getting a snapshot of what is happening in other parts of the school-I was amazed at what kids are actually doing!
• 7 minutes at each section was so effective
• Lovely job done by lovely people who were each quietly modest about the cool things they’ve been doing.
• Good, quality presentations – how to implement, what it can do for the kids, thoughts of where you can use it, and possible drawbacks (ie: tech difficulties you would have to sort out or live with). Beauty.
• Very real and meaningful examples that were inspirational. This was PD like it is supposed to be.
• Thanks a lot. Its a really good set up. Can we do it again next Wed?
• This session came at a good time and was the right type of duration for a Weds afternoon – too much focus on technology can be overwhelming, but it’s good to see what others are doing and what’s working well. Thanks
• Most effective tech. session this year, for me, by far. It was enough to really get a sense of the great things people are doing and gave me lots of ideas.

Perhaps most telling for me: when asked to rate their willingness to do this again, 21 of 27 rated it 5 out of 5. Everybody rated it 3 out of 5 or higher.

The fast pace did not suit all participants and there were 2 comments reflecting that, but I think the overall feeling was that this was a good thing.  Also, it was suggested that there be two rounds of speed geeking so that the presenters from one round would be able to view presentations in the other round. I think this is a great idea but it would have been difficult to manage in the one-hour time slot I was given.

If you’re looking for a great way to share ideas, I would definitely recommend speed geeking!

Our school is bordered on one side by plots of land used for farming and one of the common practices in Vietnam is to burn off the land in order to prepare it for use. And today, that farmer across the street did just that. The prevailing winds made for a bit of chaos as we left our assembly this morning.

Image Credits:
B5 Courtyard and A Bit of Fire by me, CC BY NC SA

Few things get me giddier than when I open up iTunes and see that my TED podcast subscription has downloaded a new Hans Rosling TED talk. He is, in my mind, the Undisputed King of TED. His ability to blend mathematics and humanities to analyze the past, explain the present and predict the future is impressive. But to do so while seamlessly integrating technology – a technology that he helped develop, by the way -  to create a visual representation of enormous amounts of data in order to weave a story that is at different times funny, engaging, poignant, memorable and powerful is what sets him apart.

With his mix of passion and knowledge, of wit and fact, of history and mathematics, of literacy and numeracy, is Hans Rosling the model of what we want our students to become?

Here is his most recently posted TED talk on the Rise of Asia from November 2009:

My last post was about The Dinks. I’d like to say that I conjured that up out of thin air, but that isn’t totally true. I do remember the first time I watched the episode – maybe a year ago – nodding my head empathetically with Prezbo. And then I sort of forgot about it…

Then about a month ago, Dan points us all to Ben Blum Smith’s post about Clever Hans, the counting horse. After reading this post, I immediately thought of The Dinks but my Google-Fu was weak and I couldn’t find the necessary clip of The Wire.

Then last week I read Sam’s post on Problem Solving and , as I was re-watching Season 4,  saw that episode again. BOOM! It all came together, seemingly out of thin air.

To bring this full circle, I was reminded of Clever Hans and hence Ben Blum Smith and hence my original attempt to find The Dinks when watching Dan’s presentation on “Be Less Helpful” at CMC North, which I highly recommend any of you math teachers watch.

And a blog post was born.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

With the wife and kids away, I’ve had some quality TeeVee time lately so I decided to start re-watching “The Wire“. As a testament to how great the show is (or how little life I have), I am already mostly through Season 4. I came across this scene again last night. I remember smiling and knodding in a “I know that feeling” sort of way as the student explained to Prezbo how he knew the answer. (Warning: This is an HBO show. The language is bound to put somebody off.)

While we are quick to praise our Special Teacher Powers of Intuition and Observation when dealing with students, we often don’t realize how much we give away as teachers. Our facial expressions, our body language, our non-verbal cues are all picked up by students and this instantaneous and (sometimes) subconscious feedback often guides them through their explanations or presentations. (This, by the way, is not always a bad thing.)

Recently Sam made a conscious effort to stop giving out The Dinks and to teach problem solving:

I tell them that I won’t be of much use to them. That they are going to have to use their wit and wiles to do these problems. That they should ask their partners their questions, that if they really get stuck they should go to another group, and if they really, really get stuck, they can talk to me. Although I won’t be of much use to them.

The results are pretty amazing.

Dan has been telling people to be less helpful for a while. It’s even spawned its own website. (I hope this has been done by Dan or with his blessing…)

Is being less helpful and not giving out The Dinks a step toward Coaching Heavy? Is this a method that could work with teachers as well as students? I wonder if some of Sam’s lessons from Day One can be applied to teachers, particularly the ones about “learned helplessness”, not underestimating your students/teachers, and making the puzzle of technology integration fun and interesting once external pressures are removed?

Thanks again to all those in my PLN who gave me some great suggestions regarding classroom management in a 1:1 classroom. After posting my draft version, I made some minor revisions – most of them cosmetic, to be honest.

I gave this presentation today to about 16 teachers, mostly from the middle and high school and my highest turnout to date. I also had the principal for a good portion of the hour. I recorded the entire discussion and have now linked it to the presentation. There are some times when the discussion wanders a bit but it is all still (mostly) relevant to the topic at hand. If you’ve got 45 minutes or so, I invite you to take a look. Or you could browse through the pretty pictures…

I just finished watch Kim Cofino’s Keynote presentation for this year’s conference. To participate in this free online conference:

1. Join the conference Ning.
2. Use the “for participant” pages of the wiki to learn how to get started utilizing everything the FREE conference offers.
3. Subscribe to updates on the conference blog.

All presentations are now listed by date/time on the 2009 Schedule. Bookmark / favorite this page, it will be updated throughout the conference as presentations “go live” each day!

Check out the Ning schedule of events and participate as much as you can! Also follow K12Online on Twitter!

(Taken from the K12Online wiki)

Daniel Pink on incentives and performance:

Some highlights:

As long as the task required only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.

But once the tasked called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.

To provide intrinsic motivation, you need to provide:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

There is a mismatch between what science knows and what [education] does. Those 20th century rewards, those motivators that we think are a natural part of [education], do work but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.

I’ve had a great day in Singapore.

First I spent the morning with Keri-Lee Beasley and Katie Day at the UWCSEA East Campus. Believe it or not, it was my first time meeting Twitter friends face-to-face. Other than being close to an hour late and still slightly wet from the morning downpour, I had a fantastic time chatting with Keri-Lee and Kate: answering their questions about our 1:1 program; asking them questions about how they plan to implement the NETS; sharing tips and ideas about Diigo, OneNote, portfolios, planning with other teachers, professional development. And to end it with a bang, one of Keri-Lee’s talented 5th grades gave me a wiz-bang introduction to Scratch!

I then hopped a taxi to the Singapore American School, where I met with Audrey Forgeron and Susan Sedro. I am impressed with the sheer enormity of the school (over 3500 students!) and their continuing efforts to orchestrate an integrated approach to technology. I also learned a few tricks from Susan about Google Docs (apparently anybody can edit now, even without logging in) and SharePoint (specifically focusing on the ‘Share’ part) that could make a huge difference for teachers who are interested in getting their students collaborating and  are willing to geek out a bit in order to do so.

There was so much more that was discussed at both campuses; these are just some highlights as it’s impossible for me to put it all into words. Thank you once more to Keri-Lee, Katie, Audrey and Susan for accommodating me and spending such precious time with me. I hope that I can reciprocate in the future!