Learning On The Job

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!

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:

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…

After a bit of research, and borrowing liberally from the good folks at Instructional Coaching, I have come up with a walkthrough observation template that I am relatively happy with.

Instead of focusing on the Big Four (.pdf) of Classroom Management, Content Planning, Instruction and Assessment for Learning, I chose to focus on:

• Classroom Management – Are students on task? Is the teacher interacting with students? Is the teacher making modifications to traditional classroom management techniques to account for tablets in class?
• Lesson Structure – What is the lesson style? What is the activity (OO – Old things, Old ways, ON – Old things, New ways, etc)? Are tablets required? Are students engaged?
• Tech skills – Is the teacher modeling necessary skills? Are the students fluent in the required skills? What are the skills required for this lesson?

You can download a .pdf version and a OneNote version of the forms below.

I plan on spending at most 10 minutes in the classroom. At the end of the walkthrough, I will sit down and record any other comments that come to mind.

The hardest part about these sorts of observations is trying to remain non-judgmental. Although it is not my intention, at this point, to share what I observe with individuals teachers, I will be using the information to make generalizations about student and teacher abilities and needs in order to better plan learning opportunities for each group.

As always, comments and suggestions for improvement are always welcome!

Three Point Walkthrough – OneNote version

Three Point Walkthrough – .pdf version

One of the main focuses of Coaching Heavy is gathering and analyzing data regarding your work to make decisions about your effectiveness and how to proceed.

As a Technology Coach (not my official job title but this is what I’m lobbying for), I’m not sure what sort of data I can be gathering and/or analyzing. There are no test scores or formative/summative assessment data to collect. We, as a school, have not systematically implemented any sort of standards or performance indicators – a la the ISTE NETS or the AASL Standards – yet.

How does one measure the level of technology integration in a classroom? How does one measure the impact of that integration on student learning?

Towards the end of the last academic year, we were fortunate enough to have Bambi Betts on campus for a series of workshops with administrators and department heads related to improving teaching and learning. One of her recommendations was to implement classroom walkthroughs – short, frequent visits to various classrooms with a specific objective in mind to gauge the climate of the school and to get the ‘big picture’ of what is happening.

I think this is my way forward. Actually, I have already conducted a few. But I have a some problems:

1. Other than the few hours that I spent with Ms. Betts, I don’t have any sort of training on how to actually conduct these walkthroughs. Sure, I’ve done my internet research but it’s not the same.
2. I don’t feel (yet) like I have an all-access pass to classrooms. I feel like I’m invading or over-stepping my mandate. I’m pretty sure this is not the case, but that’s how I’m feeling at the moment.
3. Most importantly, I’m not sure what I should be looking for during these walkthroughs. I can’t find an example of a tech-based walkthrough form. Without specific standards at our school – for teachers or students – how can I make an objective observation? (My initial form includes a description of activities that I observe, the skills required by students and teachers and any classroom management observations. I then plan on matching what I saw with the NETS for Students and Teachers after the observation.)

Do you have any advice as I look to implement this on a consistent basis? Any ideas for observational data that I can collect during these brief visits?

Keri-Lee Beasley was wondering about the use of Microsoft OneNote as a teacher. Here’s what I got off the top of my head:

For Teaching

1. Keeps all of your class notes together in one place. I have my actual teaching notebooks for the last 3 years easily available if I want to refer back to how I did something.
2. Your OneNote pages can be saved as .pdf files for students who do not have OneNote.
3. Connected to a data projector, this becomes similar to an interactive whiteboard. Students would manipulate your tablet rather than the board.
4. Other files can be embedded into a OneNote page as attachments. You can pre-load all the required documents into your pages and have them in one place. You can then distribute those pages to your students and they will also have copies of the documents. Any changes made to the documents are saved within the OneNote page.
5. Combined with Cam Studio, OneNote is a great way to make screencasts.
6. Small groups (we’ve had problems with groups larger than about 6) can live share a section of a notebook. Live sharing is exactly what it sounds like: we are working on the same pieces of ‘paper’ simultaneously. At the end of the session, all participants have a copy of the work. For example:
   • Each student is assigned one math problem on the page. They benefit from ‘watching’ the others being solved as they try to figure out how to solve their own. At the end, they’ve each done one problem but have 5 or 6 solutions to study from.
   • Students can edit a document (a poem? An exemplar essay?) together.

 

For Planning

1. Notebooks can be shared on the network between teachers to facilitate co-planning. Notebooks are synced every few minutes.
2. The clipping tool allows you to capture screenshots and easily insert them into your page. It even includes a hyperlink to the original source.
3. Templates can be created for lesson/unit planning.

For Students

1. Students download a pre-made notebook (Grade 10 Math Student Notebook) with all the start of the year info. This also serves to give their notebooks structure, particularly important for younger grades.
2. Students can embed record voice or video files. This is can then be sent easily via email (if you use Outlook too) to teachers for a check of understanding. A good tool to use in Second or Foreign Language classes.
3. OneNote Notebooks are searchable. It even searches the text in screenclipped images (using OCR) and can also search audio and video files for words (if you index them).
4. Students can share pages easily via email. This is great for students who were absent or who take poor notes.
5. Tags can be used by students to help with their revision. As a math teacher, I helped my students create custom tags. As we encountered interesting/difficult problems, the students tagged them as possible test questions. When it came time to study for the test, they only had to search for that tag and all of those questions were found. At the end of the year, they could search the entire Notebook for that tag and they instantly created a cumulative review sheet.
6. OneNote plays very nicely with Outlook. Tasks that are assigned in OneNote show up in your Outlook task list as well. Emails and appointments can be sent to OneNote, where it is easier to take notes.

Other

• A lot (most?) of the things on this list are just new salt on an old cracker. Yes, it might make me more efficient and it is definitely cool, but I am still looking for some truly transformative ways to use this in the classroom.
• I would be interested to see how it works when teamed up with an IWB. It was actually on my “Geek Things To Do” list: use Johnny Lee’s Wii-mote hack to create an IWB for my classroom. But then I changed jobs.
• I created a “Getting to Know You” scavenger hunt type activity to be used with teachers and students to introduce them to what I feel are some of the key features of OneNote. Feel free to have a play and adapt it for your staff/students. (Warning: Some of the links may not work because they point to locations on our intranet. But you get the idea.)

Okay people. Your turn: how do YOU use OneNote at your school?