Learning On The Job

This past Monday and Tuesday I held my first Blog Alliance sessions for 10 teachers here at UNIS. It was a bit of a slow start since our network has been curiously lagging lately but it went well on both accounts. In my groups I’ve got a wide range of teachers: lower and upper elementary, elementary art and technology, middle/high school languages, math, drama, humanities, and even one of our Vietnamese support staff!

We discussed some of our essential questions, most importantly: Why do you want to blog?

The main reason, not surprisingly, is to create a professional blog to establish connections with other teachers. We also discussed using the blog as an online portfolio, highlighting some of the successes in the classroom as well as documenting the process of different units or projects. I mentioned how I recently created my own online resume and how rewarding it had been sifting through my blog posts to add hyperlinks for support. I’m hoping that as all of these various blogs develop, maybe by the end of this academic year, we can all come back together and discuss different ways that this can be accomplished.

In terms of actually doing, it didn’t feel like we did very much to be honest. In the 45 minute session, in addition to our discussion, we all managed to sign up for a WordPress account and create our blogs. I took them through the dashboard and through process of writing a post as well as some of the admin options.  That’s about it, but it was enough. In the next few weeks we’re planning on learning how to personalize each blog, how to work with various media and how to manage comments.

I’m pretty excited to see how “into” this idea these teachers are getting. There is a wide range of technology savvy in the group and many of them are definitely stretching their comfort zones. They also all seem to get the idea that we, as teachers, need to practice what we are preaching to the students. I certainly admire the general risk-taking nature of this group!

Once their blogs get up and running, I hope you can take a moment to support them along the way!

image credit: Wall of Peace by Jeff Bauche licensed under CC BY NC ND

image credit: Risk Takers by Clint Hamada licensed under CC BY NC SA

I just finished Karl Fisch’s post about approaching homework differently. It is a much more detailed and cogent explanation to what I was saying here.

My plan is to deliver the traditional lecture portion of an Algebra class as the homework, thus freeing up class time to explore the mathematics and pursue some interesting problems, as well as provide time for guided practice and collaborative work.

Since Algebra is very much skill based, my hope is to provide short (less than 10 minutes), targeted instructional videos that students can watch (and rewatch if necessary) that focus solely on the skills, one skill at a time. Now I want to be clear that these videos typically will come after inquiry and exploration in class.

As I said in the comment of Karl’s post, I think this is a brilliant idea. I can’t think of one downside to this plan, other than it will challenge people’s existing beliefs of what education looks like. (That by itself is not a bad thing; the fallout of that challenge might cause some headaches though.)

Watching Karl’s ‘Proof of Concept‘ video, it’s pretty obvious that this is going to be a time-consuming effort. As is mentioned, there are tons of online resources already but they tend to have been created by individuals for their own use. I could use them in my classroom but they aren’t always at the right level or don’t always have enough practice or aren’t the right length.

So here’s my question: Is it possible for us, as  a community, to create an online open-source Algebra 1 skills-based video textbook? What would we need to do so? Here are some initial thoughts:

• We would need to come up with an agreed-upon structure for each video. (I like Karl’s Five Part Plan: Learning Goal, Explanation/Examples, Guided Practice, Self-Check, and Closing.)
• We would need to come up with a generic list of skills that are applicable to all, regardless of state or national standards.
• We would need people to volunteer to create a video for each skill on our list. If two or three people create a video for the same skill, that’s not a bad thing: more choice for our students.
• We would need to come up with a structure for displaying or publishing our textbook. I’m thinking create a YouTube channel and use a wiki as some sort of Table of Contents.

Can we work together to share the time-consuming aspects of this idea so that we all spend more time focused on the ‘heavy lifting’ aspect: supporting our students effectively with our time?

Anybody interested in trying?

Image: ‘soccer practice‘

I started coaching in my first year as a teacher. First volleyball (I was pressured into it by one of my administrators) and then basketball (what I truly enjoy playing). For various reasons, I haven’t done any coaching at UNIS until this year.

Even though I wasn’t coaching last year, I’d often discuss strategy, offensive schemes, defensive schemes and general basketball ‘intelligence’ with the Steve, the head coach of the girls team. We’re pretty much on the same page in terms of how we see the game and how we think it should be taught and played at this level.

During lunch yesterday I sat down with Steve to plan out practice for the day. We had a very spirited discussion (that drew quite a few comments for our basktball geekiness) that started with our philosophy (we want to run, be agressive, play a trapping defense, layups are more important than jump shots) and ended with a series of drills and situations that would a) prepare our players for that style of play and b) allow us to build more complicated (and realistic) drills and situations in the future. It was pretty thorough and it took all of 20 minutes, including the time to eat our lunch.

Why can’t it be that simple when it comes to planning our units? Is it because we lack the passion? (I hope not!) Is it because we lack the common understandings? Is it because we have our own agenda in terms of what (and how) things should be taught?

Image Credit: Basketball Strengths by andylangager licensed under CC BY NC

Last week our Science Head of Department was ‘lecturing’ to her Grade 8 class, reviewing the different parts of plants. In addition to providing a cloze-type graphic organizer, Andrea decided to open up a backchannel using Today’s Meet  for the students. After briefly explaining what a backchannel was and how the students might use it, she started on her lecture. In her own words:

When I was first exposed to back channel chat at a conference last year, I couldn’t really think how I might use it in class. A year later, with my 8th graders happily typing and inking away on their tablet PC’s  I was eager to try it and see what the possibilities might be.

 

I decided to use Today’s Meet in a class that was more of a lecture style. Students would be responsible for listening to my lecture and filling in blanks about our Plants topics Roots and Stems. I was curious to see how it would go and my initial idea was that it would be a way for me to check their understanding. I instructed them that if they had a question they could type it there and I would stop to check every 5 minutes or so and answer any questions. I also mentioned that if they heard me say anything interesting that wasn’t on the notes they were given, they could add that too.

 

The kids signed in and each said hello and I was curious to see if they would stay on topic or not. Interestingly when I first stopped to check, there were questions and comments about my speed (I was talking too fast for some) and even better, some students had already started to answer questions that had been posted by others! I immediately thought that this would be a great extension for kids who are better listeners and quicker at lecture type activities. I taught them how to use the ‘@’ symbol to do a direct reply so that if they were replying to only one student, it would be easy to see who they were answering.

 

We continued on and they stayed focused. I prompted them to find websites and post them in the back channel if they found things that they thought might be helpful. Many of them did. I was very happy to see the majority of students flipping back and forth between the note and the chat with ease-it seemed to work well for most of them!

 

I was also amazed that one of my quietest students, who won’t raise his hands in class was asking loads of questions of me and his peers on the back channel.

 

It was a great experiment and helped me to guide my lecture during the process which was great. Most students were eager to use it again, after all chat is an interface they are VERY familiar with! Today’s meet also can be copied and pasted into a word or One Note document so that a transcript of the session could be available for students too.

After the lesson, we discussed the positives:

• The transcript is a huge plus for EAL students.
• The students really got in to helping one another.
• For the vast majority of students, they were in a comfortable environment (IM’ing is a favorite past time of most students!) and adapted easily to the ‘academic’ nature of the task.

And the possibilities:

• Student can supplement the discussion with links.
• The backchannel can be used as a differentiation tool: it can be used to extend the strong students (by finding additional content/support/links) and to support the weaker student.
• It can also be used to accommodate different learning modalities.
• If you collect data on learning styles (such as Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence or Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences), assigning different dedicated scribes with different learning styles might capture a more complete picture of the lecture.

Do you use a backchannel in your classes? What effective strategies have you discovered?

Image Credit: What’s Your Backchannel by debs (CC BY NC SA on Flickr)

One of the foreign language teachers here at UNIS Hanoi is looking for schools and classrooms to collaborate with in French or Spanish.  In the past she has collaborated with the International School of Prague to discuss poverty in both the Czech Republic and Vietnam using a private Ning. At the end of the unit a Skype chat was organized so the students could participate in a debate and ‘meet’ each other.

A theme hasn’t been decided upon yet so if you’re interested  leave a comment below. I can put you two in touch and you can hash out some details.  Thanks!

Image Credit:
Ad – Macro’ed by bjmccray (CC BY NC ND on Flickr)