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!

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)

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!

I’ve managed to convince 4 of our teachers to sign up for the 23 Things Online Workshop. (I’m not actually participating, I’m acting solely as a coach.)  I’ve also managed to convince them to meet once a week after school at a local cafe to discuss what we’re exploring each week. The first week didn’t go wrong but didn’t go terribly well. There was a lot of discussion but without much direction.

One of my big gripes about meetings at school is that they don’t seem to utilize time wisely. I did not want that to be the same with our PLC meetings as well! I decided to adopt the Final Word protocol as a result of reading Kim Cofino’s blog post about it. It seemed to be exactly what I was looking for: a way to help facilitate a conversation based upon the interests of the participants while remaining conscious of time factors (we’ve allocated one hour every Tuesday).

While our implementation of the protocol wasn’t perfect (we didn’t always stick to time if the conversation was good and we didn’t always remain focused on the leader’s passage), it certainly felt like a more productive dialogue and a better use of our time. I hope that as we use the protocol more we will be able to strike up richer conversations.

And for the record, Prensky’s Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants theory (Pt 1 Pt 2) was the hottest topic. I’ve made my feelings known on that matter already.

Image Credit: barbara kingsolver and coffee at pix by cafemama licensed under CC BY NC SA

This has to be the best weekend for all-around professional development – bar my MYP Workshop Leader Training – that I’ve ever had. And the best part: I very rarely left the comfort of my house. With the 21st Century Learning (#21CHK)  conference taking place in Hong Kong and the MYP Workshops (#MYP) taking place in Bangkok, I had my two main areas of interest covered. Add to that the webinar given by Dr. Helen Barret on e-portfolios, sponsored by Classroom 2.0, and I was set.

The MYP Octagon

This is by far the liveliest Twitter discussion on MYP I have ever seen. One aspect stood out in particular: How does MYP prepare students for Theory of Knowledge in the Diploma Program? Eric MacKnight weighed in with his feelings on his blog and he bring up some very good points about the implementation of TOK. A major concern is that “students have little or no experience thinking about the sort of issues that arise in TOK.” His solution:

So let’s solve two problems at once. A weekly or biweekly ATL course in the Middle Years program would provide an opportunity to address learning habits and skills explicitly, and to engage in the kind of age-appropriate discourse that would give students invaluable practice thinking about how they think, so that when they arrived for their first TOK class in Grade 11 they would resemble fish in water, instead of deer in headlights.

This is a very logical solution for the TOK issue except, as my friend and (ex-) colleague Adrienne pointed out “the idea of ATL as [a] separate course is directly in opposition of philosophy of MYP’s AOIs.” (emphasis added)

The MYP, when practiced conscientiously, is a very good program. It has taken me years to be able to write that sentence – when I first laid eyes on it in 2002, I hated the MYP. Part of the problem I had, I realize now, was that I was looking at it from a Diploma Program point-of-view. There were too many things that I felt it didn’t do to prepare my students for the content -heavy IB Diploma. I didn’t buy in fully to Interdisciplinary Units (IDUs). I didn’t fully understand the importance or centrality of the Areas of Interaction (AOIs). (In my defense, neither did very many other people. With the recent release of the document “From Principles to Practice” (.pdf 1.26 MB) it has become much clearer. This is a must read – cover to cover – if you are an MYP teacher.) In short, I was teaching my MYP courses like they were Diploma courses.

The MYP is not designed to be a pre-IB Diploma course. It’s organization and structure do not explicitly follow from or lead into the Diploma Program**. The only thing that seemingly binds them is the IB Learner Profile. But if you teach MYP for the sake of MYP, if you use the AOIs to give focus to your units, if you use significant concepts to forge links between subject areas, if you strive to integrate the Approaches to Learning skills into every lesson, students will be well prepared to tackle any content-focused Diploma course, including Theory of Knowledge.

Thanks to @melanievrba, @krea_frobro747, @BrianLockwood, @ericmacknight, and  @amichetti for a fantastic discussion. I hope we can do this again!

** – While the organization and structures of all three IB levels (including PYP) are all explicitly different, I would like to see the introduction of a common vocabulary between the three programs. That would make everybody’s life so much easier!

Here’s a list of what I’m plugging to the staff here:

What: 23 Things: Tools for 21^st Century Teaching and Learning
Where: This is an online course
When: Begins September 14 and will go for 10 weeks

http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/

• Technically, you should have registered by last Friday. However, you can try to sneak your registration in if you are really keen. There are already a few teachers who have signed up and I hope to host a 23 Things Professional Learning Community for all those involved.

What: ASB Unplugged
Where: The American School of Bombay
When: Feb 24 – 27 2010

• http://www.asbunplugged.org/drupal/asb_un-plugged/
• http://asbunplugged.ning.com/
• Registration Deadline is November 15 2009

 What: K12 Online Conference 2009
Where: This is a virtual conference.
When: Starts November 20 2009 with 40 presentations being posted for download over a two-week period (December 7 – 17). There will also be live events.

• You can get an idea of what it’s all about by checking out the Getting Started info from last year’s conference.
• http://k12onlineconference.org/

What: Create the Future: Become a 21^st Century Learner
Where: BISS International School, Beijing
When: January 16 – 17

• This is an EARCOS Weekend Workshop
• http://www.earcos.org/ww_approvedSY0910.php

Did I miss anything? (I know I don’t have the 21st Century Learning HK conference listed… I figure it’s too late for people to register anyhow…)

image: Untitled by _fLeMmA__

Marc Prensky is undeniably more qualified and better versed than me when it comes to educational pedagogy. I respect that his work on Digital Immigrants v. Digital Natives (pdf) was groundbreaking. But that was published in 2001 – a veritable lifetime ago – and it is now, in my opinion, obsolete. Although using labels that can be construed as racist and/or xenophobic, its basic premise – that one segment of the population is inherently more comfortable with technology – is still true, but how that segment is parsed out of the whole isn’t quite as binary as Prensky describes.

Chris over at Betchablog does a great job of unraveling The Myth of the Digital Native:

The Natives vs Immigrants concept serves as a neat, tidy metaphor that is useful on a basic level to help understand some of the differences between Gen-Y and those who grew up in the primitive pre-Google world.  However, the problem with the metaphor is that while it’s neat and tidy, it is demonstrably wrong on so many levels.

Digital fluency and acquisition can be compared to language fluency and acquisition. You might recall the differences between BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitivie Academic Language Proficiency) put forth by Jim Cummins: BICS are the day-to-day language skills one needs to get by in social situations; CALP refers to the language skills necessary to succeed in an academic setting.

You see where I’m going here, right?

Prensky’s Digital Natives have the digital equivalent of BICS: they can text, chat, FaceBook, MySpace, and Google (simultaneously, most of the time!). Not every Native, though, posseses the analagous CALP. Can they search effectively? Do they know how to organize and search the massive amount of content they are accessing or creating? Do they collaborate effectively for learning purposes? The list of questions goes on.

In life, things are rarely ever black and white. There are infinite shades of grey that almost defy description. Digital fluency is no different. While I recognize how tempting it is offer categories in order to simplify the discussion, it is these categories that are sometimes the issue. With this concept of Digital Native, it is too easy for teachers to assume that all students of capable of anything technological and to not teach them the more academic skills. Even worse, it is too easy for teachers to assume that, because they are Digital Immigrants, they are not able to teach anything to their Native students.

We need a new nomenclature, one that helps to differentiate between BITS (Basic Interpersonal Technological Skills) and CATP (Cognitive Academic Technological Proficiency), one that promotes the idea that transiency between the categories is possible, and one that is not binary by nature. At first blush, I like the categories Digital Tourist, Digital Resident, and Digital Citizen but I know they are nowhere near sufficient. What categories would you suggest? (While were at it, can we improve upon the acronym CATP?)

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives, Marc Prensky, BICS, CALP, Jim Cummins, labels, Betchablog,

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I have a confession to make: When looking over the 23 Things, there are only a handful of things that I don’t already feel like I have some sort of comfort with. I blog, I tweet, I wiki, I have a Personal Learning Network that I am continuously cultivating to suit my needs and interests. And I have firsthand experience as to how the collaborative nature of the read/write web has changed me as a teacher.

As an L^3 (LifeLong Learner; I’m a math teacher, give me a break!), I harness the power of Web 2.0 on an hourly basis. If I have blog questions, I tweet an Edublogs guru. If want to talk politics or pedagogy or sports or the joys of international living, I connect with intrepidteacher or MsMichetti. And I’m constantly reading the thoughts and blogs of some of the most influential 21st C. educationalists around. To say that I learn more from the people in my computer than the people in my building would be a gross understatement.

As a teacher, wikis allow me to encourage collaboration and independence between my students. Creative Commons licensed photos allow my students to ethically find images to support their work. YouTube gives me a library of media that can be used for business or pleasure.

Web 2.0 is just awesome (boom de ya da, boom de ya da!).

image: idn_web_rots by Rodrigo Vera

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Part of my school’s mission statement says, “Our mission is to encourage students to be independent, lifelong learners who strive for excellence”. With the proliferation of connectivity in general and Web 2.0 in particular, lifelong learning is more accessible and more relevant than ever.

Thing 1 is all about the 7.5 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners.

One of these Habits is going to be easiest for me to get into: Play! My view towards most new things has always involved play. I’m a guy, and Real Guys don’t read directions! How do we learn? We play. When I sit in a new car, the first thing I do is push all the buttons to see what they do. When I get a new gizmo, I go through all the functions/buttons/menus just to see what’s “under the hood”. The same goes for a new Web 2.0 tool: I won’t know how to use it in my classroom or how to suggest that others can use it until I put it through it’s paces and find its strengths or limitations by just pushing all the buttons and seeing what they do!

Perhaps the most important habit will be to create and document my own learning toolbox. In my new role next year as Technology Facilitator, I will be responsible for helping all teachers in the Middle School/High School to create technology enriched learning experiences that leverage our 1:1 TabletPC program. I think that the tools that are highlighted here will be invaluable to that end.

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