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!

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

At UNIS Hanoi we have recently formed a task force to look at the best options for implementing electronic portfolios across the school. We currently use portfolios in our PYP and MYP years. We are looking for solutions – both in terms of pedagogy and platform – that will help us implement electronic portfolios across the school (even in the Diploma Program, which currently does not keep portfolios). If your school is currently using electronic portfolios, I would love to have your input. I have put together a Google Form (link below) to help collect information about how schools are currently using electronic portfolios. All responses are public and can be found at the second link below. Thanks in advance for your help!

Survey – Implementation of Electronic Portfolios

Results – Spreadsheet

Image: Anoto Digital Pen by Anoto Group licensed under CC BY NC ND

The rain has stopped and the skies are (kinda) blue!

Our recent PD session with Jeff Utecht is a direct result of Learning 2.008. A colleague and I came back from Shanghai and decided to shoot for the moon: we recommended that UNIS bring Jeff (and Kim Cofino, too, but not dice!) in for our in-house professional development weekend. Much to my surprise, they said yes and made it happen. Kudos to the admin team for that one!

We then decided to model our PD days after Learning 2.008: lots of hands-on sessions with time built in to reflect and play. While it wasn’t nearly enough time to reflect (seriously, is it ever?), I think the weekend was extremely successful.

I volunteered (was volunteered?) for four sessions. This is my recap and reflection of those four sessions, in four parts.

Session 1: Pimp My Tablet

First, I thought I was being clever with that title. Turns out, not so much. But I did make my own graphic!

Rationale:
From day one, teachers have not been very good at personalizing their tablets. A lot of that is due to the severe lock-down that we’re under. But there is so much that can be done to improve each teacher’s workflow. This was a chance for me to show others how I’ve made my tablet use more efficient and to give them an idea of all the settings, toolbars and shortcuts that they can utilize to make life a little easier.

Conclusion:
Ultimately, I’m not very happy with how this session went. There is just too much to talk about and the needs/abilities of the audience were very diverse. Put those things together and that’s a tall order in 45 minutes. I did manage to show some how to utilize the customizable toolbar in Office 2007, how to turn on their bookmarks toolbar in IE7, and how to create shortcuts so that they can save directly to our portal in any Office application. Of course, as soon as our tablets get re-imaged all of these changes will disappear for everybody, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them all that.

Photo: pimpmytablet, by-nc-sa. I created this image from an MTV-based image. If they want we to take it down, I will comply.

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Morpheus came to UNIS last weekend…

You remember The Matrix, right? (If you don’t, maybe we shouldn’t be friends. It’s only one of the best movies ever.) Morpheus shows up in Mr. Anderson’s life, dazzles him with some crazy out-of-this world stuff, and then offers him a choice:

Neo, this is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Jeff Utecht dazzled the UNIS Middle School/High School staff with some pretty out-of-this-world stuff: wikis, podcasts, chatrooms used to take class notes, Chris Lehmann’s Ignite Philly presentation, interesting new brain research (and lots more) as well as, most importantly, a vision of what education can (must?) become in order to remain relevant.

I’m excited to see how many of my colleagues are taking the red pill. The Twitter population at UNIS has quintupled with people willing to give it a try. People are buzzing about external wikis and blogs (as opposed to our in-house SharePoint wikis and blogs). I don’t know how many have been created over the last 24 hours. I’m planning on hosting another “Tablet Support Group” meeting this week to allow people time to debrief and reflect. (While we did try to build in some reflection time in our days a la Learning 2.008, it just wasn’t enough!) There is a flame that has been lit and I’m hoping it turns into an uncontrolled Five Alarm Fire that consumes classrooms and students and teachers.

Of course, there will always be those content to take the blue pill and continue believing that what they are doing (which is the same thing they were doing 2, 5, 10, 20 years ago) is relevant and best-practice. What do we say to them? What can we say to them?

I wish, in this poor metaphorical exercise, I could say that I was Neo. I doubt that I am. I’m probably more like Tank or Dozer. But I’ve got my eye on a few who could be The One…

I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came to tell you how it’s going to begin. – Morpheus

(In future posts, I hope to dissect my role in presenting a few session at our PD weekend. I also reserve the right to use “Edu-Matrix” in the future, just in case. I just like the sound of it: Welcome to the Edu-Matrix.)