Lessons Learned

As educators, we blog about best practices in using technology and information for learning. We discuss the the lives of our students outside of school in the ways they are connected and seemingly always “On” when it comes to their social networks. The New York Times just published an article entitled “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying the Mental Price” that looks at some of the negative effects of our always being connected. The author, Matt Richtel, combines research and a running narrative of one family’s gadget filled lifestyle.

One focus of my work in the upcoming school year will be to work with students, staff and parents to discuss how how to use technology to support their values and the reaching of their goals. We will look at what actions are needed to optimize the use of technology and information gathering. We will also look at what steps that need to be taken to lessen the influence of technology so that goals for family time, good communication, community involvement, etc. can be met. I also hope to discuss the idea of running a “screen free week” just as Jeff Utecht has in his schools.

I will be working with elementary and middle schools students in my school to develop their information, technology, and media literacies. One of the big habits of mind that goes with all these skills is to be able to focus with depth to really gain understanding. Helping students to think about how they are using technology and information in an effective and efficient matter has to be a primary goal for any technology and information integration program.

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“Mr. C, we are in crisis!” This was the Google Chat that appeared on my screen this morning. My student went on to stay that she and another student were stuck in Paris and probably would not be able to return to Morocco until Thursday as the airport is shutdown due to the volcanic ash from Iceland.

I then asked if she had checked Edline that lists the assignments for the coming week and if she had posted five possible research questions in her Mindmeister mind map. Her response was “yes” and could I take a look at them.

I went to her mind map and left comments to help my student narrow down her questions to one. She is now ready to use her time effectively in Paris by working on the research process and doing the regular classroom homework. In both cases, I am able to access her work using online collaborative tools.

After sending out an email to all my students to check on their status, I will see how many other students will miss some class this week but will still be able to continue their learning wherever they may be “stuck”.

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My students this past week worked on the writing process responding to the three Essential Questions for the unit on Imperialism and the Progressive Age at the start of the 20th century. The first step was to brainstorm then to outline followed by the writing of the essay. Besides interesting responses to the questions, I found myself learning further how students use the Web and researching techniques when we spoke about how some of the students developed their answers.

Using mind mapping software, Sophia explained that she started her mind map with one of the Essential Questions in the middle building the first circle of responses (nodes using the note tool) by reflecting and thinking on her own. The next step, she explained, was to do a Web search using key words she had listed looking for sites that might offer more information. Sophia then linked new nodes into her map as she read the sites and experienced “brain pops” of understanding taking in new knowledge while making connections back to her original responses.

What really caught my attention was the next step for Sophia. She explained her discovery of the book The Culture of Excess: How American Lost Control and How We Need to Redefine Success which clearly connected to the Essential Question of “Why excesses?”. Sophia then went on to explain how she built another band or circle of thinking and research on her mind map where she added nodes listing her ideas after reading the author’s site and book review sites with sample pages.

This expansion of the mind map into circles of new nodes at various stages of thinking and researching reminded me of the color coded mind mapping system that Dave Navis introduced at HKIS several years ago. We used to work with teachers to have their students start each unit of study by doing a preliminary mind map where they listed some ideas in response to the Essential Questions. As the students progressed through the unit of study, they would build out their mind maps with further responses. With the conclusion of the unit, the students would finalize their thinking by completing their mind maps. The teachers would then use the diagrams to assess student understanding. Dave had his students use a different color for each stage of their thinking thus emphasizing the metacognition of the connections that took place through the unit.

A further step that is especially helpful if your students use Inspiration is to have them use the text box on the connector lines between nodes to further explain their thinking that led them to each new node listing new ideas. Talk about a powerful way to help our learners really think about how they learn! Sophia went through a similar process. It was interesting for me to ask other students to explain the thinking they went through to answer the Essential Questions. The mind maps, outlines and essays provide a nice visual map to support this reflection process.

Teaching ELL Students

How can shadow puppets be used to teach ELL kindergarten students about the components of a story? As the majority of the students in our elementary school are learning English as their third language, my wife Margaret works to create new ways to teach her library lessons by using visuals. When you add in the need for children to have movement and social connections in their learning, a lesson using the LCD projector along with creative hand gestures really makes sense.

I was in the elementary library last week when I noticed Margaret teaching a group of young students how to make shadow puppets. Margaret explained that she would be sharing a wonderful story in future lessons and the kindergarten students were going to help in telling the story. Margaret’s goal for the lesson was to introduce the vocabulary words of character, setting and plot to start the process of teaching her students about the components of a story.

Margaret modeled examples of animal characters using hand jesters followed by doing the same for setting. Calling on some students to come up to the screen, she had them using their fingers to represent grass being blown by the wind. The hook was in and the students were definitely engaged ready to learn more about the three vocabulary words. With building a love for reading being a major part of Margaret’s teaching mission, it was pretty neat to see how she used technology to help her students start to learn about story creation while definitely getting them excited about their next lesson on plot.

The variety of landscapes continues to amaze me. Morocco is one of those places where you can be standing in snow in the morning and by late afternoon be surfing on excellent waves.

We just returned from a journey to the east visiting the Sahara Desert after driving through the twisting and turning roads of the Atlas Mountains. It is quite the site driving through Marrakech seeing the snow covered mountains ahead.

Once we drove through the mountains, our destination was Quarzazate. We rented four wheeled motor bikes to travel through the desert to visit a small village and to see some of the film studio sets. It was very interesting to see the castle from the Kingdom of Heaven movie as well as a set from Gladiator.

Our next stop was the village of Merzouga. We saddled up there on our camels to travel through the dunes to our camping area. To see the sun set and the stars come out was worth all the driving. Our sons especially enjoyed the campfire and the quiet that the desert offers.

On the return trip we stayed overnight in the Dades Gorge. The rock formation and dry air reminded me of New Mexico. Again we were fortunate to have clear skies as the moon and star gazing was superb.

If you haven’t read the following three articles from this past week in the New York Times, they are worth taking a few moments to take a look.

Wifi Turns Arizona Rowdy Bus Ride Into Rolling Study Hall

Do School Libraries Need Books? This debate style article has over 300 comments at the moment. It definitely has struck a chord and is getting people thinking about the nature of libraries and books. After reading this I went over to Doug Johnson’s blog to see if he had commented. There is an initial post but I look forward to hearing more from Doug on the topic of libraries with only digital books.

Boom Times for International Schools Despite Global Downturn

We are completing a unit in my American Studies class on Reconstruction. The students are participating in a WebQuest called ReconstructionQuest. Besides the students playing their role from the WebQuest and giving a speech, they are participating in a Socratic Seminar on the essential questions of the unit.

As Socratic Seminars usually center around students discussing their reading responses from provided text, I decided that the students would generate the text themselves. With four essential questions, the class formed four table teams where they spent 30 minutes discussing, answering and recording their responses in a Word document. Each table was then assigned one specific question to really review and prepare to share.

We then had one or two members from each table depending on class size join the inner circle discussion. The assigned table team for question one has their response projected on the screen for everyone to read and react to. The other students sat in the outside circle listening and raising their hands from time to time to join in the inner circle discussion when there were breaks in the discussion. As we moved through the questions, each table team sent new student to the inner discussion circle.

It quickly became clear that we would need a whole other class period as the students took the conversation in different directions going deeper and deeper to build their understanding. It was especially gratifying to see students make connections in the learning to their lives, to Morocco and to international current events. A nice value added to this learning activity was the opportunity for students to model good listening skills while staying focused and on task.

Here are the essential questions we discussed:

•After conflict, how to find and keep the peace?

•How can conflict lead to change?

•How to bring about change…deliberately or quickly?

•What are the foundation components of a healthy society?

I changed the focus of this blog when we moved to Morocco to present information on teaching IB history and to share what it is like to live here. As the transition and the nature of needing to write curriculum for my IB and American Studies course has been so time consuming, I have not had much time to write about life in Morocco.

When you visit a photo sharing site that has images of Morocco, you will probably find interesting and beautiful images. For me, it is the nature of the sunlight here in Morocco that adds so much to the colors, shapes and textures that I find in my camera viewfinder. One also finds beautiful vegetation almost wherever you go. The bougainvillea can be quite stunning with the contrasting vivid purples, reds, etc. set against the very deep green of the leaves.

In our recent travels to Fez, Meknes, Volubilis and Chefchaouen, it was the beauty of Morocco between each destination that really caught our eye. The souks in Fez and Meknes were filled with leather goods, carpets and other locally made materials. We enjoyed seeing the different items for sale comparing them to our travels in Asia and Turkey. However, it became clear that not only have our sons had their fill of markets but my wife and I have as well.

We have several more trips planned for the Spring as we will head south to surf and explore. To see some photographs of our travels, check out our Flickr site.

I want to share a few items that folks might find interesting as I catch up with my blogging. As we are about to travel for the next two weeks in Morocco, I will be posting about living and traveling in this very interesting country.

SOS Podcast: Jeff and I enjoyed a wonderful conversation with Justin Medved in episode 29 of the SOS podcast. Our essential question was “How can the IB curriculum be shifted?”. We also just discussed the ins and outs of international school recruiting in episode 30. If you are interested in becoming an international educator, do check out the show notes for the two articles I list in the Links of the Week.

IB History: I continue to work to find ways to shift my IB history class more towards inquiry and constructivist learning. I tried a semi-WebQuest for the unit on Germany and pulled back a bit on the latest unit on WWII. The semi-WebQuest had some of the components of a normal WQ but I did not have the students take on roles and they had a choice for their assessment. They could take the standard IB essay test or do a more WQ style application project. As so few students took on the application project, I made the unit on WWII more a standard research project. I use the term “Learning Pursuit” when I have the students to do WebQuest style online research but are not required to do all the aspects of a WQ especially when it comes to creatively using their new understanding in a real world application.

Here are links to these two units:

Germany Learning Pursuit
World War II Learning Pursuit

ICE Model of Instruction: Our school director, Mark Lee, gave a nice presentation last week on the ICE instructional model. One of the ways I like to use inquiry to make connections to then extend student learning is through mind maps. My favorite collaborative tool is Mindmeister. While now one is limited to only three maps for a free account, my students are able to export their work and stay below the limit. Here is an excellent example by Hala, one of my IB students, on the Weimar Republic,  where she created a mind map to research to make connections in her learning to then extend the learning into new understanding. Hala’s map is so vast you will need to zoom out to see all of it and to then scroll to see all the sections.