Lessons Learned

Mark and I discussed the iBook textbook initiative on the Edtech Co-op podcast yesterday. The show will soon be posted to the blog and to iTunes. Hopefully it offers some new ideas as well as background information on etextbooks to add to your thinking about teaching and learning in using digital resources.

Here are some of my main take aways from the talk:

We need to remember that the iBook app/store is just one part of a learning system that includes a huge array of apps for learning, connectivity to a world of resources, cameras and a mic for recording, all in a device that is mobile thus allowing for personal learning both in and outside of school. The iPad offers a Leatherman type learning platform for sure and supports the “1 to Many” movement so we need to remember to not see iBooks in isolation. While some may argue that textbooks are so 20th century, the iBook is just one part of a modern learning system and device.

As future iPads are introduced, the question comes up of what will a student’s interface be when working with the iBook while also wanting to simultaneously access other apps. For example, we spoke in the podcast about the note taking tool embedded in the iBook thinking wouldn’t it help learners even more if they could take notes in a mind map and even audio record their thoughts. Maybe these two tools will be included in future iBooks but as Mark pointed out, there are apps that do these two functions. The barrier is that the student would have to continuously hit the home button to get out of the iBook to access the learning tools she wants to access.

This leads me to wonder if Apple will be able to make at least some if the productivity apps more widget-like where they could float on the screen while the iBook is open. It would be nice of a calculator, mind mapper, voice recorder, specific subject/topic apps providing text and images like Britannica or simply a video feed with a search engine could float on the screen so that a student can access these tools while he is reading in the iBook. Or maybe Apple will offer the possibility of a split screen so that two apps can be open at the same time or maybe one can swipe to a second or third screen with opened apps similar to using Mission Control on the Mac. We will see.

This hope for access to apps to help the student learn beyond the iBook textbook connects to our discussion of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and our hope that Siri on future iPads will offer further supportive and adaptive structures to help all learners. The question is whether Apple will build in the UDL constructs to the iBook app and/or use Siri is not that important as long as the learning tools are added to the iPad. Many of our students would benefit if text could be highlighted as the words are being read to them. Being able to voice record their ideas and thinking either into MP3 files or into text would be another helpful adaptive technology.

And how about being able to ask Siri to gather a listing of videos that explain the three branches of the Federal Government that could be watched in the corner of the screen while viewing one’s US Government ibook? The same for an art history iBook which has a student curious wanting to see more images of Picasso’s blue period along with text from Britannica or other sources? You might say it is only a couple steps to currently make these events happen but it would be nice if the student could be immersed in the learning process only needing to swipe her finger and potentially make voice commands to access further information.

We also spoke about teachers building their own iBooks while also wondering how classes could work together to create their own etextbooks. Mark brought up several good points on this regarding current tools and having access to these etextbooks on the web for collaboration. Listen to the podcast for further details as there was a lot to that discussion.

A connected topic is how could a teacher design and publish an iBook that could include the interactive modules as demonstrated in the Apple iBook video. My interest in developing etextbooks goes back to a post I wrote about “information brokers” who could represent the publishers, media providers and the interactive module creators like Explore Learning to provide a marketplace for iBook creators to purchase copyrighted material to add to the iBooks. While there is so much free and non-copyright material on the web, one really would benefit from including, for example, Discovery Learning video segments and text resources from the huge library Gale offers. An additional point is how much of the media and interactive modules would be in each iBook or would one need to be connected to the web to receive the feed. Again listen to the podcast as Mark unpacks this topic.

We talk about students “making meaning” and “constructing understanding”. A portion of this learning process is having access to the information and then having the scaffolding to bring it together. What might this process look like for a student using an iPad and iBooks? I am picturing a humanities course with a student reading the assigned iBook historical novel, reviewing his iBook textbook and using various apps to seek more information while pulling his thinking together in one place, say a mind map or simple interactive whiteboard app. The IWB app would be populated over time with screen captures from various sources, notes from the ibooks, and audio files of ideas the student recorded. The building of understanding stage occurs potentially with the help of essential and guiding questions the teacher listed in the iBook textbook or through the school Learning Management System (LMS).

By dragging notes, screen captures, etc. into groups of common ideas and then using mind mapping lines making connections between them, the student constructs her understanding working to answer the questions while making further “brain pop” idea notes in the parking lot section of the IWB screen. Pretty cool how the technology really could support the learning process as students use their technology literacy to choose the best tools/apps for their individual learning needs.

Mark brought up an additional point about this learning process of using all these tools in that the students could then export their individual notes or the entire learning document/mind map to be shared with the class for further collaboration and connection making. Again, pretty cool and way beyond just reading a digital textbook.

As we know, change starts with validating where you are and what you are doing (the familiar) and is usually most effective when we then take small steps that shift us to new ideas and new behaviors. The iBook with its potential for interactivity via simulations, manipulative maps and charts, gaming activities, media, etc. and access to the web can support the shifting process.  We empower students to have access to information, learning activities and tools for building their understanding and for being creative to construct projects to communicate their learning.

Hopefully the ebook competitors like Kno and Push Pop Press can work with Amazon, Android device makers and Microsoft to compete with what Apple is offering thus giving our students even more choices for personalized learning systems.

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With the Blogosphere and Twitterverse filled with discussions about how to shift schools, focus on 21st century skills, create and promote learning communities, provide PD, etc., it seems like an opportune time to revisit the roles of the instructional technologist and teacher librarian as leaders and change agents in our schools. We were planning on making this a topic in an upcoming EdTech Co-op podcast but a blog post is leading me to share some ideas now.

Tim Holt’s recent post about the role of professional trainers and speakers definitely hit a nerve for many folks and has lead to lots of discussions about how to bring about change in our schools. My response is to put forth the instructional technologist and librarian as two of the key leaders in schools who should follow up on professional development (PD) activities to facilitate the action steps to make the learning from the PD connect to the learning in our classrooms. As for the huge topic of shifting our schools, Jeff Utecht and I produced a podcast all about Shifting Our Schools. Take a look at the show notes as our guests brought forth many helpful ideas. Only the latest podcasts are still accessible via iTunes.

While Tim argues that the educational gurus should offer us the how to’s on how to shift our schools, the push back is that each school is different and the road maps must be individualized for each school. I agree with this and do see that there are many ways to offer professional development for our learning communities but the key is the follow up after the PD which is not the responsibility of PD providers. Whether one brings in educational trainers, sends staff off to conferences, runs book discussions, has teachers take courses, the bottom line is that there are many choices and that each educator should be empowered to design and build their own professional learning network as so many in the blogosphere promote.

It is then up to the leadership of the school to create the mechanism involving use of time and support to empower the staff to come up with the “how to’s” to take the PD learning into the classrooms. Obviously administrators provide this key leadership but it is the instructional technologist and teacher librarian who often are the doers who either working via the curriculum review process or collaborating individually or with groups of teachers who turn the PD into action.

Whether you call your school instructional technologist a technology integration specialist, educational technologist, learning coach or whatever, it is important to realize what this well-skilled leader can do for your school. One can review the posts and articles by library leaders to paint the picture of the modern teacher librarian or you could review the skill set and 21st century vision of my wife who is the library media specialist at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

To paint the picture of an instructional technologist, here is a Mindmeister mind map that I created several years ago for a conference in China where the participants helped build out the IT/ET job description including experience and skill set for a 21st century instructional technologist. Hopefully it provides a discussion point whether you have an instructional technologist or want to hire one but need a job description.

We will soon being discussing this topic further in the Edtech Co-op podcast.

I am a real believer in finding ways for my students to use technology to make their thinking and their ideas visible. My futuristic hope is that we will have a mechanism for our words to become images, graphs, animations, mind maps, etc. on a display as we communicate our ideas. While we have the tools to manually do this today, it can be a fun and creative adventure but it takes time to produce the product. Wouldn’t it be something if our political leaders, CEOs of companies, school principals, teachers, etc. in explaining important information have their ideas automatically appear on a display for the audience to further connect to? Oh, yes, we have PowerPoints/Keynotes and markers with whiteboards but the communication process definitely slows down as we turn our backs to the audience, think, and then scramble to write our ideas out usually in the form of words. Even image rich presentations do not engage the viewers as animations expanding in real time would. What a terrific way to build understanding and to make it easier for one’s audience to really engage and ask questions of the speaker. To see the answers to questions expand across the screen truly would be something leading to further understanding and discussion. Who knows, maybe the 10th generation of Siri will have a vast “visulation” database of ideas and concepts to draw from to then display.

Jim Reese of Washington International School and Project Zero (PZ) was on an earlier Ed Tech Co-op podcast where his pick of the week was the book Making Thinking Visible which communicates the research on visual thinking from PZ. I purchased the book and have a set aside some time today to start reading it. Something tells me that the book will prompt a lot of thinking on my part.

A recent Washington Post article listed a couple British sites that make thinking visible through animations. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (RSA) produces a series of voiceover animations where an illustrator using a whiteboard expands upon the ideas of the off screen speaker. Another resource from the article is the Open University use of animations to offer explainations on several topics. Both efforts make thinking visual.

Here are links to these videos housed at YouTube:

RSA Animates Channel
Open University Channel (the animation playlist is on right side of page)

Another article that caught my attention was a post from the GigaOm site. “The 10 Key Skills for the Future of Work” post drew from The Institute for the Future and their work predicting what the jobs of the future will be and the skills needed for those jobs. We have our 21st Century Skills framework and now the Future Work Skills 2020 that this group has produced.

Here is a listing of the Skills 2020 that Jessica Stillman of GigaOm put together in her post. Many of these skills are similar to the 21st Century ones but some of these go further in cognitive processes and various literacies. As we developed our skills for Information and Communiction Literacies (ICL) several years ago at Hong Kong International School, I am seeing how this new listing will help me further develop the ICL construct. I can see a wonderful opportunity for one’s school learning community to come together in small and then whole group to discuss each of these skills to make meaning of them and to then paint the picture of what teachers are doing in their respective classes to help students learn them.

• Sense-making. The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
• Social intelligence. The ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
• Novel and adaptive thinking. Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
• Cross-cultural competency. The ability to operate in different cultural settings
• Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
• New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
• Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
• Design mind-set. Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
• Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
• Virtual collaboration. The ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

Also posted at Edtech Co-op

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The Washington Post, New York Times and WSJ published articles in the past month about virtual school providers. The main provider is K12 located in Northern Virginia. Tom Ashbrook on his On Point radio show also covered this topic with his usual finesse in trying to show all sides of the issue. Diane Rhem just produced a show looking at how well our higher education system is functioning in the US looking at for profit online providers as well. So whether you have a long holiday drive or some down time during the holidays, check the links to the articles and podcasts at the end of this post.

I continue to look for all the information I can find to decipher what is working and not working when it comes to virtual learning providers. As a curriculum designer and teacher who has been using a blended learning environment in my teaching for many years, I have a good understanding of how much curriculum development work is needed to create a learning community for one’s online students. Just as we want project-based, collaborative learning driven by students’ questions and curiosity in our regular classrooms, we must put in the extra design time to create learning activities that involve collaboration and engagement for our online students to stretch their minds to the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

While it is a good thing when topics we discuss in the blogosphere make it to the mainstream, it is taking my best information literacy skills to work through the following articles and podcasts to really get at the facts. I have many questions for companies like K12, Kaplan, Connections Education, etc. and would love to see  some of their units of study to see how they build in community for their learners.

WP article

NYT article

WSJ article

Tom Ashbrook podcast

Diane Rehm podcast

How is your student support team organized? Who is on the team? Are you providing mainly pullout, pull in and/or build in services? How is your professional development system connected to this team and their mission? There are many questions to ask when we step back and think about the best way to provide reinforcement, enrichment and an overall differentiated learning environment for our students.

Much of my focus the past few years has been on building a systematic approach to developing curriculum. One aspect of this approach is the formation of a team approach to build out units of study that incorporate ICL integration, differentiation of instruction and assessment, meeting school-wide goals, etc. Efforts by our learning support team at Alexandria Country Day School and a recent article in the Davidson Journal (Davidson College in NC) reminded me that we also should be looking at systems in how we support student learning outside the curriculum review process.

I remember back to the early 1990s at the American International School-Riyadh when we developed a student support system for the middle school. The team members included all the teachers, an administrator, the counselor and the learning support teachers. We created the structure of common meeting times for the two teams at each grade level. One day a week we discussed individual student learning needs while another day the focus was on curriculum.We used technology to record learning plans, goals, and results in the student information system. However, the librarian was not present in the meetings while the technology teacher visited to share his lessons and not so much as a collaborator in the curriculum process.

We were ahead of the curve in many ways but failed to make the connection between needing to bring more specialists on board not only for the curriculum but just as importantly for the learning support. The technology teachers and the librarians could have collaborated in both areas to make a difference for our students.

Returning to today, the article from the Davidson Journal explains how the college recently brought different groups of learning support teams together under one roof– the library. As so many of us write about, the library/media center/learning community should be at the center of one’s school/campus. It makes total sense to not just bring your technology specialists but also your other learning support teachers into the library. It also makes total sense to have your instructional technologist and teacher librarian as members of your learning support team when one creates a curriculum review system but also as partners in grade level/department meetings when creating learning support strategies.

An additional item to note is that this team is naturally skilled with “building in” learning support strategies to be added to the units in your curriculum mapping tool. By documenting strategies into your curriculum system to support struggling as well as students needing enrichment, you move away from the old “pullout” model of support. I learned from Dr. Mary Landrum and from my wife’s expertise as a GATE coordinator that the more we can collaborate with teachers to develop learning activities and assessments together, the more that they can pull learning strategies off “the shelf” of the curriculum tool to support students without calling for them to be pulled out of their classes. While Dr. Landrum teaches mainly about providing instruction for gifted students, her book Consultation in Gifted Education: Teachers Working Together to Serve Students provides a collaboration model that can be used to meet the whole spectrum of student needs.

And back to the question of how your professional development program is run, one hopes for teacher involvement in choosing topics as well as the teaching and learning team. This team’s engagement puts them in an excellent position to assess the instructional needs across the school. Who could be in a better position to drive what is in and how your PD program is managed?

I am rambling here but if you are interested in learning more about Davidson’s new program, I wrote a post for my school’s blog about the Davidson article and how our school was following the same model. Here is that post>

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Davidson College is known as a very academic liberal arts college that is dedicated to supporting the craft of teaching by its professors. Davidson’s professors do research, write articles and books but their primary focus is on teaching. To support their efforts, as part of the strategic plan, Davidson in August opened its Center for Teacher and Learning (CTL) in the school library.

The connection to Alexandria Country Day School is that we also opened our Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) in August. What is striking in reading an article from the Fall 2011 Davidson Journal is how similar the two programs are. It demonstrates the forward thinking and student-centered nature of our administrators and TLC staff when we are mirroring the program of a college such as Davidson.

Central to the work of our TLC team members is the focus on collaboration with the classroom teachers. This partnership looking at how best to reach learning goals as well as meeting the individual student needs drives how the TLC teachers help design instruction and provide one to one support for our students.

An additional part of this “collaboration team” approach to supporting teaching and learning is the involvement of our instructional technologist, teacher librarian and director of technology. As part of the iPad pilot program the fifth grade teachers worked with our technology and library team members over the summer to review and adapt the fifth grade curriculum to further support the students in attaining skills for the 21st century. The curriculum was further adapted to meet the information, media, and visual literacy standards supported by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) along with the technology literacies published as the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students. The collaboration team in January will be joined by members of the TLC as they review the sixth grade curriculum in preparation for next year and the continued roll “forward” of the iPad Pilot program.

The Davidson Journal article describes the same team effort of their Center for Teaching and Learning.

“(the CTL)…brings together these centers- along with the instructional technologists and information literacy librarians- to help students take a comprehensive approach to strengthening academic skills. The CTL also advises faculty who want to experiment with new teaching tools and to discuss different approaches to teaching.”

One might say that Davidson College is in good company with its pioneering efforts.

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This afternoon I was reading a Washington Post article entitled “Energy official sees climate ‘catastrophe’”. The chief economist for the International Energy Agency said on Monday that we are headed to a 6 degree Celsius increase in temperature by 2100 due to forecasts of increased worldwide energy consumption. As a believer in the science and research that human activities are increasing the temperature of our planet, I wondered what the math was that lead to this conclusion.

It then so happened that I turned to my RSS reader and found Patrick Truchon’s latest post which explained the math behind forecasts about the incredibly fast growth of atmospheric CO2 which is leading to the expected increase in the temperature of the Earth. As I work to teach my students to employ various literacies when they gather and analyze information, it was pretty neat to see a teacher demonstrating how to pull the data and use math to come to his own conclusions. Bravo Patrick.

I can definitely see how science, math and social studies teachers could collaborate to develop a unit of study on global warming connected to the current Republican presidential nomination process. With several of the nominees denying that human activity is affecting the temperature of the planet, students could be challenged to take a stand on the issue while using research from current global warming studies, the science method and math problem solving to back their position. An additional area focusing on social studies and current events could be to have the students research and explain the factors leading the Canadian government to just announce that they would not agree to a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol.

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These words describe the goal of the Finnish educational system as stated by Pasi Stahlberg, who is in the Finnish Ministry of Education. Read more about how the Finnish educational system is so successful in a Smithsonian magazine article that details their techniques.

Another interesting read is Tom Friedman’s revelation that parents are indeed important in the education of our children. He points to recent “studies” demonstrating that we need better parenting in partnership with the efforts taking place in our schools. What I really enjoyed from the article were the hundreds of comments offering further insights.

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I recently started teaching videography lessons to one of my classes using diagrams and tutorials pulled from several places on the web. To give the students firsthand experience, I tasked them to work in groups to come up with an idea for a short video, storyboard, shoot and edit it. The students use a template created in Inspiration to storyboard the scenes as well as to write their scripts. The early lessons on lighting, audio, camera angles, etc. usually don’t sink in until the student groups shoot their two minute videos and show them to their classmates. Their peers with their constructive criticism then help those early lessons sink in.

Once we move into students creating videos for their subject area assessment projects, I am planning on having several copies of The Guerrilla Guide To Moviemaking handy for students to review the basics while advancing their skills. The author, Rick Bell, is a friend and my wife Margaret assisted in the editing of the book.

As someone who teaches video to elementary as well as older students, I especially like the way Rick illustrates using cartoons which really connects to students as visual learners.  His step by step procedures provide his readers a very understandable pathway to shoot a school video project while offering tips for students who really want to expand their videography techniques.

Pearson publishing is taking on Blackboard in the learning management system competition. The new system called OpenClass is free and connected with Google Education and all the apps that schools are already using.

One article notes that this launch is just for colleges but hopefully OpenClass will be offered to the K-12 market as well.

My current school is using Haiku with great success and buy in from teachers, students and parents as the interface is so intuitive for the teachers and easy to navigate for the students. Having used Moodle many years ago, Haiku has been a good choice for us. It will be interesting to see if OpenClass and the other choices expand their tool offerings to include e-portfolios and curriculum mapping tools as the myDragonnet portal does. Haiku does offer e-portfolios and I hope they bring in a curriculum mapping component as well.

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Mark Hofer and I started a new community to focus on curriculum-based technology integration and new teacher preparation practices. The community centers around the Edtech Co-op blog where we and other community members will share ideas on the two themes. The Co-op is also involved with Curriki as a group that members can assign their lessons and units of study to.

We will be producing a podcast every two weeks or so working to discuss an essential question on curriculum or pre-service teacher preparation. Many of the podcasts will include guests who will bring their expertise and experience to share with our audience. One can listen to the podcasts via the blog or from iTunes.

I feel very fortunate to be working with Mark who has provided so much to the educational technology community through his articles for Learning and Leading with Technology and other journals. Mark’s students at the College of William and Mary are very fortunate to have a professor who was not only a social studies teacher but also an instructional technologist. Mark’s outreach into schools around Williamsburg working with teachers and administrators to analyze and improve their practices is another way that Mark makes a difference for students in K-12 schools.

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