Lessons Learned

Dave Navis will be joining us for this week’s SOS podcast where we will discuss the essential question of “When not to use technology?”. Dave has a nice post up on the topic so I will only mention a couple points.

The most difficult aspect of my job as an instructional technologist is when I need to work with teachers using technology that doesn’t support student learning and/or doesn’t teach the correct skills in using the various tools. Working as an instructional technologist means one must be a leader and a champion for student learning no matter how uncomfortable the situation might be. When teachers use and model technology ineffectively or have their students spend valuable time working on projects that don’t help their learning, they sadly can do a great deal of damage in that moment and in the future use of the technology.

What makes these situations so difficult is that the teachers are trying something new and often get excited about the creativity that goes with using technology. They are doing as we ask them in trying new ways to support learning by using technology. One needs to read these situations carefully to decide in some cases to simply remain silent but to be ready the next time the teacher wants to try something new. At other times the planned project might involve days of student technology work that could be used so much more effectively if the instructional technologist and/or library media specialist can get in and collaborate early in the planning process.

I think we often devalue the teaching of technology skills and the importance of using good design and communication principles. Teaching technology skills is no different than teaching reading, writing, math, art, etc. skills. However, with technology, users sometimes think just being about to put a project together is all there is to it.

A good example is that many teachers would say they know how to use PowerPoint and Paint so they can see themselves teaching it. And as instructional technologists, we want the technology to integrate and diffuse to the point that teachers model its use and teach it themselves. Yet, the dilemma arises when an untrained teacher doesn’t teach the needed basic design principles or worse, models poor design skills. The following, for example, are some basic skills that must be taught with everyday tools as PowerPoint and Paint:

• the value of using white space
• minimal use of but large enough and projector friendly fonts
• large single student created images
• when images used from the Web that they are cited
• no clip art
• no animation
• no sound effects
• simple, non-distracting backgrounds the same for each slide
• colors that are natural and compliment each other

How many adult presentations of PowerPoint have you seen that do the exact opposite of this list? Plenty. We cringe seeing the technology get in the way of the presenter’s lesson.

So are we ready to speak up when teachers go as far as to model the opposite of what we want our students to learn regarding design and communication skills? This is what teachers of technology sometimes face. In many cases they do so without the support of their administrators who don’t know know themselves the discreet skills that are needed for 21st century project creation and communication. Instructional technologists and library media specialists are peers with their fellow teachers thus making it even more difficult to offer ideas and propose instructional changes during the instruction. This is really the role of the administrator as instructional leader for the school to step forward and support the proper use of technology.

We can all read, write, do math, sing a song and paint something but in most cases, we know that it takes training and set of skills to teach these disciplines. I believe we are more comfortable in our schools stepping forward in speaking up to teachers making mistakes in teaching writing, reading, art, etc.  I think we value those skills much more than we do technology and information literacy skills and in many cases our teachers and administrators just don’t know how important those skills are for our 21st century learners.

This means that our leadership efforts must also include the ongoing teaching and promoting of the value of using proper technology, design and communication skills by teachers, administrators and students. Besides the usual efforts for technology integration through professional development and ongoing work with teachers and teams, we must celebrate successful uses of technology via our school Web site, our blogs, newsletters and any other available venue that models the proper use of technology.

How connected are your students, teachers and parents to the mission statement and student learning outcomes of your school? We often spend a great deal of time working in committees developing these guiding documents but fail in our efforts to communicate and embed them into our school cultures. Sometimes the sharing is little more than placing copies of our mission statements and learning outcomes on classroom walls. This really doesn’t slice it in our media rich world. Our students’ brains want a much richer media format that can start discussions, develop ownership and build understanding.

Much like our efforts to integrate technology and various literacy skills into the curriculum, we need to think about ways to combine technology and learning to deliver our respective schools’ mission statements and student learning outcomes into the classrooms and out into the larger school community. One idea is to pull together a team of students to go through the video production process to create videos that paint the picture of the mission statement from a student perspective. This real world, project-focused effort can be done at each school division involving the usual steps that go into videography production.

Multiple intelligences come into play as student teams apply their language arts skills to storyboard, write the scripts and contact the “talent” for each of the scenes. Roles for actors, camera people, director, music creation and video editors are also assigned.

Once the videos are produced, they need to be shared in as many possible venues as possible. Play them on your closed circuit TV system along with your normal student news shows. Post the videos to your school Web site and make sure you have links on your prospective parent and employee pages as well. Also, think about getting your school leaders to add the videos to their blogs. Ask them to post about their plans and actions to move the school community towards making the mission and student learning outcomes a focus in how decisions are made.

Strong connections are made with the viewers due to the social and visual nature of our brains. Students want to see the work of their video producing classmates and we know they really connect to images over text any day. They also will see the mission statement as more meaningful when explained by fellow classmates and teachers. You probably will find more success with your elementary students interviewing adults to explain the various segments of your school’s mission statement and/or student learning outcomes. As you move up in divisions, the students can take on more independence interviewing each other as well as adults or work to create scenes that depict their own interpretations of what the mission and learning outcomes look like.

To get you started with an example, here is a link to one of a five part video series created by Mrs. Brings’ Third grade class to promote the Hong Kong International School’s mission statement. It is a streaming WMV file so hopefully your media player can handle it.

Service & Global Understanding

Note: This story was originally posted at U Tech Tips.

Jeffrey Sachs was a guest on the NPR “Science Friday” last week where he continued the conversation on how he believes we can eliminate poverty around the world. He focused on how advances in technology will help us deal with economic growth and pollution. Sachs spoke about how we use research and design to come up with programs to deal with problems at around the world. He shared his process for designing solutions to problems that he termed “RDDD” that reminded me of the design work instructional technologists do.

On a side note, a terrific book that reviews studies of efforts to go into communities around the world to bring about change by groups like the Peace Corps, UN agencies, etc. is Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers. It was a textbook in one of my graduate courses that consistently reminds the reader just how difficult it is to bring about change and have it diffuse through a community.

As an instructional technologist working with teachers to design curriculum, I follow a model similar to Sachs’ that starts with Understanding. I work to understand the teacher and students’ needs and the specific learning outcomes the teacher is aiming for. The next step after gathering the needs information which sometimes includes observation and working with the students by teaching the Information and Communication Literacy (ICL) curriculum, is to Analyze the information from an instructional and assessment viewpoint. Research comes into play by seeing what other teachers did with the lesson in the past and by checking my Web resources to see how lessons posted there could be helpful in designing this one. I then Develop the lesson with the teacher or adapt what he/she already has in place. The lesson is then Implemented by the teacher or we team teach it if ICL skills are involved and the teacher wants the support.  We then Evaluate and Refine the lesson for future use. I remember this process, Understand-Analyze-Research-Develop-Implement-Evaluate-Refine (UARDIER), by appreciating my teaching partner with the phrase “You are dear!”.

Sach’s model, Research-Develop-Demonstrate-Diffusion (RDDD), adds the final “D” for Diffusion which is what also happens when classroom lessons are designed where the assessment data shows real student learning taking place. Word gets out to fellow teachers and the instructional and assessment strategies spread from one classroom to another.

Looking at the bigger picture of planning professional development programs, the key word is plan. This means getting instructional leaders on the PD development team who know how to design programs that originate from the needs of the teachers and students. As I have posted before, PD that really works happens consistently week after week one on one and in small collaborate grade level or departmenta teams once a learning community is created. One shot quarterly PD days, non-differentiated for all the teachers at once usually involving just direct instruction, can at times even do more harm than good especially when it comes to learning technology skills. Throwing various software and Web 2.0 tools scattershot at a weary group of teachers on a Friday afternoon can lead to their feeling confused and inadequate which can move into frustration and potentially to anger.

Adult learners need to bring new learning into the context of their experiences while having the time to practice the new skills to gain comfort and to see if they have practical value. Dr. Sach’s model starts with “Research” which means connecting to the users and getting to know what their needs are. While Dr. Sach’s acronym might be shorter than the one I follow, I think our two models have a lot in common.

Michael Lambert will be joining us for SOS Episode 9: How To Go Deep In Student Learning? Why? where he will share some of his instructional and assessment practices that take the learning deeper and make it more meaningful for his students. Mike will talk about making connections in the brain and in the learning to other areas of study.

One way to go deeper in student learning in a school is to choose concept-based standards and benchmarks that support well-developed Essential Understandings and Questions. By focusing on concepts and big ideas we then work backwards in our curriculum design to choose instructional strategies and assessments that lead our students to discovery learning. In many cases, this will lead to efforts to keep direct instruction limited to skills development leaving most of the learning to inquiry and other constructivist approaches where students apply their research and other literacy skills to find, analyze, reflect upon and create using information that they are in charge of finding.

If one follows this path, it becomes very difficult to try and do the wide “coverage” that many teachers are forced to do especially when the standards are knowledge or comprehension focused. If you really hold yourself to assessments that measure student learning and the learning is student discovered, then you have no choice but to start deleting standards and benchmarks from your curriculum maps. Fewer learning goals frees up the time to go deeper in how we teach our units.

A good place to start reading more about concept-based standards and benchmarks is the work of H. Lynn Erickson.

Looking at the classroom and brain-based learning, there are lots of resources to support our efforts to connect to our students’ minds to engage, make connections and get those “brain pops” of understanding that we want. The more we tap into the brain for active learning, the deeper the learning goes.

Good teaching is about asking big, “fat”, open-ended questions that help students make connections while giving students the time to think and come up with further questions. Jamie McKenzie is a real leader in this area reminding us that it isn’t about the technology, it is about the learning that comes from asking questions and pursuing the answers to them. Technology can support the effort, of course.

As for the question of why we should go deeper in student learning, is it really learning when our curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep when our students are working to become adept at moving information around? Enough said.

We spend some of our time on the Shifting Our School podcast chatting about examples of “shift” that usually applies to instructional and assessment strategies. Let’s take a closer look at what a shifted school might look like and what drives it.

An Example: Our Episode 8 podcast with Brent Loken about Hsinchu International School offered several examples of how a shifted school is structured and organized to help meet its goals. So what are those goals and how are they shifted from the way many schools do business?

Comparing Non-Shifted to Shifted: Let’s start with the chart that many people refer to when they compare the “normal” 20th century practices compared to what many of us are calling 21st century learning. You can find the chart that does direct comparisons in how schools and classrooms can shift at the 21st Century Schools site.

Focus on Thinking Skills and Being Independent Learners: When we talk about 21st Century Skills we are referring to the skill set needed for our students as future workers and citizens who will in many cases make several geographical moves as well as multiple career changes in their lifetimes. We also understand that there are entire fields of study and occupation that will be totally new as we advance scientifically and technologically. Thus, our focus in schools must be to teach skills that help our students become adaptable and flexible self-learners ready for continual learning.

To learn more about these skills, check out the 21st Century Skills site. A shifted school also works with Habits of Mind life skills to move our students from the 20th century dependent learner waiting on teachers for direction and information to the shifted version of an independent learner using critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, problem solving, and creativity skills to make meaning, collaborate and share one’s own constructed ideas (as opposed to those of the teacher).

Focus on 21st Century Literacies: As we talk about the 21st Century Skills, we also include various literacies (i.e., information, cultural, visual, & media). To get more information on the literacies, see the 21st Century Literacies site. I would add that this list can be expanded as our learning communities talk more about understanding of the different ways we interact with and interpret information. I can say that we use musical literacy in making of video projects working to match the music to the message of the visuals, text and spoken words. The National Educational Technology Standards for Students NETS also contain various thinking and communication skills as well as literacies including choosing the right technology tool for the task and the product to be created.

Other Opinions: The blogosphere is rich with comments about what our schools should be doing. The use of the term “shift” has gained traction as it refers to the movement from an educational system in the U.S. focused on 20th century employment and citizenship needs to one now focused on our ever changing, information-rich 21st century world.  We use the term “Learning 2.0″ to cover what the learning should look like in our shifted schools. Another term providing the same function is “School 2.0″. In both cases the “2.0″ denotes the second or next generation as you might have heard described in Web 2.0 for our current read/write version of the Web. One discussion area where you can read and add to the discussion is a wiki entitled School 2.0 started by blogger Steve Hargadon. Take a look and add your thoughts about what you think a shifted school looks like.

We will be tackling the big “How to shift?” essential question this week in the Shifting Our School podcast. Our previous shows with other EQs delved into discussions that also connected to this overriding theme to our podcast. So now it is time to put some thoughts together from practical experience.

Brent Loken, the Director of Curriculum and Innovation, at Hsinchu International School (HIS) will be our guest for the show. He will offer details about one approach to helping schools make the shift to focusing on the learning of 21st century skills, constructivist learning instructional strategies and the variety of interpretations of what School 2.0 can look like. Brent and the leadership team of Grant Ruskovich, Ken Willis, and Catherine Chen were able to take a top down, leadership driven approach working with the school board, parents, students and faculty to define what they wanted their school to be about. This “about” just happens to be a very shifted school.

As a instructional technologist working under more “normal” conditions where their are pockets of shifted teachers and often non-committed leadership towards shifting to School 2.0, I will share some of the practices that I found helpful to move a school I previously worked at to being more shifted. While I list these practices as helpful towards guiding a school to Learning 2.0 outcomes, they obviously are accepted strategies that are not new to our schools and can be used as common practice in how we generally manage organizations.

Administrative Leadership: I have to say it even though there are numerous reasons why administrators can find it difficult to make a commitment to all the change and transition that goes with shifting a school. We must have the administrators at the helm if we are to shift our schools. Our last SOS podcast for the school year in June will look into what barriers administrators face in bringing about change in their schools. As this is a huge topic on its own, I won’t comment further and ask that if anyone is reading this post to tune into our podcast with Brent Loken to hear one leader provide the vision and action steps that administrators can take to shift their schools.

Conversation-Listening-Designing-Action-ASSESSMENT: The process of deciding where a school community wants to go should start with conversations around the question “What is learning?”.  Additional questions are: What does it look like? What skills will our graduating students have? What will they need to be able to do to be global citizens in an unpredictable world? What is teaching? We can then use the UbD backwards process to develop our program plan, action steps and accountability protocols. This gets down to a very personal discussion with educators about their teaching philosophy.

Time is needed along with care and attentive listening as we grow our learning community and validate one another. 

Most of us as educators have been involved in strategic or other program building plans. We worked with parents, teachers, administrators and sometimes students to decide what our mission should be as well as what outcomes we want our students to attain from our schools. These development processes have documented procedures so one can easily find the “how to” steps. I would add that I cannot value enough the importance of listening, real attentive listening, which can lead to true understanding and help move the process along.

Planning comes into play along with action steps to put all the hard work into action in our classrooms. The part of the process that I find left out for numerous reasons is accountability. This is another huge topic that deserves a great deal of attention. I will just say here that  if a school is to shift to whatever goals it sets, one needs to take all that energy at the start of the development process through to the action and assessment stages as well. We must answer the question “Are we reaching our goals?” and then adapt accordingly.

Defining, Discussing and Understanding of School/Learning 2.0: This practice clearly ties into the planning process of where a school community wants to go with their programs. There are plenty of charts, posts and articles that contrast what and how we teach with a 20th century approach to the potential 21st century version. The Framework for 21st Century Skills Web site lists the skills and now with the Route 21 education section provide a terrific place to start the education and understanding effort with one’s school community. The next step is to begin the process of defining what Web 2.0 tools with their strange names do for the learning community without any expectations for learning or using them. Simply work to take away the lack of understanding. As an instructional technology program is developed around individual and team (i.e., elementary grade level teams, middle school teams & high school departments) needs, you can then design a differentiated learning program based on those individual and group adult learning needs in your school’s learning network.

Time: This is usually a top of the list issue at any organization. We often don’t build in the time or the procedures to follow through on our plans making the work that goes with shifting our schools an additional task added to overloaded teachers’ workloads.  Time must be structured for the activities that go into the shifting process taking away other items from teachers’ plates and giving them time during the school day to focus on the shifting. And it goes without saying that the shifting process needs a great deal of time as in years to go from the conversation to the designing to the implementation to the assessment phase.

Focus: I wrote about this in a recent post. We put in a lot of time writing our strategic plans, missions statements, etc. but then stray from them leaving less time and energy to do what we say we will. My experience with international schools is that they sometimes lose their way and their focus on how they should be using their time. Check out the post as this also connects to administrative leadership.

Less is More Especially with Depth:  If we stay focused on what we say we want to do, there will be less on everyones’ plates thus we will have a better chance of reaching our goals. Common sense. Don’t try to be everything to everyone as a school. Shifted schools are guided by the mantra “how does any new program or initiative connect to our strategic plan and mission?” This gets back to administrative leadership. “No” is not a four letter word! Our leaders connected to our community learning networks gather lots of information, dialogue and then can make decisions that keep our plates less full and our lives more balanced. We will talk in a future SOS podcast about why such a common sense idea gets dropped by many schools.

Trained Change Agents & Designers: Todays library media specialists and instructional technologists receive very specific course work in designing new programs and implementing them. They also gain skill sets from their graduate programs that support their being able to be 21st century learners just like we want our students to be. By their staying on top of the latest research and by continually learning from their PLNs, they have the knowledge and skills to be the on the ground leaders who help guide our schools through the change and transition process. Support and empower them to do what they are trained to do.

It might be uncomfortable for some schools to face but old style technology coordinators with their focus on hardware and networks have been replaced with today’s instructional/educational technologists who are teachers first, grounded in instructional theory working to bridge the technology to the teachers and students in the classrooms. We have technicians and network engineers to take care of the hardware and repair issues.

The library media specialists with their training and skill sets guide our teachers and students in the multiple literacies that our 21st century learners (students, teachers and administrators) must work with and master to be adaptable and flexible learners. They cannot be the 20th century librarian focused just on reading literacy and the building of book collections. They must be leaders and partners in designing and implementing curriculum.

By working as partners with teachers and administrators in the curriculum development process, these two instructional leaders work to support the designing of curriculum to reach the learning goals for our 21st century focused schools. To see how the teachers of the HKIS Upper Primary school designed their curriculum review process, select the following hyperlink to download a copy of an article reviewing their work. HKIS Upper Primary Curriculum Review Model

Education, Communication, Ownership and Celebration Procedures: Schools need to use all of their communication channels to the community to share progress, build ownership and  celebrate everyone’s efforts as the school works towards its goals. Once schools start making the move to School 2.0, they need to use ongoing parent workshops, community coffees, student forums, newsletters, blogs, etc. to build out the community learning network with the focus on the shifting process. The school needs to be flexible and adaptable with two-way communication from the community. Along the way, celebrate the successes and shine the light on your risk takers! So often those willing to stick their necks out to try new things, offer differing opinions, and make the shift are isolated and made to feel devalued. Put these leaders’ efforts on your school Web sites, write about them in newsletters, get their ideas published in journals. These leaders will really “own” the process and share their passion for it. Ownership means accountability and follow through. Celebrate your early adopters and they will stick around instead of looking for more shifted pastures.

Get the Right Crew Onboard:  This is a biggie that can be one of the biggest storms to work your voyage through. Going back to the conversations that start the process, everyone will need to decide if they can make the commitment to the shift once they fully understand what it is all about. Administrators will need to work with their Human Resource staff to plan over a few years to give folks the opportunity to seek employment at other schools. As uncomfortable as this can be, we must face that organizations change and that it is better for everyone to move on if we cannot support the mission of our school.

The Curriculum Development Process: Being systematic is central for bringing about change. We must build in protocols that support a system that scaffolds our efforts to move towards our goals. Sadly, for so many schools, the curriculum review process can be a struggle and an unsupported effort that gets a bad name. A dynamic, well-managed system becomes a natural professional learning community that can drive how we do business in our schools. See the previous link to the HKIS Upper Primary model for more information.

Work with Your Successes: Students are already learning in our classrooms whether we are School 1.0 or 2.0. We as teachers use well thought out instructional and assessment strategies. Back to the conversations that start the shifting process, we need to assess what we are already doing well by asking questions like:

Which strategies are working really well? Which ones guide our students to our school-wide learning goals? Which ones can easily be enhanced using 2.0 strategies?

We need to remind ourselves as Rick Pierce points out that change leads to the much longer transition period that then takes us to our goals. This transition is a continuum that we all move along at different rates of speed and comfort levels. So create a collaborative team including your instructional technologist, library media specialist, administrators, curriculum coordinator and other interested parties to design an ongoing adult learning program centered on personal learning networks that start within each individual’s comfort zone and experience. Then take small steps along the continuum towards using shifted classroom instructional strategies and assessments that support your school’s shifted goals.

A quick example is that concept maps along with other graphic organizers are being used in classrooms around the world. Teachers are comfortable with them. Students learn making connections using HOTS as they map out their learning. The next step for some might be a desktop digital tool like Inspiration or Cmap while others might be ready to jump to 2.0 and the collaborative power of Mindmeister or Bubbl with 24/7 access to their work. As time moves on the next step is telecollaborative work where students and teachers make connections outside the school still using concept maps but sharing them with learners in projects like The Flat Classroom. Just remember to start with your current successes and honor the innovative work that is already getting results as you design each teacher’s shifting experience.

Also, another obvious point, make your professional development program connect to your shifting school outcomes in an ongoing, structured learning community that periodically gives learning and connection time during the school day while avoiding the end of quarter one shot, one size fits all PD days. Adult learners deserve and need differentiated instruction, time to make meaning from their experiences as well as the opportunity to apply their new learning to really give them half a chance for success. And look to work with the professionals within your school who have attended conferences, read leading educational books, and are on top of the edublogosphere who will be with you everyday as opposed to the weekend visit of a consultant.

Yet, you might go the extra step adding the depth of an experienced consultant to partner with your on site shifted teachers by having him/her stay for weeks or months at a time. Both Hong Kong International School and Hsinchu International School are using this model.

Stick To Your Guns:  So much of what I am writing here is accepted, practical knowledge. If a school community does all of these listed strategies and more, they can feel confident in that they are inclusive, transparent, systematic and clearly focused in their shift. There will still be difficulties and uncomfortable feelings at times but that is what LEARNING is all about.

Everyone from the administrator at the helm to the crew and passengers must work together to stay the course showing the courage to stand by their planning and initial goals. It is this courage that sometimes fails especially when the dreaded “Well, the parents say …” and we as educators forget we are the professionals hired to do the job of teaching the students and running the school.

Final Note:  As stated at the start, my experience is from working at a non-shifted school without a school-wide initiative or committed leadership to make the shift. We dug in and did out best as a group of educators working within the system. Brent Loken and Grant Ruskovich took a very different tack with their work at the helm of HIS. Download the SOS podcast later in the week to hear of their efforts.