Lessons Learned

Look in most social studies textbooks, read analysis of historical events and one usually finds a common categorization of information. The categories often include the economic, social, political, religious, the arts and technological angles of what happened and why. And sometimes one finds a discussion of how geography affected several of these categories. Social studies teachers make these aspects of our study of society a mainstay to our teaching.

If you are not already teaching your students how we break the study of social studies down into these categories, look to use the  ESPRAT+G acronym. Much like using the 6+1 Traits of Writing to give our students a structure and language to talk about their writing, ESPRAT+G can do the same for the understanding of social studies.

I put a Web site together that I share with my students to help them better understand ESPRAT+G. Your students might find it helpful as well.

A portion of “learning” IB history is memorizing people, places, and dates. As I am not in the Core Knowledge camp but do believe in some level of cultural literacy, I do realize my students must have a certain amount of content for their exams. Thus, I am working to be creative in coming up with helpful content attainment practices that are fun for students to do.

Playing the American baseball angle, I have my students creating history trading cards that resemble baseball cards. The person, place, event, date, etc. is listed on one side with the other side filled with pertinent information. Here is an example of a homework assignment, class lesson and follow up homework for the Interwar years.

Before class homework description:

Trading History Cards: You are to research and write down on small index style cards information about the following topics. Some have been covered in your presentations so this will be review. Try to find paper that is a little thicker than regular paper. On one side you write the topic in large letters and on the other side you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who?, When?, Why Important? and Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? Your cards cannot be any larger than 9 cm by 9 cm. Do include a drawing, map, etc. if you can. 

We will have a little competition in class to see whose specific cards you would like to trade for the most. Each student/player will have to ask for and review a trading card from as many classmates as possible on all the topics listed below. When we meet and have our trading session, each student will be allowed to ask for 7 cards in total from other players. You will also write down on your personal scorecard how well you know each topic and who has the best card for each topic. We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game.

In Class:

Trading History Cards: You are to have your cards ready with the listing of the topics on one side and on the other side you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who?, When?, Why Important? and Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? You are to use your Score Card handout to walk around and ask as many players as you can to see some of their trading cards. You must see cards for all the topics listed on your Score Card and you are to not see more than two cards from one player. We will have a little competition to see whose specific cards you would like to trade for the most. Each student/player will be allowed to ask for 7 cards in total from other players. You are to tear off a request strip from the second page of your handout and give it to the person whose card you want. Go to your Score Card to write down the name of the person you requested the card from listing his/her name in the “Golden Glover” column. Even after you hand out all 7 of your requests, continue to list the name of the player who did the best job for each topic.  We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game to see who the top three players were. And at the end of the activity, take a few moments to self assess. Are you “hitting” above .300 signifying that you really know the topic or are you batting below .300 which means you need to do some more work to understand the topic?

Homework: You are to take the topic list from today’s exercise and voice record your explanations for each one. You hopefully have new material in your minds beyond what was there when you made your trading cards. You will come back to these recordings as you prepare for the exams in the spring.

I have written in a few venues about using voice recording software like Audacity or GarageBand to support learning. Working with my 12th grade IB history students, I discovered a new strategy to fit the needs of these students who have to document their learning to study for the external exams and to help them have one more way to construct their understanding.

I am having my students take the topic list, essential questions and unit questions for our study of the Interwar years and have them voice record their current understanding of each. This should especially help those students who struggle getting their ideas down from their minds through their fingers into Word documents. It should also offer another modality to support their efforts to take notes and outline. What I will be interested to survey is when they students review for their external exams to see how helpful it will be for them to listen to their sound files.

I keep reminding them that with six area exams, they will be on information overload trying to put two years of learning into their minds this Spring. The more they can hear their own calm, confident voice recordings before they take their exams, the more I think they will quickly remember and connect to their past learning.

The TPACK approach of connecting technology, pedagogy and content to use the power of their convergence is being covered in the May issue of Learning & Leading with Technology. Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, the authors of the article, also share a wiki site that provides further information on the framework.

Judi Harris and Mark Hofer of the College of William & Mary will soon have articles also published in L & L on the TPACK theme. They recently took the theory and moved into the practical by creating their Learning Activities Type wiki. There you can find examples of regular instructional practices and assessments matched up with various supportive technologies categorized by ones that lead to convergent learning and ones that offer ways for students to show their divergent thinking.

Another resource for learning about TPACK is a podcast by the GenTech boys. Check it out.

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Panda Smith shared an online educational tool with me today called Jog the Web. It provides a slide show, step by step approach of taking viewers through Web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each Web page. The viewers can reply posting their comments and/or ask questions. As a WebQuest designer, I find myself wishing for the opportunity to “be with” my students to ask questions and guide them as they read linked sites from my WebQuests. While I provide scaffolding via questions to be answered they are not so specific to each Web site or its individual pages. Jog the Web provides the further scaffolding opportunity that I am looking for.

The students with stronger research skills and more adept at answering complex questions can skip the steps thus supporting the differentiated nature of my WebQuests. Now by using the Jog the Web designed tracks within my WebQuests, I have a much more precise way to differentiate the multiple pathways students can take in doing their research.

Outside of WebQuests, Jog the Web provides a nice way to create short learning tasks along the lines of Web scavenger hunts. To get a feel for the potential of this tool around a topic we all know so well, check out the 21st Century Skills track created by Elizabeth Holmes.

And if you are familiar with Jog the Web, what are some ways you are using it?

Do you want to “hook” your students into your topic of study? How about immersing them in the images and discussions of your subject? While we use bulletin boards for images to display information about our units of study, how about also displaying information digitally? You can put together a slide show to run continuously on your classroom television, projector & screen and on your classroom computers to surround your students with images from the unit you are studying. An example would be to show people, architecture, art, food, social scenes, etc. for a social studies unit. As inquiry driven educators, we want to put those hooks out there to lead our students to pursue answers to their own questions.

With so many recordings of famous speeches and podcasts on so many topics, it also works to either download the files when possible or set the home page in your classroom browsers to have direct links to podcasts that tie into subject matter. If you are a 1:1 laptop school, look to create a Web page with the podcast links, images and research links for your students to add as a tab to their browser home pages.

A nice source for images and screensaver software is Webshots.  Download their slide show presenter and start adding images from their vast photo database to construct a show that fits your curriculum needs. Don’t forget to check out their community pages where Webshot members share their best shots for you to download. Also think about challenging students to find more images or draw their own (think literature lessons where students draw their pictures of characters and scenes) to be added to the collection.

Cheers to Mike Lambert for starting this practice many years ago in my son’s classroom.

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Everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. We work with early adopter teachers, students, interested parents, and administrators to build a learning community open to new ideas and practices. We don’t start with overwhelmed teachers or those not so comfortable with change. We return to collaborate with them individually honoring their contributions while working to adapt their practices when possible.

Working organically, we nurture our risk takers and spread their ideas by publically celebrating best practice instructional strategies and assessments. As is written all over the edublogosphere, we must do everything possible to bring the administrators on board to provide the leadership and modeling of the instructional strategies that lead to the skill and concept-based learning our students need.

A key location to start the shifting process is the meeting rooms where our curriculum reviews take place. This is followed up by team and department meetings where lessons are finalized for the classroom. We will talk a great deal more about his next week with our SOS guest Margaret Carpenter.

Margaret will go into detail about the “who” of the shifting equation. Two key leaders are your instructional technologist and library media specialist. They can be a big part of being in lots of places to make the shift happen.

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I recently posted How Progressive is Your School? to highlight our school’s effort to measure just how progressive we are. The discussion centered upon the article by Alfie Cohen and the 8 values (Intrinsic Motivation, Social Justice, Collaboration, Whole Child, Community, Deep Understanding, Active Learning & Taking Kids Seriously) that encompass being more progressive in how we “do” school. I am now doing a series of posts about our learning community’s ideas about each value. We are now discussing one value per month and looking at ways to follow through in making the value even more a part of our culture at HIS.

• How do you build IM when students are not passionate about the subject?
• What does it really feel like to KNOW something?
• How do we build connections to expand lateral thinking?
• How do we enrich students’ lives to give them more interests to get excited about? (Field trips real & virtual, telecollaboration, reading content in classes, current events, blogging)
• Where are most of our students on the “dependent” to “independent” learning continuum?
• How to move them along the continuum?
• How many students are motivated by learning knowledge as opposed to ideas/skills?
• How to develop risk taking?
• Is project-based instruction the only (main) way to develop IM?
• How to develop the skills to be learners today and in future?
• How do 1:1 computers help or hinder IM?

Image Source: Adopted from Johneric Advento’s revised version of Margaret Carpenter’s original diagram

Our Shifting Our Schools podcast as well as Jeff’s and my blogs along with countless other podcasts and blogs share ways to help educators make the shift from traditional style, teacher-directed classrooms to what we call the Learning or School 2.0 model. This “shift” with all its edublogger advocates is all about the change process which we know is quite difficult to manage and is not happening very quickly.

While I enjoy discussing the big picture and the big ideas, my practice as an instructional technologist is on the practical, in the classroom instruction and assessment strategies that help transform classrooms into 21st century learning communities.

My belief for bringing about this transformation is that schools must develop a curriculum and collaborative systematic model that becomes the mechanism for shifting our classrooms and our schools to the School 2.0 model. Sadly curriculum development carries an uncomfortable connotation for many educators. The reality is that the curriculum should be the driving force that guides so much of what we do to affect the learning for our students. If handled well, curriculum development as a part of an engaged and thriving learning community, can be an exciting process that shifts and transforms our schools. Obvious information but sadly we often put little thought into how we develop or follow through with our curriculum.

We often spoke about this on our SOS podcast with one show centered on the work of the International School Bangkok’s team of technology resource coordinators and literacy specialist. The ISB team constructed a curriculum development model and recently Kim Cofino created a collaboration flow chart that together nicely presents a model for other schools to review and possibly adopt and individualize to meet their needs.

Back to the practical… Kim will be presenting at the Learning 2.008 conference next week about the importance of curriculum and collaboration in bringing about the shift in our schools. After watching Kim’s slide show for her presentation, I remembered a workshop that I started to put together for another conference. It dealt with how a school learning community begins the process of designing their own curriculum and collaboration system. As I am not able to attend the Learning 2.008 conference, it makes sense to get the components for my workshop out there as a practical way to help support Kim’s and others’ efforts. Each school is different and whether one looks at the ISB model or the one we created at HKIS, the process for developing the model needs to start by engaging all the stakeholders in the discussion.

My next several posts will share the questions that teachers and administrators can use to start their discussion as they work to develop their own systematic way to review curriculum that integrates the instructional strategies, content, assessments and 21st century learning skills that will shift their schools to the Learning 2.0 model.

We will be discussing this question in the SOS podcast this week. As an Instructional Technologist much of my work deals with the integration of technology into instruction and assessments. The integration process begins from the big picture (Macro) by looking at the needs of the students and teachers as we design the curriculum as well as when we create a learning and technology plan focused on student learning. The other approach is when we collaborate working on individual lessons (Micro) to reach the stated learning objectives.

The Macro:  Learning and Technology Plan || The Curriculum Development Process

We recently formed a committee and are working on our “Learning and Technology” plan right now at Hsinchu International School. The process centers upon how we work to have our students reach the five learning outcomes. The Learning Outcomes are:

• Effective Communicators
• Critical Thinkers & Problem Solvers
• Persons of High Character
• Active Learners
• Community Contributors

There are three main ways we work to help our students reach these learning goals:

1. Instructional Models
2. Assessment Techniques
3. Learning Communities

We are using Mindmeister to map out and collaborate as we develop our plan. The screen shot above is our initial effort to prime the committee work. As one can see, there is no listing of any technology tools at the primary level. It is all about teaching and learning.

Looking closer at the mind map, one category is “Instructional Models”. Two models that we use frequently at HIS are project-based and inquiry. Our next step is to define what each of these models looks like in our classrooms and then look for ways that technology and Information & Communication Literacy (ICL) can support and enhance each approach.  If we were using a multi-level concept-mapping tool like Smart Ideas, the technology tools would begin to appear on the third level. The technology infrastructure is down at the fourth level, way in the background, providing the foundation for the technology tools that support the learning at the upper two levels.

We will use the Learning and Technology plan to design our professional development goals for the coming school year. The focus will be on improving instructional and assessment techniques while expanding the learning community. We will provide the PD to help educators learn the technology and ICL tools/skills that our plan shows as needed to support the 3 main categories that support our 5 student learning outcomes at the center of our plan and school.

The curriculum development process is a part of our plan in the Learning Community category. We use the Understanding by Design process to create our units of study that also involves the integration of technology and ICL skills.

The Micro: When working with teachers one on one or in small groups, we again use the UbD approach to determine what the learning will look like and how we will assess it to then work backwards in creating the instruction and content. As the collaboration progresses, we discuss possible ways that technology and/or research skills can support and enhance the learning. Just as with the broad, school-wide approach of the Learning and Technology plan, the technology does not enter the picture until we are far along in designing how to meet the learning objectives.

The learning determines the technology. Not the other way around.