Lessons Learned

I wrote a short piece for our school yearbook describing how being a 1:1 laptop school affects our learning community. I cover just a few of the ways these wonderful learning tools affect the way we communicate, organize ourselves and learn.

The 1:1 Apple laptop program drives much of the learning at HIS giving students and teachers access to numerous software programs, online tools and the Internet. From early morning through the evening, our community of learners uses their laptops to communicate, gather information, organize their day, generate learning projects, and expand the learning community.

Students start their days by checking their Google email accounts for any messages from fellow students and teachers. The next step is to log in to our classroom management Web resource named Moodle. Moodle is a virtual learning place where teachers post homework assignments and use several tools like forums, wikis and Web site link directories to manage their courses. Moodle also brings our community together by listing important dates, links to our student-created videos and online photo slideshows.

Accessing information is central to the learning expeditions our students and teachers take together. Whether venturing forth in teacher created WebQuests or pursuing one’s own questions, the laptops make inquiry learning a significant part of our curriculum. Online textbooks, simulations and Web site resources add to the information rich environment.

The student MacBooks come with the iLife suite of multimedia software programs that provide the instruments to:

-edit and manage photo collections
-shoot and edit video
-create multimedia presentations
-generate original musical scores for multimedia projects
-record and edit podcasts

Moving into the evening, students check Moodle for assignments and updated information from their teachers. They might log into their Google Documents account to revise an essay they are sharing online with their teacher. Or maybe they are just starting an essay or video project so they go to their Mindmeister concept mapping Web site to brainstorm their ideas which can then be reviewed by their teachers. Finally, it is time for reflection and seeing what is happening in the world. This is when students check their favorite news sites, think about their learning and go to their blogs to record their thoughts.

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.

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.

We talk about how technology can enhance learning. It can be a big part of the shift in moving how we focus on learning as opposed to teaching. While some teachers for various reasons can be uncomfortable trying new technologies, I would like to share some examples of how going digital makes our lives easier, more productive and frees up time to do the planning to design lessons that helps us make the real shift to discovery learning by our students. Here are just a few ways to be more efficient by going digital:

Video Lab Report: Brent Loken, our Director of Curriculum & Innovation and teacher at Hsinchu International School shared a couple student e-porfolios with me the other day. While we promote writing across the curriculum, Brent decided to offer his students a multimedia way to report their laboratory results. As we are an Apple 1 to 1 school, the students just used the internal video camera on their laptops and recorded into iMovie.  They could “show and tell” exactly what happened in their respective lab experiences. This is a nice alternative for our ESL students who are moving along with spoken language and sometimes need an outlet other than writing.

The Writing Process: My students recently spent several weeks going through the writing process to produce personal narratives.

The students did their writing in Google Documents and shared their work with me and classmates who helped them as peer editors. It was so easy for me to go through each draft adding comments and questions into each student’s document. I enjoyed seeing the comments by their classmates as we formed our learning teams to help one another with the writing.

What I also liked was that we were not in the documents to edit the words, grammar, etc. as so many Language Arts teachers do. We were partners using the language of the 6 Traits offering guidance but not taking over the writing. Once the students completed their final draft, they went in and deleted all the comments. I could then go into the history of the revisions and see the progress and thinking of the students as they worked through the writing process.

I also enjoyed saving time! We saved so much time not dealing with paper. Access is instantaneous and no papers are lost on the way to school.

Mind Mapping 2.0: My wife Margaret and I have been big proponents of using mind/concept maps for a long time. Our tool of choice in our last school in an elementary environment was Inspiration.

We really enjoyed the power of using visuals with our elementary and ESL students. Now that I am working with MS and HS students looking to help them collaborate, I am moving on to 2.0 mind mapping tools. There are many choices but at the moment, I am using Mindmeister. It doesn’t offer the graphics but I am guessing that they would not use them much if offered. The students create their mind maps for various research, writing or just reflective purposes and then they share them with me. I can monitor their thinking and add comments. My 7th graders are starting a WebQuest on Africa where each student with a partner shares a common Mindmeister mind map. They are diagramming their questions and using the note tool to record their research and potential answers to their questions.

MacBook Camera:  While I am pushing my students to make sure they have a camera that can take still and video recordings, we are finding that their MacBooks can be pretty versatile photography tools. As Brent Loken’s science students use their cameras and iMovie software to record their science lab reports, we are finding numerous other ways to enhance learning via the MacBook camera.

A part of the Hsinchu International School culture is that students should be sharing and presenting their learning to the school community as much as possible. As they complete their work in the second year of their “Institutes” (Institute I is grades 7-8, Institute 2 is grades 9-10, Institute 3 is grades 11-12), the students are required to present their efforts to reach the five student learning outcomes that are central to the school.  The advisors for the institutes work with the students to document their learning and to then prepare their presentations. As we get closer to the end of the year, each student will practice his/her presentation in front of the other institute students. We will have them bring their MacBooks to the podium to record their efforts. They will then have the videos to review at home using the provided presentation rubric. We won’t be dealing with the hassle of using a camcorder and having to transfer footage to each student in some form or other. The footage will already by on their hard drives. Going digital leaving out the normal in this case digital tool for the more flexible laptop will save lots of time and energy.

Kim Cofino will be our featured guest during this week’s Shifting Our Schools podcast. Kim has found a spot in the blogosphere as a leader for helping our students make the learning connections outside of the classroom. To learn more about networking for learning, definitely spend some time on her Always Learning blog. 

My wife Margaret reminds me of our previous SOS discussions where we spoke about making connections around concepts. With many of our schools using the Understanding by Design approach to curriculum design, our focus is on concepts in the form of essential understandings. Margaret points out that real critical thinking comes into play as students learn about the hierarchical nature of concepts and their connections to other ideas. From a teaching perspective, we can look at how to facilitate the process of students taking the steps to and gaining understanding of concepts. One big tool teachers have used for a long time is concept mapping. Inspiration and Cmap digitally provide the means to create and save mind maps on our computers while newer Web 2.0 tools like Bubbl and Mindmeister (among several) offer the additional benefit of collaboration.   

Another way to look at how to connect is with hardware and the Web. As a handheld user for many years, I became a reader of gadget blogs like Engadget and Brighthand hoping to one day find an article describing a tech company that was going to create a learning tool for the education market. This hybrid wifi-enabled computer, phone, camera, GPS, tablet device would come with a software package focused on the needs of students and educators. The reason for asking for such a Swiss knife handheld is that if students are to really be at the center of the learning process, they must have ubiquitous access to the Web as well as the means to gather data on spot, process and then publish it.

Are we there, yet? The business market has some very expensive connection tools that one wouldn’t probably feel comfortable giving to students to keep. We are getting closer with some of the products coming from HTC as well as Apple and even Asus with the EEE PC. The EEE is helping to drive the costs down. Battery life continues to be a problem for many handhelds while the Microsoft mobile operating system doesn’t come close to offering the smooth functionality of the Apple iPhone and iTouch platforms. 

Yet, the signs look very positive. I look forward to my sons having such a device when they ask a science, historical, etc. research question wherever we might be and they want to take a photo/video of something interesting and they simply want to know where we are and where we are going.

One of the goals of the Shift Our Schools: SOS podcast is to highlight and celebrate those “shifted” teachers using learning 2.0 thinking to adapt their instruction and assessments to meet the learning needs of their students. I will be sharing a great many of these stories about the secondary teachers of Hsinchu International School (HIS) in the coming weeks and will offer a few tidbits of creative teaching in this post. My previous school, the Upper Primary of Hong Kong International School (HKIS), also has some shifted types coming up with very creative ways to use technology and information literacy skills in their classrooms.

Sheryl Gruber and Patrick Truchon of HIS use the Geometry Sketchpad software as the mechanism for students to ask questions and use problem-solving skills as they journey to discover math concepts through their self-guided work. The students in Sheryl and Patrick’s classes received differentiated instruction by the groups they work in. They move through the discovery process at a comfortable speed that fits their skill level and understanding. The teams work together to use Geometry Sketchpad to design and create products which demonstrate their understanding of the concepts shared by the teacher. The teachers work on the sidelines to step in and ask guiding questions and to help students in their problem-solving efforts. As the students progress through their math courses, they add their completed projects to their electronic portfolios for assessment.

For more information on this discovery approach to mathematics education, check out the information on Brent Loken’s Web site. Brent and Sheryl shared their instructional methods at the recent NCTM national conference. To see examples of student exhibition work, visit the HIS media Web site.

Thomas Perkins like all of the HIS teachers follows the school’s instructional strategy of working with students to design “learning expeditions”. These student-design efforts are drawn from the essential questions of the curriculum units. Students in Thomas’ class recently completed a poetry unit where the used visual literacy and research skills to find images on the Web that connected to the poetry they were writing. Thomas’ students then presented their images with music and their reading of their work in short videos presented in “Exhibition” time during the twice weekly all school morning gatherings. As a school focused on project-based learning, it is routine at HIS for portions of these sharing times to be used for students presenting their learning to the community.  Grant Ruskovich, the school principal, leads the school’s learning 2.0 efforts through his classroom teaching and directing efforts of whole school activities like the school musical. A foundation belief for the school is to build and support community. To support this outcome, Wednesday afternoons are designated as an activity period for all students and faculty to pursue interests outside of classroom academics.

The teachers of the Upper Primary school of HKIS follow a more traditional approach to student learning with several teachers working within their classrooms to expand upon the technology and information literacy skills that are integrated into the social studies, science and language arts curriculum units. Using Audacity to create podcasts for end-of-unit assessments led Ben Hart, a grade 3-4 teacher, to have his students start recording their writing conferences. Ben now prompts his students to record their thoughts on how they are improving their use of the writing process, what they are working on as writers and what next steps they plan to take. Ben shares “it is quicker than their responding through writing” while providing him instant feedback as he listens to the sound files from the writing conferences.

Many of Hart’s students use PhotoStory for common assessments using images and voiceovers to share their learning. Viewers are wowed by the students’ videos but teachers appreciate the underlying language arts and information literacy skills that go into the research and writing of the scripts for the voiceovers. Ben is now creating a PhotoStory video to introduce the upcoming “Human Body” unit. He is drawing his own digital images and diagrams as well as using images from the Web to grab his students’ interest and introduce key themes for the unit.

David Navis, a 5th grade teacher, has expanded upon how Inspiration mind maps are integrated into the social studies and science units. Students are provided a mind map template with the essential questions for the various units. They start the units with a pre-assessment, responding to the essential questions by adding new symbols with their ideas to their diagrams.  As the school emphasizes “inquiry” (Jamie McKenzie has visited HKIS), the students also add any questions that come to mind in the “parking lot” section of the mind maps. As the units progress, students continue their reflection to further develop their responses to the questions. Navis intentionalizes the use of this process for deeper student reflection and learning by having them use set colors for their new symbols at each stage of reflection (e.g., blue symbols for start of the unit, grey for the middle, green for end of the unit). David reports “Once the diagram is complete, I switch to outline form on the class projector using an example from one of my students with his/her permission. It becomes very evident how their thinking and knowledge has expanded. The next stop is to have them write an essay from the outline.”

With all of the students doing research for a Civil War Unit common assessment project, Gene Cheh, a 5th grade teacher, did his own exploration and multimedia creation expanding upon the initial information literacy research skills integrated into the unit. Gene used Flash to construct a slideshow of primary source posters for the students to interpret using visual and information literacy skills.  Gene used clickable “hot spots” on the poster images that provided probing questions for his students’reflection.

Many other shifted instructional strategies can be found at the best practices section of the HKIS Teacher Toolkit.

I mentioned in our first SOS podcast that the brain with all of its neurons and synaptic activity is nature’s most wonderful network. As new information is embedded into our long term memories, our brains work to connect the new ideas with other ones previously learned. The more connections branching out in multiple directions from each of our ideas, the more apt we are to remember and actively engage these newly seeded ideas. As the ideas are used and connected to, the more they sprout tree-like roots and branches to other ideas. We “water, fertilize and send sunshine” to our ideas by filling our learning environment with rich stimuli coming at us through as many senses as possible. 

The “brain popping”, as Mike Lambert says, really takes off when we start making lateral thinking connections where our ideas and memories are applied to new situations. We then have to reconfigure our thinking and come up with new ideas often in a problem-solving manner highly engaging to our brains. This is when very powerful learning takes place as we move into the creative realm of Bloom’s Taxonomy. To engage our own brain in making connections, take a moment to think of a person, place, event, food, smell, sight, etc. Then let your mind pick up the connections to other ideas that it is sending impulses to in reaction to your thoughts. The connections are very real as the networked ideas flood your mind.

So how do we bring in additional stimulation to our classrooms to further the expand the amount of “roots” and “branches” of the ideas in our students’ minds? One way is to use cooperative learning techniques. It is a mainstay and well-researched instructional strategy proven to increase learning. The obvious interpersonal and group dynamic skills of working together are powerful. But it is the sharing of ideas, hearing different viewpoints, and building off each other’s thoughts to clarify understanding and create new thinking that is the most dynamic.

Many learning theories start the process of learning by building in an “engagement” first phase. Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT has the “Quadrant One” focus of making internal connections to previous learning to make meaning in the new learning experiences. Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman’s Pathways Learning Model “Phase 1″ of the Pathways Learning Model is for “activating and engaging”. They really hit the mark about the importance of making connections in the book Pathways to Understanding.

“Our current knowledge about learning informs us that we must support students in making connections; connections between what they know and what they are learning, between what they are learning and the opportunity for application in a variety of contexts; and between the relevance of their newly gained understandings and their own lives.” (p. 10)

Thus, the networking and development of learning environments and communities to make connections clearly improves the learning process in our students’ minds. Now on to shifting…

By using social networking and generative Web tools like wikis, blogs, netcasts, video conferencing, etc, we expand the cooperative learning opportunities for our students.  We definitely increase the variety and richness of the stimulation when we connect our students to other children and adults around the world. Our students move laterally with their thoughts into the classrooms of students across the world. What they sometimes find is that they need to reevaluate their ideas when they hear different perspectives. What seemed pretty simple is often more complex thus needing problem-solving that often works best when done in collaboration. Accepted analogies of understanding applied to new cultures and experiences often don’t hold up. Cause and effect thinking is expanded with complexity of additional and varying viewpoints and information.

This digital expansion of our students’ personal learning networks highly correlates to the growth of our students’ very networked minds. An excellent example of this idea of making connections to increase learning by using Web 2.0 tools is the Flat Classroom Project.  Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay have run this project for a couple years. We will be interviewing Julie for our SOS Podcast on “How does making connections affect learning?”.

“Put the Essential Questions up on the wall, display, wherever students can see them” we are told by McTigue and Wiggins. In other words, put the EQs in the students’ mind from day 1 of the unit. One way to do this is to use a digital mind mapping tool like Inspiration, Cmap, Mindmeister and/or Bubbl with a built in template of the EQs. The students then expand the diagram with their ideas and understanding as the unit progresses.

If the students use Inspiration, the teacher will need access to their network storage to formatively assess understanding. One could also ask the students to blog periodically to describe what they are adding to their mind maps. The teacher needs the account sign on information to access the online mind maps if those tools are used.

The completed mind maps can be used as the common assessment and/or as a talking point for students working in groups to share ideas as they prepare for an upcoming assessment. The sharing is powerful as the students build on each other’s understandings. One could also have them post to their blogs or possibly use an online forum to have the discussion take place after school hours.

For more on concept/mind mapping, check out the Teacher Toolkit section on Inspiration and the Teaching Tool area that has 3 resource links for concept mapping.

My several weeks teaching MS humanities reminded me of how much teachers and students spend time and resources (paper and ink) handing papers back and forth to each other. I know that I was spending several minutes a class on some days collecting and handing papers back to the students. Clearly, a well-managed classroom virtual learning environment turns this into a digital exchange that is much more efficient. I also subbed for a very digitally minded high school teacher who managed several online tools that allowed for a total digital collaborative environment for his students. I spent no time handling papers in his class.

I taught a fifth grade class that past week. I was in school today reading their journals (as opposed to carrying home 20 notebooks) and typing up responses to be printed and placed in the notebooks (my handwriting is not readable). My responses were questions and prompts to lead the students to rethink and revise their writing. I will give them time on Monday to react and write in their notebooks.

The barrier to this dialog continuing and being differentiated (some students will need much more of my attention) is the back and forth traveling of the notebooks. I think about those days when I would have some unexpected time to look at the journals of a couple students but am at home and their notebooks are at school.

We know that wikis, blogs, Moodle, Google Docs, etc. offers the virtual 24/7 environment for digital journals (not blogging as these journals are just between the student & the teacher) to provide the efficient way for students and teachers to connect with their writing. And what about really having a dialog via my posting of voice files into the students’ digital journals? One way I am prompting a few students to develop their writing is to have them mind map out the characters of the books they wrote about. It would have been nice to model this in Bubbl or Mindmeister depending on where we had set up a class account to then just put a link in the student’s online journal.

Students could also do their peer commenting online while parents have constant access to participate in their child’s writing or other school work. The main barrier is access to the computers at school as all the students can connect at home. I look forward to the day when my sons will carry a small laptop with them as opposed to the notebooks and books they use now.

I was covering for a teacher the other day showing videos from the Safari Montage system. A couple things jumped out at me. Whether one is using Safari or Unitedstreaming, the providers understand that we should be using very focused clips as opposed to showing entire videos. By providing videos broken down into segments, they remind us that our students need time to digest the material to gain understanding.

The think-pair-share instructional strategy can be very helpful in this situation. After showing a short clip, give the students a few moments to record their thought on paper or in digital form if they have laptops. This is a terrific opportunity to use a concept mapping tool like Inspiration, Cmap, Mindmeister or Bubbl. The teacher could start the lesson by prompting the students with the central concept/idea being covered by the video that the students then place in the center of their maps. Each clip then becomes a new symbol from which the students branch out their ideas.

The class then moves on to watch all the clips stopping at the end of each to record their individual reactions. Once all the media is shared, the students then work with a partner to share what they recorded in their maps. They would also record any thoughts that come from their conversations. The maps could then be used by the teacher in several ways to deepen or connect the learning some place else. The teacher definitely has an assessment to check for understanding to see if he/she met the learning goal for the lesson.

The videos we watched were chosen by students who went into the Safari system with their assigned topics to then create playlists with title slides introducing each segment creating a sort of mashup. I liked that this was a student-centered activity and that it gave students the opportunity to work on the information literacy and communication (ICL) skills of reviewing content and then generating a cohesive presentation from it. When we think of specific ICL skills we focus on the accessing and analysis of the information but we also need to teach how to compile the information from the various media sources into a well-designed and communicated format.