Tip of the Iceberg

While waiting outside for my 3.5 year old to finish her ballet class, I overheard some parents talking about schools for their kids. Naturally, my ears pricked up.

One (Singaporean) parent said she had found the perfect school for her daughter. I was intrigued! Her criteria? The teachers had been teaching at the same school for over 20 years.

I know fabulous teachers (as I’m sure you do) who have been teaching for more than 20 years, and I do not mean to take anything away from them. I also know fabulous teachers who are only just beginning their careers, and I feel the Mum who judged a good school by the fact that the teachers had been there a long time was missing the boat.

Longevity does not necessarily equal a good teacher.

Longevity at an international school doesn’t equal a good teacher either! The cynic in me might think (upon hearing a teacher has been at the same school for 20 years), what’s the package like at THAT school?

Some kids may blossom under a certain teacher, and others may wilt.

Caring, passion and determination are my measures of a good teacher. They can just as easily be found in teachers new to the profession as they can on those with decades of experience.

The parents in question had their daughters in the ballet class for a trial lesson. It was interesting hearing their interpretations of how the lesson was going and what they thought of the teacher, based on their observations through the glass window.

In my opinion, you could not wish for a kinder, gentler teacher than my daughter’s ballet teacher. She makes classes fun (there is much pretending to be flamingos, tigers, fairies etc, which appeals to my daughter’s imagination). She never appears cross at anyone, and is one of those beautiful people who you can tell is a dancer just by the way she holds herself. My daughter adores her.

The parents of the girls who came for the trial lesson judged her unsmiling and boring. In the above photo (taken as the kids were entering the class), there are fewer than 10 children in the lesson, but the day they attended there were about 16-20 3-4 year olds. The teacher made sure everyone was participating, having fun, and enjoying their experience. I take my hats off to early years teachers on a daily basis. Just getting them standing still is one thing, let alone doing any ballet!

It’s a hard job being a teacher. It’s got to be even harder having over-involved parents staring in at you, watching you teach.

It makes me even more determined to make sure those good teachers out there know how good I think they are.

Wesley Fryer’s recent blog post entitled ‘Sharing by default and encouraging others to share‘ prompted me to share this super video about Creative Commons, called ‘A Shared Culture.’

When I began teaching, I wanted to keep my good work to myself - I wanted that fun learning experience to be something I gave the kids in my classroom. In truth, I probably wanted recognition for my work (hey, I was only 22!).

Now, 10 years on, I believe the measure of a good teacher is how much they share. I know that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I don’t want to hold on to my best ideas/lessons/websites/activities/flipcharts etc etc - I want to share them so that more students and teachers can learn with them, build on them and improve them.

I am a great believer in collaboration, and know that the quality of work I produce with others, and the ideas and suggestions I gain from others, far exceeds the work I am capable of producing on my own.

Pass it on…

Thoughts have been percolating in my head about 21st century literacy, digital tools and skills. UWCSEA is at a tipping point, and we’re moving in a new direction for ICT next school year.

Currently, when I take each class for ICT, the classroom teacher is released. My sessions relate closely to what the teachers are doing in their classes, wherever possible.

Next year, I will not be providing ICT lessons for each class on a weekly basis, but will instead work with each class in depth 2 times a year. I will plan and teach alongside the classroom teachers (the guide by the side), so that the skills involved are not only passed on to the students, but to the teachers as well. We are adopting the ISTE NETS, and I will be meeting the rest of the ICT team to look at how we can integrate them into our existing skills and curriculum plans.

It’s a big step for the school, and I am very proud that we are making it, but it will be a giant leap for many teachers. There needs to be a lot of modeling, supporting, scaffolding and enthusiasm for it to work effectively.

That said, I don’t want to squander the opportunity we have to revolutionize the way we are teaching by doing the same old things in new ways. When reading the editorial in the latest TIME magazine, I came across a quote from Richard Stengel, which resonated with me:

…for we must adapt to new technology, and not simply by putting old wine in new bottles. We need to adapt by creating our content in a way that is organic to those new mediums.

It is easy to take existing tasks and inject technology into them. Indeed, maybe that is an initial step, one that is necessary to take in order to move to the next level. Perhaps teachers need to add some tools to their digital toolbox before they can start creating new experiences for their students. I’m talking about experiences which involve not just the addition of technology, but working and thinking in new ways, which technology enables us to do. I don’t have all the answers or examples, just a feeling about it all.

I am impatient to make global connections de rigueur, to get teachers involved in developing their PLN’s, to get people as excited about technology use as I am! Is it too much to ask?

I guess I’m at the tip of the iceberg…

Photo credit: cindyt7070

I have a secret identity. One very few of my real-time friends know about. It is my life online.

Online I’m a blogger. I have several blogs, documenting my work with students and my learning in technology education. I read other people’s blogs, comment on them and learn from them on a daily basis.

Online I’m a tweeter. Through Twitter, I have met a huge number of creative, talented, intelligent and inspiring people. I enjoy sharing information, ideas and random thoughts with many of them. I have certainly made new friends through Twitter.

Online I have followers. Although this fact never ceases to amaze me, there are people out there who read my blog and have me in their Google Reader! I can’t imagine a greater compliment than that!

Online people know me for my work. They know what I’m doing in my classroom, which tools I think are great, the highlights and challenges of teaching IT.

Online I help people find answers. I like being able to support newcomers to the online world I live in. I like being able to make a difference to people and help find solutions to their problems.

I have a very supportive group of family and friends, yet they seldom (if ever) read my blog posts. It appears am not alone in this: I put out the following tweet: Do your friends/family read your blog? Here are some responses:

That said, it’s important to get a balanced perspective on the issue. @nadinedickinson pointed out that her blog isn’t relevant to her friends/family, but it is for her coworkers.

If I take my particular situation, I am living overseas, and the vast majority of my friends are also teachers. Both of my parents are teachers. My sister is married to a teacher. I’m surrounded! My blog is particularly relevant to them as a group.

The intention of this post was not to moan about the number of friends/family members reading my blog, but rather highlight the fact that my friends/family have little idea about the extent of my online existence.

It makes me wonder what I don’t know about their lives.

Way back in January, Katie and I began our foray into staff technology PD with our Connecting East initiative. It was loosely based on the 23 Things model started by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. What made it different is we didn’t choose to focus on 23 Things, but instead had 10 weeks of tasks for participants to complete at 4 different ability levels: Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner and Expert.

We kept the incentive feature of the original 23 Things (the prize draw includes iPod shuffle, wine or book vouchers), as we felt there needed to be a carrot at the end, especially when working through parent-teacher conferencing time!

Our broad, overall aim was to encourage the teachers at our East Campus to use more technology in their classrooms. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and we are about to find out what participants thought about the tasks as a whole when they reflect on the process on the Connecting East blog for the final week of challenges.

I thought I would take the time to document some of the things I learned over the course of the 10 weeks. Here goes:

Cut to the chase

Think like a participant! My long, chatty blog posts at the beginning of the 10 weeks were too much for time-starved teachers, who just wanted an answer to the question: What do I have to do? Much though it pained me to realise, they weren’t interested in my witty repartee. Same thing for the wiki, where we thoughtfully designed a structure (see example below) which outlined the definition and examples before launching into the tasks:

Once it became clear that (generally speaking) participants weren’t interested in the info/history of the task, we modified the structure of the wiki to the one that follows, where after a brief definition, we went straight into the tasks:

We (somewhat sneakily) went a stage further by incorporating what we hoped people would read (in terms of examples etc) into the tasks themselves, so they became requirements, rather than options.

To link, or not to link?

In the early days of the initiative, I tried to be a good blogger and link to everything link-able (see example below).

Linking might be a good idea in the general blogosphere, but many novice participants found it confusing, as they saw a link and wanted to click on it. They weren’t sure which links they were supposed to click on and meant that we had a lot of explaining to do when it came to our Fruity Friday drop-in sessions.

To counter this phenomenon, we removed links behind Image Chef generated pictures, and put a giant button at the bottom of each post (see below), so participants would know exactly where they needed to go for the tasks.

Not everyone’s a techno-geek

When Katie and I were planning, we had a tendency to assume participants knew what we knew. E.g. just sign up for Delicious and get started. We really had a huge spectrum of ability levels, from people who were unsure what a username was, to people who had their own blog and were quite happy embedding things left, right and centre. The challenge was to cater to everyone’s needs.

I believe the 4 levels of tasks did that, however we benefited by running the tasks by people somewhere in the middle, to see if it made sense to them. We asked some participants how they thought novices might find this task etc, which provided us with valuable feedback for our planning. Call it a reality check, if you will!

Be flexible

Go with the flow. Some weeks, it was obvious that teachers were more focused on their upcoming Parent-Teacher conferences (and rightly so), than on completing our challenges. In these instances, we extended the time allowed for a set of tasks. I am sure the participants were as grateful for the extra time as we were.

It’s a time-hungry exercise

We volunteered for this initiative, so we’re not complaining, but I don’t think anyone has any idea just how much time we put into this process. Informal meetings before school, snatched conversations between classes, working late after school and having homework tasks in the evenings, was how we kept on top of it. I know the work we put in this year will be useful for subsequent years, but there were days when I thought maybe 2 weeks would have been easier than 10!

Two heads are better than one

I simply couldn’t have pulled this off without Katie. Having a like-minded person to bounce ideas off made all the difference! Going into this exercise, I would say that working with a blog was well within my comfort zone, whereas I was less confident with wikis. Developing this PD was a fabulous opportunity to improve my own skills. I can definitely say I’ve improved, however poor Katie had to help me out with html code and layout issues on an embarrassingly regular basis!

Katie and I complemented each other nicely, and participants were given a much broader range of perspectives as a result.

Face-to-face matters

The Fruity Friday sessions really worked, as they gave people an opportunity to drop in and get small-group or one-on-one assistance when they needed it. Some people turned up religiously every week, and others came in a couple of times. Either way, if they needed us, they knew where to find us.

Where to next?

If I could start over again, I would consider the following:

• Making it compulsory for all teachers. Sometimes people need a figurative kick in the pants to get going on this, otherwise things may never change.
• Having whole-school technology workshops during an inset day, to make a big difference in a short time period
• Promoting each set of tasks at the weekly morning briefing or staff meeting.
• Having a shorter overall time, e.g. 3 week blocks, where the tasks were shared ahead of time and teachers could opt into blocks that interest them most.
• Making more of an effort to highlight teachers who are using technology in their classrooms

Photo credits:
Logo modified from carlaarena
Chase: Steve Wampler
Link: P^UL
Geek: sd
Starfish: ooberayhay
Time: Michel Filion
2 heads: Daniel Fardin
Face: Erica Marshall

I tried backchannel chat for the first time during keynote addresses at the EARCOS Teachers Conference: ETC09.

What is Backchannel Chat? It’s like note-taking at a lecture, but notes are shared with anyone who has the URL. They might be people in the room with you, but they could also be anywhere in the world. At ETC09, this meant that while the keynote speaker was presenting, a group of us were on our laptops, sharing notes about the presentation, though there were some people in different countries tuning in (see links to transcripts of our backchannel chat at the end of this post). We used TinyChat, which was really easy and straightforward to set up, though others have also recommended Chatzy.

Initially, I found it hard to keep up with the fast pace.  I struggled to answer a question from a friend beside me AND watch the speaker AND type AND listen. Was I focused? I was certainly concentrating. I hadn’t concentrated this hard on a keynote speech before, that’s for sure!

After a few minutes, I got the hang of it and managed to keep up enough to contribute to the discussion. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and now I’m completely sold.

10 reasons you should try backchannel chat:

1. Keeping up - The great thing about the chat was that if I got behind on what the speaker was saying, I could scroll back over the comments of the other participants and catch up that way.
2. Remaining on-track - I found @amichetti and @jutecht typed really quickly and managed to keep the discussion focused on the keynote, not just random thoughts. This was helpful for me as a person new to backchannel chatting, who didn’t yet know the etiquette.
3. Transferring knowledge - I had a better understanding of the keynote as a whole, because I was typing it - transferring it into another form. It was easier for me to remember later, rather than just aurally listening.
4. Staying Focused - I was more focused on what was being said because I felt I had to attend to contribute to the discussion. I wanted to pull my weight and not ride on others’ coat-tails.
5. Engagement - The chat had me not only focused, but totally engaged. The number of multiple intelligences addressed at one time was definitely higher than had I only been listening. As @amichetti suggested to me via Twitter, backchannel chats can be particularly engaging when the presentation is more content-focused rather than skill-driven.
6. Perspectives - I had the benefit of other people’s perspectives. This was fascinating. We all ‘heard’ things differently. When we transferred what we heard into our own words, different perspectives were offered.  Certain parts resonated more than others for each of us, due to our varied prior knowledge and experiences.
7. Clarification - if there was a word/phrase introduced that we were unclear of, one of us would look it up on wikipedia, so we were getting near-instant clarification of new vocabulary. I couldn’t have done that myself. @nadinedickinson told me (via Twitter) that she like the instant feedback that was possible during a backchannel chat.



8. Review - I benefited because I had material to review and look over later. Not only did I have my notes, but I had the notes of everyone else in the chat.
9. Divide and Conquer - people in our chat took on different roles. @Skardalien helped out by looking up words we were unsure of or videos that related to the topic. @amichetti was a speedy typist and great note-taker. What we learned together I felt was greater than we could have accomplished individually.
10. Fun - I really enjoyed the chance to connect with people during the keynote, rather than being a passive observer. I consider myself an interpersonal learner, and the backchannel chat allowed me to participate in the way I learn best - with others.

During one keynote, I received this tweet from @rhondacarrier: @klandmiles thanks for keeping us up-to-date with what is happening. Very useful for those of us that aren’t there #ETC09

Until that tweet came through, I wasn’t truly aware of the realm of influence of our chat. It stretched around the world! Our chat was helping other people learn across countries, as if they were there themselves. That certainly upped my levels of responsibility! I sat a bit straighter after that!
[Please check out Rhonda's blogpost on the uses of backchanneling for more information]

So how does this relate to my class? Earlier this academic year, I tested out the chat function in Studywiz with my Grade 4 students to discuss an essential agreement for blogging. I found that some of the kids who would normally not say anything, were the ones who had the most to say in a chat forum. That is HUGE! I need to consider different ways to conduct discussions and ensure I provide a range of options to cater to every child’s needs.

Tips: I would recommend using small groups so the kids can keep up with each other - 22 kids all typing at once makes a challenging chat to follow! I’d do 4 separate chats next time, so everyone can follow easily and participate effectively.

How does it relate to me as a workshop leader? I cringe now at how I made people turn their phones off during a PYP workshop I led in Jakarta recently. Next time I’d like to set up a backchannel chat as some people feel more comfortable asking questions and/or participating that way. It would give me a chance to check their understanding (and levels of focus!) later on, and perhaps clarify further any points where necessary.

I’m definitely going to look for ways to incorporate backchannel chat into my regular teaching repertoire. How about you?

Links to Backchannel Chats of Keynote speeches at ETC09 can be found on the following pages:
William Lishman - If We Are Not Part of the Solution We Are Part of the Problem
John Liu - “Earth’s Hope” - Responding To Climate Change - By Healing the Planet

Further reading: Ben Grundy’s post on Back-Channel Chat in Class

Photo Credit: FadderUri

Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

Audacity is a great audio editor for use in the classroom. It can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, and the best part about it is that it is free!

NB: The Mac equivalent, GarageBand is another great option if you are at a Mac school, but in the interests of all users, I’ll refer to Audacity.

To quote their website, Audacity can be used to:
* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more

Here are 10 great ways you could use Audacity with your students.

1. Make an audio/radio advertisement - My Grade 3 students are using Audacity to advertise products the school produces to support service learning for their Advertising unit.
2. Promote language learning - record kids speaking in one of their language classes then upload to Voki to create speaking Avatars. One of the Mandarin teachers at our school, Wendy Liao, did this very successfully with Grade 4 students.
3. Create Podcasts - limited only by your imagination. I recommend checking out what Kim Cofino and colleagues are doing with Podcasts at ISB. Celeste Hopkins and her Grade 2 students use Audacity to create podcasts of book reviews, reports and poetry readings. Mr Balcom’s students created music tracks for their video podcasts. Find a need and get podcasting!
4. Record speeches to provide evidence of learning, and upload to Glogster (a wonderful online poster tool) to share with a wider audience, as I’m doing with Grade 4 students for their environmental unit.
5. Promote reading development by recording kids reading books, as Colin Becker outlines in his post on Emerging Readers.
6. Create sound stories for images using free sound effects websites, as my Grade 2 students are doing for the school arts festival. You could easily use creative commons Flickr photos as your source of  ‘sound-rich’ images.
7. Record sound for PowerPoint slides to enhance any presentation (hat tip to Colin Becker).
8. Record comments/opinions to load to a Voicethread at a later stage. This can be useful if there are problems with multiple users on a Voicethread or to save time.
9. Record compositions or class singing to share with others (e.g. parents).
10. Record soundtracks for animations as my Grade 4 students did for their animation project on the systems of the human body.

Do you ideas for using Audacity in the classroom that you could add to the list?
I look forward to hearing them!

The Maori (native New Zealanders) have a saying:

He aha te mea nui?
He tangata,
He tangata,
He tangata.

What is the most important thing?
It is people,
it is people,
it is people.

At the end of this 3 day conference at EARCOS in Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, I believe more than ever that this is true.

Sure, I had some great workshops with very knowledgeable and interesting people, but what I will take away most is the face-to-face connections and conversations I had with people.

In one of Jeff Utecht’s recent posts, he asked the question, “How do you connect: People first or Content first?” While the easy (and probably true) answer for me is a bit of both, I am really looking for a conversation, not merely a lecture. I choose people over content. We humans are social creatures, and strive to create social experiences. Content becomes more meaningful for me if I can interact and engage with it, AND when I feel I know the person providing the content.

Through the course of this conference, I can see some truly believe technology is anti-social. I think it facilitates different types of social interaction. We need balance; face-to-face, physical relationships are still crucially important (this conference proves that for me), but social interactions with people online are no less valid.

Technology is neutral. It’s not good or bad.

During the conference I put a face to the names of several people I tweet with: @mscofino, @jutecht, @amichetti and @Skardalien. I also met @nzchrissy, @hitechhall @msbecs, @jefflewis9, @sherrattsam, @cmrolfe & @ezevallos. I know that from now on, their tweets will be more meaningful to me because I know their faces. I’ve had a beer with most of them! We have a shared, common experience. I want to know what they have to say.

Thanks for the learning, friends! I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Photo credit: lawgeek

We had our very first Student Led Conferences at the East Campus on Friday 13th - brave choice of dates. Suffice to say it was a great experience. The photos (below) show such excitement on the faces of the kids as they share their learning with their parents.

In Grade 2, the kids showed their parents how to use the Digital Microscopes.
Grade 3 shared the Photo Stories they made for their Blue Planet unit.
Grade 4’s showed off their animations and taught their parents a few tricks.
Everyone was welcome to use Google Earth to share their learning as well.

I think everyone finished the conferences totally exhausted, but would all agree it was worth it. I appreciate that we took time as a staff to reflect on how it went, so we can make it even better next time.