Monday, July 30, 2007

Tranforming the World - One Teacher at a Time


Last week, I had the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a symposium on "Differentiated Instruction and Literacy" sponsored by The Reading Institute in Williamstown, MA. There were about 120 educators in attendance and less than a handful knew anything about blogging or the power of new technologies for education. The symposium was part of a five day course offered by Simmons College which emphasized the use of assistive and emerging technologies to improve literacy.
As one of the final assignments, the instructor, Madalaine Pugliese, asked the participants in the Simmons Course (I think there were about 40 educators) to reflect upon all they had learned as part of a Multimedia Reflection Assignment. Read the comments and you will see the transformation of many of these educators from timid digital novices to educators who now were thinking outside the box.

Here are a sampling of excerpts:
Up until now, I have been only using the Web as a resource for myself and sharing websites with interested parties (such as enchantedlearning.com for great projects with younger students, Journey North at www.learner.org/jnorth/, and puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com for creating word searches with vocabulary words). Now I am looking at the Web in entirely new ways. The students I work with, one on one, have had so much failure in their lives they feel all alone in the world, like nothing they do matters. They don't care. They are not interested, and they definitely do not think anyone else is interested either. When I think about all the ways that we have just been connected to the rest of the world, I feel empowered to do the same for my students. I want them to create podcasts that connect them to students across the world. I want them to be able to share their successes when they work in the bike shop or build a project in the workshop. I want them engaged and excited about their own student-driven projects that are meaningful to them personally and that they can take pride in creating and sharing.
I shared some of the videos with my oldest son and we talked about all of the things I had learned during our technological immersion. After a while, he began to smile and, in his way, reminded me of the great divide between the digital natives and immigrants. He was amazed that we had all spent money to learn about computers and the internet. He asked why I didn’t just sit down and learn to do it myself. That’s the biggest difference between the native and the immigrants………..they believe they can learn to do anything they want with the right tools.
Allowing my students to create visual representations to demonstrate comprehension of something they have read will not only add some variety to the task but will also allow them to use their strengths.

Most of my generation learned through books, articles, lectures/classes, and workshops. As the Internet invaded my world, I did not take it serious and ‘heard’ or knew only of the hazards and pitfalls of how dangerous it was. My school computer has more locks and blocks on it than Fort Knox! Clearly, these are signs to stay away. But as higher education is changing, professors are quietly guiding us (well, maybe not so quietly) to explore websites that are positive, inspirational, and informational.
Read Kathy Reck's post about her student, Joey, and how she would extend writing activities to take advantage of 21st century tools.

Love to see this kind of "digital energy" that makes learning engaging, exciting and fun!

These educators "get it!" And they are using the rest of the summer to explore the tools on their own to incorporate into their classrooms. How cool is that? The transformation continues, one teacher at a time.
(The picture is the Hairpin Turn on the Mohawk Trail driving to Williamstown from Boston. Quite exhilarating, something like being a virgin keynote speaker!)

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Demystification - A Process for Promoting Success in the Presence of Failure

The online American Heritage dictionary defines demystify -
To make less mysterious; clarify
Those of you who read this blog may know of my profound admiration and respect for the work of Mel Levine whose mission is to demystify learning style differences when he works with kids. The online June Newsletter of All Kinds of Minds was devoted to demystification and is a must read for anyone who works with struggling students. That means you...every classroom has at least one student who feels incompetent or who wonders why learning (seems to) come so much easier to their peers.
Here's an excerpt from the article "Demystification: Taking the Mystery out of Disappointing Mastery":
All too often, student with differences in learning harbor very negative fantasies regarding the reasons for their shortcomings in school. They commonly think of themselves as globally deficient or "dumb." compared to their classmates. Many believe they were born to lose, destined to endure failure throughout the course of their lives. Further, they are likely to believe they are out of control, that effort is unlikely to yield any academic payoff for them. Moreover, their lack of accurate insight into the nature of their difficulties makes it hard for these students to work on their dysfunctions while striving to strengthen their strengths. To fill this dangerous void, we must see to it that children and adolescents with disappointing school performance have the opportunity to benefit from a process of demystification.
Please read this online issue to help you understand your students so that you can help them better understand their own learning styles. ("So, you mean I'm not stupid?") Demystification promotes success, competence and mastery.
(Isn't that a major part of our role as educators?) If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend two of Levine's books - A Mind at a Time and The Myth of Laziness.

Thanks to my friend Beth Lloyd for this link mention in her blog, Thriving in School.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Assorted Stuff

A collection of good reads from other bloggers, not necessarily connected:

Aggregators: What's the Right One for You?


Jeff Utrecht blogged about different aggregators in a recent post. I've stuck with Bloglines since I started subscribing to RSS feeds but wonder if it's time to explore other options. Sometimes I think it's better not to know what you are missing as ignorance can be bliss. But am I missing out on some great features from some of the other aggregators?

Jeff's post is particularly timely since the pace of summer is slower and we can spend time exploring other options.

LeaderTalk

Greg Farr has written a powerful post over at Leader Talk, a group blog for school leaders by school leaders, entitled Effective Principals: Rebels with a Cause. His post starts,
The time has come for action.
and ends with:

It truly is our moral imperative to take action. And we know from history that if we are doing the right thing, we will only be rebels for a short time...eventually those who take the right risks for the right reasons are called heroes.

Consistently thought-provoking posts there and this one has real substance. A call to action, not reaction.

Including Our Most Important Stakeholders


Does your district include students in decision-making? Are they valued members of school committees or included in the development of district plans?

One of the things that I valued most during my recent unsuccessful campaign for school committee in my town, was the opportunity to listen to junior and senior high school students during focus groups held in my home. The students were respectful, thoughtful, engaging, genuinely interested in sharing their thoughts and provided wonderful insight and perspectives. It was an honor to hear their suggestions.

To tap into student voices, a frequently overlooked resource, use the excellent material at the Generation Yes blog, and explore their website here. One of their resources is called, "Vision to Action - Including Students in Your Technology Plan." Print it out and pass it along to your administrators!

It's time to include our students, our most valuable resource!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Addicted to Blogging?

Thanks to Kristin Hokanson for this site:

82%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I admit it, I'm addicted to blogging but I prefer to say that I am addicted to the free professional development that I get from reading edubloggers with all different points of view. I've learned more in the past two years since I started blogging then in the previous twenty (other than graduate school!) And I've been challenged to question assumptions and pose solutions that will benefit our 21st century learners.

For me, it's all about the kids and I'm thrilled to see that there are many educators who recognize the need for change that promotes learning, engagement, critical analysis and international collaboration.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Text Animation

I'm always looking for new ways to engage students. What do you think of this?
Wizard Animation

Does this have possibilities?

Some of my thoughts:

1. To get a sense of a student's keyboard familiarity as part of my assessment. They can type their name, or the alphabet or....whatever. You watch how they access the keyboard. And they watch how their text is animated!

2. Add visual text effects to the class blog.

3. Makes learning fun - have your students come up with ideas!

(I used another animation from Fodey a few months ago. Check it out for additional animations.)

Here's another example, to create a brief newspaper story. It is saved as an image and can be inserted anywhere.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

How are You Spending YOUR Summer?

It's finally July 1 and time to reflect on how I will spend these next eight weeks of summer prior to the start of the next school year. It was a blast to follow NECC remotely and I'm so grateful to all the edubloggers that kept us included.

So, my focus for the next few weeks will be on:

1. Dealing with Delicious - I have saved so many excellent sites, time to review and organize them and revisit sites that I have forgotten about.

2. Creating new Tech Tip videos and upload them to TeacherTube. This works great when I offer professional development with "just in time" videos for review.

3. Spending time with Joyce - Her information literacy wiki is a wealth of resources - as someone said, she has more links than a ten foot gold chain! Time to improve my wikis as well!

How about you? What will you focus on prior to the start of the new year? Share your thoughts here.