So, I’ve been looking forward to ISTE 2011 for months! Since it is in Philadelphia this year I decided that although I had already used my PD money, it was close enough to NYC that I would do it on my own dollar. After the usual busy end of year, our school was hosting the inaugural Teach 21 PD Institute – so I didn’t let myself plan too much for ISTE until my workshop Tech Toolbox was done. Turns out that was a mistake – I had forgotten about the pre-registering for the BYOL sessions, so none of them for me. Note to self – plan sessions EARLY next time!!
After a seemingly never-ending train journey where I started to wonder if I’d be doing anything but following the ISTE hashtag, I finally arrived and made it through registration and straight to the Blogger’s Cafe. I went through the registration bag – really ISTE, all that paper?? And no recycle bins to be seen (though I did find one hours later).
I met up with Kim Sivick and we chatted about the edcamp movement (so ably presented by Kristene Swanson at #TEDxPhiladelphia yesterday). We sat with Tom Whitby, Samantha Morra for a while and people came in and out of the area introducing each other, connecting, chatting, and sharing ideas. I briefly met Beth Still, and Mary Beth Hertz came by just as I was getting ready to go to the keynote.
I wasn’t at ISTE last year, but I remember the tweets about the keynote speaker- this time they scored! Dr. John Medina gave an invigorating presentation about his work studying the brain. (separate post about his keynote later) – yes, neurology was invigorating – great speaker and we’d love him to come to our school and speak to our faculty! Very positive tweets coming through my twitter stream, unlike last year!
One thing that I’ve really remembered today from my other experience at NECC in San Antonio is that this conference is about meeting people and connecting as much as attending sessions learning new things. While talking with some colleagues who are here for the first time, that was something I really emphasized. You can’t go to every session, and some sessions you go to may not be all that you had hoped.but you can go ton the Newbie Lounge or the Blogger’s Cafe and meet people and talk about what you are doing in your classroom or school and fins out what others are doing. You can end up learning as much from this as the sessions you do attend, but you have a more personal connection that you can continue to develop online. In fact, you can really learn more this way than if you stay in a session that isn’t for you.
Did this post on the iPad- first time! Can’t re-read the whole post, so we’ll see what typos I missed! I’ve only had it a few days, and definitely not used to typing on it – but as Samantha Morra & I talked about today, if we always have an alternative ie a laptop,l we’ll never get used to it! So, no laptop allowed tonight and it wasnt as painfully slow as I’d thought it might be, though nowhere near as fast I’d be on the laptop!
About 3 weeks ago I went to my principal and told him about my latest idea – parent-student book clubs. As always, he was very supportive – he asked a few questions, told me he thought it was a great idea and to go for it. One of my main goals with this idea was to try to facilitate conversations about reading and books between children and parents. I know that once children stop reading aloud to their parents, conversations about books change. If parents don’t continue reading aloud to their children (and of course cannot read every book their child reads), then it must make talking about what they are reading more difficult. How can you know if your child is understanding what they are reading if you haven’t read it too? Even if you ask your child about their reading, unless you know the book their answer doesn’t really help you tell if they understand it.
I really had no idea whether I would have any parents interested, so I decided the first step was to poll the parents. That would quickly and easily determine if I needed to take it any further. I sent out a quick email explaining what I wanted to do and a few ideas about how it might work. I clearly had no reason to doubt my parents – within 20 minutes I had 4 very positive responses, and my email had gone out at 10.30pm! The next day I had 10 out of 13 parents committed to participating. I then held a meeting with my students where I explained my idea and we talked about how we thought we could manage it, how they would share ideas, how they would feel if their parent wasn’t able to participate, and basically brainstormed problems and solutions. Only one kid said they would be upset if we went ahead and their parent wasn’t involved, but as that particular kid’s parent had already responded with a hearty ‘YES!’ I knew we could go ahead with no problem.
I originally thought that I would hold a ‘check out the books’ meeting with parents one morning where everyone would be able to see all the books and make their choices. After some back and forth with a couple of parents, I decided that it would be easier for me to share the books with the children, then have them explain the books to their parents and select their top 3 choices by completing a Google form.
I created Google sites for each of the 4 books chosen, and added them as pages on our class site. I gave the kids and parents access to the appropriate site for their book. This was where they would post comments, questions, respond to questions that I posted, and generally share their ideas about what they were reading. It turned out that some parents weren’t able to sign in to post comments, and we ended up having them comment through their child’s school account. That worked out okay in the end, but I think next year I need a different solution than Google sites. I’m thinking Edmodo might be a good idea for this.
The kids met every few days in class and talked about the book as they would in a regular book club. They then summarized their group conversation in a post on the site for their book, so their parents could check in and comment on their conversation, ask questions etc. I heard comments that began, “I was talking to my mom and she was wondering…” and “My dad thinks that… but I didn’t agree with him.”
The books were finished last Monday, and the students in each group then had to select the 12 most significant events and create an illustrated timeline. Once they agreed on the 12 events, each group divided the 12 illustrations and paragraphs between themselves. The paragraphs were written on a shared Google doc, and were part of their assigned homework for the week. They were responsible for writing their own paragraphs, as well as peer editing the paragraphs written by the other kids in their group.
On Friday we had our end of book discussion. I moved all the furniture out of the way in our tiny room, and set the chairs (and yoga balls and stools borrowed from other classrooms!) in groups, with a photo of the book cover taped to one of the chairs. I had one child in each group take the role of facilitator, and they had a list of questions they could use if the conversation flagged. Well – it turned out conversations flagging wasn’t a problem! As I moved from group to group, the conversation was flowing – kids and parents sharing ideas, asking each other questions, disagreeing with each other and offering alternate ideas. It was great to see so many of my students interacting with their own parent as well as parents of their classmates with such confidence. After 35 minutes, I had everybody move to the timelines which were up on the walls, so that the kids could share those. Again conversation flowed smoothly, with kids explaining why each event was chosen over others and debating those choices with the adults.
The session with parents on Friday morning could have gone for 2 hours. During our meeting time after the parents had gone, some of the children commented that they wished it could have kept going. I told them it’s better to finish wishing for more rather than going longer and then wishing it were over!
Earlier tonight I sent out a Google form to gather feedback from both children and parents. In the brief time I had to chat with parents on Friday morning I got very positive feedback. Three parents commented on the conversations they had with their child -first about specifics in the book, then onto ideas the book brought up, and then onto current events. I bumped into a parent as I was going to the pet shop after school on Friday, and straight away she told me how much she had loved the discussion group that morning, and how much she and her son had chatted about the book. Mission accomplished!
I’m definitely going to be doing this again. I’m already thinking of books to choose, ways to improve it. I’m looking forward to getting the feedback form results and finding out what ideas the kids and their parents have to make it even better. And this all came as an indirect result, from Twitter. I was in a chat about getting parents more involved, which led to me thinking of ways I could do exactly that – in a meaningful way, that didn’t infringe too much on parents working life!
A visitor to our school recently asked me about the word cloud on my classroom door. As I began to explain, one of my students popped up and said, “Can I tell what it means?” I let her take over and I went back to working with the other kids! I could hear my student telling our visitor about how at the beginning of the year all the kids had completed a Google form and chosen 10 words to express what they wanted and hoped for the school year. All the words were collected, everybody’s names added 10 times each, and then put into wordle and the word cloud was generated.
Classroom door sign
She then went over to get her maths book and show the cover – yes, on which was a wordle from the ‘words that come to you when you think of maths’ that each student had generated at the beginning of the year. Her next examples were the wordles created from the text of President Obama’s speech to the nation after the death of bin Laden. Our visitor was very impressed (so was I – my student did a great explanation of how we’ve used wordles!) and went away with a list of ideas, the website written down and plans to try it out back at her own school.
maths book cover
I find wordle to be an excellent tool in the classroom, and there are so many ways they can be used. When I taught 4th grade we studied the US and during an election year we did a huge study of the election process, history, candidates etc. Wordle proved to be an incredibly useful tool to give kids access to text that they would not be able to access in traditional form. A 4th grade reader would find the text of Presidential speeches very difficult to read and understand. But use that text to generate a wordle and suddenly they can identify the main ideas of the speech, make inferences on what that candidate/president stood for, what the issues of that election were, and more.
State of the Union address
We looked at speeches from some early presidents and compared them to later ones. They considered how attitudes and events occurring in the country at the time influenced the main ideas in the speeches. Yet none of this would have been possible with a printed out text copy of the speech. Wordle opened up those texts for my students.
During a 5th grade study of ancient China and the Chinese horoscope, students completed a google form identifying 2 or 3 signs that they considered could represent each classmate. They also wrote down 2 or 3 signs they thought represented themselves. We then created wordles for each student. After some reflection time with their wordle, the kids had an incredible conversation about perception – how we consider ourselves, and how we might be perceived by others. This was my second year with the same class, so our community was very strong and the conversation was positive and reflective. Each student then made some decisions about characteristics they thought they had but that hadn’t been seen by others, and made goals about how they could change their behaviour to better represent those characteristics. We later came back for a follow up conversation and the kids commented to each other of the changes they had noticed and how they saw different characteristics. It was a powerful experience.
These are just some of the ways I have used wordle in my classroom. I will have my students write a post about it on our class blog and link to it from here. Other ideas include:
- access to historic texts, speeches
- student’s own essays – look for overused words in revising stage
- identifying main idea of sections of text
- visual representation of ideas generated – students, faculty, from survey…
- classroom door sign ‘about our class’
- notebook covers – ideas, hopes, feelings about the subject used to generate the text
If you are on Twitter, keep an eye out because people often post suggestions for using Wordle in creative ways. If you’re not on Twitter… why not? Go check it out
I first realized something was going on with the announcement on tv that President Obama was going to make a statement. Heading straight to Twitter, I found out what was going on. As we waited for Obama to address the nation, and world, the Twitter community shared ideas questions, comments and thoughts as fast as you can imagine. There were even comments that it would crash Twitter. It didn’t. But it was an amazing thing to be sitting at home in my apartment, yet not feel alone as I connected with hundreds of other people in their and my first reactions to this news. The conversations on twitter were flying as people reacted to the news and waited for Obama. This was not the commentary from tv news, but the honest and emotional reactions of regular people. It was powerful and real. This is the first really significant world event that has occurred since I have been a regular on Twitter, and it was a vastly different experience. The feeling of connection and community is so strong.
My first reaction to the news of bin Laden’s death was relief. He has been the leader of and such a symbol to terrorists. For the families of those lost in the September 11th attacks this news is something they have waited and waited for, and I can’t imagine how they must be feeling. The justice they have demanded, and needed, has been served. I’m sure this will generate all sorts of reactions for them.
I see tweets about and photos of the celebrations occurring, and while I am happy the man will no longer be planning the deaths of innocents, I find such celebrations somewhat disturbing. Celebrating death. That bothers me, makes me uncomfortable. At the same time, I am not a fire fighter, a police officer, a family member from 9/11… I was not in the USA then. So, while I am uncomfortable with it, on some level I can understand it.
It is a good thing that bin Laden has been removed from leadership, absolutely. I think his death was a symbolic victory. But what does it really mean? He was only one man. Yes, he was the leader – and with that, what does he become now? Is he going to become a martyr to the cause of terrorism? Someone will take over the leadership – cutting off the head is good, but it doesn’t stop terrorism. I also wonder what will come next – I worry about retaliation and an increase in terrorist activity around the world as a reaction to the way the news was received around the world. I think this was big, but it is not the end of this war.
Now I wonder how to share this with my students. How to answer their questions. President Obama’s speech was strong and clear. This is how I will start the conversation with my students -
We will look at Newseum for reactions from around the world.
I’ve been meaning to write a post for ages – and it’s been one thing after another and finding time is almost impossible! I had visitors over spring break, so I spent 2 weeks being a tour guide around the city – exhausting but wonderful to spend time with my mum and 2 sisters. We haven’t been together in the same country for a couple of years so as you can imagine there were a lot of laughs! We also visited possibly every shoe store in the city. I think there must have been a pair of shoes purchased every day they were here!
Now we are back at school and we in hiring mode. Being on a hiring committee is a great experience, but also time consuming. With over 200 resumes to read and sort, I haven’t had much time for blogging. My TC class also takes time and energy – and the timing of it means I miss #edchat too, which I am really missing.
Tonight at our class (yes, I may be writing this post in class) we did a demo of speed innovating as a professional development style. There were 5 options offered by colleagues from my school, and classmates chose 3 to attend for 10 minute mini-presentations on the topic. I shared Twitter and how I use it as a learning and sharing tool, as well as how to begin to develop a PLN.
Last week our school had a Curriculum evening for families, based on our working theme of Culture. There were many presentations on offer, and I worked with colleagues to present ideas about technology. Here is the description of our workshop:
How does technology help us to offer a 21st century education and differentiate instruction for our diverse learners and prepare them for their futures?
What does it mean to be a 21st Century School? How can technology help us meet the needs of children whose learning profiles are very different? Are you wondering how you can support your child as a 21st century learner? During this workshop you will learn what experts predict will be the new skills necessary for an increasingly global community, and how we are incorporating them into our curriculum and communication. You will learn new vocabulary and tools to apply to your own 21st century life, and participate in some stimulating discussions.
Our tech director Don Buckley introduced how we hoped the evening would go. We showed a video of my students discussing what they love about google docs (which Don thinks I should send to google and they’d probably use in their advertising!) and then we set up the speed innovating. There were 6 options, and parents would choose 3 to attend for 10 minute mini-presentations. We had about 45 parents in our workshop, which was an excellent turnout! I love doing this in the speed innovating style – speaking in front of a large group of people is un-nerving and this way it feels better for me, and it also gives everyone a chance to ask questions as we go along. Sometimes people may be uncomfortable asking questions in a bigger group, particularly tech related questions if they feel they aren’t very tech-savvy and those around them are. So the speed innovating works well for all of us – I would much prefer to share ideas with a group of 8-10 and repeat it a couple of times rather than a group of 45! It also gives people the option to decide for themselves exactly which mini-sessions they will go to.
About 7 or 8 weeks ago, my Head of School asked me to go to this maths presentation and workshop about origami and geometry, that was connected to some new museum. I wasn’t really sure what it was going to be like, but I agreed and then pretty much forgot about it. Fortunately, they sent reminder emails sO when she mentioned it closer to the time I hadn’t planned anything else!
It turns out that it was a presentation as part of a series set up by the Simons Foundation and the Museum of Mathematics. It seems like kind of taster sessions to get people interested in the new museum which will be opening next year – http://momath.org/
The Geometry of Origami was a presentation by Erik Demaine. This guy is a total genius – homeschooled by his dad, he had his bachelor degree at 14 and PhD at 20! And became the youngest professor ever at MIT just after he got his PhD. Wow. He gave a great presentation, and opened my eyes to some amazing info about origami – it’s not ‘just’ paper folding after all. If you get a chance, you should try to watch a documentary called ‘Between the Folds’ by Vanessa Gould. It’s available on netflix and has some fascinating people on as well as insights into some of the real world applications they are learning about through the maths of origami. Who would have thought that origami masters and maths professors are working on ways to create medication that can attack cancer cells but not the person (or ‘host’), and that origami was used to help determine how air bags can be folded into the spaces on steering wheels??
I was a bit late to join the workshop, but I was able to catch up and then follow Erik’s instructions to create a hyperbolic paraboloid – which is apparently a mathematical impossibility but is possible with origami – too much for my brain to compute, but it was fun to create!
If you get a chance to go to the next Maths Encounters presentation (I think it’s Symmetry) I would definitely recommend it.
Once a year our school abandons our regular schedule and enters into IPW – Integrated Projects Week. Teachers connect with colleagues in 2′s, 3′s or 4′s, and create a project to offer to students of particular grades. The kids then complete an online survey entering their top 5 choices from those projects offered to the grade they are in. Most kids get one of their top 3 choices, but we ask for 5 just in case. Some of the projects on offer this year include – Black Rock Leaders, Central Park Explorers, The Science of Sailing, Sneaker Design, Happenin’ in Harlem, Rock Climbing, Picture Perfect: Capture Your Creativity, Around the World in Story and Art, and Restaurant Judges. There are many more as well! Once the groups are decided, they meet with their teachers twice in the lead up to the actual week, to share ideas and involve the kids in the planning. The IPW week is a great opportunity for kids to try something new, or to learn more about something they already have a passion for. A typical project involves trips out and about in the city – or for some it’s off to the forest for 2 nights – and taking advantage of opportunities collectively offered by the faculty and community. We reach out to our families and the Columbia community for help in connecting with people who know people! We try to make connections that can help us give our kids opportunities to work and speak with professionals in fields they might be interested in, to try out new experiences, and to visit places they might not otherwise get chance to go to.
My IPW is Picture Perfect: Capture Your Creativity. We offered it to 4th and 5th graders, and because of the cameras I want to use we only have 9 kids – awesome! One of our parents has a contact at Aperture magazine, and we might be able to visit their offices and see how it’s put together and how they choose the photographs to appear in the magazine. We may also be able to visit a professional photographer’s studio, and the International School of Photography. Each day we will go out into the city with the cameras, and try out different things. At the beginning of the week, the kids will each choose one common item – shoes, doors, bags etc – and throughout the week they are to find different ways to photograph their object to represent an ordinary item in extraordinary ways. One day we will be exploring the macro setting of the cameras. At our first meeting some of the kids talked about self-portraits, so we might take a tripod and have them try using the timer, as well as find reflective surfaces and have them experiment with photographing their images as reflections. Another day we want to look closely at the architecture of NYC – and looking for gargoyles is something we talked about that the kids were excited about.
We haven’t over-planned each day, since we want to be able to take opportunities as they arise! Each afternoon we will download the photos, and examine and analyze them – and the kids will choose their favorite shot from each day to print for the gallery exhibition which will be our showcase event on the last day of the week. Everybody is getting ready, the kids are raring to go, and on Monday it all kicks off. It’s a wonderful week – exhausting but incredibly rewarding too!
I’ve been reading a lot on Twitter recently about evaluations. The consensus seems to be that evaluations should be an opportunity for feedback that will help a teacher improve their practice. A teacher could identify an area they wish to develop further, and meet with an administrator to discuss what they want the evaluation to focus on. After the evaluation they would meet to discuss the observation and make goals based on the lesson observed.
But. When it comes down to it, how often does that really happen? The second part of the conversation on Twitter discusses how to make evaluations work that way. Currently, even with the best intentions, evaluations cause stress and anxiety for many teachers. Including me. I’ve been avoiding having my evaluation since about two weeks before break. Last week I arranged a time with my principal to have the observation and evaluation. It was for today, so of course that pretty much ruined my weekend! I spent most of my Sunday planning the lesson. Well, overplanning really. I thought and rethought so much that by the time I went to bed I was questioning the lesson I’d planned and wondered if it should be done differently.
Forward to this morning. I hadn’t sleep well. I was incredibly anxious. Fourteen years teaching, and you’d think that I’d be used to it by now. We have visitors in our school all the time, and often they spend time in my classroom – doesn’t bother me a bit. But put an administrator in there in evaluation mode and I am a nervous wreck! And I have a good relationship with my administrator, feel very supported by him, have had good evaluations in the past, so logically it shouldn’t be such an anxiety producing deal. Yet every time, that email subject line “time for evaluation” makes my stomach turn over.
How does this change? Well for one thing, I think a formal observation gives only a snapshot of the teaching at a particular time on a particular day. And because it’s planned ahead of time, teachers plan that lesson much more carefully than they do for regular classes. That’s normal. Who has time to write complete lesson plans for every lesson they teach? It’s simply not practical. But to get a clear picture of how a teacher interacts with students, how they facilitate discussions, how they provide learning opportunities – it takes more than an observation of one lesson. I would prefer to be evaluated over time. I’d rather have my administrator come into my classrooms informally during multiple lessons over a period of time. This would give a clearer picture of my teaching than one lesson that I plan super-carefully, and help us to set realistic goals for my development.
Plus – I wouldn’t have the same anxiety to stress me out!
Last week our school had a half day PD day. The students finished at 12, and the entire faculty went out visiting other NYC schools. This year we are exploring culture in our school, and the focus during our visit was identifying aspects of school culture.
I find it fascinating to see other schools in action. We get a lot of educators coming to our school and visiting our classrooms, but we don’t often get the opportunity to get out there ourselves. Seeing how other teachers organize their space and interact with their students allows you to reflect on your own practice. The school I visited was established 95 years ago – our school is only in its 8th year – and it was interesting to see how their systems have evolved over time. We are still in the process of establishing and refining systems and traditions at our school.
This school has the children address the adults in the school by their first names. I have taught in schools in Australia and England before coming to the United States, but have not been in a school where teachers were addressed by their first names. I had heard about it but doubted how it would work. Seeing it in action showed me that along with other systems, the first name use can help create a feeling of community between the students and the adults in a school. There was also a system of jobs in the school by grade – and all jobs contribute to the needs of the school. For example, one grade has two printing presses in their room, and they are responsible for creating stationery for the school to use. They also create stationery to order – mostly from faculty but also families. In a folder of examples, there was a thank you card created for one of the teachers to send to their wedding guests. Another grade is responsible for signs for the school – all the signs seen in the school were created by the kids in that grade. The kids in the school clearly had a strong sense of belonging and of empowerment, and an understanding of their place in the school – they recognize that their contributions are valid to the life of the school.
I don’t know how we can develop this in our school – but what I want to see develop is that same sense of community and ownership that I saw in my visit.
I use technology a lot in my classroom. I love the challenge of providing learning experiences that motivate my students and are authentic and worthwhile. But sometimes you don’t even need the technology. I was thinking about how I can help my students practice comparing fractions, decimals and percents in a way that was interesting and would engage them. I remembered that at my old school in England, there was a craze about a game called Top Trumps. This was a card game and each set was based on a theme – like animals, cars, or football. In the football set, each card would have a picture of a footballer, and statistics about that footballer. All the cards in the set would have the same categories of statistics. Kids would play to try and win cards from each other – when it was your turn you would choose the category and each kid would lay their top card out – whoever had the top value in the category called would win both the cards.
So I decided we could make a simplified version for fractions, decimals and percents. I made a page full of fractions, a page of decimals, and a page of percents, then cut them up into individual pieces. I cut out some cards, and had my kids take one each of a fraction, decimal and percent and record them on the coloured cards. Hey presto, the cards were made! I adapted the game a bit so there would be more interpreting required – so the kids look at their top card, choose the category they think they can win and call the category and high or low. For example, lowest percent, or highest fraction. The kids then have to determine which person wins the cards by comparing the cards on the table in the category selected.
We tried it out on Friday with one set and a few kids who were waiting to get picked up. It was a big success – the kids loved it AND they were learning how to compare fractions, decimals and percents, as well as articulating their reasoning. Score! So today we made another 4 sets and the whole class played in either pairs or small groups. It was great to see such a simple game provide so much learning – and fun at the same time. There were groans of disappointment when it was time to put the games away. Those groans of disappointment that would NEVER happen after boring practice worksheets. Sometimes an old and simple game can trump technology!
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