Technology is not the sugar on our cereal…

In today’s faculty meeting, we watched a short video from YouTube called 3 Steps. If you haven’t seen it I think it is worth taking a look.( The tags mention NECC 2007 and David Warlick so evidently this has been around for a while but I had not seen it) I used it as a lead in to today’s meeting. It address three steps we need to take to prepare the students in the 21^st century:

1. Making our classrooms creative spaces Photo by gongus
2. Teaching students to be competitive ( with themselves), to cooperate and collaborate
3. Connecting them with their global peers.

( It is on Teacher tube also in case you can not access You tube)

It was a good review of what we are trying to do and why plus it brought home the idea of changing how our classrooms look and function. The next stop was to consider the role technology plays in education. I told the teachers, “It is not the sugar on our cereal” . Technology is the means to access information learn and connect with others. As professional educators if our job is about information and teaching students how to access and use information then our job is about technology. I believe there is no way around this basic truth. It is not about cool projects it is about teaching and learning because teaching and learning are about information.

So with all of this out in the open today we embarked on something new. Armed only with our standards and a laptop I shared a iGoogle tab with the teachers on which I had preloaded some basic resources and I challenged them to go textbook free. They picked one subject, Science or social Studies and worked together to plan all of Marches lesson only with the resources they had at hand.

The standards helped us to look at the big picture and with the help of their peers everybody was successful. They explored video resource, Google gadgets, you tube, teacher tube etc. The next step is for the teachers in 6^th 7^th and 8^th grade to build an iGoogle tab for their subject area for the students to use !

Today I think we made a big step forward….and kudos to the whole staff who didn’t even flinch! Today technology became a viable source of teaching and learning in a new way for all grade levels , Pre-k to 8!

Doodle4Google- Explore your creative side

Over the weekend I stumbled on this contest and I am posting it here because I think it sounds like fun. Check it out for yourself. It is open to students from K to 12.

Design a Google Doodle and have your artwork viewed by millions on the Google homepage (plus win a
college scholarship, computers for your school and other cool stuff).
Check out www.google.com/doodle4google
for official rules and ask your teacher for
details on how to enter.

Thiwalls, A Colorado conversation, and MeBeam

Learning 2.0 A Colorado Conversation, a one day conference took place today at Arapahoe High School. I listened in to a few of the sessions through ustream and Clarence and I did podcasts for the opening session and participated in a live round table in the afternoon. One of the things that stood out was the fact that this conference was truly about conversation. In the words of the conference organizers… “Education is conversation. Conversation creates change. The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.” (You can access a great deal of the material from their wiki so use it to continue the conversation.)


For the afternoon round table we used and interesting little application called mebeam. It was very simple to use and while it worked pretty well for our round table discussion it is probably best suited to conversation where everyone has a headset. It certainly started me thinking about the classroom possibilities for collaborations like our Thinwalls classroom. It would allow groups of students to work together real time with face to face style communication. IM and skype our great but there is also something to be said for seeing each other while you talk. With mebeam you can have several people together in one room. I think this is a tool worth exploring!

I know the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time...But sometimes I forget

Where have I been? This is the season when my administrative role focuses on a broad range of issues that take me away from my day to day work with curriculum. It has also cut into my time for professional reading and when you are not reading it seems that it is much harder to write because you are not engaged with new content and ideas. ( I know that is pretty obvious…but it seems important to articulate this simple truth and to own it)

In the last several days I have begun reading and I also have been engaged in some reflective work as we begin to prepare for next years accreditation. So over the next several days I am going to blog a variety of things that are beginning to percolate to the surface.

Over the last year I have been exposed to a lot of cutting edge ideas. I have been challenged on many levels to provide leadership, support, professional development, and direction to the faculty to ensure that we are pursuing best practice across the curriculum. I have had the opportunity to hear some truly dynamic and motivational speakers including Paula Rutherford and Robert Marzano. I have talked about assessment with Scot Mcleod and I have picked the brains of many who are brighter than I am. Each interaction has left me excited and with a vision for what we can do and where we can go in ensuring that we provide an excellent education. But the real task is to translate the ideas and the head knowledge into practice.

A key to learning, a key to professional development, is to find a way to break the work down into “bite size” tasks. As an instructional leader who gets very excited about the possibilities the most challenging thing I need to do it is promote and encourage change and growth without overwhelming the faculty. Compassion and fear of overburdening already busy teachers however can paralyze our growth and so today I hit on an idea that I think will work. Daily 5 minute tasks that keep us moving forward seem relatively painless and which over the course of several days will yield real accomplishments.

With the second semester just beginning it is time to review our curricular standards to take stalk of student mastery and of what standards we have covered. We need to complete curriculum maps for second semester but that always sounds like a daunting task to teachers who only have two prep periods per week. Math is our focus subject this year so one page a day I am distributing standards work sheets to mark mastery level of the benchmarks taught. By next week we will be looking at a completed standards worksheet and be ready to plan for the rest of the year.

No Longer Content to Surf the Top of the Waves

No longer content to surf the tops of the waves of knowledge with our students we have been actively involved in retooling teaching and learning to dig deeper. It is not an easy task, nor is there a one size fits all solution. What I do want to share is some of our recent successes and the tools and teaching that took us there. As we have known all along technology is a tool and not an end and we are just beginning to learn how to choose and use tools to transform common activities into deeper learning experiences. Two tools, which have really affected our teaching and learning, recently are video game simulations and chats.

I have written about our experience with chats as a way to work on group projects on my blog. The gist of our experience was that as the students worked collaboratively with the students in Snow Lake Canada as part of our ThinWall classroom they used IM to plan their projects. The transcripts of these chats, often completed at home. gave us a whole new insight into the students thought processes, much more than one gets walking around a class listening to the groups talking. Because we could see their thought processes we know what skills they need. It is an absolutely incredible moment. Yes, it means we are working hard but the opportunity to give the students the thinking skills, communication skills, planning skills, and talents they will need for ….well for the rest of their lives is an unbeatable experience.

Using video games in class has become another incredible tool for deepening the student thinking and learning. In 6th grade social studies students study ancient civilizations and the formations of cities and societies. In most cases the students read about the various factors that influence the early developments of cities like geography, resources, government, trade etc. They can answer questions for an objective test but they have only "surfed the waves" with most of the information soon forgotten. Like many classrooms, you will sometimes see the students constructing dioramas or models depicting the various places they have studied. But when questioned about the model you find that for the most part there was little real thinking about what they created and it was mostly a fun arts and crafts activity( I remember having students do revolutionary war dioramas and they came in with WWII planes hanging from the top f the shoe box).. However, this year things are different. This year we used looked at several simulations like SimCity, SimSocetiy and finally decided on CivRome, which starts with the early development of city-states as a means to deepen the students understanding about building cities. Suddenly the students were no just reading about the choices others had made but they were planning and making choices. They were divided into teams of four with one student as the geographer, one as the government official, one as a farmer and one as a job specialist based on a web quest on early civilizations. They then moved on to the simulation where they continued work in their teams and dealt with all aspects of early civilizations, where to build, what to build, how to provide food and jobs, where to place roads, how to keep the citizens happy. In just three sessions where they could immediately see the effects of their decisions they had come to a whole new level of understanding. The teacher then had them build models which will soon be up on Voicethread, but this time they had to justify every decision, think through the process and make sure their city was sustainable.. These couple of days of activity was absolutely amazing. It was classroom as studio with students moving from simulation to building and back again. They were adjusting their plans and explaining their decisions and while these students may not remember the name of the early civilizations they have studied but they will understand the various factor that contribute to the development of society and they will understand more deeply the impact of the decisions made by leaders or a government on the people.

So, we are now building a library of simulations. It is one of the tools that works for us in the quest to re-tool teaching and learning to dig deeper but is also part of a whole package of technology tools we now are employing regularly as part of our commitment to do more than "surf the tops of the waves". What is working for you? How are you moving beyond technology or technology sake into new and better ways of learning?

Cross posted to Leader Talk

picture by by mrcthepc

Technorati Tags: IM, Chat, simulations, criticalthinking web2.0 class2.0

Instant Messaging for Class Makes Student Thinking Transparent

The ThinWall Classroom which is predicated upon connectedness, networking and learning beyond our class walls changes everything. Over the last few days the students in Snow Lake and Van Nuys began their final projects on The Oustider . They are exploring themes related to the book like teen violence , friendship and death. I have been busy lending support and collaborating with Clarence and Terri as we worked out the details and solved day to day glitches.. I worked with the students in Van Nuys modeling how to develop their topics and teaching about Creative Commons. I have been monitoring the wiki and checking on the students to assure they completed their scheduled chats. It has been an intense time of activity, monitoring and coaching.

Today I had a few moments for reflection and I had a new revelation of just how powerful and exciting this kind of teaching/learning can be. For the first time I realized that we were doing something that we never could have done in a more traditional setting…..we could literally see the students think. When technology allows you to be connected to the students thinking and processing you can guide them to build essential skills in a way that was never possible before.

Here is what I mean. I taught at the Junior High level for many years. I did enumerable group projects which fell under the umbrella of “cooperative learning”. I was careful to make sure that each student had a specific part to complete and that the work was divided between all students. I walked around the room listening in for a minute or two as they planned,(of course while I stood over them they were very productive) I watched them work and I talked about timelines etc. But I am not sure I was really very effective in teaching any of them how to think a project through in a collaborative environment. I am not sure that they really respected one another or in some cases that the kids even listened to each other.

.

Now imagine you actually had a transcript of their discussions as we do with their IM chats. I not only get a momentary glimpse of what they do in school but a detailed look at all of their planning, discussion and thinking. If two students are taking over I can intervene right away. The students and I can look at the chat together and talk about how they came across and what would be a better approach and why. If they are not on target we can remediate. If they are having trouble with any part of the process we can see how they are thinking and give guidance.

Because we can see their thought processes we know what skills they need. It is an absolutely incredible moment. Yes, it means we are working hard but the opportunity to give the students the thinking skills, communication skills, planning skills, and talents they will need for ….well for the rest of their lives is an unbeatable experience.

Photo by

Technorati Tags: ThinWall,Clarence, Instant Messaging, Classroom2.0 IM

Think aloud- What do I expect from our ThinWall classroom

Working on the "elevator speech" about the Thin Wall Classroom. I just attended a leadership conference and was asked to share about the project with Snow Lake. After I gave a brief overview of what we are doing another principal approached me and asked -"What do you want/expect your eighth graders to gain from this experience? What will they have learned? " It was an important moment reminding me that I need to be clear about the purpose of what at first blush might appear to be just a bunch of cool activities. So now as a think aloud I want to try to flesh out the my answers.

In no particular order :

• Students will move beyond limits of the classroom and the 8 to 3 learning day -opening up new ways to learn
• The students will learn how to work in a public space
• The students will understand the power of connectivity as a tool for learning
• The student will build learning networks
• The students will expand their world view
• The students will demonstrate multiple effective methods of collaboration and communication in the digital world
• Students will be self-critical of their communication skills
• Students will be able to track the development of their thinking and reflect on the impact of interaction with others on their thinking process over time
• Learning will become a process more than a set of facts to be mastered
• Students will be pushed to think about their learning

Picture : http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2047686395&size=m
by Tochis
Technorati Tags: thinWall, classroom2.0, web2.0, snowlake

When we get in the way......

Who has the key?
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=414993708&size=s by spiralz

What happens when we get out of the way. The ThinWall classroom was using Moodle to create chat groups for the students. Moodle is a great tool and it has served our school well in a variety of circumstances. However in this case the students were finding it cumbersome. For some reason the chats would drop participants or just would not work smoothly. We expect some minor difficulties and we checked settings and tweaked the system but it was beginning to effect the conversation and thus the learning. Clarence suggested we switch to MSN Messenger since his kids all had accounts and then require them to email us transcripts of their chats. Here is where it gets interesting.

I okayed the switch , asked for a code of conduct and directions regarding the transcripts and we went to check with our students to see if the had MSN. Surprisingly only seven did. So now the tech coordinator and myself were considering what we would do. Should the kids set up MSN accounts ? What was involved? Although both he and I had accounts it had been a long time since we set them up so we had to check out what the kids would need to do. The problem here is we had not asked the right questions and we had not listened to the kids. We spent at least 30 minutes working on a solution before we went back and asked the kids what IM they used. It turns out that our kids use Yahoo Messenger. Now what? Someone suggested looking at Meebo which we did... but then I actually talked with the students rather than just getting one reply and running off to find a solution.

As soon as the kids understood the issue that in Snow Lake the kids were using MSN and in LA they were using Yahoo they told us that it was no problem the two platforms could communicate with each other. They knew how to add MSN people to their Yahoo chats...problem solved. Or was it?

I think the hidden problem is that we get in the way. In an effort to be the teacher we do not allow the students to navigate through the tools. We forget to listen and be learners ourselves. It is important that we teach safe and ethical behavior and monitor the way they use the tools as well as helping them see the power the tools have to help them learn. It is good that we show them new things like voicethread and that we make the tools available to them. But we also need to allow them to find solutions and use the tools that work for them. Last night before we even had officially switched from Moodle one of the groups switched on their own and emailed the transcript of their chat to Clarence

In the beginning the students were hesitant they did not know how it would work to learn in a connected network. Some of the tools we pointed them to were new to them . All of what we were doing was a new way to approach school. Now I think they get it. They see the potential and want to move ahead and so we can point out tools and we can guide the learning but we are ready to listen and to let them find the right tool for the job. Hmmm …..if I am not worrying about the tools I can focus on planning the learning.

Technorati Tags: ThinWall, tools, Clarence, IM, classroom2.0

This one blew my socks off! What a tool!

Okay maybe I am behind the times but if you have never played with TouchGraph you have to give it a try. My technology coordinator just stumbled on it this afternoon and we have spent the last 30 minutes playing with this tool. The possibilities are limitless but even more to the point it seems to be a POWERFUL tool to help teachers uncover resources and to allow older students to find information and discover the way networks interact. One of my concerns as an administrator has always been supporting the teachers and finding ways of opening up to them all of the resources that are available for their curricular content. One of the stumbling blocks is the vast number of hits you get with a standard Google search and the time consuming activity of refining searches for each component of you lesson. Enter TouchGraph which provides a visual representation of resources networked around topics or URLs.

You absolutely have to try it to understand but the concept is straight forward. You create a visual network which allows you to see related concepts and a whole variety of resources in an incredibly easy to navigate interface. The visual representation is much easier to work with than pages and pages of hits from a google search and it allows you to move into the deep layers very quickly. So for example if you put in "California history" or "Sahara Desert" the program generates a graphic map of the network around these topics showing a wide variety of subtopics and related links. My test search for Sahara desert immediately revealed a whole host of hubs including images, physical characteristics and subtopics like animals of the desert. The graphic representation is interactive and by clicking on an orbiting sub topic that link then becomes a hub leading you to other linked information. When you click on the "+" in the circle in the upper left corner you will have a link to the URL and further description of that resource. It also worked well with the topic "3rd grade Math".

You also have the ability to manipulate and save a particular graphic representation. I have not been quite as excited about any tool recently as I am about this one. For students this has tremendous potential to deepen their research and assure that they do not just stick with the first things they find on Google. It also helps them to understand the power of the networked information that is now available. For the teachers it puts a whole network of information at their finger tips in a format that will make it infinitely easier for them to access and utilize the resources of this information age. Go and play with this tool and see what you think. Just for fun put in your name and see where that leads. I would love to hear your ideas about how this can be used. it will be the tool of the day for our technology playground this month!

Technorati Tags: TouchGraph, web2.0, classroom2.0, networks, tools

Color me illiterate!

Becoming a life long learner and globally connected just underscores how much I still need to learn. I was perusing the K12Online schedule today in an effort to plan some staff activities when I had an aha moment. When I taught 6th grade part of my curriculum included world time zones and though I taught it and the kids more or less got it none of us really understood it. Why? Because we had no real use for it! Like I said in my previous post knowledge without context and application is not of much value. So now I am confessing I am functionally illiterate in this area and I am setting out to fix this problem. Yes, I know there are time converters and world clocks but I want more than time conversion I want to understand. I just found out that my time zone is GMT -8 now I need to learn how to use that information!
Photo Credits:by melissambwilkinshttp://flickr.com/photos/melissambwilkins/388974924/

Technorati Tags: literacy, web2.0, 21century, time, classroom2.0

Taking Flight and Learning New Lessons

No time to read or blog has made me feel disconnected. The beginning of the school year has been exceptionally busy but much of it has been good stuff. The connection with Snow Lake is really moving us into some new territory. From an administrative perspective it is really exciting to read the planing going on between our teachers and Clarence on the Moodle site. It is like watching a butterfly take flight! We have worked for over a year on becoming technology literate and this year the staff is ready to fly and the students are reaping the benefits.
Today I caught up on a little reading and two blogs caught my eye. One on LeaderTalk and one I can't find now but both of them talked about the issues of Internet safety. There are lots of great resources out there and I know that almost everybody who is involved in Web2.0 with students addresses this issue. Although we used blogs some last year this year we are involved in a a year long collaboration and we are using all kinds of tools including chat, voicethreads and blogs in our work with Snow Lake.
As the year began we spent a fair amount of time on internet safety. The students did research, they discussed, they prepared brochures, and they made presentations to the parents and to all of the K-8 classrooms. We were impressed with the work they did and how well they presented the material. BUT then we discovered something, it takes practice! Our students knew what the rules were and what to say but they did not translate the head knowledge into practice. With their first few blog posts and their voicethreads we began seeing risky practice. They just had not taken the lessons to heart . We then had them read all of the blog posts and rate them for risk factors. It was a most interesting exercise and many of the students had to edit their blogs. The lesson that I took away from this was how important it is that they have the opportunity to work in the digital world and use their knowledge. It would have been easy to pat ourselves on the back and say "Wow the kids gave great talks on Internet Safety" . But what good is talk without a personal context and practice. At the Junior High level the concrete reasoning skills are just beginning to develop and so we will spend the whole year learning about digital citizenship as they continue their work. It is really pretty exciting to consider how important these experiences are to their formation and their future.They just do not get it until they really use it in a setting where someone is helping them to evaluate along the way. I for one feel strongly this is our responsibility. Yes, the parents are the primary educators and they need to be involved in guiding their children, continuing the lesson at home, but connectivity is the portal for learning and so we have to teach them how to enter that world- it is an essential learning space.
Technorati Tags: Web2.0, Safety, Blogs Connectivity

Connectedness is Transformative

Web 2.0 in education is powerful on many levels. It opens the door to education outside of the box. It creates corridors and highways of learning that have not before been available. It requires new skills and thought processes. It promotes new sense of what it means to be a citizen of this planet. And it levels the field allowing for anyone to be a contributor and creator.. Konrad posted a very thoughtful commentary on this is mid- August with some great examples of moving beyond collaboration and into contribution. I admire his work and hope to move forward to embrace much of what he talks about..... however recognizing that we are all at various points in the process of redefining teaching and learning I am struck by the notion that connectedness is the portal of transformation.

School has been in session for 9 days now and during that time we have used skype in one capacity or another almost everyday. We have had 3 skypecasts, 2 with students and one for professional development ( with another one which we had to postpone because of connection problems). As part of the Thinwall Classroom several of us have had almost daily chats with Clarence. And starting a little later this week we will be skypecasting first grade for about and hour a day because one of our students will be out of school for six weeks with a badly broken leg.

Despite living in large metropolitan area it is easy to be incredibly insulated, isolated and myopic. Skype has opened a portal to the world and begun to break down the walls of our school and classrooms. It has created an openness and a transparency that would never have been possible 10years ago. It has expanded our students world view and that of our whole community. Skype also adds the human face-to-face element to our connectedness. This is powerful. I can feel the excitement and the energy on campus growing.

Watch out the walls are begin to fall and good things are coming …..because we have opened the connections…..

Technorati Tags: skype, thinwalls. web20, Konrad, Clarence, connectedness

Picture credits: Uploaded on February 10, 2007
by Mark H. Baker

Synapses are Firing: Technology Playground

We are fortunate to have weekly Faculty/ Curriculum meetings on Wednesdays from 1:00 pm to 3:30. This is time dedicated to collaboration, professional development and planning. This year in planning for this time I have structure a rotation of meeting topics that is repeated monthly: Technology playground, Curriculum, Student work, Assessment.

Yesterday was the first Technology Playground meeting and it was a great start to the year. Part of the idea is that there needs to be time to try new applications and to explore their application in the classroom. We focused on two “skills” to start the year and we split the staff into two groups. Jan, our tech wizard, worked with one and I worked with the other but the staff actually taught each other as they rotated through the two stations. One task yesterday was to make sure each teacher had ( and understood how to use) an iGoogle page which included at a minimum, Google reader, Google notebook, goggle docs, Google calendar and a bookmark widget for those things that did not have an RSS feed. The staff had 5 bookmarks* to start thier Google reader and we share a school master calendar and a few documents. One of the best things was the realization that igoogle could make life easier. They also saw, first hand, how valuable RSS could be. I have talked about RSS for a year now and tried to show how to use it but the beauty of iGoogle was that it brought everything into one place .

The other task was to register for Voicethread and learn how to use it. We are really excited abut this application and it will be something all of the teachers use at some point this year. In the lower grades it will be a wonderful opportunity for the students to explain their learning and develop their oral language skills. We are also considering using it as a way to connect some classrooms around the globe. Last year we started the photo-a-day for schools which was a lot of fun but hard to administer. Now we are wondering about a weekly voicethread as a window to connect schools.

Would you be interested? We are open to grades K to 8. in California the social studies standards for second grade include understanding the differences in locations and this would be a great way to help the students truly grasp this!

Thanks to voice thread, skype and Joyce, another piece of just-in-time learning that surfaced was an interest in Avatars. Each teacher is going to create one for use on their webpage and with voicethread.

*Clarence, Jeff, Darren, David Warlick, Will Richardson

Technorati Tags: Voicethread, iGoogle, Avatars, Web20, projects

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/309589221/

Tools, Pedagogy and Networks- How do we build effective schools?

Clarence chronicled the edublogosphere's discussions over time recently as starting with tools moving to pedagogy and now needing to begin exploring the ramifications and practical aspects of learning networks. He poses some good questions about leading the students into learning networks and dealing with information flow. From my perspective however, the post also made me reflect on the whole process of school change and where we are on the continuum. ( or is it even a continuum?)

As administrators and technology coordinators work on professional development opportunities and provide support and encouragement for change how do we keep these components in balance.

Tools- There are hundreds ( thousands?) of things we can employ in the classroom. While my first inclination was to always be playing with the newest and coolest it only serve to frustrate those who are not quite as geeky as I am. There are three questions that might drive the tools we explore at school now. 1) What are the basic essentials for a 2.0 classroom? I am thinking wikis, blogs, podcasts/vcast, skype a reader(RSS), photo program/storage/sharing, and online WP like google docs. 2) In picking specific applications, what is the learning curve for a neophyte? 3) What do we need/ what will help us with this project/concept /goal? This is the category where things like voicethread and flickrphoto storm would appear. As we work with Clarence this year it will also push the envelope for both students and staff. ( Okay, maybe there are 4 questions...What are people naturally interested in learning? For example after our last faculty meeting one teacher was spontaneously showing another teacher how to make an avatar)

Pedagogy- This is an ongoing discussion. I see it as the place where visions are shared and the place that drives us to explore new tools because we identify new learning needs. This is where our growing understanding of literacy, creativity ( see the revised Blooms) and thinking skills has a home. This is also the category that lead to our new mission statement. (see previous post)

Networks- This I think is a question of accessing information and building knowledge. While the issues for our students are real and there are a lot of questions to explore so too for our teachers. My reflection in this area has a lot to do with what kind of PLN is important for educators. This is part of the comment I left on Clarence's blog (...as you can see he got me thinking about where we need to go) "From an administrative perspective the whole issue of PLN for the staff is taking on new levels of meaning. In the beginning I was looking to get everybody reading blogs in the edublogosphere. That is still part of the strategy but it is also time to start exploring subject specific sources of information. Maybe this is obvious but like it or not change/learning is incremental and the movement to have educators embrace digital sources as key components of knowledge takes some deliberate, modeling, experiences, and planning." once this is happening we will have to discuss questions about sorting information and what is useful and what is not...but learning by doing has always been one of the most effective methods.

Illustration from http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/images/stages_change.gif

Perspectives

One year later……..

Last year at this time the tools of web 2.0 were introduced to the faculty and staff. At that time we discussed the phrase in our mission statement which said we “educate students for the 21^st century” We were not sure exactly what that meant or what it looked liked but we were determined to try to figure it out. We did a lot of exciting things many of which I have written about in earlier posts. The bottom line was that we decided to learn by doing.

Last week we gathered once again for the request start of year faculty meetings. During this meeting, based on our experiences last year, we looked once again at our mission statement. This time however we set about writing a new mission statement. This new mission statement is meant to define more clearly our new understanding of the essential tasks we are undertaking. As with all tasks done within the confines of your own community the test of viability and clarity is to bring that work out to the community at large. So here is the mission statement we developed.

”The mission of the St. Elisabeth School Learning Academies is to provide an excellent academic and spiritual foundation that will empower the students to be moral and responsible citizens who effectively apply technology as a tool of learning and as a means to actively participate in the global community.”

What do you think? Does it resonate with you? How will it impact teaching and learning?

A Vacation Delayed Meme Response

While I was on vacation both Cathy Nelson an d Clay Burell tagged me with the 8 Random Things Meme so now that I am back I wanted to take a moment to respond before the I get too busy with the start of school.

First, I am to post the rules:

• List 8 random facts about yourself
• At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
• Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

My Facts:

1. I love to play board games, especially those from Germany, like Carcassone and Catan.

2. I have a life goal to visit as many National Parks as possible.

3. I never planned to go into education but I absolutely love teaching and would not trade this profession for any other.

4. I have read all the Harry Potter books and all of the Tom Clancy books and all of the Tony Hillerman Books to name a few....

5. I sketch and paint when I camp.

6. The Logan County Historical Society Museum is located in my mother's childhood home.

7. I like to geochache.

8. I found my first bookcrossing book in Yosemite this year and have since released two books.

Now I am tagging:

Patrick Higgins
Janice Stearns
Clarence Fisher ( Whoops - he already was tagged)
David Muir
Greg Carroll
Steve Hardagon
Kelly Whobbes ( Kelly has already been tagged too..-guess Iwas on vacation too long)
Tom Hemingway

The Trees that Rewrote History

Back from a wonderful two weeks in the Eastern Sierras and the high country of Yosemite! My first stop on vacation was a day trip into the White Mountains of California, home of the "trees that rewrote history". This was a fascinating venture into the world of the Bristlecone Pine Forest and the science of dendrochronology. The Bristlecone Pine Forest in this region is home to the world's oldest known living tree which is 4,776 years old. However in this region deadwood has been dated to be as old as 11,400 years old and the scientific community is continuing to explore the deadwood. in this area. Any other place in the world wood 3,000 years old would be an incredible find but in this location it has to be at least 7,000 years old to create any ripple of excitement.

The whole story of dendrochronology and the rangers explanation of the process of dating trees was captivating. It was amazing how low tech the procedure is and how much of the work like counting rings is done essentially by hand. I was also intrigued by the way that these trees have changed our understanding of history. The ranger, Christine, explained how through dendrochronology they have been able to date some of the Native American ruins by taking core sampling's from the wood used in the lintels. She also explained how the bristlecone helped to calibrate radio carbon dating and caused a shift in some of the dates assigned to historic events and locations like the great pyramids. I tried to record her talk as a podcast but I did not get a good quality audio. Therefore I have had to rely on bits an pieces to provided this abbreviated explanation. It was previously assumed that Radiocarbon was created at a constant rate and so by measuring the carbon present an object could be dated. With the discovery of the ancient bristlecone it was possible to count the rings and sample the level of radiocarbon present and thus calibrate the dating more accurately. Generally speaking it was discovered that in many instances radio carbon dating was too "young" and it was established that the level of radiocarbon created is not constant overtime but rather it is effected by a number of factors. Thus the bristlecone pines became known as the trees that rewrote history.

Another part of all of this that appealed to me was the sense of dendrochronology as a puzzle waiting to be solved. The ranger spoke about how they establish a timeline and look for overlapping patterns to establish a fixed timeline. If you know the date of one sample you can count backwards to date the others. This is all explained and illustrated much more eloquently, as in this example at the right, on the website for the Ancient Bristlecone Pine.

What a great opportunity to walk among these ancient trees and oh how painless learning is when we are choosing our path and involved in real work with others who are passionate about what they are doing. Truly both the ranger and scientist I spoke with were so passionate and animated that you were drawn into their world even if just for a short while.

Balance

I am taking off for some time outdoors! Sitting in a place like this has a way of putting life into perspective. When I get back it will be time for school to start and there will be a lot happening but for now it is time to simply enjoy life and look for the balance that will see me through the new school year. While i am camping my only technology link will be my geocache hunting. If you have never heard of geocaching it is definitely worth checking it out. It is a great hobby and a great way to teach students about physical geography!

BCL07-The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. Plutarch

The wonderful thing about physically attending conferences is that they force you to take time to focus, Since I have been home from BLC I have been constantly busy with work and home leaving little time for reflective thinking. In the back of my mind ,however, I have been mulling over Darren Kuropatwa's presentations. BLC, as so many have said, was a wonderful opportunity to spend time with some great minds and getting to talk with and listen to Darren was certainly one of those opportunities.

I have read Darren's blog for over a year and I have always thought that the way he uses blogs and the creative assignments he used were great examples...But they are so much more than that.

A couple of days ago I was skimming the slides from a recent presentation by David Warlick and suddenly i understood in a much deeper way what Darren does and why it is so effective. Darren embodies what I read on the slide from David's presentation....

Stop integrating technology, and instead redefine literacy and integrate that."

When I read that I realized that not only did I agree with it but that Darren is doing just that. In his field of mathematics he has chosen to teach literacy and that in so doing he is enabling students to become mathematical thinkers who can do much more than recall content. They can construct meaning using mathematical concepts. In Darren's presentation he strove to reveal the pedagogy that facilitates this kind of learning. He is very cognizant of the need to create learning environments that are not dependent on big personalities or heavy lifters and as he walked us through his process there was great emphasis on sustainability, and scalable activities.. I encourage you to take the time to look at his slides and listen to the podcasts of his presentations. ( I think at this point only first talk is up but I am sure the others will follow soon.)

Classroom scribes shift the focus and the responsibility on to the learners. It provides an annotated record of learning and a resource that serves more than the immediate community. It allows for mentoring and the addition of expert voices beyond the traditional voice of the teacher. Darren's wiki for the Scribe Hall of Fame is open to all classrooms and all subjects that use scribes so we can both view exemplary posts and provide motivation for students to strive for excellence. Darren also described how this is student driven and how he hands over the selection process for exemplary work to the students. It is all about encouraging the students to take responsibility for their learning. I missed Darren's second talk but the third one was on assessment. It was a powerful look at assessment for mastery, and assessment of mathematical literacy. The slides with examples and rubrics are on slideshare.

Technology, be it blogs, wikis, flickr rss,or de.licio.us all play a role in Darren's classroom and as he discovers new tools he incorporated them also but not as an end but as means for him to effectively engage the students in mathematical thinking and creatively applying that thinking within the context of redefined literacies.

One of the questions that Darren asks and that we all must ask is .....What will your student's remember in 5 years? It is time for us to look seriously at the revised Bloom's taxonomy and to remember that......

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited' Plutarch

Photo: Sidewalk algebra http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sidewalk+algebra&m=text
by hen power
Technorati Tags: BCL07 Kuropatwa literacy Warlick blooms classroom2.0

BLC Weaving together one little bit of what I learned.

I am home from BLC but I have not quite left the conference yet. On the plane I was reviewing podcasts and at home I have been reading others reflections and the skypecasts of the various sessions. I am not very effective at blogging conferences because others are able to record the content much faster than I am and it takes me time to figure out what I am taking away. As I was reflecting on my BLC experience once again (as at NECC) the personal face to face conversations had a big impact as did the skypecasts conversations because they continue to form and inform my personal learning network (PLN) which will sustain my work and my growth. ( Of course it also just plain fun to hang out with people from all over the globe who share your passion).

As I continue to sort through everything I heard and saw one idea seemed to keep resurfacing in different contexts. That was the concept of place. We often talk about things like global connections, flat world, spikey world and the breaking down of walls in classrooms/schools. But I heard something a little different at BLC, something more fundamental and more foundational about redefining how we think about place. Fittingly the first presentation I attended was by Dean Sharenski titled “Moving Beyond the WOW Factor in Google Earth”. It was a great presentation for me on both a practical and theoretical level. But in terms of place it served to remind us that the access to physical locations is almost limitless and the wow was the application called unype which mashes GE and skype and allows for 3d walk arounds.

This practical look at places is an essential starting point but it is only one dimension of place. Ewan McIntosh challenges my sense of place asking about public and private, implicit and explicit at once challenging our judgments and our ability to be transparent in our work/our classroom/our schools. The keynote presentation by Dr Zhao challenged the concepts of world and place looking at virtual space, cultural space and economic space. Joyce Valenza challenged the concept of library as place and talked about being available where and when she was needed by students. Finally all of this came together in Chris Lehman and Christian Long’s discussion of the creation of SLA. The question of design was a question about essential purpose of this place/space.

When we think about knowledge in relationship to place the traditional concepts of the last few hundred years has centered on books, libraries, scholars or teachers and schools. These are relatively static places and we have now entered a dynamic age. The challenge which Ewan left us with and Chris and Christian raised was that in thinking of “school” we need to reinvision our sense of place. We need to identify our goals, our essential purpose and then we need to design a public, explicit and transparent place which allows learning and the process of learning and creating to take center stage.

In the skypecasts of Chris and Christians presentation I pondered: Can we empty our rooms before school begins and challenge ourselves to start from scratch rather than automatically putting in 30 desks 2 file cabinets etc. I was challenged by David Jakes: Empty rooms, but also empty ourselves, use the empty room and starting over as a metaphor for improved teaching and learning.

If anything has and is changing radically in our world it is this sense of place and as we struggle with how it forms and informs our world I need to struggle with school as place and it begins with our goals. Schools must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate .... it should be a place of performance, invention resourcefulness, and networking . It should be a space that encourages us to negotiate and explore new places and that is what technology enables.
Technorati Tags: BLC07, Ewan, Google earth, Skypecast, chatcast, BLC