Evaluating Technologies - NECC - 6/28/08

A report from the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC). One vendor, ePals, invites attendees to contribute to an online discussion about evaluating technology solutions. The framework is a great discussion starter for leaders who make technology decisions for their organization about any type of technology.

From the website:

How can teachers move beyond technology integration and authentically embed NETS (National Education Technology Standards) into curricula across the content areas to transform learning?

A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING SOLUTIONS

How does this service help students become global citizens in the global marketplace (e.g., in building innovation, literacy, critical thinking, creativity and responsibility)?

How does this service enable collaboration, teamwork and problem solving in the classroom?

How does this service address the needs of ALL students?

How does this service foster real-life learning experiences and independent exploration across the curricula?

How does this service create a safe and secure environment for teaching and learning?

How does this service provide professional development that encourages teachers to collaborate, share expertise and maximize student achievement?

Tired of sticky notes?

Personally, I can't even begin to imagine this. I love sticky notes. I have to truly restrain myself from buying more sticky notes every time I go to an office supply store or even many gift stores now. But for those of you who have had enough of Dilbert, Garfield, or even that tropical multi-color pop-up sticky note block that was fun for the first six months and now you just want it gone...

Bob Sprankle has some ideas for going digital, and ditching the sticky note once and for all. Plus, Hotchalk is running a promo right now where you can get full access to their journals. And if you're not familiar with the Hotchalk resources, it's worth some summer Internet time to check them out (some are free, others have a small fee).

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21st C Skills & Any Century Skills

This presentation from Jim Moulton (Maine) is a fantastic focus on the importance of the appropriate use of technology to encourage student learning. Student learning. Project based learning can give students the authentic context for engaging students in the content to be learned. Also, if you have not yet invested the TCPK framework, do. Jim is right on target and every teacher should think in terms of possibilities the way he does.

Peter Reynolds Lists 6 Essentials

I hope you caught this recent article in District Administration, but if you didn't, you can read it online here:
http://www.districtadministration.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=1605

Peter Reynolds is a beloved children's book author (The Dot) and a great technology innovator and founder of Fablevision. In this article, he's celebrating ISTE's addition of Creativity and Innovation to their standards. Here's part of #6 to entice you to read the other five: "Leadership:...Without enlightened leadership, none of our lofty goals for revolutionizing education can take root. We need brave leaders who can invent the future with their staff and with the next generation. We need leaders who live the new ISTE standards personally, rather than pass them along on badly photocopied sheets for teachers to pass along to their students. This is not the "pass it along" era. This is the "connected universe" era. Unconventionally constructed social networks are reinventing the world..." His other five are equally provocative and practical! maggie

Balanced Leadership Academy

Have you heard about this opportunity from School Administrators of South Dakota?

The Balanced Leadership Academy is a series of five professional development sessions designed to help school administrators learn and apply effective leadership practices. It focuses on 21 key leadership responsibilities identified in research compiled by McRel. The program combines proven research with practical applications. School administrators will leave the program with the skills of knowing how to lead, why leadership is important, and when it's critical to provide effective leadership.

Leaders, like everyone else, need to take full advantage of opportunities like this to hone their skills, refresh their outlooks, and connect with other leaders for ongoing support. Whether you've just finished a professional development event, or it's been a while since you've done something like this, I would strongly encourage anyone in a leadership role to participate in this great opportunity.

For more information, click here, or contact John Pedersen at (605) 773-2525 or john.pedersen@sasd.org

Teaching the Digital Natives

I love this quote from Steve Hargadon in April's TechLearning, so I'm just copying it verbatim. The bold-facing and paragraphing is mine.

You may think you don't have anything to teach the generation of students that seems so tech-savvy, but it really, really needs you.

For centuries we have had to teach students how to seek out information--now we have to teach them how to sort through an overabundance of information. We've spent the past 10 years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content--now we have to teach them to create appropriate content.

They may be "digital natives," but their knowledge is surface
level, and they desperately need training in real thinking
skills.

They live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them,
talking and texting on cell phones and connecting online. We may be afraid
to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted
waters without the benefit of adult guidance.

To do so we may need to change our conceptions of teaching, and
better now than later.

Motivating

This website from School Improvement Network takes aim at all the negative publicity that public schools in the United States usually receive, and posits three short video clips focusing on the fact that leaders, teachers, and schools DO make a positive difference in the lives of their students.

Making Kids Googlable

On his weblogg-ed, Will Richardson askes administrators:

[...if you are Googling people who you might want to teach at your school, what are you doing to insure the kids in your classrooms are “Googled well” when they go for their own interviews? And I don’t just mean telling them NOT to post certain things online. I mean what are you doing to help students shape their online portfolios so that when their future employers or future mates run the search, what they find is not just a lack of negatives but a potential plethora of positives? Not surprisingly, the answer is basically “not much.”]

http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/making-kids-googlable/

Dailies-Allison Knox Keynote

Each day, the director of a movie checks the dailies to see if the filming is acceptable progress toward the vision he or she has for the film. Allison used the analogy to encourage us as teachers and educators and especially as leaders to continually check our progress toward our 21st century learning goals. She shared statistics showing that 99% of voters think 21st century skills need to be taught in today's schools and the greatest skill needed by employers is critical thinking--with innovation coming in fourth, just a few percentage points lower.

We need to ask ourselves if our dailies are ensuring that our students will have critical thinking skills. We need to focus on the higher levels of the new Anderson taxonomy that puts evaluation and creativity at the top. We need to continue to campaign for creativity and innovation in our schools, and to provide evidence that students are on the 21st century learning pathway. How can we do this? What practical things are we doing already? What needs to change?

Power Up 2 Integrate Technology

Power Up 2 Integrate Technology
Kris Baldwin, Debbie O’Doan & Jackie Jessop Rising, TIE
Participants in this grant shared their experiences when they integrated Web 2.0 tools in their classrooms.
They said the most beneficial aspects included
Enough exposure to wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and other tools to now feel comfortable using them.
1. Paticipating in online classes that focused on one particular tool.
2. Student centered classrooms motivate low achieving students and engaged them in learning.
3. Gaining confidence that they can create a unit that is meaningful and engaging.
4. Seeing detailed units that other area teachers are using.
5. Powerup project wiki at http://powerup.tie.wikispaces.net/ to access resources

Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works

In answering the question, Why Technology? Roxanne Everhard made the statistics from Marzano’s work easy to understand and builds a case for reading and using the texts: What Works in Schools, Classroom Instruction that Works, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. From her experience, Roxanne explains to us “Our students and children these days demand technology, they don’t just want it, they demand it.” From Survey Monkey, Bubbl.us, Del.icio.us, Wikispaces, to blogs, Roxanne leads us through some Web 2.0 technologies. For more information on Using Classroom Instruction that Works, sign up for the online graduate course at ESA 6 or TIE. You can also call the TIE office or email Roxanne Everhard or Jackie Jessop Rising for more informaiton.

Technology Professional Development in Your School

Lisa Tolliver & Rodney Dally from the Wagner Community School District have created a new and innovative way to differentiate professional development in their district. Some of the new ideas included a rotational in-service day schedule (discipline training, cultural diversity, technology integration, RtI, and collaboration), earning two credits for participation and implementation of professional development topics, and (one of my favorites) compensation for improving their technology skills!

This was a great session on how to make professional development more teacher and paraprofessional friendly!

Indepth on Windows Movie Maker and PhotoStory

I was fortunate to work with a group of TIE participants sharing Windows Movie Maker and Photostory.

Feel free to check out my website that I used for this indepth.

http://www.garretson.k12.sd.us/TIE2008

Dr. Tim Tyson's Keynote Address

Dr. Tim Tyson shares the importance of schools not accepting the idea of “this is the way it is always been”. The world is changing and so should schools. Students need authentic learning experiences to get them excited about learning. Dr. Tyson asks us to think about questions such as:
What if students really wanted to learn?
What if they wanted to create content?
What if they wanted to connect with people to share?
So, how can we make learning irresistible, so irresistible that students want to do it, all the time?
At what age does meaningfulness start?
Ask our students what do you have to say that is so important that everyone in the world needs to hear it?
For more information on student projects, visit Maybryonline.org

Pat McGill Energizes Educators

Pat McGill started out this humorous and exciting session with stories of her own teaching experiences. Her positive energy spread throughout the room helping educators avoid negativity. One of her key points was that individuals motivate themselves; in education our job is to provide environments where the motivation occurs. Grow the gifts! Instead of thinking outside the box, she encouraged us to grow the box (story by Leo Buscaglia).

Leadership is the power of influence. Educators model, monitor, and mentor. Participants at the session then chose a psychometric shape. This shape indicated your personality traits.

Her five R's included being real, rural, ready, reachable, remarkable. She suggested we read the Four Agreements. And left us with lots of golden nuggets to reflect on!

21st Century Skills for Administrators

Kris Baldwin lead this in-depth session on how school administrators can use technology successfully in their school districts and buildings. One area of interest included finding out about people through websites such a My Space, Facebook, and Bedo or looking at teacher certification. Another good way to find out about someone is to "Google" their name. But, make sure that you put "quotes" around their name to narrow your search.

Kris also discussed how students are Digital Natives and we are Digital Immigrants. The students are changing, we need to learn how to change with them, and connect with them digitally. She helped us to create and use wikispaces, Del.icio.us, and Blogs. These programs will meet students at their level, as well as helping teachers collaborate when they can't be together in the same room at the same time.

Kris has a wealth of information on her wikispace. Make sure to check out all of this digital information and begin connecting with your staff and students at a new and different level!

Teacher Leaders Unite

I found a great website where teacher leaders can go to learn about leadership, coaching and mentoring, professional communites, 21st century learning, classroom practice, and other teacher leadership information.

Under the resources link, there is a 21st Century link that takes you to many different articles and websites on why and how teachers can and should integrate technology into their classrooms.

Have fun looking around! http://www.teacherleaders.org/

Good Leaders (Teachers) Never Quit

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Joseph Martin of the New Teacher University located in Florida. Among the topics he addressed were the following: the most common reasons teachers quit the profession; four "Fear Factors" administrators must be aware of when hiring teachers; three P's that administrators must understand about their teachers; and three things administrators must do to retain good teachers. According to Dr. Martin, the three most common reasons why teachers quit the profession are the following: lack of support (isolation); unrealistic expectations (too much to do & not enough time to do it); and, surprisingly, other teachers (experienced, negative teachers). Dr. Martin stated that student behavior was the fourth-most common reason why teachers quit the profession. In order to truly understand their teachers, administrators must understand teachers' "Fear Factors", which are (1) Time; (2) Approval; (3) Consistency; and (4) Quality. By "time", the implication is that teachers are afraid of wasting it. Their personal planning time needs to be respected & valued so that they believe they can complete their responsibilities. Second, some teachers get offended very easily. They need to perceive a "sense of approval" from their peers & supervisors. Third, some teachers don't want to change; they are afraid of doing things differently. These individuals need to be given very clear, simple directions when asked to do something new. Finally, some teachers are concerned with "quality", and need to be given time to do things correctly. The three P's that Dr. Martin refers to are: priorities; purpose; and pressures. Administrators need to understand teachers' individual priorities, preferably each person's top three. Second, administrators should try to understand each teacher's purpose for entering the profession; what drives the individual to teach? Third, an administrator should ascertain what pressures an individual teacher experiences, in order to know how best to help the teacher. In conclusion, all administrators (and leaders) should: serve with their hearts, not with their heads; the responsibilities should cause more heartaches than headaches. Next, administrators should focus on the purpose of their positions, not the payoff. Finally, administrators should be an example to their teachers, not an excuse.

From the Boardroom to the Classroom: Value-Added Leadership

Today I had the privilege of listening to a presentation by Dr. Robert Marzano & Dr. Tim Waters from McREL (Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning). One of the key ideas in the presentation was the emphasis on the importance of individual reflection. In order to become more effective as teachers & leaders, it is absolutely imperative that we schedule times (at regular intervals) to reflect on the specific strategies, methods, and practices in which we engage. As we work with administrators & teachers, it is part of our responsibility to ask questions that direct those individuals to reflect on what they are doing, so that they may consider new approaches to particular challenges that they face. While this may seem like common sense to some, Marzano & Waters have asserted that it is something that is not valued enough. They have also indicated that, contrary to many beliefs, the strength of leadership at the district level has a strong correlation with the academic achievement at the individual school level. Some people believe that the superintendent's leadership ability does not necessarily have a significant impact on the achievement of students at the school building level. Chief among the responsibilities of the superintendent should be the following: a goal-setting process; non-negotiable goals for achievement & instruction; school board alignment with & support of district goals; monitoring goals for achievement & instruction; and use of resources to support the goals for achievement & instruction. Again, it is not uncommon to observe some leaders who will focus on certain responsibilities, at the expense of others. However, the schools who are committed to doing what's best for students will take no shortcuts in ensuring that all of these responsibilities are met. Only when this occurs will students have the greatest opportunity for increased academic achievement and personal success.

Focusing on a Gradual Release of Responsibility

Doug Fisher, San Diego State University, held an outstanding session on gradual release of responsibility and how he trains districts to make this theory come alive in the classroom. The presentation included discussions on the prupose and modeling of lessons; guided instruction to differentiate, collaborative learning, and independent practice.

Most models include modeling, guided practice and independent practice and skip over the collaborative practice, which is where the student learning and thinking occur.

This session offered many insights on this process and made us truly reflect on our practice as professional development trainers. All too often we jump through the hoops to present our content, and don't include these steps along the way. This might be one reason that we sometimes don't see the changes we would like to see. It is a slow process, but if you follow the steps, you might actually see the understanding occur more quickly. Sounds easy, but remember, it does take time.