Reflections of the TZSTeacher

Wow, I learned something about myself today.  I learned that if I cannot direct my learning at pretty much all times, I feel crazy. . .

Sat in a workshop today where internet access was unavailable.  A friend believes it was unintentional. I believe it was intentional. I spent some time being angry and frustrated that the presenter would deliberately set up a workshop without internet access.  BUT, realizing that was futile, I began to examine that anger and frustration.

I realized the thing that was driving me crazy was not being able to direct my learning.  I was missing tweets from other workshops or learning opps, I was missing being able to do any work on the web and get some things done I needed to do, and I had no access to my email or even my phone. (Cell phones were blocked in this particular workshop location.)

I realized in many ways, I felt powerless—I had to engage with the speaker’s lecture or be bored doing nothing.  I could have taken notes—so I began writing.  Thus, you get to read the angry blog that precedes this one and the reflection in this one.

I felt powerless to direct my own learning in the ways I wanted to, in the ways that I was comfortable with and in the ways that fits my style. I don’t want to be in that place.

So why do we do it to our kids daily?

Am sitting in a workshop called “Constructivist Celebration.”  It was billed as “a place to play, recharge, innovate, create, and most importantly, give voice to children, computers and constructivism.”

I’d like to give voice to children, computers and constructivism. I’d like to do it in the way I want to use it with my kids. And, I’d like to do it using not only the tools I will receive today (which is one reason I came) but also with the tools my students have access to daily in their lives.

Children,
Computers
and
Constructivism. . . .

In a place where cell phone usage is BLOCKED (so air cards don’t work), and the internet access is inaccessible to many in the room, since it is limited (and overly saturated), and the room has at least 120-150 people in here.

So how can I use these tools for creativity in ways my kids will be able to if I have no internet access? Why am I sitting in a workshop where the facilitators have set up a situation that is NOT similar to what good educational settings are like in today’s world? Why am I sitting here with a talking head talking at me? How can this be billed as a constructivist when we are listening to someone who cannot make eye contact with the audience, who is not talking in a logical sequence that is easily followed and who is showing examples he has obviously used a lot with the excusing statement of “Some of you have seen it before, some of you have not, but that’s okay—people say they really like it.”

I am sitting in a room with @TeachaKidd, @lnitsche, @zeitz, @smartinez, @bcdtech, @wfryer, @McLeod, @elemenous, @beckyfisher73, @patsylancos, @chrischampion, and many, many other brilliant educators whom I respect and constantly learn from on Twitter AND in real life.  However, I cannot quickly ask a question of these educators online. . .because the physical site was DELIBERATELY set up to NOT allow connectedness across the internet. I will have to stop what I am doing, get up and walk across the room to talk to one person—who may or may not know the answer to the particular question I have.  Then I may have to go to another person, and another, and another until I find one who can help me. In a connected world, I could shoot this question out to my PLN and get a response from someone who knows within minutes. That happens EVERY day for me, and in this paid workshop, I have been deliberately denied access to that network of learning.

Gary Stager says, “The power of the computer comes with the accessibility to the software we have available to us.”  So why are we not using ALL of that, including online tools that are ONLY available when connected to the Internet?

I guess that’s what you get when you pay to go to a workshop that is put on by the people providing the software. . . you get to work with their software only.

Oh, yeah, and it was so constructivist that there was NO direction beyond “pick up your software and be creative.”

How do we teach kids to be comfortable with risk-taking, with there being a variety of answers (and not one is THE right answer) and with there being many ways to express the response to a question. Thinking about their thinking is important. Ultimate goal of education is making connections.

Many kids would rather take a multiple choice test than answer a why question. Once you get kids moving into the direction of discussions, they want to go. . but getting them there is a multi-step process.

What are some of the parameters we need to put into place for an assessment  that is an ill-defined problem?  It’s not about powerpoint. . we want it to be tool agnostic.  What’s the break down between the tool and thinking?  Our goal is to create an assessment that uses technology–so is not based on tool, but deep thinking.

Start thinking about problem: we are going to each work to make sense of creating a problem that’s ill-defined. What does that mean? You can work with people, go blog or journal, explore the wiki, look at the books you were just given (Little Big Minds, 5 Minds for the Future, The Global Achievement Gap, Starting From Scratch)  or whatever you need to process the talk so far.

Go to questions page on the wiki for a synopisis of our current conversation.

I am struggling with something I think many of my PLN folks are thinking about. . .and that’s HOW to improve our work, HOW to change what happens in our schools, and HOW to meet the needs of contemporary learners. Ben Grey introduces himself on his blog this way: “My name is Ben Grey, and I am but one of the many. The many who are looking for change. The many who are engaging in dynamic discussions. The many who think there could be more to the way we engage education.“ I am also on that quest.

Dean Shareski wrote a post “My Big Fat Brain Dump” and he talked about how education conferences need to change to meet the needs of those of us struggling with these kinds of thoughts. Ira Socol,  Jen Wagner, Scott McLeod, Will Richardson, Becky Fisher, David Truss, Liz B. Davis, Michael Wacker, Miguel Guhlin, Paul R Wood, Scott Merrick, Jon Becker, Mike Fisher, Michele Bourgeois, Tom Woodward, John Mikulski and a multitude of others have written or talked about this topic of change in many ways.

Today , I received a tweet with a link to a YOUTUBE video by a 17 year old about  The iSchool Initiative. Kids can paint these pictures. Why aren’t we educators better at doing so for each other?

Here’s MY backstory: I have been using wikis with kids for two years now–really bright kids, really motivated kids, really thoughtful kids who WANT to learn and do well.They love having the opportunity to work on wikis and clearly “get” the potential! (See wikiworld.)

But my wikis–THEIR wikis– are pockets and pools and islands of isolation. . . They’re examples of parallel play at best, NOT collaboration. As the teacher, I own that outcome. I didn’t do enough ahead of time, I didn’t set up the structures, I didn’t paint the pictures for kids so that the work NEEDED collaborative efforts and so I didn’t get it.

I participated in several online, “collaborative” wikis this year as well. One was where we shared our writing based around a common text. Another I created, (And To Think) where kids also shared products around a common text/author, Dr. Seuss. Again, these I see as parallel play.

I skyped with several classes this year–about the Dr. Seuss wiki, about our state of VA– and found it fascinating to watch kids’ reactions to talking to other kids from “far” away. However, the interaction was bizarre. . very traditional, in that kids raised their hands to talk or ask questions, teachers (on both sides, including me) were CLEARLY in charge, and most interactions/questions were designed ahead of time. Again, parallel play in my mind, NOT collaborative.  I OWN these behaviors and outcomes, as, again, I didn’t do enough ahead of time, I didn’t set up the structures, I didn’t ask enough questions of my skyping teacher friends to make these experiences more than that.

So, I’d like to see models-and asked last night on Twitter “I’m wondering what is the most interactive /interdependent KID authored/written/produced wiki you know? Examples?”

I got no responses.

NOT ONE!

I got several DMs or replies from folks asking me to share the results of my request, so here it is.

NO one named a truly collaborative kid wiki.

So where are they?

Update:

@ellsbeth sent a couple of links this AM: “look up gaming wikis like http://bit.ly/lnavg & http://bit.ly/3s8QW Kids contribute.”

What do you think?

I’m relatively new to blogging. . . been doing it since August, 2008 and that’s actually when I began reading other blogs regularly, too. I don’t really “get” categories, (just like I have a hard time organizing bookmarks, tags, etc.), I don’t get the difference between posts and pages, and there are things I just don’t care about as I manage this blog.  I just figured out how to list other people’s blogs on my page (Thanks, Ira, for the push), and I recently messed around with the design and a custom heading.  I like playing with web design and used to create my own pages using html. I’m not stupid, just choosing what to figure out and what to leave out as I prioritize my life.

One of my goals this summer, though, is to improve my blog.

I discovered in the last week or so that when a blog thought hits, I should write it down. .. I have had so many ideas for blogging in that time period, (thanks to my Twitter buddies) and I have forgotten most of them. . . so I just wanted to remind myself–and others (if you care about reminders) to write your ideas down, so we can benefit by them. As @tim_hurson tweeted: The best way to improve an idea is to plant it [in] someone else’s mind.

So, feel free to share your tips and tricks about blogging with me. . . teach me something about how you think about as you blog, and help me get better at this.  My mind is ripe for planting right now, so sow those seeds! I’ll tweet the ideas and hopefully transplant your ideas elsewhere as well!

I have a colleague, Nancy, who is part of the county team going to BLC09.  I think she’s a personality type called an owl–she listens carefully in group conversations, speaks rarely, but when she does, what she says is incredibly insightful, thought-provoking and often downright brilliant.

At our recent team conversation (see previous post) we were talking about the conference themes and which ones we’d like to center on, how to go about it, and looking at a few logistics.  Some of us in the group are avid tweeters, others have joined but not gotten into it, and others don’t even know it. Some of us have experienced conferences with backchannels going, some of us haven’t.  I spoke to the power of backchannels (even had to define and describe what a back channel was) and was raving about how cool it was going to be to experience the backchannels at this particular conference.  I talked a bit about how some of my twitterverse has shared about using backchannels in the classroom, and people were asking great questions and thinking about it. We talked about how this is a contemporary skill/practice and how we need to think through how this can be done in the classroom.  As almost always happens when a group of innovators are thinking about how to move others along the continuum of technology use, someone said something about how teachers would say, “We don’t want them having backchannels in the classrooms.”

Then Nancy zinged: “Instead, we want to them to have it silently happening in their brain.“

SILENTLY HAPPENING IN THEIR BRAIN.

Does that not run counter to anything we know about learning?  Does it not run counter to Vygotsky, to Bloom, to any name you can name in education writing? Does that not take the social out of learning? I don’t know about you, but when I can talk about something I am learning, it makes more sense to me.  I make meaning out of it more quickly and more deeply. Shouldn’t we be providing our students that opportunity as well?

No wonder our kids are bored stiff and give schooling no quality points in their world. What gets the points?  The social parts of school. . ..LUNCH. . RECESS. . .IN BETWEEN CLASSES. . .the classes where teachers set up collaborative projects, conversations, activities. . .

Maybe if we made school more social and made it NOT about “happening silently  in their brains” we would get more buy in.  Maybe if we listened more and talked less. . .maybe if we gave them the tools and supported what THEY want to do with it, then maybe, just maybe the majority of our kids would say they loved learning, rather than they hate school.

What about those backchannels?

We need them to keep it from

HAPPENING SILENTLY IN THEIR BRAIN.

Recently I was one of a group of people in our system invited by our Superintendent to go to Alan November’s BLC 09 conference as a team to bring what we can back. I was honored and thrilled–and even more so a few days later when I was also invited to be part of the practitioner’s strand and present at the Building Learning Communities conference. So I am going–as part of an austere group of educators from our county–and I am presenting!

Last week, the group going was called together to begin to pre-plan and strengthen our own community of learners who will converse, listen, think,  and learn together before we go, while we are there, and after we return. Our team consists of some amazing educators, many of whom are on Twitter–@BeckyFisher73, @jacatlett, (Janelle)  @dld1, (Donna DeGroat) @dharding3, (Diane Harding) and Beth Costa, Kristen Williams, Nancy McCullen, Christa Livermon and John Hunter. Many of these folks are our new instructional coaches (Christa and Janelle will be in my region) and I am looking forward to going with this group.

Last week, we talked about our goals in going:

Where do we, as a school system, go next?  As we incorporate more 21st century tools, what do we want to accomplish? What can we bring back?

When many of us saw Alan November at VASCD, we heard him talk about new literacies and redefining or recognizing new literacies–just what IS 21st century learning? How do we ensure that students do new things? We wonder about student involvement in creating the questions. . do they get to? Students need choices  that are open-ended and creative; we recognize it’s not just about the technology, but what the technology is forcing us to see and understand about our world. That’s a foundational understanding many teachers don’t have.  What foundational underpinnings do we want for ourselves, our teachers, our students? How do we best help students think for themselves?

We reminded ourselves visual literacy is crucial–how do we make that a vital part of our curriculum?  Back channels came up–we talked a bit about how conferences are changing because of back channel conversations–and the power of networks like twitter.

Our notetaker recorded these questions:

• Redefining what literacy means, what is the “new literacy”?  Does everything 21st century mean “just technology”?  What about collaboration?
• How do we hold ourselves accountable for addressing 21st century teaching and learning (beyond “you have to have 2 technology projects each year) information literacy, visual literacy, inquiry, collaboration
• How do we stay on top of all of what we need to know and be able to do?
• What do we mean by “21st century learning”? Not all wikis are 21st century?
• If it sounds too intellectual and we don’t make it practical enough and related enough to the learning environment, are we pointing out the right stuff in the examples?
• Examples that cut across specific projects but illustrate how we can just do this as what we do?
• How do we make this more about who we are and not just something a few people do?
• What does inquire, collaborate, etc. mean for students?
• Why do we wait until after the SOLs to do cool stuff?  creative productions with choices…why aren’t we doing this all of the time?

We decided to meet again closer to the time we go, and also go to the opening reception together. We also agreed that we should pair up to go to sessions so we could bounce ideas off of a teammate.

And, again, we were reminded:

“Watch the back channels – this will be very interesting.”

On Thursday, May 21, 2009, ** Chris O’Neal ** brought a colleague from Fluvanna to observe my 3rd grade math students work with their iPods. The day before, I had discussed with my kids what they thought we should show and how the class should be organized.  I WISH I had videotaped that conversation, as it was simply amazing. However, I didn’t, so this is take 3, the description of Station 3.  (See previous posts for description of stations 1 and 2.)

Station 3 was to record the number of rolls it took to get 6 of a kind in ** Motion-X Dice**.  We had done this before, just collecting data and then looking at that data. Today’s twist was to predict how many rolls it would take and then calculate the variance between their prediction and the actual count.

To introduce this task, I put a three column chart on the board labeled P, A and V.  (I use T-charts all the time as organizers in my classroom, so adding a column is nothing the kids haven’t seen before.) As I introduced the chart, I told them that today we were not only going to record the actual rolls of the dice, as we have done before but we were going to calculate something called “variance.”  I then pointed to the chart and asked what they thought the V meant.  Of course they said variance, and I said I would tell them in a minute what variance meant in this case.

Then I asked about the P, thinking they would immediately say prediction, even though I hadn’t pre-loaded that word into the conversation.  I can’t remember everything they guessed, but the third or fourth guess stuck in my head, and that’s when I told them it was prediction.  One kid raised his hand and said, “PRAY?”  I laughed and said, “Explain that, please,” and he responded, “We pray to roll the same six numbers really quickly?”  At that point I named “P” for prediction and A for “actual,” then gave a few examples, to make sure they not only knew how to fill in the table, but understood that the variance could be positive or negative.

I have never taught negative numbers to these kids, although their classroom teacher has done a quick one day lesson, and many of their parents have told me they have worked with negative numbers because their child asked. However, math just makes sense to these kids, so I don’t worry about them not having prior information–I give them enough to figure the patterns out and they usually do.

As I watched this station, my observations were focused in two ways:

1. I wanted to see if they were indeed calculating the variance correctly and if they “got” negative numbers.

2. I was looking to see if predictions were even close to the actual number of rolls.

What I saw surprised me in some ways.  First, there were a couple of kids whose predictions matched the actual count perfectly at least once. Generally the variance was fairly low, which told me the kids had figured out some patterns in the rolling, and gave me fodder for the next class’ conversation. I was surprised the variance was as low as it was in many cases and was anxious to ask what they were basing their predictions on and what patterns they were looking for in their work.

The kids whose variance numbers were larger were doing things like holding the iPod differently as they shook it, or talking to the iPod as they rolled it, or attaching some ritual to the act of rolling the dice (much like some people blow on the dice before they roll for good luck.) That told me some people were believing, at some level, luck (or chance) could be manipulated, and again, gave me info to use in the next conversation.

While I didn’t initially think this station was as powerful as the others, when I went to observe (and then to reflect here) I realized there was lots to be gained by asking kids to do a similar activity again, with just a small twist. Only one child needed support to understand negative numbers, they all were predicting, couting and recording accurately, and talking to one another about their results as they worked.  PLUS, I found out that despite our work on probability this year, there were a few kids who were still believing they could manipulate chance to improve their results.

The other thing that struck me (AGAIN!) was the motivation they had to predict, shake, record and reflect on their results on the iPod.  The tool is virtual, there is no noise (unless they turn the volume up), but they worked the entire time at this station, doing something they KNEW how to do from prior experiences.

Once again, the iPod Touch motivated them to stay engaged and involved in the learning task. The tool here provides an avenue for learning that allows them to gather data quickly, and easily see results. The tool here engages the student.  AND, the tool here entices the kids to stay engaged.

iPod Touches should be in EVERY classroom!