Tag Archives: Changing Teachers

We Are Off!

We held our first Blogging Club for teachers at my school yesterday and I would say that it was a resounding success. Of course I would say that because I am facilitating the group, but seriously it was great to see so many enthusiastic, open-minded teachers eager to learn about something new.

If you are one of the teachers who was there yesterday, and you are reading this post, welcome! Reading blogs is one of the first steps to entering the conversation and moving forward on your journey. In the spirit of reflective learning, I want to use this post and the subsequent ones I write about this process to be a place where I reflect on the process of working with teachers who want to use more technology. I am a firm believer that we learn best, when we can articulate our style, our successes, and most importantly our failures. I also want to use this series of posts to document what we are doing as a means to share the journey with other teachers, at other schools who may be interested in a similar project.

What we did:

In an effort to use as many useful tools as we can, beyond just blogs, I created a Google Doc as a place to take collective notes on our meeting. I am finding that Google Docs are a great tool for constructing meaning by its users. I could have easily passed out or shared the answers to some of the questions we discussed on a hand out or powerpoint, but I feel it is important to have stakeholders gather their thoughts and ideas and collaborate to come up with a shared response.

I created an outline on the document and encouraged participants to take notes as we talked. This was a bit new and unusual for some, and it was natural to want to read what was happening on the document. I think after a while it will get easier.

Here is some of what was there:

Why did you sign up for this blogging project?What are you hoping to get out of it?

A renewed interest in blogging
Have difficulties sometimes trying to figure out what to write about.
never blogged before – want to learn/experiment!
To develop a class blog and perhaps a professional blog
To have a space for discussion points that are generated in class but because of time-constraints we cannot fully develop them.
Community
Communication
who is the audience?

Two words on this list make me very happy: Community and Communication. We are on the right track!

Here was the agenda:

Have a general conversation about why people blog.
Different types of blogs: class, personal, professional.
Different blogging platforms
Start a blog
Talk about design and features

It was great to see how these initial questions raised much bigger and more philosophical questions. I didn’t want to start with such a big scope, but it was encouraging to see the interest. Some of the major raised questions were about:

Time constraints
Safety
Online Identity
Publishing something while your learning (Things not being perfect)

There were other concerns, but these were the few that come to mind. I do not want to address these issues in this post, but rather hope that we can tackle each one in the coming weeks.

I think one mistake I made was that I only used my blogs and general way of doing things as examples, and people may have been a bit shocked by the amount of time I spend on my online presence. I want to ensure teachers who are in our group that I may be a bit of an anomaly. There is no expectation for teachers to have four blogs and spend a few hours a night posting to your blogs. Each individual will find a comfort zone and work from there. So please do not think that we are all trying to race to some kind of blogging ideal. We are here to start where you as an individual teacher feel comfortable and slowly move at your pace till you feel confident to move forward.

Interesting to see how much more cautious and nervous teachers can be about learning than their students. As teachers we tend to be more dubious and want to move very slowly and cautiously while we learn, but then we expect our students to be enthusiastic learners who are always working at the class pace rather than their own. Something to keep in mind: Each learner starts in a different place and needs their own pace. Do we do that in our classrooms, or are we trying to get through curriculum?

Next week we will look at a variety of other blogs to a sense of the diversity in style and content. Here is a list you may want to start exploring before next week:

always learning
Intrepid Teacher
Tip of the Iceberg
Learning on the Job
Mr. C’s Class Blog
Everyone has to start somewhere
Beyond Digital
The History Ninja
Teach With Video
Mrs. Utility Player

We went on to discuss the different types of blogs that teachers could have: Class, Personal, and Professional. Based on this Google Doc Survey I sent out prior to the meeting it looks like we will have a variety of different blog styles within our group, which is fantastic.

In closing we spent some time looking at various platforms, mainly: Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, and Edublogs. The expectation is that teachers will have a clear idea of what sort of blog they want to start and which platform will be best for them. Next week, we will create blogs and begin looking, I mean writing about, what we learn.

I am thinking about proposing that no matter what kind of blog teachers create, they also create a reflective blog for the purpose of this club. So they/you too can have a place to write about the various videos we will watch, the posts we will read, and the conversations we will have.

What do you think teachers? How is it going so far? Don’t be shy leave a comment and let the conversations begin. For those of you wondering about time, this post took me 17 minutes to write, 10 minutes to edit. Please do not judge lest there be typos or grammatical faux pas. (Spelling?)

Blog Alliance!

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I recently sent out a document asking for some editing help on a letter I want to send out to teachers at my school. I am a firm believer that teachers will never use new tools or try new methods of teaching, until they have a firm understanding of the tools and methods on a personal level. In short, if you want a class full of bloggers, you need a blogger to sell it to them. A teacher mandated to “use” technology will never convince a class of students to blog.

To remedy this situation, I have decided to gather five to ten teachers from my school and walk them through the blogging process. From there we will move wherever their interests takes us, but I will guide them toward Twitter and building their own learning networks. I will encourage them to blog about whatever excites them, whether that is pedagogy or knitting. I just want to see teachers modeling good writing practice and taking charge of their digital identities.

Here is where you come in: Blog Alliance! How about you do the same thing? In a few weeks we will join our fledgling bloggers. As they become more comfortable we will help them find a supportive and critical audience. In a few months time, we will hopefully have some new blood in the network as well as a team of teachers ready to move our respective schools forward.

If you are interested please leave a comment with your details. Let me know if I forgot anything or other suggestions. I plan to send this letter (Edit it, use it, share it) out this week. My school is off for a week’s holiday but I would like to start before November.

Credit where credit is due, Clint Hamada coined the term Blog Alliance, but I am pretty sure it is under Creative Commons license. CC another lesson for the Blog Alliance!

Please join us on the wiki to offer any advice or guidance you feel will be useful.

Dream (Tweet) Team

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A few days ago, I sent out a Tweet asking:

I thought of the idea after I saw the “dream team” that is being assembled at various international schools world wide. I noticed that several people I follow and trust as great members of my team have ended up at Korean International School @stevekatz @krea_frobro747 @kurisuteen and @tsbray I was quickly told that @b_roadside is at KIS as well. Last year there was the All-Star team in Bangkok. Are there others?

For those of you familiar with this sports analogy, you will appreciate that teams who want to create a unified team will scour the free agent market and find players who will help deliver them a championship. Is your team looking for a connected team?

I thought about the teachers I know world wide who Tweet and are connected through various modes of networking tools. I thought about where they are placed and whether or not they feel isolated or connected. I was jealous of the people at KIS, because they seem to have a great team who shared similar values regarding pedagogy and technology.

I thought about how I was excited to now be at a school with at least one other person on Twitter @janeinjava, but this constant connection and interaction is not the culture of my school. (Not yet) I am hoping that I too can create an environment where we have a team on Twitter soon, and I am hoping that doesn’t only mean that they randomly tweet now and then, but rather the team reflects a culture of connectivity.

But one can look at KIS now, and see that they value technology and it’s implications in education, based on their recruiting practice. I have a feeling that this team was created partly through luck and happenstance, or is it because they are purposefully recruiting teachers who are connected? You tell me. How many schools during interviewing ask potential teachers whether they are on Twitter, or how they use social networks to stay tuned to the latest professional development?

Most people responded that they did not feel that the number of Tweeting teachers had any correlation to a schools commitment to technology, because many people simply use Twitter to waste time. I thought it was implied in my message that I meant teachers who are part of this burgeoning edtech community.

I am not claiming that a school should be judged solely on the number of tweeting teachers, but I do think that if you are in a school where there is a value placed on your involvement in social networks you should feel lucky.

Where do you teach? Are you looked at like some kind of geek because you Tweet or blog, or is there a culture of these activities at your school? What are some dream teams that you know of?

Talk Back

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I had an interesting talk with my 6th grade students yesterday. We were discussing Bloom’s Taxonomy, lower-level thinking skills, homework, busy work, work, and why teachers assign it and why they do it. I was explaining to them that in the information age, simply naming, listing, memorizing information is not enough. We need to do something more with the knowledge we acquire. I challenged them to look at the work they are being assigned by teachers and try to place it on Bloom’s pyramid.

“If you are working on an assignment or taking a test that is simply asking you to memorize “facts”, a unit that goes no further, you should speak with your teacher and ask them why they have chosen not to challenge your thinking? Ask them to explain to you the purpose of the assignment.” I told them to keep in mind that all teachers, myself included, are sometimes guilty of relying on the easy way out due to various stresses. We will all sometimes assign a worksheet here, a quiz there, but ultimately a unit of study should extend their thinking and encourage them to create something new from acquired knowledge.

They gawked and said, “Yeah right! We would get in so much trouble. We would never ask a teacher that.”

This left me thinking about the power structure of schools, the relationships between teachers and students, and the image students have of most of us. I had a brief discussion on Twitter about standing up to authority figures. The following post is the result of my ruminations:

I don’t want to be an authority figure. I don’t want to be the type of teacher who students are afraid to face, to challenge, to argue with, to understand. Do not get me wrong, I believe in running a tight ship. After ten years, I am beginning to find a classroom management style that works for me, and it is based on The Golden Rule. I treat my students how I wanted to be treated when I was their age. I respect them and their opinions. I understand the struggle, pain, and confusion they deal with on a daily basis. I want to encourage their passions and help them find their voice, their curiosity, and desire to learn, grow, and evolve.

In order to this, I have to have an open door. I don’t speak to them, but talk with them. I put my guard down. I am vulnerable. I have to share my ideas, my thoughts, and my struggles. Don’t get me wrong, I am not proposing being their friends or the “cool” teacher that everyone takes advantage of and doesn’t respect. I am simply saying that if we want to guide are students, if we want them to feel comfortable coming to us when they are lost or confused or when they want clarification, we must build trust. You cannot do this if your students are afraid of challenging your authority.

I don’t know about you, but I have never trusted an authority figure in my life. Back to my point about my students not feeling like they are able to speak to their teachers about their own learning. Their apprehension goes back to the antiquated notion that teachers are the experts and that students are simply receptacles of our infinite wisdom.

Much has been said about educational reform, technology and the new classroom, but the way I see it nothing will change until students are not afraid of their teachers. We are not equals. That is not what I am saying. Teachers, after all, have years of training and life experience under our belts. The best way to change student attitudes is to be aware of their perceptions of us, be open to helping them change those perceptions, and build honest, trusting, relationships based on respect and a shared goal- Learning.

In the next few weeks, I hope to write about some of the things I have done to build these relationships. I will share some success and failures, but in the meantime, what do you do to build closer relationships with your students so they are not afraid to come to you for guidance? Or do you think an authoritative teaching style is more effective then the mentor model I have described? Is there a hybrid model, what does that look like? Please leave some comments. This is an important topic for me and I would like to explore I further.

There's No Such Thing As Virtual: It Is All Teaching

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It has been an interesting week in Doha. The government Supreme Council has decreed that all schools stay closed until October 4th in an effort to curb the spread of Swine Flu. What makes matters more complicated is that this announcement came on the tail of a weeklong holiday for Eid, so I haven’t seen my students in over two weeks. The decree caused a lot of anxiety for all the schools here in Doha, because no one was sure how long it could last. People began to speculate and spread rumors that Qatar may follow the examples of other Gulf states like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia who will remain closed until November, but it looks like we will be back in school sooner than that. This temporary closing of schools, however, has brought to light some very interesting aspects of distance learning. (E-Learning, “virtual” learning)

Because my school does not have a virtual school platform like Moodle or Blackboard, we have opted to simply asked the teachers to post pages, links, .pdfs and .doc to our school’s CSM run website. While this presentation of worksheets and online activities is limited in scope, it is still better than nothing.

The American School, where my wife works, is fairing a bit better and has even received some press for their use of Blackboard. For years they have been encouraging teachers to use Blackboard for such an emergency, and while teachers have begrudgingly posted a few assignments here and there the tool has largely been unused till now. Now that the emergency is upon them, however, teachers are scrambling to quickly learn how to become “virtual” teachers, and in doing so are finding the limitations, not only of Blackboard as a tool, but they are also realizing that teaching using online tools is more than simply posting assignments on a web storage space.

Teaching online, or being a virtual teacher, is more than a skill set; it is a mindset and a philosophy. Teachers who are well versed in a variety of tools, not just Blackboard will fair much better in times of crisis and will be better prepared for finding ways to reach their students than say teachers who rarely use technology at all. Teachers who themselves are connect and use many tools for their own learning will barely miss a step. While I understand the unease these teachers are experiencing, I think their apprehension speaks more to the limitations offered not only by blackboard, but of school philosophies when it comes to technology use and pedagogy.

This crisis has clearly illustrated that creating a valuable web-friendly ethos/community of teachers well versed with technology, is the first step in creating a sustainable system to deal with not only emergencies, but in helping to maintain strong ties between teachers and students beyond the classroom. Communicating with students outside the classroom whether through Blackboard or other free online tools must be an ongoing activity for the entire school. If students are used to checking a blog for assignments or working on a Google Doc with a peer, then not being in school will not impact their schooling as much as say a student who has no way to contact their teacher beyond email.

I am not writing this post to make teachers feel bad about their or to discredit any schools. We are all doing the best we can. I just want to point out that using technology is not something that schools can force their teachers to do only in times of emergency. Teachers who are not familiar with a variety of tools that will help them connect with their students will stumble and become anxious when forced to change the way they teach. Schools must imagine different possibilities:

We need to imagine a school where everyone blogs- teachers, students, parents, and administration. Imagine a school that has its own youtube channel and podcast space. Imagine a school that uses chatzy as a back channel even when school is in session. Imagine a school where students are constantly working together using Google Docs and wikis. Imagine a school where almost every knows how to use several tools to connect, communicate, and collaborate. Imagine a school where the school day never ends, and the work can be done anywhere any time. Imagine a school where the teacher uses class time to coach and guide and not lecture or “teach.”

This is the type of school I am trying to build. You can use Blackboard, but the beauty of the Web is that it is all free and available to us all. We simply must be able to take some risks and trust our students to learn from their mistakes.

Here are some examples of what is possible:

I had planned to use this week to get my students started on our online 2.0 journey. I already have two classrooms, one in Canada and one in Thailand, waiting to meet us. We have sketched out some rough ideas of how our three classes will interact, but I needed to start showing my students the tools and skills they will need to make the kinds of connections I want them to make throughout the year. I was going to walk them through each step in class, but due to Swine Flu we were forced to “just do it.”

I was actually a bit excited when I heard we would not be in school. Rather than fumble around with how I would deliver my traditional material, I began instead to think about how I would help my students quickly learn about and use a variety of tools that would help them connect and stay tuned with our class community. I was not interested in posting worksheets for them to complete. I wanted to recreate our classroom online, so we could have conversations. It is this sense of community that I feel is missing from Blackboard.

COLheader

The first thing I did was launch our class blog. I had planned to start blogging soon anyway, so it was perfect timing. I used the blog as the central place to communicate with the kids. Unlike Blackboard where individual classes are closed and hard to access, a simple blog allows me to share information, media, and much more in an environment that inspires commenting, conversations, and community. The hope was to quickly create an area where we could meet and move onto completing a variety of tasks.

Once the blog was published, I had to find a way to direct the kids to it. Out of 50 students I had the emails of about 29; I started there. I posted a link on our school website under the page for English work, and on the first day I had 81 visits to the blog. Because my students are not yet familiar with RSS, I had to find a way to let them know when there was going to be new posts.

graph

I decided to create a Facebook Fan Page, (I have asked that adults not become a fan of the page yet. I want my students to feel safe and really understand what we are doing, before I introduce our network to the bigger global network.) In three days already has 23 fans. I embedded a Facebook feed in the sidebar to allow students who do not have Facebook a chance to stay tuned with announcements. I can now also send the group updates straight from Facebook. I now have an easy way to share class announcements with the kids in the place where they spend their time online. Instead of hoping that they would check Blackboard, I know that they can simply get an status update telling them to take a survey on the blog as they chat with their friends.

For the first task, I asked students to create Gmail accounts. Later in the year I want to use Google Docs and Google Reader, so I felt that this was a crucial first step. With little help from me, I now have 23 students created Gmail accounts. A few students had problems so I set up a chatzy chat room to answer questions. I experimented with various video conferencing sites and dodged a major bullet and didn’t use Tiny Chat due to some inappropriate material on their site, but found TokBox to be very useful and I hope to use it in the future.

I’ve used Youtube as a way to create videos for my students who are not native English speakers and may not be able to read all of the text on the site. As the students perform each task, I give them a little more to do. They have in three days: created Gmail accounts, commented on a blog, signed up to be a Facebook Fan, responded to some quotes and images, and finally answered a survey I posted from a Google Form.

Not only have I not fallen behind this week, I have actually helped my kids learn real life skills by doing and not just talking about it. By quickly building our online community, I think the kids will better understand the power of these tools and how they can use them to help their learning.

I hope you will stay tuned to what we are doing throughout the year. I have big plans for the year and this is a great group of kids. We will create individual blogs next week, as well as set up RSS on Google Reader, begin to think about tagging bookmarks with Delicious, and we will set up a class wiki and Flickr page. Why have I chosen these tools? I see them as the most vital for my own learning. I use them often, feel comfortable using them, and I really understand their value in creating a network.

Empowering teachers to use these tools is a huge first step in creating a school that can function on or offline without missing a step. Swine Flu or no Swine Flu, I know my class will be connected and ready to learn, share, and teach others. The question now is how do we get other teachers on board and feeling comfortable using these tools?

If you are interested and want ideas on how to be a more effective virtual teacher join us on our journey. We are learning as we go, but would love the company. What do you think? How has Swine Flu affected your teaching? What has worked for you? What has been hard? Do you find Blackboard useful? Do you use any other tools to connect with your students? Let the conversation begin!