Use, Abuse or Lose

Last week I was fortunate enough to meet with a group of innovative HS English teachers during a job-a-like session at ASB Un-Plugged 2010. We spent one hour discussing the ways we integrate technology and web 2.0 tools in our classrooms. I titled this post "Use, Abuse, or Lose" because that is my mantra at ISB when I share and collaborate with my peers. I honestly could care less if my colleagues use, abuse or lose the stuff I send them.  But if somehow by sharing, I can save them 1-2 hours of work so that they can read to their own children, share a romantic dinner with their spouse, or give them 30 minutes to do whatever they please, then my job is done.  So here is a list of things I have used, abused and a few I have lost in my experience as a high school English teacher. Take a minute and see if anything can inspire or relieve you of our never ending duty of creating meaningful teaching moments in our classrooms.

I house all my ePortfolios on www.netvibes.com/teachwatts. Everything is streamed into one account and I manage/read all of my students' work on one site. Check it out if you have a minute. I love it.  Their work comes to me and my life can now manage approximately 100 student blogs without falling too far behind with my grading.

I use Word Press for my students' ePortfolios.  Although they are still a work in progress, it allows my students a lot of freedom and ownership of their work.  Since I teach at an International School, I see their ePortfolio as a transportable gift.  As third culture kids, sometimes my students are given less than a week to relocate to a new country or school.  Word Press allows them the freedom to bring their ePortfolio with them without it being housed by our Moodle site.

Voice Thread: I have posted different passages from "The Odyssey" on VoiceThread and allowed my students to comment/write what they have found in each passage. Worked amazingly well for my ESL students and the ones that need more time to process their thoughts before making them public. This would work really well with a unit on poetry as well.

Digital Storytelling: I LOVE http://www.xtranormal.com/. So easy, if my 8 year old son can do it, so can my 10th graders.

Independent Reading: I use shelfari and have each of my students update what they are reading, friend me, and place the shelfari widget on their eporfolio. An easy way to make suggestions on novels.  I used to use a Ning but found that after my students had completed my class, their conversations stopped.  Shelfari keeps them going and there is an easy widget to add onto their ePortfolios/blogs to showcase what they are reading.

Oral Commentaries for IB: Take a look at audacity.

FanFiction: OK, this site rocks.  Students can add their own twists and turns to any story (popular, classics, plays, short stories, etc) and read what others are writing as well.

Turnitin.com: This site checks for plagiarism and now you attach a rubric and post comments and grades on the site.  All of my students use turnitin.com to submit their work.

Twitter: OK, I admit it took me awhile to "get" Twitter and there are times when I can't stay up with everything that is going on, but the number one device that made me love twitter- my TweetDeck.  If you download TweetDeck onto your browser, you can plug in hash tags for all of the conversations that are happening on twitter that you care about (some hash tags I follow: #eportfolios, #edtech, #asbup2010, @safety, #edchat).  My professional development comes to me.  Another way to use it is to watch a popular subject as it unfolds in the news.  For instance I typed in #salinger on the day Salinger passed away.  My Grade 10 English students could see the profound effect this author had on the lives of people all around the world by the minute.  We were only half way through the book and my students couldn't wait to finish the novel to see if Salinger would have as profound of an effect on them as he did for all of his fans around the world.  It helped me prove my case that Holden is just as relevant today as he was almost 60 years ago.

That's what I can think of for now.  As I think of more things I have used, abused, or lost, I will send them your way.  I promise.  Please feel free to comment on what works for you!

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Week Without Walls Done Right

Last week I was fortunate enough to participate in possibly the most meaningful week of my life.  Chris Tananone, and I boarded a plane to South Africa with 20 students from the International School Bangkok for a Week Without Walls.  For those who are not familiar with the term, Week Without Walls is one week each year that is designated for students to learn outside the confines of the traditional classroom.  Each year in the high school, ISB closes its figurative doors and creates opportunities for learning throughout the world.  This year trips varied from Italy, Prague, Egypt, Laos, Habitat for Humanity, Reefs to Rainforests, Painters with a Conscience, local medical internships, teacher apprenticeships. . . you name it, the option was there.  I helped organize the WWW trip to South Africa: Service and Safari.  We stayed approximately 5 hours north of Johannesburg, in the town of Mpumalanga (approximately 25 miles from Nelspruit) outside Kruger National Park at the Likweti Lodge.  

The lodge and accommodations were set-up like Girl Scout Camps I had been to many times before back in the states.  There are dorm rooms with bunks for males and females, and a dinning lodge stacked with picnic tables and a camp fire waiting for stories to be told each evening.  The setting could not have been more perfect.  When you are in charge of 20 students in a country you have never visited, it is nice to know that if they decide to break curfew, they could be trampled by a Buffalo.  I had no worries or concerns about the students getting into mischief after hours.

You would think that the safari part of our trip would be the highlight, and so would have I . . . two weeks ago.  The safari was no doubt amazing, but nothing close to the incredible people we were able to work with in the community.  The service part of our trip led us to work with an organization called Trading World International which I highly recommend.   Peter Evans and Steve Bullock put us in touch with a local orphanage that needed some help.  Our initial plan was to work at the orphanage in the mornings and safari in the evenings.  After day one, I could sense this plan could change.  Although we were still able to safari each evening and it was amazing, the focus of our trip immediately turned toward the orphanage.  The Siyakhula orphanage is run by an amazing woman, Elizabeth Mariya (read her words here).  She currently cares for 18 orphans that live on the premises full time whose parents have died from HIV and up to 225 local orphans that she works with on a weekly basis and 95 HIV patients.  The orphanage sits on a piece of property that used to house the community center in the heart of the village.  When Peter and Steve initially started working with Elizabeth, the children hadn't eaten in over a week.  They are in better shape now, but orphanage was badly in need of repair and some TLC.  We began by painting the exterior and interior of almost every room.  From there we planted banana trees for shade, dug up a rotten tree stump to create a play area,  cleaned and re-created an ampitheater that hadn't been used in years and was covered in debrie, and then began to put the place back together again.  This involved fixing old broken furniture, repairing and building shelves and hours worth of sorting through old papers and files.  In addition, the Grade 2 students from our school in Bangkok had organized a fund drive for the local school.  We brought suitcases full of donations for the local students.  Within these donations were loads of new school supplies.  Since the orphanage sits almost directly across from the local school, we helped stock a small store on the premises of the orphanage, to enable the orphanage to slowly become self-sufficent.  They now have pens, pencils, markers, colored pencils, rulers, crayons, notebooks and a multitude of supplies to sell to help them feed the children.  On the last day we went to the local grocery store and bought supplies to keep them well fed for quite some time.   

One week later, my hands are still filled with blisters.  I hope they never go away.  I don't want to forget about what we were able to accomplish there.  More importantly, I don't ever want to forget how little it took for me to make a difference in the lives of so many.  I awoke every day with a sense of purpose.  Can we only hold onto that feeling for a moment?  How do we achieve that feeling everyday of our lives and still survive, and make enough money to feed our children and provide them with a home?  I want to feel that way again.  Teaching definitely provides me with that feeling at times, but not in the same degree.  I came back a changed person.  I learned that all my degrees and experience mean crap unless I use them to help those less fortunate.  I am far from new to community service.  I volunteer my time in a multitude of ways in my community.  Nothing I have ever done compares to how I feel about this trip (see more images on my flickr account).  The students mirror my emotions and feelings on our WWW blog and especially on Marisa's blog.  I was fortunate enough to be able to help provide this learning experience for students.  What they learned far outweighs anything I have ever gotten from a traditional textbook.  

One week of my life. . . , now I need to figure out how to give a lot more.

To find out more about running a similar trip for your school or company, contact Peter Evans from Trading World International.

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TechTrain 2010

So one of my goals for this school year was to finally have the courage to speak at a conference.  Although I have attended quite a few technology conferences lately, I have lurked in the back row quietly as I have attempted to soak in all the knowledge around me. I decided it might finally be time to try my hand at the EARCOS conference or a much smaller conference somewhere and start to get my feet wet. 

Yeah, well that was a good idea, . . . now talk to me in about a week.  I am about to help host an EARCOS Conference workshop titled TechTrain 2010 at ISB this weekend.  I will not be doing a nice one to two hour presentation, but running workshops all weekend long on RSS feeds, blogs, Google Docs, wikis, and Twitter.  Nothing like starting small.  I am a nervous wreck.  It is going to be amazing, because I won't sleep until I feel it is amazing (I have been up since 2 am and it is currently going on 11 pm).  It will be amazing because I am lucky enough to be working with some of the finest colleagues in the field of education: Tara Ethridge, Dennis Harter, Kim Cofino and Chrissy Hellyer.  Our goal is to introduce teachers to a selection of educationally and developmentally appropriate technology tools that will enhance learning in the classroom and beyond.  Basically, it is a technology conference for beginners, and I can't wait to get started.  It was just a few years ago that I walked into a workshop at an EARCOS conference and was inspired by some guy named Jeff Utecht.  Little did I know what that spark would ignite in me; hopefully, I can continue to pass on that torch.

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Dancing in the Pool of Technology

Each year at this time, there are a ritual of things I enjoy doing to get me in the Christmas spirit.  One of my favorites is watching "It's a Wonderful Life" by Frank Capra.  One of my favorite scenes (although there are honestly too many to count) is the famous Bedford Falls HS Charleston dance scene where Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dance as the floor of the gymnasium begins to open.   

As educators, aren't we in the middle of this same dance?  We are going about our business in our classrooms as the floor of technology is opening.  When we fall into the pool, will we adapt the Charleston to our new environment or complain about getting wet?  As a past HS varsity swimmer, I know how to swim and I have never worried about drowning in a pool of water.  But I know I still have a lot to learn if I plan to dance in a pool.  We are all falling in whether we like it or not-

Will you dance or drown as you fall into the pool of technology? 

. . . this is the question we must ask ourselves as we enter 2010.

In the words of George Bailey (AKA: Jimmy Stewart),
"I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long . . ." 

Image can be found at:  http://www.constellationcenter.org/images1/intro/wonderful_life_dance.jpg

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Reflecting Through Digital Short Stories

Isaac Newton once said: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."  My grade 10 students have just completed a unit on Short Stories.  This year the English 10 team incorporated digital storytelling as the final assessment of our Short Story unit.  With the amazing help of my colleagues: Brad, Ronna, Casey and Karen, we created a really fun unit to teach and watch unfold before our very eyes.  We began by reading a multitude of short stories including:

• "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan
• "A Family Supper" by Kazuo Ishiguro
• "A Man With No Eyes" by MacKinlay Kantor
• "The Ninny" by Anton Chekhov
• "Two Words" by Isabella Allende
• "The Stolen Party" by Liliana Heker
• "Lather and Nothing Else" by Hernando Tellez
• "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

We then examined the authoritative intent and theme for each story and viewed different adaptations of these stories over time.  From there, students were given the assignment, shown a Power Point and given the rubric.  The results were fantastic and one of the students from a different class had immediate validation from teachers at SAS.  They posted comments on the digital short story and plan on using the students' digital story in their class to help teach the short story "The Bet".  Talk about authentic assessment!

Dear Mike and Carl, I am an English teacher at the Singapore American school and we are currently studying short stories, one of the short stories is "The Bet" by A. Chekhov, I truly believe that this movie clearly shows the short story and I will definitely show my class this video, Thanks a lot and great job on the movie and the sound it really matches with the story.

As with everything I teach, there are many changes and lessons to learn from this unit.  First and foremost, I would be clearer on the creativity I would like to see from the students.  Too many of the students recreate the story verbatim and after awhile they were a little redundant to watch.  I would also give them the assignment at the start of the unit.  The students had one week to create their stories, with much of the work done at home.  I would also continue to tweak the rubric.  We had students look at the rubric and revise it, but it still needs some work. 

If you'd like to see some of their digital short stories, they can be found on their ePortfolios on my netvibes account.  They are under the Grade 10 tags, but all of them are not uploaded yet.  In the future, I will post some of them here for viewing and continue to upload them to my teachwatts youtube account, but for now the following take on "Two Words" by Sarah is one of my favorites:

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Sharing Technology Peripherals

In this digital age, we are surrounded by new toys under the Christmas tree.  What should we play with first?  Come Christmas morning, we run downstairs and are amazed at all the glossy paper and bows under the tree.  And as each child has a preference for a certain toy, teachers have preferences for certain peripherals in their classrooms.  As I read the multitude of blogs about this subject, I continue to learn about my colleagues favorite toys.

Here's what I'd like to see implemented at more schools: show and tell.  My daughter does it every Monday in her Kindergarten class.   After each Monday, she spends the next week looking for the next perfect thing to share with her classmates.  How amazing would it be if you had one professional development day or even five minutes of your next department meeting to share your favorite toy under the Christmas tree this year? 

Imagine a room full of educators sharing their favorite ways of incorporating technology and ways they connect the technology to learning in their classroom.  Recently I attended a fantastic student leadership conference run by the JUMP Foundation!  Among the many things I learned that weekend from Justin Bedard and Josh Morris, one saying keeps running through my mind: "All the experts are in the room".  So here's my professional Christmas wish: I would love to see administrators give teachers more time to connect and share.  Let's look at the tools we have, and visualize best practice for these tools before we acquire anything new.  All the experts are in the room, now let's have some time for some good old fashioned show and tell.

The above image can be found at: http://ippaonline.com/ippa/?m=20060

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"Good Educators" and the Relevance of NETS Standards

Are we fostering the creative spirit in today's classroom? The NETS standards for students, teachers and administrators carefully define five to six standards to make this happen.  The more I read, I find my interest continuously drawn toward the very first standards of each of these documents.  The first standard listed for these are:

1. Creativity and Innovation (Standard for Students): where students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity (Standard for Teachers): where teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.
3. Visionary Leadership (Standard for Administrators): where Educational Administrators inspire and lead development and implementation of a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology to promote excellence and support transformation throughout the organization.

These three standards are intrinsically interrelated to developing students into life-long learners that can achieve their fullest potential.  As educators we can do this in the following ways:

1. Creativity and Innovation for Students: Recently someone told me that it is not important for the students to know how something works, just that it exists for them to use when needed.  If we continue to follow that wave in education, we will produce a society full of consumers instead of a society full of creators.  There needs to be a balance between product and creation to allow students to be truly innovative in multiple field of study.
2. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity: if an assessment is truly authentic, the learning becomes more meaningful to the student. The key here is to allow students a chance to fail. History proves that creativity and innovation go hand in hand with failure. We need to build more opportunities into our curriculum to provide students the opportunity to take a chance on something and learn from their mistakes. Our society has become so grade conscious, that we are subtly teaching our students that grades are more important than learning. This must structure be revised in our assessments for learning to truly happen.
3. Visionary Leadership: administrators need to advocate for policies that allows students and teachers the opportunity and ability to reach their potential in these environments where success does not always perfection.  

At the end of the day, the student learning is what matters.  When you think back on your own life, when did you learn the most?  When you succeeded or failed?  It is what we do when we come face-to-face with that failure that true learning happens and as educators, we need to provide more opportunities for this to happen.

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