If you want things to improve, get out of there!

Whether you are a teacher, administrator or consultant, the key to improvement is for you to disappear. That's right, get out of there! This might seem like a crazy or even provocative or accusatory notion, but I've given this plenty of thought and a little bit of practice.

I complete about 75% of my consulting work online, and many people were a tad skeptical about how this could be effective. I guess I had to convince myself as well.

However, what has become apparent is that when you are physically removed from the equation (be that classroom or school), you are forced to capitalize on other modes of gathering and disseminating information.

It challenges you, it threatens to bring you undone, but more than anything else, it evokes tremendous growth for yourself and those with whom you work.

In order to provide online, personalized professional development, I have had to draw upon applications that I would probably only have tinkered with if I were still presenting myself daily in the school building.

My advice to teachers and administrators then, is to imagine yourself robbed of physical presence in the classroom or school. How would you get your job done then? How would you find out what you needed to know? How would you pass on what others need to know?

I'm sure that most people won't really give serious thought to this proposition, but until you put yourself in this situation - either imagined or real - you'll continue to fall back on the spoken delivery that has seemed to serve you so well in the past.

After all, explaining things from the front of the room or over the intercom has been the preferred mode of communication for eons now, hasn't it? And everyone listens and everyone understands, right?

If you need a change, take an imagined break from the room and see what wonderful new teaching (with technology) methods you develop. And please share. Good luck.

P.S. I also like Will Richardson's post on Learning Like Kids, which describes a mindset that would complement my proposal.

The Year in Review

A Fly on the Wall

Have you ever heard someone decide not to attend the big game because there was a better view on offer from home? This is the situation at a Bronx middle school, where the “big game” is being viewed with bated breath from afar thanks to the marvels of modern technology.

When Mr. Jason Levy, Principal of C.I.S. 339 School of Technology conjured up his vision of the school as an authentic 21st Century learning network, he took the brave move of continuing a professional development partnership with me, an Australian consultant, despite my impending return home with my family.

“How would you like to keep working for us from Australia?” Mr. Levy proposed. “Wouldn’t that be something!”

The Principal’s view was that schools today should reach beyond their walls. He is in the process now of achieving exactly that – thanks to his own passion for technology, and the drive of some brilliant teachers.

Many schools can probably boast of the use of technology somewhere, somehow in their curriculum, but C.I.S. 339 has adopted a whole school approach to technology-enhanced change. The wiki that was used for communication last year has now spawned not only a generation shift for some tech-fearing teachers, but also a more united, collaborative community.

Some school change experts have discovered that technology can increase the rate of change for a school, and that has definitely been the case here.

We started the year with a thematic “spider’s web”, encompassing not just online learning, but support structures and interconnectedness between teachers as colleagues, teachers and students, students and students, students and parents, and teachers and parents.

The explanation that accompanied the “spider’s web” was that if you get stuck, you’ll only end up in a bigger mess if you thrash about. If you help to create and maintain the paths of the web as a team though, you will be part of an awe-inspiring network.

The ‘threads of the network’ are really held together by the formation of teacher-led teams. Instead of coaches as instructional leaders, teachers facilitate their own meetings and record all agenda items, minutes and next steps. This was a daunting experience at first, but it has seen the emergence of teachers confident in their own abilities and decision-making, and teachers who are keen to exercise initative.

At the start of the school year we set up a communications network using gmail, Google Talk, blogs as professional development eportfolios, and Google Docs for shared planning and record-keeping.

Having a common platform of communication was essential, and this has paid huge dividends now, as information is shared and recorded more effectively.

This then progressed to the use of iGoogle for organization of online communication, and Google Groups for organization of resources. After surveying all teachers, we established a PD plan based on teachers’ own S.M.A.R.T. goals for professional development, student growth, and improved communication with parents, students and colleagues.

The school’s technology coach, Ms. Christina Jenkins has been instrumental in running after school professional development sessions for teachers, and now teachers are sharing their expertise by facilitating sessions themselves.

We started mapping initiatives across the school so that instead of isolated ‘pilot programs’, we had shared experience. Our Celebrations Pages are an ongoing record of these initatives.

So far this school year, I have taken on the varied roles of coach, cheerleader, commentator, critic, and cameraman. Teachers have engaged in online professional development through screencasts that I have created, but our intention is for learning to be more self-directed.

Some of the “players” are teaching me new tricks almost as quickly as I can formulate the next strategy, as teachers are teaching each other. One particular team has decided, on their own, to take turns in videoing their own lessons to enable peer review of their instructional methods. This is a startling breakthrough as it personifies both the spirit of sharing and the desire to keep on learning and improving.

Our next step is to draw in students and parents. I am very excited about the potential for us to keep parents more informed than ever before about their children’s education. Our dream is to set up “triads” and “transparency” – online learning relationships between teachers, students, and parents, which are visible beyond the boundaries of the classroom.

When the student work starts emerging online, I think we’ll have many interested ‘flies on the wall’.

Podcasts, ipods, Jeopardy and Test Prep

I'm sure that just about every teacher has to endure a horrible phase of 'test prep' at some stage during her/his teaching year. However, this doesn't have to be a completely mundane and decontextualized experience.

Why not exercise a little creativity? For instance, to prepare for the listening sections of the New York State ELA test, why not make use of podcasts? At the moment, good podcasts for the likes of fables and narrative nonfiction are not easy to unearth, but worth looking for, or making yourself (to be shared with colleagues). You could take a look at the Biography Podcast though. Using podcasts for read alouds enables you to model notetaking for the students, or observe the students' listening behaviors.

Similarly, companies like Kaplan have jumped on to the potential of ipods as tools for SAT preparation. Would it be entirely silly for students to create their own revision audio files for playback on ipods and the like?

And many teachers have employed Jeopardy as a fun revision method, made even more colorful and interactive by the use of SMART Notebook files to hide and reveal answers. The benefit of this type of revision might lie more in students making a graphic organizer or mind map to explain a concept or event, and using this as the basis for an interactive game. Bubbl.us allows easy design of mind maps, which would be great for this type of thing.

Test prep is a necessary unpleasantry (notice I shied away from 'evil'), but I don't like encouraging a focus on learning devoid of enjoyment. So why not exercise your creative streak and share some of your own ideas with colleagues.

Best Web 2.0 Applications for 2007

Thanks to classroom 2.0, I can share two lists of the best web 2.0 applications for 2007: the first from Larry Ferlazzo; and the second from Silvia Tolisano. I can't wait to start exploring some of these applications that I had not yet discovered.

Celebrating Miletones

Some might argue that we're only celebrating stepping stones, rather than milestones, but any initiatives that keep driving a school forward are worth acknowledging. Also, at this time of year, teachers are more than a little weary and are deserving of some praise.

This link takes you to our Celebrations Page.

Confessions about Classroom Connections

In advocating the interdependence of technology and education, we run the risk of getting a little carried away with what is practical and achievable in most classrooms.

For instance, it becomes all too easy to get used to having internet connection at all times. This week though, reminded me of the frustrations of planning internet-based work, only to be left frustratingly disconnected. I tried everything from attempting to tap into nearby unsecured networks (tut tut!), to investigating wireless cards (to tap into the phone network), blackberries, and hiptops.

Imagine then the frustration that teachers face daily when faced with the possibility of an inexplicably disconnected classroom full of 30-odd students and a now dysfunctional lesson plan based on web-based activities. Sure, we always say “Have a back-up plan”, but that’s little consolation to teacher and students.
Then there’s still the problem of connection speed – often adversely affected by a school’s bandwidth. Many schools are struggling to get through computer-based lessons properly, particularly during peak usage times.

I also discovered recently the horrendous costs that some schools face just to ensure internet access for their students. For schools with limited budgets, they are being stung horribly by telecommunications companies.

And I haven’t even ventured into the dilemmas of theft and damage to computing equipment – let alone the initial purchasing of same – as these hound every school.

In saying all of this though, I’m not advocating a slow down in the attempt to intertwine technology and education. I’m just saying that we’re all still learning and taking some risks, and this is what education should be about. If everything was safe and easy, that might just constitute a stagnation of our own development.

What we do need to do though, is applaud those who continue to bring technology and education to their students in innovative and meaningful ways. Whilst calling these teachers ‘pioneers’ would be a tad corny, they are definitely at the pinnacle of their profession in this regard.

It’s hard to go past the diagram below as an example of how these teachers are moving towards the creative peak of Bloom’s taxonomy.

The spread of news and networking

It's amazing how news travels. Within a few days of Johnny Chung Lee commencing his blog, I have already received news of his wiimote interactive whiteboard via Christina Jenkins' gmail, and from a post on Will Richardson's blog.

Will Richardson talked about the power of networking and sharing, as opposed to marveling at the tools themselves, and this is something that is becoming increasingly evident at C.I.S. 339.
Grade 6 teachers at C.I.S. 339 have been videoing their own teaching to share and discuss with their colleagues. This represents trust and a willingness to improve one's practice.
I can't wait for the day some time soon when a spate of gmails explode around the school in fevered excitement about the wonderful lesson that was witnessed in another teacher's classroom (much like the zeal surrounding the sharing of Johnny Lee's wiimote wonders).

Practicing what we preach by publishing our thoughts

There has been a massive push of late, of which we are all a part, for students to engage in writing on the web. Whilst this is great, there needs to be an even bigger push for teachers to embrace this type of interaction.

It has taken me some time to develop any sense of being a 'blogger', and I'm sure that I still have much need of growth. As I become more comfortable with this mode of communication, self-reflection and learning though, I realize even more the need for teachers to engage in blogging, or other forms of web authorship.

We have been pushing very hard for teachers to include professional development reflection posts in their own eportfolio blogs. Little by little this is starting to happen, and the posts are slowly developing more substance. By the end of the school year, those who have invested fully in this activity will have a tremendous timeline of their own development.

In addition, it really helps when the Principal and the Dean of Instruction lead by example with their own blogs.

There are also teachers who have launched class blogs - despite having low levels of 'tech comfort' themselves. It will be interesting to see how they encourage and enjoy the students' writing, and whether or not they develop as well in terms of their own posts.

The bottom line, I guess, is that we have to go beyond our own levels of discomfort when it comes to using technology or publishing our thinking in order to enrich our own experiences and provide positive role models for the students.