Building Collaborative Classrooms

On April 28 and 29th, I was priviledged to attend and present at the statewide One-to-One Computing Conference at the PennStater in State College, Pennsylvania.  For a high-tech conference, this conference center is notably low tech.  There were probably about 350 people in attendance including presenters and attendees, all of whom came with the expectation of being wired…..oh, no.  We linked to files on our desktops so we needed to have screen shots and downloaded files prior to our presentations.  I usually work on this blog while attending a conference.  Once again, that couldn’t happen.  Although Word was available, the connection was not. 

We were well fed and inspired and entertained by

I attended several concurrent sessions which I will summarize below:

Using Moodle to Deliver Teacher Professional Development 

This presentation was made by a group from Cumberland Valley School District.  They use a Moodle course that they have developed to deliver inservice content.  Most of the presentation was about the process they went through to make the decision about the delivery system (Moodle was not in the district’s bag of tools.), the design of activities, the connectin to Penn State’s eLearning standards, and the connection to Moodle.  They described their pilot program and related how happy everyone at the school was with the program.  They were able to somehow link completion of the course to automatic reporting to the state Act 48 system.

This is a link to the conference presentation resources that they used.  At their website you will find the guest access login.

www.cvschools.org/cvmoodle

On October 30, 2008, I attended and presented at the CFF Best Practices Institute at Great Valley Campus of Penn State University in Malvern, PA.  Fred Griffiths and I made a presentation about the use of technology in the Warwick School District in general and in my language arts classroom specifically.  Please visit this site to view our presentation, created in Google Docs.

The “Breaking Down Walls with Google.docs:  Collaboration Across Time and Space”presentation. Also check out the chat that was carried on during our presentation.

The one break-out session that I was able to attend was one of those ahahs! that turn my thinking around.  Although the presentation was about a collaboration between students and teachers at Cranberry High School in Western PA, it was an aside that this described that really caught my attention.  This aside was about how they used to do their staff development and it struck me that their plan would be a good–if not perfect–fit for WHS when we make the shift to block scheduling.

Please visit this Google doc that Fred and I created while listening to the presentation.

Flattening Hierarchy by Widening Leadership at the HIgh School

This fall we decided that we were going to do an activity that would have students from different classes working together.  We wanted to break down the walls within our school to have students of varying groups  interacting in an academic setting.  We also wanted to promote independent reading and to develop the use of reading and thinking strategies by our students.  I felt like a huge undertaking

Reading for Pleasure and Understanding

Keynote  Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire:  The Methods and Madness of Room 56 Rafe Esquith

Of the three keynotes speakers this week, Rafe Esquith was the one who was the most inspiring.  He was the one who told a story, his story of his classroom and his students.  I’m not going to list all of his awards for excellence in teaching except to say that he has them all, including National Teacher of the Year, Oprah’s Angel award, and Citizen of the Realm from Queen Elizabeth II.  This report will not reflect the inspiration that he gave me while giving imparting these simple  words “to remember.”

1. I am a role model.  If I want students to pay attention, I must pay attention. If I want students to work hard, I must work hard. If I want them to be nice, I must be nice.
2. Consider things from the students’ points of view.  Listen, don’t talk.
3. Kohlberg’s Six Levels of Moral Development:  People behave because
   • they want to avoid trouble
   • they want a reward
   • they want to please
   • they want to follow the rules
   • they are considerate of other people
   • that is who they are

He says that we should assess the things we want students to know and that should be a moral person who is willing to take risks to learn.  In a nutshell he believes and lives the use of music and art as a way to connect to students; and that, rather than cutting back on those things to make room for more testing we should be “setting a larger table.”

And don’t be afraid to ask for help.  After hearing Mr. Esquith, I am ready to get back into my classroom.

Teaching Computer Ethics Using Case Studies Matt Frederickson  Council Rock School District

I have the PowerPoint used by the presenters in my computer files should anyone want to view the actual powerpoint.  I also have a .ppt of their presentation about students’ use of proxy servers to circumvent the school’s firewall.

The presenters were a teacher of technology and a technology director (I think that was his position). The teacher teaches an introduction to technology class in an alternative setting.  He wanted to teach his students about the ethics of computer use and the consequences of actions along with teaching them the skills of analysis, collaboration, evaluation, and problem solving.

Students were assigned a case study about ethics related to technology (although not necessarily just about computers).  They were given a description of a situation (problem) and then with a partner, they read, analyzed, and came up with a recommendation or solution.  They wrote a 1-2 page paper and made an oral presentation.

Questions students must answer in paper and in oral presentation:

1. In your own words, what is the case study about?
2. What do you think the ethical choice would be?
3. What would you do in this situationS?
4. What could be the consequences of your actions?

Possible case studies:

• texting inappropriate photos
• illegal music downloads
• what “archived” means
• appropriate email address
• cyberbullying, identity theft,

These are some websites that the team recommended for case studies.

• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University) http://www.scu.edu/ethics/
• Digital Citizenship – Resources for Educators http://digitalcitizenship.ning.com/
• Education World http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech055.shtml
• The Research Center on Computing and Society (Southern Connecticut State University) http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs/resources/teaching/teaching_mono/teaching_comp_eth_contents.html

This website, although not directly related to the topic, is highly recommended by the presenters as a rich resource for teachers.  It contains lesson plans and even textbooks in editable format.

• Connexions http://cnx.org/

Using Web-Based Rubrics to Enhance Learning Celina Byers, Bloomsberg University

Dr. Byers shared the rationale for establishing guidelines and criteria for grading and for giving those criteria to students at the time that the assignment is made.  She shared her search for a method of creating rubrics that provided significant feedback to her students that was compatible with the LMS used at her university.  the program that she found and piloted at Bloomsburg University is compatible with Moodle and data can be imported into Moodle.  In addition, the program can be customized with the state standards.  I plan to check into piloting this, if I get clearance.  I have contacted Dr. Byers with a few questions prior to bringing the details to Kathy Frankhouser and Brian Ginter.

http://iit.bloomu.edu/Byers/UsingRubrics/

http://itt.bloomu.edu/Byers/PETE_C

I am just beginning to explore this tool. I have found a couple of videos that I want to be able to access easily.

This one is directions for using Excel to create posters….the replacement for Appleworks and the dot matrix printer!

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=a121ce581499d7b70166

This one is just for fun:  The top 10 Things They Don’t Tell You about Teaching in College…or something to that effect.

1. Create Writing Project—Top 10…..

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=c157590b2fa1a7d093a3 

I don’t see individual students Skyping in school, but Skype could be a cool tool to use as a teleconferencing tools between classes within the school or between schools. In the past I have had students use a moodle forum to discuss issues in Romeo and Juliet with students from a school in another city. They have then create public service announcements with classmates in their own schools. In the past, we have talked about getting the kids together “for pizza and a movie” to watch the products of their work. That has never worked out because most of my students are not field-trip eligible. A Skype teleconference would make a face-to-face meeting more of a reality. Students like social network sites because they can be themselves and some even like to adopt a persona and enjoy a sort of anonymity. On the other hand, they like to have the face-to-face connections. They like to connect a face (They post their pictures) and a voice with the posts that they are reading. This has possibilities. I’ll let you know!

I have spent this week researching connectivism and trying to create an argument against it. That was difficult when I really believe and have observed how connection makes for better learning in my students. The group who defended the learning theory, stated that a new learning theory is necessary to describe the way we learn in the 21st century, in the digital age. That that connectedness is a part of the way we learn is obvious to anyone who goes to Starbucks or watches their kids on the computer communicating with their friends and doing school work or collaborating with co-workers or getting customer service or tech support or finding a new car or accessing databases to get information about ??? or sharing photos and family vacation plans on a blog or taking courses for degrees, and the list goes on…and I haven’t even mentioned social networking.

I agree with the importance of connecting learning to the real world; it is important to engage students in activities that will prepare them for the real world. It is also important to keep current with the explosion of knowledge.

The major issue that I find with connectivism is the notion of the creation of knowledge by the network. If the network is the people in the network, it makes sense; but when you start talking about the network as an entity like a pipe, I have a hard time getting my head around it.

During my creative writing course, one of the activities that we do is a drama. Students write short plays, actually radio dramas. I have a tape recording of the Orson Wells “War of the Worlds” which we have listened to so students could hear sound effects and the reading of the play by actors in the radio studio that sounds like the real thing. I have looked for a podcast of that radio broadcast and haven’t found one yet. In the mean time, I have been looking for other radio shows that would be appealing to students in their “antiquity.” I have found the Captain Midnight shows on iTunes store and have downloaded them to my laptop. I was also able to find an external link for the series. This is a sight that contains a link to iTunes from which the podcast can be downloaded.

I chose these because they parallel with the action hero movies like Fantastic Four, The Incredibles, Batman, and Spiderman that are so popular with kids today. They are also a manageable length, ranging from 14-20 minutes.  Since my students have access to iTunes on the laptops, they could also search for other podcasts that appropriate examples of radio dramas.  I feel comfortable having them use iTunes to search because their a limited number of podcasts of radio dramas and iTunes rates the content so that students can be directed to get only those that are rated “clean”  and ” family.”

In teams, students create the story board and script including sound effects. They then record their radio dramas. In the past I have had them tape record their dramas; now I will have them create their own podcasts using Garageband.  I am looking forward to doing this.

About 17 years ago, when my computer was an AppleIIGS with 3 floppy drives and 12mg of memory and my printer was a dot-matrix, my professional life was simple–paper came in, I acted, paper went out. My sources of information were WGAL evening news, the Lancaster New Era, NPR on the radio during my 15-minute commute in the morning and the bulletin at school. Supplemental information was distributed through our “land” mailboxes in the school office or announced over the intercom. My children’s communitcation from school was always in their backpacks.  Yes–life was simple.

Today I get little information on paper. I get emails at home, emails at work, nudges from Twitter, photos from Flickr, text on my cell, messages from Google Reader, comments on my blog, discussion on the collaborative project that I am working on in a wiki, emails from Moodle that tell me a student has submitted and assignment, discussion in Blackboard and Moodle from online classes, along with attendance online, notice to post grade via email and that is just the beginning.

This week I went to Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE & C) in Hershey for two days. I have spent the last couple of days every free minute trying to assimilate all the cool things I learned. That means that now I am part of Eduwiki.us at http://eduwikius.wikispaces.com/ and I have to check my Instapage to read those pages that I didn’t have time to read, but didn’t want to upload to del.icio.us account, and I want an iPhone and should I get a MacBook Pro or the Mac Air…the beat goes on. Managing our time and our space and our presence is becoming more and more complicated. Now we can’t get away with surfing the web, bookmarking an occasional page to come back to, we must interact!

What tools have you found to help you manage your lives? How do you keep track of all your user names and passwords and secret questions? How to you manage the time so that you aren’t sitting in front of the computer 20/24 hours? What criteria do you use when selecting cites to join? What works for you; what doesn’t?