Hot Lunch Tray

Educational terms can become overwhelming.  And if they don't make you quit in the first five years of your career, they will hound, test, confuse you for the next 25 or so.

So forgive the initial eye roll on the topic of Problem Based Learning.  However, I am driven to complete this mooc experience and know that students sometimes feel this way, and I should walk my talk of pushing through the mundane to get to the exciting topics.  The author of this model was wise to put this movie front and center in the content this week – they hooked me when a young lady said, “…for children sometimes it’s like we don’t have a voice in anything.”  Yeah, something that gives any child a voice is something I am interested in.

Posted by Bucks Institute of Education (BIE): TEAM Academy in Newark, NJ

Once I bought in I marveled at my lack of depth of understanding of what Problem Based Learning really was.  I liked this initial post I found via twitter – ow.ly/kiLH3 – about what PBL is not.  Novel to start there?  Not if you understand I have been considering it “real world projects” only.  After reading that doing projects wasn’t exactly it, I then happened across – ow.ly/kjmeF  – which basically made me think about the fact that I had to tell students that the problems we were working on were “real world” … I mean if it wasn’t apparent when I explain the challenge, maybe it wasn’t too real world.

Now the mooc also has content on inquiry based learning – luckily I am an expert in that as a former science teacher.  However, what I learned was that I was an expert in inserting inquiry into my lessons, but not really in structuring my class for full on inquiry learning.  Which is a pity, science of all places could have been a place a teacher could go all in, right?  Well, my forays into inquiry are not without reward – I think that this has greatly contributed to my ability to allow differing lengths spent on the same task among my students – helping me ease into a Blended Learning situation.  I find myself much more comfortable with time as a variable in any students task.  If nothing else, it showed me how much organization I need to pull off these elements and then I could see available technologies as they came up as truly useful.  I consider my efforts into inquiry a gateway drug to differing tasks/projects/assessments.

I really learned that I am on my way, but not there yet.

Enjoying the videos posted and watching the YouTubes posted by the BIE I am reminded that there is nothing new under the sun in education.  I am surrounded by great educators such as John Hardison (@johnHardison1) who runs @Studio113_EHHS who has shown many of us what can be done.

I have a renewed sense of purpose as I start writing online components for the upcoming school year, new Next Generation Science Standards, full access to a district-wide LMS and some good inst=piration from videos like this will spur me on -

Posted by Bucks Institute of Education (BIE): The Hydrology Project, Tucson, AZ

I became interested in joining Blended Schools Network MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) for two reasons. One was that it sounded like a cool thing to try out in an area I already had some background knowledge – it was more within my realm than one of those MIT MOOCs – and it should be full of “my people.” Second I know BSN from the content writing tool/software they use, SoftChalk. My district has recently purchased a private cloud from SoftChalk as well.

I wanted to journal my experiences, thoughts, feedback in one place for future or shared reflection.

I signed up for this MOOC as soon as I heard about it and scoped out the calendar coincided with our districts last weeks of school. In my position within the Tech Department as an eLearning Specialist I felt it was within the scope of my work to: have experience within a MOOC with an eye toward future building/supporting within the district, find any information on SoftChalk/Blended Learning which could inform my job, and add to my PLN.

Registration was smooth, when the first week came around I was a little confused on how to actually get to the content. I followed the link in my welcome/registration email, but it did not lead to the content. Luckily the teachers had contact information and I tweeted an instructor and he tweeted me the Google+ link. While I thought I had read something about content being shared via G+ I don’t think I realized the whole thin was going to be there. Of course, I had some network issues and the network engineers had to unblock it. I am not sure how a teacher in our district could have managed that. I assume they would have just completed it from home not knowing how to go about getting it unblocked in time.

Within the course I was at first a little leery as I noticed my first reading assignment was produced by Blackboard, and in 2009. I felt goo about a couple of the districts mentioned in the piece and Googled them to check on the mentioned administrators credentials.  I felt better about the document and the two introductory videos by instructors when I turned the page to the Curate: Contributions from Course Participants section.  Ahh, the “good” stuff.  I have been clicking/reading happily since yesterday.  Let’s just say I am wearing out my Delicious Bookmarklet, check out my account (@Pen63).

I want to also point out that as the course authors update this in SoftChalk, the date changes in the bottom right corner – nice SC feature, eh?  As a participant I value the most current content and think this a great step towards transparency in our classrooms!

My contribution to the course is educause – they are such a trusted source for me on all things education – http://t.co/k0pu4Mx0bF .  And I would also add University of Central Florida’s Blended Learning Toolkit – http://blended.online.ucf.edu/blendkit-course-diy-project-tasks/ they seem to be a higher ed leader and much of their work can be adopted to K12!

In the process of starting something for a Udemy course I (of course) wanted to include an appropriate infographic.  I found this infographic on Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/pen63/ .  As you pinners know the source page for pins you love are not always correct.  Once I read through the credits on the infographic to find the author I visited their website to find their original post which contained the infographic.  I had to view the image info of the infographic within their web page, but then copied that URL and took that to this cool tool I had re-discovered through a recent refresher visit to a Kathy Schrock Infographic workshop website: zoom.it – and look at the cool result!

Now I am just waiting on Udemy to tell me how I can include this in a course!

I was pleasantly surprised to have a story for future producers of infographics of how important your citations on the bottom of the infographic are.

This was my 3,000th tweet. I did not even realize that I had surpassed 3,000 until the next day when I had an occasion to look something up on twitter.com directly.
Surely, this is a chance for reflection. I am not a Tweet Goddess, but do find Twitter an indispensable educational tool. So, what is different than a few years ago for me?

You can find your Twitter Birthday at twbirthday.com, they even give you a copy of your Twitter birth certificate free of charge, how very web 2.0 of them.

When I started out on Twitter I was in a new job as a technology integration specialist; not just new to myself but to the county and my two co-workers. I signed up for Twitter immediately. At that time I was comfortable justifying my presence on Twitter during school hours, but not entirely willing to go on the record if teachers should be on Twitter during school hours. I am not sure what I thought about students being on Twitter, much less during school hours. But that tells a great deal in itself, that I was not really giving the idea complete consideration.

Now I am slightly suspicious of teachers who are not at least reading Twitter. And I definitely consider Twitter a worthwhile pursuit on school time! (Schools should as well, because we all know if teachers get hooked on something good they will call on it 24/7, off the clock.) I see it as a way to connect the mavericks that have been traditionally spread out to the corners of the Earth and given them encouragement and an outlet. I see Twitter as a way to control your own weather. If you are surrounded by those with a contrary attitude, find different colleagues via Twitter.

I would now say this could be extended to students to who use Twitter to learn. I still reserve the right to ban Kardashian nation building, but have since learned that potential bleed over between learning and living exists. Better to open Twitter and educate students, but big thought, that is true about most tools.

I no longer see Twitter as just for educational technology either. I think when I started on Twitter that was my focus, but now I delight in finding divergent passions in one place. I believe Twitter has evolved as much as I have started to look around at different resources. The largest hashtag I follow is #edchat and that has opened me up to a wide variety of educators who challenge my ideas about all types of education.

Looking at my 3,000th tweet I realize I do not actively filter out my personality, I actively ask for feedback, and I am mixing work and home life. I think this is a healthy sign that this tool is useful for me beyond my work life.

When I reflect on what I thought about Twitter for educators I think about how I explained it to other teachers and how I observed how non-educators (mis?)used this awesome tool.
My assumptions about what one should/should not do were pretty revealing, and have softened. I view followers differently than non-educators I realize, and maybe most teachers do too.

I explained it as a positive Teacher’s Lounge where you could get great advise, tips, and make some great connections.

• I still think that is true, but I was thinking it was a Teacher’s Lounge where you only talked about teaching – and now I am glad that is it a touch more personal than that.

I used to advise people to verify a user account by looking over the account and if the other user seemed legitimate follow them. I implied that if that user was following or followed by other teachers they were somehow worth following. I still struggle with what makes a follower worthy of being followed back. I think this goes to the heart of the differences between the world of education and the world at large. For the most part, teachers want to share and help each other. The world at large is more competitive and often critical of each other.

• Right now I look through their tweets for original content and evidence of reading or writing outside of the Twittersphere. What is your criteria? I am still open to be swayed on this.

I distinctly remember implying that following 1.5-2 times the amount of followers you had showed you were constantly seeking out new resources

• I found lists via my friend and co-worker @ugaodawg and it has helped me manage exponentially
• I have since reached the point of diminishing returns on those I follow. I have deja vu with the numerous retweets. I have found it easier to cut some of the middlemen out of my Twitter sphere and directly follow the thought leaders, the teachers actually trying these things out in their classrooms. Read this post: http://tonybaldasaro.com/2012/11/01/why-i-unfollowed-5-000-people/
• Why would I assume some ratio was magic? Who knows, I had magic-bullet-itis I guess

I remember hearing about a denial of service attack involving Twitter right before I signed up and know I had in the back of my mind that the reliability of the service might be sketchy.

I know that at the time I signed up Twitter was blocked for both our teachers and students. Since then our district has allowed teachers to login via our network, but there are still blocks on guest wireless/phones. And students were allowed and then re-blocked (but that’s another blog entry). I guess what I think is ironic in look at my assumption about reliability I’d that I thought the platform itself was unstable and really the network I operate within is the real wild card!
Twitter democratizes educational thought and leadership like nothing before it. Bill and Melinda Gates should save their money on reforming education, if this doesn’t do it, nothing can!

One of the systems I support in my school district is a relatively new technology, a Learning Management System (LMS).  Of course being a model of public K12, my system has some entrenched prior systems with unique idiosyncrasies.  For the past few years any attempts to integrate with the established Student Information System (SIS) have been met with reisistance from the group which manages that data.  I consider these folks good people, but wonder at the nature of resisting a student-based solution in a public K12 institution.
New Tech – LMS with curriculum/assessments on the Internet.
Old Problem – Data reporting equals funding, so is often attended to as a matter of doing business.
New Problem – Administration must make public their priorities between data reporting to the state and delivering content to students/teachers.

So, what other issues has technology raised, and are they really new problems or are they just revealing problems that were hidden?

New Tech – LMS with curriculum/assessments on the Internet.
Old Problem – Teachers taught what they wanted in their classroom and reported what they deemed appropriate in assessments.
New Problem – Teaching content, techniques, and results are now transparent for any administrator to view.

New Tech – LMS with curriculum/assessments on the Internet.
Old Problem – Textbooks have been substituted for curriculum.
New Problem – Buying quality online content OR paying teachers to create quality online content is expensive and front-side intensive.

When I was in the classroom, circa 2007, I had a computer assignment through TrackStar – a program designed to keep students on the web pages the teacher deems appropriate.  Even then, one student clicked off the TrackStar and was somewhat proud to show my co-teacher a animated gif of a very old man in his underwear.
New Tech – online content, students might browse outside the teachers intentions
Old Problem – students off task, not following guidelines.
New Problem – off task behavior by students is not only evident, but possibly archived.

I tried my best to find an educational use for FourSquare.  It was fun for me and I thought with the mobile device wave and this fun tool surely I could find an educational application.  I have not really found one that I feel very comfortable suggesting any other teachers try with students.  If it is fun for me I assume it is oxygen to socially hyper-sensitive middle and high schoolers.  So here is an opportunity to incorporate the idea of geolocation services into our digital citizenship training for our student.
New Tech – Geolocation tagging
New Problem – advertise where a student is
New Opportunity – to teach digital footprint/citizenship

What “new” problems has technology raised in your district/school?  Or what has it just revealed?

Pinterest Party Invite for WordPress

National Public Radio’s Fresh Air segment on The Inquisition is an interview with Cullen Murphy, author of God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. (National Public Radio, Fresh Air podcast. January 23, 2013)

In this interview Cullen talks about the Third Inquisition, or the “Roman Inquisition” and how it occurred due not just in reaction to the Protestant Reformation, but the revolution brought about by the printing press.  This author made mention of the reaction of the governing agent of the time, The Church, to the influx of the written word from Gutenberg’s Press: “If only we could just stop the presses for a just one year we could make the corrections and regain control”  In the context of the time this was a reaction to the printed word using inappropriate/unapproved of terminology/words, perceived misinformation for an audience not able to full comprehend what they were consuming, and according to the authors implications an end-run around control that The Church enjoyed at the time.

• How do teachers react to students getting on the Internet?

I think back on how I first guided student to Internet resources.  I gave them a specific URL; a hopelessly long URL, forgive me 1998 4/5th graders.  I wanted them to only view the information I deemed appropriate.  I probably did not trust them on the search engines of the day, but do remember modelling use of Ask Jeeves.

• Filtering not on the Infrastructure, but taught as a lifelong tool for students entering an ever increasingly complex world

How ironic that before CIPA when I could have allowed them a guided experience on the Internet, free of the dreaded Access Denied screen, I was so narrow.  And now hyper-compliant CIPA regulators are blocking site I intentionally use/recommend to educate.

I think my experience is typical in that I allowed my fear, or lack of knowledge, to limit student learning.  Not so much that the Internet was that informative for elementary students in the late 90s, but that I did not help them learn how to evaluate information/sources/biases.

• What will it take to make an older generation seeing the current set of information from the point of view of the younger generation?

Technology to a teacher may not be technology to a student.  If a technology was present before you were born it is not technology to you.  So, while my first Internet experience from home included the dial-up screech, the Internet is not technology to many of our students.

Teachers first need to embrace the fact that they are not the experts, keepers, or editors of the Internet.  Once relieved of that duty realize a teacher should be teaching how to filter the Internet.  This is not a physical filter, like a piece of software which attempts to block specific websites, but a mental filter.  When the student understands how to evaluate a piece of information for purpose, by the source, and potential biases that student is equipped to run into any information in the world with the right tools.  And the teacher can sanction that with confidence.  Even if the governing body of the time does not.

National Public Radio, Fresh Air podcast. January 23, 2013

One facet of my job is to support an LMS.  I recently had occasion to enter the 200th trouble ticket and since it felt like a milestone I browsed through some of the previous tickets.

• How I have Grown

I have changed because of working with this company.  For the worse: I may have asked some folks to do too much based on our friendship.  I thought if I just-tried-harder I could impact software/integration development – way wrong.  For the better:  I have a more compassionate understanding of user error – due to my numerous errors.  I have acquired a pattern of troubleshooting which I did not possess before this endeavor.  I have learned to under-promise and strive to over-deliver.

• Expectations Shifted

Working with a smaller LMS there was not much documentation with which to begin.  I notice the first questions I would ask via a trouble ticket were procedural, now I am personally asking bigger “What If” questions.  We are already paying for the product, we are already invested and as such the optimism of the vendor dwindles into an examination of the limitations of a product and an emphasis on feature requests (future revenues) versus the unbridled enthusiasm of a sales person.  I now find myself passing on my newly found expectations to the end users, asking them to work within the current confines of the program, but express their wishes for the future, but I try not to promise anything.  I have learn the bifurcated nature of this vendor relationship thingy.

•  Telling Doesn’t Work, Showing Does

Just because I am now working with grown ups doesn’t mean I should toss everything our the window I know from teaching kids!  Until a teacher watches me DO something in the LMS it doesn’t exist.  I know DUH, but I lived this one especially in the first two years and now *so* own this idea.

Not that I am trying to deduct my TV bill on my taxes, but I had an educational epiphany while watching National Football League (NFL) playoff games this weekend.  In the NFL teams end zones after each quarter of play.  “Duh” you say?  Yes, “Duh,” but think about what we watch the NFL for – we want to see these giants of athleticism crush each other physically for every inch of ground earned on this field of play.  And then when time expires in the pursuit of one end zone they all simply change course 180*.  The yards they just fought for or defended against they turn and give back up to the opponent because the goal changed. 

Education could take something away from this.

How often do educators stubbornly hold onto an old goal and not change when the original goal is no longer there?  How often do we fight against our own team?  Or the Rules of the Game which we do not have the influence to alter?

You could do this if you had a better coach you say?  Great, be you own coach, be on the look out for the times that the goal changes.  Start to anticipate the changing of the goal, accepting the changing of the goal.  Start to model an effective use of you time, talents, and energy and work with the changing of the goal instead of against it.

What do you think, do I have a traumatic brain injury from teaching too long?

The week back from winter holiday is always an odd experience for any educator; the caffeine is never strong enough, every one seems to wander about trying to find the couch for the obligatory 2 PM nap, and work generally cramps ones style developed over three weeks of watching Downton Abbey.  But I made it into work, because as my husband is fond of reminding me we have not struck it rich yet.  Although drowsy, I did show up with a healthy amount of optimism which was immediately challenged as  I set out with a colleague to a high school.  While we were not able to speak to the Media Specialist we soon came across a recent purchase of hers – Promethean ActivExpression2 – we believe there are two sets…..  We found one set in a math class with a very young teacher.  I asked the teacher in conversation how many of her students had cell phones.  She answered: “almost all of them.”

So, the teacher knows students have cell phones.  The Media Specialist buys two sets of ActivExpression2 – a single use device – which has undergone a makeover to look more like a Blackberry it appears.  The student keeps their phone in their pocket to learn to use this device, the teacher has to learn to use the proprietary software, and the teacher goes through the exercise of adding questions to the software.  Did I mention the $2K+ cost for a set of these single use devices?  Where is the CHANGE? Single-use, proprietary, expensive, redundant devices.  No communication?  No planning?  No vision?  Leadership does not appear to be impacted by the changing face of the classroom and the evolving role of student interaction on their own terms.

Today I read an article from a high school teacher within the same district.  This high school is a lower socioeconomic status than the previously mentioned HS – 44Smart Ways to Use Smartphones.  While I delight in the openness this teacher has toward BYOD as a solution to fold into his ever-changing practice, why are these thoughts not promoted while the old, inefficient practices ended?

Where is the real progress?  I fear it is not at the top, but at the intersection of a teacher willing to listen to students and students engaged in their course of study where any real change is occurring.  How does one reach school leaders to impact real change in educational thought around student-centered technology – make them substitute teachers in a required 9th grade class?