Thinking Constructively (about changing the status quo)

During Christmas Break my family and I were invited over to my parents' home for lunch with some of their friends. Unbeknownst to me, one of their friends, Mike, had spent over 40 years in education. Of those 40 plus years, he spent about 10 years in the classroom and the remainder in various leadership positions working with curriculum, instruction, and technology integration.

We "talked shop" for well over an hour, and I mostly just listened. Even though Mike had "retired three times in three different states" he was still full of passion for his profession and the changes he had worked so hard to make over the years.

Somewhere during the conversation I mentioned that I had completed an independent study on constructivism a number of years ago. Mike's face lit up.

"Did you know that constructivism has been around for over 30 years?" he asked.

"So why do you think it has taken so long to catch on despite research to support its effectiveness?" I replied.

Without hesitation Mike replied, "constructivism is a student-centered approach to learning. The teaching profession is and has been teacher-centered. That's the status quo. Changing the status quo is difficult."

I've spent the past month pondering the idea of changing the status quo.

I was first introduced to the idea of inquiry (a constructivist teaching practice) a decade ago by the Building Science Leaders program at the Regional Math and Science Center. Over the past ten years as I've experimented with moving towards a more student-centered classroom I've had many successes, and just as many failures. I know it is working well when my students are excited, engaged, and motivated to learn, to prove, to share their learning.

One of the huge challenges of inquiry-based learning I've experienced over the years is having materials available for students on-demand. If I had a dollar for every time I've told my students "now, if you each had a computer sitting in front of you, this is what we'd do..." I could have bought my own class set of laptops. The most exciting thing about our 1:1 initiative is that this will now be a reality. Students will have instant access to information, the ability to discuss their learning and questions with their peers -- locally and globally, and the ability to share the products of their learning with the world.

Do these reflections bring us any closer to changing the status quo? I don't know. However, I am hopeful that as teachers and students start to see the benefits of student-centered learning made possible by 1:1 technologies, we will be able to finally transform teaching and learning for the benefit of all.

Four tools for learning

Over the past six months, I've been thinking quite a bit about my school district's move to 1:1. Specifically, I've been wondering what web-based "tools" my students should have available to them for their learning.

I began by asking myself what tools I need for my own personal and professional learning. Each week I find my use of my RSS reader, Twitter, Diigo, and my professional blog (on weeks when I make time to write) are the tools I use the most. So, I gave my students the student-friendly versions of those.

This school year, my fifth graders have been using:

• Diigo -- to collect bookmarks and share to a private 5th grade group consisting of the three fifth grade classrooms in our hallway
• Edmodo -- to share thinking, questions, and resources within a private class set up for our team
• KidBlog -- for reflection and posting random assignments
  
• PB Wiki -- for publishing their writing

A few reflections on each tool after a couple months of sporadic use (we're not 1:1 yet and available lab time has been scarce in my building the past two months):

• Diigo has been a tool that I've used daily since it was presented to me at a conference back in October. The ability to set up public or private groups has been great for me and for my students. They are still learning how to share useful comments and once we have more regular computer access, I'm sure it's usefulness will grow.
• Edmodo is a tool that, like Diigo, will grow in usefulness when my students have greater access. I've shown my students how I and those I follow use Twitter (after previewing my Twitter feed for kid-friendly tweets) for sharing resources, asking questions, and responding to others tweets. My students have practiced these, but they aren't natural uses yet.
• KidBlog has been my favorite student tool so far from the teacher side. It is simple for both students and teacher alike. I can have total control over what gets posted to our class blogs by approving each post and each comment before they go public. I'm hoping that I can get my students using it more frequently for their own short reflections and writings (remember Type 1 writings?) in the coming months.
  
• This is my second year of using PB Wiki for publishing student writings after I watched how the fifth grade East Dragons out in Littleton, CO used it in their 1:1 classroom. My students really enjoy posting to the wiki and commenting is quite easy. Recently, I've been reading The Power of Less and it has me asking if I can do the same with less. I've been thinking that KidBlog could easily take the place of PB Wiki. I suggested that to my students earlier today and was met with a chorus of "no, we love the wiki." For now, it's staying.

Those are my thoughts at the present. I'm interested to know how you're using these tools with your students or if you've found others that are essential for student learning.

Practicing Empathy

In a recent post, Will Richardson shared a video of a discussion between himself and Lisa Brady, the superintendent of the district he was formerly employed by and where his kids now attend school. It was a great discussion about the challenges and successes of going 1:1 and the realities of introducing social networking. As Will writes, "I think it’s great opportunity to hear a school leader in the midst of shifting a traditional school to a inquiry-based curriculum grounded in technology and online social learning tools talk about some of her thinking around making those changes."

I highly recommend viewing it.

As I've been thinking about the big shift that is occurring and talking about it with colleagues, I'll admit that I don't always remember to practice empathy and put myself in their shoes. In a comment on the same post from Will, Susan Davis wrote the following:

I am struck by your (our) frequent use of the word “shift.” To many, I think it feels more like a quake. Even as a quake, the earth moving under our feet — the change in the way learning is happening in the world — can make us feel excited (hey, that’s cool, I wonder what that shaking means…) or it can feel pretty scary (hey, my house is falling down around me).

This conversation reminds me to feel a little more empathy for those whose educational houses are falling down around them.

When Lisa Brady asks, as if for those scared and shaken folks, “Where’s my entry point?” we can imagine how they are seeing a world where the doors are moving side to side so fast they can’t see beyond them. Still, there is some urgency, the ground is shaking, and they need to get through one of those passages and safely to the other side.

It was a good reminder to me to practice empathy with my colleagues "whose educational houses are falling down around them."

Reflections from TLC 10

[This post has been adapted from an email I sent to our Technology Plan Implementation Team, a group responsible for overseeing our technology plan which includes the move to 1:1 for students in grades 3-12. I'm posting it here because it explains a lot of the thinking going on inside my head and will give some background to future posts.]

Last Friday I attended the Teaching and Learning in the Cloud Conference. I left the conference with my head spinning and I’ve spent time this weekend trying to figure out why and putting words to what I am feeling.

I went in to the conference with the unanswered question of the week (which device for students - netbooks or a pad/tablet?) on my brain, as I felt the question of the professional development for staff had been answered. Starting with the opening keynote by Wes Fryer, I was quickly reminded that the technology itself will never change learning, only by changing the teaching can we change the learning. As he wrapped up his keynote, he challenged us to look at the web 2.0 tools that were being presented as either accommodating (doing the same thing with a new tool -- ex. typing the same essay in class on a netbook) or transformative (changing the way students learn -- ex. students collaborating to create a unique product that they can share with a global audience). I’ll get back to this point later.

After that session, a colleague had the opportunity to talk with two local ed tech leaders. I started off first asking what device they would choose if they were in our shoes and both of them replied that it isn’t about the device and wanted to know about our goals for the technology. One of them said that he would take whatever funds he had and devote 25% of them to professional development.

Later on, I had the chance to ask the tech director of a local district, about the expectations they have for teachers and 1:1 and how they hold them accountable. He said there some common expectations (i.e. everyone uses Moodle), but they use it to varying degrees. He explained that tech coaches and administrators work together to help set individual goals for staff and staff have quarterly tech goal meetings to discuss the technology they are using. He explained that while they are doing lots of great things, there are cases where parents will call and ask “why is ___ grade at ____ school using more technology than the same grade at another school?” or parents of a high school student calling wondering why their student only plays games on his laptop at night as his teachers don't require use of technology for learning. Once again, the message to me was the tool isn’t important, it is how it is used to transform learning.

During my last session of the day, I had a chance to ask Ben Rimes, a tech specialist, about his district’s plan to go 1:1 next fall. They have an interesting plan for how to train staff that I’ll share later, but here’s what stuck with me. While we were chatting, another person who teaches at a charter school explained that they had been 1:1, but administration found it too difficult to keep everyone invested and are allowing the initiative to die away. I’m sure that school has more issues than just investment in technology, but the key thing that has stuck with me is that staff need to be invested and trained well.

All of these interactions and conversations through the day left me feeling that even with our tech plan outlining 7 instructional/tech coaches, six 1/2 day training sessions, inspirational speakers, etc. is it enough?

Late last week, the Science Leadership Academy, a public magnet school in Philadelphia, considered by many to be a model for tech integration and transformative learning, was featured on the Apple Education website. I mention it here, not because of the tools they are using, but because of the way they continually train staff. Here’s a paragraph from the article:

Although most new teachers arrive at the school already familiar with its learning approach, they participate in a weeklong boot camp that covers curriculum and technology. During the school year, faculty members meet for two hours of professional development each week to examine their own practices and share insights from the classroom. Staff development continues on the school’s website, where teachers discuss tools and resources in forums and blogs and post unit plans that are shared across disciplines.

If I were to synthesize all of my thinking down to one point, it would be this: the shift to transformative learning using technology is huge, for both teachers and students, and much larger than I've imagined. As I try to look at the process with our End Goals in mind, I see that there are so many layers to the professional development piece: learning the tool, integrating curriculum, learning to collaborate digitally, changing instructional practices, to name just a few.
I do believe that I have entered the Valley of Insight. This is going to be quite an adventure....