Category Archives: Podcast

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What Happened to the Potential of Social Media in Education?

A post that happens when Twitter isn't enough

Dean Shareski posted this to Twitter (SM = Social Media):

Read the thread of comments (it’s worth a minute or 2) by following the link.

I’ve written a bit about this before, and ironically that post from 8 years ago also involved Dean (Who’da Thunk?).

Dean is right, when this social media thing was new and all, some of us saw a powerful potential for it’s use in the classroom and beyond as a thoughtful, motivating and powerful way to connect our students with each other, and experts, and locations, and learning that hadn’t been very accessible before. Now they were available, and they were available on a global scale. Time zones were pretty much the major obstacle (and fear for some, really many I guess). I co-wrote a book about what we had learned along the way because we found it was pretty much as awesome as we thought it would be.

Many of us sang the praises of blogging and Twitter and Flickr and Skype and Facebook (except it was usually blocked even more often than the others). We’d encourage and almost demand that those attending presentations we were giving sign up for Twitter … RIGHT NOW! …. and provide the screenshots to follow and time to sign up. This was such an powerful tool we had to evangelize to the world about it.

So what happened? Plenty of good things happened. Many teachers made those connections and shared learning experiences that were leveraged by the use of online tools. Blogging was my favorite because a blog can be writing, but also photos, video clips, podcasts, and more … and the photos could be of student artwork field trips, math …. any subject. My class connected with Dean a few times when he was working with teachers in Canada … but we danced with students in New Zealand, performed experiments with classrooms around the world, shared guest speakers and much, much more.

So what didn’t happen? Plenty. Among the things that didn’t happen was what usually happens in education – a lack of professional development, especially for those that needed more support and experience to see the value. Just doing “technology” isn’t where the value is, but that is where schools/education in general tended to go … the message too many get is that just by doing school on a computer will bring the change we are looking for … so not true.

Fear was and is big – will the boogey-man get me or my students and will I get in trouble? Access – to the internet, to technology (well the lack of access really) is and was a roadblock. Time, in reality, but also the perception of lack of time for all this stuff stops many from gaining the experience necessary. A very demanding, narrowed and scripted curriculum that does not lend itself to integration, going deep and being thoughtful … that happened big time.

I think the potential is still there. It just needs a re-birth of sorts. At least more of us know the nuts and bolts of getting online and setting up accounts and some safety concerns. Perhaps now the focus needs to shift to the powerful collaboration, connecting, editing, sharing between our students about important things (not mostly bopping around via video-conferencing to figure out where someone’s school is) that these tools provide us. Share science data, stories, poetry, how to do things, art projects, robot designs and so much more … and take the time to do them well and even the time to re-edit and re-present. Then have conversations about them in the comments … and teach students how to have the positive, supportive discourse that makes it powerful and the world a better place.

There’s lots more to say about this, its a very important discussion that should be ongoing … maybe we can have some of that discussion in the comments here (or on Twitter or elsewhere). I’m out of time for now. I hope this continued Dean’s Tweet conversation in a meaningful way.

Learning is messy!

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Use Powerful Tools Powerfully

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure to work, via various social networking sites, with Kathy Cassidy, a teacher “of six year olds,” in Saskatchewan, Canada, according to her class blog. We’ve even met face to face at conferences. My class (4th – 6th graders) shared blog posts and comments with her students a few times, and we Skyped at least once. Kathy recently shared a post on the Powerful Learning Practice blog about “Five Ways To Use Skype.” Some of the aspects of the post I want to highlight are that yes, ‘even’ 6 year olds can connect online in ways that provide powerful learning opportunities for them, and Kathy makes the point that, “If we are going to use technology, we need to use it well.” Check out her post, she shares some great ideas on connecting your students.

Reading Kathy’s post had me re-visiting a point that has been made by others (and me) over the years, but a point that needs repeating … repeatedly, because it is such a vital point to make.

There are very powerful learning tools available on the “inter webs,” and many are free to use … video conferencing tools like Skype, Google Hangouts … blogs, wikis, online photo and video archive sites (like Flickr), and many more. As Kathy and others point out there are powerful ways to use these tools that connect students, experts, facilitate collaboration globally, provide the ability to design, produce, edit and share content in any subject, and so much more (and yes, occasionally just to do something fun or cool!).

There are many of us that have been working very hard to spread the word about how these tools facilitate new, innovative and engaging approaches to learning. How they require teaching our students to be active learners instead of teaching them to be taught … sit quietly but attentively, raise your hand if you have a question, then wait for me (as the teacher) to decide this is an OK or appropriate time in my lesson to break from my cadence, my lesson, and answer your question or listen to your comment … now … or not.

So what’s my point already? It’s the point Kathy made: “If we are going to use technology, we need to use it well.”

Ever since personal computers and other technologies were introduced, their praises as learning tools have been sung from the highest rafters. Unfortunately, much more often than not, when technology has been purchased with improving education, improving student learning, improving student achievement or (yuck) improving student test scores as the goal … the technology or tool has been the focus with too little thought or professional development or teacher autonomy considered to actually use the technology in ways that empower students and/or their learning. The results therefore have been ugly and have lead to a backlash about the actual value of technology and connectedness as pathways to learning.

In addition, the tunnel-vision of test scores in language arts and math have turned too many computer labs and other technologies into drill and practice, test prep and “what apps can we get that will engage the students” dead ends. That use of technology as learning tool is like buying a Ferrari just to listen to the great stereo while its parked in the garage.

There is nothing wrong, especially as a way to gain experience with the technology, to do a video-conference or two that is mostly about saying hi to a class in another state or country and share some basic information. But if that’s all you do … then that’s probably not “using it well.” Collaboration, sharing and analyzing data, simultaneously performing an experiment or activity to see if location changes the results, read alouds between students, an international poetry festival between classes … that’s more like it. Students tend to be more engaged, spend more time editing, ask more clarifying questions … because these students from somewhere else, and maybe others, are going to see it … I want it to be good.

Blogging is awesome! Blogging is writing for sure. But its also posting photos, videos, podcasts, vid-casts … and because blogging is a two way street (because others can leave comments) its a conversation. Students can post any kind of writing you do in class, and yes, I’ve even had them post a written response about their reading. But also creative writing, science experiments, reports on any subject, short stories, long stories, explanations, diagrams and representations of math problems and concepts (that other students from around the world can see, discuss and argue about). But also photo essays, video clips of anything, pieces they write just because they want to (my new puppy, my birthday party, what happened when we got a flat tire, I was so scared when …) … and again, these pieces are published to the world … and the world responds, and that leads to more writing and thinking deeply about the response, and sharing ideas and realizing what is different about living in different parts of our city, state, country, world.

I could go on explaining the power of wikis, photo and video sharing sites and more. But that will just belabor things.

Too often we utilize technology and the web because they seem to be automatically engaging for students .. at least for awhile. If we aren’t learning as educators how and why to use these powerful learning tools and opportunities to enable our students to do important, meaningful work. If we allow ourselves to feel unprepared or stupid or phobic about using technology and perceive that our students know more about it, or worse, see it as a way to keep students busy in the computer lab while we grade papers or do other “teacher stuff.” (yeah I know that you probably don’t get enough prep time). Then we are leaving its promise and capacity as a learning facilitator, connector and collaboration tool on the cutting room floor. We might as well not bother with it.

So as Kathy said, “If we are going to use technology, we need to use it well.”

Learning is messy!

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Being Transparent When Things Get Messy

Last week while I was at our state science and math conference down in Las Vegas, I used Google Hangout and Todaysmeet to participate in a discussion about our book “Making Connections With Blogging” with a group of teachers in San Diego. Adina Sullivan led the video-conference and Lisa Parisi, my co-author,  joined in from New York. This is where the fun began.

Understand that Lisa, Adina and I are all veterans of video-conferencing and sharing in various ways over the net. I had informed Adina that I was having some issues getting online over the wireless connection I was using, and my computer was acting up as well. So as a back-up I planned to use my iPad that has an optional connection over cellular. I explained that if there were any issues to just be patient and I would probably eventually get there. Adina was un-deterred.

I got into my Google + account and it wouldn’t let me get into the Hangout until the exact time came. Note that when connecting over the net I find it is usually a good idea to get in early so there is time to deal with any issues that come up. I was reminded why this is good policy. I noted that there was a chat feature going on and that both Lisa and Adina had left comments … Lisa’s noted not being able to get in early … Adina’s noted some way she was going to have to moderate on her end and included a link to the Todaysmeet chat.

Finally a link to the Hangout appeared and I clicked to join … I was pleased because I was doubtful my laptop was going to cooperate … but it turned out I had doubts for good reason. After a few seconds a white screen appeared where the Hangout should have been and I could tell by the way it looked that it was done doing whatever it does to connect and it wasn’t changing from a white screen. No problem … I’ll just go to “Plan B”. I closed my laptop and started to log on using my iPad. I have only been in a Google Hangout one other time and things looked different on my iPad, so finding just where to go to click on something to join the group was alluding me.

I finally managed to get into the Hangout, but when the images and sounds began I could tell things were not going exactly smoothly. Lisa was apparently walking around her classroom with her laptop dangling and I could hear her commenting faintly … and Adina was there in another box wearing headphones. Once she noticed I was there she welcomed me and about that time Lisa landed and steadied her laptop and we got started … sort of. Adina explained that the teachers in her class were in another room watching on a screen on a computer with no camera … they would just listen and watch the Todaysmeet feed and ask questions that way as well. Adina was in another room to moderate.

Once we started however the other teachers reported that they could not hear me … Lisa and Adina could be heard fine … just not me. Adina is obviously one of those people that can type about 200 words per minute because what she did was transcribe everything I said into the Todaysmeet chat so the teachers in the other room could read it. We went on for over an hour that way. Lisa and I took turns answering questions and sharing our experiences using blogs and more … and it worked.

I’ve had other somewhat similar experiences in my classroom over the years connecting my students. The school’s network dying during a video-conference and me switching to a cell card I had to re-connect and finish the discussion … using a phone to include someone in a Skype call because whenever they joined in over Skype the 5 way conference would crash. And there are others.

I think when these issues arise it is valuable to share them with students. What is wrong … what you are trying … what you are thinking could be causing the problem … and usually stating that you are not really sure what is wrong. I think it is important that students see that when it eventually does or doesn’t work, you didn’t exactly know what to do … you thought and tried things. And also when things get going again … sometimes you aren’t sure what you did (or someone else did) that made it work.  Be transparent. Otherwise I think we risk students getting the message that we knew what to do and why to do it, and the steps to follow, and there was an obvious answer and we leave them thinking they just don’t get that and aren’t smart enough or whatever. Not what we want them believing. This stuff can be messy at times … it’s OK, even valuable for our students to learn that.

Learning is messy!

 

 

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Leaving Their Mark – Redux, Redux

This is a first I think, a second repost of a post on my blog. I’m doing so because of my appearance on NBC’s Education Nation Teacher Townhall. I talked about things my students have done and an innovative pedagogy, and although this post is 2 years old it shares many examples of that innovative pedagogy.

LEAVING THEIR MARK

The end of the school year is always tough. Lots still to do, lots of emotions, lots of memories. This one is tougher than most because not only are we closing in on the end of another school year, we are coming to the end of 3 years together. As I was reflecting upon this the other day it occurred to me just how large a legacy this class is leaving behind.

This has been my first experience in a 1:1 laptop classroom. It certainly isn’t all about the technology, but the technology really has leveraged what they have accomplished because it has connected them easily to so many and allowed them to share and archive those connections easily along the way.

It started in fourth grade when we began blogging and learning about being understood and being careful with language so it meant what we meant and was clear to the reader. Their blogs became a way to share their stories, but also what we did and learned and what we accomplished- and we accomplished a lot. When I broke the news to them in December of 2006 that we had a student that showed up on my attendance over a month earlier and that we had never seen her … but that there might be a way to include her in our classroom using Skype video-conferencing, they were intrigued and awed that we might do that. After our first experience we decided to share it with the world and in just a few short weeks the students had designed and produced a video that taught the world just how powerful these new tools can be.  Their video has been downloaded thousands and thousands of times. (Update – about a million times now)

Not only did we use Skype most days to include our classmate, we also began making connections with others. We were interviewed over Skype by Lee Baber’s class in Virginia about our experience and made connections with other classrooms about science and other topics.

We were very fortunate that our classroom was chosen to have a special guest. Grace Corrigan, the mother of Christa McAuliffe, the  “Teacher in Space” who died tragically when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during launch, visited our room, and we Skyped out her visit to classrooms in Virginia and New York and they were able to take part in the question and answer period Grace agreed to.

To finish off that year we visited a local animal park, Animal Ark, and afterwards designed a wiki page to help further anyone’s learning about the animals there and included a lesson and video about designing your own animal.

In fifth grade as we continued to blog about our experiences, my students’ exploits became known to others and so we would get contacted by schools to participate with them – usually because they didn’t know of anyone else that knew how. One such experience was Skyping in George Mayo’s middle school class from Maryland. They had made some short videos and wanted us to watch them and give them feedback. It was easier for them to have us do this than the elementary school NEXT DOOR because they were at lunch when this class met and they couldn’t work out the details. We watched  and wrote our reactions to their videos and gave them feedback when we Skyped, and they asked us questions about including our classmate.

I was contacted by Skype about making a short film about our “Inclusion” experience. They sent a film crew to our classroom to shoot a mini documentary about how we did it. Even though our classmate was now with us in the classroom, they had her stay home one day and do school from her computer. They hung lights in our room and shot video all morning as we did what we usually do. They interviewed students and then packed up and shot in the afternoon from our classmate’s house. They produced 2 versions of the video. Here and here.

We continued to blog almost every day either writing new posts or reading and commenting on others. We built relationships with a number of classes around the world and to help keep track we began adding links to them on our class wiki page. Most of my students are second language learners and when we started blogging it would take most of them a week to edit a post into publishable quality. I don’t require my students to have zero errors on a piece before it publishes, but my students’ writing skills were very poor in general. They used poor English and grammar, and punctuation was almost nonexistent in some students’ work. They left out the details that made meaning for the reader, and we won’t go into spelling. At first students would write their posts by hand on lined paper and edit them several times before word processing them. Next they would print them out in a large size, double spaced to have room for editing. Many students would have 5 or more copies of their story all marked up by me in 1:1 meetings with them before their work was “publishable.” That’s why it took a week. By the end of fourth grade about half the class would publish in 2 days. And by the middle of 5th grade some students were publishing the same day as the assignment was given, and almost all were publishing in 2 days. We killed a lot of trees the first year, and I (and they) felt bad about that, but the impact it had on their English, spelling, punctuation, style and more was worth it. And the students continue to write and write and write (but we don’t print very often anymore).

During fifth grade, I believe initially over Twitter, but then in email, a fifth grade teacher in New York, Lisa Parisi, mentioned to me how much she liked the comments my students left on her students’ blogs. I explained that we had really been working on the quality and substance of our comments, not just saying, “Nice post” or “I liked your post” but also explaining why. Our students began doing more reading and commenting on each others posts.

Lisa and I wanted our classes to do a project together and so the “Mysteries of Harris Burdick” writing project was born. This book, written by Chris Van Allsburg, is the ultimate writing starter I’ve ever seen. After reading and discussing the book in class our students wrote collaborative stories using Google Docs so they could work at the same time on their stories even though they were thousands of miles apart. They even discussed things over Skype so they could meet their co-writers and have discussions about where their stories were going. Other teachers joined the project and paired their classes. The project won an award.

This year we participated in 2 projects that stressed being safe online. We talk about safety fairly often, pretty much anytime we use a new application – blogs, wikis, Flickr and so on and anytime it comes up in the news we tend to review the issues and what the people involved did right or wrong that caused or helped the problem that came up. We participated with a bunch of schools all over the world in the “7 Random Facts” project … sharing seven random facts about yourself without revealing any information that could identify you. By request we followed that up by participating with another class in another safety project where the students wrote vignettes about someone NOT being safe online and then wrote a moral to the story. We shared them in a Skype session with the other class. During this time students in my class shared that they had MySpace and other sites that they were really too young to have and that they had taken down inappropriate information about themselves.

The “Around the World with 80 Schools” project this year has been incredible in how it has made my students more aware of world geography as they met and talked with students on almost every continent.

Most recently we are finishing up our Reno Bike Project, project where we are helping a local non-profit organization that rehabilitates old bikes and sells them inexpensively, spread the word to get people to donate bikes to them. The Public Service Announcementand web pages they designed were just published and we are doing some other activities to help get word out.

I’ve left plenty out here to save space, but the point is these students have left a mark, a legacy that will survive their graduation to middle school and beyond. Not only have they done community service that effects their community, but they have participated globally and left the archive for others to ponder and I hope improve on. Most importantly they have vastly improved their writing, research, communication and numerous other skills along the way. They were only held back by my limitations and the limitations of the system.

I’ve learned at least as much as they have and I believe I’m a better teacher for it. I’m chomping at the bit to take what I’ve learned and share it with my new class. As of this writing I’m being moved down to 4th grade again to begin a roll up to 5th and hopefully sixth grade again. I’m really going to miss this class and I want them to know that and to know they have made more of a difference in this world than they realize. They can be proud!

Learning is messy!

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The Tightwad Tech – The Interview

A few weeks ago, after many attempts trying to find a time we could all make, Mark and Shawn at The Tightwad Tech managed to coral Lisa Parisi and myself across timezones long enough to interview us about how we utilize a changed pedagogy utilizing tech (usually for free – hence the “tightwad” connection). Here is a link to the podcast. We had a great time. Give it a listen … and Thanks to Mark and Shawn for inviting us!

Learning is messy!

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Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming!

After finishing up our second and last day of ActivBoard training today I was talking with Mark Skoff, our school district’s Technology Program Coordinator (translation: He gets a teacher’s salary and puts out every edtech fire in a district of 65,000 students). He was explaining about what our plans are for next year. We are rolling out 200+ classrooms that will have ActivBoards, but he went on to mention that we have already purchased video iPods for podcasting and vidcasting classes for teachers next year – more digital photo classes – PDA classes – and the possibility of iPhone classes – they are serious! Realize that when you take any of these classes you get (for free to use with your students) the iPod or camera or PDA OR iPhone!!!

The reason this excites me as much as it does is that not even 2 years ago we blocked almost everything – Flickr, blogs, wikis, Skype are not blocked now and they are even talking about unblocking MySpace and other sites IF teachers take trainings in best practice use with students. Not even 2 years ago the classes offered beside one digital video class per year – a couple digital photo classes and some PDA classes were 3 classes on Word, 3 classes on Powerpoint and 2 classes on Excel … oh and classes on Groupwise (our e-mail client) and EasyGrade Pro, that was it. Attitude toward edtech was ..”just be happy doing Powerpoint presentations and Word docs with your students … and use the net, but not too much.” Those of us doing Marsopolis were hassled some about setting up yahoo email accounts in our classrooms so students could communicate with each other between schools – IT was really uncomfortable with that.

So what happened to change minds? (because pretty much the same people are in charge of Ed tech and IT now as were then). Some higher ups have been to some conferences, some of our edtech people finally “got it” how restrictive and narrow minded some of our policies are, and the few of us that were doing things anyhow raised awareness for how powerful web 2.0 is and could be. Like the title says: Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming! Oh, and so I guess this is more news that keeps me optimistic about finally making some progress towards trying some new ways and new tools. Yea!!!

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Come Join Me On WOW2 Tonight!

Women of Web 2.0, Cheryl Oakes, Jennifer Wagner, Sharon Peters, & Vicki Davis have asked me to be a guest tonight on their live webcast. On their web site they describe themselves as:

“…four women who not only love using the tools of the Internet but also love sharing the tools with others.”

I’ll share what my class has done and is doing right now using Web 2.0 tools and more. That’s tonight (Tuesday) 6:00pm Pacific Daylight Time – 9:00pm Eastern.

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The Cost of 1:1

workinghard.jpgWe read all the time about how cost is one of the disincentives to technology in schools, and certainly I don’t know if my current experience is anywhere near what does or would usually be the case, but I left this as a comment on Tom Hoffman’s blog and thought it was worth posting here too:

“My 1:1 laptop pilot is going pretty well so far with old Apple iBooks – 7 years old – we use Appleworks because it “came with” and iPhoto and iMovie and web browsers and Flickr and blogs and wikis and all kinds of free math and language and science software – haven’t paid for anything but new batteries – once (AND I’m rolling this class to fifth grade and plan on using them for an eighth year). I don’t know if laptops will usually last this long – they aren’t the latest and greatest and the screen resolution isn’t fantastic – but I haven’t found anything I wanted to do yet that they won’t do (I expected that to happen by the way – “sorry guys we can’t use Fun Brain, the computers are too old” but that hasn’t happened yet. We paid over $1600 per originally so we’re down to almost $200 per year per computer, but the price has dropped close to half and current computers have more power etc.
Maybe it depends on what you want to do with them??? But so far we’ve done everything we wanted to. I do have to use a newer computer when we video Skype, but how often would you need more than one computer doing that in your classroom at the same time? Not that I would necessarily start a 1:1 laptop program in Kindergarten – but 7 years means our current 6th graders (I’m in 4th) could have received these laptops in K and still be using them today as they leave sixth grade.”

So … how far offbase is my experience?