Last year we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) sat down to tackle the big question ” How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century.” As Technology and Learning Coordinators at the International School of Bangkok this question was important to us for three reasons.

1) 2006-7 was a WASC accreditation year for ISB and we were charged with taking a look at the K-12 Information Technology curriculum and creating a plan of action to improve it.

2) The discussions and writings coming out of the edu-blogosphere last year were rich in ideas all about “shift” , “re-thinking” and “who is teaching these new skills?”. It was hard not to feel like there was some momentum building around a fresh educational paradigm and a shift away from the “integration of technology” in the classroom, moving towards “embedding” it in the way schools “do business”.

3) Prior to our roles as coordinators we had both taught in schools with elaborate technology scope and sequence plans which we felt had little to no impact on learning and often became outdated the moment they were written. We also felt that the previous NET standards were too bulky and disconnected from the average classroom teacher. We wanted to create something that could stand the test of time and be manageable to the average teacher.

With initiative and a purpose driving us forward we sat down to write a rationale to guide our approach. We came up with this:

“We believe that technology is a tool that can help and enhance learning. Everyday we see technology used as a tool outside of formal schooling for communication, collaboration, understanding, and accessing knowledge. It is our goal in developing an integrated curriculum to ensure that the way students learn with technology agrees with the way they live with technology.

Technology is in a constant state of evolution and change. Access speeds, hardware, software, and computer capabilities all evolve and improve on a monthly basis. This change occurs at a rate at which it is impossible for schools to keep up and adapt. Is it not time that we create a curriculum model that understands and this fact and works with it rather than tries to control it?

Too often typical information technology curricula have focused heavily on skills and their scope and sequence across the curriculum. The hard reality of this approach was that they became outdated as soon as they were printed due to changes in software, hardware and the skills that students came equipped with.”

Instead of asking the question “What technology skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” should we not be asking “What thinking and literacy skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather aim to provide students with the thinking skill and thus the opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold.”

We felt strongly that for too long that way technology was integrated with learning focused more on the tool and less on the curriculum/content that it could be used to support. To compound this fact ,since technology changes so rapidly it became almost impossible to map what “skills” students needed to learn from year to year as new technology arrived on the scene and old skills trickled down age groups. It wasn’t long ago that spreadsheets were the domain of high school students in accounting classes. Now we introduce them to fifth graders doing graphing and data analysis.

Typically teachers saw teaching these technology hardware and software skills as “someone else’s job.” IT skills to be learned in isolation. Yet schools rightly began to insist that technology be integrated into classroom practice. Under this technology skill curricular model, faced with teachers ill-equipped and not believing that it was their job, IT integration was doomed to failure.

We had to think bigger different………

Looking at Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design approach to curriculum and unit design we liked how big “essential questions” and “enduring understandings” had helped us plan and design units when we were teaching math and social studies. What if this same “best practice” approach could be applied to the way technology was used and talked about in the classroom? If this was good curricular design practice, why should technology and thinking curriculum be any different? What if that same approach was used in the way we looked at connecting technology and learning across the curriculum? What if there were only a few manageable questions that even the most tech-resistant teacher could see value in?

Over the school year we fleshed out these questions and ideas and came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum – one focused on the thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the technology.

• How do you know information is true?
• How do you communicate effectively?
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?
• How do I learn best?
• How can we be safe?

You can read into the elements of each of these questions at our curriculum wiki – http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/

What do you think of the approach? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tomorrow’s post: Curriculum 2.0 – Creating buy-in, shopping an idea and refining through collaboration

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Thinking Allowed and Dangerously Irrelevant

When Scott put out his initial request for guest bloggers on school leadership, we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) considered whether we fit the bill. We are not school heads or principals, but rather a different kind of leadership that is emerging in this current era of technological change and efforts in education to use this change positively.

We are Technology and Learning Coordinators at International School Bangkok. Our primary role is to lead teachers toward embedded technology use, enhancing learning opportunities in the classroom and beyond.

More and more however, we find that school leadership looks to us to guide and inform on all sorts of decision-making, ranging from curriculum to hiring practice to processes involved in running the school. This defines a new kind of leadership in schools – one that breaks down typical hierarchical set-ups into one of collaboration and deferred expertise. One that is less top down and one that is more shared – at least in some areas. Ultimately, the buck continues to stop at the top, but input and influence seems to be growing from the “middle”.

Currently, many school administrators and curricular leaders are not “up-to-date” or savvy on current ed tech thinking or even on current technology tools. They lead from an understanding of traditional schools attached to isolated IT classes with computer labs for student use. They don’t grasp the possibilities of a participatory web or realize the true potential of the “network” (social and hardware). For the most part, this is not because they don’t want to change, but because they don’t know what’s possible. This speaks less to their skills as an administrator and more to their backgrounds as educators. It is a credit to those administrators who recognize a changing landscape and ask for guidance from those in the know.

So they come to us.

We work in this dual role, convincing administration of directions we need to move, while at the same time working for teacher buy in. Administration defers to our expertise in these matters. Both may be considered the jobs of the administrators, yet both jobs fall on the guys with the ideas and the people skills to get it done.

Do you have a similar situation in your schools? If you are reading this as a technology-type, what is your role in this alternative leadership? How much responsibility/say do you have?

Justin and I often wonder and tackle the question, “what does it take to bring administration on board to make significant change in schools, curricular or otherwise?”

This week we’d like to share with you the process that we went through from both a leadership side as well as a curricular side. We are in the process now, because we are trusted to do so, in moving ISB forward into a model of embedded technology founded on the Essential Questions of the 21^st Century Learner. This curricular model has come directly from us rather than the curriculum office because we see a need for a different way to approach learning with technology. In the coming posts, Justin and I will take you through our thinking on this curricular model with two purposes:

1) To get feedback from you and to push our thinking forward.

2) To hopefully inspire thinking at your own schools about how to best “embed” technology into classrooms so that is accessible to teachers and agrees with the way children live with technology.

This is a terrific opportunity to speak to a different audience than the readers we have already have at our own blogs (and those who have seen us present), so thanks, Scott. We are looking forward to the week.

Justin Medved, Dennis Harter, Guest Bloggers
Tomorrow’s Post: “Birth of a question and a concept” – How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century.

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Thinking Allowed and Dangerously Irrelevant

A new bi-weekly podcast aired for its second time last week. Called Shifting our Schools International podcast and hosted Jeff Utecht and David Carpenter it is set to be a new twist on an important discussion and its coming all the way from Asia! You can catch it via SOS UStream and Jeff’s On Deck blog every second Thursday. I really like the format as each show centers around an essential question that is the lens through which all discussion should flow. I was a guest on last weeks show along with Julie Lindsay and the question “How does making connections affect learning? ”

If you listen to the podcast you will get to hear some great discussion and thinking around the value of collaboration and connecting classroom from some educators who are passionate about the subject but also who are practicing what they preach. There are some big voices in the edu-blogosphere but those who resonate the loudest with me are those who are DOING what others are preaching about and making it happen in an environment that is slow to embrace change and bound by countless  barriers and distractions…………SCHOOLS. IF you are interested hearing about real application and ideas in action. Tune in! 

• The next show is Thursday February 7th. 7:00 PM Shanghai time.
• The guest will be Clay Burell from the Korea International School. Check out his Beyond School blog. This guy is worth reading and is PASSIONATE!
• Essential Question for the show: Passion for learning, how to nurture and grow it?
• Check out the SOS Del.icio.us bookmarking site for some great resources and links associated with each show.

Readers,

Thought you might be interested in the direction ISB is taking with its technology and 21st century literacy professional development for 2008. We have tried out a few models and constantly tweaking and evolving our approach to try and differentiate instruction to meet all of our teachers needs. Here is what was sent to our staff that beginning of this semester.

Update – We have also decided to Ustream the Wired Wednesday to anyone who is interested. Come join us every Wednesday at 2:15 Bangkok time here: http://ustream.tv/channel/isb-edu-stream

---

ES Staff,

In response to the results from our recent technology survey we have revised our PD strategy for the year. In an attempt to encourage whole-school sharing and collaboration we have combined the three divisions into two weekly sessions. It is our hope that by bringing staff together discussions around technology, 21st century literacy and the K ­ 12 philosophy will spread. Below are the new weekly in-service opportunities available to you.

While our weekly workshops are a great way to spark and fuel ideas about how to use some of the great tools we have at ISB, the research on professional development is clear. Teachers and students learn best when technology is used in context to help attain the learning outcomes of the classroom. It is for this reason that we will be making more of an effort to embed ourselves in your team/grade/subject level meetings to co-plan with those teachers who wish to explore, promote and bring 21st century learning opportunities to their students

.Mondays: Personal Tech Support
Where: Main Library classroom
When: 2:15 ­to 3:00 pm

Need help with a technical problem? Want to spiff up a lesson? Need help finding online resources to support your unit? Want to know what Web 2.0 means and how it can impact your teaching? Want to collaborate with a global audience? Looking for some SMART Board tips? Just want to know how to podcast? Crop a photo? Download a video clip from YouTube? You have a tech question; we have an answer (we hope).

Justin, Dennis and Kim will station themselves in the Main Library classroom every Monday for any sort of tech question or help. We can work individually or present something to a group.

PD tailor made for you. You can’t beat this kind of personal, differentiated attention.

Wednesdays: Wired Wednesdays
Where: Main Library classroom
When: 2:15 to­ 3:00 pm

Are you interested in talking about technology, the future and how both will impact education? Wired Wednesdays are about that conversation. Come to these sessions to be immersed in progressive and current thinking about how teaching and learning is being redefined in a rapidly changing world and ISB’s plan to keep up. These sessions will have a strong audio/video component so whether you want to get deep or just want to be edu-tained, these sessions are for you.

Hope to see you there!

Justin, Dennis and Kim

ISB is hosting one of first FLNW unconferences. Come join us right now – Jan 16th, 2008 – 2:15pm – Bangkok Time -

http://ustream.tv/channel/isb-edu-stream

We are online right now!

Have you ever been to Kaohsiung?Do you even know where it is ?Well before this weekend I didn’t either. Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s second largest city and I have been flown here by SMARTBOARD to present at the 2007 Symposium on Development of Creative Intergration of ICT in Educationto. I am one of 5 keynote speakers who will be speaking to 200 Taiwanese teachers about technology, teching and learning. My presentation is titled – “Interactive Whiteboards: Their impact on teaching, learning and professional collaboration – Reflections on a 5 year study”.You can download the pdf version here: “Interactive Whiteboard Presentation Notes”So wow did I get here?Well it all started (like so many other connections this year) at the Learning 2.0 conference. I contributed the same presentation, the people from SMART seemed to like it, and so the invitation was extended.I have opportunity present quite a bit in my current job but this conference will provide me with lots of firsts.First time visiting Taiwan.First time being a keynote presenter.First time presenting with a Chinese translator.First time presenting to a non-english speaking audience.My talk is focused on how Interactive Whiteboards can change pedagogy, planning and promote collaboration in schools.The conference is at one of Microsoft’s schools of the future. This school (see below) is massive and hold over 3000 students. Factory style with a Feng Shui twist.I hope I can add some value.

 “Students 2.0 is about quality over quantity – one or two posts will be published every day. Every author will write a post approximately two times a month. Every post is reviewed for quality and grammar by a student editor. In addition, guest posters will occasionally invited to contribute. No matter what, all posts will relate directly to one or more of our topics: leading, learning, and teaching. All authors and editors are students.Authors will also have the option of writing asides: small posts with links to elsewhere in the edublogosphere. These will serve as a method for sharing breaking news while still maintaining a high quality standard.RSS feeds will be offered for a variety of uses. There will be feeds available for posts & asides, as well as both together. We will also have a comments feed available if a lively discussion suits your taste. A conglamerate feed, containing the posts from all of our individual blogs, will also be published, for the truly insane. Of course, there will also be a master feed containg all of our fine feeds rolled into one. Eat up!” Do I need to say any more other than WOW! and big kudos to Clay Burell (the godfather) for connecting with these students and getting this project off the ground. You only need to spend a weekend with Clay to be inspired by what passion, initiative and talent can enable. Can’t wait to watch the words fly!Click here to visit the site.  

This weekend I along with 49 other educators from around ASIA have been invited to attend the Apple Distinguished Educators institute in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be a chance to be indoctrinated immersed in all thing Apple through the lense of education.

What really excites me about the institute is that it is project based. All participants will be placed into groups and given themes and questions to explore using the variety of Apple products available to us. Lots of advanced workshops and new stuff to try out.

Some notable edu-bloggers (Kim, Clay) will be there along with MAC guru Steve Clark of Shanghai Community International School.

I’m psyched!

Check out all the action here

………………..the students will play, or so the old adage goes.

Last week the verse when something like this.

When the teacher is away the students don’t know it because he checks in and leads a class by SKYPE!

One of our teachers did just that while at a Partners in Learning conference in Madrid Spain.

His class has been exploring similarities and differences between cultures and he saw a great opportunity to share some on the ground experiences as they were fresh in his mind. He as able to share some art he bought and the students were able to ask questions on the fly.

Its about making connections.

Minimal planning with huge learning rewards.

When teachers are willing to take risks and they know they have support on the other end to make thing happen, great teachable moments emerge.

A few observations:

Classroom management needs to change a little so questions can be addressed one at a time to allow for any delay.

A brief mention to the students that although the medium is different nothing much has changed, this is still their teacher and the same behavior expectations apply.

Projecting the picture engages the students and immerses them in the experience.

Elevate the camera so the speaker can see the maximum amount of room space.

Wow!

No one told me how time could fly when you have kids…………

That’s not true. Everyone told me, I just didn’t believe them.

The last month at work has been all about “SHIFT HAPPENING” and over the next few posts I will take you though that journey. I hope to provide insight on how one school is moving forward to creating a shared understanding of what it mean to be literate in the 21st century.

In the mean time…………

Have you leveled yours?

Thanks so Doug Johnson for digging this one up. 

The first thing I thought of was……….I wonder how this is calculated?

An algorithm that scans vocabulary and language and assigns a score to based on the level?

Try yours and then try your favorite blogger.

Cool.