Yesterday we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) spoke about our efforts to broaden the conversation that we had been having within our department with our wider school and the leaders within it. It became very clear to us early on that unless there was a shared understanding of concepts like “21st century literacy” and why our classrooms needed to educate for it then we would be stuck in a curricular holding pattern. There is lots of talk about the need to broaden student literacy to encompass and address the skills needed to navigate the new visual and information landscape, but what does that look like in practice and how do you write it into the K-12 curriculum in a way that is manageable and meaningful.

Our initial work led us to form five essential questions that we felt met the needs of a 21st century learner. It was our feeling that a curriculum focused on just five questions would be much more manageable for the average teacher. These questions speak to thinking, critically evaluating, analyzing, and communicating. They value responsible behavior and knowing yourself as a learner. In a world in which it is impossible to predict what technology children will be using as adults, it is the “answers” to these five questions that will provide students the opportunity to succeed and thrive in the 21st Century. The power of these Essential Questions, lie in their applicability to all ages and to discussion more important and broad than technology standing alone.

A grade 1 teacher can and should have valuable discussions with students about being safe or recognizing truthful information. Who are the people you trust? What about them makes you believe what they say? Whatmakes one “source” more valuable than another? Those same questions can be asked throughout a child’s schooling, but the answers begin to include more sources and more critical examination of their world. And eventually, they begin to include technology. If experimentation and data analysis is a way to know something is true, then you will have to learn how to use the technology needed to analyze that data. If being safe is valued, then learning about responsible use of social networking sites, issues of privacy, and web 2.0 technologies inevitably will be discussed at a time appropriate to students’ use.It was our feeling that the broad nature of these questions makes them accessible to teachers whose responsibility it is to embed this curriculum into their students’ learning.

Teachers believe that they can teach effective communication but they don’t believe they know much about PowerPoint. Nor should effective communication be limited to a software title anyway. The answers to these Essential Questions are higher-order thinking skills and issues of global citizenship. These are the skills we NEED students to have and the ones that will serve them well once they leave the arena of formal education.

These were our beliefs and they had come from hours of conversation and reading about the subject. If we wanted to move our ideas forward others would have to own them as well. So we gathered some key players and leadership from around the school to come together on a number of different occasions to refine our idea.
Our google collaborative document was the perfect venue to allow this to happen. It was fascinating to watch as 12 people debate and edit the same at the same time. What a powerful tool!Our first challenge was to answer the question “What do we want our students to learn?” Our framework provided much of this information but it was also important to try and outline what we wanted our students to be able to do once they were finished at ISB. From the perspective of this framework we all agreed that the ideas could be synthesized down to three areas.We wanted out students to be:

• Effective Learners
• Effective Communicators
• Effective Collaborators

From this starting point and as a result of much discussion and collaboration, we all agreed that our ideas and five essential questions could be refined further down to three new questions.

• How do I responsibly use information and communication to positively contribute to my world?
• How do I effectively communicate?
• How do I find and use information to construct meaning and solve problems?

With these questions we then proceeded to flesh out the enduring understandings that went with them. It was our feeling that these should always be evolving to address the changing face of communication, collaboration and information. The curriculum frameworkwould be in constant beta. A testament to the ever expanding nature of the skills it was attempting to map.

What do you think?

Do the 3 questions miss anything?

Is this accessible to the classroom teacher?

Could you sell this to your admin?

What barriers do you see?

Justin Medved, Dennis Harter, Guest BloggersCross Posted at: Medagogy and Thinking Allowed
Tomorrow’s post: Part 5 - Moving forward - from rhetoric to reality.

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

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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

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.

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

Live from Shanghai - Learning 2.o conference

Here are my synthesized notes from the first conference session I attended.
Papert Matters - Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas

By Gary Stager

This session presents just a few of Professor Papert’s most powerful ideas about children, computers and learning through his own words and rarely seen video. The presenter worked closely for Dr. Papert and was the principal investigator on his most recent institutional learning project.

www.stager.org/learn2

MAIN IDEAS

If immerse students in math the same way immerse them in language.

Mastery over the machine on many levels - not just for access not just for connection

Information is one SMALL piece of the information puzzle. Largely computers are seen as the gateway to information but we should see them as much more than that.

For the general public, information mean information and so the role of information technology becomes more like, let’s say , listening, hearing the news than making it. It’s more like getting information passively.

Learning happens through experience.

“the best way to ensure that construction of knowledge happens is through active participation that can be shared with others”

As educators around the world slowly wake up to the possibilities and opportunities that many of the new web tools afford, the world gallops ahead. It is always the business community that seems to be the early adopters  of tools that can increase and enhance collaboration, communication and creative thought. The global work-space has shrunk but the hours in the day have not and as a result any tool that can allow for collaboration independent of time and space has many appealing merits. One recent site caught my eye as a emerging resource for business, economics and math teachers: Wiki Invest.  What better way to get skeptical teachers on board to the virtues of collaborative technologies than to expose them to resources that will not only enhance their classrooms but their portfolio’s as well :).  In all the in-services that I lead last year, the most well attended were for resources that helped teachers outside the classroom (itunes, iphoto, image editing, movie making etc.). Perhaps I should re-think our schedule of offerings this year?

This resource is new but gathering steam.  I especially like the concepts section of the site which at a quick glance provides an extensive resource of all of the current issues facing global business today.  Notice “sub prime lending” as one of the most popular?

Relevant, engaging and meaningful.  The way learning resources should be.

Another one!!!

This is getting silly.

The International Educator, a wildly circulated professional newspaper has made the editorial decision to put this article on it’s front page with the above title.

If you read the article you will come across lines like:

“The students were told at the beginning of the course that they could bring their laptops to class to take notes if they wanted to but they would never NEED their laptops”

“You’d sit and watch the students and wonder, “What are they doing with their laptops?” You’s walk by other classes and see everyone playing solitaire.. I wanted to know, ‘Is this a problem?,” said Fried, a psychology professor at Winona State.”

To its credit the article goes on to add: “It’s just good classroom management. If you’re a good professor moving around your classroom, engaging your students, you don’t have those issues. Our best professors don’t see those issues.”

It is clear that pedagogy and instructional practice is the villan here and NOT the laptop. However my big issue with this article lies with the fact that TIE decided to lead the article with “Study finds laptops in class hinder learning.” Like our students, adults just read headlines, and this headline  actually refers to a college study. TIE is largely read by K - 12 educators and this article which really should be focusing more on the poor teaching practices of the these college professors will actually just provide one more “See I told you so !!” moment for some teachers to latch on to.

But what do I know?

I know that:
1) Good teaching , instructional strategies, and pedagogy leads to learning.

2) Good classroom management contributes to effective learning environments which affect student learning.

3)Technology is a tool that can enhance student learning but on it’s own will not guarantee it.

When you take number 3 and apply some number 1 some number 2 you get a classroom that is engaging, relevant to the lives of our students and possibly fun. All of these things are essential elements to learning.

Articles like this one just cause people to stop thinking.

I have written about this before. Here and here.

The tipping point for all of this is near.

Keep writing and keep reading and DON’T STOP THINKING and in time it will all fall into place.

I can feel it!

I just finished going through my feeds. I had over 300 unread posts to get to.

Instead of methodically reading each one like I usually do, I skipped around.

I read some and not others.

I looked for ideas to jump out at me and rushed past them of they did not.

I moved quickly, like I do with a newspaper or magazine.
As my “unread feeds” number started to grow smaller, so did the guilt.

You know what I’m talking about!

The RSS guilt.

“When am I going to get to all of this stuff ?”

“There is so much good writing out there! When am I going to read it all?”

I have always known this but tonight it became clear………..you can never get to it all!

Tonight I feel content that I got to SOME.

It’s ok to just get to SOME.

Tonight SOME of it was OK.

Tonight SOME of it was really GOOD.

Tonight SOME of it was GREAT!

Sometimes you just have to set your counters to ZERO.

Try it and let me know how it feels.

Image source: http://zegnou.free.fr/2006/02/lost-every-108-minutes-button-must-be.html

 Looking for a nice succinct way to explain RSS to your staff in 4 minutes or less?

Looking for a way to visually convince your colleagues that  RSS may be a tool that could open new digital doors for them?

Check out Common Craft’s video entitled “RSS in Plain English” 

Add it to your PD library today!

Over here at ISB we are always thinking about innovative ways to broaden, strengthen and improve the technology awareness and skill sets of our teachers. It is a dilemma all schools are facing and if you are reading this, you are well aware of it as well.

Jeff over at the thinking stick recently posted about Individual Educational Technology Plans for teachers and students and some of the interesting things Doug Johnson had to say at this years EARCOS conference. Some cool thinking going on here. Since we know that teachers like students are all on different learning continuum’s when it comes to technology would something like a IETP be helpful in ensuring accountability and skill growth for teachers while still respecting the fact that acquiring these new skills takes time and effort? How hard would it be to manage?

In steps the Personal Learning Environment or what I like to call your PD TREE.

If you had to map the sources of your own professional development, what would the root system that feeds your learning look like?
Where do you look to gain new knowledge and information that helps you become a more informed citizen?

What mediums does this information come in and how much control do you have over it?

Who, what and where are your main sources for current information that help you develop and improve as a teacher?

Where and how do you enhance your own skills?
Are these not good questions to ask all teachers to reflect on?

Ray Sim’s over at Sims Learning Connections recently shared his own Personal Learning Environment and I found it really impressive. More importantly it is an example of what is POSSIBLE with today’s access to information.

Having teachers map their own PD Trees would very quickly expose gaps in knowledge ,skill, and awareness in staff and provide an easy guide for further PD training in areas like RSS, Blogs, Forums etc.

Imagine if everyone shared their trees?

I plan on designing my own in the coming weeks and posting it here to share. I encourage you to do the same and if you do please let me know.

Tomorrow I will be presenting to the ISB admin team about Web 2.0 tools and how they can enhance teaching and learning in our classrooms. I certainly will be bringing this image up as an example of how some administrators are tackling and leveraging the information landscape to stay current and customize their own learning and development.

Click on the picture to get the whole view as the entire image does not show up in this post.