| The Main Point: |
| (copied from bottom of this blog post) A while back I called on readers to help compile a list of educator bloggers who helped us do their jobs. Today, I’d like to ask that we populate another wiki page with the blogs who consistently talk about what Classroom 2.0 looks like. I’d like to have a list of bloggers who share practical techniques for using emerging tools with young children, to help students learn to read, and learn the language of numbers, to learn science, social studies, and health, and to think like artists, composers, and poets. This is not for the big picture folks, like David Warlick. This is for the nitty gritty educators who talking about their classrooms and their dreams for their classrooms.
Here’s the link. There is no password required. Please bullet you list and add in as many as you like. I’ll probably make a video of the growth of this wiki, and it should have more than three frames 😉 Thanks in advance! |
I’ve gotten several comments over the past week that have suggested topics deserving more conversation — and today, it’s about professional development.
Kim S., after talking about how mixing text with video and sound livens up a lesson, said:
…I have to say though that I too feel that schools should include more training because (if) you are not sure how to create lessons using the technology you have it makes, it’s scary and a lot more work. Anyone have suggestions on how to learn more (cost effectively) if schools do not provide the training? Any useful web sites or organizations? thanks.
What I find, as I get to attend conferences and see presentations from classroom teachers who are doing innovative and captivating activities, is that they did not learn to do these things in workshops. They learned by being creative and by engaging in conversations with other educators through the growing (and sometimes bewildering) array of online meeting places. Blogs and some wikis can serve as avenues. Ning networks (ex: http://www.classroom20.com/) can be especially helpful. Some consider Twitter and other microblogging services to be at the center of their professional development or Personal Learning Network, and others do their professional learning through conversations in Second Life. But, of course, it isn’t as simple as spending a couple of hours a night driving your avatar around ISTE Island.
J.D. Wilson, continues the conversation by citing the lack of time and current administrative priorities as a barrier.
I use wikis, podcasts, Moodle, web pages, blogs, flikr, and VoiceThread in my class room (maybe a few others). But for all I know I am like the teachers Mr. Stager speaks of because there is not a lot of feedback one gets and most of what I do is self directed because there is so little training and support. The time I spend on these things is mostly my own time because it is not a priority right now with administration.
Time is certainly a critical issue, as are administrative priorities. We are hopeful that priorities will be changing in the coming months, pointing us toward instructional and learning practices that seem more relevant to our world, today’s children, and a new information environment.
..And there should be more training. But training alone is not the answer, nor should it be. Retooling our classrooms into rich and dynamic learning environments will not be something that you can learn how to do in a workshop. It’s something that will happen through continued creativity, conversations, sharing, experimenting, reporting, and more conversations.
Certainly, there is much that can be learned in workshops. Just like youngsters have to be taught the basics of literacy, teachers need to be taught the basics of using today’s networked, digital, abundant, and hyper-connective information landscape. You can’t shape your own personal learning networks or build, maintain, and control digital learning envrionments without understanding the basics of that landscape.
As I said in a previous blog post (More on What Matters..), the time has come for us to start painting clearer and more concrete pictures of what learning 2.0 actually looks like. When you look at classroom 2.0, what are you seeing? What are the teachers doing? What are the students doing? How are the facilities being arranged, shaped, and reshaped and who’s doing the shaping?
A while back I called on readers to help compile a list of educator bloggers who help us do our jobs. Today, I’d like to ask that we populate another wiki page with the blogs who consistently talk about what Classroom 2.0 looks like. I’d like to have a list of bloggers who share practical techniques for using emerging tools with young children, to help students learn to read, and learn the language of numbers, to learn science, social studies, and health, and to think like artists, composers, and poets. This is not for the big picture folks, like David Warlick. This is for the nitty-gritty educators who talking about their classrooms and their dreams for their classrooms.
Here’s the link. There is no password required. Please bullet you list and add in as many as you like. I’ll probably make a video of the growth of this wiki, and it should have more than three frames 😉
Thanks in advance!
Powered by ScribeFire.
I teach oil painting on a live broadcast 3 evenings a week… does that fit what you’re looking for? I have about 100 artists and non-artists viewing regularly form all over the world.
Come take a look this evening: http://www.DavethePaintingGuy.com
David,
Wanting to jump in with a thought on PD, and not sure exactly where it should go – so here it is, you lucky guy 🙂
I do not think the key to good PD is in the presentation. Nor is it in more training, painting clearer pictures, or retooling classrooms. It is not in a gangbusters preso.
The key is getting “attendees” hungry to learn. Before they attend.
The key is cultivating that attitude, that hunger, and that thirst.
If those attending are not craving knowledge, the best PD in the world is lost.
If teachers crave new knowledge, they will not wait to attend a training session, they will teach themselves.
A different approach to PD? Sure. Cultivate that kind of teacher, the hungry one. – Mark
Spot on, Mark!
I noticed the first and most important aspect of how much someone learns is their MOTIVATION! As you say – if somebody is craving knowledge about a subject, they WILL learn and make great progress 🙂
I’m always wondering how the education system manages to do such a great job of killing student motivation. It’s almost as if they DESIGNED it to prove your point – that no matter how much money and equipment you throw at the students, if you kill their motivation, they won’t learn anything :p
David –
Your writing touches on the central issues of tech integration. It is clear that teachers truly must become life long learners. The pace of innovation continues to challenge even the most motivated of educators. Tech integration represents a changing mindset for teachers. Where does technology fit with content and pedagogical knowledge? The shift toward student centered inquiry represents a new way of doing business for some teachers.
Professional development can help teachers with technology integration but unfortunately in my experience these efforts lack coordination and follow up support. Additionally, professional development needs to focus specifically on individual subject areas or disciplines versus a one size fits all. For instance training on simulations and spreadsheet programs would be applicable to science whereas digital storytelling would be applicable to English or the arts. School leadership must work with teachers to create a clear vision for their school. Visions should be accompanied by clear rationales for the need to integrate technology. Lastly, schools need to implement their plans. Too often good plans fail to get off the ground because of failure to execute. Frequent pulse checks could help ensure that teachers are getting the needed support and resources to be successful.
I agree with all the sentiments above. It’s not about training, it’s about creativity and learning – that’s because the vision is still evolving through community experimentation and discourse. There are no tried-and-true steps to success.
But there is another ciritical component – reflection and critique. As we learn and try things and improve our own abilities, we are creating knowledge – something that is best done within a community that shares the experiences, successes, failures, and invites the thoughtful critique that hones our perspective and collective expertise.
What are the forums where we can ask for, and receive, the critique that accelerates our abilities and capacities?
The latest research shows that the biggest impact on student learning is the expertise of the teacher. Teachers who are willing to learn new technologies, improve their craft and are provided relevant and ongoing training will have this “creativity and learning” reflected in the students’ performance.
David, I appreciate this blog post and the Wiki. I find that I follow many bloggers and edutech leaders who aren’t actually teaching in the classroom that much. It’s the every day practice of integrating technology that needs to be shared and collaborated on. I will add information to the Wiki later today. (I, like so many others, need to find the time to do it!) I would like to point out that Foreign Language should be a unique category. Thanks!
All of the above concerns are significant in the obstacles in the way of full tech implementation in the schools. For me, I believe there also is a huge underlying logistics problem. If you teach in a school with fragmented schedules where you see kids for 40 minutes a day for literature, it is really hard to do project based learning and cover what the curriculum “suggests” should be covered in that year. Besides philosophical implications of change, there are plenty of logistical concerns that seems to be impossible to change in many situations.
Hi David and all…
I appreciate everything that you are saying. Yes, podcasts, vcasts, wikis, blogs and the like are great classroom tools and have great value in expanding the educational experience. However, when allegedly tech-savvy kids walk into my room and say things like, “A wiki? What is that?” it concerns me greatly. Since we have state mandated tests to prepare kids for as well as local assessments, the time really does not exist to teach these skills. I have used Elluminate with kids for tutoring on weekends, but that takes family time from MY kids and with the “digital divide” still fairly apparent in my district, there are no guarantees. Any suggestions? And yes, I have tried teaching the content THROUGH web 2.0 tools and still get the inevitable “How did you do that?” questions.
Any in-service or retired teacher knows that the structure of K-12 education inhibits professional development. I They know, too, how hard it is to get out of the classroom after that first day on the job. I’m a teacher/administrator in a small, independent school with a fair degree of flexibility, but it is still damnably hard to get out of the building. (But imagine what schooling would look like if K-12 were given a sabbatical every 5 years during which they were required to bone up in their subject areas and publish on their experience in the classroom.)
In the meantime, Twitter & blogs are a great boon. They circumvent some of the structural barriers to pro-development; though I am sad to hear schools prohibiting teachers using it and other social networking platforms such as Facebook at work.
Dave et.al.
I work with teachers who are doing great things with their kids and technology. These teachers need to be seen in action, but have barriers to conferences (time, cost). What they do can be shown via screencasts that are narrated BY THEM. Teachers learn well from simple demonstrations that are developed and narrated by respected colleagues.
The use of Jing (free and short narrated clips), Camtasia (more detailed and more bells and whistles and cost), Screencorder 5 (the European counterpart to Camtasia, very easy to use but cost is similar), Smartboard captures, and other tools of this nature allow us to collect and share experiences.
When you or I show what others do, we are intermediaries and the connection is just a bit distant, though still meaningful. Conferences are limited in scope and participation.
Showing good teachers how to speak for themselves via screencasting can kill two birds with one technology! I had a very successful presentation at a summer conference last year by taking 40 minutes to show 7 5-minute clips called “In Their Own Words”. This could fit any conference or setting wherein teachers can’t attend and the video technology to bring them in real time might be dicey.
David,
Thanks for your thoughts. Professional Development for teachers is a very complex issue near and dear to my heart. I love being a part of helping teachers reflect on their practice and brainstorm ways to grow. The last two workshops I’ve done have been particularly eye-opening for me. Many of these teachers are having to “fight” the system and it is quite depressing. However, what is incredibly rewarding is getting them to a place where we pretend the barriers don’t exist, we start envisioning what the 21st Century learning model might be, and they fly. They really fly.
Personally, I am a teacher who focuses on community-building and whole class inquiry. I have found that wikis and blogging have been crucial additions to my classroom and have helped me achieve some goals more effectively. And by simply modeling these approaches, I have other teachers seeking out my help to get these ideas into their courses. But it’s tough when I barely have the time to the work necessary for my students, but what a joy it is when it happens.
So a key component in professional development is modeling, in my opinion. The teaching that takes place in the classroom is typically a reflection of the climate nurtured by the educational leaders in a building. They should be a key target audience for sincere reform in curricular development, which of course would include technology as a part of it. (Not just teaching them new skills, but discussing the philosophy behind these tools is extremely important.) Then meaningful professional development can be planned.
David,
I feel like I’ve found a home! I’ve been in the business for a long time, but have always loved to ‘tinker’, to move around in my career, and to find new forums and new ideas to help me along the way. I’m presently involved in a district committee due to a recent change in governance…new super and new asst. super. We’re called the ‘Strategic Action Committee,’ and our task is to find best practices for learning in the 21st C while bringing our test already admirable but not stellar scores up. The state of our budget leaves us with many fewer teachers and services. We’ve been asked to furlough 3 student days and 3 professional development days. I refuse to be deterred by this, though. I love what I do, and I’d love it more if I could continue to grow with it.
Your blog is a light in the midst of the shift that we all know is coming. I welcome the shift and I do believe that we may not need to have all the fancy, high-priced performers on site all the time to teach us this. We’re not going to get it. We ALL learn best with the technology tools in our hands and a mentor to guide us along the way. I do know that there are many who will resist…but as always, if a few can start to find their way, the fear will lessen and the walls will fall one classroom at a time. Thank you for giving me a place to start my journey!