Thoughts2.0

In mid-April, I was teaching a segment of Learning through Technology and started looking at ways of expressing what statement: Teachers will provide equal access to the digital world for all students meant.  On the surface it sounds as though it is saying that it is the teacher’s responsibility to make sure that all students have equal access, whether they are at school or at home.  After thinking about it in the week leading up to the class I started feeling better about my own stance on the statement.

It is unrealistic to expect anyone outside of the home to provide physical access to technology to a student in the home. However, when I started comparing technology to other subjects, such as language arts, it started to sink in a little more.  Take for example using punctuation, a student may understand what it is they are supposed to do, even if they are still making mistakes.  As time goes on, they will become better and better. To that student learning punctuation, I am giving them access to the rules of grammar.  To the technology student, I am providing them with the information they need in order to use technology when they do have access to it.

I am teaching them how to drive, not getting them a car.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

It’s been about a month since I last posted, and it has been a busy month! I’m going to be teaching a graduate course at a local university on learning through technology, or technology integration techniques. I’m very excited to be teaching this! I received a copy of the syllabus and started tweeking it to add in some of the digital tools I use.

It is as though someone spilled my digital toolbox all over my homework!

I have tools everyplace, trying to categorize them is almost impossible as so many have fuzzy edges on where the scope of one tool ends and the scope of another begins. I’ve long believed that it isn’t in what the tool is, it is in how you use the tool, and that is how I intend to present the information. It isn’t the tool that drives the process, it is the process that drives the tool — that was the motto I used in software development and should transition nicely to tool selection in the classroom as well.

My plan is to start off with general discussions on what technology integration is and isn’t, and an early assignment will be to start creating a class podcast as I would in the classroom so that the podcast is part of the learning and not simply an afterthought.

I guess the determining factor will be the filtering at the university!

Time will tell…

The winter in New England has been harder than normal. Not that it is has been particularly cold, or even that we have received a particularly large amount of snow. Instead, when it does snow, at least in New Hampshire, we receive large amounts in a very short amount of time. This has created quite a few missed school days due to snow.

It just so happens that I also teach at the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, a virtual school offering both Middle and High School courses. One of the things that they don’t have an issue with is the snow day. Where students and teachers all work from their homes and any teacher/student/parent communication happens over the Internet or telephone, the outside weather isn’t an issue.

Back the November timeframe, I had a math night at the school. We had two sessions, one was in-person where parents could come and be shown some of the algorithms we use. The second session was done completely online using Flashmeeting, a video conferencing tool.

The recent snow day issue started me wondering if there was a way of using some of the available tools to solve the missed school issue. Could we host classes virtually?  Would we see a time when we could record (I almost wrote video tape, but that has also gone the way of the dodo bird) lessons and assignments for students to do at home? This lead to another thought, one that I had heard Bob Sprankle had tried in November: when you are going to be out and don’t have time to write sub plans, could you effictevely use a tool, like Skype, to conduct your in-school lessons from home with the substitute being more of a proctor?

As a sidenote, back in my software days, I had cameras set up throughout my house. When my own children would come home from school I would connect to them from work.  I was able to monitor their activties, talk with them, even turn on and off lights if needed. I used to call it Homing from Work.

After I wrote my previous entry about “What’s a Teacher to Do?” I received an email from a friend of mine. She lives and works about 90 minutes from me, and our main way of keeping in touch is with various microblogging platforms (Twitter, Facebook and TxtMsg). She received my tweet, or perhaps it was a text message, about my updated blog and wanted to talk to me about it.

It turns out that she doesn’t have anyone in her school that can help with technology integration, their tech coordinator is shared by many schools, so any ideas that happen within the school happen amongst the teachers. Her PLN is more a Personal Learning Network, as opposed to a Professional one, and most of her professional contacts are from her own school.  I must admit, I maintain a few different social network areas, and I try to keep them separated by function and to keep my networks somewhat distinct (I had an earlier blog discussing a social networking synapse).

Her purpose for the call was to say that when we do talk, and we discuss integration opportunities, new tools, or new tool uses, she brings the information to school with her. But her collegues are asking where you can go to learn about these 21st century tools. In my area, many of the college “Technology and the Teacher” classes are still teaching competencies with word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation programs. Those that are teaching about the tools, end up being a whirlwind of information without any application ideas.

Life is often a cycle of wants and needs. You need to learn an application because you want to use it. Before you can decide what application you need, you must decide what you want to do. Before you know what you want to do, you need to know what is available. Where most tools are multi-purpose tools, it is sometimes difficult to envision how to adapt it to your specific needs until you know exactly what it can do, and you can’t find out what it can do until you need to use it.

Yesterday I was approached by another teacher in my school and told that they wanted to do something that the students would like, and because they don’t use a lot of technology, they thought it would be nice to do something with technology.  “Ok, no problem. What did you have in mind?” an innocent question on my part, or so I thought.

“Oh, I don’t know, you tell me!”

the teacher replied with a smile.  No, they weren’t being sarcastic or difficult, they honestly had no idea what types of things might be interesting for the students, or what types of things were possible in the school.

Bear in mind, I’m not the technology integration person. Our school doesn’t have anyone with that specific title. We do have a technology coordinator, but they deal with more hardware, network, maintenance and software installation issues. This teacher that approached me seems typical of many of the teachers I’ve spoken to, some with 20+ years of experience, and those with only a couple. It is not an issue faced by only our senior teachers, it is an issue faced by everyone!

If you’re in a school without a technoogy integration person, and haven’t yet created a Professional Learning Network (PLN), who do you turn to? Personally, I have no problem being the “go to” person for suggestions or help with integration questions, issues and ideas. In fact, it helps me stay in touch with what is going on in other classrooms. But it does make me wonder, “What’s a teacher to do?” when they don’t have a technology-integration support system in place, and really don’t know where to begin.

We had an ice storm last week up here in the North East US. For those unfamiliar with how these storms sometimes work, the outside temperature drops below freezing but not enough that rain freezes or becomes snow. When the rain lands, it freezes before dripping off power lines or trees. This causes quite a large amount of weight, toppling trees and taking down power lines. In my case, it was 4 days without power.

It was a little cold falling asleep at night, plus I was going through digital-withdrawal, which got me to thinking:

Where am I in relationship to others in my Social Networks and Personal Learning Networks?

Let me explain – I participate in several different networks from Twitter and Nings to Skype Chats and Webcasts to in-person meetings and networking groups (such as my grade-level team or even my classroom). Each is its own Social Network and together comprise my PLN. If I am the link that connects each Social Network together to form my PLN, is a PLN only as good as the sharing that occurs across that link?

When I see a piece of information in one of my Social Networks, I choose whether to pass that information along to others causing a synapse of sorts. A network needs to be stimulated to survive, a PLN needs synapses from active and stimulating networks to be productive. Am I doing my part? Am I a giver, a taker, a sharer? Do I act as a synapse or do I hope others will do it?

How do you make sure your PLN stays productive? What do you do to be an active participant?

This week I’m attending the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Nashua, NH. Yesterday I attended two pre-conference sessions presented by David Warlick. David was also the keynote speaker today, and presented the first two sessions that I attended.

As I listened to his presentation, along with the comments and questions from the audience, I kept wandering back to a phrase I had heard David say a few times. Teachers are not preparing students for the teacher’s future; teachers need to be preparing students for the students’ future. As I pondered this phrase, I wondered if this is the answer to one of my questions — and that I had just been asking the wrong question. I felt a little like Arthur Dent as he got the Ultimate Answer “42″ only to find that they now needed the Ultimate Question. I think David had just given me my Ultimate Answer, I just had to find my Ultimate Question.

Is it possible that the reason so many teachers are reluctant to integrate technology into their lessons is that the ideas and concepts seem futuristic? Logically we may realize that these tools are here and highly used, but emotionally are we having trouble wrapping our heads around the why aspect to fully commit to this reality?

On my web-browser’s startup page, I have a link to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, but I also have a dusty hardcover dictionary in the bookshelf next to me. I have a clock on my computer screen, but also one (which happens to be analog — and set to the wrong time) sitting on my monitor. I have my Olympus digital camera on my desk, but in my camera bag is my Canon EOS (which I just checked and it has out-of-date film loaded). Why is there an answering machine (which is not only off, but with 20 old messages) attached to my phone if I’m using Vonage with voicemail?

I would like to think that I’ve moved into the digital age and am using 21st Century tools, yet I am apparently still clinging to my past.

This is a tough realization to wrap my head around. Why do I have these pre-Digital Age artifacts sitting around?

What pre-Digital Age artifacts are you clinging on to? Look around, I bet there are a few!

Put Pedagogy before Technology, that’s what I often hear when I’m talking with people about integrating technology into lessons or researching a tech-topic on the Internet. Recently I was even told:

“Technology! That’s all bells and whistles, It doesn’t serve any real purpose. I’m not interested in that.”

That started me thinking: Is Pedagogy before Technology, a phrase that was accurate 10 years ago, as accurate now as it was then?

Regardless of what, if any, technology is used there needs to be a purpose to any lesson. The technology is there to support that lesson, the lesson should not be to support the technology. Likewise, the technology shouldn’t detract from the lesson; the class shouldn’t be so blinded by a cool technology that the lesson is lost.

Here lies the problem that I’m now seeing. The importance of technology integration is increasing, but often the topics in the lessons are not changing. Technologies that were “cool” a few years ago are often neither engaging nor relevant to the lives of today’s students. To me, the intent of integrating technology is to bridge the gap between the student’s personal interests and their academic lives. Is there something wrong with having a student want to learn or use a tool and having that student use the lesson as their means or test case?

As an adult, when I am learning something new
that I need to use for a specific purpose,
I find it difficult to learn and apply it in that real-life case right away.

As I learn more things, I often need to change things I’ve already done or find that I’ve gone down the wrong path entirely. Basically, I’m only learning what I need to accomplish the task at hand and I may end up with something that is just “good enough“. Instead, I find it easier to learn with a fun project that engages me. Then I am able to take what I’ve learned and use it in a way that goes beyond good enough and goes a long way towards something I’m proud of.

I don’t want to do what I have to do so I can do what I want to do.
I would rather do what I like doing so I can do what needs to be done.

Last month I didn’t put my application to Google Teacher Academy together in time to submit it. I’ll admit it, the paper part was fine, it was the video that I always seemed to put off. Two days ago I saw an announcement that 3M was having a video contest to give away a classroom projector. Yesterday I saw a reply to my earlier post from from Alice Barr reminding me, and everyone, of the important fact that often students know some of the newer technologies better than we do and there is nothing wrong with letting them lead the way.

I arrived at school early this morning to get things ready for the day, make sure I had the materials I needed and would be able to find them when the time was right. All the while wondering what kind of video I could make for the 3M contest, what would my Tired to Inspired video look like? Then it hit me:

Why not ask my students?

I move from class to class and on most days am in contact with as many as 150 students, some days nearly 300! Why not ask them what would inspire them?

Of course the first rule of teaching is to be flexible, which means that even though I had a plan, it didn’t even get off the ground. My first group of students arrived at 8:05am, and I told them my woes about making a video and wanting to know what types of things would inspire and motivate them.

At some point between the words leaving my brain and reaching their ears, I had asked them to scrap the ideas for making our math videos about problem solving and create a math video series about random math topics.

Featured episodes would be “Pi Rap” and “Math tricks: You can subtract by adding!”

My first thought was, “Oh did this get off track or what?” but as I listened, I realized this was what I really needed to hear. This really was my answer, I just didn’t know the question! If the only form of technology I wanted to incorporate into my lessons was video creation, this was what they wanted to do. They were excited, they were brainstorming, they were showing me that they did have an understanding of math and look at what the content of the videos would actually demonstrate. How much practice would they get? Wouldn’t this be a great assessment of learning?

I never did ask the other classes what it would mean to them. I really needed to reflect on what happened and what an incredible journey to go from tired to inspired in 45 minutes.

Coming from a technology background, I sometimes have a very different perspective on what technology is and isn’t. In late-20th century standards, it is mainly electrical or digital equipment: Cameras, IWBs, voice recorders, computers, etc. However, that is the equipment that people use and having those, you can fairly easily transfer things that you do with paper and pencil into a digital environment — but that is not integrating it into the classrooms or lessons here in the 21st century.

At just about every meeting I hear people saying that they can’t integrate technology because there aren’t computers in the classrooms. My answer is simply, “…and what would you do if you had computers in your classroom?” Today we need to talk about what we do with them, not whether or not we have them. There are many things that a classroom (meaning a group of students, not a physical room in the building) can do with technology by going to the library, computer room, a single classroom computer, home computer, or using a mobile cart that go well beyond using the Internet to do research or a word processor so students can type a paper.

Now that’s all fine and good and pretty much a lot of rhetoric.
How can we actually do that?

Teachers are always told to model their lessons, to model what they’re presenting, not to just give the students information and expect them to integrate it into their understandings. Students need to have experiences. One of the big issues teachers face when integrating technology into the classroom is that they don’t have the experiences to draw from. If the only thing you do with a computer is email, reading news, and research (either academic or personal) then that is all you can do and therefore, all you will see. It is difficult to know or understand beyond what you know and understand.

The driving factor for the 21st century learning is that no one knows what it will be like in 10 years. Things stayed the same for so long, now suddenly the students are using the Internet in ways that are foreign to most of us. The new web tools are usually refered to as web 2.0, also known as: the participatory web, the interactive web, or the read-write web.

Now the kicker. In order to learn web 2.0 tools, one must use web 2.0 tools. What makes this easier than many other things is that the big innovation in web 2.0 is collaboration. The big advantage to teachers is that if you want to do something in the class and you don’t know how to do it — no longer do you just ask your neighbor or people in the school: now you can ask the world.

Web 2.0 is no longer a “what is in it for me?” it has transformed to a“what can we share?”.