I spent far too much time today on this image…….

But first

What are the key elements required for a transformation of teaching and learning through the use of technology?  There are obviously many reasonable ways to look at this.  From what position do you view this issue?  Are you a teacher, instructional coach, building principal, technology facilitator, director of technology, chief administrative officer of some flavor, superintendent, parent, or student?  For you, this issue will likely run through the filter of your current position.

It will also run through the filter of your experience.  Are you an eighteen year old student who lives a life that is highly digitally integrated, or are you a teacher of 20 years or more who is just now trying to become familiar with the Internet as it relates to teaching and learning?  Are you a superintendent or head of school who is beginning to open to the importance of a smart approach to technology integration, or are you a technology facilitator who has been a digital evangelist for the past five to ten years?

Those filters should all be applied to the problem of how to retool schools along the lines of technological transformation.  (Though I didn’t think it worked in the title of this post, you will see below that I would rather use the term transformation as opposed to integration.)  At this point, the vast majority of school systems are behind the curve in this area.  Being this far behind might just have one distinct advantage.  If there is no way to see any of the individual trees in a forest, you are likely going to be forced to start your mission with a whole-forest view to begin with.  This is not a bad thing.  It allows you to realize two important things:

1) You don’t need a flashlight.  It’s not that dark in there anymore.  Trust that there are others who have proceeded down this path before you, and they have learned many important lessons.  Collaborate.  Learn from their successes and failures.  Do not go it alone.  Resist the temptation to slap a digital device in the hands of each student and call it success.  Have a plan.

2) Rarely do we get to make decisions with the clarity that a little distance provides.  Take your time (but hurry).  Ask yourself: what can we do with these new tools available today that we couldn’t do before?  If we could remake our curriculum any way we wanted, how would we do it?  Think transformation of the way teaching and learning is done in your district, as opposed to integration into it as it exists.

Allow me to run this challenge through my own filter for the next several paragraphs.  For more on my filter for these ideas, consult the About page.  Also-  I certainly do not profess to know all of the answers.  I am currently sitting on top of a nice little foothill of educational technology leadership…  and staring up at some pretty massive peaks ahead.  Allow me to talk about a few things that make these peaks seem climbable from where I stand.

It is my belief that all schools (and/or school systems) need the following four pillars below any technology “integration” effort…

An Innovation engine

All systems need what I will call an “innovation engine.”  Whatever the system, whatever the setup, schools and school systems need pockets of sponsored innovation.  Without some folks directly charged with instructional innovation with digital tools, we will always be just trying to fit technology into what we do on a day to day basis.  It is far better to build innovation directly into the system, and to foster it purposefully.  I know this may seem somewhat fringe in the world of public education, but it can’t afford to be much longer.

“At enlightened, forward-thinking companies, managers understand the connection between learning, innovation, and higher productivity — in fact, employees at these companies may even be encouraged to spend time learning and experimenting with new technologies.”

~Joe McKendrick, FASTforward

So who will drive this engine of innovation in your school?  Will this be a technology facilitator?  Will it be a technology coach?  Perhaps an instructional coach.  A ad-hoc committee of teachers?  A requirement of your leadership team or department heads?  If you are thinking of this from a district perspective, where does this responsibility land?  Will you just hope for it, or will you truly sponsor innovation in new approaches to teaching and learning afforded by digital technologies?

Administrative support

An innovative technology leader will be of little use beyond their immediate world without direct, purposeful and inspired administrative support.  Administrators:  join forces with your innovation team.  Learn what they learn.  Push them to new heights.  Allow them to bring innovative approaches to the classrooms and teachers of your school.  Support your teachers every step of the way as they slowly transform the classroom environments they create toward new and better approaches to learning…

…and then hold them to it. Hold staff accountable for bringing their skills up to the present realities of the 21st Century.  We’ve been living passively in this century for almost ten years now.  It is time for all of us to sit up and take a direct and active role in the changes happening within the learning profession.  Without strong administrative support, advocacy, and supervision, no real and lasting changes of the magnitude are possible.  Guidelines for such leadership aren’t exactly guesswork.  Grab a copy of the NETS and familiarize yourself with these standards today if you have yet to.  They come in three fine flavors:  for students, teachers and administrators.

Unfiltered ubiquitous access

So now you have innovation closely coupled with administrative support.  With those two things, you can get a pretty immediate return for your buck, provided one more terribly important thing:  that you don’t filter the very usefulness out of the web. A school can have instructional innovation and local administrative support and still fail with regard to technology integration.  How do you kill innovation quickly?  Tie it down.  Even today, many schools filter all of the good, interactive raw materials right out of the web.  Figure it out, people.  Ask a school who only lightly filters.  Ask.  Don’t assume there isn’t another way.

Our school system does currently block Facebook and MySpace.  However, our general approach is to put the filters in place required by law, and then keep the real Internet open for education.  Yes, that means we have open access to YouTube, Flickr, UStream, Ning, Twitter, Blogs, Wikis, etc…  We have our hands on far too much fuel for innovation to even worry about looking at Facebook and MySpace at this moment.  They are where our students already are.  But for now, we are luckier than 95% of school districts I encounter.  This fact has allowed us to move quickly toward figuring out the advantages and disadvantages of these powerful new tools in an educational setting.

Oh, and ubiquity.  Access to these tools must be easy and everywhere.  Soon after access is all around you, it doesn’t even feel like “technology,” it just feels like the way things are done.  This is a good thing, for when technology becomes invisible, we can finally focus on the value added from new uses of these tools.  The world is moving quickly toward wireless access in all corners.  If your school isn’t wireless, then only your students have wireless access.  That’s right-  via their phones.  You have a cell phone policy in your school?  Don’t kid yourself.  Your students are on the raw, unfiltered Internet via the 3G connection of their cellphone more often in the classroom than you care to admit.  Why ignore this…   or worse yet, why punish it?  Embracing might just be the answer.  Try it.

If your school isn’t at a 1:1 ratio of students to laptop computers… and the students don’t take them home with them night by night, all year long… then you don’t yet have an ideal learning environment for 2009 in my opinion.  However, there are other ways until that time to assure ubiquitous access.  Our school currently employs MacBook carts at a ratio of 2.5 students to one computer.  60 of these machines will be available for checkout from our Media Center in the fall.  Our Media Center/Library will also be open well beyond school hours.  It isn’t perfect, but it is allowing us to move ahead intelligently.  We are moving quickly toward the 1:1 environment everyone knows is inevitable in schools.

Instructional model

So now you have innovation on the ground level, administrative support, and unfiltered access.  Be proud.  If you can honestly say this characterizes your school or school system, then you are in a very small but fortunate minority.  You work with smart, visionary people who know how to plan and have been doing so for some time now.  If your lone goal is to have students, teachers and administrators all gleefully pushing buttons and gazing at computer screens…  then your work here is done.  Congratulations.  However, if what you were wanting out of this nationwide technology push was something a bit more…  substantial, then you had better finish reading.

The fourth pillar of “instructional model” is more than a quick soundbyte allows.  I see three levels of this notion with increasing value as follows:  1) You have thought about and encouraged good instructional practices in your building/district.  2) You have a well-articulated plan for effective instructional practice that is building or districtwide.  3)  You have a true learner-centered instructional model in place in grades K-12 that credits the constructivist nature of human learning.

I am fortunate to say that though our district has awakened late to the call of real and purposeful transformation via educational technology, the toughest of our four pillars has already been built.  The final pillar of a student-centered constructivist model for instruction that is carefully stated, professionally-developed, supported, and supervised…  is in place.

As I stated earlier, we are looking up at some pretty tall challenges ahead of us.  Locally, we have unfiltered access to all of the content and interactivity the web affords.  We have pedagogical experts in district leadership positions who have put in place an ideal instructional model for the future.  We have a quickly multiplying group of administrators at both the district and building levels who are responding to the call of the digital world, and we are making plans to foster innovation and creativity in our classrooms.

I feel like I am at the foot of a mountain that a handful of good people have climbed…  20,000 feet below the summit, yet armed with the best climbing gear and support I can get my hands on.  Our immediate future should be interesting indeed.

Where are you?

So where does all of this leave you?  How many of these pillars have been already constructed around you?  What have you done to help in that construction?  What do you see as the greatest challenges in this mission?  What can I or others do to help?  Are there other pillars that you believe I have missed here?

This post was initially intended to be a part of “Leadership Day 2009“ as conceived by Scott McLeod.  I am posting it at 1:30am on July 13th instead of on July 12th.  This is not to shabby considering my two baby girls thought that since it is technically summer here…  it should feel like it today.

Artwork

Happy anniversary to “nashworld.“  This post is the 65th of the year, and it comes exactly one year after my first post on April 21st, 2008.  Wow.  Looking back at that post, it was quite clear I was full of questions for the coming year of study and reflection, but very shy of answers.  In fact, this blog was initially titled “virtual southside” that first month.  My first plan was for this space to be a group blog to facilitate PD for our brand-spanking-new tech cohort starting in June.

Forming a purpose

Then I found Ning.  In one weekend, it was clear to me that this platform would be a far better, and more flexible, match for our school’s edtech PD mission.  It also served to bring some comfort for our staff in the world of social media.  Though we control membership to the site, it is certainly a more free-wheeling place than a simple group blog.  It was the decentralized nature of a Ning network that I loved.  I didn’t want to drive “virtual southside.”  I didn’t want anyone to drive.  I wanted to be merely another loud voice on a very enthusiastic and speedy bus.

So after a quick rename, nashworld became more of a personal place for reflection, sharing, and synthesis of thought.  I do drive this bus.  However, I had my first guest move up from the passenger section just this month.  Though I certainly do have an amazing passenger list here, this is where the metaphor breaks down, for the readers of this blog certainly help steer my thoughts and words with their comments.  To those of you who have put in your two cents here, I thank you greatly.  You have helped to develop many of the thoughts and beliefs I currently own.

Year One Archive

A couple of months ago, when I started to really reflect on what blogging has meant to me over the past year, I decided to create a different type of archive for the blog.  If you look up, you’ll notice that just to the right of the “About” page is a link to a new page entitled:  “Year One Archive.”  This page lists every post I have written over the course of the year by month-  with somewhat of an abstract-like summary.  I hope this provides yet another way to navigate the site.  It certainly isn’t a quick and efficient way, but it does provide a bit of a different approach.  The archive page also serves as an interesting chronological history of the past year.

Archaeo-blogology

In fact, after that first post in April…  I didn’t write another that month.  I didn’t even write one in May.  During that month I was working hard on both Virtual Southside as well as my first shot at social media for an actual course I teach.  June, my most prolific month, was the result of using the blog  to fulfill the requirements of a really lame online grad course on “educational technology.”  Truly the worst course I have ever experienced.  You can easily tell this by the lame posts and lame books and movies and edtech articles from five and ten years ago.  Jeeeez.  I wish I hadn’t looked back over those just now.

Things got much better when school started and I began to feel a true mission for the blog.  When November began, I followed along with Steve Dembo in his 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger adventure.  That experienced helped tremendously.  Also in November, I was actually even nominated for a 2008 Edublogs Award.  You can imagine my surprise as such a green little blogger, but that was no doubt extrinsically empowering.   I am certain to post several more reflective pieces on things I have experienced, learned and accomplished over the past year.  Stay tuned for those.  As soon as my grad program is completed in May…  I have a lot of things to explore yet.  Grad school, a new baby girl…  it’s a wonder I could pull off any of this at all.

To community

Most of all-  thank you.  Thanks for coming here.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for commenting.  Thanks for joining in the discussion.  Thank you for helping to steer my personal learning mission over the past year.  I cannot thank each and every one of you enough.  The thinking I do about the things you say… is worth a graduate course in something each time.  In reflection over this past year, I can for certain that the biggest thing I have gained from blogging is people.  I now have current and future collaborators on from all over the country.  We have and will collaborate on projects that will no doubt extend not only my learning, but that of my friends and colleagues in Saint Joseph.  I am humbled by the professionalism, creativity, and generosity of people in this newly-generated community.  Thanks isn’t enough.

Artwork:

Refocus

I’m certainly not the first person to utter that sentence in reference to the integration of modern technology into the world of education.  This was originally posted to our school’s professional learning network, Virtual Southside, here.

*Full size image linked in citation below.

Then what is it about?

Folks… our mission really isn’t about the “technology.” I think most of us are starting to come to that realization. I would love for you to weigh in on this assertion. I am becoming less and less fond of the “…if we’re gonna be the ‘technology school’…….” phrase. Are you?

To be honest, I never did want that. The reason we used the “technology” moniker is that: 1) it was largely “given” to us, and 2) it is familiar to all who hear it. As you know, familiarity can distort meaning. What we believe in is a move toward a student-centered, constructivist learning environment. The fact that we believe the best way to achieve this goal is through the integrated use of emerging 21st Century technologies… does not make us a “technology school.” A technology school is a school that is centered upon gadgets and tools. Some would say this is all “semantics.” I couldn’t disagree more vigorously.

Our goal as high school teachers is to deliver a relevant and rigorous curriculum laden with the concepts and facts of many different schools of knowledge… as well as (and perhaps most importantly) the processes of learning. “Technology” is not our curriculum. Nobody writes “use chalk here” in a curriculum guide, and mentioning any other technology will only date your work in about two years.  Technological tools are way to interact with said content and process… but they are only the curriculum itself in a scant few of our courses.

Honoring PD in this area for once

I never wanted us to “teach technology.” I have always wanted us to use modern and emerging technologies to access and extend our current curriculum. Are there times we need to directly teach the best uses of a tool? Yes, of course… but this is just the first tiny step.  The first waypoint in this mission is to ensure that we are collectively savvy as a faculty first.  Continuing to put laptops in the hands of kids, all the while skipping directly over the lead learners in the room is just…  wrong.  It is ineffective, irresponsible and wrong.  I’m so glad that we have a staff who believes in this important part of our mission.

Therefore, I would like to propose a new set of language about what we are doing as we move forth into year two of our initiative:

Really think about what this title says.

Finding our own way

I think the kids who have had the opportunity to interact with our cohort teachers this year are far more adept at accessing information and in finding creative new ways of demonstrating their learning than ever before. We have all absorbed that which we found most valuable throughout this first year. Our development should be allowed to be as close to the constructivist ideal we seek for the classroom.  Why wouldn’t we?  Some of us have even carried the torch directly into our classrooms at a very high level already. I have seen it with my own two eyes. The district “tech study committee” saw this as well in our classrooms in a recent walkthrough of our building.

With the coming summer of reflection and relaxed study, we will surely begin our second year far more prepared to bring this learning to our students in the classroom in a very regular and integrated way. What do you think?

.

“OK Sean, I am ready to start reading some blogs.  Can you tell me where to start…  give me a few places to begin?”

Connecting

The above question is one I have begun fielding more and more often from faculty members as of late. Many teachers at Benton, and a growing number from other schools in town are ready to start tapping this powerful resource. In my opinion, this is a fantastic way to begin. Read. Read. Read. The best way to understand blogs is to read them.

The second step in the process is usually making your mark publicly and actually commenting on a few blogs that stir your interest. This is a very important move because it is the step that actually defines you as a contributor. This is no small thing, for this is a contribution to what has become a vibrant and global conversation.

For some, the final step in joining this conversation is to set up a blog, which is a place to guide a community of conversation of your own. Sure, some folks will say that they blog “for reflection”, or to “sort out their thoughts”, or even to “create an archive of what is happening in my life or work.”  To this, I agree completely. 

My perspective

Blogging fulfills many of those things for me as well. However, if that was all I really wanted to do, I certainly wouldn’t need to go to the Internet for it- much less do it in global public spaces. I would simply download one of the available free journal applications… or just tap away at MS Word. Right? Okay, perhaps Pages for me… but you get the point.

For me, the act of blogging has been responsible for more synthesis of thought than I have experienced in a really long time.  For me, this is not only a place to put together professional thoughts, life experiences, and opinions, it changes the way I experience things.  I find that I am now engaged in the act of “blogging” even while away from my laptop during most waking hours (and likely a few while asleep). I have always composed in my head, and this exercise makes it happen often.  That said, for me personally, it is also very much about the interaction with those who reply to, link to, or blog about the ideas that I present there. That interaction between interested people from many countries not only changes the conversation after I post to the blog, but it also affects my future writing as I once again consider the audience that unfolds there.

It is exactly that mental exercise that pushes me to develop this tool as an educational strategy for my kids.

Start simple

So, where do I tell folks who ask where to look? The first place I suggest looking is down the right-side column of my blog under the header “blogroll.” This is a list of bloggers who, for differing reasons, have compelled me to plaster a permanent link from my site to theirs. Looking through someone’s blogroll is akin to mining the bibliography of a really super journal article.  My blogroll is my “go to” list when I get a hour to read. How did I find those names in the first place? The answer to that question is as diverse as is the list.

However, more and more I realized that before you fill up Google Reader with a ton of blogs you may or may not read later on, there might be a better place to begin.  And really…  if you are just starting to open up to blogs as a learning resource, you probably aren’t ready to mess with RSS just yet.  I really do like Alltop.  I still use it.  I came pretty close to titling this post: ”RSS for the masses.”  When I want a visual version of the latest posts from the best blogs, I scan the screen there and click at will. In the words of Alltop, their service “is an ‘online magazine rack’ of popular topics. We update the stories every hour. Pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and we’ll deliver it to you 24 x 7.” There is also a nice little explanatory video linked near the top of the main page.

In fact, just this past week, Alltop has now added a feature called “My Alltop.”  As you can probably guess, this is a user-customized screen showing only the latest posts of the blogs you choose from all categories.  I created my personal page the day it went live, and it bookmarks tons of blogs on the topics of education, science, neuroscience, literacy, news and even a few humor and “being a daddy” -type blogs.  To me, it feels like something between that of a beefed-up blogroll and an aggregator.  Another cool feature is that you can share the URL to your personal page with others.

Give Alltop a go. Clicking here directly will take you to the “education” page. There you will see some of my favorite blogs by Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, Clay Burrell, Michael Doyle, and many others.  You will also see EdNews, the US Dept. of Education, and Boardbuzz: The National School Boards Association. Technologically, this site is really basic stuff. Geeks will tell you this is nothing special. But think… have you ever heard Mick Jagger sing? The guy sucks as a vocalist. He can’t sing a lick, and yet the Stones sound awesome. Much like Apple touts its products, it just works.

Shamelessness

In fact, as of a couple of months ago, you can also find my nascent little blog there.

The day my link first appeared on the site, I received a message that invited me to go to Alltop and download a badge to adorn the blog. I’m not above badges.  Badges are fun.  Steeenking badges.  The one you see just above is the one you’ll see in the right sidebar of my blog. However, if public education wasn’t my business of choice, I might have been inclined to choose the more playful one shown modified below:

Add Alltop Education to your bookmarks toolbar. Click when you have a slot of time that couldn’t dare handle the latest print release by ASCD, but certainly could slide in a blog or two. Oh and of course, look for me there:

Oh yeah… I almost forgot: My name is Sean, and I approve this message.

*Artwork thanks:

Bit ‘o setup

I think the TPACK framework is one of the most influential things I have learned about/grappled with this past year.  As an instructional coach in the middle of an educational technology implementation, this is one piece I have relied on heavily for personal focus and planning.

One thing I worry about with concepts of this depth (that possess a graphic illustration so perfectly simple) is that the real idea gets misinterpreted by any old joe who does a copy/paste of the Venn diagram from a Google image search.  You’ll see what I mean in the diagram below.  I’m not saying the diagram is in any way off the mark.  What I am saying is that the visualization is so elegantly simple that I think for some it might not at first glance convey the sophistication of the concepts presented.  Would I change it?  Not one bit.  I think it is a really good example of distilled reality.  Judge for yourself:

When it works

However, this post isn’t just another nod toward the synthesis of visualization and concept present in the TPACK framework (formerly TPCK).  It is also about a brief and recent e-mail exchange between one of the originators of TPACK and I.  Punya Mishra, professor of educational technology at the College of Education at Michigan State University, has been a fixture in my blogroll since I started nashworld.  In my opinion, the TPACK framework is one of the few things in educational technology that you can truly hang your hat on.  Tools will come and go, popular methods of instruction will as well…  and content?  Content changes in the blink of an eye in 2009.  However, to me this framework is core to what we do (or should be doing) in education.  And with a mouthful like “technological pedagogical content knowledge,” it really does help to have a visual representation that nails it cold like this one does.

Inspiring connections

I honestly don’t remember exactly how I first found Punya’s blog, but I instantly connected to the eclectic nature of it.  Particularly, the fact that he is not only deep into edtech, but is also a huge fan of all things regarding the visualization of information.  I too am fond of creative and innovative ways of visualizing data of all types.  My mixed life as a generalist instructional coach (who also teaches biology and marine biology) is one that often blends strategies for learning data with methods of collecting and interpreting it.

From reading his brief but frequent posts sharing precious nuggets of visualization, I now think of his blog whenever I find one of interest that is new to me.  So just a few weeks ago, I sent a different sort of link that included a visualization about visualizations…  and to top that, it was bent and twisted into the familiar form of the “periodic table” of elements.  My knee jerk on this one was not favorable.  However, I thought I’d e-mail it to Punya to get his objective take.  What developed into a small back & forth via e-mail, then developed into a full-blown post confirming not only what I thought he might find, but then quite a bit more.  For a table about visualization methods, this could easily serve as an “anti example” itself.

Visualization risks

Punya makes the case that it works to do this in sort of a humorous way, and provides several examples in his article.  I even have an example of this hanging above the sink in my own classroom.  The Periodic Table of Fruits & Nuts was given to me as a gift back in the days when I taught an Honors-level Botany course to Juniors & Seniors.  We had fun with the poster.  In fact, it is quite pretty and really does display a ton of information.  But I always made sure to point out the massive misconception machine that it was… in taking the shape of the periodic table of elements.  The main point being, the table of elements is the shape it is because of the periodicity of the elements within.  I assure you there is nothing periodic about the latin names of fruits, nor the caloric value of the nuts in my poster.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

~Plato

Upon more closely mining the site for the source of this document, I finally found the original paper by Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler of the Institute of Corporate Communication, University of Lugano, Switzerland.  So, I suppose it makes sense that this does not have roots within the natural science community.  All scientific inaccuracy, and creation of misconception aside, the authors apparently realized a few of the limitations themselves.  The conclusion on page five states that the chart, “…cannot be seen as a close adaptation of the periodic table of chemical elements. It is rather a functional, metaphoric homage to it.”

However, the Plato quote above was lifted from another paper linked to the site, from the same university, entitled: “The Risks of Visualization.“  It seems that this second paper might have some further suggestions for the first, huh?  There are some other interesting non-examples presented in this paper.  Check them out toward the end of you have time.

What is happening?

Are you doing this at all?  If so, how do you address visual literacy in (or out) of your curriculum?  What do you do to help students acquire skills in this area?  What supporting sources do you use?  Do you have a colleague who is doing this really well?  Have them weigh in.  I want my kids to be visually literate.  I think addressing this by the time a student is 18 is important.  I think I personally have a reasonable level of skill in this area.  I try my darndest whenever possible to address visual literacy.  However, this is a far cry from being organized, efficient, and well-equipped to do so.

Tell me this isn’t good. I am inspired by the performance here as well as the coaching that led to a kid being empowered to this type of creation. Think this isn’t synthesis?

Lyrics:
People get malaria when they’re bit by a mosquito
It’s taking lives like a torpedo
Every year one million die worldwide
But you can prevent it with insecticide

Maybe a breakthrough cure for malaria
To starve the parasite was their idea

Every thirty seconds a child dies
Without treatment, it’s no surprise
A family in Africa could be saved by a bug net
Too bad they can’t afford one yet

This treatment fights the drug-resistant kind
Hopefully we can put malaria out of mind

I wish this cure will help people everywhere
I want it to end their nightmare

Understandably, I often field comments like: “I just need to see what technology integration looks like.” Well, I would say this is a nice little example of a student taking a piece of content and exploding it into not only a scientific and artistic expression… but ultimately what may just move across the plane of classroom into social action. And to me, that is golden. This blog post and video are certainly not about the technology, but rather facilitated by it.  To think that you can sit in front of a camera, and then a computer and create rich content like this to demonstrate learning is very cool. Though to think your response could actually move folks to action is, well… nothing short of inspiring.

The video is just a part of a really nice blog post that provides some nice context for the song. You really need to visit this link to get the full experience. Shoot- perhaps Miss Jennifer needs her own YouTube channel to publish future scientific songstress expressions?

This post was made by a student of Stacy Baker’s biology class. Stacy is one a handful of my Twitter friends who helps to keep The Synapse running along with Erin & I. Her class blog was most-deservedly voted “Best Class Blog” in the 2008 Edublogs Awards.

I am pretty excited to see all of the chatter about this post in such a short time (as I hope Jennifer is). You never know where these things will go. So what do you get out of this? What does it make you think? Is this to be valued as highly as I value it? Am I wrong in thinking so? I would love your feedback.

Calling all brains

I’m asking for your help.  If you could pick anyone, anything, or anyplace, What books would you read?  What conferences, workshops, or meetings would you attend?  Who would you travel to meet with?  Who would you fly in to sit at the table with you?  Who would you pick to help you in your strategic brainstorming or planning?  Who could help inject progressive, innovative ideas about the future of education and the technologies that will drive it?  Anyone.  Yes, I am serious.

This post is a straightforward attempt to leverage the power of my PLN.  It is my goal to get some fresh input about that very thing…  fresh input.  As a generalist instructional coach on what could realistically be called a “21st Century upgrade” mission in my building, I have spent countless hours in research this past year.  In fact, this blog originated from some of my earliest explorations into how a school can systematically raise the tech literacy of its staff ahead of a larger edtech implementation with students.

Here’s the deal

I am pleased to say that I work in a district with some success in incubating innovation.  We locally help to fund innovation with a fantastic “Apple Seed” grant program for creative projects.  We also celebrate ingenuity with an “Innovator of the Year” award- presented alongside the T.O.Y. award each year.  On a district wide level, our administrators in charge of curriculum & instruction are working hard to implement constructivist-leaning instruction and content-specific best practices.

In my opinion, we have long lacked such a mandated, district level approach to educational technology integration.  We invested early in a robust and speedy system-wide fiber optic network.  We have always succeeded in putting current, state of the art technological tools in the hands of our children.  What we now recognize the need for, is an innovative and comprehensive plan to elevate the technological savvy of all SJSD faculty members.  21st Century literacy skills (whatever you think those might be) cannot be developed in our children by skipping over our staff to do so.  We are ready to do the staff development required in readying our own workforce…  to ready those of the future.

Our crew

A district task force was assembled to study the situation.  Our group consists of three instructional coaches, one social studies teacher, a library/media specialist, our district’s technology curriculum specialist, and our chief operating officer.  We have been told that we are “taking one year to study.”  One year to learn everything we can about what the future of learning will look like-  at least with regard to information and communication technologies.  Experimentation with free online technologies has been spawned and is growing in a grassroots way in a few places already.  My home high school actually has a building-wide implementation plan that was put into play this past summer.

The goal is to get just enough perspective about what we are currently doing… and what we still need to do…  before making any more large scale technology purchases.  The idea is to put the “buy it and they will come” -approach to edtech integration to bed for good.  This task force is headed by our C.O.O.  He is a direct sitting member of our superintendent’s council.  This level of buy-in is aligned what I had in mind when I wrote a post entitled “Increasing Our Level of Vitamin A” last November.  We are really to the point in our little corner of the world where we need to think long and hard about our mission and vision prior to buying even one more laptop.  Smart move, methinks.  And this mission had better be flexible.  Life moves pretty fast in these circles.

Why should you care?

I don’t know if I can say why you should care about a project in Missouri.  However, I do believe I know why you will.  Because you are a bunch of committed, forward-thinking educators.  Folks like us know the power of buy-in at all levels of implementation.  Here’s betting that the readers of this blog realize the power potential of solid know-how combined with administrative support.

Please help.  I could submit my own recommendations.  I essentially do that quite regularly behind the driver’s seat of this blog.  The articles I write examine interesting avenues and advocate passionate positions.  My blogroll is a list of folks I rely on for new learning.  I have a set of books on my shelf that were important to me, but really…   the elements of my learning network allow it to be a dynamic, hyper-responsive, thing.  There is even a pretty good chance you came here from the Twitterverse-  and that has become a frighteningly good resources as of late.

We are locked and loaded for NECC 2009.  We are set for a sit-down at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino this March.  We recently sent a small contingent to METC 2009 for a last minute look at a few of the presenters.  We are ready to grab a few keystone texts for the group to dive into.  We are ready to visit the top workshops available where our learning/time ratio will be strongest.

We are going to take a slow, smart, focused look at this issue.  I can make informed suggestions as it is.  Yet- this post marks one of the ways I am increasingly gaining input.  Here’s betting that an emerging best practice in “informed decision making” includes surveying your PLN as an crucial step.  What do you say…  will you make a suggestion for our study?

“Play game, ‘puter game… play ‘puter game… gaaaame… yayyy!”

My almost-two year old has a thing for letters and numbers.  That, of course makes me delighted because from there, everything is exciting.  I spend my professional life trying either to help teenagers find excitement in the natural world or colleagues find excitement in refining their practice.  Those two groups of people in my professional life have little in common with preschoolers.  Yet, the content carrots I have to work with there are far more thrilling than the bare bones geometric shapes and associated sounds of letters and numbers.

Now, it is here that I must tell you (as if you didn’t know) that I am no kind of authority on early childhood education.  I have spent nearly 18 years as a teacher or an instructional coach.  However, those years have been spent working in secondary education.  I have developed a really healthy love of the process of learning itself, but I walked to the plate in 1991 swinging a love for science.  Now that I think about it, I suppose there would be a bit of overlap in a Venn diagram of those two entities.  I have now spent less than two years on a case study of early childhood education.  How could I not?  Instructional coach + new father = easy fit.  That said, I welcome the comments here of anyone and everyone who might carry a bit fatter portfolio of educating children.  Please allow me to extend the educational technology discussion down a grade level or ten.

So let’s get back to the leadoff quote.  Yes, that is exactly what our little beast now exclaims when either of us sits down by her with laptop in hand.  In reality, all it takes is the slightest hint.  What on Earth is she speaking of while in the throes of such excitement?  Starfall.  She is fired up about the online reading site at Starfall.com.  This is not a new site.  It was founded well prior to the “Web 2.0″ boom around 2004.  If you are an early childhood educator -and computers don’t frighten you- you likely already know about Starfall.  Since this is not my largest reader demographic, allow me to point most of you in this direction.  Even if you don’t have your own larvae at home, you can certainly share this link with friends who do.  They might just thank you.

At Starfall, you will not be blown away by slick graphics nor amazing audio.  What you will find is a rather engaging little site for curious tykes that seems to be very sound at what it does.  What does it do?  It provides a version of online reading instruction starting with ABC’s and moving on to various levels of early reading.  The ABC’s introduce students to the sounds of letters (phonemes).  Learn to Read teaches students how letters are combined to create words.  The simple animations associated here are quite good as the letters (always pronounced by a child’s voice) move closer together as they become a word.  The It’s Fun to Read section uses learning activities to begin simple sentence construction.  Finally, I’m Reading uses plays, myths and folk stories to increase fluency.

How well does it work?  I honestly have nothing to compare to.  My little girlie could identify all letters by sight when she was 18 months old.  She has delighted in the phonemes for each of the letters, and is starting to identify simple words.  Is this website the only thing she has explored in that time?  Certainly not.  Erin & I read and read and read.  That’s pretty much what happens in the family room.  Whether we are reading to ourselves, or to the babe, we read tons…  and much of it is online.  Our little bookworm even finds little corners in the house to hide away and “read.”

Will Starfall raise a child through the screen of a laptop?  Not so much.  Will it help out in the early stages of learning to read?  I certainly think so.  It is a very cool part of the puzzle.  In fact, my wife just remarked about how she also first began to actually nail down colors and numbers as a side effect of several of the mini-lessons on the site.  I guess watching mom & dad work & play on laptops influences the way a child likes to learn.  She gets so fired up when we let her take center stage in front of the ol’ Mac and click her own way through the site.  No gift we have yet given her has been met with the enthusiasm this website has, and continues to deliver.  Ok, maybe Discovery Channel dinosaur flicks.

Check out Starfall.  Copy the link to anyone in your world with small children.  Or really-  perhaps even older kids who struggle with reading.  I would be curious about that.  Are the animations & examples too young for somewhat older kids to gain from the program?  Or is this something that might be utilized in a school setting?  As I said above, my “expertise” with early-childhood education amounts to one case study with a 23-month old princess.  If you need a “testimonial,” link back to this page. Check it out.  Check back.  Let us know what you think here.

And oh…  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and many others.  May you all glow in the warmth of any celebration of light in the middle of Winter’s darkness.

.

History was the talk of the day today.  It all started with Barack Obama’s inspirational late-night victory.  It evolved into a lunchtime chat with the Apple folks about an educational technology revival in our district.  The icing arrived in a conversation about writing and publishing in the aisles of a local grocery store.  I don’t know… if yet another dose of motivation comes my way, I might just just pinch myself for a bit of reality check.

I don’t know when I’ve seen so many Americans so happy on so many television stations.  I didn’t realize what a breath of fresh air this would really be.  There is power in inspiration.  There is power in promise.  There was a snap in the step of a real majority of Americans today.

Lunchtime brought conversations of revival.  However, this was a revival of purpose surrounding the implementation of rigorous technology-integration standards within our school system.  I attended an Apple “21st Century Learning Leadership Institute” in Omaha.  I was a member of a team of three.

Our technology curriculum specialist, building principal and I spent two days learning about Omaha Westside High School’s journey into a 1:1 computing environment over the past five years.  We could have certainly used a few more members in our study group, but the trip was an overall success in learning.

I capped the evening in a conversation while grocery shopping at the local HyVee.  Near the frozen foods section, I ran into a retired communication arts instructor who worked for years in my building.  I never did get the opportunity to be a true colleague of Donna Jean Boyer.  Her career in education ended at about the time mine was beginning.  She is a beloved teacher and was a well respected member of the Benton High School faculty for 38 years.  Donna Jean has since been a St. Joseph Councilmember since 1998.  She is now the senior member on the current city council.

Donna and I know one another, but mostly from afar since there was no real overlap in our careers in education.  So, you can imagine my surprise when shortly after “hello,” she greeted me with, “I have been reading your blog.”  Wow.  I have to tell you, that was weird.  I know my current colleagues at Benton read these entries.  I know folks in states and countries afar read them as well.  I have electronic data and warm commentaries to document those interactions.

However, running into someone local who “accidentally ran across” this blog and started to read, is not something that has happened to me.  How fun is that?

We chatted for some time about writing, teaching and technology integration.  It was a fun conversation.  Not only did I get to share the new technology staff development network at my school, we talked about the value of publishing.  In fact, Ms. Boyer related the past impact of simple computer-based word processing on writing education.  She explained how she saw a huge increase in student engagement when -all of a sudden- student writing could look instantly-professional.  The very act of seeing their own words and ideas in an instantly glossy format was empowering at a point in history.

Of course, there would never be a substitute for substance, but never discount the power of a nice sheen of gloss on a rigorous piece of work.  Paying $100 for a fresh coat of wax on a ‘76 Maverick might be a waste, but it certainly looks compelling on a Ferrari.  There has been some discussion of these ideas in my community as of late.

Towards the end of our conversation, I explained to Ms. Boyer about how I believe I am seeing a very similar reaction to my students given the still-recent phenomenon of instant publishing.  The fact that web 2.0 features are now being used to leverage student empowerment via publishing is exciting.  The novelty of on-screen writing has likely worn away long ago, but this next edge is always just around the corner.  I ended our chat by relating my enthusiasm toward professional writing on this blog.

I starkly remember the stinging feeling of the rejection letter I received in response to the first poem I ever submitted for print publication.  I can be a pretty stubborn person, but that hurt.  I am a biologist.  I am a teacher.  I am a colleague.  But that experience pointed toward the fact that I was not a writer.  Rejection was tough.  I didn’t feel any less of a person, but I certainly didn’t feel like a writer.

Driving home from the store, it hit me:  post it, Sean.  You tell people every day about the virtues of today’s instant web publishing.  Yep.  I’ve been writing here since April and this one never occurred to me.  I think I will post it after all.  Who cares about its merit?  It meant something to me.

So here’s to healing.  Here’s to healing myself as a creative writer-for-fun.  Here’s to a potentially nation-healing election.  Here’s to the birth of true technological pedagogy in our school district.  Here’s to swallowing your pride and giving a nod to the century of the everyman…

AND YOU ARE SO SMALL

I bathe in the pale silver moonlight

I smile as it looks

Down upon me

The moon feels my mood

Tomorrow I celebrate the burning of the sun

As it casts its radiant glance

Down upon me

Largest of all things

And you, you are so small

Yet when your smile burns

Its way into my heart

You seem larger than the heavens.

So take that, 20th Century.  You hold us all back less and less as the days go by.

Artwork thanks:

What is Slideshare?
OK, allow me to say in advance: this tool has far more potential than you will even realize at first.
Give this one a chance: SLIDESHARE.net
Here is an example of what this can embed directly into your network, blog, wiki, etc…

Ewwww…. he said PowerPoint
Slideshow software almost has an “evil” connotation in the world of K-12 education right now… not to mention within many communities just beginning a study of constructivism. However, this is certainly a perfect case of where the TOOL isn’t a bad thing… but sloppy or lazy USE of the tool is a bad thing.

For some, PowerPoint became an easy way to slap one’s yellowed overhead “notes” into a digital media and call it “progress.” Careful use of presentation software to enhance and inspire discussion, debate and visualization is impressive. I believe it is something worth studying in much more depth. If PPT is boring… then it is because it is being used for little more than to lay a ton of text on sitting children who are being expected to receive information from a talking head.

With slideshare, you can also allow full-size downloads of .ppt or .pdf slideshows, you can publish to the planet, restrict access to a certain contact list, or restrict usage of a presentation to only yourself. With slideshare, you could potentially not even drag a laptop to a remote presentation (though I cannot imagine no backup strategy).

Flipping the classroom
Check out this example (from The Fischbowl) of how archiving lectures allows these chemistry teachers to turn their daily in-class sessions into chemistry workshops. There is a sample screencast from an Arapahoe HS chemistry class embedded within this blog post as well.

Chemistry workshops. That idea won’t sound bad to any science teacher. It sounds… natural. It sort of rolls off the tongue. It also sounds scary, because it means shifting the focus of the classroom environment from you- the teacher, to your students- the learners.

But Fear is Fun
The ideas presented in this blog post are so exciting to me. Think about it- flip your use of slideshow technology. Post your lectures, screencasts, podcasts… assign those for homework. Allow class time for exploration, extension, remediation, and correction of misconception. Think about how much more you would have to figure out formative assessment strategies. Think about how much more dynamic your classroom could be. Take a baby step. Try it once. Tell us about it. I dare you.