Category: professional development

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Ten commandments of school tech support

The ten commandments of school tech support

  1. Thou shalt test the fix.
  2. Thou shalt talk to actual students and teachers and make time to watch how  technology works during actual class time, not just when it’s quiet.
  3. Thou shalt not make fun of the tech skills of teachers or students, nor allow anyone else in the tech department to make disparaging remarks about them.
  4. Closing trouble tickets shalt not be thine highest calling; thou shalt strive to  continually make the learning environment better.
  5. Thou shalt not elevate the system above the users.
  6. The network will be never be perfect. Learning is messy. Get thyself over it.
  7. When teaching someone a new skill, keep thy hands off the mouse.
  8. Thou shalt listen to requests with an open mind and respond in plain English.
  9. Blocking shall be controlled by educators, not filtering companies. Thy job is to enable learning, not enforce behavior.
  10. Thou shalt include students and teachers in decision-making about technology purchases and policy. Their interest is not an affront to your professionalism.

Your thoughts?

Sylvia

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Tinkering and Technology

Before this all slips my mind, I wanted to post some thoughts about the conversation I led at Educon 2.2 last weekend called Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency. I had a few slides prepared, and a general list of things I thought would be interesting to discuss, and some questions in case there was a lot of deadly silence. Well, that didn’t happen! What happened was that we had a really interesting conversation, which wandered a bit but no one seemed to mind. That’s the cool part about Educon, the conversations are the point. I learned as much from everyone there as I hope they learned from some of the things I shared.

What I’d like to do here is provide a short skim through the topics I brought to the session. I think many of them either support themes I’ve posted about before, or will in the future. I plan to return to them in the future and explore each one in depth.

This is such a rich area for two main reasons:

  1. Unstructured time is undervalued by School.
  2. Tinkering supports technology and technology supports tinkering.

Random thoughts in no particular order:

Humans yearn for tinkering and playful activity
The popularity of the Food Network, HGTV, and shows like Monster Garage  illustrate how people want to learn from watching others DO things they love. Work is interesting when you can see it happen, and people are interesting when they work. Make magazine is awesome.

Tinkering is social
Yes, there is the stereotype of the lone tinkerer in his basement. But more often, tinkering is a shared, social experience. Social learning with no structure or single, all-knowing teacher can happen! Leveraging the power of social learning seems like something we should be thinking about in this day and age.

Bricolage
French for tinkering, using found objects, playfulness in creation. (Wikipedia)

Tinkering/bricolage vs. the scientific method/analytical design
Seymour Papert, the father of educational technology, defined two styles of problem solving: analytical and bricolage. School only honors one style. What are we losing? (Who are we losing?)

“The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next.” Sherry Turkle

Tinkering and gender
The book by Sherry Turkle that I couldn’t remember in the session was “The Second Self”. I also forgot to mention this crucial connection to tinkering and gender issues in technology. Turkle says that tinkering is a “female” approach to technology, calling it “soft mastery” (as opposed to the “hard mastery” of linear, step by step problem solving, flowcharting, and analytical design). However, these “hard” styles are often taught as being superior, with “soft mastery” styles deemed messy or unprofessional. Again, who and what are we losing by ignoring (and denigrating) alternative learning and problem-solving styles?

Tinkering requires similar conditions to project-based learning and games in the classroom. Implementation brings up similar questions
Teachers who are looking at project-based learning or games are struggling with the same issues that arise with tinkering. Time, space, overwhelming curriculum requirements, tests, etc. These all need to be solved in similar ways, and teachers are doing this all around the world. Sharing is important.

More connections with games
James Paul Gee (What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy) says that we should examine the attributes of gaming such as identity and agency and how to bring those to the classroom. We are being too literal with “games in the classroom.” The attributes of tinkering are similar. We have to be willing to give students agency and allow them to develop their own identities as problem-solvers and learners.

Why is tinkering learning?
Tinkering is a uniquely human activity, combining social and creative forces that encompass play and learning.

The problem with the scientific method
A pet peeve of mine is this structured monstrosity called “the scientific method.” We teach it to children like it came down on stone tablets. It’s not how science really works. Science is about wonder and risk and imagination, not checklists.

Risk and design – what happened in engineering in the 80s
When I went to engineering school, they taught us to use the “waterfall” design methodology. Every stage was planned and went in order. Then in the 80s everything changed.

What happened? Computers. Digital design and modeling decreased the cost of making mistakes. You could try things out with little risk or cost. It’s called the spiral design method, or rapid prototyping, sort of like tinkering with an audience. It’s why Google is always in “beta”. Of course it doesn’t work for everything, you can’t release a “beta” skyscraper or tinker a space shuttle, but for digital products, what’s the harm?

The problem is that school hasn’t caught on to this design methodology. What do we need to do to get school design courses to catch up to the real world?

What can we learn from other unstructured (but successful) school activities?
This also connects back to a post I wrote called Technology Literacy and Sustained Tinkering Time which connected the ideas of Sustained Silent Reading to using technology in less structured ways. Schools have embraced Sustained Silent Reading in the face of scripted curriculum and standardized testing – what can advocates for constructivist education learn from this?

Technology literacy without tinkering time is hard to fathom
Maybe we should be talking about technology fluency anyway. Literacy is such a low bar.

Teaching risk free design is so 20th century.

More later – your feedback on what to tackle first is welcome!

Sylvia

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Constructivist Celebration at MACUL

The Constructivist Consortium in partnership with SIGTELE is bringing the popular Constructivist Celebration to Michigan! Plan to join in this MACUL pre-conference learning experience on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 in Grand Rapids. Participants will receive the day’s educational program, a hearty lunch and free software from Constructivist Consortium members, including five free tools from Tech4Learning: Pixie, Frames, WebBlender, Twist, and ImageBlender.

This hugely popular workshop, also offered as a pre-conference event at the National Education Computing Conference (NECC/ISTE) sells out quickly each year. Don’t miss your chance to learn with the best at this full-day, hands-on workshop led by Constructivist Consortium co-directors Melinda Kolk and Gary Stager.

More information and registration here.

If you aren’t convinced, read this article (PDF) by Mary Saffron,
SIG TeleLearning Communications Officer about her experience at the NECC Constructivist Celebration in the latest MACUL Journal.

If you are in the Grand Rapids area or are attending MACUL, be sure to add this event to your conference registration!

Sylvia

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What does project-based learning look like?

“Even as I write this, I am amazed at how much kids did in just 20 minutes. I can’t wait to see where they go next and what they do when I introduce ideas such as storyboarding, clay animation, etc. It will be interesting to hear their conversations about the things they notice outside of school–times when photos are manipulated, etc I didn’t realize how much they would learn from this one tool.”

via A Year of Reading: Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5.

People ask me all the time – so what does project-based learning look like? This blog post is a great example of a teacher explaining just that. It’s the details that stand out – the choice of a good tool, the thoughtfulness of finding the right balance between too much or too little initial instruction, and the reflection on what happened.

People think that project-based learning is more difficult for the teacher, but this article points out that the teacher used the same tool and same lesson plan for grades 2-5. The projects were age-appropriate and varied because students brought their own experiences to their projects, not because the teacher designed the lesson differently.

I often ask teachers to share in sessions what happens in their classrooms when they allow these experiences to unfold. These stories share a sense of wonderment at what students are capable of when given the chance. Yet it’s hard to explain exactly how this happens or what the teacher does besides “let go.” To many people, project-based learning seems like an “if you build it, they will come” kind of mystical promise.

Articles like this explode some of that mythology. It’s clear that the teacher is actively guiding students in their natural pursuit of learning. And it’s clear that for technology based projects, open-ended tools like Frames allow students to not only succeed quickly, but support longer and deeper experiences as students gain fluency.

Please read Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5!

Sylvia

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Free technology and education conference – C3 2010

CRSTE logoThe Capitol Region ISTE affiliate (CRSTE) is hosting a free online conference on education and technology called C3 – CRSTE Cyber Conference 2010 every evening from Feb 21 – March 5, 2010 . You don’t have to be from the mid-Atlantic region (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, DC, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware) to participate in this conference, and you don’t even have to show up!

The conference is a combination of asynchronous and synchronous events, and everything will be archived so you can check back in at any time. I was honored to be asked to participate and I’ll be presenting a session live.

Student Leadership ‐ Building Authentic 21st Century Skills
Date: February 27, 2010 Saturday
Time: 5:00 PM EST

Session Description:  This session will present 4 models of student leadership focused on improving technology integration in real schools around the world. Having tech-savvy students help solve the authentic problems of 21st century education builds future leaders, learners, and citizens.

You can download the conference schedule here (PDF)

To register for the conference, you simply check off the sessions you are interested in. Online conferences are great ways to participate without a huge committment of time or money! And yes, although the sessions will be permanently archived, it’s more fun to be in the “action” online. You’ll be able to chat and interact as the session goes on.

Hope you’ll stop by!

Sylvia

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Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010

It’s back!!!

Plans are shaping up for an amazing 3rd Annual Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute, July 12-15, 2009 in Manchester, NH USA (near Boston).

In addition to master educators and edtech pioneers, the Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010 faculty includes history educator James Loewen and bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me; popular provocateur and author, Alfie Kohn; MacArthur Genius and incomparable school reformer, Deborah Meier; and children’s author, illustrator and animator, Peter Reynolds. Cynthia Solomon, Brian Silverman, Sylvia Martinez (that’s me!), Gary Stager and John Stetson round out the amazing faculty.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is a minds-on institute for educators committed to creativity, collaboration and computing. Participants have the opportunity to engage in intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty. Inspirational guest speakers, pre-conference expedition and social events round out the fantastic event.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is about action, not listening to speakers. Attendees work and interact with educational experts committed to maximizing the potential of every learner. The rich learning environment is filled with books, computers, robotics materials, art supplies, toys and other objects to think with.

The real power of Constructing Modern Knowledge emerges from the collaborative project development of participants. Each day’s program consists of a discussion of powerful ideas, on-demand mini tutorials, immersive learning adventures designed to challenge one’s thinking, substantial time for project work and reflection.

CMK 2010 info

21st Century educators need to develop their own technological fluency and understand learning in order to meet the changing needs and expectations of their students. Constructing Modern Knowledge will help participants enhance their tech skills, expand their vision of how computers may enhance the learning environment and leave with practical classroom ideas.

Spend four cool summer days in New England making puppets roar, robots dance, animations delight, movies move, simulations stimulate, photos sing and leave with memories to last a lifetime!

Each participant receives a suite of open-ended creativity software from Tech4Learning, LCSI, Inspiration Software, FableVision and other members of The Constructivist Consortium free-of-charge for use at Constructing Modern Knowledge and beyond. The software alone is worth the registration fee!

There is also a July 11th preconference Science and History Tour of Boston available for a nominal fee. Explore the future at the MIT Museum and visit the past during a private guided tour of the Boston Freedom Trail.

The institute is less than an hour’s drive from Boston in picturesque Manchester, New Hampshire. Free transportation is available from the convenient and affordable Manchester Airport. Discount hotel accommodation has been arranged at the institute venue.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is sensitive to the budgets of schools and educators by keeping registration costs affordable and by offering school/district team discounts. The institute is appropriate for all K-12 educators, administrators and teacher educators – private or public. CEUs are available for an additional fee.

Save $75 on early bird registrations! Register online now!

Sylvia

Reflections from previous years:

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Students say teachers limit technology use

Last week posts from two popular edubloggers hammered home the same point – that technology is going to make an impact on education whether we are ready or not.

These horses are out of the barn – Doug Johnson, Blue Skunk Blog

There are some educational “truths” that we can’t change, even if we wanted to. These educational technology resources, annoyances, and conditions are here to stay despite some educators denial, resistance and fast grip on the status quo.

I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…) – Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed

When do we stop trying to fight the inevitable and start thinking about how to embrace it?

As usual, the students are way ahead of the curve. They don’t need a blog to tell them that their access to learning technology is being denied, meaning not just Internet access, but access to personal technology.

I blogged about this yesterday based on student focus group data, but here’s the qualitative data from over 280,000 K-12 students supporting the same thing. (Data from Speak Up 2008)

Student response to: Besides not having enough time in your school day, what are the major obstacles to using technology in your school? (Check all that apply) Grade 6-8 Grade 9-12
School filters or firewalls block websites I need to use

34%

51%
Teachers limit our technology use

34%

36%
I cannot access my personal email account or send email or IM to classmates

31%

29%
I cannot use my own computer or mobile devices

30%

32%
There are rules against using technology at my school

25%

26%
Internet access is not fast enough

18%

22%
None of the above

16%

14%
My assignments don’t require using technology

12%

11%
Software is not good enough

12%

15%
Computers or other tech equipment are not available

11%

11%
Teachers don’t know how to use the technology

8%

13%
I am unable to access the Internet

8%

7%
I don’t have the skills I need

6%

5%

When 34% of today’s 6-8th graders say their teachers limit them from using technology, what does this mean for the future? I think what children are learning is that teachers are out of touch with the real world, and worse, that school is where you literally power down and wait to be told what to do.

OK, granted — not every student has visions of exemplary learning when we ask them about technology. BUT, we simply can’t ignore this either. Many of these students ARE interested in learning.

It means we are telling them that they must achieve, but preventing it at the same time. And there is no one wiser to hypocrisy than a teenager. We run the risk of losing a generation of young adults who are taking a good hard look at the way the real world works and comparing it against the artificial limits placed on them in school. And when we tell them “it’s for your own good” we simply lose all credibility.

According to the student Speak Up 2008 data, only one-third of high school students who participated in the poll think their school is doing a good job preparing them for the jobs of the future. Think this is just kids whining? Nope – even fewer numbers of their parents think that. Yet, a majority of school principals (56 percent) say their schools are doing a good job. Who is kidding whom?

So this is straight from the horse’s mouth, not edublogger ponderings … what are we gonna do about it?

Sylvia

PS And do you know what YOUR students would say about this? Find out! Sign up for Speak Up 2009 (survey open until Dec 23, 2009.)

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Professional development that hurts

Yesterday I wrote about a report on What Works: Effective Technology Professional Development. Today, unfortunately, I have the other side of the story. Yes, it’s possible to do professional development that actually decreases the chance that teachers will integrate technology into the classroom.

This is from the Student Speak Up survey project, where students, parents, teachers, and administrators answer questions about technology in their academic and personal lives.

Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, who runs the Speak Up project sent me this input from a focus group of 40 high school students in California in March 2009 (and gave me permission to publish it.)

Students told me that they had better access to technology at school before we (meaning education agencies and groups) trained all the teachers how to use technology.  The students said that their teachers were very fearful of the dangers of Internet use in particular and concerned about their own liability.  The perception of the students is that their teachers were therefore making conscious, deliberate decisions to use technology and in particular providing Internet access less than what they had done previously.

This is not that teachers don’t have technology skills. This is a deliberate stance taken by teachers who LEARN about technology, but are so confused, scared, or disempowered that their practice retreats to use LESS technology.

Professional development that doesn’t empower teachers is no solution at all.

Sylvia

PS Registration is still open for the 2009 Student Speak Up until Dec 23 – share your voice!

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What Works: Effective Technology Professional Development

I’d like to share a book with you about technology professional development. Meaningful Learning Using Technology: What Educators Need to Know And Do by Elizabeth Alexander Ashburn (Editor), Robert E. Floden (Editor) (Amazon link)

Many educators are looking for research that shows “what works” in technology professional development. This book is an excellent starting point for discussions about new strategies and best practices. In one chapter, GenYES was one of four models selected for correlation to key dimensions to successful K-12 technology professional development. GenYES and the other models were selected as “… large-scale efforts that were shown to be effective in affecting teachers’ use of technology.”

Fostering Meaningful Teaching and Learning with Technology: Characteristics of Effective Professional Development
Written by Yong Zhao, Kenneth Frank, and Nicole Ellefson of Michigan State University Michigan State University (MSU), these researchers studied four “large-scale efforts that were shown to be effective in affecting teachers’ use of technology”:

1. The Project-Based Learning Multimedia Model (PBL+MM)
2. The Galileo Education Network Association (GENA)
3. Project Information Technology (PIT)
4. The Generation Y Model (previous name of the GenYES model)

Based on data collected from hundreds of teachers, the study determined that several key factors positively influenced teacher’ use of computers.

Study Findings – Key Factors of Successful Technology Professional Development

  1. Time to experiment and play. “Use of computers was positively correlated (.3) with the extent to which a teacher was able to experiment with district-supported software.”
  2. Focus on student learning. “Teachers’ use of computers was positively correlated (.4) with the extent to which the content of professional development was focused on student learning.”
  3. Building social connections and learning communities. “Computer use was positively correlated (.2) with the extent to which teachers accessed other teachers’ expertise.”
  4. Localizing professional development. “Computer use was positively correlated (.2 for each) with the extent to which professional development was provided locally, either in the classroom or school lab.”

The study outlines why and how these models support each of these factors. Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the entire chapter here, but there is a bit of it online at Amazon.com (the chapter starts at page 161). Buy the book!

Sylvia

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Circle of Life: the technology-using educator edition

Stage: A whole new world
You hear an inspiring keynote at a conference, read a book, or see a colleague use technology in their classroom. It clicks with something inside you.

Stage: Connection
You try to understand the role of technology in your life as an educator. Coincidently, you start to see this topic pop up all around you. It seems to be haunting you. You set up a blog reader and add a few feeds. You find a guru whose words help you make sense of the murky picture.

You read books, start your own blog, or change something in your everyday life. You go to an educational technology conference and attend every session.

Stage: Stepping into the void
You implement a project you never would have attempted before. You get more and more into the subject and are amazed that there is such a vast network out there. You add more blog feeds, listen to podcasts, buy books, start a wiki, subscribe to magazines, and join other networks and conversations. You wonder why grad school never felt like this.

You feel renewed as an educator and lifelong learner. Your colleagues wonder what’s gotten into you.

Stage: Firehose
You try too many new tools and join too many networks. You start to resent it when someone introduces something new. You hate your pile of unread stuff. Your blog feeds start to overwhelm you. No one comments on your best blog posts. It seems there is just too much to keep track of, and it never stops.

You get a bit depressed that you are so late coming to the party.

Stage: The big picture overwhelms
You wonder if what you are doing is just a waste of time. You find analogies to the failure of school in everyday occurrences. Your regular friends look at you funny when you start using words like “pedagogy” and railing about the “factory model of education” in everyday conversation.

You find that it’s not just technology-using educators who feel this way, that education reformers have been saying things like this for decades, even centuries.

You are sure that “school” cannot be fixed.

Stage: Ennui
You commiserate with your network about people who don’t “get it.” People who are coming late to the party annoy you. You tire of the clichés that seemed so fresh at first. You say things like, “If I hear about sage on the stage / guide on the side (or digital natives/immigrants, or anything 2.0, or insert your own pet peeve here) one more time, I’ll kill someone!” You meet your gurus and find out they are just human, and maybe really wrong about some things.

You stop going to conference sessions. Someone accuses you of being in the “in” group.

Stage: Renewal
You accept that you won’t ever be able to keep up with the hype machine and stop worrying about it. Your project goes well and your plans expand.

You start to narrow down your areas of interest and explore them deeper.

Stage: Building expertise
You attempt something on a wide scale, collaborating with other like-minded educators. You find renewed energy as you work with students or teachers and see things change. You find books, even some written decades or centuries ago that support your beliefs. You become better able to articulate the “why” of all this. You think about going back to school. You find experts outside of your newly constructed network.

People look to you for advice and expertise.

Stage: The circle of life
You connect with new people in their own early stages and give them guidance as they figure out what you have figured out. You mentor someone. A student says you’ve changed their life. You learn something new and feel that spark. You rededicate yourself to changing what you can. You think that if these ideas can take hold, even if it has to happen one person at a time, there is hope for the concept of school after all.

You use the phrase, “sage on the stage vs. guide on the side” – see someone’s eyes light up and forgive yourself.