The Workshop Model

One thing that worked well at KAS was a culture of workshops and peer coaching. Maybe it was because the school had 10x the teachers this one has, but every time I would post a workshop someone would be there.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

Yesterday I had my first workshop of the year. The topic seemed on point as I had heard many teachers asking how to do it. I set a time of 30 minutes in the working hours, but after school, so people would be free. I sent out reminders - even on that day - and still I was alone.

A suggestion was made to have time with me scheduled for teachers. I don't know how I feel about that since people would be forced into it.

I will give it this month and reevaluate.    

Summer Doing

Looking around my PLN, it is hard not to feel envious of the accomplishments everyone is making. I must be following the right people. If you had a great summer, congratulations!

I felt like I was treading water - not moving anywhere in my own journey.

So I decided to sit down and write out what I did [professionally] this summer.


* Completed a course to gain credits for recertification
* Started learning Scratch
* Became an MIE
* Became a Screencastify Ambassador
* Renewed my driver's license
* Made it to the "new" Twins stadium
* Created new extension

What I am realizing I haven't done is take some time for myself and just try to relax a little bit. We go back to orientation in two weeks, so maybe I can take a day trip or two and just unplug for a little bit.

The 4 P's and Coaching

I'm currently taking the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten MOOC. I'm trying to keep up with it anyway.

The mantra of the MIT Media Lab is the 4 P's: projects, passion, peers, and play.

This is a great way to teach, but what if teacher PD was set up around these four words? What if we allowed teachers to take an hour a week to work on a passion project that they shared with their peers?

What if coaches encouraged teachers to choose one project for the year, a project that would impact their classroom and allowed them to learn a new teaching technique?

Moving Workshops Into The Faculty Lounge

Part of my responsibilities when I was a technology coach was to conduct regular workshops on tech topics as a way to move the faculty forward in their knowledge and skills.

Most of the time, the workshops were during the "lunch hour" (Although this period of time stretched out over two hours. Maybe lunch period would be more suitable?) They were also held after school quite a bit. These periods of time were chosen based on surveys given to teachers, and feedback received from teachers.

At the beginning of the second year, I wondered what would happen if I moved the workshops I delivered the heart of the action, the faculty room.

I wanted there to be people to be in the vicinity. The idea was to have people who thought they did not have the time for the workshops to at least get ideas or tips in passing.

Grade 1 Collaborative Storytelling

Today was a good day.

We spent most of the morning collaborating on a story we helped make for Traveling Tales. The kids were really into making the story, and this time I was more comfortable since I remembered what had happened last time. This time I pushed the story along more instead of waiting too long for more ideas. Once I heard a good idea we moved on to the next part so putting the pieces together did not take too long.

After we all talked together about the story by recapping what happened first. We recapped the first part of the story frame-by-frame.

When we moved on to brainstorming what could happen next, the students tried to write the entire rest of the story including the ending, so I then showed them that there are, in fact, five different classes making the story. We reviewed the Story Mountain and how the part we were writing, the build-up, was still in the beginning of the story, so you can't give away the ending yet!

Brainstorming as a class allowed me to show students how a title should have something to do with the story (and at their age, everything to do with the story). We talked about a lot of vocabulary: pyramid, desert, haunted, cool down, thirsty; and I could talk with them about how we were given a title "The Haunted Pyramid", so maybe [definitely] they should keep that in mind when they are in groups drawing their pictures.

Each of the 5 parts in the story has 5 parts. So, the build-up has five parts; which is nice since we have five table groups. I asked all students to draw a picture. In their respective groups, they were then to show their group members the picture they had drawn and vote, or decide somehow, whose picture would be selected so each group would have one picture.

I remember thinking how well it was going and I remember thinking that this is what teaching should look like.

I even remembered to add the annotations in Adobe Spark this time so when the recordings were muddled, the other groups could still see what the story was.

Book Creator Chat

Since I discovered it, I have spread the news about Book Creator to whoever will listen. So when I saw that Book Creator was looking for ambassadors, I thought I might as well have a title for what I am doing anyway.

Then late this spring the Book Creator team sent out an email asking for help with the chat series they were going to have over the summer. Thinking I would have nothing to do, I signed up for the chat on June 29th. But as the chat drew closer, things my schedule started getting tighter. I am staying with my in-laws this summer and in addition to the work to do around the house, I am volunteering at a local school and looking for a place to live for next year across the country.

I am glad I went through with it but there are a few things to watch out for when hosting a Twitter Chat.

• time differences - do you know the exact time the chat will happen?
• international collaboration - how engaged are you? do you have a plan?
• chat timing - what else is going on?
• questioning - do you have questions that will engage everyone joining?

See below for the full chat. Or click here if it is not showing up.

Bringing Apple Teacher to KAS

A post shared by Thomas Hammerlund (@thomashammerlund) on Feb 13, 2017 at 11:36pm PST

When I heard about the Apple Teacher program, I was interested and went to apply. Unfortunately, my Apple ID is registered in Japan, and Japan was not one of the countries where the program was available. So, I decided to make a new Apple ID and I took the Apple Teacher Certification.

I have gone through several tech certifications and after each one, I kept thinking how much better each would be if teachers got together and went through the certification together. I am not talking about the test, but rather the training that most certifications have to study for the test. I could see that some interesting conversations could come out of sharing experiences with each other.

We tried this at KAS with the Tech Ambassadors this year and it was awesome. One takeaway I had was to use Keynote's Instant Alpha for greenscreen images.

Apple's Planning Guide

Tech Educator Programs

Certifications can show that you are willing to go further to learn and develop as a teacher. Certifications for a type of technology can show that you are proficient or at least a working knowledge of the software.

Here are three certifications you might want to try.

Apple Distinguished Educator

This was one of the first certification programs and is one of the most difficult to achieve. To become an ADE, you need to demonstrate you integrate Apple products in innovative ways through a 2-minute video. They give some advice for how to do this, but planning early is important.

Apple Teacher

Apple Teacher is the ADE's little brother. There are two types of certification - Mac and iPad. Each has a total of nine (could be 10 as they are adding more) and each program has five questions that require you to read a scenario about a project using and determine how to solve it by dragging in answers or selecting from a few choices. The tests are free, so there is no reason not to try.

While not available in every country, you can create a new account (with any email address) in a country where it is offered.

Google Certification

Google Certification has a few different levels beginning with the Google Certified Educator Level 1.

From there you can try the Level 2 test. The first two are requirements for the next level of Trainer and Innovator.

The Level 1 test is $10 USD and is scenario-based. It takes about an hour to complete. Google supplies study materials and there are Google Plus groups with people discussing how to study for it.


Others of Note

Many tech apps or programs offer some sort of certification, two I highly recommend are the Book Creator Ambassador program and Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship program.

Going through certification can not only show you know how to use the product but also shows a dedication to learning and maintaining a level of proficiency, so go out, get certified, and share your knowledge.

cross posted to tekiota.com

My Daily Breakdown

I just realized the title could be interpreted in other ways. I'll leave it.

I've had this a form template that +Geoffrey Derry shared with back in the autumn. I didn't do much with it, in fact, I did nothing with it until last week.

Then I started playing with it.

This is his creation, so it suits his needs. I still need to tweak it. But I like this. I like being able to quickly visualize what I have done on a particular day. I like the idea of being able to quickly show what

Putting Your Learning into Practice

In this activity, we are asked to work with another teacher. Since it is summer, I am going to pull a lesson from our Atlas Rubicon and go this one alone to get practice coming up with suggestions.

I'm not sure if it's because of the summer, but lately, I have been trying to brainstorm ideas for interesting lesson ideas but have been coming up flat.

Ask if they have an activity that the two of you might improve through collaboration.

Character stories - Realism/Fantasy/Plays

Review the information about ways that technology might enhance learning from the last activity with your learning partner.  

Questions to ask ...

How could we add a real-world problem to this unit?
Are there any tools that might scaffold learning?
How can we provide more opportunities for feedback, revising, and reflection?
How can we give students access to quality information, primary documents, or points of view not available otherwise?

How can we allow students to engage in learning activities that would otherwise be infeasible (examples: human/animal anatomy, or online scientific investigations)?
How can we differentiate learning for students with different needs?
How can we help students understand abstract concepts?
How can we help student gather information, organize, synthesize, analyze information and draw conclusions?.
How can we foster student discovery of a concept or construction of their own understanding of a concept?
How can we enable students to share ideas and collaborate with remote groups?
How can we help students receive feedback on their work from outside the classroom?
How can we enable students to participate in the democratic process?


Now review the common learning tasks- communication, collaboration, gather and analyze information and creatively share their learning- with you peer.

communication
Students will read and write during this unit. They will also




collaboration




gather and analyze information






creatively share their learning



STANDARDS

Writing a Play
Write a play with Characters, Setting, including a problem and solution.

Language Arts (HM Theme 3)

·           Compound words

·           Synonyms

·           Action verbs

·           Suffix –able

·           Main verbs & helping verbs

·           Word endings ­–edand –ing

·           Syllables

·           Past/present/future tenses

Performing in a play
This is an oral and visual assessment. Must include props and work on voice.

Identify ways that some or all of those are present in the learning activity your peer wants to improve.
This unit has been


Discuss ways to improve the lesson, and incorporate the changes the two of you agree on.


Once you are through revising the activity, take some time to debrief the process.

• Be sure to ask you peer what was helpful about the process you followed and
• What they might suggest you do differently next time.

Idea - Sway

Technology Integration Example

Lesson being examined:

Your goal is to identify some of the educational tasks like communication and collaboration the teachers who created this project wanted their students to complete. In addition, draw on what you learned about how technology enhances learning from the last activity to identify ways technology is being used to enhance learning in the River Yamuna example.

When I read "educational goals", I think of skills. When integrating technology, I think teachers should first look to learning outcomes/standards, and then think of what skills they want students to learn, so that is how I am approaching this assignment. 

Standards:

Class 11^th NCERT:-

Environmental Education Unit III, Environment Pollution and Global Issues, (Project and activity )

Collect samples of water from different sources and study their physical characteristics like turbidity, colour, odor; the measure of pH, the nature of suspended and dissolved impurities and pollutants, the presence of toxic materials like mercury, lead, arsenic, fluorine and the presence of living organisms. For testing the presence of toxic materials and living organisms the help of a local laboratory or institution may be taken, if available. 

Identify the most polluted sample of water and locate the sources of its pollution. 

Devise an action plan for mobilizing public opinion for checking the pollution. 

image via mypchat.wikispaces.com

Skills from the lesson: (Based on above)

• Research - Information Literacy
• Self-management - Organization
• Thinking - Critical Thinking
• Communication - Communication
• Collaboration - Collaboration 

Identify ways technology is being used to enhance learning in the River Yamuna example:

• Computers are being used to read websites
• Digital camera to photograph the scene (this could be substituted with the student's own cell phones)
• Science lab tools to analyze the water samples
• Multimedia in the presentation (I guess the presentation itself)

---

I'm going to take this activity one step further and try to identify an additional three ways in which technology could be used.

Making a chronology of state of Yamuna in different years post discussions with senior citizens of the area.

Create the chronology using a site such as hstry.com or timeline from Knightlab.

The notes used should be created using Google Docs, or another collaborative tool.

Instead of posters, how about the students create commercials that include some footage of the interviews they did?

Ideas on how technology can improve or enhance learning at my school ...

The following is from ISTE

The authors of How People Learn (2000) believe technology enhances learning by:

• Bringing exciting curricula based on real-world problems into the classroom
• Providing scaffolds and tools.
• Giving students and teachers more opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision
• Building local and global communities that include teachers, administrators, students, parents, practicing scientists and others. (Bransford, et al., 2000).

Technology enhances learning when it is used to:

• Give students access to quality information, primary documents, or points of view not available otherwise.
• Allow students to engage in learning activities that would otherwise be infeasible (examples: human/animal anatomy, or online scientific investigations).
• Differentiate learning for students with different needs.
• Help students understand abstract concepts.
• Gather information, organize, synthesize, analyze information and draw conclusions.
• Foster student discovery of a concept or construction of their own understanding of a concept.
• Share ideas and collaborate with remote groups.
• Help students receive feedback on their work from outside the classroom.
• Enable students to participate in the democratic process.

This is the next part of the assignment. I am not sure in what direction I should take this question. Maybe it is tricky because I think it is such a fundamental question that everyone should know it is the right path to take.


Ideas on how technology can improve or enhance learning at my school ...

Assessments can become more authentic. I have seen assessments that contained straight "remembering" questions and teachers have to watch over students to make sure the students are not Googling the answer.

What if assessments were made to be Googlable?

I think it sounds exciting to have an assessment where knowledge needs to be synthesized into something new instead of a question that resides at DOK 1 [Depth of Knowledge]. (Alice Keeler writes a lot about this topic.)

I think that is the basic way in which technology can help student learning. Teachers have the ability to use technology to push student thinking forward as well as scaffold their progress.


And leaving myself with some unanswered questions from Silvia Tolisano:

Ask yourself what happens to student learning when: 

• a teacher does not have a (teaching) plan that they are able/required to follow? 
• the “plan” is outdated/has been used for the last 5 years? 
• teachers (across grade levels and subject areas) teach in isolation of each other? 
• teachers have forgotten, are not interested in, don’t have time for, or are not supported in their own learning? 
• collaboration and communication among administrators and teachers in order to pursuit of the common goal called student learning is out of sync or non existent? 
• teaching means covering lessons, units, objectives and standards and does not involve teaching for understanding?

Making the Linkage

After reviewing both the teacher standards and the student standards, think about a learning activity you, or one of the teachers you might coach, are currently offering to students.

• How can you use the ideas found in the NETS-S to integrate technology effectively?

One way I am using the ISTE Standards is by giving examples of what the standards look like in the form of a Scope and Sequence. We adopted our technology standards around the 2007 ISTE Student Standards, and we are building upon the Scope and Sequence developed by Singapore American School. The examples in Slide 4 will eventually be linked to a blog post/video explaining/showing the lesson.

I hope to complete a linked document showing the development from standard to lesson in a hyperdoc format. Below is a sample.

For me, a large part of the coaching role is to help teachers help themselves. (Give someone a fish ...)


As a teacher, reviewing the Student Standards can help me see the larger path for students to take. The Student Standards show many ways in which students should be taught.

• How could the ideas found in the NETS-T guide you, or your peer, to develop the skills you need to integrate technology into this learning activity effectively?

Like any standard, the NETS-T are goals to reach. I should be reviewing the standards when lesson planning to see if there is anything in there that might help me advance my lesson. Often I forget which skills I want the students to learn, so reviewing the standards could help me remember a skill that could be easily integrated or discover one I hadn't thought of before.  

Reflection

---

1. How are these ideas in Part B and Part C above consistent with your thoughts about how technology enhances student learning?  
2. How do these ideas align with the ideas your colleagues outlined when they talked about how and why these use technology?
3. What are some ideas you have on how to coach your peers to incorporate some of these ways to integrate technology to enhance learning?

Rethinking PD

When I did PYP training (Making the PYP Happen), I was fortunate to be able to do it all in a weekend. It was a whirlwind weekend, but it was over after two days plus some online time.

I was able to do my MYP training this past school year. It was not the best timing (Is it ever?) but I feel I learned a lot in that short time. My wife is in the middle of her MYP training, and it got me thinking about an effective online PD.

During the first two weeks of her training, the facilitator was online every day. The pace of the workshop was set. The facilitator gave about four assignments a week, which were then turned in and commented on. It was pretty intense, but it looked like a worthwhile effort.

Then suddenly the facilitator was not online for a few days. I said that it is probably just because it is summer and the facilitator is on vacation too. My words rang hollow. The precedent had already been set that the facilitator would be online daily and assignments would be checked regularly.


What might work better?
I have taken many online courses in the last 10 years. Not one of them has put students into small learning teams.

But who will oversee the work?
I would either get extra teacher assistants to help (online courses don't require as much capital to get them going) or monitor each group. Each group would then have readings, blog posts, comments, and projects to do with roles being rotated amongst the group members. In addition, I would create a set routine of when I would be online and when I would check work. That way students would be able to fall into a routine.


I know that facilitating an online course must be a challenge and I don't mean to come down on anyone. But, I do think that the way courses are structured are due for an update. These ideas are here for me incase I decide to use them in my own courses.

Characteristics of Effective Professional Development

The following are this course's Characteristics of Effective PD:

====

I had a few of these down in my own reflection, but I did not think of a few.

On the job or job-embedded

The GLT Center has a long definition in this report, but in summary (p. 2):

• grounded in day-to-day practice
• deals with authentic and immediate problems
• part of a continuous cycle
• aligned to standards and school goals

Looking through these, even the most influential PD I say I have had cannot be described as this. But a few I can think of have been adoptions of initiatives such as the PYP, MYP, Singapore Math, and different reading and writing programs. 

I think coaching also falls into this category.

Connected to classroom practice, pedagogy, and content

Most all of the PD I have taken has, thankfully, been directly related to what I am doing in the classroom. 

Shaped by data

This is something I do not know whether the PD I have taken (as well as the PD chosen for me).

Intensive, ongoing, and long-term

Again, the initiatives are those ongoing PDs I have experienced. By being long-term and embedded, or intensive, they were always on my mind while planning and teaching.

Connects peers with purpose, focuses on innovation

I think this is the most important of all the characteristics listed. In my experience, the connections with my peers has helped me think differently about what I do, and has helped me think more deeply about what I do. 

I originally started using Twitter professionally about 5 years ago based on a recommendation from a colleague. The colleague was transformational for me, but left the school soon after he arrived, but the connections I made on Twitter never leave (and now we are connected on Twitter).

Collaborative and structured to offer educators chances to learn from others

I have had limited exposure to this type of PD, but it increased with a change of schools. It is this type of PD that we began last year on a small scale using our tech ambassadors program. Twice a month we meet for 20 minutes, take turns sharing what we are doing in class, and give feedback to each other.

For further thought:

How can I better incorporate these characteristics into the PD we deliver at school?