We had a few goals for the sessions:

• Concept Exposure: We wanted to introduce a number of concepts (and tools) to them, and we really wanted to stress that when leveraging technology in curriculum DO NOT focus on the tool… focus completely on the concept and skill you are introducing and let that drive your “tool choice.”
• Investigation: We needed to provide both time and the incentive for participants to learn the concepts and then encourage (sometimes force) them to explore and experiment with various tools that might fulfill the concepts…
• Direction and Commitment: We did NOT want this to be a typical  “sit and get” with little or no follow through to actually put what you learn into practice. i.e. really make at least one of these concepts truly integral to their personal professional learning or to their classroom.
• Repository: We wanted to have a repository for the participants not only to reference, but to provide practice and to help build out as a future resource… enter: Web20School

I can’t speak for the participants, but I can speak for Mike Bachrodt and myself and I am happy to say that the last four days have been a joy and we have one more left!  I can also say that all of the wonderful teachers we have attending the sessions have gone from amazingly overwhelmed to focused, passionate learners each with a different concept and tool set that they are excited to find all of the nuances of bring into their lives and classrooms.

Here is some of what they have discovered and created:

ToonDoo was a hit!  Here is the first comic of Karl Craddock (scroll left and right)

Samantha Serrano and Jim Nowak blogging

This really has been an amazing week!  I am looking forward to tomorrow and a bit sad at the prospect of the week ending.

Live Blogged: Please pardon the incomplete thoughts, omissions, and or errors.

Kelly Doubek  and Anna Beard

How to evaluate software or tools by breaking them down to along literacy goals.

Reading to learn: Reading and writing across content area

Project CRISS, PowerUP, etc

What are your District’s current reading Initiatives? How is technology supporting reading initiatives?

• Data Tools
• Online Assessments
• Student Practice and Skill Reinforcement
• Others

All tools must have a data component to be useful. 

Phonemic Awareness and Phonics (20in)- MUST HAVE MEASUREMENTS AND WHERE THE KIDS ARE GOING.

(Interesting note: data shows more than 20 minutes is not having and more of an impact on student achievement.

• If you are looking to have a tool to assess you need:
• Letter symbols and letter sounds?
• Is there a sound component?
• Is there a continuum of skill included?
• Is there a pre/post assessment included?
• Are student responses, time on task, etc. reported?

Free Tools – Kidspiration, PowerPoint, Kid Pics

Do teachers know how to take student data and then look at the assessment data and beable to find a site or lesson to support the kids?  Is your staff Development supporting this?

Fluency (has not been a focus in the past) (10-15min only)

Is is practicing rate or just accuracy… does it involve comprehension? Expression and phrasing? What software have a sound component?

PowerPoint – Can be used as a fluency tool.  You can record SOUND for fluency

Vocabulary

• Syllables, spelling patterns, high frequency words, word origin
• Is it building "Tier 2" (More descriptive) words? What are they measuring

Tablet PC’s

"Color Shock… using color to dissect the words.How are they using the technology at hand?

Comprehension

Is the text appropriate? If there a variety of genres? Is it measuring both literal & inferential comprehension? (Often there is LOW level comprehension questions…

Kelly will be doing an Administrator Academy on "Going beyond RTI" I will try to keep apprised of the session and get the dates and times in the future..

What tools are out there for free…

Anna Beard – Wireless Generation http://free-reading.net

Literacy is Priceless Blog

Free-Reading – Open Source early education will be K-3 by early summer Has a population of 273K users in 173 countries. Based on a mediawiki platform

Currently showing that teachers can upload lessons and place comments on the materials to build community.

Artists and musicians are now communicating with free-reading.net and providing art and music to align to literacy and vocabulary.

Check this out! It is a song by a group called Flocabulary on the free-reading site.  It is a vocabulary lesson rap about a Chipmonk.      

Related Posts

SOoooo… you know how you learn things by doing? That is what happened. here. I hope that you find my stream of consciousness appealing: (17min – 4mb)

Show Notes

• Idea of apathy and involvement
• Crushing feeling of being overwhelmed by classroom, parent, and community initiatives /
• Teacher Professional Development – Lack of personal initiative
• It there a linkage between student apathy for learning and lack of teacher intrinsic value in personal life long learning?
• Is there a linkage to the need to provide a “reward basis” for student learning with the need to provide a “reward” for educator professional learning?
• When will we move beyond the excuse of “lack of time”?

References made

• Darren Draper & Robin Ellis
• OpenPD
• Steven Covey – The 8th Habit
• Dean Shareski
• “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” – Richard Carlson

What I learned

• Hold the phone like speaking on a phone to greatly improve quality.
• Have quick sheet for focus of thought
• Think of linkages to other topics / best practices / leadership
• Possibly speak more slowly?

Related Posts

from tag staffdevelopment

• Charlotte Danielson’s framework on changing staff accountability

from tag professionaldevelopment

• Raise Your Hands (Techlearning blog)
• Ustream.tv – OpenPD
• PD 2.0: It’s All about Building Community (Techlearning blog)

from tag learning

• Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Digital World — Open Education
• CASTLE – Home
• eSchool News – SIIA: Get K-20 vision in focus
• The Blog Police Hits the Blogosphere
• eSchool News – Experts: Ed tech must change its message

(more..)

Teaching is often looked at as a reflective process, and as such we often view it in almost the light of scientific methodology. We begin with a skill or concept that is going to be taught (Define the question). We develop a lesson or unit with curricula to engage and convey the concept (Hypothesis and data gathering). We teach the lesson/unit (Perform) We develop a formative assessment to gauge learning and assess student comprehension and achievement. Then we “reflect” (oh, how I hate that word) on the entire process to internalize the lesson/unit and it outcomes and begin planning adjustments. While this is not a bad model for lessons and units, when it is used with making technology integral to teaching, in my experience it simply breaks the process.

Students do not have this internalization process. They simply utilize whatever is at hand… be it a technology or anything else. In the retail world we would call them the ultimate consumer. Today’s students ultimately use a “SEE IT, USE IT, TEACH IT” methodology. Ryan Bretag tweeted yesterday about how he helped his mom learn how to use skype… then he corrected himself and said he sat back and watch his niece and nephew use and model skype while he sat back and watched. Another example, I was attending a conference last year where Wes Fryer was presenting and he told a story of how a group of students had developed an online presentation and an hour before they were due to present the District blocked that resource… Now for a teacher that would possible be a crushing blow and cause a major hiccup in their lesson for the day and tarnish that type of tool for future use, the students simply found a different online presentation tools, and in 20 minutes moved their entire presentation over to the new resource and they were ready for class…

As an educator how would you have reacted to that situation? There is not time to internalize a new tool…

This is the difference! We need to move away from the need to internalize or we begin to lose engagement.

Too often I have seen teachers look at a tool, and simply refuse to do anything with it “because no one has shown me how to use it” (<- that is a future post I will be making.) or they are given training or investigate a technology and determine that at this time there is too much on their plate to focus their attention on it at this time… then they simply file it away regardless of the impact it could have on students… (or worse they don’t know anything about it and they assign a projects with the use of the tool as a requirement for the output but cannot support students when they have questions – here the rational I have heard is “that they are young they can figure it out”) but I digress… now the knowledge for this tool is rattling around in his or her brain for a use… then comes the time where they are hard pressed for “something” because the demands of their class / curriculum require something… (internalization) and OH YEAH! I remember something about “X” that can help here… Hello new tool! However, also quite often they do not remember how to use the technology or have not truly made it integral to their teaching, but use it as an alternative methodology… with the world we live in today this simply does not work. We need to begin to investigate, adapt, accept, and embrace at a gut level.

I realize that with technology, teachers often fear “breaking” something, or feel they do not have TIME to be open to learning something new as it “adds” to their workload. (as opposed to replacing or enhancing their current instruction) OK, I know that this post will feel like I am coming down on teachers, and in a way I am. I also know that there are a LOT of great teachers out there embracing technology and driving their students to the edge of capacity, but there are also a great number of educators who simply do not want to even think about 21st Century skills because they have their curriculum established and opening that door makes revision necessary. There are a lot of folks out there that discuss the issues with teaching or education reform… unfortunately too often those in the spotlight are NOT educators themselves, but we [educators] have to live with the decisions uneducated lawmakers impose on education. However, often the people who really get in the way of educational reform are teachers ourselves.

Ok, I said it, kill me now and let the flamewar begin.

We are so caught up in content or standards that we are not looking at what is crucial to the world today and how our students will need to interact on a global level when they stop being OUR students and need to have skills to survive beyond the educational process. David Warlick has had a number of great posts along these lines one on Pedagogy Getting in the way of Learning and a more recent one on What Would you have Them Say. Additionally, Marc Prensky is speaking around the country with his Engage Me or Enrage Me topic set. While some (including myself) challenge some of the extravagant statistics he throws around, and well sorry Marc horrible ugly slides, his message is sound. The students we are teaching today are growing up in a global connected authentic world. I presented on this topic myself last November.

Ok, so the questions that keep bouncing around in my head are:

• Where do we go from here?
• How do we create (or re-find) that childhood love of investigation for all educators?
• How do we break down the fear barrier?
• How do we become comfortable moving away from [canned] curriculum?
• How do we meet the needs of 21st Century learners?
• What is it really going to take to make technology integral to learning?

I would like your thought and comments… even negative ones. We all learn best from our mistakes.

Scott

Photo from Flickr: Comte de Cagliostro

http://notebook.zoho.com/nb/public/sweidig/book/3946000000023213

I came away with more questions than answers.  Now while David Warlick would relate that that is a good thing, (and I often agree) in this instance I didn’t feel that way.

The session focused on two main “tools” (wikispaces and class blogmeister) for both the delivery of hands on practice (wikispaces) and the awareness of the second one (class blogmeister). Unfortunately, for me the session was far too one sided.  There were a few times that the participants really came forward with strong discussions bringing a myriad of viewpoints to bear on a topic, but this was more the exception than the rule for the session.

There is no one at fault for this neither instructor or participants.  We all worked well in the framework which the session was designed, and part of the design was to get individuals to use these tools… but it did feel silly at times a with 15 people sitting in a room NOT talking, but typing to each other in a threaded wiki discussion forum…

Please feel free to review my notes, but I wwould also love to get your thoughts and feedback on some of the questions that I am still struggling with wrapping my brain around like:

~ What are the implications for learning?

~ What are the implications in opening up conversations with PARENTS and students as well as OTHER classrooms around the world?

~ What are the concerns that should be raised when teachers act outside the district walls using web 2.0 applications and resources…?

~ Should administrators create a sense of transparency in their practices through using blogs to create a communication vehicle with parents and the community at large?

~ What is the role of web 2.0 in the “new” view of Professional Development?

~ How can we leverage technology to (in essance) give time back to teachers? Unfortunately, this is not the perception of technology for educators… what are the collective thoughts around shifting this paradeigm for teachers?

Ok That is just a few of the questions still rattling around in my brain tonight. Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!

Scott

[Cross-posted at http://myiltce.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1239424%3ABlogPost%3A10314]

Link to eSchool News online – Experts: Ed tech must change its message