30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 28: Technology

Day 28: Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa?

Both.

Curriculum should drive technology - Technology is a tool. It can be used (often very effectively) for students and teachers to share their learning, connect with others, communicate, collaborate and create. For many students, technology engages them and allows them to share their voices in ways they never dreamed possible.

Technology should drive curriculum - Our students will need to use technology in many aspects of their lives. Our curriculum needs to keep up. The Ontario Media Literacy Language strand is outdated. I'd love to see responsible digital citizenship built into our curriculum.

30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 13: EdTech Tools

Day 13: Name the top edtech tools that you use on a consistent basis in the classroom, and rank them in terms of their perceived (by you) effectiveness.

Tool: Google Apps for Education, particularly the Google Drive
Use: Creation and collaboration. Students effectively create slideshows, surveys, documents and drawings on the Google Drive. They can easily share them with their teacher and peers for help, feedback and to work together.
Effectiveness: Green light - once you learn how to log in to your account, transferring word processing skills from Microsoft's publishing suite is simple. Students consistently discovered new features and shared with one another. So empowering.

Tool: Chromebooks
Use: Individual devices with Chrome accounts personalized so each student's experience was completely differentiated and targeted at him or her. Used for creation (Google Drive), collaboration, (Google Drive) research (all over!), backchanneling (Today's Meet), practicing skills (IXL, Khan Academy, TypingWeb), contributing (Kiva, Free Rice), goal setting and tracking (lift.do)
Effectiveness: Once they're up and running - green light. My current 3/4s still need to do their training before we're off and running. Teachers need to carefully monitor on-task work!

Tool: iPads
Use: CREATION! We use our class iPads (Isaac, Ivy and Ilys, and our class iPod, Itty) to create. We love apps like Puppet Pals and iMovie to create videos that we share with our school, families and the world. We've created stop motion films of our class pets, clubs and daily activities.
COLLABORATION! We meet with other classes from around the world to work together and play games (like Mystery Skype). Students who are not able to be in class (on holidays, illness) join us on Skype. Parents and families near and far Skype in to see what we are up to! We share our ideas on Twitter and our class blog and seek feedback.
Effectiveness: Green light - super easy to use, intuitive, good battery life, with the iGuy Speck case, iPads are sturdy and are carried around the school like members of our team!

Tool: Projector and Smart Board
Use: In my room, the projector is hooked to my classroom desktop (which is not working!) and I can hook up our iPad or my laptop. In the past, it's been used daily to collaborate as a class - students or I take notes on what we are discussing and work together on documents. Last year's class needed transparency in their learning, so our Daybook was posted on the projector each morning (as well as shared with them)
Effectiveness: Yellow light - since my classroom computer needs to be replaced, my daily use of our projector is temporarily limited. I do not use the Smart Board effectively yet. We play with the touch screen ability sometimes, but I am not terribly comfortable with the system and miss out of what are surely lots of great learning opportunities.

Some other tools we started to play with last year and I hope to explore more this year include: Our Sphero, our MaKey MaKey boards and Sifteo Tiles. These are awesome maker tools.

Overall, I love how using tech in the classroom can help engage kids and make them creative, critical thinkers.

Tech Helps to Prepare Our Students for the Future

A member of my PLN and #comcon, Aviva Dunsiger, recently posted the above comment on one of my blog posts. Aviva is great at pushing me to think. She always makes sure to comment thoughtfully and ask questions to encourage further thought.

I am also thinking a lot about my rationale behind using educational technology because of discussions that took place between my BEd students yesterday in our first class. As a whole, my students were less familiar with edtech than I expected. Some even questioned the need for it.

We are responsible for preparing our students for the future. As teachers, we have to be futurists. The future includes technology in our daily lives. For better or for worse, kids in today's classrooms will be using technology every day throughout their lives. If we don't help to prepare them to be responsible digital citizens and how to use technology effectively, who will?

As those of you who know me in person know, I love technology. I love playing with new things and finding ways to make them help my students. I've gotten a reputation amongst peers and students that I am a "tech expert". I am not an expert by any means, but I am an eager learner.

Using tech with students has been transformative for me (and for them). Students who struggled to find and share their voices in a busy classroom suddenly feel empowered through the use of tech. Some ways I've seen this is in the work they create on the Google Drive, the videos they create to share in class (sometimes if they're too shy to present in person), and the projects they collaborate on. Notice that in the previous sentence, I mentioned "creation" twice. It is too easy to be a consumer in our world. Creation is key in life and in education. It's part of the reason I'm committed to blogging more this year. We are all responsible to control our own impact on the world - in person and online. The sooner students start living this the better.

Of course, there is a need for balance, and I don't, by any means, suggest that technology is a replacement for relationships or in-person contact. I only know that it enhances everything I value in a classroom. Tech helps with differentiation, creation, collaboration, authenticity, transparency, communication and engagement.

My Rainbow Eggheads presented at a conference for local teachers last year about how tech enhances their learning. They can tell you far better than I can about the impact edtech has on them.

I think today's teacher is not just a "Guide on the Side", but should be seen as a "Collaborative Curator". Technology gives me the abilities to: personalize all student learning and collaborate with each of my students; aid them in collaborating and connecting with each other and those in the world who can help and support them; help them sort through the huge volume of information available and curate effectively; give each student the opportunity to share his or her voice with each other and the world.

Technology, as Bill Ferriter wrote, is a tool, not a learning outcome. Like any educational tool, it can be used in a variety of ways depending on the creativity of students and teachers, and it does not stand alone.

I share this image frequently. I think Bill effectively summarizes so much about what great educators do, in the face of fears of technology. 

Technology allows me, as a teacher, to bring my practice and student learning to another level. I have deeply internalized the SAMR model to not just enhance, but to transform my teaching. Just substituting a paper worksheet for one online does not an educational enhancement make. When you start to redefine teaching entirely, that is when technology becomes indispensable. Providing my students with opportunities to Skype and collaborate with students in California, create a video for a student in hospital undergoing cancer treatment, bring their families from around the world "into" the room by live streaming class events and sharing our inquiries with changemakers through Twitter and our blog would not be possible without technology.

I think every teacher NEEDS to know and understand the SAMR model. My class learned and lived it last year.

Becoming literate today means a lot more than being able to speak, read and write. As I shared with my BEd class yesterday, there are "New Literacies" illustrated by Silvia Tolisano that was can use technology to help our students develop. 

"New Literacies" include the abilities to collaborate globally, create multimedia and design effectively. 

My new grade 3/4 EPCOTclass is very excited to get started using their Chromebooks. We are several days and some training away from starting to use them daily, but I look forward to exploring with them the challenges and advantages of having access to technology anywhere, anytime in our classroom.

Teachers, we have to keep up with our students and help them keep up with the world. Technology is a tool that can help us do just that.

30-Day Blogging Challenge Day 2: Ed Tech

Day 2: Write about one piece of technology that you would like to try this year and why. You might also write about what you're hoping to see out of this edtech integration.

In the past several years, I have used a lot of technology in my teaching. I love to be an early adopter and try new things. I've had great success with student blogs, iPads, Chromebooks and, towards the end of last year, students experimenting with MaKey MaKey and Sphero (one of my grade 6 students created both of those videos to present at a conference for teachers last year!).

Feedback from parents last year was that they wondered about how much time should be spent using educational technology. It is something I certainly consider long and hard. With a class set of Chromebooks last year, the Rainbow Eggheads had access to devices at anytime. We were able to collaborate and create every single day. Easily. It was transformative to my teaching and to the learning of my students.

This year, I have a much younger group, many of whom I will be introducing to the Google Drive for the first time. I look forward to having them work with the Drive and Chromebooks, but know that I'll have to start slowly. I will experiment with text to speech software and screencasting with this group in order to allow them to communicate and share their learning orally and visually as well as in writing.

A huge theme for my class this year is Imagineering. We took apart the word today and they recognized that it was made up of Imagination + Engineering. They each started an Imaginnering notebook today. We'll use these books to plan, dream and develop ideas. I look forward to working with the students on multi-disciplinary projects where we can use elements of the Maker Movement. My students independently figured out MaKey MaKey and Sphero last year. They know a lot more about each of them than I do. This year, I am going to make a point to play with the tools alongside the students and learn together.

My amazing co-teacher (she'll be in the class 2 afternoons a week this term) and I are planning challenges for our students to Imagineer their learning through projects inspired by Hitchbot and theme parks, just to get started! I can't even wait to see what we create in Room 209!

Ottawa's Mini Maker Faire - Maker Education Panel

This weekend is Ottawa's forth annual Mini Maker Faire. If you haven't been yet, I highly recommend popping by tomorrow. It's held at the Museum of Science and Technology (not the Aviation Museum, where I first turned up this afternoon). 

My friend, Luc Lalande is one of the most interesting humans I've met in a long time. He is a founding partner of True Innovators here in Ottawa, owns a Community 3D Printer, is on the board for Artengine and is the incoming Executive Director of the University of Ottawa's Entrepreneurship Hub. He decided to offer a panel discussion at this year's Mini Maker Faire, including people with different points of view and ideas about making in education. I'm honoured that he asked me to be on the Maker Education Panel. He is so wonderfully organized that he made a blog post, sent us all the structure and questions and made sure we were all prepared. I like his style!

Because of Luc's great organizational skills and attention to detail, I was way less nervous than I could have been (which brought my nervousness down to a 9/10!). I always worry in events like this that everyone will suddenly realize that I don't know anything and they'll think: "Her?" and question why I'm included in such a great group of people. Anyway, my chronic overthinking wasn't worth it. Everything went really smoothly and only one person recognized my pen spinning on stage as nervousness.

My role on the panel was to answer the questions: What kind of learning occurs when students are encouraged to use educational technology and digital tools? Why is this kind of learning important? Each of the other guests had their own questions to address and we were all encouraged by Luc to "hack" the panel and add to one another's responses. Other members of the panel were Alison Evans Adnani, who I've gotten to work with through her Maker Junior company; Alison's son Nanik, who is a middle school maker; Paul McGuire, the former principal at St. Gregory's and incoming to St. Anthony's; and Rick Alexanderson, a tech teacher from St. Peter High School. 

When sitting on a stage and talking, I realize how ineffective the "sage on the stage" method of teaching can feel. It's hard to figure out if your audience is engaged or not as they sit back, relaxed in comfy seats. I much prefer involving the audience in presentations so I can make sure I'm meeting their needs and addressing their interests appropriately. Luckily, I had some great supporters in the audience who were familiar faces to look out at and assured me that we were informative and interesting. 

Of course, I made notes to keep me on track, but I was happy to have some paper with me as I took a lot of notes during the session. I've just finished transcribing my chicken scratch.

What kind of learning occurs when students have access to educational technology and digital tools?

Teachers who successfully embrace educational technology are comfortable with: 

• admitting we don't have all the answers
• asking for resources
• being opportunistic and taking advantage of ideas and opportunities
• communicating our goals effectively to students, parents and administration
• failing
• flexibility
• improvisation (things will inevitably go wrong when trying new technologies or old technologies in new ways)
• learning new things (and the frustrations that go along with learning new things!)
• taking risks
• putting some time into professional development and learning
• student leadership
• uncertainty

Really great classrooms are led by futurists who recognize that the skills and tools we give our students today will help them in very real ways in their lives. Leaders recognize that they're preparing students for the next steps in their lives.

What are the benefits for students?

• transformative: students have ownership over their learning and realize their own powers and abilities
• collaborative problem solving
• depth of understanding is evident
• demonstrate that they know how to think
• differentiated learning: opportunities for all to thrive and share
• engagement
• empowerment 
• leadership: students help peers, other students, staff to solve problems
• perseverance: through frustrations and failures, they explore creative solutions and iterate
• sense of accomplishment

In a very quick hour, we got through a lot of ideas and stories. I was happy to have students and parents in the crowd who were able to offer their persepctives during the Q and A. Stay tuned for a post about how "tech is the new sex ed", inspired by the hilarious father of a former student.

Some of my key learnings from the other panelists include:

• Rick's advice: If you want to try something new and you don't have qualified or interested staff, start by offering a club for eager students.
• Rick's high school students have partnered with Carleton to make 3D-printed robot kits. They'll visit classes and teach them how to use them.
• Alison and Nanik talked about how the curriculum comes alive through making. Nanik is engaged when he works with his hands and becomes motivated to learn.
• Maker Junior operates on the principle that we should not just receive, but be active creators.
• Paul describes his role as a principal as the main helper in a school and he is there to enhance the experiences of teachers and kids.

I was happy to speak with many enthusiastic educators at the end of the panel, and had my first ever tiny taste of celebrity. One gentleman came up to me and said his wife was really hoping to meet me, but wasn't able to stick around. I have a fan! My former students who were hanging around thought this was hilarious.

Did you make it to the Mini Maker Faire? How do you think we can bring more Making into our classrooms?