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Today marks a the beginning of a new year at my job. Its been a year since I’ve taken the position of Instructional Technology Specialist and it is a time to take a step back and reflect what has happened in a year. There are many things I have experienced over the past year so this is Part 1, of a series “A Year In Review.”A Year in Review: Webtools
Through the collaboration of my co-worker and friend Jacob Standish its been an encouraging year of some new webtools that have influenced our district protocol. Here are few a of the tools we have “pushed.”
Yammer – It may seem small but it isn’t. It is huge. I wrote earlier about it here. With this Social Media program an entire shift of thought has taken place with many of our teachers. No longer do they feel there is no one to talk to or connect with, Yammer makes our big district feel small.
CMSWiki – Although Wikispaces has been in our district for a few years it took a big leap in the past year. It went from a side project to a major one. Our district does not allow many outside websites, and we needed something to help our teachers have a web presence.
Moodle Online PD – Professional Development in a district as big as ours is “difficult”. Moodle gives us an opportunity to pull them all together. Professional Development has focused heavily on IWB’s in previous years, and we have tried to bring an excitement and energy to other 21st Century Skills and Tools. Not my favorite tool, but can be useful to help PD.
Twitter – Twitter has been around for a while and we are trying to help our teachers be a positive force in directing them how to use their Professional Twitter Life. We can either be agents for good change, or we can be negative. Our desire has been to use Social Media Tools for the betterment of our district and staff. We try to connect our teachers together on Twitter, and learn together.
Edmodo – This has been a great tool to for students and teachers to connect and learn in a fun and new way. It has been great to hear all the excitement around learning through such a tool as Edmodo.
In December of 2010 a co-worker (Jacob Standish) and I stumbled upon Yammer. Our minds immediately saw the potential of a great in-house Professional Learning Community (PLC). We work in a district that restricts access to many social networks because of the lack of productivity that can happen in places like Facebook and MySpace. Yammer though gave us a unique opportunity to cut the distractions out (what you are doing for lunch, who you are meeting, where you are, silly off topics jokes, non-professional non-educational content) of such social media and focus on what teachers do: Educate and Professional Development.The philosophy that we introduced Yammer to our district was for TEACHERS by TEACHERS. The desire is a place for EDUCATORS (the true enterprise of our district) to share EDUCATION ideas and thoughts that will help TEACHERS to explore and learn together. Teachers are true professionals and Yammer gives them an opportunity to speak about their PROFESSION. Some teachers will never be able to get twitter (and that’s OK) but they can get Yammer because it is in Yammer where they will meet their fellow district teachers. Teaching the same Common Core on the same pacing guide.Yammer works best in groups. Since there is no “facilitator” on our Yammer network it is by the common good that teachers keep to the vision of the PLC. Anyone can create a group that is Educationally Focused. The power of our Yammer network has been in the Grass Roots efforts of teachers to be Professionals in our district.
We have been deliberate in our cause to keep Yammer a Professional Learning Community and not Facebook or a non-professional Twitter feed. We have been focused in Yammer to help teachers find people of like mind and explore educational content together in ways they have not been able to do in the past.
Jenny Grabiec, Jacob Standish and I have created Podcasts and Help Files for our district to guide the proper uses and nuances of Yammer.
The focus of our Yammer network is very direct. Part of that is because of the strict rules our district puts on “social networks” being a possible waste of time. Everyone who joins Yammer gets a notice posted to them to help guide the focus of their thoughts. The majority of teachers and educators have been great at keeping to that focus.
Yammer would be a great opportunity for your district teachers to build a safe PLC without feeling lost in such places as Twitter. It is a great way to bridge the gap between school collaboration (school building) and global collaboration (Twitter). Helping teachers model 21st Century Skills of social networking as professionals.
If you are interested in more help in how our district uses Yammer feel free to contact me via Twitter or comment below.
Here is what all users get in our Yammer Network:
Currently I’m involved in a project that includes building a team of people who will eventually be leaders in developing and implementing professional development across the district. As I personally and professionally begin to think about the teachers and district level people I work with and consider them for this opportunity the question came to mind: What kind of person does it take to make something this big (and this is big for my district, probably nationally) a success? Three essential elements came to mind:
Knowledgeable
I also strongly feel that there needs to be some knowledge about the topic, subject, or thing that is being presented on. I think trainers can learn about things, but having some background knowledge seems necessary. If the trainers have no knowledge of what is going to be presented it is a sure beginning of failure. If the trainers haven’t gathered any of their own knowledge on their own then I question their commitment to the professional development. This leads into my next thought on what kind of person does it take to professional development: Passion.
Passionate
I could write a lot about passion and how it plays into professional development. I would say that there needs to be a passion for the subject mater (whatever it is). I believe it is that passion that drives you to want to know about the subject, and there in have the knowledge to help guide people in their learning. It is in the passion that you will take the time to learn all about the subject so you are able to ‘break it down’ and help someone else get it. Passion is not an assignment given to you by your boss. It is the passion that gets under your skin, in your mind, and invades your day. When you are passionate about something you want to SHARE it and help others GET IT. I believe this is NECESSARY (yes I said necessary) for professional development to be GREAT, and successful. I believe passion is the lynch-pin to a successful great professional development.
Finally, notice that I did not say any one type of personality was “it”. There isn’t one type of person; extrovert, or introvert, or whatever that makes a professional development great. It does take presentation skills, and the more masterful the better, but it is not one “type” of person. I fully believe that for a professional development to be great it takes a team effort that has knowledge of the subject, and a lot of passion.
It is on the passion that hangs how great and successful the professional development will be.
I have a passion (like many Apple folk) for the words and life of Steve Jobs, I’ve written about it here how Steve Jobs’ vision helped me succeed. Recently @scottbelsky wrote an article about “Vision Without Obstruction: What We Learn From Steve Jobs”. This blog post is an outflow from that article.
What Status Quo?
Steve Jobs choosing not to do things the way others have wasn’t to just be different, but it was to stay true to his ideas, perseverance, and vision. I feel that when we go against the status quo it is because we have a strong backing and understanding of our idea and vision. This is something we need desperately in education. Such a strong understanding of the vision for education and technology that when the status quo is threatened its because the vision clearly states the course of action needs to be unique to educate our students.
Perseverance
Often times we are missing this aspect of Perseverance the most in the area of education and instructional technology. Instructional Technology is rapidly changing because information is vast and fast via the web. The challenge in today’s educational technology landscape is to persevere over the obstacles that are coming down the road of success. Many of these obstacles are people saying “give it up” to the ideas you know are going to challenge the status quo. But you know those ideas are the most powerful. Steve Jobs didn’t allow these people to derail him from the visions he knew would radically change the way we live our lives, and we shouldn’t allow people to stop us from bringing our radical instructional ideas to the classroom.
Demons
We all have our demons that we fight against: doubt, failure, impulse, expectations. They are no different for Steve Jobs and no different for anyone willing to take a risk and enter the world of Instructional Technology. The statement stated in this article that sticks out the most to me, and worth remembering when those demons enter our head, heart, and dreams:
“Nothing To Lose In Staying True To What You Envision”
In a time when we need more creative educators get your visions, create the ideas, and persevere.
Note: This post was part of an exercise to read an article and respond to it with a co-worker. I have not read his response yet, but his is here: A Call For Clarity by @edtechstandish.
I’ve done a lot of research on 21st Century skills across the globe
(Internet):
They all have the same aspects of 21st Century Skills highlighted (I guess that’s a good thing):
This is a short list of the major concepts that are quite weighty and in-depth centered around what 21st Century Skills are. Interesting? Take a look at the list (short list) and you notice a major “C” in our society is missing (and that is a good thing)…
There is No CONSUME in 21st Century Skills
What is consume? It is to take in, buy, absorb, and to use. At the core of who we all are, we “get” consume. We have been raised as consumers. The goal of every company is to get the mass public to consume their products. The thing is companies aren’t hiring consumers, they are hiring the people who have the attributes of 21st Century Skills.
Education and Consumption
The problem I see in the education system is much the same. Educators are looking for a product that they can give to their students, so their students can consume it and say they’ve been taught. We should not be raising students up to be consumers, but creators, innovators, leaders, able to learn, and make choices about their learning. This means our teachers need to be all these too! This is not easy, there is a reason why these attributes are the top of Revised Blooms. But if our students are going to be productive in the 21st Century (which we are already 10% into) they will have to move from consumers in the classroom to creators, innovators, collaborators, organizers, and leaders.
First Steps away from Consumption via Technology
The rest of our teaching collective conscience could be spent on the how to do this, but I would like to mention a first step to be taken in Instructional Technology. Take every opportunity for any webtool or venture to be a creative one for THE STUDENT. Looking at every aspect for the student to apply the higher blooms taxonomy. I truly believe if we (the teacher) put some creative thought into the tools we use, students will be creative. The first step, is to realize the potential for an online tool to be used in some creative fashion.
I find myself asking this question a lot: Why are people so interested in getting Flash (Adobe Flash) on your iOS Device (iPad, iPodTouch, iPhone)? The reason I am asking myself because I see a new tweet about it daily. “I found the perfect Flash app. YAY!” or “Oh, it is great to have Flash on my iPad!” or “Another Flash app! Awesome” and the statements goes on. I look quizzically at these posts, as I do many posts, because nobody ever says what they are DOING with their Flash app. They all just seem to think they NEED one! I’m just going to come out and say it: You don’t need a Flash app on your iOS Device.
I wrote recently on an unexpected byproduct of collaboration: Fun. But that fun isn’t always something that just happens, it is something that is cultivated. To cultivate collaboration and have a byproduct of fun, there were a few aspects set in place between my co-worker and I that brought that fun about! Many of these aspects are personality traits, but I think they are needed for most collaboration to be beneficial and fun.
The past month has been a culmination of working through ideas Jacob Standish and I have been playing with since November 2010. We collaborate on everything. That collaboration has been (and continues to be) FUN! Fun was not the intention. We didn’t start collaborating together because we were looking to have fun, we collaborated together because our ideals seemed in line with the directions we both wanted to go with district implementation of 21st Century Skills and Learning. Fun has been in unexpected aspect of our collaboration. When we are creating for our district the collaboration is fun, it is something I look forward too!
This collaboration wasn’t forced on us, it came about after some time hanging out. A teacher (or boss) didn’t say “You two work together” or “You will be collaborating with Jake.” Our collaboration developed over time. So often Teachers “force” the aspect of collaboration with their students when collaboration can (and should) happen naturally, organically (like the web itself). I do collaborate with others, groups and people that I am asked to work with on projects, as we also ask our students to collaborate with different individuals. And I seek others out to collaborate with, both at work and through my PLN. I believe fun should be a byproduct of these collaborations. Does that mean that EVERY ASPECT of the collaboration is fun? Usually not. Jake and I usually get into a weekly argument about something we are collaborating on, but it is because we are passionate about helping our teachers in the district. As we develop opportunities for our students to collaborate we should consider fun as a byproduct.
When people are collaborating and having fun the products they are creating end up as a much better product. Outside the education world I’ve seen this to be true too. I’ve noticed this in the music industry for certain artists. The music industry is one big machine of collaboration. When artists truly collaborate and have fun the product they have to show for it is by far a much better product. Take Eminem’s Album Recovery. Whether you like Eminem or not the songs on this album that he has collaborated on are better because of the collaboration. The collaboration is seamless, the hard work is obvious, and the fun shines through on these songs. Included is a playlist of some of his collaborations that highlight the quality and fun because of the collaboration.
Collaboration is a 21st Century Learning Skill. We are asked to collaborate weekly with co-workers. We ask our students to collaborate with fellow students. The product of true collaboration should be better because of the collaboration that took place. The unexpected fun that ensued will show through in the products. As we all continue to explore implantation of 21st Century Learning and teaching in the 21st Century we shouldn’t overlook the understated aspect of fun. [Now, how that fun comes to be? That is for another post.]
Students are into music. Most teachers are into music too. There are a couple music web tools I share with teachers to help them teach. Pandora and Rhapsody are the two main tools I share with teachers. They booth meet a little different need, relatively cheap, and they are assessable in my district. The problem is these are primarily consumption tools. We use these tools to listening to music for classroom management, to set a mood into the classroom for study or excitement. Now imagine using artists music (new and old) as a way to create not just consume.
The embed and sharing is powerful. You can tweet, facebook, and social media your playlist like crazy. But there is more.
Group Playlist. Students and teachers together can create shared lists. Ask students to have a hand in the music they will hear while taking a test, or reading silently. Involving students in the climate of the class through music. Every student can have a say in the musical surroundings. Take this opportunity to have students discuss why they choose that song and how they feel it fits the playlist you are trying to create. Using the gmail resource Jake Standish and I discussed in July’s itWeekly 118 (http://j.mp/itweekly118) you can create accounts you control that students use to facilitate collaboration.
Create Playlist
Collaborate on Playlist
Playlists themselves are organized content.
Share your ideas of how you plan to use Playlist as a way to incorporate 21st Century Learning Skills in your classroom? What lessons come to your mind for students when you are able to hand them the music via the web to interact with?
Technology Tim 