Observation Notes: How one Science teacher is integrating technology

I began my official observation hours this month and this entry begins a series of observation notes from the 100 hours I will eventually accumulate.

This entry concerns several 9th grade science classes at MS 202 - the Robert H Goddard school taught by Mr. Exume, with the help of the technology specialist, Ms. Deninn. The Robert H. Goddard is primarily a middle school covering grades 6-8, however they are expanding to become a high school beginning with 9^th grade in the 2008-2009 school year. Every classroom has a SmartBoard and the school is part of the 1-1 laptop program.

I spent several periods with Mr. Exume’s classes and I could see wide variation among the students. One of the biggest differences I noticed was that the 9^th graders were able to carry on real conversations (one girl walked me to the teacher cafeteria, asked if I was student teaching and what school I went to and told me she wants to go to NYU) and engage in thoughtful discussion. The subject that Mr. Exume was discussing that day was about classification of species. The general format was that Mr. Exume presented his notes on the SmartBoard including some pictures and videos while students took notes on their laptops. He also had the students break out into groups to work on classifications. The students print, save to a Flash drive or email their notes at the end of the period. One girl was asking a lot of questions and in particular consistently brought up issues of testing on animals. After several minutes of this, Mr. Exume suggested to the girl that she meet with the “newspaper committee” to write an opinion piece on the issue. He explained to me after that this topic had come up several other times throughout the year and it was a sore topic for some of the girls. The girl commented that there are no more newspapers this year. In my conversation with Mr. Exume, I suggested that he might want to encourage the girls to write a blog on the topic which he thought was an excellent idea for next year. Mr. Exume ensures that all his lessons and presentations are available on a shared network drive at the beginning of the year and students can download any or all of them at any time for use as a study guide.

Mr. Exume spent his free period providing me with resources that he uses in his classroom. Here is a snapshot of some of these resources.

• The Review Game Zone - Because of the time of year, Regents review is a big part of the curriculum. This site is a review site for Regents questions and it also allows the teacher to input their own questions. For example, here is a soccer game with review questions on classification.
• Power Media Plus - This is a subscription service that Mr. Exume uses to embed videos and other media into his Powerpoint presentations. He finds this helps to clarify complex subjects. The site lets you save videos to your hard drive for use in other applications.
• Virtual Labs: Utah Genetics Lab - Contains virtual labs on genetics. Frog Dissection - Virtual Frog Dissection. Mr. Exume is going to allow the use of this latter one for the students who choose not to dissect a real frog. InnerBody - Used to teach and study about human anatomy.
• YouTube & TeacherTube – TeacherTube is allowed in the school but YouTube is blocked. However, sometimes there are useful videos on YouTube that Mr. Exume will use in his classroom. He does this by loading the video at home and playing the cached version at school.
• Drop.io – Used to share large files between students and teachers.
• Engrade - A free service used by Mr. Exume to record grades, among other things.
• Lesson Planet - Mr. Exume uses lesson plans from this site to help enhance his own curriculum. Requires a subscription. I told him about Curriki which contains free and open lesson plans.
• Enchanted Learning - A compendium of worksheets for teachers. Subscription required.
• Classroom Performance System – Mr. Exume is going to be using these CPS Clickers to do Regents review preparation throughout the month of June. I will be going to observe this in a few weeks.

This Week in Social Media: YouTube Delivery, Sext-Ed and more...

This week's topics cover the gamet from picking wedding dresses online to sneaking through government firewalls just to get online. I'll start with the YouTube delivery. It's not what you think!

I'm not talking about delivering a video to the YouTube platform. I'm talking about a man who had to deliver his own wife's baby with no help from anyone but YouTube video's! Yes, there are actually videos about that. In Can't Get Midwife? YouTube Will Assist, a British man explains that his wife's history of speedy deliveries meant that getting to a hospital was not happening and the midwife they planned to use was unavailable. YouTube to the rescue! You really can find just about anything on the Web today. What are the implications for YouTube in education? Especially when YouTube is often blocked? Is that good or bad? On the one hand, students will access YouTube online at home and learn anything they want to (and maybe more than we want them to!) but shouldn't we, as educators, be able to find useful videos for the classroom and show them as appropriate?

The internet is all about being open and available to all, right? Well, not quite. Many countries block websites containing content that they do not want accessible to their citizens. In Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors we see that organizations exist that focus on helping everyone have equal access to the internet - but it's often at their own risk. I bring this up because it's important to remember that though we sometimes view the internet as a democracy for all people and our students probably are growing up believing this, we have not overcome censorship around the world. What does it mean to be a digital citizen? Does it depend on where you live?

Remember the Prom? Well, now there is a way for girls to ensure that nobody else comes dressed in their Prom dress. Online Photo Says "It's My Dress, Pick Another" explains that many boutique stores are creating a registry of which girl purchased which dress for which school's Prom and won't let anyway else buy the same dress. What's more, Facebook groups have been set up to let the girls post their dresses online so that others will be discouraged from buying the same or similar dresses. Why is the relevant? Because it's just another way that teens today are making use of Social Networking tools to meet their needs. These trends will continue and as educators we should be tapping into them also.

Lastly, sex ed has a whole new twist: When the Cell Phone Teaches Sex Education. Services have been popping up around the country to answer teens questions about sex and relationships. Many of these are canned questions that they can choose from but several new services are providing 1-1 personalized answers anonymously through texting. In some states this is designed to overcome school mandated limitations of abstinence-only curriculums. How do you feel about this service? What are the implications for families and students themselves. As educators, curriculum matters and we have to realize that if we are not teaching students what they need or want to know (sex ed or otherwise) they will find out from other places. Today, it's easy to do on the Social Web.

Wrapping Up "Digital Media in the Classroom"

This will be my last "official" entry for my Digital Media class although I plan to continue discussion of many of the topics that were raised in the last few weeks. This wrap up is really more a beginning than a conclusion.

It is my intent to continue to explore how social media and Web 2.0 tools can, and should, be implemented in the classroom. The essential question posed by this class was basically: which of the broad spectrum of digital learning technologies and tools provides the greatest possibility for transnational education across cultural boundaries? I would argue: All of them. What do I mean by "All"? Technology is ever-changing. You have to continuously learn and read and participate and connect, just to keep up. The answer is that every single technological innovation has it's place in education. Schools are the feeding ground for the next generation, the generation that in turn creates, uses, enhances and integrates the next technological innovation into their own lives.

So, the next question is one of HOW. How do we help propogate this circle of innovation? Through communities of inquiry. This class was an example of such a community. Each of us maintained our own blog with our own perspectives, while simulataneously discussing pertinent topics on the class main blog. We asked questions of the technologies and their usefulness in the classroom, and we shared our own reflections and feedback on practical (as well as visionary) implementation. Exactly what we have done here, is what educators should be doing with students. Get them to think critically and make use of all the tools and resources (digital and non-digital) at their disposal. Get them to think about school as a microcosm of the real world, not an imaginary world where nothing real is accomplished.

This clip ties together my learning from this Digital Media class with the intent of the blog.

You can also listen to this in my first podcast:



There are several sites that I want to leave you with because they provide avenues for further research.

• The History of Social Networking Sites - An interesting account of SNS's from the early days of sixdegrees and friendster (both of which I had joined) through MySpace and Facebook.
• The Tags Within (aka The Semantic Web) - Some call this Web 3.0, but it will only be made possible through the use of Tags. This blog entry describes the history of Tagging.
• A review of the book Born Digital - which claims that a digital native is one born after 1980. I return to one of my earlier postings on this topic and maintain that I still consider myself a Digital Nagrant, although I might even take one step further towards Digital Native after this class. Oh, I was born in 1970. So, you can see that I wholehardly disagree with the hard line distinction here.
• Everything you ever wanted to know about Participatory Media Literacy but were afraid to ask.
  

This Week in Social Media: Political Twittering, Kindle Snobbery, and more.

As a continuation to my Social Media series started last week, I introduce a new weekly series discussing the latest news articles themselves discussing various social media topics. Seems somewhat roundabout perhaps, but I will dissect the articles and present my reflections on the relevance to education in the 21st century.

I begin today with "The Chatty Classes" in the New York Time Magazine section. The article suggests that politics and Twitter should be kept separate and that Twittering, like the days of private diary writing, should be something kept to yourself. It's the same old story of "why do I care what you ate this morning?" People still aren't getting it. It's not about diary writing. It's about networking. It's about following people who share your interests in order to increase your own expertise or simply for enjoying discussion on shared topics. For education, this means that students have yet another outlet for learning. They can reach out to experts on Twitter to gain new perspectives on a topic not found anywhere else. And, by the way, these same students will be the experts in tomorrow's Twitterverse.

"With Kindle, Can You Tell It's Proust?" suggests that Kindles and similar devices negate the benefits of reading actual books - for publishers, that is readers who buy a book after seeing someone else reading it, and for readers, the snobbery or fantasy of trying to determine what type of person reading a book is. I introduce the topic of Kindle here because, besides books, many are also "cramming the day's newspapers" on to it. So, it's a device for social media. My perspective is somewhat different. I'm not too concerned with trying to figure out why someone is reading a certain book, and while I do sometimes get an idea to read a book based on someone I see reading it, I wouldn't oppose Kindle for that reason alone. For me, I do enjoy the feel of flipping through the pages of a book and spend enough time "on screen" that a book feels like down time to me. However, remember that I'm a "Digital Nagrant". Wearing my Native hat, I see lots of educational and environmental benefits to a Kindle. 1) All textbooks can be delivered through a Kindle (assuming the price drops dramatically) and students will only have to carry one little device back and forth to school. No more, "I forgot my book at home". 2) Notes and highlights are all stored and shared electronically. 3) Think about how much paper will be saved! And, these are just to name a few...

A Singer-Songwriter Ignores Musical Boundaries profiles Gabriel Kahane, a young classical/pop musician most well known for his song "Craigslistlieder" about online dating and personal ads found on Craigslist. I mention this article, not because Craigslist is so social-mediaesque but more because it highlights the new forms of inspiration that are driving artists to create music, art, theatre and more. Educationally speaking, social media and the Internet itself, is a prominent source of inspiration in the lives of students today and this should be leveraged in the classroom.

Web 2.0 is even making it's way into film in the upcoming (Dec 2009) picture "Avatar". The article, "Fan Fever is Rising for Debut of 'Avatar'", describes what limited information is available about the much anticipated specially designed 3-D technological film to rival any picture of the past. The idea is that the 3-D virtual world will feel so real that it's like "dreaming with your eyes open". So, it begs the question, how different is a 3D film from an immersive education platform? Could we someday transform our classrooms into movie theatres and learn in this transcendent otherly world where lessons are hidden among the actual experience of doing?

Lastly, we speak often of the democracy of the Internet, the fact that everyone has an equal voice and participation and sharing of ideas is what drives this new era we live in. But, what happens to Internet democracy in non-democratic countries? In "A Tibetan Blogger; Always Under Close Watch, Struggles for Visibility", we learn that Woeser, a Tibetan poet and blogger is blocked and under constant scrutiny because of her beliefs that she espouses on her blog - Invisible Tibet (not in English). Her first three blogs were blocked. It is scary to think that governments even today are not recognizing the individual's right to freedom of speech and expression, espcially in this new age of participation. I mention this here because it is a topic that we, as educators, should strive to impress upon our students. It is only through educational enlightenment that these ancient traditions have any chance of falling away and bringing forth global equality.

My Life as a Shadow - Part IV

It's been a while since my last shadow entry, but I'm bringing the topic back. Yesterday, I spent the day shadowing at P.S./M.S. 188 - The Island School on the lower east side of Manhattan. Unlike my other experiences, this one was not elementary school. This time it was with 6th, 7th and 8th graders. At the beginning of the day I didn't notice much difference in the grade levels but my the end I could tell that the 8th graders were much more independent and followed directions more thoroughly.

As opposed to my experience at Drexel Avenue elementary, the technology teacher here, Mr. Lahana, taught the students the same lesson across all the grades. However, the implementation was slightly different. Mr. Lahana uses TechBrarian, his own website, to post lessons for the class. The students listen to a 5 minute overview and then proceed to work on their own as the teacher goes around the room helping them. "Room" is somewhat of a loose definition since it's really an extension to the building that used to be outside and has been converted to the Internet Cafe.

Today's lesson was part 4 in a unit about how sneakers are made. Each student is supposed to listen to a video, fill in their concept map with their notes using either Bubbl.us or Inspiration and then proceed to the next step. In this case, the next step was to watch two videos (Beginner, Advanced) that Mr. Lahana created to show them how to design their own sneaker, download a sneaker template from Pig Magazine and then color the sneaker to their own preferences using layers in Photoshop. The last step is for the students to upload their creation to their blog.

Mr. Lahana chooses to use Blogger for each student and manages the blogs from the master class blog with each students' blog listed in the blogroll. I thought this was interesting because the blogs are out in the open with no security or privacy settings, however the master class blog is secure. Also, the students love blogging and it encourages them to write carefully and thoughtfully. Mr. Lahana shared with me one of the students blogs which contained a sensitive and honest portrayal of his relationship with his step-father and lack thereof with his "ancestor" - his birth father. I choose not to share the link to this young man's blog for privacy reasons.

I observed that the students behaviors during class varied by both class and grade level. Most did not watch the videos before attempting to design their own sneaker and then needed assistance along the way. Some, especially the 8th graders, followed the directions more closely. Some chose to work on their blog instead of the lesson of the day and some requested permission to use GarageBand as an alternative to the lesson. The environment was fairly freeform although I could see that some students were given more freedom than others, presumably the better behaved students.

Other tools that Mr. Lahana encourages students to use include ToonDoo which lets you create comic strips and embed them in blogs, XtraNormal which lets you turn text into animated movies, and Shelfari which students use to review books they have read and share reviews on their blog. I would say that Mr. Lahana knows his audience based on the tools he lets them use and the examples he gives them to make his point. He also uses Renzuli Learning for differentiated instruction and Keynote to create presentations that highlight student work.

My assessment was that the technology classes are focused primarily around teaching technology as opposed to integrating technology into other subjects. I asked Mr. Lahana about this and he explained that the Island School is focused on creativity and innovative outputs from the students. His lessons are all about creating and a school video that he showed me described the student population as the "future innovators of tomorrow". So, the presentations of student work that Mr. Lahana creates is a measurement of how well the students are doing. He also creates individual "profiles of talent" videos for each student, and the school also has 2 talent periods per week. It's for this reason that using GarageBand instead of doing a lesson is permitted. It's also the reason behind the schools policy "No dissing around here" which was seen in the school video and heard through the day. Students need to know that they are free from ridicule in order to create personal and creative work.

To conclude, the students seem to enjoy their time on the computers although many of them do not have computers at home. They do want to listen to music while working but it is only allowed sometimes. They also like to be free from "infractions" (points they get for improper behavior) because infraction-free students can enter the Internet Cafe at lunchtime and get free time on the laptops. It is interesting to note that Mr. Lahana uses a Google spreadsheet to manage infractions so everyone can see it during class. The last period of the day, normally reserved for test prep, is also open to students to work on their blogs when it is not test season.

While, I am not sure how much technology is being used in other classes, it is obvious that the use of Web 2.0 tools and the very concept of Social Media is very much at play at the Island School. Students relish the opportunity to use technology as creative outlets.

Robin on Digital Media in the Classroom

Click to Play

This video contains my reflections on what I learned in my "Digital Media in the Classroom" seminar. It is also my first video blog so I apologize in advance for the poor quality. Hopefully this will get better over time!

In addition to the comments and reflections I've made on all the readings, I was particularly pleased to hear the way that some of my classmates have started using digital media and social tools in their classrooms. These include blogging about different pieces of music, using Ning to discuss and provide feedback on planning for an upcoming show, and using Twitter to as a pre-discussion tool reflecting upon readings before students get to class and continue the discussion.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the direction that seems to be occuring and the role that digital media can play in the classroom.

Social Media Part 2: The Effect on Education

Social Media and Social Networks are defining the next wave of the Web. There are unspoken guidelines about what it means to participate in this Web 2.0 world. Let's look at Facebook for example. Facebook just revised their governance documents to include one called Principles. They state:

"We are building Facebook to make the world more open and transparent, which we believe will create greater understanding and connection. Facebook promotes openness and transparency by giving individuals greater power to share and connect, and certain principles guide Facebook in pursuing these goals. Achieving these principles should be constrained only by limitations of law, technology, and evolving social norms."

In case you don't have a Facebook account and can't read the principles, here is a sampling of a few: "Freedom to Share and Connect; Fundamental Equality; Social Value; Common Welfare; One World". I believe that the principles which they identify apply to more than just Facebook. As you just read in Social Media Part 1: In the News, digital media is being created by everyone all around us. Individuals have an outlet for their voice as much as any media giant does. This creates transparency and our students are growing up expecting this transparency. They expect to be able to participate, vote, get involved, comment, give feedback, earn their online reputation through ratings, and communicate across borders anytime from anywhere.

So, how does this effect learning in the classroom? What is the effect of Social Media on Education?

First, we have to realize that not all students are digital natives. They come to school with different levels of technology literacy and like all subjects, we as educators, need to be able to differentiate instruction accordingly. As an example, my husband asked his 4th graders to do a biography in the form of a "Time for Kids Person of the Year" publication. The results reflected a wide variety of technology literacy ranging from a handwritten report on one sheet of lined paper to a very realistic Time "cover" adapted with student's name and date, typed with multi-columns and inline images. Quite a difference!

Second, we have to realize that while technology literacy will develop at different rates, all of our students are going to be immersed in a world where they can not escape social media and social networks. We must look at technology as though it is another language, rather than another subject to be taught. Technology must used as a tool to enhance learning in every subject just as every subject needs to rely on reading, writing and speaking.

Finally, we have to embrace constructivist learning. We can't be afraid of change. We must recognize the fundamental changes that 21st century skills will require of education. What does this mean? It means that we need to design more real-world like tasks. We need to encourage learning across boundaries: classrooms, schools, geographies. We need to ask more open-ended questions without right or wrong answers. We need to use team-based approaches to learning. We need to stop "drill-and-kill" methods of instructing. And we need to enable students to not only enter the workplace ready to participate in a social world, but encourage them to start participating now.

This is my take on how the unprecedented evolution of media from traditional sources to social, digital platforms will impact the education of our students. I used to hate watching the news when I was younger. Too much "bad stuff", but today you can choose the news you want to hear about, you can seek news of interest, you can easily find multiple perspectives on a story. Social media provides a wealth of information and the opportunity to transform yourself into the "expert" you want to become. Students are no exception.

Please share your own thoughts on how social media will impact education today and tomorrow.