Forked!

I find myself at a fork in the road. Everything was going according to plan. I was planning. I was researching. I was learning new tools. I was creating professional development videos for my district on technology tools and ideas for implementation. And then...I got a phone call. That phone call led to a meeting with another teacher from my district who is involved with global communication, partnerships, and collaborative learning. 

Now, I find myself in an interesting position. I could go forward with what I had been planning. I could purchase a classroom with Taking It Global, make my own connections, and create my own plans from scratch. Or, I could learn how to use a Ning, take advantage of my district’s resources, and help roll out a program of social change that could be influential in the entire district. Of course, the details are a little sketchy about exactly what it would look like. It is interesting to note that Taking It Global is a partner in the program that my district is looking at rolling out though.

So where does that leave me? I feel like most teachers who implement PBL. I am a little worried about the planning and implementation (Ertmer & Simmons, 2006) of a program with such a public face and such large management issues. I am not sure if it would be better to continue down my own track or to take of advantage of resources that will be available (if the money comes through). If it doesn’t come through, then I am not sure what that means. Does that mean I am back at the point I am at right now? Or would the connections to the State Department be enough to assure some level of support regardless of district financing? 

I am not sure. I think I am going to change my plan though. I can still use the kinds of resources I have already been planning on rolling out a number of tools, and the assessments for those parts would not change. It is just the actual distance learning piece that might be different, but at the very least I have a connection with someone in my district who has actually been to some of the countries I would like to offer my students as collaborative partners. 

In the end though, it is about what I am willing to put out there for my students. If I am going to have to develop something from scratch, I would rather do it with someone than without someone. I need to be able to reach out and go through the same process I want my students to go through. I have identified my problem, I have begun to research the problem in order to clarify it, I have realized the need to be collaborative as I approach a solution to the problem,   and now I am beginning to formulate a solution to my problem with the help of others. These are the steps of PBL (Laureate, 2009). That is the crux of the matter, if we are to really engage our students in problem based learning, we have to be willing to put ourselves in the uncomfortable spot of defining a problem and attacking it in the same way we want our students to...even if that means we get forked sometimes. 

Resources

Ertmer, P., & Simons, K. (Spring 2006). Jumping the PBL implementation hurdle: Supporting the efforts of K-12 teachers. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 1(1), 40-54. Retrieved fromhttp://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=ijpbl.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

Up the Styx without a Drachma

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Maybe it’s the economy...or maybe the end of the world...or maybe it’s the conversation that I had with a former athlete from my high school athletic program. At the end of High school she went on to play Division 1 field hockey for UMass. We recently met up and she asked why education doesn’t prepare students for the real world. “After high school and college I am in the real world and I wish I would have learned how to do more of the basic, real life stuff like budgeting or balancing a checkbook,” she confided in words that were pretty close to this quote. It got me thinking about death and learning to live on a fixed budget. 

Oh yeah, I am going to be teaching mythology so it isn’t as big of a leap as you would think at first. One of the issues that I am running into with my plan is trying to make the content I have to teach relevant to the students and prepare them with valuable skill sets. One way I plan to do this is to have my students create online portfolios and have them use mythological content to practice skills that can be used for real world student gains. Enter death stage right. 

Charon is the ferryman of the river styx. For each passenger on his barge he is paid one coin to be ferried into the underworld. No coin, no rest. This provides an opportunity for real world student learning on how to budget and use a spreadsheet while learning about mythological content. There is an average that you can count on more or less, but there are also times when you get a boon (wars, famine, wrath of the gods, etc.). There are also times when you make a little less than average (those damn heroes, pesky resurrections, etc.). You might have to fix your boat, hit the chiropractor, and occasionally deal with a freeloader. It’s a lot like being a waitress (except you look like a skeleton, are confined to your workplace, and have to deal with a three-headed dog who eats souls). 

An interactive budgeting spreadsheet that includes real content from my classes can help students prepare for a real world issue that they will have to deal with. It can also be an important part of an online portfolio. There is a lot of reading and writing here, especially if their “budget” relies on the stories that we are reading in class (how many people died in the Iliad?). There are opportunities for student engagement and creativity. Lambert, Depaepe, Lambert, and Anderson (2007) talk about the power of online portfolios and I am more convinced now that this needs to be a cornerstone of my classroom set up this year. As I learn more about skills students need in the 21st century and the capabilities of different tools, the more I am adjusting the kind of instruction that I am leaning towards in my class. 

Assessment is an essential component of instruction (Laureate, 2009) that can inform our practice. Knowing what skills we are trying to get across and the types of learning we want our students to demonstrate allows us to look at the tools we have available and select those tools with intentionality. There needs to be more alignment of what we are learning, how we are teaching, and the world our students are going to be entering (Lambert, Depaepe, Lambert, &Anderson, 2007). This is where my learning and thoughts about my plan are starting to come together this week. Assessment doesn’t need to look traditional to be valid (Laureate, 2009). I have been thinking too much about traditional assessments and not enough about authenticity. 

My biggest questions at this point revolve around how to leverage the resources I have available (due to filtering, budgets, etc.) to provide my students with authentic assessment opportunities that allow them the double benefit of presenting content knowledge and technological knowledge in a single showing while providing them skill sets that they can transfer into their own lives. We will be working on resumes of mythological heroes as a formative assessment on resume writing skills and story comprehension. The students will have a summative evaluation where they write their own resumes which would show the transference of skill knowledge to a real world situation. I just need to keep thinking about the kinds of information that we are learning on a weekly basis and how this can inform and transform my instruction in creative ways. 

It would be a shame for us to miss the opportunity to make a difference for our students by limiting our own creativity and implementation of knowledge. That happens too often (Grunwald Associates LLC, 2010). My plan needs a minor course adjustment to accommodate the new information I am internalizing about the different options for assessment in a digital age. I am also adjusting my understanding of what skills my students will find valuable in addition to the content knowledge I have to teach them. I need to think about my goals and my actions a little more and think about some of the alternative methods I might allow for students to reach the shores they are aiming for. I don’t want my students to end up dead in the water...or even worse, stuck on the bank with a three-headed dog. 

Grunwald Associates, LLC. (2010). Educators, technology, and 21st century skills: Dispelling five myths. Walden University. Retrieved from http://www.waldenu.edu/Documents/Degree-Programs/Full_Report_-_Dispelling_Five_Myths.pdf http://www.waldenu.edu/Documents/Degree-Programs/Full_Report_-_Dispelling_Five_Myths.pdf

Lambert, C., DePaepe, J., Lambert, L., & Anderson, D. (Winter 2007). E-portfolios in action. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 43(2), 76–81.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

Look in front of you! It's a bird...its a plane...Nope. It's a traffic cone...

The first step in overcoming an obstacle is admitting that you have a problem in front of you. My biggest problem right now is that I don’t know my students or my curriculum for next year. This makes planning out some of the aspects of my GAME plan a little difficult right now. Part of the issue is that I need to pay for the online classroom that I am going to be using but I don’t personally have the money to do that right now and won’t have access to my funds until later this month.

So, what is a guy to do? Well, I have been leveraging the technology that I do have available to beginning planning out some of the elements that I know I will want to bring into the class regardless of the content I am teaching. I have created a Facebook group for each of my classes to provide a social networking aspect to the class, created online dropboxes on sites like Drop.io. Begun growing my personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter (my name is wybrasr for anyone interested). Set up a Diigo group for my colleagues to share links to professional development sites or technology tools. I have researched some assistive technologies. I have created accounts on Teachertube, Podbean, webs.com (which will be used for student portfolios), set up my iDisk for different classes, and thought about how to use blogs in class.

I still need to work on ways to use videoconferencing software to engage experts, find the time to create multiple formats of my lessons, and gather a list of external sources to use as a model for my students when I am showing them how to use search engines and databases for research. All of this is an attempt to do the kind of lesson planning described by Howard (2004) and just like Howard I am finding that it is time consuming. I am not sure where the return on investment tipping point is, but I am thinking about it more and more. I agree that we should engage each student at his or her level and take into account his or her preferences (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009), but at the same time I wonder in some ways about what this means for education. In order to allow students the freedom to engage with content in a meaningful way there has to be a model for them to follow and what I am doing right now is trying to determine what that model will look like in my classroom. 

I wouldn’t call that a problem, but an opportunity to expand my thinking. 

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach.  (Laureate 
Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Howard, K. (2004). Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Needs of All Students. In the Curriculum--Multidisciplinary. Learning & Leading with Technology, 31(5), 26-29. Retrieved from ERIC database.

I'm only moving it once...so make sure that's where you want it

Incorporating technology into the classroom is a lot like moving furniture. First you have to come up with a plan of action. You scope out the situation, determine the steps, and look at all the angles. Then, you take action and do the heavy lifting or the rolling out. As you are doing this, you try to make sure that everything is fitting into the spaces the way you thought it would and you are monitoring the effectiveness of your efforts. In the last step you ask your wife if she likes it where it is and, if you are lucky, she says yes. If not, you go through the process again. If your wife is easy going like mine, you only have to do this once or twice, if not, the process can seem like it goes on forever until you have finally decided that you either need new furniture…or a new wife.

This is the same kind of process I go through when deciding whether or not to bring a new piece of technology into my classroom. There are lots of factors to weigh, but in the end it comes down to a simple question: Will the technology enhance my students’ understanding of content? If the answer is yes, I ask myself questions that relate to the T.E.C.H. process of technology integration described by King-Sears and Evmenova (2007). One of the most important aspects of this self-questioning is trying to determine the best way to use the technology to create enriched environments. As King-Sears and Evmenova (2007) and Coulter (2008) point out, technology in a classroom does not, by itself, lead students to a better understanding of content or increased student achievement. The tool’s effectiveness is dependent on the experience, intentions, and application by the instructor and students.

To this end, it is important to have a GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). This plan includes having Goals, taking Action, Monitoring progress, and Evaluating and Extending the learning environment with the integrated technology. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) created a set of standards for teachers interested in integrating technology into their classrooms (2008). When looking at the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T), I found that there are two areas that I feel comfortable with but would like to extend my awareness of. These two areas are standards one and two which relate to facilitating creativity and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments (ISTE, 2008). These are learning areas for me because I would like to delve into ways to engage students in authentic problem solving and determine better ways to assess this kind of real-world work within the bounds of a standardized testing system.

Goal: First I will locate and participate in a global community of educators interested in having students address real world issues. By connecting with other educators I will be able to work collaboratively with educators who have been successful and will be able to utilize online collaboration tools to help both my students and myself learn how to engage in thoughtful participation. As part of this plan I will be utilizing the online spaces at TakingITGlobal to begin networking and engaging my students in real world issues. I will also be utilizing this Personal Learning Network to find and create authentic assessments for student work. 

Action: Once my online classroom is built and I begin to network, my students and I will engage in collaborative projects and research on global issues that students find relevant. We will use online databases, collaborative writing spaces, video-conferencing (I hope), and interactions with experts to make a difference.

Monitor: I will monitor the interactions, the use of technology, and the roles of everyone in the classroom as we work on our projects and I will have the students do the same. As I look at my own growth, I will be focusing on whether or not the online environment, collaborative tools, and research methods are fulfilling the goals of increasing students’ engagement with real world issues and whether or not my formative assessments are leading to an increased understanding of the content I am attempting to teach. I will modify my approaches and the tools used if it appears that this would be beneficial for students.

Evaluate: At the end of the process I will reflect on the plan and make modifications for future attempts. It is important to take risks when those risks are not detrimental to student success and at the end it is important to study the whole approach and make modifications as necessary. I will go through this final step with student input so that I am sure that I am seeing the situation through more views than merely my own. I will also have students evaluate their own progress and set goals for their future endeavors with respect to collaboration, creativity, and their digital experiences.

Though I have attempted to engage students in digital experiences and creative endeavors, these are two aspects of teaching that can never be fully mastered. As King-Sears and Evmenova (2007) point out, technology changes at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to stay abreast of all the changes let alone master them all. In addition, creativity is a skill set that has no final destination or defined form and is always something to strive for. With the problems facing the world today, creativity is going to be a cornerstone of the way we address issues and needs to be constantly fostered in our students. At the end of the day they are the ones who are going to have to be satisfied with the way we leave the furniture…or they are going to be the ones who have to fix it.

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach.  (Laureate 
Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Coulter, B. (2008). Bridging the Gap with Technology. Connect Magazine, 22(2), 14-15. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

King-Sears, M., & Evmenova, A. (2007). Premises, Principles, and Processes for Integrating TECHnology Into Instruction. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 40(1), 6-14. Retrieved from ERIC database.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved July 8, 2010, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf