I miss you too!

One thing that absolutely SUCKS about NECC is being so far way from my kids. My son however has figured out Skype. I’ve never showed him how it works, he’s obviously seen me use it around the house. I missed his first steps because I was at work, missed the first word, but I’ve caught his first IMs. As cool as NECC is, I miss the kids. After listening to Konrad today … the scary reality is that as he’s a first grader … then he may well be copying stuff of a board and doing all the stuff that teachers do … he can figure it out! Whats the teachers excuse?.

Teach and Learn

Konrad’s awesome presentation at NECC this morning was made all the better with Judy streaming his slideshow into Jokaydai and Will Richardson helping out with the Ustream.

Konrad is part of the Jokaydia Community in Second Life and a great mentor in Second Classroom, and has a great insight as to the use of community blogging in school.

His presentation will appear shortly on his blog. It’s amazing to get together with people who jump onto so many vectors for delivering, what is, a connected community message.

Konrad’s presentation was an affirmation that what is happening in our school classrooms is exactly what Im facilitating with EduTech with our teachers. Re-showing this in professional development will give staff a clear context for what the teacher (not me) are doing with our students in Study Groups – In The Wild (Year 12 HSC Advanced English) and the about to start Year 9 PBL project that we created during the New Tech symposium and workshops.

The power of peer to peer authentic learning to me is exactly what a group blog promotes. It removes the artificial ‘teacher lead’ discourse and promotes independent critical literacies. I only wish I could articulate what were doing as well as Konrad.

The room was packed out, people on the floor and lining the walls. It was truly an amazing experience. Thanks to Alan Upton, Judy O’Connell and Will Richardson for the amazing Mac-Tech broadcasting team!

Edubloggercon – NECC Unconference Day

Edubloggercon is the pre-conference, unconference held the day before the official NECC event. The day started off with a few hundred people voting live on about 20 different topics that had been proposed by ‘the network’. It worked really simply via a web2.0 site (of course), the most voted topics were split up into about 12 sessions during the day.

Most people attended one session and were watching the ustream of another and the back channel of a third, and no one really wanted to miss anything.

It was great to talk to so many people that before we just names on Twitter, but kind of wierd as they all know so much about what each other is doing.

The format for an un conference is simply that everyone is both presenter, facilitator and participant, and even though there’s an agreed format, people still go off and un-organise that too, holding impromptu sessions such as jail breaking iPhones.

NECC Edubloggers was a Mac Fest, this meeting had some of the people I’ve been following for so long on Twitter, reading and watching on YouTube. They were messing about with Mogulus – the webTV station and modding iPhones. Even the ‘A’ list Will Richardson got over excited at his newly jail-broken iPhone – great to know that is not just me that has ‘wow’ moments.

In a session called “Social Networking in the Classroom” the talk was mostly about what people thought about using Ning as a social network for kids. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was being said about getting kids to ‘create a social network in the classroom’. Kids have social networks already, and this is school, not the rest of their life. It is not the same, it is artificial to suggest it is ‘their’ social network. It does more like a micro-social network, having the same facets, but to me that is not the power of Ning in the classroom. This was a point of view shared by Scott Merrick (wow I just had a bitch to Scott Merrick!).

A couple of neat things happened, that simply don’t happen at a ‘conference’. I got up to the panel and talked about how Shareen at school is now using a Ning as a ’study group’. In The Wild, is a senior study group, looking at visual representation in Advanced English. The power in this is not the blog (which all too often is a substitute for a writing book), nor the range of cool add-on tools that it has.

In a previous session, they talked about why many teachers don’t move from read to read/write technology and multi-modality. What is the benefit of moving, if in the view of the teacher, what they are currently doing works?. This problem is a classic advertising dilemma. How do we get them to buy this product, when they are happy with the other one, and have post of reference to motivate them to change from what they know, to what they might like to know’. How do we sell more dog food? Create more dogs.

I suggested that In The Wild’s benefit to the teacher is that they can see the peer groups form, observe the critical friends process of learning that is talking place. The teacher can ‘walk among’ the student’s thought processes, maybe drop in the odd comment etc., You can’t do this in any other structure. Even though students had to blog – their blog post word count was maybe 50 words. Their comment word count was twice that. They are reading, writing and critically analysing each other. So we might see 300 blog posts, but well see 3000 comments – the visual representation of thought.

Students who often feel, or do not demonstrate ‘voice’ in class, use the internet, to add voice … but the Ning does that, without being ‘creepy schoolhouse’ or making a task smell of, as Clay puts it, smell of ’schooliness’.

Right now there’s another Ning happening. Lucy Gresser is facilitating a Study Group looking at ‘green issues’. The PBL entry document is a podcast, the research involves students looking at past video comments from the Green Party blog, reviewing Bob Brown’s video clips on You Tube, finding commonalities with these and things in their own local area. The end ‘product’ is an informed written comment back to the Green Blog, in which they reference earlier posts, connect these to the wider Bob Brown stated issues and their local area concerns.

The benefits over and above some ‘report’ presentation is that the students are looking forward and interpreting information as it happens, so can’t ‘Google’ the correct answer – the only way to do well in the project is to take an active role. Students cannot ‘knock out’ the presentation at the end of the project … which gives Lucy the ability to monitor a constant flow of ideas and critical literacies.

So far at NECC, I’ve heard a lot about Web2.0 tools, but only a handful of people – who ISTE refer to as ’super star’ teachers getting beyond basic ICT/Web2.0 concepts. This makes Lucy a SUPERSTAR TEACHER. The tools are being used well outside their original intention – and the mashup is entirely focused on ‘just in time’ learning. I can’t wait to see it develop and compare it to the non-PBL ‘In the wild’ study group

Exit Grand Rapids

What a difference a week makes! With an hour to kill before the 26 hour flight back to Sydney. Here we find our staff still working on their projects. Apart from Gavin that is, playing with his DS. With a brand new Ning based PBL project – that includes a podcast as an ‘Entry Document’, a video to launch a science project, the staff have not only thrown themselves into their PBL professional development, but have been open to discovering how a range of ‘critial Web2.0′ tools can boost the engagement and delivery of their PBL project. They leave Grand Rapids and the New Tech Foundation feeling empowered to create their own PBL projects. We used a wiki all week to discuss as ‘critical friends’ how we can better support each other, develop better scaffolding for students and all agreed how important it is for individual staff to take control and responsibility for their own professional development.

I’d also like to thank Kimmie@New Tech High School for her patience and support with us during the week, and to the great conversations and shared experiences. I’d like to thank Andy@New Tech for sharing his ideas and development vision for the PeBL system roll out – its is a shame we can’t (yet) use it – and we didn’t get that much promised chat about all things Web2.0. Maybe next time.

Big thanks to Paul Curtis, who filled in a lot of holes we had in our strategy – and for sharing his experience on ‘where 2 from here’. I hope that PMHS will forge a path to greater connections with New Tech Foundation as we move forward …

I’d also like to thank Rick Schmelz@Bloomington New Tech High School, who patiently answered a million questions I had about the US Tech Environment, structures etc., great to meet ya! … Good luck with the roll out, and look forward to many more chats – you do use Skype? right?

To all the other people I met during the week, I hope we can continue some of the conversations …

I just found out I’m rooming with someone I don’t know at NECC, guess that guys is in for a shock when I roll in the room at midnight!

Tags: pblnew tech high

Why PBL and Web2.0 make great ingredients for lifelong learning

As I come to the end of the week in Grand Rapids. There are many things that I’ve learned, and even more that I’ve unlearned about ‘what makes a great project based learning’ curriculum and EduTech.

Firstly, in order to learn how to teach teachers about PBL, you have to use the PBL process and tools to really immerse and engage the student experience. Perhaps this is why everyone is putting in 12 hour plus days.

Addressing the ‘norm’ expectations of teachers and students is key to delivery. This is not as simple as it may seem. Norms in PBL are more like benchmarks and way points, rather than ‘rules’. In order make these norms add value to the process, I am more adamant than ever that teachers need to be pro-actively involved in their own professional development – both as an effective and reflective PBL teacher (reflective practice by both students and teachers in the best way of determining if ‘real’ learning is happening) is a norm. It is not acceptable to ignore either the needs our students have in taking their place in the 21st Century or the need to scaffold and embed Digital Literacy (Web2.0) to demonstrate their learning. In an earlier post, I drew a chart to explain how I see the immersion of both staff and students in to core digital skills early, and then to build upon them.

I have been amazed by that all 8 US schools have no clue about Web2.0, let alone integrating it into the classroom. Powerpoint and brochures were deemed to be ‘exciting’. Well they are moving away from text books I guess, but all the ‘projects’ developed by the schools were squarely based around ’searching the internet’ and making presentations, brochure and word documents (at least Bill Gates will be happy – Microsoft funded New Technology High back in the day). I am sure however that is a coincidence!

If we are creating Global Citizens, then I’m more than happy to know that the competition is still basing it’s ICT use around MS Word!

This has been a key learning from the conference. 1st year, 1st semester PBL students (and staff) need to have core Web2.0 methods embedded in their projects.

We must not use Web2.0 as an alternative to desktop applications. We need to use them as a key scaffold to turn them from ’skill’ learning to ‘critical knowledge vectors (CKVs)’. Let me explain what I mean.

Specifically I see these skills in initial exposure to PBL/Web2.0 as:

• A Blog – the beginning of reflective writing – (knowledge)
• A Wiki – information processes – collaboration and organising (data and information)
• Social Networking (Ning, Facebook et al) – Critical peers, Communication, Collaboration
• Digital Rich Media – Flickr, YouTube, Ustream – ways of demonstrating multi-literacies
• Basic Adobe CS3 – Photo manipulation, digital media, desktop publishing
• RSS – bringing information to students rather than passively ‘Googling’

Of course there are plenty more tools. However I am talking about a key ‘concept methods’ rather than ‘blend’ or ‘product’.

Over the course of 2 years (9th/10th Grade) the level of scaffolding needs to reduce. The need to give away the answer reduces and students learn how to deal with frustrations. Ultimately we are aiming to have students who are using the these tools to facilitate:

The initial skills then become CKVs for life long learning. Given the speed of ‘new’ tools, this conversion list will probably be obsolete next week – however the ‘information, communication and knowledge’ vectors they represent will remain valid, though evolving.

• Reflective Practice (Blog)
• Organisational Skills (Management/Information) (Wiki)
• A Personal Learning Network relevant to their needs and interests (Ning, Facebook et al)
• Multi-modal approach to digital literacy (Flickr et al)
• Effective Social Networking to become Global Citizens (Twitter et al)
• Use professional applications to delivery professional presentations (Adobe)
• Selecting focused information sources relevant to their learning (RSS)

The week has highlighted challenges in the way we approach the ‘culture’ we need in the school, the management structures needed to facilitate the environment and changing the roles of ‘mentor’ staff to continually support staff in terms of scaffolding, professional development and access to effective technologies in the classroom.

A huge week, but probably not as huge as next week, when I turn my focus from the problems and challenges now, to the methods and opportunities that the EduTech community are exploring for the future at NECC.

PBL and Web2.0 immersion process

Spending the week at the Napa New Technology Foundation PBL training symposium in Grand Rapids has posed an interesting question around ‘how much Web2.0 is enough?’.

Teachers are learning about developing effective PBL projects, working with 8 schools and staff from all over the US. In doing this I’ve been considering how students move through their first semester – the skills know, need to know and how we embed core digital literacy foundations and making sure we leverage these. At some point, less “Web2.0″ might actually promote more learning.

A case in point, we considered (with the end in mind) what ‘products’ we are expecting students to produce. This diagram explains how I think we manage the Classroom 2.0 skills, methods and services with content and critical literacy.

In term 1, we need to begin with ‘what is PBL’. Some immersion into the PBL process, explaining the ‘norms’. What we are expecting as core practice, methods and expectations – over arching principals and under pinning values.

When the first project is launched, students begin to be exposed to ICT (digital literacies) in a logical, methodical manner, in which key skills are embedded into the project.

Key skills include – how to sign up ’safely’ to online services. How to critically analyse these services and check that what these will do – meet the requirements of the ICT components of the rubric. We need to ensure that we pay special attention to ‘global citizenship’ and the reality of what it means for them to be using the read/write web. We are assuming that most of our 9th graders are already publishing using MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube etc., but for the first time they learning about the wide reaching implications of this. Why teach it? – Because they are doing it anyway, and if we don’t then we can’t really be shocked when see the kind of ‘content’ that they publish.

As we move to the middle of the semester, with a handful of projects behind us, we need to ensure that students are able to select the most appropriate tool for the job. This is represented by the white ‘curve’. The decrease in the curve only represents the explicit ‘new Web2.0 skills’. By that I mean, using a differentiated service – Blog, wiki, voicethread, animoto, podcast, imovie, muve, rss etc. Students should learn how to critically analyse the plethera of ‘me 2′ options along the way. For example, we might start with PBWiki and then move to Wikispaces – as long as the students are able to appreciate and justify the move.

We are layering one service on another, using a technology scaffold, teaching them to take a multi-modal approach to their final presentations/solutions.

The blue curve on the background, illustrates the on-going refinement of skills, and extended learning. They will learn how to create slicker presentations, learn more about Adobe CS3 and on an individual level, each explores facets of ICT that interest and motivate them. This is the beginning of ‘life long learning’, as it is unlikely that technology will make a U turn.

Some students might be motivated by Photoshop, others by Virtual Worlds (Skoolaborate) – as each explores their own interests and develops skills as an individual, these skills are of increasing value in a collaboration. I see this as critical in encouraging all students in a group to develop as independent learners. The alternative is for a few students dominating group work, as they alone have the ‘expert’ skills to deliver a ‘quality product’.

Collaboration is linked with individual learning. The level at which 9th grade students can be effective in a collaborative situation is also linked to the group being able to pass out tasks, knowing that each individual will be able to deliver similar ‘quality’ to the whole group. As time moves on, then students are better able to leverage this experience and skill set to meet ever more challenging projects.

In the second semester, we can look to reducing the ‘new Web2.0′ explicits. Students will need to spend less and less time producing work through tools as their individual proficiency increases and less time learning ‘new’ tools – as they become familiar with the Web2.0 tool ‘characteristics’. By semester two, the students should revisit the ‘norms’. The ‘know’ list will include now a range of productive Web2.0 tools which were, in semester one – on their ‘need to know list’.

So what do we put on their ‘need to know list’?

We can focus our need to knows on content, application and deeper learning. Occasionally, as we tune the projects we can introduce a new tool – who knows what tomorrow brings – however, we are sure that blogs, wikis etc., are getting better and integrating more and more with like minded Web2.0 tools.

The first year then is an immersion year. Ideally this should be 7th grade. Regardless of the start point. The first year of PBL for staff and students alike is to get familiar with the read write web using a multi-layered, scaffolded approach – not using tools because they are todays ‘wow’ – but because they deliver authentic 21st century skills and facilitate deeper, life long learning.

Second Classroom & Edna Event

This is a really cool video. Kerry J invited the Second Classroom group to present at an Edna Event. You can visit the Second Classroom building in Jokaydia. Kerry did a great job of organising a tour of the educational spaces for ‘newbies’, and it was great to see so many take the plunge.

What makes the video cool, is that Kerry made this by streaming LIVE video from her Nokia N95 Mobile phone!

Questers Wanted

I’ve started on the professional development with Quest Atlantis. Its a MUVE with a back story, that covers a range of KLA content with a strong ’social commitment’ theme.

It is designed for students 4th to 8th grade, and as a teacher allows a very comprehensive online way of managing students progress. Students are engaged in ‘questing’ activities. Teachers may be aware of the work of Bernie Dodge in ‘webquests’. QA has elements of online learning applications, webquests and gaming. It is a great balance of fun activities, learning to communicate and work with others and teaching social and ethical values.

To become a QA teacher, there is a great professional development course, that includes in world and skype based activity, held after school (AEST). The plan is to roll out a number of quests to a limited number of students in Term 4 2008, as there are 3 teachers at my school also doing the course. I have to thank Angela Cooke and Al Upton for the motivation to explore QA, and already I am thinking of how adding some QA type structures into Skoolaborate would work. I do like the way students submit their work to the ‘council’ online. I am thinking about how I can get that to work in Skoolaborate using Google Docs already.

The graphics animation is great in QA, and students get to try their hand at building. I know Westley Field at MLC uses QA are a fore-runner to Skoolaborate, and the lessons learned in QA would make for very productive students in Skoolaborate, so I am really thinking about how I can get students and teachers to use QA in the classroom.

One constant feeling I have is that schools need people to undertake this kind of professional development. Students benefit from activities that are out of the normal structures, and I really enjoy working with groups of kids what I don’t directly have any real tenure. Being able to offer things like QA at the whole school level, and then to support the teacher via technology is something that I see a growing role. EduTech is something that many EduBloggers and advocates talk about – the need to have a specialist, who can navigate the ‘tech’ aspects of Web2.0/MUVE/MMORPGs and support teachers in delivering the syllabus content in engaging ways.

I’ve buddied up with Jeff, a teacher from Great Falls, Montana. We have 3 other teachers in my school doing QA, so working with Jeff who is a middle school teacher, will give me a better insight into 7th and 8th grade learning, which is not to be honest my ‘home’ territory. It will be great to have both QA and Skoolaborate as part of the core desktop in school, meaning that our students are connected to many other teachers and students than ever before. I have no problem with them talking with other teachers or students in QA or Skoolaborate – as both are safe, secure and supportive worlds – and open 24/7, so kids can use both at home as well as school.

Can’t wait to graduate!

Naked Googling – we see you!

Diigo may fast becoming the new black in Social Bookmarking. The PBL Group on Diigo now has over 80 PBL teachers and educators with some fantastic discussions happening in a short period of time

Two of our PBL teachers are now using it to aggregate and focus learning in a cohort of over 150 students, divided into around 20 project groups.

Here’s how it is working. The students are working within Catholic Studies (the content) and Information Software Technology (IST). IST is a compulsory subject in 9th grade, no longer an elective.

The student task is scaffolded on our Moodle Server “PM Online“

In conjunction with the Blake Society, Parramatta Marist will be hosting the 2008 Images of Jesus Exhibition.

With the theme “Images of Jesus throughout history to contemporary times”, the exhibition has been created to link art, digital media and religion and give students new possibilities to explore and have published their own personal images of Jesus in the twenty-first century. This competition is one of many that the Blake Society promotes and supports, including the Blake Poetry Prize and the Blake Prize for Religious Art.

The winner of the Blake “Images of Jesus” Competition will have their work published in the Catholic Outlook. The competition will be judged by a panel of specialists.

Closing date for entries: Week 10, Term 2.

CONDITIONS OF ENTRY:

1. Each exhibition must be created by a group of 4 entrants.

2. Each exhibition must consist of a total of 12 pieces of artwork. Each group is expected to contribute one artwork from each historical period and four original artwork submissions.

3. Each piece within the exhibition must be accompanied by a written art caption of approximately 150 words. Each art caption must contain the name of the original artist, the artist’s motivation at the time of creation and personal analysis of the artwork.

4.There is a word limit of 2000 for each exhibition.

5. Individual submissions must be the original work of the entrant.

6. The exhibition must never have been published before, or have won another competition and they must not be under consideration by any publisher, literary magazine or for any other prize.

7. Artwork must be on the theme of “ Images of Jesus throughout history to contemporary times ”.

8. Exhibitions must be presented in a wiki and saved to digital media.

9. Each entry must be accompanied by an entry form.

10. Entrants should write their names, email addresses, group number and the title of the work on a separate wiki page.

11. No entries will be accepted by email.

12. The judges’ decision will be final and no correspondence about the result will be entered into.

Gavin Hays (IST) and Bruce Carr (RE) – the project facilitators, work as all our staff in PBL do in a team teaching environment. The students are obviously researching a wide range of things to answer this project and prepare their presentations. As we are painfully aware – “Googling” can largely be a shallow activity of clicking and skimming, rather that objectively assessing content and wide reading. Some students are better at searching than others – which often leads to a shallow pool of research.

Gav and Bruce have come up with a criteria in the project rubric that encourages students to research and share information, not just with a group, but with the year group using Diigo.

One of the interesting, and unexpected results is that students not only look for information, but are using Diigo’s comment feature to ’sumarise’ and ‘critically assess’ the information found in the context of the project. This has caused some competition within students, and also helping students with less skilled search techniques metacongnitively judge what they are doing in comparison to others – all with the wonderful anonymity that the web offers.

Students are not just looking at ’static’ images, but have jumped into looking at ‘film’. They are just as interested in looking at stills from music videos, films as they are in ‘art’ images.

The are using Diigos discussion group feature to talk about what they are finding and actively discussing what they are finding and how it can be applied to their learning and project requirements.

Compare this to ‘normal’ classroom “Googling”. The only evidence that students have actually done an research is some loose bibliography, and the often obvious ‘cut and paste’ job that they are slapping into a final document.

Gav and Bruce have begun to extend the Web2.0 environment into a new application. They have a pan optic view of what the students are looking at and can judge how ‘deep’ the research is going. They can comment on what they are finding.

Rather than ‘wait’ for the end product, they are able to see the direction the students are heading, and what kind of information the students consider ‘of value’ in answering the project.

In just over 2 weeks, 113 students have bookmarked and shared over 170 sources of information that can be used to develop their solution. Some groups have also set up their own smaller groups in this time.

Gav and Bruce have found: a simple and effective way to scaffold and create community learning; to be able to leave a ‘trail’ to show the path the students are taking; have a rich resource of bookmarks specific to this PBL unit of work that they can use again.

The students are still ‘Googling’, but are justifying, applying and creating in a very open Web2.0 space.

Of course some students are better than others at this but the quality of the ‘early bookmarks’ is helping the middle and lower order kids use a scaffold to build their own research. The students are TEACHING each other what makes a good ‘find’ and teaching Gav and Bruce a lot about how they go about research and what aspects of a ‘find’ that they consider ‘good’.

Gavin Hays and Bruce Carr are part of the Project Based Learning Group on Diigo. Our PBL classrooms are powered entirely by Web2.0 technologies – with the addition of Adobe Creative Suite for production. We do not run Mircosoft Office, nor Movie Maker. Our students produce work online or through Adobe Creative Suite and Final Cut Studio.

This week, a question was asked in a ’strategy’ meeting – how can we measure the increase in learning between what we used to do, and what we are now doing. The problem with that is the point of reference is the past. We never used to measure stuff like this, we made assumptions. What we are more interested in is benchmarking the growth and leveraging these skills into these kid’s futures. We could measure it as “Suggest 2 ways you can use Social Bookmarking in learning (4 marks)”. I would imaging most of the students would not get full marks in an exam,but if we ask them to do it, show it and apply it then we get a full score card and move from low order stuff to high order stuff in a very short space of time.

So stop asking kids to ‘list’ and ‘find’ with Google, and start asking them to analyse, appraise and apply with Diigo!