ISTE Press Release

ISTE Announces winners of 2011 SIGOL Online Learning Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE®) has named the winners of the SIGOL Online Learning Award. This award recognizes creative teachers for their pioneering use of telecommunication networks to provide innovative learning opportunities for K-16 students.
Award winners were selected from a field of exceptional submissions. Judges sought three educators who created online learning curriculum that extended beyond the classroom to engage students. Among the award winners several initiatives were recognized for excellence, in areas such as digital citizenship, independent study, and global collaboration. Award winners will be honored at ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia this coming June 26-29.

• First Place: Hatboro-Horsham School District, Horsham, Pennsylvania, Valerie Frey, Diane Heitzenrater, Stacy Rotchford, and Andrew Osborne for "Internet Safety 101"
• Second Place: Manitou Springs School District , Manitou Springs, Colorado. Lisette Casey and Toni Olivieri-Barton for "We’ve got Sole"
• Third Place: Two Way Interactive Connections, Janine Lim, Berrien Springs, Maryland, Sue Porter, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Elaine Shuck, Sturgis, South Dakota for "Read Around the Planet"

In addition to the top winners, the judges also gave Honorable Mentions to the following projects:

• Cordill-Mason Elementary, Blue Springs, Missouri, Gail Bush and Civacon-Kanppco Engineering, Riverside, Missouri, and Chris Boucher, Honeywell FM&T, Kansas City, MO for "Engineering e-Mentors"
• Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School, Reg Nakoneshny, Saskatoon, SK, Canada for "Animation 10"
• Denton Avenue School, Lisa Parisi and Lauryn Tiedemann New Hyde, New York and Brian Crosby, Agnes Risley School, Sparks, Nevada for "Energizing Energy"
• Short Pump Elementary School, Michael Price, Richmond, VA for "Online Social Science Network"
• Geelong High School, Geelong, Victoria, Australia, Gail Casey, Darren Hobbs, Kyla Jacques, Felicity Cowey, and Kelly Roberts, for "Changing Classroom Practices and Attitudes through Online Social Media"

About ISTE
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE ®) is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in advancing excellence in learning and teaching through the innovative and effective use of technology in PK-12 and teacher education. Home to ISTE’s annual conference and exposition and the widely-adopted NETS, ISTE represents more than 100,000 professionals worldwide. http://www.iste.org.

iPads and SMARTE Design Coming to Manitou

I'm so excited!  Manitou Springs School District 14 is introducing 1:1 technology next year.  That 1:1 technology will be the iPad.

TO SUPPORT EFFECTIVE DELIVERY OF 21ST CENTURY INSTRUCTION AND CURRICULUM, Manitou Springs School District will provide an iPad to every student in the 5th through 8th grades for next school year. Teachers have already been using the devices to deliver instruction this year, and with one in the hands of each student, the district will move to the next level of technology integration in education.

The district plans to have select classes at the high school use the devices in 2011- 12 to help prepare for the following school year, when every student in grades 5 through 12 will have their own device.

Students will be able to take the iPads home with them to work collaboratively on projects, do web-based research on their own, OR COMPLETE HOMEWORK.  Learning is no longer confined to the hours of the school day; with today’s technology, it can happen at any hour of the day from anywhere.

How will the iPad change learning at MSMS?  Well, for starters it will increase student participation and engagement.  There are so many interesting  apps available on the iPad that excite and engage learners because of the current information they access and their interactive nature.  Learners are no longer solely consumers of information but producers of content.  Everyone can create on the iPad.  The connectivity and portability of the the iPad allow students to connect with experts and learners anywhere in the world throughout the school day.  They allow for flexible and tailored learning.  Students who struggle to get their thoughts written down on paper have many apps to choose from to make this process less laborious and arrive at the same end result.  We're truly moving to a student centered model of learning.

Additionally, the district will be launching the S.M.A.R.T.E. Design (science, mathematics, art, research, technology, and engineering) program for students in 6th through 12th grades in 2011-12. Students will be receiving rigorous instruction and will be applying skills via team-based projects. The 21st Century student must have extraordinary skills in reading, writing, math and science, along with the ability to
create, design, solve and apply. This program has been created to address the needs of the “whole new child.”

Manitou Springs School District – still growing strong!

Collaborative Projects Using Google Docs and Skype

Skype in the classroom

7th grade classes in Colorado, USA and El Salvador were working on collaborative presentations in Google Docs related to what a day looked like for kids in their respective countries.  Early in the project as students were editing their google docs excitement erupted. The other class was also online and working on the presentations.  Immediately Google Apps group chat windows began popping up and student exclamations could be heard all around the room. These students were no longer separated by thousands of miles.

We very quickly shifted the entire class into the center of the room and our partners in El Salvador did the same.  We got Skype up and running at both ends and within minutes were video conferencing with our partner school, and the excitement began to crescendo. We had not prepared in advance for this. It was a bit of a surprise, so there was no script, just kids engaging in discussions about each other, face to face with their partners in another country using Skype. Hobbies, favorite books, musicians and the weather were the main topics of discussion.

This impromptu skype lesson developed further as we began to prepare for our final conference with the schools, sharing our projects and asking questions of each others' culture etc...  Skype allowed us to bridge the distance gap and students soon realized that kids in other countries aren't so different from one another.  They enjoyed similar experiences in all avenues of life.

My collaborative partner is this project was Jennifer Garcia the Learning Resources Centre Coordinator from Academia Britanica Custaleca in El Salvador.  Together we coordinated this learning experience for our students and used skype to iron out the details.

Check out the student presentations on the ABC wiki.

Online Learning Environments - Today's Meet

Just yesterday I was listening to someone state their child uses Facebook to do their homework.  "What do you mean?" another parent asked.  The person responded, "The teacher assigns a worksheet and everyone gets together to post the answers on Facebook.  No need to copy papers in the morning anymore."

Students love collaboration.  It's easy to take the good from the above events and incorporate them into a meaningful learning experience using Today's Meet.  Today's Meet is a backchannel, a room created by someone wanting to encourage conversation about a particular topic.  Anyone with the link can join in on the discussion.  The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, provide feedback, and as in the case above, exchange answers.  Tapping into Backchannels lets presenters of any kind tap into the needs of the audience and engage them at the same time.


I used Today's Meet in class the other day as a sounding board for a lesson related to image manipulation related to iPhoto.  Students in the class enjoyed this means of asking and answering questions.  When I first introduced them to the concept of a backchannel silly, unrelated posts began appearing.  I encouraged this experimentation until the class had a handle on how the backchannel worked.  Students need play time with new tools.  The experimentation period provided an excellent opportunity for a quick lesson in digital citizenship, the need to be appropriate, and a reminder that everything written is visible to all.  There is no delete button.  I am convinced if we increase the opportunities for students to engage in appropriate, online conversations at school these behaviors will transfer to their personal life, especially when they understand the risks of poor choices.

 Students quickly became comfortable with the format of Today's Meet and we focused the conversation on the topic - iPhoto editing of images.  Some students actively participated in the backchannel while some checked in every so often to view the dialogue.   Overall, I was very pleased with the way students helped each other solve problems from across the room.  The backchannel gave everyone an equal voice in the classroom.



Mark Barnes at Learn It In 5 has created an excellent how-to video showing you how to use Today's Meet.




There are all sorts of ways to use Today's Meet in an educational setting.
First, create a room, then have students go to it, either in teams or individually.

Then:
Write a backwards story and then use the transcript mode to display the entire dialogue in reverse order (beginning to end.)
Mark Homework 
Check understanding during a lesson
Review game - students post answers
Write supporting sentences to an introductory sentence of a paragraph
Write key points of a particular topic
Brainstorming a particular topic
Warmup - Post open-ended questions to get students thinking on a subject
Editing Exercise - post a sentence that needs correcting

Just be cautious about the room name when you create the room and don't leave the room online for longer than two hours unless you plan on monitoring the room.  

7 Guidelines For Marketing Schools

Don Tapscott offers a Consumers 2.0 list at the end of chapter 7 in his book Grown Up Digital.   I started thinking about the school itself being a company and the students and parent community being the consumers.  The checklist at the end of the chapter is fitting if you change the last wording from Consumers 2.0:  Seven Guidelines For Marketing Professionals to Seven Guidelines for Marketing Schools.  As teachers I think we can, and should, apply these guidelines to our classrooms.  But it doesn't stop there.  These guidelines need to infuse all aspects of the school setting from the front office to the lunchroom to the recreation areas.  I'll post them for further discussion.

1.  Don't focus on your customers - engage them.  Turn them into prosumers of your goods and services.  Young people want to coinnovate with you.  Let them customize your value.  Open up your products and services.
Some teachers are already doing this with Web 2.0 tools and this is just the beginning.  If parents and students want to make the services better, let them.
2.  Don't create products and services - create consumer experiences.  Add value to your offerings to make them richer experiences and use the Web to help deliver your new value.
Richer experiences lead to greater investment.
3.  Radically reduce advertising in broadcast media.  Shift your "Marketing Communications Spending" to digital media.
And...encourage students and parents to have a hand in the creation of these communications.
4.  Develop a strategy to plug into N-Fluence networks.  The three keys to Net Gen marketing are word of mouth, word of mouth, and....you get the idea.
It's time schools had a presence on social media.  We're missing a great opportunity to connect with customers.
5.  Rethink your brand.  The brand is no longer just a promise, image, or gadget- for many companies it should become a relationship.
We've been promising educations and many believe schools are falling short.  When schools build relationships with their students and parents, learning and good education are easier to achieve.  Students are willing to go the extra mile for a teacher they trust and have a relationship with.
6.  Bake integrity into your corporate DNA and marketing campaigns.  Honesty, consideration, accountability, and transparency are the foundation of trust for this generation.  Be authentic in everything you do.
Share everything worth sharing via social media, newsletters.  Explanation and keeping students and parents informed on events and decisions helps build trust.
7.  Move the Net Generation into the center of your marketing campaigns.  They are important.  They influence all generations like never before.  The Four Ps - product, place, price, and promotion - are an inadequate framework to deal with the consumer of the future.  Replace them with the ABCDE of marketing:  anyplace, brand, communication, discovery, and experience.
We need to move towards bringing the ABCDE of marketing to our lessons so that students will walk away with incredible learning experiences.

It's time to start talking about how we can make these transitions in public education.

Emphasizing Reading and Non-Fiction Writing in Every Assessment

Part of our weekly PLC sessions in our district are spent discussing what needs to occur in our classrooms as we promote and increase rigor and opportunity.  Today I discuss point # 2.  

Effective teachers emphasize reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment.

I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not a big fan of scripted writing, specifically when students follow scripts to paragraph writing.  At the end of the day a teacher faces reading 20+ paragraphs, each having five sentences which includes a topic sentence, a red, a green, and a blue or what ever the color coding for these approaches may be.  The topics may be different but the structure is the same. I don't think they promote good writing though some might argue they promote standard writing. And though there is a great deal of pressure in schools for students to perform well on state assessments we can still promote a love for or an interest in writing by providing opportunity for writing in everything they do, including assessment.

But I'm off task.... already.

Many of my thoughts on writing come from Laura Robb's book Non-fiction Writing from the Inside Out

What is important to me about writing is this:

• Redefining non-fiction writing in a way that encourages creativity and relevance to both the reader and the writer.
• Encouraging understanding so that students understand that the "league of writers" is not exclusive but open to everyone
• Providing student examples as models of writing-in-process to encourage risk taking and exploration of unconventional approaches to writing. 

But, aside from my beliefs, the first question for me is:  What makes including reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment effective teaching?  

If I assume the answer - it does - to the above question is correct, that there is research to back the statement up, and I'm left to document how I do include reading and non-fiction writing in every assessment - well that's an easy task.  And though I do this because it jives with my beliefs and because it makes good pedagogical sense (incorporates critical thinking, etc...,) it leaves my curiosity to wonder how doing so makes me more or less effective?  

So I tried doing some research and have come up empty handed.  

If I am given the charge of incorporating reading and non-fiction writing into my teaching than I want to be sure what I am doing is being done well.

If you have resources to the question above, please forward them my way.

I Love Teaching

Nathan Russell

I love being a part of another's learning and for that I am truly grateful I am an educator.  There is something very special about being an instrumental part of someone reaching their potential, discovering something new, or seeing something in a different light for the first time.  Lucky for me I get to do this on a daily basis and though sometimes obstacles arise when I least expect them, they provide a challenge that sweetens the reward for the learner, and ultimately me, the teacher.

All this sentimental hogwash arises from my just spending an hour reading over the most recent blog posts of my students.  I had asked them to reflect on their learning related to a specific essential learning and to comment on what they had learned and what they were most proud of in their work.  I was astounded at their comments but mostly, they were astounded at their posts.  Some of those students were literally stunned when they hit the publish button and visited their site to view their work.  Stunned because never before had they written so much in such little time and had it published for others to view. Stunned because after taking the time to summarize a project they realized how much they had learned.  Stunned because they all saw ways to improve and when they had a free moment were returning to their work to add in those improvements.  Stunned because they were beginning to realize that perhaps learning and sharing that process wasn't so bad after all.  How could I not love being a part of that process?

Kids, teenagers, adults... I feel so fortunate to have the time to spend with them, to encourage them to craft their methods, to introduce new tools, to model learning in the 21st century, to share and be a part of the lifelong learning in each and everyone of their lives.  Lucky me.