Small Changes; BIG RETURNS

The point of all this is that it took me right up to the last few minutes before the presentation at San Jose to get it all just right -- so there was no more time for blog posts.

To those of you who came to see us there, we hope some part of our presentation resonated with you. We'd love you to give us some feedback.  Perhaps you'll email me with the answers to the following 4 questions and any comments or suggestions you'd like to add:

    (a) Which part of the presentation was the most interesting to you?

    (b) Which part held your interest the least?

    (c) Will you be trying Freeapth?

    (d) Which of our other tools might you try?

Also, if you'd like to receive this blog regularly, please send me your email address. I'm trying to find out from the team at Posterous how I can send you all an update notice.

To the 2 people from Toronto -- I'm so glad you found us!!! Did we say/show anything that particularly interested you? I'm thinking of setting up a network of Canadian educators who use Freepath. I know of at least one person in Alberta. Are you interested?

This is one of our students, Syd G-B, using Freepath to research photos for her PowerPoint for Peace project slide.

NEXT 2 FREEPATH QUESTIONS:

How do you balance the use of "leading edge" tools with the normal time requirements as teachers?

Simply put, the flexible structure of the learning environment in our alternate school allows Debra and me to have the luxury of being able to make the time needed to learn and implement “leading edge” tools.  Working with individualized programs relieves us of the need to live within strict timelines.  Our kids keep working on a subject until they finish.  For some students this can be accomplished in a few weeks; for others a few months.  The self-paced instruction gives us the time to breathe, to think, to collaborate, and to learn new and interesting technology in a non-frantic, non-stressful manner, and to launch centre-wide projects like Powerpoint for Peace and our Earthcast’08 presentation.

How does Freepath fit into your classroom?

Freepath happens to be the tool I found and Deb agrees that is capable of helping us address a number of challenges, such as: how to easily combine different kinds of resources in one lesson; how to provide instruction that provides for different learning styles, multiple intelligences, and varying abilities; how to work around the limited bandwidth in our school; and how to maximize student on-task time in our individualized setting. 

Here’s what I envision:

Students will load up their thumbdrives (we can’t yet depend on fast or consistent internet connection) and they will be able to work on our material 24/7.  Many of them are night owls working on their computers at home anyway -- we might as well capitalize on this.  They can do the assignments right on the Freepath screen or print and work by hand if they wish.  The files can be deleted and replaced when the work is completed.  Their most interesting work samples can be stored in student portfolios at myFreepath.

A unit built in Freepath can truly get us away from traditional learning centre content packages -- duotangs with fading photocopied text material and lists of questions or written assignments.  Once we have loaded a playlist with the relevant text pages, idea diagrams, Powerpoints, pod- or vod-casts, other multimedia materials, and response form templates, we can let the students loose.  

Units constructed this way enable us to more easily differentiate learning by customizing activities to meet the needs of the student, and they ‘free‘ the student to negotiate the ‘path’way to learning.

For a stronger student, we can leave the completion of work required to meet the objectives more open-ended.  Whereas a special sequence of activities can be selected and arranged by just shifting the cues (frames) for students who need more direction or who have trouble with reading or grasping concepts. The neat thing here is that we don’t have to rely on print and long videos. We can dole the concepts out in smaller chunks and the students can go back as many times as is needed to really get the answers. We’re trying to minimize the hours spent reading content material they really don’t understand and answering questions by trying to match words and copy the ‘right stuff’.

The material can be easily reshaped over time as we listen to the students’ feedback and add new resources and remove others.   A case in point -- my mum sent me an article about a recent discovery of the oldest rock in the world (4.28 billion years) in northern Quebec. All my old stuff has the oldest rock in the North West Territories (4.03 billion years).  Right now I have to amend the old package, recopy it and toss out the old ones. Once it’s all in Freepath I’ll be able to change a couple of cues and be totally up to date. I may even have a student do that as part of a learning activity -- to reinforce the notion that scientific knowledge is always growing.

 

Filed under  //   blended learning   California   Freepath   ILC 2008   San Jose  

I have set up 3 playlists for the bigreturns group (just my profile is available here as of tonight)  at myFreepath . When you download Freepath and sign up for myFP at the same time, ask to be invited to my group and you'll be able to see a comprehensive tools list (with homepages and student work if we've used them already); a sample unit in Social Studies 10 showing how leading edge tools can be integrated, and a general pot of other stuff I thought would be of interest to people at the conference.

QUESTION: What are your beliefs about of the integration of new tools into your work in the classroom?

In our Learning Centre all students work individually on a variety of subjects in a large classroom area. Debra and I share this large storefront-type open room with all the distractions of two different classes going on simultaneously.

When there are fewer than 10 kids in our groups, keeping the kids on task is fairly straight forward.  However, we both can have upwards of 17-20 on our lists. Debra tends to get a younger group -- mostly grade 10’s -- many of whom have been recently ejected by their mainstream schools because they are difficult to manage. I teach math and science -- the 2 subjects that students find the most difficult to work on without constant help.

When our kids can’t work independently, we turn to better-crafted instructional packages to keep them interested and engaged.  It’s a matter of day-to-day survival for us. Therefore, we believe that keeping the students engaged, on task, and working independently requires us to put enough actual instruction into the packages so that they can understand the concepts without continual teacher input. This way they’ll be interested in and capable of working on their own for longer periods.

“Why everything old is new again, but better” (borrowed from Caroline Gray; see references below) is the banner we’re working under. We have no time or interest really in throwing out everything we’ve always done and starting over -- not after the more than 30 years it took to get good at what we do!

What really interests us is that there are a lot of smart young people out there developing easy-to-use tools to make tech-challenged people like us look good.  With such tools we can get students to perform tasks on the computer that we’ve always had them do by hand -- draw idea diagrams, work out time lines, collect research, make posters, build bibliographies, work through lesson packages. These tools enable our kids to produce work they can be proud of and that they can share with the world.  Such tools eliminate a lot of the struggle they used to endure to get the job done.  They can concentrate on the message rather than on the construction.

We want students to unplug their headphones, logoff Facebook, and get out of MySpace for a while. As shown in the affective domain model diagram above, no learning can occur until students are (a) receiving us and (b) have a willingness to give us their attention. We want students to give more of their 'brainspace' to schoolwork -- not just the bit left unfilled by loud music and text messaging. However, the 2 pre-requisites for engagement in learning -- i.e. receiving and willingness to pay attention -- are seldom elicited by our just insisting that the students turn off their devices when they pass through our doors.

To take them where we want them to go, teachers have to start from where they are -- but not just in the academic sense.

Students learn more from teachers they know care enough to forge a connection. We need to be willing to make ourselves vulnerable by taking some steps into their technological world and then guide them confidently into our world from a place at their side.

You must have flash to see this embedded document.

Filed under  //   blended learning   Bloom   Caroline Gray   enhance learning   Freepath   ILC 2008   model of engagement   myFreepath   San Jose   tools   using technology  

2 nights ago I finished 3 proposals for the NECC 2009 conference in Washington, DC next June/July. The deadline was midnight and I made it by 11:55 p.m. The next day one of my students remarked that it was probably a good thing the deadline was midnight because it meant I was forced to stop and get some sleep. I wasn so tired by the time I actually pulled away from the computer that I found this cartoon hysterically funny.

Click the pics for the links:

This looks like it will be a pretty interesting event that will be spread over several weeks. You can click the First Timers' link to figure out how to navigate the conference e-waters.  As long as you can convert GMT to your own time zone, and you're not teaching or sleeping when the sessions are broadcast, you can participate in real time. My biggest problem is that I can never make the time converter work!

Thanks to the Freepath people for the heads up on this interesting blogpost by Sarah Perez. In the comments was a reference to

which looks fascinating as was picked up by Jane Hart as well as her E-Learning Pick of the Day. After the 24th when the current conference season is over for me, I am definitely going to play with that one.

The folks at Freepath have posted the "short answers" to the long questions I referred to in my last entry. 

10:06 and I have to dash!

PPS:

Filed under  //   funny IT movie   ILC 2008   Jane Hart   K12 Online   NEEC 2009   pick of the day   Read Write Web   San Jose   Sarah Perez   ZuiPrezi  

Braving the weather makes us strong.  Talking about the weather gives us something in common.  When I lived in a different city from my family, my Dad used to call me long distance and we would chat about the weather.  When they're done, my students should know what makes the wind blow, what kind a front brings the kind of wind that is threatening to topple the over-heavy trees in my yard as I write,  and how the rain forms.  When their own kids ask "Why is the sky blue, Daddy?" if they can't recall the answer, they should be able to look it up with their kids and understand the explanation. If they catch from me a sense of how interesting the science of weather can be and look at the world with a little more understanding, I'll retire happy.

All my students work on individual learning packages, and even in this high pressure week, I didn't have the heart to hand out the 'copy-memorize-dump out on the test' stuff that makes up most of the learning packages that we use. Weather  I had to rewrite!  I finished it a few hours ago, and then let the deluge of emails flow out of the ether & onto my desktop.  It was kind of like watching the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when the bags of letters to Santa are dumped out on the judge's bench.  The most important items -- mostly education blogs and lists about tools and interesting initiatives -- have been sorted and filed. Family and friends have been replied to. The rest can wait.

In the meantime, the most interesting tools I came across today are listed below. Remember to click the pics.

GLOGSTER wants us to 'poster ourselves' -- a 'dumb' slogan but a great looking result.

 

Free video help for homework and test prep -- even for math -- but nothing on weather (boohoo!).  Some of these videos are a little young for my 15-17 year olds, but they're worth a look.

WEBINSIPIRATION  is a visual thinking tool that makes it easy to collaborate on and share documents by inviting others to contribute, post comments, and view changes.

For the budding composers in my class and new users can sign up free -- the drawback is that you have to subscribe ($$) to get a fully functioning version.

THE ART ZONE  -- interactive art that you can make online from the National Gallery of Art

I'm looking for a new way to communicate with my students -- especially when I have to be away from school or when I have new tools to share --  so I'm considering 2 possibilities:

 

    Grou.ps  -- where I can create a community site by choosing the modules I want -- it sounds a bit like Squidoo but with interactive capabilities.

 

   Offers me microblogging for education -- my students & I can share notes, links, and files to foster communication inside and outside of the classroom.

I want to thank shareski for his Interesting Quotes  series in Flickr.  I have to say I really don't get Twitter.  I can't imagine (a) having the time or (b) really caring enough to wonder what strangers are doing 24/7, but this poster and Angela Maiers' blogpost on the subject have me curious -- which is a big step.  Twitter's in my November 'to do' lineup.

Last spring when I was first looking for free, downloadable software that I could use to build interesting learning packages for the kids, I came across Freepath -- a multimedia packaging tool.  I can collect all the materials I use --  text files, PDF's, videos, sound files, and Powerpoints, and more -- and sequence them in a single playlist for a lesson or a presentation.  I managed to get my school district to allow my school to download Freepath to the our computer on a trial basis -- and now I'm in the process of working out how I can take the last step away from textbook-based learning into developing learning packages that will look something like this.  

By storing my playlist files online at myFreepath, I can make them available to the students who will be able to download them at home or bring their thumbdrives to school to be loaded.  I'll be able to invite other teachers to share my files and collaborate to improve them or build new ones.  

 

 

When I sign off here, I have to work on a list of questions sent by Dave of myFreepath.  The list reads a little like the final exams I took back when I was in 'teacher training' some 35 years ago. Many years ago a friend and co-department member at the time, Nancy Demwell, told me that she believed all teachers ought to be able to articulate the fundamental principles upon which their work was built. Few of us ever have to unless we're interviewing for a new job or want to move up the ladder into administration.

I think Nancy felt teachers fell into 2 groups: those whose work is infused with a well-articulated vision and those who fly by the seat of their pants.  The latter will certainly keep up with content requirements, familiarize themselves with new trends, and discipline as they saw fit at the time,  but their work lacks a greater coherence and meaning and has little lasting impact on the lives of their students.  She believed that answers to questions such as "Why are you a teacher?"  reveal a lot about whether the individual was a deeper thinker or "was good with people and wanted to good things for kids" -- a vague kind of response she thought was particularly flakey.  

So with Nancy on my mind, I am going to tackle Dave's questions. It's an interesting exercise especially given that I'm a year or 18 months at most away from retirement. I suspect with all this new passion for my work bubbling up again, my colleagues may be taking bets on whether I'll really going to leave or not.

Take a look at these and see what you come up with. Please send me your responses.

 QUESTIONS (courtesy Dave at myFreepath & edited a little by me):

(1) What is the core of your perception of the integration of new tools into the classroom? 

(2) How do you balance the need for "leading edge" tools with the normal time requirements of your program?

(3) In your blog, you discuss the idea of 'blended learning'; what does this teaching model look like?

 
(4) How do you see social media impacting students in the 21st century? How does it impact teachers and where do you see the intersection?

(5) How might Freepath fit into your classroom? 

Filed under  //   Angela Maiers   Art Zone   Edmodo   Freepath   Glogster   Grou.ps   ILC 2008   Interesting Quotes   Jam Studio   myFreepath   San Jose   shareski   Studio4Learning   weather   Webinspiration