The kids were off for Martin Luther King. Jr.’s birthday, but the teachers had an all-day inservice. I was kind of look forward to it because our speakers were supposed to tell us about how Ruby Paine’s Framework for Understanding Children in Poverty would help our kids. Nearly half the kids in my class are on Free/Reduced lunch, so I was very interested in how I could help them to achieve better.
The people who showed up were 3 administrators from Hutchinson, KS USD 308 school district. The proceeded to tell us about the impressive gains their district had made on No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress. Over half their students live in poverty, but they pulled their students’ achievement above the ever-rising AYP proficiency bar. It’s impressive, and I wondered how they did it. They credited it to 5 things:
- Ruby Paine’s program $$$
- Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures program $$$
- Koality Kids / Quality Keys program $$$
- Data driven curriculum alignment and assessment analysis
- Technology integration
They spent some bucks on the first three training programs.
They spent the rest of the day telling us about what the Ruby Paine program, Koality Kids program, and data were, but very little about how we could use it in our classroom. I was excited to hear that they had successfully implemented Cooperative Learning and Technology integration into their district. That’s what I wanted to hear. Nada.
Instead we got cramped points full of lists and words too small to see. We got a birds-eye, administrator overview. Each presentation, Koality Kids, Ruby Payne, and data, was abstract. Each presentation had 5 minutes of sunshine that gave me an activity or graphic organizer I could use. I could have gone without the other 55 minutes from each. I guess it’s par for the course for full-day inservices. I guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.
I still would like to know more about Cooperative Learning structures, address the needs of students in poverty, and technology integration. I guess I will still have to search for it on my own. Do you have some good ideas for resources? I’ll include here ones I find useful in my classroom.
I just finished my first workshop for this year. It was on Making Classroom Web Pages with Blogs. It was open to all teachers in my district, only 4 came. I tried a new, modified format which had mixed results.
Workshop 2.0 - I wanted a workshop that was more interactive than a standard “sit and get” workshop.
Overall the workshop was a success. The participants learned a lot of what they wanted to know through our conversations and left with a classroom web page (actually 3 pages). I’ll do a 3 hour version of this workshop next month at our local Southwest Center for Educational Excellence. Upon reflection, I think there are some things I would like to change for next time.
- I showed them 3 places to make web pages: Blogger, Edublogs, and Wetpaint. I think I will leave out Blogger next time. The purpose I put it in was to show them how easy it is to make a blog, but it took more time than it was worth.
- I think I’ll invert the agenda and show Wetpaint first instead of last, since they have to sign up for it anyway to edit any pages. I ran out of time to show them more about Wetpaint, even though we used it for the whole workshop.
- I had a separate notes and agenda page. The notes page was unnecessary because it involved too much flipping back and forth. We could just use the agenda page for notes.
- Instruct the participants on how to flip back to the wiki on a separate tab to take notes. I don’t think they understood that it was Ok to edit the agenda. I could ask separate people to add various notes to the agenda during the workshop. Collaborative note-taking on a wiki is a very new idea, and may take a while to work out kinks.
- Most participants still wanted to use pen and paper to jot notes on. I guess I’ll give in and copy an agenda for them to take notes on.
- The beginning workshop writing prompt needs to be more open-ended, but not general in purpose. Maybe, “Why do you want create a web page?” This needs to be one wiki page instead as comments on a blog entry. They will also need an overlap task for those who finish their answer early.
- To get participants to use the treaded discussion, I need to teach it, give a stimulus video, then give them some time to think, type, and reflect.
- I need to be prepared to talk about Edublogs control panel.
- I should include how to add a Feedjit map and Voki script to the blog.
- Quit 5 minutes early to allow reflection time at the end to comment on a “Takeaway” Edublogs post.
There were also many things I liked.
- I loved using the Wetpaint wiki as an online handout while teaching about the Wetpaint wiki.
- I think it would be Ok to integrate more about 21st century skills: internet safety, blogs, wikis, connected networks, collaboration, Creative Commons, global focus, and the role of creativity in learning. They were curious about the direction technology is moving in education.
- The discussion was great.
- The examples of how I had used blogs, wikis, and my classroom web page in my classroom were very illustrative.
- They were fascinated by the Feedjit and Clustermaps map of visitors. (It’s one of my favorites, too.)
Workshop 2.0 is a new approach, but I think it has tremendous potential after some adjustments. Read/Write Web interactions will have to be taught, though. If you have ideas or comments, please leave them below.
- Since it was such a small group, the workshop turned out to be a good mix of lecture, discussion, hands-on, and one-on-one just-in-time learning.
I am teaching a workshop in my district on Monday on how to create classroom web pages.
The online handouts wiki for the workshop is at
I was going to just do it with blogs, but Wetpaint had a terrific template for creating classroom web pages. So, I added it in.
If you are in the workshop now head over to our first stop on the journey: Blogger.
You can also leave feedback in a comment to this post if you like.
Once you have an
Thin client network set up, then what do you do? What do you do with the kids? Will it last past this year, or will it just be another fad? You needs a plan.
Step 1 is very ready student access to the technology with an Edubuntu thin client network (Which is more than my class has now with one computer lab for over 500 students). However, we already know that just putting computers into the classroom does not necessarily improve student learning. It’s not about the tools, it’s about the learning.
Step 2 is high-quality Professional Development. The training needs to be over time to allow application of new techniques. The training must include collaboration between defined small groups that allow free exchange of ideas, best practices, successes, and failures. It needs to include ready access to online, on-demand, just-in-time learning. The teachers need to feel they supported and allowed to take some risks.
Step 3 is Support. This includes moral support from school leadership. The school administration needs to have a vision for how the technology and learning should look like in the classroom. There also needs to be technical support from the IT department. Some IT support people don’t want anything to do with non-proprietary software since support comes with software you buy. Some just don’t understand Open Source Software. However, some companies
have developed their business model around supplying support
for open source software. The software is free, but you can buy tech support. There are also 
online manuals and 
forums.
That is just the big picture planning before it can even be effectively used in the classroom. Maybe you are already at this point. If so what has been your experience so far in bringing technology into the learning with you students?
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Professional Development To Go - A Summer Time Treat
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| But just because technology is on your list of areas where you want to refresh your skills does not mean you have to spend all your time inside on a computer. If you’re the type of educator who feels torn between the need to upgrade your technology skills and the need to be enjoy the sunshine, paint the garage, or play in the dirt, then why not take your Professional Development to Go! Grab your IPod or other mp3 player, fill it with podcast that instruct, inform, or inspire you to become a 21st century teacher. (Photo credit) |
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This what I did this summer. I downloaded all of the podcasts from the blogs I follow or discovered. I then got loads of professional development while I worked around the yard and weeded the garden. I’ve gone through all of Wesley Fryer’s, David Warlick’s, Vicki Davis’, Miguel Guiland’s, and 2006 K12 Online conference podcasts. I’ve started listening to Bob Sprankle’s Bit-by-Bit podcasts, and the Worldbridges EdTechtalk podcasts.
The result is that I have started blogging this summer. However, I’ve noticed that it is harder to blog about a particular podcast because I have forgotten my thought by the time sit down to write. I’m working on some podcasts to add.
Unfortunately, Our cable has been out for over a week, so I’ve been disconnected from a lot of my professional development. which also makes it hard to blog about podcasts or anything else. I hope to do some podcasting and blogging with my 3rd graders this year. I just figured out how to add clip of something to my blog. Cool huh?
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