Brainstorming about eCommunication

Just saw a tweet about this article from eSchools News "Ten Tips for Building eCommunication." (Thanks @kylepace!) I'm thinking about their list and how it could be applied to a school district as well as an individual teacher's website but also about how these tips are really about creating "community." So I'm going to take a stab at brainstorming a few ideas for each of these and perhaps you might add more of your own in the comments.

1. Start Tweeting: We're seeing that school districts are jumping on the Twitter technology and using it as a way of communicating with parents. Wouldn't it be great if the district tweeted to:

• welcome new teachers to the district
• keep parents up to date with school curriculum nights
• reminders about vacation dates, half days, testing dates, etc.
• congratulate teachers or students on their accomplishments
• communicate regularly with staff
• point out outstanding classroom projects

2. Tell stories: We have a staff newsletter that comes out at certain times during the year. Instead of a printed newsletter giving us bullet points about new teachers, why not ask them to write a short story about themselves? Instead of bullet points about teachers retiring, why not have them write about their experiences as teachers and their plans for the future? How about featuring students telling stories about things they're learning in their classrooms?

3. Add more people: eSchool News refers to this as bringing a human dimension to communications. How about creating and sharing a VoiceThread about things going on in the district? It would probably take as much time for someone to record a message as it would to write, revise, print and distribute.

4. Keep it fresh: I think my school district's website does a good job with that but individual teachers don't always. People who are considering moving into the district almost always begin with the district website and then move on to look at what teachers are doing. Simple tools can help to make the updates easy to do and keep the pages fresh. How about enlisting older students (in an elementary building) to buddy up with students who are younger and help them choose pictures or class work that they'd like to display on the teacher's web page?

5. Survey your audiences: While eSchool News points out the use of online tools such as SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang "for less than $50 per year", Google forms provide a free way of surveying people quickly and gathering the results together in a spreadsheet for further analysis.

6. Use new tools in new ways: The article talks about building in feedback loops.

• Seems like Google forms would be easy to use. It could be embedded in a teacher's webpage for parents to visit with ease. A survey form could be used for gathering names of parents to help with field trips or special events or for students to gather data to be used in Science, Math, Social Studies, etc.
• How about presenting a math problem to be solved, then have a chat room such as Today's Meet set up for other classes to contribute their ideas and/or chat about the possibile solutions?

7. Start blogging, podcasting and video streaming

• What if student's doing a Reader's Theatre were streamed live to other classrooms?
• Blogs are easy to set up. Classblogmeister and Edublogs are pretty standard for classrooms and they're free.
• Video streaming in-school events, evening concerts and other events would be a great way to bring the school and community together
• Put a virtual bookshelf, such as GoodReads, Library Thing and others on your blog or website and invite others to talk about the stories you're reading with your students - your memories, what connections those stories have to your childhood, etc.
  

8. Free control of web sites from IT.

• Does your network administrator or IT team know what's going on in your classrooms? Now is a good time to help them see what they're supporting. Send them regular emails, tweets or whatever linking them to class projects, blogs and other instructional work where the technology is key.

9. Improve site navigation: I like the site search engine idea...I don't think we have one. That would be a great addition to every school website.

10. Learn from the kids: Many of the teachers I work with have said that they feel like the kids know more than they do. So what? We can take advantage of that. We can create expert groups among our students to buddy up with younger kids or with other teachers for assistance. That would be a great way to promote community in the school.

Well...that's what I've come up with. Anything you'd like to add?

The Art of Possibility

Since attending the Building Learning Communities conference put on by November Learning in Boston last week, I've been working to make some final edits to a wiki I'm working on to support a workshop on Digital Tools and searching for just the right way to present the information. Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra was the first keynote speaker. His point of view and philosophy about life and work and everything else was refreshing to me and I immediately found the inspiration I was looking for to move on with my workshop planning.

On Wednesday evening of the conference, we were able to see him demonstrate how his philosophy becomes performance when he conducted the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. I've been to a number of musical performances in my life but this one...this one was...absolutely wonderful!

I picked up a copy of the book he wrote with his wife Roz and just finished putting it on my "currently reading" shelf at GoodReads. If you haven't seen GoodReads yet, I'd recommend it highly.

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander



I need to give an "A" to more people in my life. Read the chapter 3 to learn more.

View all my reviews >>

The Power of Words

Wordle is such a great tool. It really gives us the power to see the intent of a document. Here, at the Connected Classroom, is a Wordle created from the NETS-A document just released by ISTE. With that in mind, I thought I'd see what Wordle would do with the NETS -S. I removed the words "student", "use", "using" and "technology" thinking that it's a fairly obvious assumption that those words would occur frequently in the document. Here's what Wordle came up with.

I kind of like this: digital, information, and learning - all of those words are important as we help our students use the digital learning tools that are available and that help them locate, organize and use information.

Now, let's see what the NETS-T looks like. Once again, I removed "teachers", "use" and "using" as well as "technology" - again, feeling that those words should be pretty obvious. Here's the result:

Learning comes out on top - of course, that's really what I would have expected to see. But, I'm also noticing that model, tools, and digital are fairly large words here. That is what I hope we can continue to think about in our work in my district next year. Teachers learning to use the digital tools and modeling their use for our students in order for them to begin to use those tools for their learning.

Embracing Imperfect

I'm reading an article today on AssortedStuff titled "Imperfect is What You Want." This is making me reflect back on the work we've done in our school district this year in creating digital stories, having students blog and working with wikis.

It's always been the case that we want our students to achieve some level of perfection before they publish their work.  But, publishing to the walls of the hallway is different than publishing to the world.  It's when we start putting our work and our voice on the web that we begin to be even more afraid of the imperfect.

But, imperfect is the beginning of growth isn't it?  It gives us a chance to go back and look at our work and reflect on what we can improve on or take stock of how far we've come. The web then is the perfect place for us to begin that journey since it provides a way of archiving the work that we do.

As I think back on the work done last year in my district, I keep thinking about the fact that we've tended to use our technology tools too much for just the end product - the "Project."  I worked through this thinking a little bit in a previous post when I was reflecting about how the use of the technology became problematic in some of the "projects" when the inevitable glitches or lack of knowledge on the teachers' part prevented them from moving forward. We waited until the end product needed to be created before we taught students how to use the tools.  I think this makes our work more difficult when we're at a point where we need to come to a finish on something, especially those projects that brings us right up to the end of the school year.

So, next year we should begin to embrace imperfection early on and learn together as we go.  Imperfect is a part of life and a part of working with technology and imperfect means that we're growing.

The Technology is Getting in Our Way

Over and over again in the past few weeks, this idea that the technology can get in our way keeps coming up. Let me explain a little further...

This has actually been a really exciting and productive school year. We've had several projects going on incorporating the use of new technologies or software that have been introduced including PhotoStory, VoiceThread, and Diigo to name a few.

But, here's what I'm struggling with right now... It seems that these tools have been incorporated into projects at the point where the students need to be using them to support their learning or for creating the end product. In other words, we're not teaching the tool and refining the skills as we go along with smaller, manageable activities. We're teaching the tool as the learning needs to be occurring or as the project needs to be completed. And, because of this, I'm wondering if, when we wait until that point, the technology is getting in the way.

The tool is never the point, of course, but, the processes and skills needed to use the tool effectively have to be taught. How can we scaffold the teaching of those skills in such a way that, when it's time for that "big" project, our students already have an automaticity with the skills to the point where the technology isn't "in the way?"

Kim Cofino already recognizes this need when she writes:

One of my first tips for any teacher wishing to authentically embed technology into their classroom experience is always to start small. It’s easier to build on a simple, achievable idea, than it is to trim down an all-consuming tech monstrosity.

The automaticity with any tool is what helps us to use that tool to support our learning and to create. This is where procedural knowledge comes in. When what we need to learn involves following a specific set of steps in a process, we need to practice these steps to a level of automaticity then begin to apply the use of those skills to new situations. If we begin with "simple, achievable ideas" first, we can provide the scaffolding of procedural knowledge that will help our students become better users of technology in support of 21st century learning.

Flickr photo by Chrysaora

No News Makes a Difference

On the way into Panera for breakfast this morning, my husband commented that he'd been listening to something on the radio where they were talking about whether or not we would soon see the end of newspapers all together. Since he's retired, his morning routine begins with coffee and breakfast at Panera along with the morning newspaper. He jokingly said, "What am I going to do when I come for breakfast if there's no newspaper?"

In the last few months, that newspaper that we enjoy together over a leisurely breakfast on the weekends has changed. The number of pages is fewer, the focus of what's printed has changed and frankly, what we pay for it isn't worth the read anymore.

So, in response to my husband's question, I said that maybe places like Panera will have to build devices into some of their tables so that we can get whatever news we want digitally. I can just imagine not having to drag my laptop there but rather being able to just pop up some sort of screen that automatically connects me to the web so I can access the news in any way I'd like. What do you think? Is someone out there already thinking about this?

Create a New Story

This video on Teachertube is a really cute way of conveying a message using the format of a familiar story by Laura Numeroff, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." Enjoy!



A technology specialist took this one step further and made it a project done with first graders narrating. Nicely done!

In the Trenches...

Holy cow! It's been about a month since I've been here to update my blog. I never have set goals for keeping up the writing and sometimes the thoughts don't come when so many and varied things are going on. So...let's see if I can catch up a bit here with the events of life in the fast lane in just the last month!

Technology Site Visit
Each year, the National School Boards Association sponsor site visits to school district to "showcase innovative technology implementation." We attended a visit in Batavia that was really interesting. We saw the use of interactive whiteboards, document cameras, tablet PC's and we got to hear from district staff about how they've funded, planned for and implemented the use of technology in their classrooms. These were two well spent days. The NSBA did a fine job of organizing the visit and the staff in Batavia were very welcoming to those visiting from New York state, Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere. Oh yeah...and their music groups entertained us all along the way. Batavia can be very proud of their music programs as well.

Curriculum
Five years ago we began a curriculum process in which we created documents that would guide the teaching, assessment and learning in our classrooms. We've begun to take a look back at Social Studies to review the alignment between the documents and our state curriculum. We've found that we're doing well in that area but we need to provide some additional resources for some of the topics. I've had an active role in this process and it gives me a chance to get a better idea of exactly how Social Studies is being addressed by our teachers and to make some recommendations for technology resources.

Collaborative Projects
For the past three years, we've been involved with the PALS project through our regional school library system. PALS is all about the librarian and the collaborative relationships that can exist with the classroom teacher when we all have access to the data that informs instruction and learning. As an instructional technology specialist, it's a lot of fun to help plan this work with our great library media specialists and classroom teachers. But the best part is the problem solving we're doing together as we work through the collaborative process and the implementation of the technology tools that support all of the projects that are being designed. Our work with collaborative projects continues to grow and expand each year.

Literacy
This year, each grade level has had the opportunity to meet together twice to discuss small group instruction and the use of literacy work stations. As the basis for this, they've talked about the Daily Five (the excellent work of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) as well as the work of Debbie Diller.

We have an excellent group of teachers who are known as ELA team leaders. They have been charged with helping to facilitate these groups and have done a really spectacular job with it. We have a Blackboard site for Curriculum and Instruction which we're using to support English Language Arts through the sharing of lesson activities and resources. Since I help to maintain that site, I stay involved in this initiative. Again, a great way to stay in touch with teacher needs and a great way to bring the use of technology into the discussions.

Teacher Training
This year, the decision was made to switch our elementary computers from Mac to PC. It's difficult to see this happen for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we've supported the use of Macs in the district for more than 20 years. Nevertheless, some of our teachers need to learn how to use Word and understand the navigation of a networked PC. In addition, we have computer lab assistants who are learning to use new software tools such as Scholastic Keys. We'll also be working with Google Picasa and PhotoStory 3. These are the kinds of issues occupying a lot of my time not to mention planning for the removal, discard or reallocation of all those computers as we make this switch in stages.

Smartboards
For the past three years, we've slowly been installing Smartboards in our secondary buildings - grades 6-12. This year, for the first time, we're beginning to install them in our elementary buildings as well. Unfortunately, they've just come in - too late in the school year to make arrangements for full training on the use of the boards and the software. So, late this summer, we'll be preparing these teachers to make use of the Smartboard in their instruction to begin the next school year.

Data Analysis
OK...I'm a data geek. We have some cool resources for data in my district and I've been taking all the facts and figures and putting them together for building administrators. I really do like that part of my job but it's really labor and time intensive. And...wouldn't you know it? The data isn't usually available until right about now. First of all, it doesn't come in a timely fashion that allows us to use the data to have an impact on this year's learning. The best we can do is to look at the results, let the next year's teachers for those students see how they did and try to find some patterns in performance that help us to know what kinds of skills in general are in need of remediation.

So, I think that's about it. How about you? Is the end of your school year as busy as the rest of the year or does everything seem to happen at the end? Cheers!

Ahh....Springtime!

Spring break...we look forward to it every year as a time to open the windows and let nature remove the stale winter air from the house replacing it with the fresh, clean air of springtime. While many of my colleagues take this time to travel to southern climates (which are not always all that warm at this time of year), we usually prefer to spend this time at home doing the things that we can't always get to when we're working.

Here are some reasons that I'm really enjoying this particular Spring Break.

1. A change from the work routine.
The work routine and time schedule is well established in our household. With the kids gone, we're thoroughly entrenched in our morning routine - out the door before 7:00 am; me to travel for 25 minutes and my husband to enjoy his coffee, doughnuts, morning paper and chats with friends before going to his school. We're into our work for the entire day then back home again - me to go exercise at a local establishment, my husband to work a little extra beyond the usual day and then we're both home to enjoy dinner and relax for the evening.

But this vacation, my routine has been to start the day with exercise then come home and do a little work at the computer - reading blogs, thinking about the tasks to be accomplished before the end of the school year and doing some writing. I could easily adopt this routine forever!

2. Time to read and actually process the information I'm getting.
I do a lot of reading both in and out of my job. The reading outside my job is mostly related to reading blogs, checking in on what those folks are connecting their readers to and sometimes, tackling a pile of books that I seem to find interesting enough to purchase but hard to read on a continuous basis. It's been very rare lately that I start a book and then read it all the way to the end. I guess I find that I read about half of a book and get the gist of what the author's thesis is then move on to something else. After all, it's going to be sitting on the shelf waiting for me if I ever have the need to go back to it.

But, what happens, no matter what I'm reading during the school year, is that I feel this rush to move on to something else. I log in to my Bloglines account, click on the latest updates, save some for "future" review, sometimes make a comment but, mostly I just skim through for new information that applies to my own work. Under those conditions, there's not really a lot of time to process what I'm reading - to think about it more deeply, respond more clearly, make clear connections to my previous learning.

So, on this vacation, when I come home from the exercise, I get my breakfast ready, fix a nice cup of tea and go to my computer for my reading and thinking time. I can spend all morning here if I want or I can spend a little time now and a little time later. I'm already feeling lots of cobwebs being swept from my brain as I replace them with the freshness of new ideas.

3. Make new connections for creativity and innovation.
I'm reading a book right now that I've vowed to read from cover to cover. It's called Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration by Keith Sawyer. I've kept a notebook at my side while reading this book.

A couple of quotes I've written down from this reading:
"The engine that drives collaboration is conversation." When make connection between this and my own learning, I think about the blog reading that I do on a daily basis. Whether we all know it or not, we're engaged in collaboration all the time with the end goal being to improve our schools and our students' learning. Blogs provide the conversation [no matter how many comments you're getting]. It's a conversation unlike the face to face discussions that we engage in with our work colleagues. This conversation is free for you to engage in or not - but the engagement in the conversation is where the learning really occurs. Comment on a blog, read what other people's reaction are. Frequently, I've written a comment on a blog then wished I'd stated my position a little more clearly or I've read someone else's point of view and a different side of the issue becomes more apparent than before. All of these interactions, whether we know it or not, contribute to our thinking in some way that may not become apparent for a while and, even when they do resurface, we may have no idea where the connection came from originally.

"Today's pervasive and high-bandwidth communication and social networks give us the potential to be far more creative than human beings have been at any time in history." Both the synchronous and asynchronous contributions that we all make to the "conversation" have an impact on someone else, somewhere whether we know it or not. The tools we have on this day in 2008 are the most powerful we've ever had for communicating with other. It's that ability to communicate our ideas to a wider audience that inspires creative thoughts and new ideas.

The book begins with an explanation about the inner workings of improvisation and groups that perform improvisationally. We've been to see some performances ourselves and are constantly amazed at how these people manage to create something from a single word, song title, or small suggestion. One of the things that Keith Sawyer points out is that these performers frequently use "yes, and..." as they work through the improvisation. "Yes, and..." keeps the performance following and keep conversations evolving. Makes me think about those meetings where someone inevitably begins a sentence with "yes, but..." - stops the conversation from evolving and the creativity from flowing every time doesn't it?

4. Read books that have been stacked up and waiting for a very long time.
My book buying decisions are usually made in at least two ways - by wandering around certain sections of my favorite bookstore or on the recommendations of others. I came across Group Genius via the wandering method. Using this method, I also located The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr as well as Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner. Both of these books are loudly calling out to me, just the titles alone made me buy them and make me want to delve into them - but that would mean I'd have to break my "read it cover to cover" vow. For now, they'll have to wait though because I have to find out how Group Genius ends first.

Image: The Purple Invasion of Spring http://www.flickr.com/photos/bogenfreund/428005735/

Reading Books Online

A while ago I posted about a site online where you could read children's book before you buy them. Thanks to an anonymous comment to that posting, I've been exploring another site that allows you to read books online - both fiction and non-fiction. As I peruse the site this morning, I notice that there are some great non-fiction books that would support topics that teachers are addressing in content areas so I'll be recommending this to them.

• Best Children's Picture Books Online - BigUniverse.com
  

  Excellent resource for fiction and non-fiction books that can be read online. Users may also create their own books or purchase using this site.

  tags: literacy

In addition to reading books, you can also easily create your own books. Read the Terms of Use carefully if you sign up for an account and intend to create a book.