My final reflections....

This is going to be a rather long post, so my apologies in advance...

What have I learned in this course to further my own technology integration?

While I’ve been introduced to various new Web 2.0 tools (Animoto might be my favorite - I really enjoyed creating the Recycling Relay video), I think that the fact that I created and maintained a blog and participated in a professional learning network are, by far, the biggest accomplishments.

While I still have some concerns about my privacy, I’ve found the experience to be helpful both personally and professionally. Maintaining a blog has helped me appreciate some of the ways I’ve already integrated technology into my classroom (and I like reading the kudos in comments).

Reading my classmates blogs and looking at their projects has influenced me. Two examples:

Andrea’s final project using The Cay started a discussion with the Grade 5 teachers about using a dusty, unused class set of the novels for next year. Since we have Grade 5 students reading at a middle school level already, they can utilize her unit as a way of integrating technology into their classrooms for Chapter 11 of the novel.

Dan’s Prezi on digital citizenship made me consider how I had designed my own Prezi, and over the summer, I’ll be modifying my own presentation as I give it “more meat.” After looking at his Prezi, even though he considered it basic, I thought mine needed more substance; however, I have no plans to drop some of the Korean cultural references in my own (since it’s important for the new teachers to be aware of these facets of culture).

How far have I come?

Part of me is pleased with what I was already doing within my classroom. When I look back to my first blog post, and I think about how I was kicking myself for not feeling as though I was doing enough, I realize that this is a gradual process. But I’m starting to appreciate the idea of maintaining a PLN, especially when I feel as though I need to do more to understand Korean culture and language, and my role as a principal.

I already give parents and my students some access to my classroom through my Weebly website, but now it’s time to take things to the next level. I need to feel comfortable with them accessing my blog as I express some of my ideas. I still won’t have a Facebook account, especially with all of the data mining going on, but if I want the students to be responsible digital citizens, then I need to model responsible blogging.

How I’m going to apply what I've learned in this course within my profession (and since I believe we should integrate technology into the classroom, this is how I plan to work with my teachers to implement enhanced integration).

As the new elementary school principal, I plan to post some questions from The Connected Educator, (from page 144) on my school blog (and office wall). When I’m having conversations with teachers and parents, I want the focus to remain on ways to answer these questions.

Nussbaum-Beach and Hall suggested that we think about:

What principled changes should we be making to our classrooms to ensure that we are developing in students the skills sets they will need as they face future challenges?

Creating more opportunities for student-centered learning is key.

Are we preparing kids for yesterday, today, or tomorrow?

The mission of KIS is to promote preparing kids for tomorrow through English education (the new global lingua franca), and through project-based learning activities utilizing Web 2.0 tools and a 1 to 1 laptop program.

Are current classroom techniques helping those we teach become future scientists, technologists, and imagineers who will solve the social ills of the society of the future?

I would say that the Service Learning component to the curriculum is one way that my school tries to help kids think more globally.

How can we collectively advocate best for needed policy changes that will enable our teachers and students to engage in connected, authentic learning?

I think forming a PLN within the elementary school will be a big step towards helping teachers advocate (and share) ideas about authentic learning.

How can we help our students be ready to learn using tools we cannot yet imagine?

I would say that if students have strong basic communication skills (reading, writing, and digital), they can adapt and teach themselves.

And so, in conclusion, I'd just like to say that it's been an interesting, and at times challenging, journey. I'm glad I took this course. I came along at the right time for me in my professional life.

My Personal Learning Network...Baby Steps

Angela Maier's blog talks about what people can do when they feel as though they are drowning in social media. And to a certain extent, during this CE5160 course, I felt like I was drowning at times. It was tough to keep up with my readings, my assignments, my blog entries, reading classmates' blogs, commenting, and trying to build a personal learning network at a moment in my career where I am making a transition from the classroom to the front office.

But as I consider the Personal Learning Network I tried to establish,  I will follow Maier's suggestions:

Find your friends. There are literally hundreds of millions of people occupying this space.  The key to your success is finding people most relevant to you. Go slow, chose these friends and fans wisely as they will become your most important asset in this new world.

Chose three (3) tools that maximize your productivity and ensure you are getting what you need from the network.There are hundreds of tools, but when building your base, less is often more.

Finally, commit to three (3) actions; steps that you will repeat and sustain every day until they become action-based habits.

Go slow, and choose wisely. Based on a suggestion from Professor Tufts, I added Connected Principals to my Feedly feed. The benefits of having this site as part of my PLN is the diverse group of contributing principals. In their own words: This blog is the shared thoughts of school administrators that want to share best practices in education. All of the authors have different experiences in education but all have the same goal; what is best for students.

And as I step into my new role as principal, I've also considered how living and working in the Global Education City has isolated me, somewhat, from Korean culture and the language. It is the point of the GEC to give students an English-only environment, but I feel that I'm missing out on Korean life and culture.

I realize that I acquired more Spanish speaking skills in the first two years I lived in south Texas than I have acquired Korean language skills in the two years I've been here. I think that as a principal, it's important that I learn to better communicate with parents and not just rely on the office staff to translate. And so I've also added two sites to my PLN that relate to Korean language and culture.

To help me learn Korean (in baby steps), I'm going to rely on Talk to Me in Korean, a blog recommended by some colleagues, and one that I've just discovered in the past couple of weeks.
And to better relate to the students, I've found Eat Your Kimchi, which should help me better navigate the world of KPop, especially since the Grade 4 and 5 students are so consumed with these groups.

Here's a sample from Eat Your Kimchi, just so that you can see that I can get a quick idea of what is going on with one of the groups the students follow...

And as for blogging, I think after this course, I'm going to make some changes to this blog (or just start another) that will focus on my role as a principal as I try to navigate between two cultures. There is a good book, Confucius Meets Piaget, by Jonathan Borden, and even a blog associated with it (although not really updated, and so not very helpful for an on-going PLN) my colleagues and I will be discussing at the new teacher orientation at the beginning of August. I think, perhaps, that this will be a new starting point for me. Perhaps I will call my blog Prugh Meets Confucius and Piaget?

Working away at my final project...

This is not my official Week 9 blog post, but rather a chance to get some feedback.

I've started on my final project, and I am considering using Go!Animate (Professor Tufts suggested this site for an Animation class I want the ES students to take during Activity time next year).

This is what I managed to create...Students will have limited time in the tech lab, so I think 90-120 seconds should be adequate time for a video as part of a collaborative effort.

Any comments from my classmates (or professor) at this stage of the lesson plan process would be appreciated.


Intro to Culture Week Project by byronprugh on GoAnimate

Watching a Webinar

I decided I wanted to watch a webinar which would be useful for my professional development, especially since we have a two day holiday for Buddha's birthday (May 17, 2013) and my school scheduled a Professional Development day on Teacher Appreciation Day (May 15th in South Korea). I also decided a prerecorded webinar made the most sense for me since I there is an eleven to fourteen hour time difference between the USA and South Korea.               

Image from https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSldLPMNXcFIkR1KpDtuGisE28FqtIoBOmvjaST-EDJ9V5FDgu5

I'd had some prior experience with a prerecorded BrainPop webinar for educators (I watched how to use the Mixer to make my own personalized quizzes, and I also shared this experience in an earlier blog post). One of my frustrations with the quiz mixer, though, was that if I wanted the students to report their results, they would either have to email me the results, take the test in my presence in the Mac lab, or print a copy of their score. But now that I've become more proficient in Google Drive, I wanted to take my tech knowledge to the next level.

And so I watched: BrainPOP and Google Apps for Education. In order to view this webinar, though, you need to be a BrainPOP educator. Rather than force people reading this blog to sign up (especially if your school does not have a BrainPOP license), I'll just have to have faith that the people reading this blog will not completely abuse my trust, and I'll let people log in using my ID and password. You'll need to email me for the info. And unless you change the password on me, I'll reset the password at the end of CE5160.

The webinar was INCREDIBLY useful! It was originally recorded in January 2013, and it was very timely. Andrew Gardner, a Senior Manager for BrainPOP Educators, guided me step by step through the process of integrating Google apps, and the lesson on directly collecting quiz scores in a spreadsheet (very useful data) was probably the best gem in the program. I can't wait to share this with my colleagues at work on Wednesday during our PD time.

BrainPOP integrates with Google docs so that a spreadsheet is generated with the names of the students, their first, second, and last scores on the quiz (since they can take the assessment multiple times), and sorts the tests by the tabs at the bottom of the page. This will save me tons of time as a teacher, and it puts all of the information in one spreadsheet rather than creating a new document for each quiz.

A key difference in this recorded webinar, as opposed to a live webinar, is my ability to stop the recording in order to actually follow through with what the presenter, in this case, Andrew, was discussing. In a live event, I'd just be taking notes. Plus I find I can become distracted by the side chats occurring simultaneously. 

I think that this webinar relates to two of the course objectives for CE5160.

• Design and implement digitally-based learning experiences with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments.

The BrainPOP Mixer quizzes are a fantastic way for me to quickly assess my students' understanding of a topic. For example, this week, as part of the Social Studies lesson, I am going to discuss citizenship (which can be a challenge). In addition to the textbook reading, I plan to use the BrainPOPJr. video which ties into citizenship, Rights and Responsibilities.

Then, when we head to the Mac lab in the afternoon, my students will take a quiz I made with the Mixer. I should know before the students leave for the Buddha's birthday break how well they understand the Social Studies concepts.

• Use knowledge of digital tools and technology applications to facilitate experiences that advance learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.

Since my students will have a five day break from school, I want to be able to give them a few videos to watch. Thankfully, all of my students have access to the Internet at home (this is South Korea, after all!), and I can ask them to watch a few videos over the break which will reinforce some of the concepts we have covered in Science class relating to matter and energy, light and sound. So I don't have to be face-to-face with my students for them to take some responsibility for their learning over the break. 

Then, with just a quick check of the BrainPOP spreadsheet tabs on Sunday evening, I'll know who took the quizzes, how many times they took the quiz, and their scores. I couldn't be happier! Although a little part of me wishes I'd known about this sooner, perhaps I would not have been mentally ready to embrace the technology before now. Kudos to BrainPOP and Google!

Project Based Learning and My Role as a Teacher/Principal

Wow! Yet another example of how my Connected Educator class is timely in terms of my professional life. I'm meeting with parents on May 14th to discuss the new schedule for next year, so I had to redesign the schedule.

As luck would have it, Chapter 8 in the textbook also talked about what principals could do to improve collaboration amongst colleagues at school. I gave it a great deal of thought.

So, based on the schedule I created, a Grade 3 teacher would have a schedule that looks like this...

And it creates many opportunities for collaboration. It's not going to create a full integrated Project Based Learning environment yet, but next year is only my first year as the ES principal, and I need to take things in baby steps rather than completely trying to rock the boat in my first year. I'll save that for year two to give the veteran teachers some time to adjust, and to get the new teachers on board.

What I like about this 3rd Grade schedule is that the Language Arts block is a common time for the Grades 1, 2, and 3 teachers to create leveled classrooms (based on reading levels) as part of a  Literacy block. This Literacy block is something we've done for the past two years at my school, and most of the students see a two-grade level increase in their reading level over the course of one school year. There are two class periods a week where the Tech teacher can come into the classroom (or the students can use the Mac lab) to team-teach a lesson. I also want one of the mandatory Activity lessons to be a 9 week course called "Animation" so that students can experiment with different Web 2.0 tools in an enrichment class.

Every other week, the Music and Art teachers can teach an integrated class (something we had in the schedule two years ago, and I missed it this year). An integrated lesson in Music might tie in reading notes with fractions, or in Art, students could sculpt landforms out of play dough (one of my favorite projects). And in addition to time to meet or plan after school, there are two periods per week for the Grades 1, 2, and 3 teachers to collaborate during a planning period. As they learn to better collaborate, it should make the transition into PBL easier.

I'm really proud of this schedule, and the fact that it was my first major document I created using Google Spreadsheet. The CE 5160 coursework (again!) proved timely. I'm also optimistic that it will give teachers better opportunities to create a Project Based Learning environment since one of the fundamental tenets of PBL is collaboration (by both teachers and students).

In this blog, I've already given a few examples of how I worked with my Grade 1 and 2 colleagues to develop a "limited PBL" with the lower ES students during Service Learning and Leading Week in March. The Grades 2 and 3 teachers collaborated with the Grade 1 colleague on Google docs since she was confined to a room at Halla Hospital; however, the week was limited, in part, because it was only a week (time) and it doesn't adequately meet all of the requirements of the the Essential Elements checklist developed by BIE. These elements include: Focus on Significant Content, Develop 21st Century Skills, Engage Students in In-Depth Inquiry, Organize Tasks Around a Driving Question, Establish a Need to Know, Encourage Voice and Choice, Incorporate Revision and Reflection, Include a Public Audience.

Our essential question asked: Why do we recycle? And as a way to guide student teams, we organized several activities both within and outside of the school.

Students researched and created lapbooks on the cycle of life and conservation.  (Significant Content)

Students raced to sort items between recyclables and contaminants. (Organize Tasks Around a Driving Question)

 Student teams created Keynotes on recycling after developing a template in their Korean Social Studies class.  (Develop 21st Century Skills)

Students designed and created recycling boxes with the Art teacher. (Encourage Voice and Choice)

We visited the Asia Climate Change Education Center on Jeju. (In-Depth Inquiry)

 

Students went with the Music teacher (and chaperones) to a play about recycling at North London Collegiate School. (Encourage a Public Audience - at least NLCS managed this).

And we established Friday as a day for revision and reflection, but again, it was too rushed and limited. We gave the students some choice about what information they could include in their lapbooks and Keynotes, but no choice in the medium. The same was true for their Recycling box images and messages. And while parents saw some of the projects the students produced when they visited on Parent/Teacher Conference Day, there was not a much larger public audience. It just happened to work out that the NLCS play, Planet Plenty (written by one of the teachers), tied into Recycling/Conservation; that wasn't planned. We were just trying to have an activity with a neighboring school.

After the week, though we did notice a change in the behavior of the students. They have fewer problems resolving issues on the playground, rarely complain when they are assigned to a mixed group (by age or sex), and display more care about their classroom environment (picking up trash, sorting recyclables).

It's not that we didn't try, but part of the problem is that we are only given a week for this part of the curriculum; I plan to rectify this next year by adding an additional week to Service Learning "Week" and giving the students an opportunity to collaborate with a group of students from, of all places, Oklahoma (Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain)!

As I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for a final project for my CE5160 class, I received an email out of the blue from a teacher in Oklahoma asking if we could collaborate on a project for her school's culture week next year. Apparently, there is a large enough Korean minority in the school that the teachers there want to find a way to integrate some of the curriculum into their lives. Since one of the teachers spent 10 years in Japan, she just searched on the web through ISS (International School Services) for a school which might collaborate, and lo and behold, after several exchanges of email, we're on the path to a flat classroom project.

Over the next few years, I'd like to develop a broader, project based learning program for the school, but I recognize that this won't happen overnight. I'll include Eric Isselhardt's blog in the new professional learning network I am developing for my role as a principal. I'm already considering his advice from his post on Creating Schoolwide PBL Aligned to Common Core.

He says: We know that without excellent classroom management, project-based learning efforts devolve to classroom chaos. In addition, we are still grappling with how to best prepare our students to be successful in a project-based learning environment when they have difficulty working together cooperatively. As we move the school closer to a true project-based learning paradigm, we are actively working as a team to address those core issues.

I'll heed his words, and start promoting cooperative group work and strong classroom management.

Digital Citizenship at my school

It's been an interesting week at school, and I'm amazed how my (soon to be) new life as an administrator (ES Principal) is tying into this Connected Educator course. I have to say that both Frontline documentaries affected me in different ways. 

In Growing Up Online, I could only think about how sorry I felt for Cam, the high school student with an overprotective mother. I thought back to my life in high school, and how happy I was to move 1,000 miles away from home when it was time for college. 

And while the video warned that some images might be inappropriate for children, I certainly felt awkward watching this documentary at Tom and Tom's (a coffee shop). South Korea censors the Internet and tries to block anything deemed pornographic, and at one point, I had to turn my computer to hide images of Autumn Edows. My concern was that a patron would see what was on the laptop and make a huge fuss.

In the Digital Nation follow up documentary, I immediately recognized the PC bongs in South Korea before the narrator even identified them. I noticed that the documentary did not cover the censorship of the Web that happens in South Korea, nor that if the Korean government really wanted to, it could try to block access to online games. And online gaming addiction is a real concern at my school. 

Since students in Grades 5 and up use MacBooks as part of the 1 to 1 laptop program, they have access to their computers all the time. During lunch, snack, and between classes, some groups of boys will just sit on the hallway floors and play League of Legends, a role-playing game (RPG) similar to World of Warcraft which was highlighted in the documentary. 

And students certainly use the computer to check their hair (also shown in the video) as well as engage in bullying online (using local social sites like Naver). These are real, everyday issues at my school. Consequences included taking away student MacBooks and cell phones, but students have tried to find ways around these restrictions. Boarding students must hand in their laptops and cell phones at 10:00 PM every night (they are locked in a cabinet in their dorm common room), but some students filled their laptop cases with paper notebooks rather than the computer itself, and others just had a second cell phone (or tablet/device to access the Internet) hidden in their bedrooms, and they'd stay up many hours after bedtime to play games or chat.

But the control has mostly been punitive, and these devices are seen as "problems" rather than tools. There has been a greater emphasis on educating students about choices they can make, but all the MacBooks now have monitoring software installed so that the IT Department can view student screens at any time.

Middle school students hated seeing me in the study hall room last year because they knew I had caught their peers trying to Skype or play RPGs during homework; moving around the room, being aware of students rapidly clicking on certain keys, and with a simple use of Command-Tab in order to see all programs running on a computer (since screens can be changed so quickly), any teacher can monitor a study hall session. But prevention isn't about just establishing a reputation, it's also about being pro-active and talking to students about your expectations for their use of the Internet/technology.

Next year, my goal for the elementary school will be to inform students how to make good choices through an Integrated Tech class period, and for teachers to make sure they are moving around their classrooms and in the tech lab while students are using school-provided iPads and computers.

In my classroom and school, I will say that just like in the video of South Korean children, students are learning to use the computer at the same time they are learning to read and write (we just don't sing the netiquette song in Korean...we are an English-medium school after all). Although we start in Grade 1 with digital etiquette rather than wait until Grade 2.

In my Digital Citizenship Prezi, I used examples from my Grade 3 class to discuss ways that my students practice the NETS (National Educational Technology Standards).

My students are learning to cite information and summarize it rather than just cutting and pasting.

My students are using gaggle.net email accounts to collaborate on a Social Studies project with their pen pals in Florida.

My students use iPad applications both individually and as teams, and one of the most memorable moments of the year was when North London Collegiate School students visited and the students used Bluster to compete with their peers from a neighboring school. 

They had tons of fun learning and challenging each other.

Using the iPads on the beanbags.

And I was also very proud of the two boys who notified me at different times during the school year when they found inappropriate images as part of a search they were conducting. Even with filters, not every possible bad image is blocked. But these boys knew that they found something wrong, and rather than bring it to the attention of the entire class, or giggle uncontrollably, they just signaled me quietly, and calmly said, "I think there is a bad image, and I know I will not use it in my Keynote."

I think this ties into the idea that we need to give kids some credit. Rather than live in fear of sexual predators trying to lure kids into danger, teach kids to make responsible choices. My 3rd graders know what is bad, and they can choose to delete it or ignore it.

So, for the new teacher orientation in August, I will need to inform the new faculty about ways students are making good and bad choices with their computers. The Prezi assignment for this week was VERY helpful because I've started considering how I want to discuss digital citizenship with the staff. I don't feel as though my Prezi is quite ready for a faculty meeting, but rather, it's a working document that I will tweak before I actually present it; I'm just excited that my classwork ties nicely into something I already need to do for work.

Prezi on Digital Citizenship

My Animoto Video

Hope you have as much fun watching this as I did creating it!

Midterm reflections podcasts

My first podcasts!

Perhaps I will become advanced enough to not need a script for these sorts of things, but for the time being, I'll need to type my text first to organize my thoughts...

listen to ‘Midterm reflections - Part 1’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Midterm reflections - Part 2’ on Audioboo

Am I Connecting with The Connected Educator?

I've arrived at the mid-term of CE5160, and these are my thoughts on the first five chapters of  The Connected Educator.

Chapter 1

One of the things that resonated the most with me in this chapter was the difference between cooperating and collaborating with colleagues, and how technology could play a role in my professional learning and practice. In March, just as the Grade 123 team was about to implement our week-long Service Learning Week (see one of the YouTube slideshows here), the Grade 1 teacher broke her wrist and was hospitalized before and after her surgery. Google docs was a critical component in our ability to organize and collaborate with her and the other Specialist teachers in the school, and it provided a means for the Grade 1 teacher to work together with us from her hospital bed as we combined our efforts to create an amazing curriculum.

Chapter 2

I think I mentioned in my VoiceThread comments that as a group, my CE5160 colleagues are collaborating in an activity even though we live and work in different time zones. I've also come to appreciate the diversity of the members of this class, and as I read their blogs, I find myself reflecting on their thoughts and ideas. And sites like Creative Commons (not mentioned in the chapter, but in keeping with the theme of group collaboration) allow people all around the world to share images in the public domain (like the connected globe I found) with others for free; this, therefore, contributes as another form of collaboration - offering others an opportunity to use an image or idea for their own project.

Chapter 3

While this chapter was rather short, I felt that the question posed, "What do you need to unlearn and relearn?" is a rather powerful thing to think about. And frankly, I know I have a lot to learn, especially about technology. Lately, I've been trying to learn more about BrainPop and how I can use it in my classroom, and so I've been learning more through webinars offered by BrainPop. And after watching one webinar on the Quiz Mixer, I developed a fractions quiz for my students. Soon, I'll have another quiz created, and my plan is to create about one new quiz per week through BrainPop to review concepts covered in the curriculum.

Chapter 4

While I've already mentioned how I used Google docs, or more properly, Google drive, to collaborate with a hospitalized colleague, I will admit that Chapter 4 left me thinking a great deal about I will be sharing the vision of the elementary school with new teachers, and how the current teachers are collaborating with the incoming teachers. My school created a ning site to welcome new teachers to KIS and in order to create relationships before we even meet each other face to face in August during teacher orientation week.

Chapter 5

The chapter mostly focused on Web 2.0 resources teachers can use in the classroom, and this course has required me create a Diigo account (and I'm starting to add some of the websites I bookmarked on my laptop so that I have these bookmarks available to me "in the cloud."). I'm also blogging - a feat that my friends back in the States find amazing since I tend to guard my privacy so carefully. I'm using Feedly now, and I have a link on my Firefox browser so that I can quickly access the site and scan article headlines to see what I might be interested in reading about on any given day. I'll be creating podcasts to complete my mid-term assignments, use the wikispace every week for this course, use Google drive almost daily at school, frequently check the KIS ning site for new teachers, and access TeachTube to find supplemental materials for my core academic classes.

My Voice Thread....And news for classmates from Korea

A supplemental blog assignment:

My Voice Thread....

And an update to my colleagues in CE5160....

I've finally finished with my Week 4 class assignments! Thank goodness Professor Tufts built a catch up week into the syllabus. Somehow she must have known that, when I returned from my Spring Break, North Korea's saber-rattling was going to force me to spend some of my free time working on ways to continue teaching my students even if war broke out.

What I can say, I think, without getting into trouble, is that my boarding school will serve as an evacuation site (since people can stay in the dorm rooms, there is a large cafeteria, the building's solar panel arrays provide electricity), and that teachers will be flown to Bangkok, Thailand. My colleagues and I are still expected to try to teach: provide lessons, assessments, and feedback to students, but who knows how many of my students will have Internet access (or electricity or safe drinking water and food)?

So it's not like the school is pretending that there is no threat whatsoever (some planning for war has been done). We also have had to think about things like moving cash from our Korean bank accounts into our US accounts or making sure to have copies of important documents gathered together in a safe place. But you make those sorts of preparations in Florida when you have a hurricane approaching too. And in my elementary school days in the 1980s, I lived with the threat of the USSR launching nuclear warheads towards the US. Of course, that was a case of 2 superpowers with nothing to prove.

Since there are direct flights to Japan, China, and Taiwan, we will probably go through these countries to flee, but I can imagine it will be quite insane at the airport. And I'm sure jet fuel will be reserved for the Air Force planes which would be parked on the tarmac. We would be evacuated only if the US Embassy in Seoul tells Americans to leave South Korea; however, if the North just goes insane and launches an attack, I doubt there will be days of advance notice (unless that's what all the bellicose posturing right now is, a prelude to an attack).

Also, I will say (because it's definitely public record at KIS, at least) that the Grade 123 team agreed that we would use Edmodo accounts (thanks again, Professor Tufts for this suggestion) to give the students one place to go (rather than jumping from sites like BrainNook, BrainPop, Weebly, Skype, Starfall, or TurtleDiary). Hopefully I don't need to teach with all this Web 2.0 technology because of war, but rather, I can continue trying to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into my classroom on Jeju - "Korea's Island of Peace."

Reflections on New Learners of the 21st Century

After viewing New Learners of the 21st Century, I spent several days reflecting on a few things mentioned in the video (and some things that were not mentioned, but I felt related in some ways).

Initial thoughts....

Very early into the program (about 2 minutes into it, actually), I found myself stopping the video after Henry Jenkins, a media scholar at the University of Southern California asked people to consider the meaning of addiction. He posited that we (as a culture) find it commendable for a child to be so interested in reading that he or she stays up late into the night reading a book, but if a child spends many hours playing a video game, we are critical and consider the child's obsession to be addictive.

It made me think about my own bias, and how my personal experiences have formed that bias. I'll share an example of two different, intelligent students, both of whom, based on his views, were interested in their respective media (literature and computer games).

The first example, a female student from Rio Grande City, Texas, whom I taught at Ringgold Middle School, was so enamored with reading that she frequently would hide in a colleague's classroom during the weekly pep rallies in the gymnasium, buried her head in a book a lunch and recess, and usually ignored her other teachers in favor of reading a book in the back of her classroom. Most of her teachers were annoyed by her obsessive reading, but she maintained a straight A average in her classes (except PE).

She told me she read to escape the monotony of the lessons in other teachers' classes, the monotony of life in South Texas, and the tediousness of poverty. She read voraciously because she wanted to learn more about the world, and I thought about her almost immediately after Jenkins spoke in the video. She has since graduated and was accepted on a full scholarship to Brown University, and she will be the first in her family to earn a college degree.

The second example, a male student from Seoul, South Korea, whom I worked with last year while covering my boarding school responsibilities, was so enamored with StarCraft that he spent hours a day hiding in empty classrooms, playing through lunch and breaks, and staying up through the night (when his laptop was not confiscated) to play. Most of his teachers were annoyed by his obsessive playing, and he maintained a straight F average in his classes (except Art).

He told me he played to escape the monotony of the lessons, the monotony of life in South Korea, and the tediousness of wealth (his parents had started him in boarding school life at age 8, and he rarely saw his mother or father except on major holidays). He played voraciously because he wanted to improve his ranking in the game. He has since left KIS because he was unable to maintain the minimum grade point average.

So when Jenkins spoke, I realized how strongly I held this cultural bias, and perhaps I needed to rethink some of my own prejudices if I want to effectively prepare my students to be new learners.

Other thoughts....

I really like what Nicole Pinkard, founder of the Digital Youth Network, was doing with the older students in the program. Using high school seniors as teachers is similar to a program I helped to develop at the Korea International School, Jeju. At KIS, middle and high school students in the SLAM (Students Leading And Mentoring) program collaborate in their advisory groups in order to create lessons to teach the elementary students about concepts like leadership, fair play, and teamwork. I was pleased to see students, like a high school senior, teaching middle school students.

And finally....

As a History major, I was troubled to hear, in Diana Laufenberg's History class at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the discussion she was having with a student working on her "What If?" project. They were talking about the Spanish not wanting to sell the Louisiana Territory to the US, and the impact this might have created for the development of the fledgling United States.

WOW! History certainly would have been quite different if the lands were Spanish "possessions" (quotes are used because these European powers did not have title to the lands owned by the Native American nations living in these areas), but, in fact, it was Napoleon Bonaparte of FRANCE who made a strategic choice to "sell" this territory. And with Napoleon focused on Europe (and military campaigns financed, in part, by the sale of these lands), world history was dramatically changed. At this point, I had to stop the video too because I was upset with the teacher, Diana.

To some people, perhaps, it might not seem like such a BIG deal to make a mistake over "ownership," but I hope in some course of the research, this student (or the teacher) discovered this HUGE mistake; otherwise, the students in this class will learn erroneous historical information from a peer. I'll likely rant about the dissemination of wrong information online in another blog posting and refer back to this example. But this example, in the very least, is a case of a facilitator (the teacher) needing at least a minimum foundation of knowledge to teach this subject, and of a potential downside of peer to peer teaching.

I think, though, I'm going to continue to think about this PBS video, and consider how teachers as facilitators of knowledge and learning fit into the new learning paradigm of the 21st century. And that, I suppose, is the point of this part of the Week 4 lesson: to make me think!

Technology Integration at KIS

I think this video from Edutopia (available on YouTube) summarizes technology integration well...

And when I a saw this visual in the User Generated Education blog article, Schools are doing Education 1.0; talking about doing Education 2.0; when they should be planning Education 3.0




I began to think about my own experiences at the Korea International School, Jeju,

and how my school works to achieve seamless integration of technology.

It has been a bumpy ride at times....

I don't think KIS has achieved seamless technology integration yet, but I do believe it is a goal the administration and teachers strive to achieve. I think there are a few things that hinder integration. Miscommunication is one facet to consider, especially since KIS is an English medium school immersed in the South Korean countryside. Sometimes what is posted in Korean on the website does not reflect the English meaning of words or phrases.

Experience with technology is another factor that can hinder integration. Although we have professional development trainings several times during the year, it does not mean that teachers universally adopt all of the programs. Just because an event is posted to the Google calendar doesn't mean that people won't overlook it or simply not check to see if something else is planned.

Another factor is the 1 to 1 Macbook program. High School and Middle School teachers use CourseSmart for their classes, but because the Elementary School students do not have their own laptop and school email accounts, the ES teachers use technologies at their discretion in their classrooms. The Grade 4 Social Studies is supposed to use an e-textbook, but they can't access it easily at school. Secondary students are constantly creating Google documents, forms, spreadsheets, and presentations, but if I want my students to use Keynote or write emails with Gaggle accounts I set up for them, we need to go to the Mac Tech lab in the basement.

But it's getting better. All teachers use PowerSchool and AtlasRubicon for grading and lesson plans, and parents and students can log into these sites to see assignments, grades, and curriculum. The school is only two years old, and as problems arise with technology integration, there is an effort made to fix things rather than bury heads in the sand. We have another iPad cart, a classroom set of iPads, new laptop charging stations being set up in classrooms, new initiatives like ClassDojo for positive (and negative) feedback, and new faculty specifically designated for tech support and integration in all three schools.

Really, I see a mix of things happening as we grapple with the models (see the chart above again) of an Education 1.0 school, an Education 2.0 school, and an Education 3.0 school. I see myself blending some of the practices on each of the columns.  

(Some) technology is confiscated at the classroom door (Education 1.0). I do take the Grade 3 students' cell/smart phones at the start of the day and leave them in a basket so they can't access them during the school day. Unfortunately, some students in other grades have abused the privilege of having a phone, and they maliciously took pictures of confidential information or tried to cheat on assessments, and so we have a policy in place to try to prevent some of this from happening. I also monitor the students as they use iPads and Macs. A firewall and filter doesn't always eliminate inappropriate images from appearring on screens. So technology has some restrictions, but I don't think I would be comfortable with young children just having free-reign online.

My teaching is done, I think in many ways, in an Education 2.0 style. I have a blend of teacher to student and student to student interactions, and I'm looking forward to the end of May (as an end of the year activity) as I try to facilitate a student - technology - student project with our pen pals at Hidden Oak Elementary School. I want the students from both Grade 3 classes to develop a webpage (maybe using a wikispace) comparing and contrasting Jeju, South Korea with Gainesville, Florida.

Parents view KIS as a place for them to learn, too (Education 3.0). I think that is why some parents enrolled their children at KIS in the first place. So that they might get more insight into the American style of education/learning. I can remember one mother telling me at a meeting last year that her son asks so many more questions about things after spending a few months learning in my classroom. As if being inquisitive was a foreign concept! But she learned something from her child. He's more curious about the world than she thought.

I guess my vision for technology would be that as it becomes more integrated into society as a whole, it will make us all start asking more questions and help us to seek more answers. I think KIS is making an effort to produce students who will one day be adults who can cope and adapt to all of the rapid changes in technology and seek answers to tough questions.

A Portal Into My Classroom

In the first parts of Professor Wesch's rather "old school" presentation

(with an audience in rows not interacting with the teacher who lectures in the front of the room), I found myself reflecting on the question Professor Tufts asked us to ponder...

What message are you hearing and seeing?

In addition to noticing the format of his presentation (almost the antithesis of what he is proposing teachers should be doing in their classrooms) I did think about how he spoke about the need to move students away from the "How many points? How long should this paper be? What do I need to know for the test?" type questions and start asking "Why?"

In my own classroom, I think I've done a fairly good job at moving my students away from asking "Will this be on the test?" (especially common at the start of the school year) to the more interesting questions of "Why do we have assigned seats?" or "Why would anyone threaten to kill a little girl like Ruby Bridges?"

But perhaps I need to do more. Professor Tufts also posed the questions:
Do you think your students are bored or tired of your same lessons? And...Do you accept this or do you think it is a call for a challenge to make your lessons better by possibly enhancing them with some form of technology?

I think Math might be the most tedious subject I teach, and I think, in part, because I don't like the spiraled aspect of the Everyday Math curriculum (exactly the sort of scripted series Wesch warns about), nor do I think the text is particularly challenging to students accustomed to working on memorizing their multiplication tables at hagwons. 

Perhaps I have become complacent in using the series because I spend many hours planning interesting Social Studies, Language Arts, and Science lessons (since I am the only Grade 3 teacher at the school), and by the time I get around to prepping for the Math units, I am burned out. There was a time when I only taught 5 sections of Grade 6 Math with classes of 30 students, and I used to make the students create animated math videos using our school laptop cart. Or we'd go on math scavenger hunts (yes, the whole class) around the school grounds to learn about concepts like pi. <sigh> I need to recapture some of that joy and wonder in my math lessons.

And so, yesterday, our Professional Development Day transformed unexpectedly into a Prep Day, and I thought about how I might incorporate one new technology into my classroom for this quarter. Since I like for my students to create simple quizzes at the end of their country Keynote presentations, I thought I would experiment with a new tool I had learned about through a webinar, but I had not yet used in my classroom, the BrainPop Mixer.

When the students return from Spring Break on April 8th, I will start a fractions unit. Since we are in the Mac Tech lab two days a week, and since every student in my class has a computer and Internet connection at home, I will tell them to check for their understanding using a personalized multiple choice quiz. You too can take this quiz. I used the students' English names (unless they haven't picked one yet), but you need an access code to log in. It's prugh001. The first of many personalized quizzes. I think I will start to use them as reviews for assessments and as a way to pose more open ended responses (also an option).

I'll let you know what sort of feedback I get from this activity. While my students are not yet ready to engage in a world simulation activity like Dr. Wesch's anthropology students (with a game outcome that left me somewhat depressed), I do think I can rise to the challenge of adding some more new technologies in my classroom in order to create more "knowledge-able" students.

Do I Want to be Connected?

My first thoughts of this course relate to my utter dislike of social networks, especially because I'm using Google+ . I already had one friend express shock that I created a blog too. Because I'm not thrilled about the idea of having a Google+ page either, I've tried to make things as private as I can, but still function for this class. If I need to, though, I will be flexible enough to be more public. If I've learned anything while creating this post, it's that I don't have as much anonymity as I desire.

I tend to be a very private person because I don't want anything spilling over into my professional life as a teacher. And I've avoided Facebook like the plague. I really don't like the idea that a company mines my data to glean information about me, and the thought of friending people I knew in my 20s horrifies me. Those skeletons need to stay buried. I'm a respectable member of the community now. Not that I was a porn star or God forbid, a College Republican, but there's a time and place for everything, and it's called college. 

My digital footprint is real. So despite my efforts at trying to achieve some anonymity by refusing to create a Facebook page because I don't want to update people about the minute details of my life, there is still a great deal of personal information about me on the Internet. When I google myself, the first hit is my LinkedIn profile which I haven't updated since I lived in Texas six years ago. I think Teach for America wanted us to set up accounts for something. I don't even remember why I created it, but I think that one of the things I will do over the course of this class is to update my profile and link to the professional people I know through work and graduate school. I don't have to create a personal page, but I think a professional profile would at least give me some control over the information about me online.

My next hit is the same parent letter I have on my KIS Jeju Grade 3 class website I set up through Weebly.

Then something for a Flat Classroom Project that KIS encouraged, but I had already taken the initiative and started a collaboration/ pen pals with a former colleague in Gainesville, Florida.

The fourth hit is quite disturbing. A geneology site. I have no doubt my cousin's wife has something to do with this since she is a bit obsessed with her husband's side of the tree (my family). Her family only came to the USA through Ellis Island 100 years ago, whereas her children can now trace their origins to the Mayflower and the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (now New York City). If she reads this post, she'll know I still have no problems with illegal immigration since my ancestors arrived here illegally too. It wasn't their land to take. 

My experiences teaching along the Texas-Mexico border for six years made me very biased in this matter. Unless you are a Native America, we are all immigrants, and if people want to move somewhere else to better themselves, then by all means, they should be able to emigrate. I did. Just like my ancestors left the Old World 400 years ago for a new beginning, so too have I moved from West to East looking for new opportunities.

I've also noticed my mother's maiden name is on this geneology site, so anyone wanting to get a credit card issued in my name should have no trouble. Especially since another link lists my US mailing address.  But I digress....

In my March 10th post, I mentioned some of the technology I already use in my classroom, so I won't really repeat myself here. But I was pleased with the video I created for my introduction to my peers in my doctoral cohort using iMovie.

And today happened to be the first day of Service Learning week at my school. So I quickly put together a slide show using iPhoto and posted it on YouTube (unlisted, so that parents and students need the link to view it for the next few weeks).

So, I guess when it comes to what I know, I'd have to say that I know what I don't know. I'm not a Luddite, and I certainly use technology every day, but I find I want to achieve a balance between how I use technology in my professional life (heavily) and how I use technology in my personal life (sparingly).  At school, I use an iPad, an iPhone, a MacBook Pro, a SmartBoard, and a myriad of websites every day. At home, I don't even have the flat screen television the school provides as part of my housing package plugged in. I will check email, use apps, and play games with friends through my smartphone, but on most evenings, I dine out with friends, swim in the indoor pool, work on EdD program assignments, or read a book before bed.

What I want to know would be how to set up wikispaces to use for collaboration with my upper and lower elementary school teams for next year's Service Learning week.  I suppose by the end of the course, I will learn how to use more technology for effective collaboration with my colleagues at school and abroad. 

So, in answer to my query at the top of this post, Do I Want to be Connected? I would have to say, yes and no. Connect me professionally, but I don't want to connect with strangers or friends of friends when I already have such a diverse group of family members and personal friends all around the world with whom I keep in touch via email and through Skype.