2020 Nexus

What is TechBytes?   Bite-Sized Bits of Technology Tips, Tricks & Info - For Educators, Geeks and Regular Folks

At this time of year in the US, when we go back to work in schools or send our children off to school, I get a lot of questions about tech and many of them center around “Which computer or laptop should I buy?” Although it’s nearly impossible to recommend exact models because of people’s different needs and the multitude of options available (which are rather like comparing apples, oranges, pineapples, and blueberries), I’m happy to refer you to trustworthy reviews and/or review sites that can aid in your decision-making processes.

My favorite site for news and reviews of all electronics is http://www.cnet.com. Click on the “Reviews” tab.  There are many other great review sites you can find with any search engine–far too many to mention here! I have a few bookmarked at http://delicious.com/suzanne31381/reviews.

I happened upon an article today which was written on the premise that many of you may be looking to buy a machine to send off to college with your student. The information is great whether the laptop will be for either home or away:

“One of the biggest challenges of sending a student off to college is finding the right computer to accompany them. Most school’s recommend notebooks or give out guidelines so parents will have some idea of what they should be looking for but it’s still difficult, especially if you don’t want to go overboard on something that you know will be abused. In this article we are going to go over a few recommendations that will fit most students. Of course different schools and different curriculums will have varying needs, but here are a few starting points….” (Continued at http://www.geek.com/back-to-school-laptop-buying-guide-nr-20080808/ )
If you would like back issues of TechBytes newsletters please email me.  If you know someone who would benefit from receiving TechBytes, refer them to me and I will add them to the recipient list.  Thank you!  At your service, Suzanne

I could give an excuse here about why I haven’t been blogging, but the truth is I have never achieved blogging regularity and I especially wasn’t motivated to do so during the summer. I continue to battle with the reality that I have nothing new to say - whenever I am inspired on a topic it seems that 5-10 people in the edublogosphere or Twitter have already discussed it and I rarely have a more original thought than theirs.  I’m not sure what to do with that fact.  I still plan to reflect here or journal about books, professional development, etc. My goal is to blog more as I get into the swing of a new U.S. school year.

I haven’t given up on Project Based Learning. I have studied several chapters beyond where I was supposed to begin working with a group to collaborate on units. Without a group with which to collaborate, I have decided to put this project on hold until school starts and I find those colleagues.  The book is excellent and I continue to encourage everyone to read it. I am also pestering my District PD people to let me lead a study because that would not only help other teachers, it would give me a network of local, real-life educators to collaborate with.  This has been sadly unavailable to me, even though I have tried to persuade a few to consider it.  Logistics get in our way, as I have mentioned before, as I am an elective teacher on a different schedule than the content-area teachers. In addition, I have only half of each teacher’s class during any one quarter.

More soon on Disrupting Class.

It’s only mid-June and I have already attended an international train-the-trainer event (held in the U.S.), presented at a tech conference, and am eagerly anticipating my state’s big tech conference next week. I’ll be facilitating some online and face-to-face trainings this fall so I’m preparing for those. And oh yes, I’m looking forward to teaching in my own air-conditioned classroom!

As you can see, I am totally pumped very enthused about the coming year and all that I hope my district, my clients, and I can accomplish around embedded technology and 21st century skills. There are about a million conversations I wish we could engage our teachers, students, and school boards in. Since a million may be a little overly ambitious, I narrowed the field to three for today.

Recently my district’s Director of Learning Resource Services invited me to share some of my ideas about professional development and 21st Century teaching and learning with her.  She may regret this in a matter of days, so I struck while the iron was hot and proposed three topics that I wanted to toss in the incubator right away.

First, I believe it should be an earliest priority to have teachers begin to build their own Professional Learning Networks/Communities both on- and off-line so that they can start to use some of new digital tools & skills themselves as they prepare to use them with students.  I have spent the last couple of years cultivating my own PLN and offered to teach a class to help others do so.  (There’s so much more to say, but then the proposal would have gotten way too long.)

Second, I proposed book studies of some excellent PD books. A few which immediately came to mind are listed below. (A few Twitter friends were gracious enough to suggest even more titles that I hope to recommend soon. Thank you @akamrt, @ricktanski, @dserrato)

1.  “Reinventing Project-Based Learning - Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age” by Suzie Boss and Jane Krause, ISTE Press.

http://www.iste.org/source/orders/isteproductdetail.cfm?product_code=reinvt

http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Project-Based-Learning-Real-World-Projects/dp/156484238X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213562443&sr=8-1

2.  “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” by Will Richardson, Corwin Press.

http://www.amazon.com/Blogs-Wikis-Podcasts-Powerful-Classrooms/dp/1412927676

3.  “Raw Materials for the Mind: 3rd Edition” by David Warlick, The Landmark Project.

http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Materials-Mind-David-Warlick/dp/0966743210

I hope I get to be an instructor for at least one of these studies as I am bound to learn even more than the participants that way.

Finally, since I had mentioned earliest priorities I wanted to mention earliest obstacles. Unfortunately, I know from experience that one of the earliest obstacles to teachers as they strive to integrate digital tools on school machines will be dealing with roadblocks thrown up by web filters. Obviously the filtering system is necessary and important–I’m not going to lobby for anything rash. I really have become convinced that caution is wisdom: we might proceed only as boldly as our most conservative constituents would comfortably proceed.

It is, of course, a given that we should only be accessing sites and network resources which are justifiably linked to achievement, standards, and instruction.   However, our teachers will definitely run up against blocks nearly every time they try to access legitimate, academically-worthy web 2.0 sites or keywords, like wiki, social network, blog, mp3, streaming audio, video, etc. either for their own learning or in doing activities with students.  There is much legitimate educational content that must be read, saved, or downloaded at home and then converted, printed, or uploaded to school because of the filters.   The point is, I shudder to think of how quickly we can turn off teachers new to these tools if we don’t work the filter/block problems out ahead of time whenever possible.

What kind of a professional development or learning experiences are we going to provide for teachers and students — frustration or fascination?

I understand that filtering is a huge issue which cannot be resolved by one committee, one school board, or even one country, but it is increasingly critical and essential to begin a journey toward resolving it if our professional development and teaching activities are to be successful.  Perhaps your district is already having discussions about changing policies to reflect changing instruction?

(In the meantime, it will continue to be necessary to check every domain at least a few times before every activity and leave time for the process required to pursue an unblock.)

So far I’ve nominated three conversations I wish I could have this fall: Building Professional Learning Networks, Great Texts by Leaders In The Field, and Internet Filters.

What are your thoughts? What conversations do you think every district must have A.S.A.P.?

I wrote recently to a couple of the higher-ups in my district to ask about next year’s 21st Century Learning plans and directions because I had heard nothing since the first and only mention of it (within my hearing) last April.  You already know about that Summit if you’ve been reading my blog.

The back-story is that I have not been able to get anyone from the district to provide me with any kind of mission or goal statement about educational technology for at least two years because of a major shift in energy, time, resources, and personnel to all things testing and data-related.  I am just another computer specials teacher at one school in a large well-respected, district so I’m certainly far from any position of influence and I do understand my rung in the food chain. (I sometimes think elective teachers may rate even lower than content or homeroom teachers. LOL)  But I have high hopes about being an agent of positive change if possible, at least in my own classroom if not my own district, so I keep pushing, asking, and learning.

Here is the substantive portion of my email. I was aiming for respectful and professional. You’ll have to be the judge of whether I achieved that goal:

As I attend conferences and engage in some additional self-styled professional development this summer, I am beginning to consider next year’s plans. I’m wondering what the vision or plan is with regard to 21st Century skill-building for the next year or two, especially at the middle level. If there were any directives, suggestions, or ideas issued after the Summit last April on how we will move forward, I missed them.

Would you be so kind as to fill me in on how the District wants to move forward?  I want to be well-prepared, design my curriculum, and have intelligent discussions with my administrators around vision and professional development in this area. I believe I have some elements already in place but need to be sure I’m building in the right direction and staying on the same page as you and the Board.

One of them replied with this. The only changes I have made are to spell out words abbreviated in the original response and to remove the name of a neighboring district:

Professional Development - We will be working with the Professional Development Department and Instruction Department to put together training on use of 21st century tools and skills.  The main idea is to create opportunities for staff to think differently about the way they are instructing our children (not textbook based) but 21st century based:  inquiry/project based learning, student creations, critical thinking, use of technology to engage them in learning, etc.

Another way is also a type of professional development (21st Century Educator program) - this is an idea that we borrowed from xxxxxx County to embed professional development.  The idea is to provide tools to teachers to create best-practice 21st Century lessons that start with the standard and engage students in learning.

I will keep you in mind as we move forward.  If you have ideas, please share.

I was gratified to get this response and will be mulling it over in the next few days. A few thoughts have already sprung to mind but I doubt they are ready for airing quite yet.  Soon.  But what are your reactions?

Photo credit: http://www.techdoctorcompany.com/images/photos/happy_woman.gif

Where are you starting your journey with PBL? I’m already excited about PBL and have done parts of it before; never in a formal sense that included all the usual steps. I think many elementary-trained teachers do this instinctively but it is more rare to think like that at the junior high level. In the era of true “middle school” there was a lot more teaching with integrated units & projects, so although that’s sort of gone away in the era of high-stakes testing (at least around here), I’ve had a chance to participate in the past.

I’m totally comfortable with the idea of embedding the technology and incorporating 21^st Century Skills but I am a novice at finding collaborators and working together long-distance. I admit it feels a little daunting now but I know that it will only get more comfortable with practice. Last year I took an extended graduate-level class through the Oracle Ed. Foundation that was all about PBL and collaboration. In fact, I am now trained to facilitate that course. Thankfully I already have a ready pool of projects to join and colleagues to work with through www.Think.com and Oracle is making it easier and easier to use PBL with their tools.

I feel that if I don’t get serious about finding a way to do serious collaborative projects (rather than the small facsimiles I’ve done so far) then I will essentially be a professorial imposter. Of course I want to do them for lots of other reasons…

I have a strong online PLN to whom I turn for inspiration, ideas, and feedback. I have loads of colleagues here in my local offline network but few of them teach with PBL or collaboration. Honestly, it is logistically very, very difficult to collaborate at my school due to the nature of my job. I am almost the only teacher using tech (other than Smart Boards) and I teach it all day as an elective class. So, it is imperative that I find teachers outside of my building to collaborate with because I need the experience of doing it via web tools.

The other teachers think all my tech talk is invalid because I don’t teach in a content-area classroom (although I did that for 10 years, thank you). I’m hoping the technology picture in my District and building will begin to change this year. I hope I can be more persuasive in recruiting colleagues than I have been in the past (definitely a learned skill) and/or that our staff will get some encouragement from administration to tackle some PBL and 21^st Century Skills. However, when it comes down to it, I am responsible to improve my own skills to persuade others, communicate with them, and mentor them when they are ready. I take responsibility for the fact that I have done a poor job of this in the past or more of my staff would be interested in and attracted to embedding tech by now. It isn’t my job to recruit them or even support them but as a professional in this field I feel an obligation to do so for the kids’ sake.

Enough for now.

Photo credit: http://www.feralcare.org/images/imposter.jpg