Disruptive technologies are not tidy.  Teachers do not readily restructure lessons, classroom processes, and their roles as professionals in a seamless, painless transition.  In coaching teachers through profound shifts in thinking about technology’s role in their students’ learning and how this impacts their role as educators,  what I seek and strive for is that aha moment that signals a teacher’s empowerment and ownership in transformative learning with technology.

So how do we create the right environment, the so-called “fertile ground”,  for teachers to have this experience?

Empowerment not Entitlement

A reliable path to success is to encourage a culture of innovation and sharing in your school.  When a teacher innovates – independently or with a team – and completes an activity, assessment, or project with a unique and inspiring product to share with others,  the result is empowerment.  Even if the idea was borrowed,  the success was their own to share. This in turn builds greater incentive to reflect, refine, and repeat.

This is the type of behavior we want to see.  This is the type of behavior that will lead to real change in schools.  Teachers who innovate lead for change themselves.  They help motivate and empower other teachers as well.

One thing I’ve observed in my work is that teachers are more likely to overlook, downplay, or accept frustrating in situ technical problems when they own the change. Also,  the frustration is tempered by the teachers’ own desire to see their ideas bear fruit.

Conversely,   when teachers have little to no ownership of an activity,  the opposite reaction often occurs.  If teachers don’t own the change, they don’t own the success and have little motivation to ensure it.  Failure may breed resentment.  In order to keep the wheels of integration turning, the squeaky ones get greased.  What this breeds in the end user is a sense of entitlement (in the pejorative sense), or a feeling that one is owed more support, more time, or more software in order to remain an ally of the program. This is never a winning strategy long-term.

Reversing the Effect

It is not an overnight process. But if you find yourself in a situation where entitlement or apathy, rather than empowerment, is the rule, there a few simple things you can do to get moving in the right direction.

Encourage Innovation

Are teachers encouraged to think outside the box at your school?  Are they, within reason,  provided with tools and resources that they need to experiment ?  If so,  does this innovation have a public forum to spread these ideas?    School leaders must set the expectation and then set the stage for innovation to flourish.

Provide the right support

There is a direct relationship between empowerment and the need for educational tech support.  A good integration specialist will promote consistency across grade levels and subject areas, ensure that best practices are followed,  and strengthen ideas that empowered teachers generate.   An innovative school needs top notch support.

Build collaborative teams

There are good and bad ways to collaborate, but either is clearly better than nothing.  Develop teams of empowered teachers that help shape the school technology and education vision.  Set an expectation for dedicated collaborative planning time with technology integrators.   This is an opportunity for teachers to bounce tech ideas off of each other and receive just-in-time PD from the integrator.  This can be done at all divisions.

Empowered teachers become allies that help promote innovation and positive change in schools.  Entitled teachers drain the energy of a system.  Which type of teacher do you want on your team?

But really, information literacy is what learning is. The closer we get to pure inquiry learning, the further we get from seeing it as something added on to a unit. Information literacy  is at the core of inquiry and constructivist pedagogy. It underwrites all action and problem solving.  For any student to take action, learn authentically, or explore and solve complex problems,  they must be able to ask relevant questions in the proper scope, know where and how to look for information,  abstract ideas from data, formulate hypotheses, synthesize knowledge, report findings and follow-up on the feedback.  This is learning how to learn, and this should be our top priority as educators.

My school is undertaking an important project around information literacy that aims to carry out a fairly straightforward action plan.  More and more,  however,  I feel we need to take a more critical look at how learning itself is changing in parallel with information literacy.  We can’t from one side of our mouths say that digital technologies will revolutionize learning and yet layer 20th century information literacy processes down on top of it and hope that it fits.   We need to look at the many new ways that humans can inquire and learn about the world and develop activities that support learning how to use these tools.

How do you support information literacy skills in your classroom, library, or school?

If  you cannot explain to a stakeholder why your students are blogging or producing a digital story, then you need to take a step back and think for a minute how you got there.  If your school or tech leadership cannot explain to you why you need to be integrating technology then my guess is that the ignorance is systemic.  This is not uncommon.  Few principals or school directors that I have met have a solid grasp of the power of the interactive web, graphic communication tools, or collaborative workspaces.  21st Century banter is thrown around as though everybody knows exactly what it means, but I bet there’s really only a handful of great thinkers, none of which are anywhere near a school board, that truly grasp the concept of 21st century skills in a digital-age classroom.  It makes for a convenient talking point, but it doesn’t really answer the why question.

There are, however, thousands of talented teachers and tech leaders blogging, tweeting, and podcasting who truly get why they integrate technology.  At one point they probably asked the question themselves, rightfully needing a good justification before dragging their students into the unknown.  If you don’t keep asking this simple yet powerful question,  you or your school will never make any meaningful progress.   So where do you get answers to your why questions?

Typing is one of the most important skills a student can learn.  The ability to communicate with digital tools almost always requires some level of typing proficiency whether it is simply recognizing letters on the keyboard or touch typing.  You probably already provide  students with regular classroom practice in typing using software such as Ultrakeys or Kidkeys;  however,  there are several competitive web-based tools that can complement or even replace your desktop software.  These three have free written all over them.

BBC Dance Mat

Dance Mat is geared for the emergent typist, specifically children ages 7-11, though perhaps somewhat childish for 10-11 year-olds.  No account is required and the site is free of advertisements.  The activities take students through common key groupings and provide typing tests.  Ironically, the level 4 games in this kid-friendly site are set in a virtual Greek taverna, though ouzo drownings are not part of the challenge.

The Dance Mat Typing Home Page

Typing Web

Typing web is a comprehensive tutorial site that offers well-organized courses, statistics tracking, and even certifications to the more accomplished typist.  To help motivate kids,  some great games are included as well.  The site keeps detailed statistics including problem keys and progress over time, and picky users can even choose personalized skins.  A free account is required to participate, and the mildly intrusive ads can be removed for a fee.

Defeating the monster on Typing Web

Keybr

Keybr is very straightforward and easy to use for a variety of age groups.  Without an account, you can begin practice typing and testing your speed and accuracy.  If you create an account, you can log your typing scores in to compare them with other Keybr users.  Keybr doesn’t have the strength of tutorials and games that the other sites have, but for pure simplicity it is hard to beat.

The Keybr typing interface

The first three categories Elizabeth highlights involve web tools and appear to be based to a large degree on the factors of participation and specificity by and for the students.  Level one tools are content management tools like Moodle and Blackboard.  Level two tools are participatory including wikis, blogs etc. Level three tools require more creativity, may be less text-based, and allow for portability via embeds.  Beyond that the tools are categorized by how they are are used in class; these include student work-flow and assessment tools.

Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing this model and soliciting feedback on it.  It got me to thinking,  and the way I perceive it, there’s actually a lot of overlap among the different categories. For example,  if a wiki is used as a formative assessment tool with multimedia, fair use citations, collaborative discussions, and other embeddable objects, what level does that fall under?  If we apply these tools without using them as some sort of formal or informal assessment then why are we using them at all?    It helped me to think about it in a more Venn-ish way to represent how these things might layer up to create a powerful learning experience.  Call it the CPA model, if you want, for creative, participatory, and assessed.

Seems like we could throw several other circles in there for collaborative, problem-based, and contextual, to name a few, if we wanted to build the mother of all Venns.  If anything it highlights the complexity of digital-age pedagogy necessary to prepare students to handle the complexity of our 21st-century problems.

A model of digital-age learning

Education places an unbalanced emphasis on the left brain.  In an article on Left Brain/Right Brain intelligence, Dan Eden claims that more students enter schools as “right brained” students than leave the schools.  He suggest that schools actually rewire students brains to be more logical and academically driven, thus students become more left-brained the longer they stay in school.  Some never make the switch.  The correlation with Bruce Dixon’s big dilemma of course is that we are turning students into less creative, more orderly and logical beings, which is exactly the skill that computers are also very good at, arguably better.

Many argue that in the future, the skills that will truly be valued in humans are the more right-brained, creative skills. Computers will more exclusively occupy those logical, planning, organizational tasks that many humans are just not that good at.  What are the potential costs and obstacles of refocusing our educational systems to be more supportive of a right-brained education?

One burning question I have is that while computers are often touted as a vehicle for being more creative, they may just as well require us to become  more logical in order to operate them.  This is purely anecdotal, and just a thought, but I wonder how different software programs and operating systems might appeal to people with a different brain “handedness?”

She discusses existing and new literacies including basic literacy,  information literacy, visual media, intercultural network literacy, and digital citizenship.

For teachers where vocabulary is an essential component of the curriculum, you might find yourself using Quizlet, which involves a “deck of flash cards” created by the teacher.  Other examples are tablet flash by jumping minds which allows allows you to write and record the pronunciation of words in a flashcard.  Another example is Knowtes which allows video to be incorporated in flash cards, but its a bit cumbersome at the moment.  A lot of this can also be done with Powerpoint of course, and can be loaded onto an iPod.   Elizabeth claims students love to make these themselves and when loaded onto a portable device presents a fun way to study for vocabulary tests.  This of course is a useful thing for schools that still teach vocabulary.  This can be done collaboratively using Google Docs of course, and can the presentation can be downloaded as a Powerpoint.

Art Rage is a useful tool for making the images, but Flickr can be incorporated in this too.  A picture can be taken on an iPhone or other smartphone and sent immediately to Flickr.  With a group set up in Flickr.  Flickr storm or Compfight can also be used to search for images to use for flashcards that have public or “creative commons” licensing.

Quia creates games and quizzes, but it is a bit expensive, Lausanne was very close to using this tool as their language exam but backed off due to security questions at the last minute.  Langolab is another service that allows you to create a profile of your language learning using a language of your choice.  It is geared for teachers, rather than students, and has a YouTube-ish interface.  Other tools she demonstrated are My Language Exchange, Jing (for recorded demos & lectures) and  Live Mocha.

If podcasts are your interest for language teaching,  along with the audacity standard, Mixcraft is like garage band for the PC.  To share the audio files, drop.io is a free site that allows students to create a media drop box and put up to 100 MB free and share the files with other.  Gabcast is a podcasting tool that requires a fee, but allows uploads from a mobile phone or Skype.  FirstClass email also allows this type of interaction.

Voicethread is another great tool for interacting in language learning and the example provided by Elizabeth describes an uploaded image that students would describe.  Another good idea is to have students complete pieces of a story based on what has been included previously.

Annotated video is a new technology that is gaining ground and is perfect for language learning.  Viddler is a good example of this and allows you to create questions and other annotations while the video is playing.  YouTube also has video annotations.  Subtitles can be added to videos using Overstream.

I was also impressed with the Clear Audio Dropboxes which allows widget interfaces that can be placed on a wiki for example for other students to hear.   Also check out Anvill, Voxopop,  Learnosity, Comiclife + Artrage (these comic books can be published to Scribd or Issuu.  Glogster accounts are good for uploading photos, videos, text and audio to create online interactive posters.

Thanks Elizabeth for a super informative workshop as usual and I’m looking forward to what you have for us next year. Do any of you have suggestions for tools in addition to all of these?

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson has this to say about why Blogging is so effective in classrooms.

“Weblogs are truly a constructivist tool for learning. Because the content that students and teachers create is on the World Wide Web, it is content that becomes a part of the wider body of knowledge that the Internet represents”.

This alone is an incredibly powerful reason to take up blogging with your students if you haven’t already. This argument relies on the potential audience factor that the web offers. It’s one thing to write a report for a teacher, but throw in millions of potential readers and the game changes.

Richardson states further that Blogs are useful for developing the literacy of global collaboration, and that they archive student learning in a neat, chronological, searchable format.

Another factor he mentions that I’ve also heard cited by several great teachers who use weblogs in their classes relates to the democratic nature of blogs in general. Students who may be too shy to speak up in class or who take longer to process their ideas have an opportunity to be heard and share their understanding with the teacher and their peers.

With four sound pedagogical reasons to pursue blogging in your classroom, the ball is in your court.

Jeff believes that students need to reach out to get to know students from other parts of the world, and see how students with different backgrounds can share the same story. Do we really want the rest of the world’s kids to think that Bart Simpson is the voice of America’s youth? Similarly, do we want our kids to believe that all students in Pakistan are right wing extremists in the making? Probably not.

An example of a GCP was an exchange betten Nashwaaksis Midle School and the American School of Bombay. Heather, a middle school teacher at Nashwaaksis, took on a project from the previous year and began the project with a gift exchange sent through the mail. The project is housed in a Wiki and the two schools began by describing their schools and putting in all their names and profiles. The goal of the project was to practice their French as this was a language course. They made a movie about themselves in French introducing something special about each of them. Students from both schools would then comment in French on the videos posted.

After this, several topics would be edited collaboratively by a few students describing something about the culture, the weather, or the community for example. Heather claims students were working on the Wiki outside of class on weekends, over Christmas break and at all hours of the day and night. Students in Heather’s class got into the project at the same time as the attacks in Mumbai, which gave a special context to the project.

Several stipulations were made to ensure the success of the project which included using 75% or more authentic, student-generated content. Other precaustions were to keep to start small, one small class to begin with is a good idea. Kids were also in agreement that they could not contact the students outside of class and students pictures were not going to be used online. Another key to success are to get involved with existing projects and suggests you visit http://whipple-web20.wikispaces.com under global collaborative projects.

Jeff goes on to explain that GCPs help with several 21st century learning goals including digital citizenship, information literacy, copyright considerations, and your digital footprint.

To do this, Scott presents a tool called iThryv he helped develop that brings online banking to a new height.  This tool includes a variety of flavors to suit all different needs.  Widgets are included that, when combined, seem to function much like an expert system to help them with financial planning depending on your situation in life.  Users can be scored on savings and credit behaviors, and facts and video can be fed to the user dynamically  into the content window based on behavior determined by the system.  There are a variety of content providers that feed the system and Tech Crunch as listed the company in the top 50 startups this year. A real world investment simulator is available to help teach students about the stock market and about other financial instruments. 

We prosper is a community that uses iThryv for students and teachers to help build financial literacy.  Scott describes weProsper as a national movement in which he sees a bank adopting a community. Part of this is based on the fact that most banks have no idea how many minor accounts are retained when a minor becomes 18.