Multi-faceted Refractions

My Information Technology Director, Mike Peccia, and I have been asked to meet with our Head of School and the three division heads so that we can plan for the upcoming year. In preparation for this meeting, we have brainstormed many ideas and have come to the conclusion that we have to look beyond next year, as we begin to plan.

In our presentation, we present our vision for the future and the obstacles and challenges that we have identified which need to be addressed and prioritized in order fulfill our vision. I am sharing this draft as a sounding board for you to comment and add your thoughts.

Vision

In the year 2014, we envision North Shore possessing a technology rich environment in which students, faculty, staff, and parents have access to the resources and tools so that they can communicate, collaborate, create, and contribute to society. The school community will investigate real life problems with experts and passionate amateurs around the work to propose and create solutions to those problems.

The learning spaces at North Shore will support these investigations, allowing students and faculty to easily share their research both synchronously and asynchronously with all interested parties, both on-campus and off-campus. Ample access to resources will be provided both at school and at home to support the learning. On campus, students and faculty will be able to easily share their work in small groups.

Obstacles

Access to Resources

In order to support this vision, North Shore needs to continue to plan for growth and of both bandwidth and resources. Specifically, North Shore needs to determine solutions to the following:

• Determine a 1:1 computer strategy. In order to support the vision, a shift needs to be made so that all students have access to the tools necessary for communicating with others, researching their problems, and creating content to communicate their solution to the problems that they are addressing. We need to begin to acknowledge that possession of a computer is that of possessing the a textbook for their classes.
• Providing access to resources on-campus. North Shore’s current network infrastructure was designed and implemented six years ago. During that time, we have increased the number of nodes on the network (computers, printers, and servers). When the network was last designed, it was done so to primarily support the flow of text based resources. To support our vision, members of this learning community will need to be able to access streaming video and audio in addition to text, which has greater demands.
• Providing access to resources off-campus. The hours for learning is not limited to 8:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Members of North Shore’s learning community all need to have access to the resources off-campus to support their learning.

Using North Shore’s Physical Learning Environment

• Physical space on campus should be flexible. We will have to grow towards our ideal physical learning environment. In order to do so, we may need to develop a plan which allows for the flexible use of space in order to meet the demands of a class. The establishment of “smart” classrooms should be done to provide a fiscally prudent growth path, so that we keep pace with the demand from members of the learning community.
• Examination of use of time. Being able to research and communicate with the appropriate individuals does not alway conveniently fit into a 45 minute box. To be able to better be able to share resources as well as the ability to connect with others outside of our physical learning community may involve an examination of how we segment time.

Expansion towards a Professional Learning Community

• Continued Support of Professional Development Opportunities. North Shore needs to continue to support professional development of the adult members of its professional learning community in a planned and measured way. Over the past two years, we have had the opportunity to provide professional development to larger groups of individuals (whole faculty and division wide). We need to continue broad access to larger topics for all individuals and targeted learning opportunities for smaller groups.
• Creation of Individual Learning Goals.Annually, each adult member of the North Shore Learning community should be required to develop, share, and review their progress towards individual learning goals in a more formal way. Part of the resurgence in the growth of technology has occurred due to conversations and goal setting with individuals and these need to continue with a more formal recognition of the process.

At North Shore, I am fortunate to work with division heads and teachers who trust my word and enthusiasm. So much so that I have been asked to plan a two day “retreat” with the administrators to do a hands on workshop with them to teach them about web 2.0 technologies and I was able to get two teacher to commit and two definite maybes for a workshop in three weeks on a Friday night and Saturday without advanced warning.

I am really excited that they are willing to become learners and commit the time necessary to do so.

What a wonderful place I work at.

I am often asked by my daughter what exactly do I do during the course of a day at school, since I only teach one class. Today was one of those days when I got to experience the fruits of all of the hard work that I have done this year, laying the groundwork for teachers to begin to think about their curriculum and technology in new and interesting ways.

The day started like most. Once I settled and unpacked my laptop, I turned it on to check my email. One of the messages that was awaiting me was a message from a dear old friend, a technology coordinator who I have know for nearly 2 years. She has put together a two day (Friday night - all day Saturday) workshop with Will Richardson that is occurring within the next month. She had a few open seats that she was offering to me and my teachers if we were interested. Not wanting to pass up this wonderful opportunity, I quickly emailed our Head of School and our three division heads to notify them of this wonderful opportunity.

Once I had dispensed of my morning email, I got myself prepared for a meeting with our Middle School Head. We continued our conversation on many different topics, dealing with planning for professional  opportunities for the spring and summer, brainstorming about changes to the daily schedule and the impact on our Upper School (I am the person who creates our High School schedule), assessment of current curriculum and potential changes, and the new opportunity to meet with Will. After identifying the teacher we were hoping to target for the workshop, I asked her if there was anything else that I could be or should be doing. After thinking for a moment she replied, “I would like to see you do a 2 day hands on training class on the new technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other web 2.0 tools) sometime in June. I would love learn about and play with these tools.” As we were wrapping up our meeting, our Lower School Head dropped by to see when she could meet with our Middle School Head. After they found an open time to meet, I asked our Lower School Head if she desired to meet for two days to learn about the new web tools. “That would be wonderful. I conceptually know about these tools, but I would love the time to explore and play with them.” Two down, one to go.

I then went to seek out our Upper School Head to inform them of the Richardson opportunity and to see if he would be willing to set aside two days in June to learn with the other two division heads. I was fortunate enough to catch him for five minutes before he had to go to another meeting. After talking about the wonderful opportunity, we targeted a few teachers and he said, “Yes, I would love to work with my colleagues and get a better understanding of what we are asking our teachers to implement in their classrooms.”

The bell rang and I wandered to approach the Upper School classroom teacher that we had targeted. I provided the background and the rationale on why I thought that this teacher would benefit from this workshop. This teacher and I have done a tremendous amount  of collaboration and there are plans for a new course that he wants to incorporate more of these tools within his teaching. Checking his calendar, he saw that a friend was coming in town and he was trying to connect, but he was game to attend the workshop if he could. A definite maybe. So far so good.

Since I had been away from my office for several hours, I went back to check to see if there were any urgent phone messages and emails that I needed to attend to. Once I dispatched those which needed immediate attention, I headed down to the Middle School teacher whom had been targeted in my earlier meeting. She had also sent an email to see what steps she needed to take to create a wiki to facilitate a classroom exchange with a class in China in May. We created our action steps for the wiki and then I pitched the Will Richardson workshop. There was nothing on her calendar and yes, she would be interested. She did have to check her calendar at home, as a friend was coming in town and she wanted to make sure her husband had not planned something during the workshop. Fair enough, two definite maybes, plus movement in getting the class cultural exchange to the next steps.

I went back to my office and sent off an email to our Lower School Head sharing my thoughts on who we should extend the invitation to the Richardson workshop. Next, I fired up NetVibes to see what was happening on the various blogs which I like to follow. Knowing that I only had a 15 minute window, I chose only to check only the ones I really enjoy. The first one I wanted to check was Chris Lehmann’s Practical Theory. I wanted to see if he had blogged about the departure of Paul Vallas, since I had heard on the news he was returning to Illinois, but instead I was drawn to his post about the season finale of Friday Night Lights, a television show I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and began to watch my TiVo’d version. I entered a comment onto his posting, sharing my views. Vicki Davis’ post about Burning the Midnight Oil caught my eye. Not having spent the time playing with Twitter, I commented on Vicki’s blog telling her how I couldn’t wait to hear about her project that she was getting ready to introduce later. (The Horizon Project has since been kicked off by Vicki and Julie Lindsay) This led to an email exchange (we should have skyped) where Vicki allowed me a sneak peek and invited me to participate. Reading about the project and then going to meet with the only teacher who may have been able to possibly work on the project, given the time frame, I determined that we would not be able to integrate this project, at least not initially. But Vicki did ask if I would consider being one her her “expert reviewers” which I accepted nearly immediately.

After a lunch, where I caught my breath and relaxed, at least for 30 minutes, I then met with a parent to discuss and provide access to our yearbook’s digital archive so that they could copy pictures for the end of the year slide show. Once I got that parent situated and started, I then met with a new Middle School teacher to instruct them on our philosophy of curriculum mapping, how to enter information into the maps, evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative project we had done in order to make it better for next year, and how they could incorporate the Holocaust Museum’s Google Earth data in a presentation that she was going to do in early May.

I then swung over to our Lower School Head’s office to confirm who was going to ask which teachers she wanted to invite to the Richardson experience. She said she had already invited the one and she was really charged up about the opportunity. She asked me to see if the second teacher would be willing. I immediately followed up with the second teacher and she also committed on the spot. Two yeses and two teachers who would have dropped everything and leave right away.

On the way back to my office, a second Upper School teacher asked if I had a few moments. He expressed interest in tackling a global collaborative project, Challenge 20/20 being coordinated by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). I took a few moments to plan with him the next steps towards completing our application, which is due on Monday.

By now, it was 2:00 p.m. I spent the rest of the afternoon planning for a technology planning meeting we have scheduled on Monday. Once 3:45 p.m. rolled around, I packed up my laptop and briefcase and went to pick up my daughter at the chorus room to head home.

If she had asked, “Daddy, what did you do today,” I would have been able to answer that I assisted many teachers so that the students would have great new experiences in the future.

And it was an excellent day.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity present to Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s pre-service class at the College of William and Mary. At the conclusion, I was both frustrated and exhilarated. I was frustrated by the number of problems and issues that I experienced while using Elluminate. Some of the problems were due to my lack of understanding of how to best use Elluminate. Knowing what I do now, I would use different methodologies in order to comply with the environment. I attribute some of the issues to the “technology gremlins” which always seem to make themselves know when trying to pull off a dynamite presentation.

My presentation was entitled Telling a New Story: Collaborating with Students (and Teachers as Students) to Develop Their Digital Voice (My lecture notes can be found at the wiki maintained by Sheryl for her class. I encourage you to visit this site to view some of the projects that I was highlighting for the class). You can download and view the presentation.

I started out with a Google Earth flyover from the College of William and Mary to North Shore Country Day’s campus so that the students would have a visual and spatial sense of where I was located. I then wanted to show them a Windows Media presentation that I put together using Microsoft’s PhotoStory 3 which would show a picture of myself, the buildings on campus, and candid shots of students working in classes, in our dramatic performances, and at our Science Olympiad regional. In order to create a connection with these college students, I tried to introduce them to two of our recent alumni who they may have heard about, Brendan Leonard, who had a nationally syndicated show on ABC Family which was popular with students their age during the summer of 2003 and Pete Wentz, who is the bassist of the band Fall Out Boy, with whom I used to play soccer against him during our high school’s pre-season conditioning as I was getting in shape to coaching our Middle School boys soccer team. It was during trying to show the video that the problems began. I will be posting the movie on the support wiki.

After providing some of the back story of who I was and why culturally why North Shore was in a unique position to be able to integrate technology towards the aim of curricular innovation, I wanted to share with the students an Inspiration diagram that I created this summer which summarizes the tension between instruction on how to use the tools that is essential for students to experience, especially for elementary school teachers and the use of the tool for communications that support the integration and implementation of technology to create content and collaboration for a world wide audience. These ideas are not mutually exclusive and there should be balanced with students being exposed to both skills building towards the goal of content creation and collaboration. However, some schools and administrators struggle with the issue, as it is easier to be accountable and assess student learning if the focus of technology instruction is weighted towards skills building as these skills are more discrete and measurable. Another factor of this tension is dealing with the limited amount of time that is typically alloted for technology in some schools. I know that I do not always get as much time to work with students as I would like. Within the next week, I will re-create this graph in one of the new mind-mapping software packages and share it so that you have access so that you can visualize this tension. Whenever I create a pdf of the document, since it is so full of information, it is always too small to read.

Now that the stage had been set, I was going to highlight the work that I have done with our 11th grade students. In the history class, I have collaborated with our History teacher, Kevin Randolph, on incorporating more elements of visual literacy into the history curriculum. I was going to share the cycle of projects that they have worked on, from a PowerPoint presentation (known tool), to a visual exploration using still imagery and sound (Vietnam Project), to an audio only project (Sound Poem). I selected examples that they students were unable to access and I will be adding to the support wiki. I also will be posting an excerpt of an interview I have done with Kevin Randolph on this space and it will be accessible via iTunes.
I was then going to share a unit that I have worked with our Middle School teachers/advisors for their global awareness unit. I trained them on how to use the simulation software from Real Lives. I also worked with teacher to introduce them to blogs to have students create the back story for their characters and how we used Google Earth to allow the students to see the distribution of different sims that they generated. While we usually share only success stories, on the surface, this was not a successful implementation, as the blogging did not take off, but working on this project inspired our 8th Grade Humanities teacher to take a look at new tools and this spring, we are trying out peer editing using Google Docs and are going to facilitate an exchange, using a wiki, with a classroom in China.

The piece de la resistance was going to be a project that our 5th Grade teachers integrated into their Mayan civilization unit this winter. After exposing 16 4th and 5th graders and the 5th grade teachers to Google Sketchup, I worked with the two lead teachers, Annie Gentithes and Libby Ester on a plan to allow students to research Mayan cities and then to recreate different temples and structures using Sketchup. Once each student completed each of their models, we then combined them to re-create the village. One item that I need to finish is to associate the village to a location on Google Earth and then load these villages into the Sketchup Warehouse so that others can use these models themselves. By associating these models with Google Earth, we are able to overlay the ancient on top of the current, which allows students to see the differences, as well as to be able to “walk” through the village to get a better sense, a 3 dimensional sense of what the village may have looked like. I also had an audio excerpt planned of our 5th Grade teachers and their experiences first learning Sketchup, where they were reminded of the struggles and frustrations that their students may experience when learning a new skill. I will be posting this audio later as well.

I wanted to finish up directing the students to the my blog posting on the different type of global collaborations, both passive and active, and how they can begin to get involved.

That was the intention.In practice, I was trying to resolve problems, one which was a caused by my computer, which crashed at the end of the class and while trying to manage my frustration that my plans were not working. I know that I was presenting on auto pilot and according to Sheryl, I did a great job articulating the projects, painting word pictures so that the students in Virginia could visualize them. I guess this is no small feat, especially when I know my attention was on trying to get the presentation to work like I wanted to. I look forward to listening to the presentation to see how many “rules” I broke while presenting, my overuse of the word thing rather than being more descriptive and the “umms”.

What I have learned is that when you push out video in Elluminate, that each student would have had to start their own player. Elluminate also does not like Windows Media Files. Having this experience, I am sure that I would have had the same problem with my audio files as well. I also found out that I could not share Google Sketchup unless I had a model pre-loaded.

I also learned that teaching in this environment is difficult. Because I was projecting my screen for some teachers who were stopping by, I had to change the resolution down from my wide screen to 1240 x 1024. Because of this and the way that windows stacked up, it was difficult to be able to watch the reaction from the participants, track the questions in the chat window, while trying to troubleshoot and present. Now knowing the limitations of Elluminate, I would have had different examples and handled the experience differently, in a way to better manage the virtual space. I would then, hopefully, be able to be able to follow the feedback in the other windows better.

I hope that I was able to inspire and show these pre-service teachers a number of different examples that they will be willing to adapt and try in their own teaching. I know that the process of putting this presentation and presenting in a virtual space was exhilarating. I was exhausted at the end. Please be sure to check out the wiki to view the examples and hear the audio and I hope that I have inspired some of you as well.

A little more than two weeks ago, when I was looking forward to breaking away from the hectic routine of school and settle into the relaxed routine of an extended break, I anticipated being able to catch up with projects, spending time blogging, and wrapping up and reporting on many of the projects which were initiated and completed during the winter. However, personal issues arose which kept me from fulfilling my goal of getting back to blogging. The day that break was to begin, my father was hospitalized for a six day period. We just returned from having Easter dinner with him and I am happy to report that he is doing well.  I also had to deal with my furnace, which decided to quit working as winter weather returned last week. Two days later and a trip from the heating and cooling guys, I am happy to report I am no longer needing to wear layers and go outside to warm up. I also took care of important items such as filing my taxes. This year, I also spent time helping my wife with various tasks as she directs the first musical she as done in the past eleven years as she transitions back in her first full year of teaching. She has experienced several major obstacles which have added stress and tension.

I did manage to get some down time. I was able to catch up on some reading, completing or nearly completing Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich by Mark Kriegel,   The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series and America’s Heart During the Great Depression by John Heidenry, Reading Judas: The Gospil of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity  by Elaine Pagels and Karen King,  Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, and  High Noon by J.F. Rischard.  I also indulged myself watching the free preview of Major League Baseball Extra Innings on DirecTV. I am a huge baseball fan and I indulge myself by watching parts of 5 - 6 games each day and evening, often as background noise while reading or catching up on correspondence.

I am looking forward to the upcoming nine weeks remaining in the academic year.  I love the challenges of this time of the school cycle, as we transition, winding down this year’s projects and beginning to plan for next year. There are several exciting projects in the discussion phase, we are planning for our new acquisitions, I will be creating a new master schedule for our high school for the second year in a row. I look forward to throwing myself into each of these challenges. I am already excited about the possibilities that next year will bring as I collaborate with more teachers to shift their use of technology in the classrooms from simple skill building towards using technology as a basis to communicate and collaborate with others.

I have also began to pull materials together for an experience that I will be participating in tomorrow. At 2:30 p.m. CDT, I will be addressing the students in Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s  course at William and Mary. I will be using Elluminate to facilitate the conversation. I am tentatively titling the conversation Telling a New Story: Guiding Students (and Teachers as Students) to help develop their voice via technology. I will share my thoughts on reflections about my experience in the next few days. As always, I am coming up with great ideas at the last minute that I am scrambling to put together before the presentation. I will work for a bit on this tonight and will be waking up early tomorrow to wrap up my materials. So back to the grindstone I go.