Ruth’s Ruckus2

I’ve got bunus points because I’ve got Plurk open!!

Learning to Speak Native:

Reference to Prensky: Natives are multitaskers, they prefer graphics BEFORE text etc… they think differently because they grew up connected.  Our schools were not created to accomodate these kids.  If educators want to reach NATIVES we will have to “just do it”. 

We’ve had an information explosion…161 Billion GB of information.  Another key trend flattening the world.  Open sourcing and tools on steroids (like cell phones).  Also Wikinomics - everyone helping to build something better than they can do on their own.  Look at the www.curriki.com  project or the fact that some things like Gmail are in perpetual beta …not everything is a final draft.  The idea is finding innovative uses for things and not necessarily inventing everything. This is the intersection of tools, experts, and knowledge.  It’s the idea of a listserv vs. plurk.  It’s a conversation and it’s personal.  It’s impromptu professional development.  You get ideas and professional development that you didn’t even know you need.  People share discoveries, request info, social and personal connection, explore new things, professional development opportunities in real time.  We are all DEN STARs and we are supposed to share, so we should use these things.  VA has a guide on social networking in grades k-12?  I need to get my hands on it…Apparently it’s published by the DOE?

Networking allows us to learn how o do what we do and using WEB2.0 allows us to share what we are learning in bigger audiences.  So now teachers are becoming as connected as the students we teach.  Then we start doing the same things kids do to try to stay connected at work.  If you give a man a fish, if you teach a man to fish,  ic you connect a man to a fishing community he’ll have variety in his diet.

Natives attends conferences using Live blogs, podcasts, backchannel, skypecast, twitter, ustream even in second life.  During packed sessions folks who stream it out can help folks who want to attend.  Then you can sit is second life next to others who couldn’t physically be there.  www.mogulus.com a virtual broadcasting studio in your computer? www.qik.com plays nicely with mogulus and you can do truly mobile recording. Can’t get parent’s to come to an assembly during the day?  broadcast it live and then they can attend while on break at work.  Create an on demand video library…

Find a way to share the info that fits you and stay connected.

I spent most of my time in June working on the TEACH Academy initiative.  If you didn’t make it, you really missed a great opportunity.  TEACH was a 3 day technology professional development experience.  We took over the Starbase Victory facility and ran 7 hands on concurrent sessions every day.  Wow.  We even had a strand for administrators on Thursday the 19^th. We had a great mix of presenters: Debbie Rollins, Tom Spencer, Doug Adams and Paul Barron as well as our own folks.

I gotta give props to Christine Munroe who handled all the registration and all the changes.  Karen Streeter who was the visionary who knew we could do it back in January when she dreamed it up and the TRTs who both taught sessions and assisted throughout the week. Special thanks (what is this an Emmy speech?) needs to go to Jason Sullivan,  AJ Boone, Bob Roberts and Tami Barker from the engineering and applications groups who gave both remote and onsite assistance troubleshooting and getting things fixed.  All hail the Great PPS Websense Nazi who unblocked sites as necessary at the last minute so the show could go on…I know I’ve forgotten folks…you all did so much to help. 

Between the preparation and the actual event, I thought I was going to die.  When I finally got my car unloaded on Friday and had a chance to unwind, I just fell out.  I didn’t leave my house all weekend.  My good friend Melissa is a TRT for Bristol Schools and she does a teacher academy all on her own…don’t know how she does it.  

I still have to finish the debrief but overall we got lots of positive comments, some lessons learned, and 115 teachers who were immersed in technology and will be ready for followup in September…Oh - I’ve got some pictures…

 I’ve spent the last two days in professional development.  On one hand, I feel like a limp dishrag.  On the other, I can’t wait to try some of these things out.  Karen Streeter, my supervisor, arranged for Tammy Worcester to do professional development for the TRTs for two days.  It was just us, the Portsmouth folks and it was great.  Tammy is a nationally known Instructional Technology Specialist from Kansas.  She’s been in the field for a very long time.  Lots of the things she showed us were applications that we should have been able to figure out on our own. However when you are working at 100mph every day, you just don’t have time to think about some of these things or play with applications the way you’d like.  

As I see it, Karen was doing herself a great favor by arranging this for us.  In my mind it was at least the equivalent of going to the VSTE ITRT mini-conference.  We spent a day learning how to support academics and another day learning about using web applications.  We would have probably had the same kind of learning experiences at the mini-conference, but logistically our whole team would not have been able to go.  First of all the ITRT conference is in the summer and most of our folks don’t work in the summer.  Secondly I think the cost (travel, meals, lodging) would have been more, and this way we got two days of professional development instead of one.

So at the end of day two I am wiped.  But since we had arranged to be in the ODU tri-cities center, we needed to make especially sure that we returned the teaching lab back to the way we found it…(my mom taught me manners). So, the question is how do you clean up after a group of TRTs?  The answer - with dread…I know this because I end up cleaning up after these folks most Fridays. 

      The first thing we had to do was to empty the recycle bin (a large blue container with the recycle symbol on it above which is a sign clearly stating that it is for copy paper only).  It was filled to the brim with garbage from everyone’s lunch from the two days we were there.  Of course if they had followed the lab rules about not eating in the lab in the first place we wouldn’t have had to clean up their garbage.  Then of course we wanted to make sure the computers were all back in working condition.  Here again, my experience told me there would be an issue.  Most of the computers were fine; however one had been totally upended and left that way.  So the computer needed to be put back the way it was found.  

Other than that, the two days were great.  I look forward to finding language arts applications for the information we got. 

 Overall I thought the conference was great.  I found out about it through a colleague who I met while working on my ISTE NETS-T certification.  I actually got to meet Anita at the conference!! It was nice to actually meet someone who I had spent 18 months studying with online. 

I went to eight sessions while at the conference.  I took notes, but summary is a great strategy…

1. Sara Armstrong talked about assessing 21^st century skills.  It was very interesting that she brought together three models of teaching 21^st century skills that overlapped.  While I have studied all three models: The partnership for 21^st century skills, ISTE’s NETS, and the enGauge model; I had never actually looked at them side by side before. I found the overlap surprising since I had never considered them in the same light and yet not surprising as they are all models for teaching 21^st century skills.  I was dumbfounded when I realized that I failed to make that connection before.  Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees…Sara also posited that the digital native/digital immigrant dichotomy might not be the best way to conceptualize our relationships with technology.
2. My second session was a panel aimed at helping administrators think about use of technology in education.  Goochland schools talked about blogs and online learning.  They have an elementary principal that blogs about goings on in the school.  He has a strategy that he uses where he takes his IPOD and microphone out through the school and interviews students after different events.  He records student reactions and uploads them to the blog.  He uses these podcasts to drive traffic to the blog and find that while there parents, students and other stakeholders read and comment about various events, situations, and policies and it helps the school climate.  Henrico talked about blogging and while I have a handle on educational uses of the technology, I found they had some strategies that I had not run across before and/or had misunderstood.  They have teachers who simply moderate their blogs, assigning the major portion of posting to the students who all have various user status for the blog.  Some very interesting ideas were thrown out which were timely for me because I was preparing for my own inservice on blogging.  Powhatan discussed their strategy for raising the bar in terms of tech integration with their teachers.  Their teachers are required to turn in a technology portfolio every three years - kinda like recertifying for TSIP.  TRTs are assigned to the teachers with the lowest tech skills.  Teachers who want “additional stuff” have to spend time troubleshooting and helping other teachers integrate technology.  Ten percent of the teachers in Powhatan are tech leads.
3. I was not impressed with Larry Anderson’s presentation, and quite frankly didn’t understand what point he was trying to make.  He talked around a lot of the issues in the air but I don’t think he ever really made a point.
4. Karen Richardson talked about the need to change how we perceive assessment.  She challenged participants to not only consider the purpose of assessment but to look at it in the context of the skills that Sara Armstrong discussed in the morning.  She asked us to rate our schools in terms of what they are measuring well (after she removed straight content area knowledge out of the focal point).  It was a great exercise.  Of course I new that my schools weren’t doing a whole lot of anything that wasn’t content area related.  So of course I need to ask the question ‘what are we preparing kids for at my schools”?  Obviously we are not preparing them to be successful in the 21^st century…
5. I sat through Spotsylvania’s presentation on data mining. I totally misunderstood the thrust of their presentation from the conference program.  I was glad that I was sitting at a table with my laptop…I got caught up on my school email.  I do have to say that I liked their explanation on how to use data: formative assessment informs instruction and is data that can make a difference in this year’s students while summative data is data that shows instructional trends.  I couldn’t help thinking that their take on the SOL was so much healthier than what I am usually exposed to.   Wondered if we are even able to establish and look at trends in data here in Portsmouth given the rate of teacher turnover, constant changes in placement and instructional strategies and materials.  Since they all effect our data, how good can our data be?
6. The next session I went to was about professional learning communities.  A school in Henrico had used PLC models for teacher professional development about technology.  I would LOVE to facilitate something similar in one of my schools. It’s always better when teachers drive their professional development - they get more out of it.
7. After lunch I got caught up with Anita discussing the keynote and comparing war stories.  I caught the tail end of a presentation on adult learners.  At least I know where to get the notes.
8. The last session I went to was done by a professor at VCU who talked about using Web 2.0 communications technology to help beginning teachers establish networks.  I found her thoughts on digital natives and immigrants to be interesting.  She said the primary difference was that digital natives lead connected lives whiel digital immigrants tend to stand alone.

Getting all of that down on paper and synthesized feels good - like a weight has been lifted.  Wait ’till I tell you about David Warlick’s keynote!!

I’m at the VSTE conference in Roanoke and the first session I have is a hands-on session.  Look what I’ve learned…

I made a Blabber for You!