Flat Classroom Workshop virtually

I attended a great workshop in St. Louis on Tuesday and Wednesday without leaving Maryland. The workshop was the Flat Classroom Workshop given by Julie Lindsay. For us relative newbies to technology, it was an excellent introduction to the Flat Classroom universe and several commonly-used Web 2.0 tools, and it gave me a chance to work with other workshop participants, both virtual and real, in designing a Flat Classroom-style project to work with other classrooms across the web.

In the course of the workshop, I worked with two collaboration tools which I highly recommend. One was Dabbleboard, which was a whiteboard that many people could edit simultaneously, with a chat room box attached, and a similar program called Sync In. And I managed to create a spreadsheet in Google Docs and share it ...small potatoes for you skilled Web 2.0 folks, but a step forward for me.

Was being a virtual attendee the same as being there? No. it was a small workshop, and those who were there were able to interact much more easily and fully than I as a virtual participant. The audio at times was hard to follow, and the web cam struggled to resolve the display screen with any clarity. But, was being a virtual attendee worth it? Definitely yes! Julie and the other workshop organizers clearly put a lot of time and effort to make it possible to attend virtually, and I got a lot out of it. I think the point of virtual participation is to make it possible to take part, not to replace the experience of being there. And the choice for me was virtual participation, or no participation at all. I would definitely encourage others to attend conferences virtually when it is not possible to be there in person.

Taking was a big step forward for me, and, undoubtedly my personal development highlight of the summer! Thanks to all who organized the conference and allowed us to participate virtually!

Photo "virtual seat" by Bob Esty

Summing up the Year, Part 2

Last year, when I asked students to evaluate my class at the end of the year, I received a lot of good and some bad comments, but the one that stuck with me was "You talk too much." I found it interesting because, that year, I had made a real effort to talk less. However, it got me thinking, and I ran across an intriguing book called "Never Work Harder than Your Students" by Robyn Jackson. I also had started working with a class wiki.

So, I tried a system where I would give out questions, and the students would research the answers on their own for the factual portion of our history units. It worked out very well. Now, instead of bored faces listening when I lectured, my students did their own research, and posted the results on the class wiki. Each student answered a question, and added his or her own name and the page numbers in the relevant textbook. The wiki page became the study guide for the test. And I talked a lot less, and students got more practice in using the index and looking up information for themselves. That's probably the thing I'm most proud of this year.

And what about this year's evaluations? Largely positive, but the thing that stuck in my mind was "Can we act out more scenes from history." Now I have some ideas for next year....

Image: Pearson's Falls, near Tryon NC, Photo by Maureen Esty, my daughter

Feeding the Elephant

I was amused by Dane Peter's post on Dane's Education Blog which related a story in which a teacher from India asked a teacher from the United States whether the US did a lot of standardized testing. Upon receiving a confirmation, the Indian teacher noted. "Here, when we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant. We don’t weigh the elephant."

I am fortunate to work at a private school that receives no Federal funding at all. This means we also don't have to abide by Federal mandates, including those about standardized testing. We used to do one set of standardized tests a year, in part as a 'sanity check' on how our students are doing both for ourselves and our parents, but we've stopped doing that, and I can't say that I miss it. Neither do many of my students, who, having come from the public schools, complain long and loud about the tests they had to take when the subject comes up.

One of the sillier mandates I positively enjoy ignoring is the one put in by Senator Byrd of West Virginia which mandates that all schools receiving Federal funding teach about the U.S. Constitution on Constitution Day, which I believe is September 24th. Don't get me wrong; I believe in teaching about the Constitution, and spend two weeks on it in my US History course for 6th graders that I teach. But I teach it where it fits in chronologically, after the American Revolution, which, this year, I got to some time in November. I did not have to interrupt my presentation about the Salem Witchcraft Trials to devote an out-of-context day to the U.S. Constitution.


It would be nice to think that, with No Child Left Behind coming up for revision/renewal, that we'd get off this emphasis on testing, but I haven't heard much to indicate that this will be the case. In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy my 'bubble' existence free from Federal mandates as I feed the elephant as best I can.

Picture by Oso, published under a Creative Common license. http://flickr.com/photos/oso/5890418/

Yeah, about this blogging thing...

I follow a number of blogs, including Vicki Davis's Cool Cat Teacher Blog and David Warlick's 2 Cents Worth (both of which I recommend, by the way), but when it comes to writing my own, I can't seem to muster the patience or even the time, to put the obligatory picture on top, and to wordsmith what I have to say to something pithy and wide-reaching, and I certainly can't find the time to blog as much as these folks do. When we had the 'snow siege' in our area two weeks ago, I made myself a promise to say something weekly, which I've tried to do, but I'm not sure that forcing myself to write that often has resulted in that much added wisdom.

But, to continue from my last blog, I did have my students use the discussion feature on our class wiki to start a discussion on our current historical literature book, Ashes of Roses. It's just the first go-round, and I can see, even from my own inexperienced eyes, that this will be a work in progress for some time. I can see that I'll be tinkering with the format for a while before I hit upon something that works. What I do find is that I can launch only so many new things at one time...otherwise some fail simply for lack of attention.

On the bright side, however, I did get the idea of using the discussion feature from the English Companion Ning (which I also highly recommend). For much of my day-t0-day needs, I find this Ning answers a bit better than some of the blogs I follow. However, I find it a challenge to just keep up with the modest amount of on-line reading I do, much less add to my blog even once a week. How some of these folks find the time to read widely, which they clearly do, and blog at the pace they do is beyond me.

Bumps in the Road

Ah yes, it is always fun to imagine that life goes in an ever-ascending spiral upwards, and that projects once begun, will take on lives of their own. Sadly, reality, just like the economy, is full of ups and downs, and sometimes it does come to 'two steps forward, one back.'

Our ePals exchanges seem to be at a pause point. About half of my students sent out emails to their penpals during our 'snow week', but we didn't get any student responses back last week, and now the French class at least, is on break until March 8th. We're not sure why, but we haven't heard anything from our Spanish class this month. Some of my students are getting a bit frustrated at the lack of response.

Our class wiki continues to move along. Right now, the most active part is our book review section. This quarter, the students seem used to the idea of regular reading and posting book reports. We had our last batch of posted "Find Outs" for our US History unit on Reconstruction, which turned out to be very handy when our first date for the test was snowed out. Interestingly enough, I haven't gotten much in the way of reaction from parents when I made the wiki public except for one or two offhand comments about "gee, it's nice to see what you're up to."

I'm trying something different tomorrow. I'm going to use the discussion feature on the class wiki to talk about our current book, Ashes of Roses. Right now, I'm just requiring a post some time this week. We'll see what happens.

Snowed in? S'no problem

Our school has been closed since last Friday due to two snowstorms, and it won't reopen until Tuesday at the earliest. By email, my administrator asked us as a faculty to suggest things to do for our students that would allow them to work at home. For my students, I suggested that they write their French and Spanish epals, and I set up a place on our class wiki for them to share what they found out about the French and Spanish schools. I'm rather looking forward to the results!

Update for January

Well, if anyone were following this blog, they'd be mighty disappointed, since I've been posting at the rate of one post per month! Outside of being busy, as we all are, with various school duties, I'm somehow reluctant to post unless I feel I have something to say. Another issue is that I come lately to the entire Web 2.0 world, and I've never gotten into the swing of either checking or commenting daily. There's a part of me that is turned off by the concept of Twitter; yet I can certainly see that it has been useful for some people.

My email exchanges are moving along. My students and I have gotten a number of responses from both our French and Spanish classes. I have a picture of the town, Perigueux, in Aquitaine, in which our French correspondents have their school posted on our class wiki. I'm thinking of some kind of summing up exercise for my kids, in which they combine information they've received from their French correspondents to try and get a picture of what their school is like.

Meanwhile, I'm moving ahead with a version of my 6th grade Humanities course which features very little lecturing at all. As I've mentioned before, I've tried to be very specific on what I want my students to get out of a particular section, and have institutionalized this in a list of "Find Outs" or short points for identification. For my current unit, Reconstruction, I've put in for each item a "identity" and a "significance" header, following what the 7th grade teachers do at my school. I split up the "Find Outs" among the kids, each researching one and posting their answers on the class wiki. I also include some broader questions, some of which I also assign as homework. When I write the test, I have them fill in the identity and significance of some of the "Find Outs" and write answers to one or more of the questions I've put on the wiki.

So far, I'd have to say that it's been a screaming success. The students are engaged, and all of them do at least passing on the tests and most do very well. In the meantime, they're actually reading the textbook, or at least parts of it, using chapter headers and the index to find subjects, and synthesizing what they know in their own words.

One of my colleagues pointed out, however, that taking notes during lectures is a skill that is needed in upper school and college courses. Hmmm...have to think about that. Got some ideas already, but let's see what happens. When I ran that idea by my students, however, they were almost unanimous in their lack of enthusiasm for lecture, and my sense of some of them is that they are too restless or too distracted to pay attention during a lecture of more than, well, five minutes. At least, that's my impression judging from when I give instructions....

Two steps forward

I've always found December a frantic time for teaching. It's a short month because of the Christmas break, and there are plenty of interruptions in it because, for all practical purposes, it marks the end of the fall semester. In my school, we also give semester exams, which means that our regular schedule is thrown out the window for the week before break. Nonetheless, I made some progress this month in getting my international exchanges going.

Yes, international exchanges. I found a classroom in Spain through ePals that was in our age group and was willing to email in English. We just sent off our first emails to them before the break. I'm going to keep my exchanges at two for the moment and see where they go.

We've also now had two exchanges with our French school. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that our correspondent French school is not in Brittany, as I first thought, but in Aquitaine. I eventually found this out by doing Mapquest searches on towns mentioned in the student emails. My French counterpart did send me a copy of the school's web address, but I haven't been able to pull it up. Perhaps this has something to do with the electrical failure in the computer lab at their school. In any case, it gives us a lot to talk about.

One lesson that I have certainly learned is the necessity for patience. There always seem to be bugs in the system to work out, and, although the tech base in my school is far from extraordinary by US standards, it seems to be better than either of these schools. I just hope that my students can be patient as well.

My second strand has been to turn more of the learning in my class over to my students. As you might recall from earlier posts, this was inspired by things I read over the summer, most notably Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn Jackson. What I've done over the fall is to turn over researching facts, group paper outlines, and finally individual paper outlines to the students and posting them on our class wiki. One big step I took in December was to make the wiki public. I had worked with our school administration to get this approved, and approval came some time ago, but I waited until I thought the wiki was ready. I finally realized that I was waiting for me to be confident enough to throw the switch, which I finally did the first week of December. So far, the reaction I've gotten from making it public has been positive, if somewhat minimal.

I suspect that where I'm heading with this approach is some sort of inquiry-based learning, but I would have to make myself a lot more familiar with what inquiry-based learning is before I would claim to be going there.

I've been trying to keep up with various blogs in my Google Reader. Most of the people I follow seem to be light-years ahead of me in the tech stuff they use, which I find both inspiring and a bit discouraging at the same time. I guess that's another patience lesson; to run the marathon at one's own pace and be comfortable with one's own achievements while being aware of what else is out there.

We have an exchange!

We just received our first emails from our sister class in Brittany, France. I'm very excited about this, and I know my students are looking forward to getting these emails, which they will reply to in the coming week. Another small step, but we've come some distance now.

Another small step

Last week, my class sent its first emails to our class in Brittany, France. We used some stock French phrases (Bonjour, Je m'appelle...) and wrote the rest of our introductions in English. Our corresponding class is a English class in a French school. I'm curious as to how or when they will respond.

Today, I took another small step towards making the class wiki public by inviting my supervisor to be a member. She was favorably impressed by it. I was hoping to get some pictures from our French correspondents and put them on the wiki before taking it public, but I'm thinking now of turning it public after the Thanksgiving break, and adding the international portion later.

My last group project on the wiki was group reports, in which each group posted its sources (from a limited list) and main points of information on the wiki before writing the paper. This seemed to work well on a number of levels; more than one member of the group could access the information, and it gave me an easy and paperless way to check their sources. For my next project, I'm asking my students to do individual reports on the same model; post their sources and main points on the wiki, and then write their paper off of those.

Also for this unit, I have come up with my usual list of questions, which I call "Find Outs," for my students to research. This time, I've assigned each student a "Find Out" question, and I've made it one list between my two classes. I guess we'll see what happens.

Everyone on our faculty was asked to suggest a topic for a workshop for our local AIMS convention next year. My topic ended up as "Evolution of my class wiki." I like the term "evolution," because it suggests a step-by-step forward movement, which is how I've been working in incorporating Web 2.0 in my teaching. I'm sure others have done more, and more quickly, but given the lack of a computer technology person at my school, and the lack of other tech-savvy role models at my school more skilled than me, step-by-step is how I feel comfortable working. Besides, I do have an outside life.

Permission to proceed

I got the word today that I now have the school's blessing to go ahead with a publically-viewable wiki and with establishing email accounts on epals. Both of these things have not been done at my school before. I'm excited: this means I can go ahead with my projects, which include an email exchange with classes in Belarus and France, classes which I contacted via epals, and a publically-viewable wiki that will help feature this project. Neither of these things are new in an overall sense...plenty of schools have done this and much more, but it will be interesting for me to see how I can get this all to work. I'm looking forward to this. More details to come!

Not exactly tech, but new for me

I had an "aha' moment in my classes today. Over the summer, I've read "Never Work Harder than Your Students" by Robyn R. Jackson. (yes, I know. It's a book. Very old-fashioned). I got the idea of, rather than telling my students what was important about the first two English colonies in America, I could ask a series of questions, and have my students look up the answers using the index of the textbook (and exposing them to a research skill in the process). Better, I divided the class into "Team Massachusetts" and "Team Virginia" and had them work in groups, to split up the questions among themselves and help each other with the answers. I had planned to introduce this a bit later, but I had to be away from my class today, so I sped up the introduction, so they could work while the sub was there. Not only were my students completely absorbed in the task, but they wanted to continue it after I came back halfway during class. And, when I did have to explain the difference between 'Separatists' (Pilgrims) and Puritans, it was in response to a student question, and I got everyone paying attention. I did the same with my afternoon class, and did some one-on-one coaching, and my students stayed on task for over an hour on a Friday afternoon before a three day weekend. Wow. Without a doubt, my most successful group project to date. Now the tech part comes in when I introduce wikis next week, and get them to post their information there.

Step 2A - the NECC Conference

The 2009 NECC Conference, a big gathering of those interested in education technology issues, convened in Washington this past June. I heard about it relatively late in the year, so I went for a day on my own nickel. To be honest, I spent most of my time there in a state of overwhelmed be-gogglement. I did take in an excellent session by Steve Dembo on his Top 10 Free Web 2.0 sites for teachers. I also enjoyed the Global Connections in the Primary Classroom presentation. I'm thinking of this wiki as a possible model for what I would like to do this coming year. I also wandered among the student presentation and the venders hall. I know that I didn't get as much out of it as I could, but one has to start somewhere, and I feel that it was very useful to me.

Step 2 - What I did last year

To pick up the story from Part 1, after I heard Meg Steele's presentation at AIMS and during the time I was taking the 23Things course, I created a classroom wiki through Wikispaces. I have to say that the Wikispaces support staff was very helpful to me while getting this wiki set up. Being a naturally cautious person, I kept access to the wiki limited to members, that is myself and my students. I also built on the experience of one of my colleagues, Laurel Seid, who set up a similar wiki for her course.

My first project involved posting short papers on a historical personality on the wiki, which worked well both for my correcting the papers electronically but also so the students could get to know how the wiki worked.

After that, I expanded the wiki by using it for a project called "U Teach Em", where students summarize an event covered by a chapter or two in our history textbook, write it up, and present it to the rest of the class. I had my students outline the important parts of each chapter and post them on the wiki. After the students gave their presentations, they chose questions, which I used for a quiz. The outlines worked as a backup study guide for the quiz.

At the end of the year, working off an idea I got from a blog (sorry, I don't remember which one), I asked the students to write book reviews and post them on a separate section of the wiki. Since it was the end of the year, I didn't get a lot of reviews, but I'm hopeful that I can carry over that section of the wiki over several years.

My aim for this year is to take the wiki public, that is, allow anyone to see it, but restrict editing it to members only. This seems to be the normal setup for classroom wikis. Having the wiki visible will not only help parents see what is going on in our class, but it will also be useful in my efforts to reach out to classrooms around the world. We'll see what happens.