Students Use Google Maps to Plan Field Trips

May 14, 2012 Janet Moeller-Abercrombie One comment

Each May, our fifth grade stu­dents go Walk­a­bout. No, we don’t send them into the Aus­tralian Out­back, but we send them into the city to find writ­ing inspiration.

Plan­ning a real-life field trip is a project that requires stu­dents to research online, explore the geog­ra­phy of the city using Google maps, col­lab­o­rate in small groups, plan for and use pub­lic trans­porta­tion, cre­ate rea­son­able timeta­bles, orga­nize itin­er­aries on a spread­sheet, bud­get, and com­mu­ni­cate with parents.

While on the field trip, stu­dent groups make stops at places where they write for 20 min­utes and take pic­tures. Most writ­ing is descrip­tive, but we ask that stu­dents draft at least one haiku.

When they return to school, stu­dents revise, edit, and pub­lish their haikus. Pic­tures and descrip­tive writ­ing are turned into nar­ra­tives, pho­toes­says, and more.

Brain­storm­ing Places to See

The class begins by explor­ing some of Hong Kong’s great tourist attrac­tions and look­ing through vir­tual tours. Indi­vid­ual stu­dents list places that trig­ger fond mem­o­ries as well as places they’ve always wanted to visit. Indi­vid­u­als then iden­tify at least three places they believe will inspire good writing.

Indi­vid­u­als with sim­i­lar lists are paired up or grouped together to plan a joint trip. Pairs and groups are then matched with par­ent chaperones.

Learn­ing the Geog­ra­phy of the City

Many of my stu­dents have lived in Hong Kong for years but do not know the geo­graphic loca­tions within the city. Which attrac­tions are on which island (after all, there are 260+ islands in the Spe­cial Admin­is­tra­tive Region)?

In order to visit as many places as pos­si­ble, stu­dents need to iden­tify the most effi­cient order of des­ti­na­tions. More than a few groups begin with itin­er­aries that cross Vic­to­ria Har­bour numer­ous times or double-back across Hong Kong Island. When asked to point out their des­ti­na­tions on a map, the “Ohhhhh“s and “A-ha“s are audible.

Click on the image to go to the Google Map

 

Plan the Route

Once stu­dents have iden­ti­fied loca­tions on a map, they must plan how to get from place to place. They ride the school bus to the Cen­tral part of Hong Kong Island. Then, they are released to fol­low their itin­er­aries through­out the city.

We ask stu­dents to use pub­lic trans­porta­tion rather than pri­vate vehi­cles (no dri­vers, no taxis, no pri­vate cars). They com­pare the length of time it would take them to get to a des­ti­na­tion using the MTR (sub­way), using buses, and walking.

Google maps allow stu­dents to make those comparisons.

 

Cre­ate a Detailed, Fea­si­ble Itinerary

The goal is that stu­dents get to all their des­ti­na­tions, write for at least 20 min­utes in each loca­tion, and return to the school bus by 1:15 in the after­noon. Groups used the Google spread­sheet to collaborate.

When stu­dents began enter­ing times, some time­frames were very gen­eral. When con­fer­enc­ing with groups, I’d hear them say We’ll be here be [this time] and there by [that time].

“What time wil you leave x-place to ensure you are in y-place at your des­ig­nated time?” I’d ask. Many planned to arrived at a loca­tion, stay for 20 min­utes, then leave. They didn’t allow room for explo­ration or photography.

Other stu­dents looked at the Google routes and gave them­selves the exact time indi­cated on the “Direc­tions” loca­tor. They would catch the bus at 10:42 and arrive at their des­ti­na­tion at 10:54. When I asked how they could be so cer­tain about the times, groups said Google maps say that the bus ride is 12 min­utes long. I had to explain that a 12 minute bus ride began once the stu­dents were on the bus and the bus was mov­ing. The time does not account for walk time to the bus stop, wait time at the stop, and pos­si­ble traf­fic delays. Students had to prove their timeta­bles were feasible.

Itin­er­aries include lunch at a loca­tion cho­sen by stu­dents and a bud­geted amount of money.

Below is an exam­ple of an itinerary.

 

Trip Expec­ta­tions

While on the field trip, stu­dents were expected to write for 20 min­utes in at least three loca­tions. Since we’re in the midst of a poetry unit, stu­dents were asked to draft at least one poem and one Haiku.

Stu­dents were also encour­aged to take pic­tures and write detailed descrip­tions of loca­tions, includ­ing sounds, smells, and sights in each location.

Follow-up Writ­ing

Using ideas put forth by Richard Byrne at Free Tech­nol­ogy for Teach­ers, stu­dents posted pic­tures and Haikus around a Google map of Hong Kong.

Click on the image below to view the final project:

A detailed expla­na­tion of teach­ing Haiku and putting together the final projects can be found on Expat Edu­ca­tor.

Real­ity Check

Cities vary in terms of safety and ease of pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Also, schools have dif­fer­ent lia­bil­ity con­cerns. That said, stu­dents could use maps to plan itin­er­aries within smaller areas such as zoos, National Parks, and his­tor­i­cal areas such as Gettysburg.

Stu­dents might be able to walk around small cities with par­ents, stop­ping to write about parks, rivers, or fire sta­tions. Alter­nately, a Walk­a­bout trip might be an exten­sion activ­ity for par­ents and stu­dents to do together on the weekend.

What are your ideas for project using Google maps?

The journey can be exciting and scary at the same time

May 11, 2012 Blair Peterson No comments

Cross posted on Cre­ative Tension

In Decem­ber 2009, I used this photo in my Lead­er­ship and 1:1 Bus post and last year I used it with the Graded fac­ulty to describe our jour­ney to pro­vide stu­dents with a rel­e­vant edu­ca­tion for today and the future. This jour­ney includes going 1:1 in August 2012. For me the photo con­jures up excite­ment and fear. And while some peo­ple are adven­tur­ous enough to sit on top or hang on the side, oth­ers feel more com­fort­able inside. It doesn’t mat­ter where one sits, the impor­tant thing is that we’re all together on the journey.

When is it excit­ing and often mag­i­cal?  When our stu­dents are using tech­nol­ogy for learn­ing, cre­ative and orig­i­nal think­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, research and infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy and crit­i­cal think­ing and prob­lem solving.

When is it a bit scary?  When we are uncer­tain of what is com­ing next or when we have to step out­side our com­fort zone to try some­thing new.

We have so much to be proud because we have trav­eled so far in such a short amount of time. This year we have done the fol­low­ing to pre­pare for a full 1:1 roll­out in August.

  • Sup­port pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment at con­fer­ences by pro­vid­ing fac­ulty with the oppor­tu­nity to attend the Lap­top Insti­tute at Lau­sanne Col­le­giate and Unplugged at the Amer­i­can School of Bom­bay.
  • Pro­vided all of our teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors with lap­tops so that we all get used to work­ing any­time, anywhere.
  • Using dig­i­tal tools to help us with our work and our learn­ing. The idea is that we will exper­i­ment and fig­ure out what works as we do the same in our classrooms.
  • Cre­ated PLCs around assess­ment in today’s dig­i­tal environment.
  • Reviewed and redesigned our cur­ricu­lum in sci­ence and Eng­lish with a 21st cen­tury lens.
  • Encour­aged stu­dents to bring in lap­tops to ease the tran­si­tion for August.
  • Defined our Infor­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­ogy stan­dards that will be inte­grated school­wide next year.
  • Pro­vided teach­ers with a full-time aca­d­e­mic tech­nol­ogy coor­di­na­tor to sup­port them with inte­grat­ing tech­nol­ogy and pro­fes­sional development.
  • Devel­oped our accept­able use pol­icy and LARK guide­lines so that our com­mu­nity mem­bers can be respon­si­ble dig­i­tal citizens.
  • Devel­oped a dig­i­tal toolkit that will pro­vide us with some soft­ware stan­dard­iza­tion in our bring your own lap­top environment.
  • Upgraded facil­i­ties so that we have elec­tri­cal power through­out the campus.

We real­ize that the jour­ney is not over yet. In real­ity, we’ve really only trav­eled a short dis­tance. The key is that we are well on our way to trans­form­ing the learn­ing expe­ri­ences for our students.

Teacher Appreciation Day

May 9, 2012 Nick Sauers No comments

Yes­ter­day was Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Day and if you’re an admin­is­tra­tor, hope­fully you have already taken the time to thank your teach­ers for all of the hard work that they do for stu­dents.  I’d also hope that you don’t save those thank-yous for Teacher’s Appre­ci­a­tion Day only.  In the past three years, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to meet out­stand­ing teach­ers from around the coun­try.  Prior to that, I was for­tu­nate to learn with many for­ward think­ing col­leagues.   A good ques­tion to con­sider is how to sup­port our best teach­ers with more than a thank-you or cheap trin­ket once a year.  The ideas that I’ve listed below are bor­rowed from schools and edu­ca­tors across the coun­try.  Feel free to leave a com­ment with addi­tional ideas.  I’ve split my list into two cat­e­gories.  The first group of sug­ges­tions is for admin­is­tra­tors, and the sec­ond cat­e­gory is for those of you who are teach­ers look­ing for bet­ter sup­port systems.

Admin­is­tra­tors:

  • Pro­vide your best teach­ers with RESOURCES because they can serve as mod­els for other teach­ers.  Resources include not only things, but also time!
  • Find ways to help those teach­ers con­tinue to grow.  Send them to con­fer­ences and let them visit other schools.
  • Be cre­ative and reward them for their hard work.

Teach­ers:

  • Try to develop net­works that will help you con­tinue to grow.  Your net­work may include other teach­ers in the school, but should also include other exem­plary edu­ca­tors from around the globe.  Use social media to con­nect with others.
  • If your admin­is­tra­tion isn’t pro­vid­ing you with resources, think cre­atively.  Apply for grants, or go to your PTO if pos­si­ble.  Try to make part­ner­ships with local busi­nesses that are friends of edu­ca­tion. Even a non-supportive admin­is­tra­tion is unlikely to turn down free money or tools.
  • Toot your own horn!  Gen­er­ally, most edu­ca­tors are not good at this.  How­ever, if you want your com­mu­nity to sup­port your work, you should show them all of the great things you are doing.

I hope that yes­ter­day was a great day for all of you. More impor­tantly, I hope that each of you have the sup­port sys­tems that allow you to be suc­cess­ful in your school each and every day.

Nick Sauers

 

 

Reinventing Education

May 3, 2012 Nick Sauers One comment

I spent the day on Tues­day at the kick­off of Emi­nence, Kentucky’s Frame­work of Inno­va­tion for Rein­vent­ing Edu­ca­tion (F.I.R.E.) ini­tia­tive.  School com­mu­ni­ties often unite behind ath­letic or other extra-curricular activ­i­ties, but are less enthu­si­as­tic about sup­port­ing learn­ing ini­tia­tives. It was awe­some to see the excite­ment gen­er­ated for Emi­nences School on F.I.R.E. ini­tia­tive.  Not only were stu­dents, board mem­bers, and school staff mem­bers at the kick­off event, but also many other indi­vid­u­als who had been involved with the launch of their pro­gram.  Many things from the day were inspir­ing, but the mes­sage from Terry Hol­i­day, who is the Ken­tucky Com­mis­sioner of Edu­ca­tion, was very pow­er­ful.  Com­mis­sioner Hol­i­day may have bor­rowed a line from a pop­u­lar speech with his “Yes we can” theme, and it was enthu­si­as­ti­cally received by the crowd. He noted how many schools said that that they were unable to go 1:1 dur­ing such a dif­fi­cult bud­get time, but Emi­nence said, “yes we can”.  He noted how many schools banned cell phones and social media, but Emi­nence embraced it.  For me, his mes­sage was rel­e­vant to a vast range of top­ics or issues.  In schools, and in life, we often let rules or obsta­cles get in our way of chang­ing our behav­iors or reach­ing a goal.  In schools those obsta­cles may be 45-minute peri­ods, stan­dard­ized test­ing, the bud­get, facil­i­ties, or a host of other things.  Those chal­lenges, how­ever real they are, often become excuses to not make major changes.  I say excuses because in most cases there are exam­ples of schools that have over­come those obsta­cles to improve their learn­ing envi­ron­ment for stu­dents.  One exam­ple of this would be the bud­get chal­lenges that most schools are fac­ing.  I’ve worked with numer­ous schools in Iowa who have gone 1:1, and many oth­ers who have said that they just can’t afford to do it.  Those schools that have gone 1:1 in Iowa don’t have any unique resources that other schools do not have.  In fact, most of them have declin­ing enroll­ments, which is an essen­tial part of bud­gets that are cre­ated on a per pupil basis.  They were able to go 1:1 because they thought it was impor­tant for their stu­dents and they were com­mit­ted to mak­ing it hap­pen.  On Tues­day, there were many exam­ples of how Emi­nence was over­com­ing numer­ous obsta­cles to improve stu­dent learn­ing.  Some exam­ples include:

  • They have embraced a “sur­prise and delight” approach to school, and even have included that as some­thing they look for in their walk-throughs. For more infor­ma­tion about sur­prise and delight, con­tact John Nash or visit his dLab web­site.
  • Build­ing on the last point, they have thought of cre­ative ways to have pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment. A 9-year old led one train­ing!  On another day, they had their train­ing at a local shop­ping mall.  Another was held at a Starbucks.
  • They worked closely with an archi­tect to cre­ate a great envi­ron­ment for stu­dents. In the ele­men­tary, the hall­ways were designed to look like a road and the out­side of each class­room looked like a busi­ness or other com­mu­nity build­ing.  I can imag­ine that the ele­men­tary stu­dents were pretty excited about their school! (This was done at min­i­mal costs.)
  • They are imple­ment­ing a 1:1 pro­gram in the high school called ACES.
  • One of their school buses has been equipped with Wi-Fi!
  • Their class sched­ule includes an amaz­ing list of elec­tives that should be extremely rel­e­vant to stu­dents.  I’m excited to learn more about their syl­labi for each course and will likely post about them in the future.  One of those courses involves stu­dents help­ing to solve prob­lems their com­mu­nity is fac­ing.  Another course, the one that I’m most excited about, will have stu­dents try­ing to cre­ate a large dig­i­tal foot­print around a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion.  They will use social media to spread their mes­sage around the world.
  • Stu­dents will col­lab­o­rate with stu­dents from a promi­nent high school in the UK.

These are just some exam­ples of the excit­ing things that they have done.  They also high­light how schools CAN rein­vent them­selves if they truly want to do so!  I hope to fol­low their school closely and write about some of the chal­lenges and suc­cesses that they encounter on their jour­ney.  It is extremely excit­ing to be involved with a school that is very aggres­sively think­ing of cre­ative ways to improve their schools. Emi­nence closed their cel­e­bra­tion with a rap from stu­dent Bran­don Mitchell, and part of his wrap is below.  If you’d like to see the entire set of lyrics, you can find them here.

You know I love those ACES
I ain’t talkin bout the card
But with all these Apple prod­ucts
Got me feel­ing like Steve Jobs

With all these advances
a new era is now enter­ing
Schools are mak­ing progress
time to move into this century

B. E. Ready, B. E. Ready
B. E. Ready… For fire
B. E. Ready, B. E. Ready
B. E. Ready… For fire

Accom­plish the impos­si­ble
Were liv­ing by this code
No bet­ter way to start it
Then with Mac­Book Pros

Assign­ing them to stu­dents
Each and every indi­vid­ual
We take the school and flip it
You can call it the reciprocal

Nick Sauers

A conversation about changing schools…

April 25, 2012 Nick Sauers No comments

I spent April 19 and 20 in Yoko­hama, Japan at the #beyond­lap­tops con­fer­ence. Inter­na­tional 1:1 edu­ca­tors from across Asia par­tic­i­pated in the con­fer­ence.  The con­fer­ence was very unique because it didn’t take the tra­di­tional con­fer­ence or work­shop for­mat with keynote speak­ers. Instead, par­tic­i­pants spent the two days con­vers­ing with one another and dri­ving the con­ver­sa­tion in what­ever direc­tion was most ben­e­fi­cial for the atten­dees.  There was an agenda, but it was made clear that the sched­ule was flex­i­ble and that proved to be true.
 At the con­fer­ence kick­off, Yoko­hama Inter­na­tional Schools  Head­mas­ter James Mac­Don­ald explained the think­ing behind the con­fer­ence. He stressed how the knowl­edge in a room full of edu­ca­tors is much greater than any one indi­vid­ual could bring to the room.  I think that such a phi­los­o­phy could help edu­ca­tors work through many chal­leng­ing issues. How­ever, it seems that pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment in this for­mat is rather unusual. We instead often cre­ate rigid sched­ules and stick to them at all costs. I have cer­tainly done so both as a teacher and prin­ci­pal. Those plan­ning pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment may care­fully want to con­sider some ways to take this more unstruc­tured approach to pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment.  It was well worth it for me, and the other par­tic­i­pants who spoke with me about the conference.

I hope to post resources from the con­fer­ence on this blog in the near future.  I’d also like to rec­og­nize Kim Cofino and the entire YIS staff for all of their work mak­ing the con­fer­ence happen!

Nick Sauers

How are you using your wiki and other Web 2.0 tools?

April 18, 2012 Nick Sauers 2 comments

I recently read an arti­cle in Edu­ca­tional Researcher that ana­lyzed the use of Wikis in schools. The find­ings were very inter­est­ing and they may serve as a cat­a­lyst for every­one to ana­lyze their use of Web 2.0 tools. In their exten­sive analy­sis researchers in the study iden­ti­fied four types of ways that wikis were being used. Those rea­sons are listed below along with the per­cent­age rate each are being used for.

 

  • Trial wikis and teacher research-sharing sites (40%)
  • Teacher content-delivery sites (34%)
  • Indi­vid­ual stu­dent assign­ment and port­fo­lios (25%)
  • Col­lab­o­ra­tive stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions and work­spaces (1%)

These find­ings indi­cate that this Web 2.0 tool is often times not being used to its fullest poten­tial. It is often sim­ply being used as a place to store resources. This post isn’t intended as a crit­i­cism of those basic uses. In fact, that is how I often use wikis. Hope­fully this arti­cle and post will push all of us to care­fully con­sider how we are using technology. I REALLY like Berna­jean Porter’s tech­nol­ogy and learn­ing spec­trum.  In that spec­trum, she writes about the three ways most peo­ple use tech­nol­ogy in their class­rooms.  She describes lit­er­acy uses as sim­ply teach­ing about tech­nol­ogy. Her next cat­e­gory is adapt­ing uses such as edu­ca­tors using tech­nol­ogy in their classes just to use it. The final cat­e­gory is the trans­form­ing uses and she describes that as using tech­nol­ogy to meet learn­ing con­tent standards.

I think that it can be very easy to learn about a new tech­nol­ogy tool and then be dri­ven to use it sim­ply to use it. I would chal­lenge each of you to truly ana­lyze how you are using the tech­nolo­gies that you are using.  My goal wouldn’t be that all of the tech­nol­ogy you use would fall into Porter’s trans­form­ing uses cat­e­gory. Much of my own use of tech­nol­ogy is sim­ply about effi­ciency. More impor­tantly, I think we all need to become extremely cog­nizant of all of the things that we are doing in the class­room.  I’d like to push you to clearly iden­tify the rea­sons you are using tech­nol­ogy X in your school or classroom.

  • Why are you using X in your classroom?
  • Does it improve stu­dent learning?
  • Are stu­dents more engaged?
  • Are stu­dents col­lab­o­rat­ing more frequently?
  • Does it increase effi­ciency and allow you to spend more time on more impor­tant things?
The list of ques­tions goes on and on, and I’d chal­lenge you and your col­leagues to have con­ver­sa­tions around those questions.

Nick Sauers

BYOD Questions to Consider

April 8, 2012 Pam Livingston 16 comments

The buzz in 1-to-1 right now is about BYOD — Bring Your Own Device — and it’s not a fad and it’s not going away. There’s a con­ver­gence of fac­tors caus­ing it including:

  • Hard­ware is diverse and at price points that are more affordable
  • Schools are hyper bud­get conscious
  • The “cloud” (pre­vi­ously called The Inter­net, the Web and the Infor­ma­tion Super­high­way) is ideal for core apps which are free or inex­pen­sive with such as Google (although be sure to use GAFE), and Zoho
  • Par­ents are real­iz­ing that a dig­i­tal device is nec­es­sary for learning
  • Schools want to be sure stu­dents pos­sess 21st Cen­tury skills

But BYOD upsets apple carts right and left. We’ve been build­ing school infra­struc­tures for a long time that have sup­ported a data-centric model in that IT direc­tors allow or dis­al­low devices on the school net­work accord­ing to a set model which is partly about good design and sup­port, partly about sup­port­ing what already exists and partly about not tak­ing on new projects or approaches that require more work, resources, and skill sets. And I’ve been a tech direc­tor in schools so know first­hand that open­ing a can of worms when it impacts the net­work, the laptop/desktop stan­dard­iza­tion, and the hard­ware replace­ment plan is not some­thing many peo­ple will relish.

But then there are the stu­dents. They grow and develop and move to the next grade level and out the door to col­lege and to life. They need to be empow­ered and learn in an envi­ron­ment that encour­ages them to think and write and research and pub­lish and present and ana­lyze and cre­ate new ideas and solu­tions to prob­lems. They also need to own and under­stand the vehi­cles used for learn­ing. So this might mean BYOD.

In order for BYOD to work well there must be a strong part­ner­ship between admin­is­tra­tion, Board mem­bers, teach­ers, tech­nol­ogy, stu­dents, and par­ents. Every­one is going to be impacted by 1-to-1 no mat­ter how it is imple­mented, whether BYOD or a stan­dard hard­ware plat­form either pro­vided or spec­i­fied by the school or dis­trict. But with BYOD it’s likely you are going to see some push­back from tech­nol­ogy peo­ple because of the com­plex­ity, change, work, plan­ning and resources required. So here are some ques­tions to consider:

  • Have you vis­ited a BYOD school or district?
    • If not a team with rep­re­sen­ta­tive stake­hold­ers should do so armed with lots of questions
  • Are you already using Google or Zoho or some cloud solution?
    • With­out cloud apps BYOD is going to be nearly impos­si­ble to imple­ment in a mean­ing­ful way
      • You need the entire school/district com­mu­nity to be able to com­mu­ni­cate, pub­lish, present and share centrally
  • How will you define BYOD?
    • Will there be a min­i­mum device or specification?
    • Will smart­phones be one of the devices?
  • How’s your net­work — is it ready for
    • Wifi every­where with mul­ti­ple roam­ing wire­less devices
    • Cen­tral­ized data secu­rity (Bar­racuda, Light­speed, etc.)
  • How will you address logistics?
    • Will stu­dents be charged with keep­ing their devices charged, ready and safe/secure?
    • Will you have “loaner” devices?
    • Will devices be locked up somewhere/somehow dur­ing lunch, tests, sports?
  • How’s your curriculum?
    • Are teach­ers already used to assign­ments in Google and in using online social media tools so that stu­dent work is already free of hard­ware require­ments — and hap­pen­ing in “the cloud”?
  • How’s your dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship education?
    • Do stu­dents already know how to keep a respect­ful appro­pri­ate dig­i­tal footprint?
      • In my book I talk about L.A.R.K. — tech­nol­ogy use by stu­dents should be L — Legal, A — Appro­pri­ate, R — Respon­si­ble, K — Kind
  • How’s your com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with par­ents, students?
    • If the device is pur­chased, main­tained, repaired and man­aged by par­ents and stu­dents, it’s going to be impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate often and well
  • How’s your budget?
    • Unless you have planned fully for the changes of BYOD you might be blind­sided by some upgrades or unex­pected costs so make sure to ask these ques­tions when you are vis­it­ing BYOD schools

There are ter­rific schools that have been BYOD for years, The Harker School in San Jose comes to mind for instance. Many peo­ple I respect have been writ­ing about BYOD includ­ing William Stites who posted this blog post for Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors early this year, Lisa Nielsen who wrote about debunk­ing BYOD for T.H.E. Jour­nal and a recent arti­cle in Dis­trict Admin­is­tra­tor starts with a quote from Lucy Gray who I respect very much — this entire arti­cle by the way is an impor­tant read. The Lap­top Insti­tute which is highly rec­om­mended will have threads this sum­mer in Mem­phis on BYOD.

BYOD can be a solu­tion if you do your plan­ning and home­work and try to fig­ure out up front exactly what you’re get­ting into and plan care­fully. You’ll want to be ready to rethink your net­work as not being about enabling a few mod­els of spe­cific con­trol­lable devices but instead as a path­way to the cloud where your school/district-wide learn­ing com­mu­nity resides.

- Pamela Livingston

Iowa 1:1 Institute

April 4, 2012 Nick Sauers No comments

In a lit­tle over a week, we will be host­ing the third annual Iowa 1:1 Insti­tute. This year’s event will be held at the newly ren­o­vated Com­mu­nity Choice Credit Union at Vet­er­ans Memo­r­ial Audi­to­rium.  As in pre­vi­ous years, we have once again had such great enthu­si­asm that we had to close reg­is­tra­tion within a month of offi­cially announc­ing the conference. The 1100 plus par­tic­i­pants and over 40 ven­dors should make this year’s con­fer­ence a great event! The con­fer­ence includes edu­ca­tors from over 150 dif­fer­ent schools and 6 uni­ver­si­ties. Since our first year we have strived  to make the con­fer­ence dri­ven by our par­tic­i­pants. For­tu­nately, our 1:1 schools and tech­nol­ogy savvy teach­ers have will­ingly par­tic­i­pated and pre­sented. This year we had a record num­ber of pre­sen­ta­tion sub­mis­sions which allowed us to be very selec­tive about the con­fer­ence ses­sions. A team of Iowa edu­ca­tors selected the 80 ses­sions, and those ses­sions can be viewed at this link. We are also work­ing out details to live stream over 16 ses­sions through­out the day. We have part­nered with Edu­Vi­sion who will stream and record the video. I will post links to the live stream­ing videos once they are avail­able. If you aren’t join­ing us phys­i­cally, we hope you will join the con­ver­sa­tion on twit­ter (#i11i) or view the stream­ing videos!

Nick Sauers

10 Steps to Managing Cooperative, Project-Based Learning Groups

April 1, 2012 Janet Moeller-Abercrombie 4 comments

In an ear­lier post, Keep­ing Stu­dents Engaged in a 1:1 Project-Based Class­room, I focused on projects com­pleted by indi­vid­u­als. What about group projects?

Com­mon Group Project Issues
Back when I was in school [insert granny voice]…and the teacher assigned a group project, some would cheer and some would moan. Those who cheered gen­er­ally pic­tured the assign­ment as an I-get-to-spend-time-playing-with-my-friends assign­ment or a someone-else-will-do-all-the-work assign­ment. I moaned. I saw group work as a prepare-yourself-to-do-boatloads-of-extra-work sen­tence that would neg­a­tively impact my bud­ding social life.

Even stu­dents with the best inten­tions have dif­fi­culty work­ing in groups. They decide what they want to do. They decide what needs to be done. Then they do e-v-e-r-y s-t-e-p t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r. They col­lab­o­rate on each sen­tence of the script. They sit by the same com­puter where one types and the oth­ers watch. They don’t real­ize that, if they divide a project into man­age­able chunks, they can get twice the work done in half the time.

What does that have to do with tech­nol­ogy? I lead stu­dents to pub­li­ca­tion for­mats that stu­dents can work on simul­ta­ne­ously — from mul­ti­ple places. Usu­ally, the for­mats are posters (for the stu­dents who like to draw/cut/paste by hand), Google Pre­sen­ta­tions, movies, and Prezis.

Even with these tools, scaf­fold­ing is nec­es­sary. Below is a series of mini-lessons I use for the first project. The expec­ta­tion is that groups become more inde­pen­dent in sub­se­quent projects.

 

1. Con­tent Comes First
Be clear about how stu­dent projects will be eval­u­ated. In one of my most recent projects, I wanted stu­dents to engage in his­tor­i­cal fic­tion book club dis­cus­sions and sub­mit sub­se­quent projects that demonstrate…

  • reflec­tion on his­tor­i­cal fic­tion char­ac­ters, set­tings, and small details (observed dur­ing book club meet­ings and use of post-its for meet­ing preparation).
  • com­pre­hen­sion of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion text.
  • non­fic­tion read­ing that enhanced under­stand­ing of the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion text.
  • evi­dence of orig­i­nal thoughts and how those thoughts changed or were rein­forced through­out the story. This tended to be the for­mu­la­tion of a “big idea” that could be sup­ported with evi­dence from the text.

Stu­dents were not allowed to touch tech­nol­ogy (apart from the email and Google docs they used to com­mu­ni­cate) until they were clear about the ideas they wanted to communicate.

Exam­ple Prezis of this projects are pro­vided at the bot­tom of Step #2.

 

2: Choose and Defend A Par­tic­u­lar Pre­sen­ta­tion For­mat
Once stu­dents know what they want to com­mu­ni­cate, they can begin dis­cussing the clear­est means for com­mu­ni­cat­ing their ideas.

Even in a 1:1 envi­ron­ment, some groups choose a poster for­mat. Admit­tedly, I nudge the poster groups toward info­graph­ics — design­ing a for­mat like the one here:

This stu­dent took a pic­ture of her desk at home, then inserted the text.

But, in the end, they may sketch out a hand-drawn poster idea that meets all the afore­men­tioned cri­te­ria. These par­tic­u­lar stu­dents can pro­fi­ciently work with tech­nol­ogy tools (they have ePort­fo­lios, active Google doc fold­ers, and more), they just pre­fer writ­ing with pens, draw­ing by hand, cut­ting, and work­ing with phys­i­cal layouts.

Many stu­dents choose Google Pre­sen­ta­tions. Given the choices of Power Point, Keynote, and Pre­sen­ta­tion, my stu­dents now choose Google prod­ucts. I sus­pect many use this tool because it is famil­iar. Also, they can work on their Pre­sen­ta­tion from their home com­put­ers rather than hav­ing to lug around their laptops. They sketch out their plans for each slide.

Oth­ers choose to do an iMovie. Those who choose iMovie like the idea of writ­ing a script and read­ing it into a speaker rather than speak­ing in front of a large group. They plan out their pic­ture slides, out­line the script, then begin work. We do weekly iMovies, so the iMovie for­mat is quick and easy for all students.

A final group of stu­dents wants to take on some­thing novel. For this project, my teach­ing part­ner and I intro­duced stu­dents to Prezi. We chose to intro­duce Prezi because it par­tially resem­bles a poster, par­tially resem­bles a Keynote/Pre­sen­ta­tion/Power Point, and can be pro­duced by a group from mul­ti­ple com­put­ers (simultaneously).

Two exam­ples can be found by click­ing the image below:

Note: Prezi did not embed as expected. The pic­ture is linked to a post with the exam­ple Prezis.

 

3. Stu­dents “Divide and Con­quer” the Work­load
Mul­ti­ple stu­dents around one poster or com­puter is a recipe for dis­trac­tion. It’s not that groups are try­ing to be bad. The 11-year-old mind seems to pic­ture group work as “fair” when every­one does every part together. And, when stu­dents are jock­ey­ing for space and/or fight­ing for their voices to be heard by the typ­ist, one or two stu­dents give up. They start to fid­dle with things or they engage oth­ers in side conversations.

Divi­sion of labor should be explicit. Once stu­dents have the project’s “big pic­ture”, they are chal­lenged to divide the work into 30-minute tasks and del­e­gate these 30-minute tasks to each per­son. For a big­ger High School project, I’d prob­a­bly have stu­dents fill out a One-Page Plan. If you have stu­dents with par­ents who are project man­agers, invite them in to help guide groups.

Crit­i­cal ques­tions are:

  • What needs to be writ­ten? Can that be divided into chunks?
  • What needs to be pur­chased? Who wants to go where? When?
  • What needs to be researched/read? Can that be divided?
  • Can the project be divided into sec­tions so that each stu­dent is respon­si­ble for one of those sec­tions? Posters can be divided into sec­tions — Who will be respon­si­ble for which sec­tions? Pre­sen­ta­tions are divided into slides — Who will be respon­si­ble for which slides? iMovie sec­tions can be pro­duced on sep­a­rate com­put­ers and assem­bled in the end — Who will be respon­si­ble for which sec­tion? Prezis work like Pre­sen­ta­tions - Who will be respon­si­ble for each part?

 

4. Stu­dents Plan a Time­line
Time man­age­ment is one of those crit­i­cal skills that is miss­ing from the writ­ten cur­ricu­lum. The key is back­ward planning.

  • If the project is due on x-date, what is the best date for the final assembly?
  • If the final assem­bly needs to be done by x-date, when should we be review­ing each oth­ers’ sec­tions and revising?
  • If we are review­ing each oth­ers’ sec­tions on x-date, when should drafts be sent to one another?
  • If drafts are due by x-date, when should research be com­plete? items purchased?

 

5. Group mem­bers work as Indi­vid­u­als
After stu­dents have decided on con­tent, defended a for­mat for pre­sen­ta­tion, and “divided-to-conquer” the work, they can be mean­ing­fully engaged in their own mini-projects. Each work ses­sions should have a work goal. My line is, “I’m happy to let you get your com­puter when I know what you will accom­plish in the next x-minutes of your life” (said with a smile, of course).

 

6. Indi­vid­u­als Com­ment on Part­ners’ Pieces
Dur­ing the revi­sion and assem­bly stages, some trouble-shooting may be necessary.

One Pre­sen­ta­tion group had dif­fi­culty because group mem­bers began edit­ing slides that oth­ers had cre­ated. It resulted in audi­ble “Hey! Stop that!” responses. I then did a short mini­les­son on “own­er­ship” of indi­vid­ual slides as the author’s cre­ation. Group mem­bers were allowed to make com­ments, but not change another person’s work.

Learn­ing to for­mu­late con­struc­tive com­ments is crit­i­cal to any group project. I like what Kath­leen Mor­ris and Linda Yol­lis have to say about blog com­ment­ing — their advice relates to group com­ment­ing on project portions:

  • read over the com­ment and edit before submitting,
  • com­pli­ment the writer in a spe­cific way, ask a ques­tion, and/or sug­gest new infor­ma­tion to be added,
  • write a rel­e­vant com­ment that is related to the [portion],

One stu­dent said, “When my team­mate said he wanted to for­mat the title with a bunch of stars, I thought that was lame. Then he did it and it was great. I learned that I need to see what a part­ner does before crit­i­ciz­ing it.”

Those in Prezi groups had some ini­tial prob­lems with one per­son con­trol­ling the lay­out when mul­ti­ple peo­ple were on it at the same time. They worked it out, though.

 

7. Groups Reflect on Their Work
Finally, the group needs to come together and com­ment on the “fit” of all the parts.

At this point, I’ve already assigned grades to indi­vid­ual stu­dents for their input. It’s time for stu­dents to look back at the rubric, pre­tend they are the teacher, and “assign” them­selves a grade (which I con­firm or dis­cuss with them later). Are there any last-minute changes that need to be made?

 

8. Allow Groups to see other Groups’ Work
Some stu­dents are risk-averse. They want to work on project for­mats they know. But when they see oth­ers’ work, they have a frame­work they can use when con­sid­er­ing for­mats for other projects.

Those who have tried new pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats are not “experts” in that for­mat — and can be called upon by oth­ers in the future.

 

9. Use Projects to Inform Report Card Com­ments
Those who chose to make Prezis don’t know this, but I jot­ted down a quick report card com­ment about self-motivated learn­ing. My teach­ing part­ner and I gave very few instruc­tions on how to use the tool. Stu­dents took their own time to work through the tuto­ri­als before assem­bly. I also noted which stu­dents helped other stu­dents trouble-shoot — an indi­ca­tion of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Finally, I noted which stu­dents had their parts of the pre­sen­ta­tion ready by the group’s revision/assembly dates.

 

10. Cel­e­brate!
Stu­dents should cel­e­brate work well done. If your stu­dents are in the same sit­u­a­tion as mine, their par­ents put a lot of pres­sure on them to suc­ceed. Rather than see­ing life as a series of tasks, I want them to learn to enjoy the feel­ing of accomplishment.

The cel­e­bra­tion need not be a full-on party. It can be com­bined with Step #8. I’ve devel­oped a the­ory for tweens and teens…If there is pizza, it’s a party.

 

Future Projects
When I look over the com­pleted Prezis, I see that stu­dents could use a review les­son on cit­ing the sources of their images. They could also be guided to use more visu­als and fewer words. Finally, it is clear that Prezi has no built-in spell-check. Some com­mon words were (and maybe still are) mis­spelled on slides. While stu­dents revi­sion skills may be good, edit­ing skills still need some work.

 

What have been your expe­ri­ences with group projects? How have you man­aged them?

Common pitfalls of 1:1

March 12, 2012 Nick Sauers 3 comments 

Photo credit ecastro on flickr
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecastro/6786705424/in/pool-858082@N25/)

I recently had a con­ver­sa­tion with a col­league about what I see as some of the most com­mon pit­falls as schools move to 1:1. In my work with CASTLE, I have had the oppor­tu­nity to work with a large num­ber of schools as they have tran­si­tioned to 1:1. For some schools, that work has sim­ply been a con­fer­ence call with a lead­er­ship team. In other sit­u­a­tions, I’ve been much more involved. Through that work, I rou­tinely see two issues as the major prob­lems with 1:1 imple­men­ta­tion. Those two issues are a lack of clear goals, and a lack of a sense of urgency. How­ever, those don’t seem to be issues most edu­ca­tors want to dis­cuss. I rou­tinely have edu­ca­tors tell me that “every­one is on board” with mov­ing to 1:1. They instead want to dis­cuss issues such as:

  • Train­ing teach­ers how to use tech­nol­ogy to trans­form teach­ing and learning
  • Build­ing a solid infrastructure
  • Financ­ing the ini­tia­tive long-term
  • Select­ing the cor­rect device
  • Devel­op­ing appro­pri­ate accept­able use plans

I would be the first to admit, that all of these issues are EXTREMELY impor­tant. How­ever, with clear goals and a sense of urgency, it is tough to get a team to put in all of the hard work to address each one of those issues. Like me, most edu­ca­tors are very prac­ti­cal. They don’t want to spend their time dis­cussing things like vision and goals. They are action ori­en­tated and want to solve those impor­tant prob­lems I men­tioned pre­vi­ously. How­ever, it becomes clear to me quickly when I visit those schools that have failed to put seri­ous time and con­ver­sa­tion into truly get­ting every­one on board. When prob­lems such as band­width arise, the whis­pers of dis­sen­sion are very evi­dent with the staff. Rather than work­ing together for solu­tions, those staffs seem to look for rea­sons for 1:1 to fail. Rea­sons such as the block­ing of cer­tain sites, a poor infra­struc­ture, or prob­lems with a piece of soft­ware are rea­sons for edu­ca­tors to jump off the 1:1 train!

My expe­ri­ences, good and bad, have shaped these beliefs. I have been happy to work with those schools where the lead­er­ship team has said staff only needs train­ing on how to effec­tively use tech­nol­ogy in the class­room. That type of train­ing is fairly easy for me, and I eagerly com­ply. In hind­sight though, I often regret tak­ing that approach.

If you’re cur­rently a 1:1 school, I don’t believe it is too late to revisit your goals and vision. I also don’t think it is too late to light a fire and cre­ate a sense of urgency! If you aren’t yet a 1:1 school, don’t over­look these issues! Time spent doing so will pay huge div­i­dends when you face the tough prob­lems you are sure to encounter as you imple­ment 1:1.

Nick Sauers

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