Today’s post was writ­ten by Eliz­a­beth Helfant who is the Upper School Coor­di­na­tor of Instruc­tional Tech­nol­ogy at Mary Insti­tute and Saint Louis Coun­try Day School (MICDS). She has played an inte­gral role in the plan­ning and exe­cut­ing of MICDS’s one-to-one pro­gram. Read more from Eliz­a­beth on her blog. Her post today pro­vides some great insight and ideas for edu­ca­tors at one-to-one schools. As a for­mer social stud­ies teacher, I was extremely excited to read about the “Global Action Project”. Happy reading!

As another school year opens and the mood around cam­pus is full of excite­ment, energy, and enthu­si­asm. I love the way that feels so I am tak­ing a minute to pause and be thank­ful for another year of pos­si­bil­i­ties and for an incred­i­ble fac­ulty that have embraced change and worked hard to design learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for all mem­bers of the com­mu­nity. I am excited to see their work and those pos­si­bil­i­ties, a few of which I’ll share, unfold. I’m excited to know that we are a com­mu­nity of learn­ers, that teach­ers rec­og­nize we have much to learn our­selves to be wor­thy of the young minds that have been entrusted to us.

This year we will launch a course enti­tled the Global Action Project. The course will ask stu­dents to explore their world and to find some­thing they care about that needs their atten­tion to find a solu­tion. They will explore con­cepts of social activism and entre­pre­neur­ship.  They will exam­ine the role of doc­u­men­taries to com­mu­ni­cate a mes­sage to an audi­ence and will tackle the bias and polit­i­cal under­cur­rents that can come with that process. They will be asked to exam­ine global chal­lenges through the eyes of oth­ers and to think empa­thet­i­cally and with broader per­spec­tive.  They will look at enter­prises like Kiva and will read from Fast Com­pany mag­a­zine. Ulti­mately they will be asked to deliver a mes­sage and to cre­ate a busi­ness plan to bring about change for their cause. Their mes­sage and their plan will be deliv­ered to the school com­mu­nity and to an exter­nal panel that might be able to help them bring a well-crafted plan to fruition.

The sci­ence depart­ment with some help from the art depart­ment is offer­ing a dig­i­tal fab­ri­ca­tion course for tenth through twelfth graders. The course will be mod­eled in part off of a course given by MIT pro­fes­sor, Neil Ger­shen­feld  called How to Make Almost Any­thing.  We’ll play with 3D print­ing and milling, laser engrav­ing and arduino cir­cuit boards. We’ll explore panako.com and look at global fab labs and their pur­pose. Stu­dents will be asked to work in teams to design some­thing that is just plain cool and some­thing that helps make the world a bet­ter place. The cul­mi­nat­ing projects are broad but the goal is to allow them to dream, design, and do. There are no tests and quizzes in this course.

Ninth graders will enter class­rooms with exer­cise balls for chairs (our work on brain research taught us that using those stim­u­lates many mus­cle groups and is good for learn­ing) and will find that they are going to develop a Brain Owner’s Oper­at­ing Man­ual as they progress through the year. They will take sur­veys on learn­ing styles, mind­set, and exec­u­tive func­tion and will look at their results as they begin a learn­ing port­fo­lio. The librar­i­ans will lead them through a research project on the anatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy of their brains and the art teach­ers will have them use Pho­to­shop to craft a cre­ative rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their learn­ing brain. Eng­lish teach­ers have tied the work of Judy Willis to the sum­mer read­ing book, Lord of the Flies. They have also con­nected the work of Carol Dweck and Things Fall Apart and The Odyssey and exec­u­tive func­tion skills.

There are also many insti­tu­tional changes that will be excit­ing to watch. Fac­ulty worked on Project Based Learn­ing this sum­mer and in a one day ses­sion upon their return to cam­pus. We don’t give exams first and third trimester opt­ing for projects, research and port­fo­lio assess­ments instead and it will be fun to see if we can up the rigor and rel­e­vance in our projects given our learn­ing. We just moved to a new LMS from Instruc­ture, Can­vas. We selected Can­vas because of its abil­ity to eas­ily cre­ate elec­tronic assign­ments with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments and because of its rich assess­ment pack­age that allows teach­ers to pro­vide copi­ous feed­back, attach rubrics, assign peer edi­tors, drop or curve grades, and col­lect, return, and grade sub­mit­ted work. We are really try­ing to deem­pha­size grades and move the con­ver­sa­tion to improve­ment and growth and Can­vas has the poten­tial to help with that.  We are com­mit­ted to learn­ing more about dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and about what emerg­ing brain research means for the classroom.

We have ten new teach­ers and a new stu­dent teacher from Canada who will be blog­ging about his expe­ri­ence. The new teach­ers enter a world with a rather large tech­nol­ogy and ped­a­gog­i­cal toolkit. I love adding new peo­ple because it adds an entirely new set of ideas. I’m look­ing for­ward to watch­ing them help shape our learn­ing community.

We rec­og­nize that learn­ing for us must be inten­tional and ongo­ing and as such, we will offer sev­eral learn­ing groups for fac­ulty to join. The learn­ing top­ics for now are Car­ing About Learn­ing And the Brain (the CABAL), Project based learn­ing, Port­fo­lio Assess­ment, and Dif­fer­en­ti­ated Instruc­tion. We’ll read and share and learn together to bet­ter help our stu­dents learn.

I’m opti­mistic about con­tin­u­ing to do some par­ent edu­ca­tion. You can’t be a com­mu­nity of learn­ers and not involve par­ents.  We will offer some ses­sions on social media.  The cur­rent plan is to do a par­ent read, and maybe a school wide read of Cathy Davidson’s Now You See It:How the Brain Sci­ence of Atten­tion will Change the Way We Live Work and Learn.

On the admin­is­tra­tive front, I’ve sug­gested that we read and explore Lehmann and McLeod’s What School Lead­ers Need to Know about Dig­i­tal Tech­nolo­gies and Social Media. Given the Mis­souri Sen­ate Bill 54, I think it might be a good choice for us.

Some of the tech­nol­ogy lead­ers and I are explor­ing and fol­low­ing Kim Cofino’s lead and cre­at­ing a Con­nected Learn­ing Com­mu­nity Hand­book.  Kim has done a ter­rific job and its def­i­nitely worth check­ing her hand­book out.

Because I am the instruc­tional tech­nol­o­gist for an Upper School, I feel that I should throw in the oblig­a­tory tech­nol­ogy excite­ment. We do have new tablets for all fac­ulty and for 300 of the 900 tablet-toting stu­dents. It’s a new Lenovo with mul­ti­touch capa­bil­i­ties. We also have a shiny new wire­less net­work. All that really means is we have the tools and the access. For­tu­nately for us, we have the human ele­ment and the learn­ing com­mu­nity to lever­age it as well — and for that I am most thankful.

In short, lots of new things are unfold­ing and there is still much work to be done. I find that ener­giz­ing. I do know the “start of school” feel will dis­si­pate some­what. We will have out ups and downs, our suc­cesses and frus­tra­tions. But I’m com­mit­ting to doing what I can to keep it around for as long as pos­si­ble. So tomor­row as stu­dents return, and on what­ever day you wel­come your stu­dents back, take a minute to be thank­ful for the pos­si­bil­i­ties ahead– and take a minute to com­mit to mak­ing them happen.

Note: While I share some info about things are my insti­tu­tion, these views and thoughts are my own. I do not speak for my institution.

Today’s post was writ­ten by Alex Inman who is cur­rently the Direc­tor of Tech­nol­ogy at Sid­well Friends School in Wash­ing­ton D.C. (Some of you may rec­og­nize the school as the school of Pres­i­dent Obama’s chil­dren). Alex launched one of the ear­li­est lap­top pro­grams in the coun­try at Uni­ver­sity Lake School in Hart­land, WI and he has helped many schools design and refine their own lap­top and tablet pro­grams as a founder of the Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors. Enjoy his post!

The begin­ning of the school year is always an inter­est­ing time for the tech staff at a school.  Sum­mer is a tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity for school tech peo­ple to get stuff done!  We do infra­struc­ture work, upgrade servers, re-image com­put­ers, update inven­tory and more.  My staff goes through a case of that cool canned air, although a lit­tle too much is used by our stu­dent work­ers play­ing pranks on each other.  Sum­mer is a very busy and pro­duc­tive time.  By the end of it, we’re tired!

Just about the time we’re wrap­ping up and breath­ing a col­lec­tive sigh of relief, throngs of rested and ener­gized teach­ers come flood­ing in the door!  “I have so many new project ideas!”  “Did you see the cool new soft­ware they released at ISTE?”  “How can I print to the net­work on the iPad I bought this sum­mer?”  “I know we just spent the last year build­ing up our Moo­dle pages but have you heard about Can­vas?”

Ugh!

The ideas, the con­cepts, the sheer num­ber of words…it is all a lit­tle over­whelm­ing!  I guess this is how the teach­ers feel when we come up with days of tech train­ing in June, begin­ning 15 min­utes after they turn in final grades.  I am chuck­ling as I write this, think­ing of some of the new con­cepts my col­leagues at Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors have been shar­ing with some of your teach­ers!  Sorry about that.

Well, take a big breath, put on a smile and jump in with both feet, my friends!  I know it’s hard.  Trust me, I know!  Here are a few tips to the tired tech staff to get through the open­ing days:

1. Drink a lot of coffee.
2. Lis­ten to teach­ers and write stuff down.  They are going to ask for things that you inevitably can’t imple­ment in the first few days.  Write it down and make it a cal­en­dar item for some­time in early Octo­ber when both you and the teacher can talk about it.
3. Remind your­self that even though you are tired, this is the sweet spot.  Ride that new enthu­si­asm and use it to estab­lish a foun­da­tion that will make the year eas­ier for everyone.
4. Drink more coffee.
5. Remind teach­ers of your pro­gram goals.  Some of the cool tools intro­duced over the sum­mer are just that, cool.  How­ever sev­eral ulti­mately may not be a bet­ter fit for your pro­gram once you really focus on the desired out­comes you have set as a com­mu­nity.  (If you haven’t estab­lished those out­comes, talk to me.)  Doing this not only helps you keep your eye on the prize, it also helps you take a few things off your plate and helps keep teach­ers focused on stu­dent outcomes.
6. Think of the kids.  That’s why we do this.  Pic­ture those eyes light­ing up when they really get it now because a teacher approaches a con­cept dif­fer­ently with new tools that really speak to that child.  That’s a well­spring of energy right there.

For you teach­ers read­ing, be gen­tle with your tech staff.  They likely worked long hours in the days lead­ing up to the school year.  They are really annoyed at them­selves about the bugs they fought to remove all sum­mer that you found in the first 15 min­utes with the new lap­top.  They are tired of telling you that the net­work was not designed to accom­mo­date over 100 teach­ers all on wire­less down­load­ing videos in a sin­gle big room.  How­ever, here’s a lit­tle secret…deep down, they are really glad you are back.  It’s quiet when you are gone and though they get a lot done, they know you and the kids give mean­ing to their work.  Tell them “thanks” and you’ll see what I mean.

Alex Inman

For most of you, the school year either has begun or will begin shortly. As you head into the new school year it may be worth tak­ing some time to think about ways to enhance your prac­tices. Below are three pos­si­ble ideas to con­sider for teach­ers and/or administrators.

1. Start a class­room or school blog for your par­ents, stu­dents and com­mu­nity. Make the blog more valu­able than tra­di­tional com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools by includ­ing pic­tures, audio, video, links, and other forms of media.  Imple­men­ta­tion tip: Don’t take this on by your­self. Have stu­dents par­ents other guest writ­ers blog with you.
2. Start a Twit­ter account for your class­room or school. Use Twit­ter as a tool to com­mu­ni­cate with par­ents what’s hap­pen­ing in your class­room or your school. Imple­men­ta­tion tip: Sim­i­lar to the tip above, you may want to con­sider hav­ing oth­ers help you tweet. You should also list your URL on every pos­si­ble loca­tion that par­ents and oth­ers will see.
3. Cre­ate a Face­book page for you class or school. This is a scary idea for many, but if used appro­pri­ately Face­book can be a very pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool. Most of your par­ents and stu­dents are already very com­fort­able with that medium. Imple­men­ta­tion tip: Spend some time care­fully ana­lyz­ing and select­ing the secu­rity set­tings for your page. You can make it as open or locked down as you think is appropriate.

Nick Sauers