The Tempered Radical

Technology Professional Development Scenarios

Let's start with a simple truth:  Schools have limited budgets and every time that we make careless spending choices, we tie our own hands behind our backs.

As a result, I've worked HARD over the past several years to encourage both teachers and school leaders to think systematically about just what they want to see happening in classrooms before they spend ANYTHING on technology.

To that end, I've whipped up a set of stories that are designed to start conversations about just what good technology integration is supposed to look like in schools.

You can download the stories here:

2. Handout_TechnologyScenarios

What I plan to do with the stories is ask audiences to engage in Carousel Brainstorming -- moving in small groups from story to story and answering the reflection questions found on the final page of the packet.

My hope is that every participant will see themselves -- both who they are and who they want to be -- somewhere in the stories.  More importantly, my hope is that the conversations started in small groups will help participants to wrestle with the rationale behind their own technology spending choices.

Whaddya' think?

_______________________

Related Radical Reads:

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Making Good Technology Choices

Buying Teachers Chainsaws

 

Why Kids Need Goodreads

One of the core beliefs of my interdisciplinary team is that our sixth grade students need to see ALL of their teachers -- not just the language arts teacher -- as readers. 

As a result, we've decided that (1). silent reading will happen once a week in every classroom, giving every teacher the chance to talk about books with kids and (2). every teacher will take students to the library for media circulation during the course of the year. 

That's given me a bunch of time to get to know our school's new media specialist, Pete Caggia. 

What I love about Pete -- outside of his quirky sense of humor and deep knowledge of books that middle schoolers might completely dig -- is that he's AT LEAST as knowledgeable and passionate about using technology with students as I am. 

That shared interest got us talking about Goodreads -- the popular social site that allows users to network with one another around the books that they are reading -- the other day. 

What makes Goodreads so powerful is that it enables readers to discover high-interest titles -- either by following the public bookshelves of like-minded peers, by making recommendations to their friends, or by checking the suggestions offered by Goodreads -- that they may never have stumbled across.

Heck, Goodreads' slogan says it all:  Meet Your Next Favorite Book.

That process of discovering new texts -- of stumbling across topics and titles that have a real chance of capturing attention -- comes naturally for accomplished readers who almost NEVER walk into the library without SOME idea of what they're interested in reading next.

But spend some time watching struggling readers browsing for books and you'll quickly recognize that sifting and sorting through shelves can be a haphazard process that rarely pays off for a BUNCH of our kids.  Finding favorite books just doesn't happen NEARLY enough. 

And that's frightening because every poorly chosen title reinforces negative messages: "Reading is NEVER fun; There's NOTHING I like to read; The library is a place that I don't fit in."

That got Pete and I thinking.  If we could get our students networking with each other in a social space like Goodreads, would struggling readers be more purposeful -- and more successful -- when browsing for books?

So Pete created logins for every one of my kids on Destiny Quest -- a Goodreads-ish social service for students that is aligned with our district's library management program. 

In the course of one 45-minute class period, every student had signed in, filled their digital bookshelves with books they HAVE read, ARE reading and WANT to read. 

They'd also followed a handful of friends on our team -- peers that share similar interests whose bookshelves they want to explore -- learned how to find recommendations from Destiny Quest, and figured out how to write reviews and give star ratings to the books that they were reading.

Since then, traffic on the site has been nothing short of incredible. There hasn't been a day -- including long holiday weekends -- where students haven't been signing in, adding titles to their bookshelves, and making recommendations to their friends. 

The simple truth is that Destiny Quest has made sharing titles with friends easier -- a key to engaging middle grades readers who ALREADY get most of their book recommendations from peers. 

As one of students on my team explained:

I think the Destiny Quest program is really useful because I get most of my book recommendations from friends already so now instead of having to ask them what books they really liked I can just see what books they are reading on Destiny Quest and get a good idea.

I think Pete and I are on to something here.  I'll keep you posted as the year goes on.

_________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Real Men Read

Maybe Reading ISN'T Fun

Reading is NOT Optional

 

What Will You Click On Next? [Handout]

Poking through my feed reader this weekend, I stumbled on this GREAT bit on the Mindshift blog featuring the thinking of Howard Rheingold -- a leader in defining the kinds of changing skills needed in order to learn efficiently in today's digital world. 

Rheingold makes a simple point early in the Mindshift article that really resonated with me:  Kids NEED to learn to carefully tame their attention span while they are searching the web. 

He writes:

"You need to make decisions. ‘Am I going to click on that link? Am I going to maybe open a tab for it on my browser and look at it later? Am I going to bookmark it to look at it much later or am I going to ignore it?’

You need to make those decisions consciously and I think most of us make them unconsciously… We wouldn’t have so many cute cat videos if people didn’t click on impulse."

Stew in that for a minute, will you?  And then ask yourself whether or not you've ever taught your classes to be THAT intentional about the sites that they are clicking on when they are researching.

I know that I haven't spent any time encouraging my kids to think systematically about what they are clicking on when we are researching -- and I'm a guy who really DOES spend a good chunk of time teaching kids how to sift through information efficiently. 

So I whipped up a handout based on Rheingold's suggestions that I think I'm going to ask kids to use the first few times that we do online research. 

Check it out here:

Download Handout_WhatWillYouClickNext

It's pretty detailed -- which means it will also be pretty time consuming for kids to use -- so I'm not likely to require that they actually write down every answer to every question every time that we go to the lab.

But I AM going to continuously remind my students that they should be clicking with a purpose -- and that clicking with a purpose requires that they think carefully before, during and after sitting down at a computer to research. 

Any of this make sense?

__________________________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Google's Redesigned Related Search Feature

Google's Reading Level Search Feature

The Anatomy of a Hoax Website

 

Quick Guide to Web 2.0 Services [Handout]

Not sure if you've figured it out or not, but I've been writing a ton about teaching and learning with technology this month! 

That's because I'm spending my three-week vacation on the road presenting two-day workshops connected to Teaching the iGeneration -- my book about using digital tools and services to make learning more efficient.

I was in Orlando this week, and one of the participants asked for a list of all of the services that I recommend for various digital projects. I thought that was a great idea and whipped one up last night.

You can download it here:

Download Handout_QuickGuidetoWebTools

It's important to remember that this handout is designed as a companion to the participant wiki that we use in the Teaching the iGeneration workshop.  That means the descriptions for interesting ways to use each of the tools in this handout are brief. 

If you need/want more information about the specific role that these tools play in my work, you'll have to either spend time poking through the wiki -- which can be found online here -- OR you'll have to buy the book!

#shamelessplug

#sorry

It's also important to note that there's no one RIGHT collection of tools for schools to be using.  While the services that I share in my Quick Guide are the tools that work best for me, your choices may vary depending on your individual instructional needs and situations.

Feel free to use my list as a starting point for your own work -- but if you find a better option somewhere else, run with it!

Finally, please understand that digital tools and services are CONSTANTLY changing.  While this list is accurate as of today, it could easily become outdated in no time.  Services close up shop all the time.  Similarly, new services are always being unveiled. 

I'll do my best to keep this list updated, but I can't promise that it will be perfect when you find it!

#forewarned

Hope this helps somehow,

Bill

___________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Making Good Technology Choices

The Danger of 'There's Nothing Like' Thinking

 

Materials for My #scichat Homies [Handouts]

Bad news, all y'all:  I don't have a ton of time to write tonight.  My 2.5 year old daughter -- who is completely beautiful, by the way -- is sick as can be, which means my wife and I are juggling work schedules.  That automatically puts me behind. 

The good news, though -- particularly for my #scichat homies -- is that I've got a few activities that I can share with you quickly!  Not sure if they'll be useful for everyone, but if you're a middle grades science teacher, my bad luck may just be your good luck.

Here they are:

Scientific Method Lab Handout 

Download Handout_LabReportOverview

One of the biggest challenges for sixth grade science teachers is introducing kids to a process for working through an experiment.  While kids are naturally curious and great at asking questions, they're not always great at answering their own questions systematically.

This is the handout that I use with my kids early in the school year to help them to learn about the kinds of steps that scientists take when experimenting.  I love how direct it is -- and think it really works.

#estamuybueno

 

Spaghetti Tower Challenge

Download Handout_SpaghettiTowerChallenge

Late last year, Jonathan Martin wrote about a neat activity that the kids in his school were working on.  Essentially, groups of kids were given spaghetti and told to build a tower that could support a marshmallow.  Tallest tower wins.

It seemed to me to be a great way to get groups thinking and working together on an engineering type challenge that didn't require a ton of materials -- so I whipped up this handout and turned my kids loose. 

#theylovedit

 

The SUPERTUBE Challenge

Download Handout_PaperTowelTubeColumn

After watching my kids get completely geeked by the chance to design a spaghetti tower together, I decided that I needed to whip up another quick, materials-light design challenge. 

That's what this activity is.  Essentially, groups had to modify a paper towel tube to get it to hold up as many textbooks as possible.  The record on our team currently stands at 23. 

#beatthat

Anyway -- hope these activities help someone out!  I gotta go and check on my kid.

Rock on,

Bill

Tool Review: Posterous Spaces

Our school has always required that teachers maintain websites as a tool for communicating with both parents and students.  For most teachers, "maintaining websites" means housing updates and classroom resources in Blackboard -- a popular service that our district has been using for years.

I ditched Blackboard last year, though, for about a thousand disgruntled reasons.  I decided to use Posterous -- a site that I'm admittedly tech-crushing on right now -- for my classroom website.

Here's three reasons why I think YOU should use Posterous for classroom websites, too:

How Are You Vetting Ideas in Your School or District?

I stumbled across an interesting service called Vetter this week.  In its simplest form, Vetter is a digital suggestion box designed to get ideas from employees. 

What makes Vetter unique, however, is that it also allows you to create groups of employees who can read and rate the suggestions that are being submitted by their peers on a scale of one to five. 

Essentially, this collective review and rating process allows leaders to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds.  Ideas that are reviewed by a diverse cross-section of employees are far more likely to succeed simply because they have been reviewed by individuals with unique organizational perspectives and experiences. 

Better yet, this collective review and rating process helps to encourage cross-pollination across an organization.  When potentially innovative ideas are made transparent to everyone, intellectual collisions help to spark creative thought.

Vetter also sends "the boss" (read: the primary account holder) a daily (or weekly) digest of any submitted ideas with an average rating of two stars or better AND keeps track of the individuals who are regularly submitting the ideas that are highly respected by peers. 

There's real potential here for school leaders, isn't there?

I would LOVE to see -- especially in large schools and districts -- formalized processes established that encouraged employees to submit ideas on improvements in everything from practices to purchases. 

Not only do I believe in the wisdom of crowds AND think that school leaders would benefit from hearing the voices of a wide range of staffers, I know that school employees would benefit from seeing the thoughts and ideas of colleagues working in a wide range of roles in schools. 

In a profession where isolation -- both physical and intellectual -- is the norm, it's all too easy to get stuck looking at change through our singular lenses. 

Heck: I'd even love to start using a service like Vetter with my classes.  I truly value the feedback that my students give me about teaching and learning -- but I don't have a tool that makes collecting and analyzing that feedback easy. 

Now, Vetter's not perfect. 

Because it is designed for businesses and not schools, users have to have an email address and be a part of an invited group in order to give feedback and to rate ideas. That means my sixth graders -- who rarely have email addresses -- won't be able to use the service.

I'd love to see Vetter create a more generic option that schools could use to gather feedback from students, parents and the broader community -- which would require allowing users to submit and rate ideas whether they'd been invited by someone at the school or not. 

Vetter's not a free service either -- and because it is primarily designed for business users, the pricing model is based on a monthly fee. 

I'd love to see them develop some kind of single use option -- which would allow school leaders to collect ideas during focused school planning sessions without having the ongoing charge that goes along with a monthly service. 

But Vetter's certainly a tool that I think schools and districts might want to take a closer look at. 

We've simply GOT to do a better job at innovating efficiently -- and idea management services that allow ideas to be submitted, rated and reviewed by larger groups of stakeholders are certainly a step in the right direction. 

What I Would Do with an iPad in My Classroom

An interesting email landed in my inbox this week from a good friend who has really been trying to integrate technology into her language arts class. For confidentiality sake, we'll call her Mary.

Turns out that Mary's principal recently decided to buy iPads for all of the language arts teachers in her school.  Mary--like many teachers--was excited to have an iPad coming her way, but she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to do with it. 

Her question was a simple one:

"So Bill: If you had ONE iPad in your classroom, what would YOU do with it?"

To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was to be frustrated with Mary's principal.  After all---in what appears to be an all-too-familiar pattern---she seems to have made a significant investment in devices without any careful planning or coonsensus building. 

Think about it:  Shouldn't the teachers have had plans for the iPads they were getting BEFORE the checks were written and the cash was spent? 

Technology planning doesn't have to be a difficult process, y'all.  But it shouldn't be an optional process either---or an afterthought. 

But Mary's good people----and she really does want to find a way to take advantage of the iPad she was getting.  I had to help her do a bit o' brainstorming.

Here's what I suggested.

_____________________________________________________

Hey Mary,

Glad to hear that you're working to find a way to take advantage of the iPad that you have in your classroom.  If I were you, I'd think first about the kinds of instructional practices that matter the most and THEN look for a practice that one iPad can support.

The first thing that came to my mind was formative assessment because as a language arts teacher, I'm constantly making observations of my students on the fly. 

Google's Reading Level Search Feature

In a comment on my recent post about teaching students to search for reliable information on the web, Debryc wrote:

I want to teach my students these skills of information curation but I don't know how. I find it challenging myself to find reading level accessible material for my fifth graders.

Are there any good blogs/books to read that can help us start purposefully planning lessons and learning experiences on information curation and research?

While I don't have a ton of time to write today, Debryc---we're hosting an end of the year pizza party for our Kiva Microlending Club tonight, so I'm icing down cokes and opening bags of chips as we speak---I wanted to point out a quick solution that might be a good starting point for you.

Google has just recently introduced a Reading Level feature to their searches.  You can find it by clicking on the "More Search Tools" link that appears in the left side bar of any Google search page. 

After selecting the "Reading Levels" option, all of the returned search results will be sorted into "Basic," "Intermediate" and "Advanced" categories. 

You might also be interested in this bit that I wrote on teaching kids to approach content with caution.  It includes a few structured handouts on spotting hoax websites and on using Google's Wonder Wheel to work through more structured searches. 

I hope that's useful to you!

Bill

PS:  My book---Teaching the iGeneration---also has an entire chapter on introducing students to strategies for information management.  You can check out the handouts for the book here. 

 

 

Why are we STILL Wasting Money on Whiteboards?

If you’ve spent any time reading the Radical, you know that I hate Interactive Whiteboards—and the companies that sell them as instructional silver bullets—with an unhealthy passion. 

Recently, though, I’ve dialed back that passion.  I guess that’s because—thankfully—conversations about teaching with technology have started to shift into healthier places. 

I hear less and less from educators who just HAVE to have an IWB.

More importantly, I hear less and less from school leaders who are ready to plunk down their schools’ already limited technology budgets on a small handful of glorified presentation tools that do NOTHING to change teaching and learning in our schools.

That lull in the lunacy ended this week.

You see, I bumped into a friend who is a well respected instructional technology leader in his large middle school.  He was completely jazzed because his principal had asked him to help spend the school’s technology budget.

That excitement was short-lived, though.  Turns out that his principal—who’d recently attended a conference and seen a slick presentation in the vendor hall—had already bought and paid for 6 IWBs.

Total cost:  $18,000.

Stew in that for a minute, would you?  Do you have ANY idea what you could do with $18 THOUSAND dollars?

Here are 5 different ways I would spend that cash: