We’ve had a pretty successful first year of our Connected Learning Community. For the most part, things have run really smoothly, and our Responsible Use Agreement (the green section of our CLC Handbook), designed last year by a team of students, parents, teachers and admin, has stood the test of time (so far). But there has been one specific area where we’ve done quite a bit of work this year: appropriate consequences for the misuse or unethical use of technology.

Of course, we had all of the rules and expectations outlined from the start, so that students and parents would be clear on what is responsible and appropriate behavior, and what is not, but it wasn’t until our first “incident” this year that we developed a clear process for how we would deal with unethical behavior. We call it the “Three Strike Rule”.

For the most part, the kinds of unethical behavior we’re talking about are:

• engaging in cyberbullying at any time
• illegal behavior at any time (for example, illegally downloading copyright material)
• “hacking” or attempting to access another students accounts or laptop
• excessive or repeated off-task behavior in class, resulting in loss of learning opportunities

We are lucky to be working with amazing students, in a very progressive and supportive community, where responsible Digital Citizenship is a regular part of our everyday conversations and expectations, so we haven’t had too many incidents like this, but for the issues that have come up, we’ve handled them well with the Three Strike Rule.

Here’s what happens:

Please note: this is a general description and may not follow exactly these steps in every single case, based on individual student needs.

Strike One

If a student is caught breaking the Responsible Use Agreement, the teacher will inform the principal. For teachers, we have a quick survey they fill in to track exactly what they saw, which student, and when the incident occurs. The teacher will collect the laptop and bring it to the MS/HS Assistant’s office, where she will then scan the QR code on the laptop to record the incident in our hardware database, and arrange a meeting with our fantastic MS/HS admin team.

As soon as possible, our MS/HS admin team (with, our amazing counselor, Adam Clark, as needed), meets with the student to discuss what happened and the following steps, should the behavior be repeated. At this time the laptop is returned to the student. The students have started calling these RUA violations a ‘CLC Infraction’. The end result of this first visit is a warning.

Strike Two

If the same behavior is witnessed again, or something along the same lines, the process above is repeated. This time during the meeting with our MS/HS admin team, a letter will be sent home to the parents describing what has happened, and the following step (should the behavior occur again). The end result of this second visit is a letter home to the parents.

Strike Three

If the student continues this same behavior a third time, which has happened maybe three times this year, we move on to a more formal consequence: First, all of the above steps are repeated. Then our MS/HS admin team and the observing teacher and counselor (as needed), along with the student (and the parents, as needed), create a behavior contract to identify exactly what needs to be improved and the time expectations for doing so. When necessary a meeting will be held with the parents.

Finally, the student’s CLC laptop is taken away, and they receive a “YIS Corrections” loaner laptop from our CLC Tech Support Center. We can customize this loaner to fit the student’s needs exactly: for example, if the issue is with accessing specific websites during class, we can limit the browser and which websites can and can’t be accessed. Each loaner is tailored to the needs of the student and their agreed-upon behavior contract. The amount of time a student will have the loaner laptop depends upon the behavior contract. The end result of this visit is a loaner laptop and a behavior contract.

The Three Strike Rule in Action

So far this year, we have only had two or three incidents that have required the formal Three Strike Rule. Although we do regularly speak to students about making good choices for smaller incidents (like checking Facebook during class, when not part of the lesson; or playing games in class, when not part of the lesson). Generally we don’t move on to this, more formal, process unless a serious violation of the RUA has occurred.

There are three important things that I really appreciate about this process:

The consequences are fair and appropriate

During Digital Citizenship Week, the students participated in a number of activities (Digital Citizenship Court, in particular) where they thought about the RUA and appropriate consequences, and they regularly came up with a similar style consequence for every ‘CLC Infraction’. It’s clear the three steps is a natural process for students to understand the choices they make, and how to improve their behavior.

The process is pastoral in nature

Just because these incidents involve a computer, does not mean the technology is at fault. What we’re dealing with is student behavior, responsibility and decision making processes. When these issues don’t involve a computer, the process is handled by admin and/or counseling team, therefore, so should the ‘CLC Infractions’.

There is no loss of access

One of the main concerns we had at the beginning of the year was that if we took a student laptop away (as a consequence), they would not be able to participate fully in class, and would miss out on learning opportunities. We wanted to make sure we had a system in place that would address the behavior issues, and not impact their use of technology for learning. This process solves that problem.

Final Thoughts

Although we have not had to issue a “YIS Corrections” laptop to too many students this year, it’s clear from what we’re hearing that the process works well (I’ve also had my own personal experience this week with a loaner that makes me realize it’s a perfect consequence, but more on that later). Students are well aware of the “three strikes” idea, and appreciate that the process involves two formal warnings before a serious consequence. Generally, I think teachers are happy that poor choices with behavior do not impact learning opportunities (I know I am). We’re planning to continue this process for next year, when these kinds of incidents occur.

How do you implement the Responsible Use Agreement at your school? What are the consequences for misuse or unethical behavior?

Original Image Credits:

• Fenway Park 2 by Werner Kunz, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Process by Thomas Hawk, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Contracts by NobMouse, CC Licensed on Flickr

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Last week was our first Digital Citizenship Week at YIS, and it was fantastic! We focused primarily on the Middle School to get an idea of how an event like this would work for our students, teachers and parents. Here’s what we did:

Learning objective: A renewed focus on the choices we make and how they affect us, specifically about balance, responsibility and safety.

Guiding Question: How are you a responsible digital citizen?

Conversation Starters (Daily Theme)

We started each day with an open discussion (based on the themes listed below) in morning tutor group (homeroom) inspired by a short video (see videos and guiding questions at the links below). Our goal was to get students thinking about the big ideas behind digital citizenship, and give them an opportunity to reflect on the choices they make.

• Monday: Balance
• Tuesday: Safety
• Wednesday: Behavior
• Thursday: Reflection
• Friday: Possibilities

Estimating & Tracking Time Spent Online

A huge thanks to Rebekah and the MS Student Council for running this entire activity, you guys are amazing!

On Monday, we asked our students to estimate the amount of time they spend online (at their grade level, and as a whole middle school). Each student had the opportunity to guess how much time we spend online, with the winners announced at our MS Assembly on Friday.

At the time time, we asked students to start tracking the amount of time they spend online. They had three options to do this: use Rescue Time (which would allow them to automatically track what they were doing and when), use this simple Balance Journal spreadsheet as a template to keep track of their own hours, or keep a paper journal.

The amazing MS Student Council, particularly Sophie and Naomi, kept an updated bulletin board in the Main Lobby to show our daily results:

On Thursday, we asked all students to share the amount of time they spent online each day (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) so that we could calculate the numbers and announce a winner the next day.

Special Tutor Group Activities

Each middle school tutor group has a weekly 45-minute meeting for pastoral care. This week, every group did the same set of activities (see lesson plans here):

1. A short digital citizenship survey (this is a .pdf, since the survey is closed to YIS accounts only, to make sure the data we receive is actually from our students). The survey is based on this Google Doc, thanks to all who contributed!

2. Adding a pin to our collaborative map to see how, where and when we connect

View Our Global Connections in a larger map

3. Adding a slide to our collaborative presentation to highlight something we learned together this week

Special Sessions

Each middle school year group had a 90-minute pull-out session with either me, Adam (MS Counselor), or Damien (Secondary Technology and Learning Coach). These activities were based on the ones we ran at the beginning of the school year, during our CLC orientation (two days of non-formal school).

• Grade 6: Behavior: An Over-the-Top Lesson Skit, based on this Arrested Development episode, with Kim
• Grade 7: Balance: Maintaining Balance, with Adam

• Grade 8: Responsibility: Digital Citizenship Court (using these Digital Citizenship Scenarios), with Damien

Subject-Based Digital Citizenship Focus

Several subject areas were also able to devote time to Digital Citizenship during their classes for the week as well:

• PE: Balance
• Technology: Grade 6 and Grade 7 also completed the Digital Citizenship Court activity

Middle School Assembly

On Friday, Rebekah and the amazing MS StuCo team put together another fantastic assembly highlighting the thinking that went on during the week.

As students were filing in, a video highlighting some of the results to the question: “To me, digital citizenship means…” from our survey played on a loop. Here are a few of the responses:

To me, digital citizenship means….

• Being a good, thoughtful person online.
• To me I think it means to use your technology responsibly.
• I think digital  citizenship is how you use your computer overall. If you mostly go on Skype or Facebook to chat, or if you go on youtube to watch videos, or even if you download stuff illegally. Digital citizenship is how you spend your day with the computer, do you do the right things or the wrong things?
• I think digital citizenship basically means being good and responsible online, which includes tons of different things. They can be from not revealing personal information, to being nice to people instead of cyber bullying.
• It means being a part of a community where you get to know people that live in a different place/country than the one you live in.
• To be a good citizen online and offline and to balance your time on an electronic device with your time you spend with family and friends.
• To me, digital citizenship means to behave properly on the internet. Digital citizenship is basically general citizenship, although the only difference is that it’s online. It’s saying something over the internet that you would say face to face. Digital citizenship is being responsible for your actions online.
• Being responsible, caring, sympathetic, and open minded for you actions online and what you write and considerate of other peoples feelings.  As well as the amount of time you spend online.
• Taking care of each other
• Your reputation online and how you act online.
• Being in a community and respecting each other on internet.
• To be responsible and respectful online to other people, what they have created and what belongs to them. Also to be aware of the consequences and dangers on the internet.
• to me, digital citizenship means to be a responsible and balanced user on online.
• …being an online member of the internet community and using the powers of the web responsibly.

Throughout the assembly, highlights from the week, as well as examples of digital citizenship from throughout the year were shared (thanks to our amazing humanities teachers Alex and Rebekah, and our Digital Dragons curriculum). One student per tutor group speaking about what they learned this week, as part of our collaborative presentation activity (see above). We ended the assembly with the winners of the Estimating Time Spent Online challenge:

Final Thoughts

An enormous thank you to Rebekah, Adam, Susie, Damien and the rest of our fabulous MS teachers for making this week a success! Big events like this kind of freak me out, so I never would have been able to even attempt coordinating something like this without my fantastic colleagues.

Rebekah and I had a chat yesterday to reflect on how things went, and really, they went well. We have some ideas for next year, of course:

• We need to clarify what our focus words are (the daily themes), and re-use them throughout the year – would be great to have posters, or other activities throughout the year highlighting these themes, like we do with the IB Learner Profile.
• Timing: coordinating Digital Citizenship Week with #beyondlaptops was an idea that sounded great in theory, but was kind of crazy in practice. Plus, this year it feel the week before MS Exams (which was really not fun for anyone). So next year, we’re thinking we should move it to before Feb break, the week of Feb 11 – 15
• It would be great to see more involvement from different subject areas, we have ideas, and we’ll seek input from the department heads and subject-area teachers to make this relevant to their curriculum at the time.
• We would love to have HS students facilitate conversations from their perspective – what would you tell the 11 year old you? Maybe they could they facilitate the double-block pull out?
• The map idea was cool, but not sure the kids understood what it was – we can either drop it, or have it take place during a specific lesson so that there’s a discussion around why it’s important
• Would be nice if the survey could include time for discussion as well. Next year we’ll use the same questions, so that this year’s questions become the baseline.
• We need to make sure to filming some activities to show later – they were great!
• We would love to coordinate timing so we can collaborate with other schools – this was an idea that actually came up last year, but I was never able to follow through. Next year for sure!

Do you have a Digital Citizenship Week at your school? How do you help bring the concepts behind digital citizenship alive with your students?

Image Credits:

• Keeping track of time we spend online by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Day 1 by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• How to achieve balance by gr7 by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Gr8′s discussing responsibility by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Grade 6′s using the CLC Handbook by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Yuki starting the MS Assembly by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr
• Day 3 by superkimbo, CC Licensed on Flickr

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Last week was a busy one at YIS. We had our first Digital Citizenship Week, with tons of great learning and reflection opportunities for our middle school students (more to come on this later), two meetings (Tues night & all day Saturday) of our YIS COETAIL cohort, and our #beyondlaptops mini-conference. Needless to say, by the time Sunday rolled around I was exhausted. And exhilarated.

I am so fortunate to be working at a school that encourages risk-taking, creativity, openness, collaboration and sharing. Not only is everything we do open and accessible, but we regularly welcome other schools to visit and see what we’re doing, in action. This is what #beyondlaptops is all about, and this is why we’re able to host this kind of event here at YIS.

Last year, while we were still planning our Connected Learning Community, our Headmaster, James MacDonald, had the brilliant idea of inviting school administrators, technology and curriculum leaders to YIS to brainstorm, together, based on our collective experience, how to successfully implement a 1:1 program. We had about 20 educators from around Asia join us for a day of informal discussion.

After what we consider a very successful first few months of our CLC, we thought it would be worthwhile to host the same event again, this time with the new focus of moving beyond discussions about hardware, infrastructure and visioning, including things like:

• Essential skills: what are they and how do we teach them?
• The future and beyond: envisioning a future we can not know
• Changes to learning environments and curriculum structure
• Staffing needs to support continual development
• Embracing Digital Citizenship as a community
• Embracing digital connectivity: when, how, why and where do we share?
• Evaluation and reflection: how do we know the program is “working”?
• Logistics and Management
• Student panel, sharing feedback from YIS and beyond

Building upon the year before, we wanted to keep it open and informal – no presentations, no “big name” speakers, no real structure, just ideas and facilitated discussion. We didn’t do much of a follow up last year since the group was so small, and it was more of an experiment than anything else, so we figured we could do something similar again this year.

Little did we know that we would end up with over 55 educators in the room.

Clearly, this is the type of event that people are looking for. A time to chat, to think, to share, to create together something more than we can do in our isolated, individual schools. An event, where the conference is the participants (thanks Simon for that gem of a tagline!).

As easy as (I hope) we made it look, this was not easy to pull together, and I learned quite a bit:

Go Informal!

Even though I regularly read blog posts where people complain about what they don’t get out of conferences, that the time most useful to them is the conversations in between formal sessions, I wasn’t entirely sure if all of the participants really understand how informal this event was going to be. We had a lot of “big name” schools attend, with quite a few administrators. Would they want to be told what to do? Or would they jump in with both feet?

I knew my tech coaching friends and colleagues would have no problem, but what about the people I didn’t know that well? The people that were being grouped together by one liaison at their school, so I never actually had any interaction with them at all before the conference started?

It turns out people not only felt well informed about the format (thanks Heather, for reassuring me), but that it was one of the key reasons they chose to attend:

Although I facilitated the discussions, and (ahem) perhaps over-planned the two days so we were constantly busy, people really jumped right into the conversations. They were open, they shared, the questioned, they left wanting more time to collaborate. In the feedback, almost every single person responded that the chance to have informal, but focused discussions, was a major highlight for them:

• The conference format allowed for engagement and relationship building with nearly all participants. not sitting and listening, but engaged in collaborative “work” and meaningful conversations.
• Discussions were rich with ideas and information…so much knowledge in the room.
• I loved having time to just talk about the issues, I got so many ideas that are easy to implement, I had just not thought of them. Being with other like professionals was amazing, there need to be more opportunities like this.
• Conversation, student participation, relaxed environment. Freedom to go down different avenues regarding different topics. Flexible schedule.
• I liked the sharing of this conference and that it was not a sit and get time. The conversations were meaningful and effective.
• Conversational style was great – allowed for diverse sharing of ideas, and exploration of approaches to shared concerns. I simply learnt a lot, and more importantly got to think of higher level things than nuts and bolts details of one to one.

The Conference is the Participants

OK, I’ll be honest. We didn’t charge anything for participants to attend, all they had to do was get themselves here and pay for their (very reasonably priced) hotel room. YIS covered all of the food for both days (amazing snacks and lunches at school thanks to Zest, our fabulous school caterers; and dinner on Thursday night at Green, our favorite local organic bar and grill).

So, I kinda thought that maybe, some people wouldn’t show up. That on Thursday morning I would wake up to a flurry of e-mails in my inbox saying that people got bogged down with work and had to cancel their plans. Aside from one minor aviation emergency (we missed you Rob!), and one health issue, every single person that signed up arrived, ready to start right on time.

Clearly, everyone in the room wanted to be in the room, and wanted to learn from the expertise in the room. We don’t need a “big name” speaker, although it was awesome to have Scott McLeod Skype in for an hour on Thursday (more on that later). As long as the conversations are facilitated, we can make the conference what we want, together.

Being “in the room” was a highlight for a number of participants:

• Unconference aspect; meeting old tech tribe and making new contacts
• Having the opportunity to meet people who I’ve been connected with online through Twitter
• Liked the small size of the conference which allowed for greater opportunity to develop relationships and connections
• Opportunity to discuss issues with well informed and passionate people
• I love that the focus was on discussion with people doing similar jobs as me. The most valuable take away from most conferences are the conversations with people. More and more, I am finding that more valuable than the workshops I attend. To have 2 whole days for discussion was the best PD I have had in a long time. Thank you.

Involve Students & Be Open

I’m not entirely sure that every school could host an event like this. I am overly positive about YIS, but it’s for a good reason. Although we think we are doing many things well, we are not afraid to share our mistakes and to learn from them. I’ve worked at a number of schools that emphasize competition over community. I’m so proud that YIS is the opposite.

So much of formal PD is about sharing what we do best, and highlighting our school’s strong points. Hardly any of it features actual students. We wanted to make sure that we listened to and respected our student voices, so we included them for both mornings:

• Thursday as part of our discussion of the essential skills for the future, Scott’s presentation and our debrief.
• On Friday, we had a student panel of ten 6 – 11th graders facing an audience of 55 school leaders and their only rule was to “be honest”. And they were. And we are so proud of them.

That’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s almost the norm here at YIS. We have students presenting and collaborating to and with visitors, teachers and admin on a regular basis – not the same students, either.

We have a community that values the input of it’s members, that respects everyone equally and supports open and honest dialogue. It’s a pretty good feeling.

It’s wonderful to see that our students were also a highlight for many participants (I’m not going to put the survey results here, because although they are very positive, I wouldn’t want any of the students to be upset by any of the work they did – they were amazing!)

• The inclusion of the students on both days were great! We need to keep the students directly involved in both these philosophical and decision-making processes.
• Including the students in the conference. Do it again!
• Hearing from students. Student voice is so important and not present enough in our P.D.
• Involving students was invaluable.

Teachers Like to Eat

I am one of them. Any event that feeds me well gets a gold star. In typical YIS fashion, we definitely earned our gold star. Zest, our amazing (and I do mean amazing) catering company provided healthy, delicious, organic snacks and lunches both days.

Plus, YIS sponsored Thursday night’s dinner at our favorite local organic restaurant, Green, with all-you-can drink craft beers (and anything else you might want). And then, I organized a “field trip” to Tokyo on Friday night (not sponsored by YIS) to Gonpachi which was equally wonderful. Considering the event was free, providing all of these amazing meals really was above and beyond. Thank you YIS!

Respect the Room

In our James’ opening to the conference he talked about the value and knowledge in the room, that we don’t have an easy answer to any of these questions, but we can find it together. There is so much value in acknowledging and respecting the experience and expertise we have together.

Likewise, it is so important to actually being in a room, physically together, seeing how people react, getting to know people on a personal level, and making deeper connections with the people you know already. As much as I love networking online, it’s clear to me that we need time to come together, in person, to delve deeper into the discussions we have online. We need this time to come together.

A few people came with a very focused agenda, and they were not all able to accomplish their goals, so we’re thinking of adding one more day to the conference as a totally unstructured pre-conference. A time when people who have a clear agenda (that may not be the agenda of the entire group of participants) can come together, undisturbed, to hash out the answers to their questions. (Thanks to Will Kirkwood for the idea!)

Organization is Key

So, turns out people love the unconference-style format. But that doesn’t mean that there was no organization involved. Just like facilitating learning in the classroom takes more organization than lecture-based lessons, so does an unconference. Just organizing the readings and resources was a handful!

A couple of items were especially challenging this time around:

Privacy: Because this event is “invite-only” (due to space limitations) most of the organization was done in Google Docs (I hate the feeling of excluding people, even if it’s not my choice). I kept one doc running with all the questions people were asking and kept referring everyone back to that one document. Now that the event has grown in size, the Google Docs method has really become unmanageable so most of this information is on the website, which will make things easier next year.

Local Information: Because we had such a small group last year, I really didn’t provide any information about Japan. I expected people would figure it out on their own and they did. This year, with such a large group, this really wasn’t possible. Thankfully, we had a very active Twitter hashtag with questions, so I could keep track and start posting the responses. Huge thanks to Brian Lockwood and Rob Newberry for their suggestions to many of the answers too!

Input: I really had no idea what people would want from this event. I was only confident about what the participants from YIS would want, so I wanted to make sure I included as many participants as I possibly could in all of the decision making. I created  a separate Google Doc and invited 12 of the external participants (and all of our YIS participants) to share their input, to help guide the outcome:

• Susan Sedro
• Simon May
• Jabiz Raisdana
• Will Kirkwood
• Rob Newberry
• Colin Gallagher
• Stacey Stephens
• Dana Watts
• Thomas Galvez
• Adrienne Michetti
• John Turner
• Nick Sauers

Huge, huge, huge thanks to our YIS team of Stephen, Genki, Bob, James, John, Dennis, Elif, Rebekah, and Adam, plus Rob, Susan, Will, Thomas and John for all of your thoughtful feedback and participation in the planning. Without you, I would not have been able to pull it together, and would not have been able to come close to meeting the needs of the majority of the participants.

Next year, I’ll make sure to formalize this planning committee a little more so that different participants can take responsibility for different sections of the agenda. Not only will this be a great way to ensure variety, but it means that I can participate too! (Thanks to Tim Wojcik for the idea)

It’s All About the Team

Two of my biggest take-aways from #beyondlaptops unfortunately contradict each other:

1. limit the number of participants (it will be capped at 30 people next year)
2. ensure that everyone who participates comes with a team (minimum 2, maximum 4 people from each school)

We need to limit the participants both because of space, and because of the level of conversation we want to have. Although this was a very select group of people (I actually only sent out 3 e-mail invitations to a group of people that I know, and we ended up with 45 people from outside YIS), we still had some competing dialogue, some discussion that wasn’t quite what we were hoping for. Now, of course, it goes without saying that you can not stop people from having their own agenda or priorities, but it would be nice if we had a clearer vision of what those priorities were at the time of registration, so we could better select a group that would work very productively together.

So, limiting sounds like a great idea. Except that we know when people go off to a conference on their own, it’s so much harder to implement the ideas they learned about. So we also want to encourage teams to come. Specifically teams that include an administrator, a tech coach, a curriculum coordinator and a teacher – with no two people from the same job. In this way, we hope that not only will we get a more rounded perspective, but we can actually hope that some of the learnings will be implemented when they get back. This means that we’ll probably only have a maximum of 15 schools represented, instead of the 21 we had, but that’s OK. More focus, more productive sessions, and hopefully more action taken will be worth the slightly more limited exposure. (Thanks to Tim Bray for the idea!)

We Need to Be Pushed

Our only formal “speaker” was Scott McLeod, and he presented via Skype on Thursday. It was fantastic to see how Scott could actually facilitate a discussion and activity in Japan from the US via Skype (well, I may have helped a little). As usual, Scott’s presentation was controversial. He talked about the various companies that are working toward replacing teachers with computers (Knewton, Rocketship Education, New Classrooms, etc). Although the idea was not entirely new to me (thanks to Disrupting Class), I still enjoyed the feeling of being a little bit uncomfortable with the future Scott described.

Many of the participants are the change agents in their schools, they are the ones doing the pushing, they feel they are “ahead of the curve”. To have a conversation where we feel as confronted as some of our teachers do on a daily basis can only be a good thing. Thanks Scott!

Final Thoughts

Well, it’s seriously hard to believe that all I did was send out three e-mails (in January) to a group of educators I know personally, and we could all be sitting in Yokohama in April having a deep, thoughtful, respectful and open dialogue. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to participate in many of the discussions because I was facilitating, but I could feel the vibe in the room, and it was exciting. I love that so many of my colleagues around the world want to spend time talking together about these issues, and that they’re so passionate they will fly all the way to Japan to sit in a room together to hash things out.

Thank you so much to all of the participants for joining us. It really was our pleasure. We hope to see you again next year!

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I haven’t been blogging much this year, mostly because so many fantastic things are going on at YIS that are keeping me super busy. One of which has been the implementation of our Connected Learning Community (1:1 program) this school year.

It’s been such a pleasure to see how smoothly the program has been going overall. From the first two non-formal days of school, to the creative uses of our primary technology tools by teachers and students, to the commitment of our school community to continue learning together. Although things have been going really well, we have learned quite a bit in these first few months.

1. Don’t worry about it. Really.

We heard it time and time again last year as we visited 1:1 schools around Asia: the battery lasts the whole day, don’t worry about. Kids will bring their laptops charged, don’t worry about it. They’ll take good care of their machines, don’t worry about it. And they were right. We’ve had a couple of interesting damage cases (which Genki, Stephen and Aaron have nicknamed: “perfume”, “hot chocolate” and “dropsies”), but for the most part the charging has not been an issue, students consistently come to school with fully functioning laptops, and generally they are taking much better care of these laptops than the ones we had on the carts.

A few things have really helped us keep these kinds of issues to a minimum:

As part of the Responsible Use Agreement, students are required to bring their laptops charged to class each day. This was clearly stated at the beginning of the year and is continually reinforced. Those that have trouble remembering somehow do manage to remember to bring their charger to school so they just plug in when they need to. For those teachers that requested an extra power station for their classroom, we’ve fixed a powerbar with chargers onto the wall, just to make things a little bit easier (but we’ve had very few requests).

All students were given a case for their laptop (thanks to Rebekah for the suggestion, based on her experience at Munich International School). They’re also allowed to buy their own case if they prefer, but it must meet our requirements: it has to zip all the way around to allow the laptop to stay in the case, even when it’s in use. Our cases aren’t the coolest looking, but they’re kind of like a uniform for our laptops – everyone has the same one, so no one really notices. They are allowed to personalize the case with stickers, but it seems like not too many choose to do so.

We have a simple structure for damage and repair. The student (family) is responsible for a fixed amount for the first damage, and then the full price of the laptop if there is another incident. While laptops are being repaired, students have a loaner laptop, and their laptop is not returned until the cost is paid through the school office. We will not service laptops unless they arrive inside a laptop case.

2. Accountability

Like most international schools, we have great kids (I like to think ours are extra special, of course). Generally they are very respectful, they follow the rules, and they treat each other (and their teachers) well. Even though they’re mostly pretty wonderful, there have been a few issues here and there with inappropriate behavior (very few, really). We’ve developed a clear and simple structure for dealing with these issues that we like to call the “three strike rule”:

We have a clear and concise Responsible Use Policy that all students and their parents have signed. When teachers see students breaking the RUP, there is a short Google form they fill in to report the behavior to John, our amazing Secondary Principal. All instances of RUP infractions are dealt with through the principal and counselor as needed – not the IT department.

Strike One: Any time a response is entered into the survey, the laptop gets collected and handed to our equally amazing Secondary School Administrative Assistant, Maki. She scans the QR code on the laptop, gives the details to John and he speaks directly to the student before the end of the day. Having this conversation with the principal is “strike one”.

Strike Two: At the “strike one” meeting  John lets the student know that if this behavior continues, a letter will be sent home to their parents, which is our “strike two.”

Strike Three: If, after the letter is sent home to the parents, the behavior continues, John will have a formal meeting with the parents at school, the student will sign a contract for improved behavior, and their laptop will be exchanged for a “corrections laptop”, a loaner that we tailer specifically for the needs of that particular student – if they’re having trouble staying on task during lessons, maybe we’ll limit the browsing to Safari only and specific websites for example. We call this “strike three.” No one has gone past strike three yet, but we have had a few cases.

3. It’s all about balance.

Most of the concerns teachers, students and parents had last year, before we started our CLC, were about logistical items like charging, software, ownership and damage. So that’s what we spent most of our time talking about, and thankfully, all of those items have gone really smoothly. What has come up as more of a challenge, not so surprisingly, is balance and responsibility. Students are working through the challenges of having their own laptop 24/7, and they are very well aware of it. Here’s what they have to say:

Living with Laptops from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

Alongside their children, parents are also struggling with how to deal with a new laptop in the house. There seems to be something different about a “school” laptop and how it’s perceived at home, versus one purchased by the family.

In order to help support our fantastic parent community, we held a session, called Living with Laptops, for our parents to help them recognize the skills they already have and how to apply them in this new context. It was a great conversation, and one we will continue to have in future parent sessions. Feel free to read the (very detailed) recap here.

To highlight the importance of balance, responsibility and safety, we’re also having a Digital Citizenship Week next week (more to come on that later). Hopefully, this will help students reflect on their use of technology and provide opportunities to make better choices in the future. At the end of the year, we’re also very fortunate to have the wonderful Robyn Treyvaud visiting for three days of non-formal school during our last week, where we’ll come back to revisit these ideas again.

Final Thoughts

I firmly believe that the reason this year has gone so smoothly is because of the community involvement in the development of the program. All stakeholder groups had a say in exactly how the program would be implemented, what our vision is for the future, and what expectations we could have for our community. Having parents, students, teachers and admin involved in this process really helped ensure that our CLC is exactly what we wanted it to be.

I’m sure we have a lot more learning to do, and I’m really excited about the possibilities for next school year – once actually “having” a laptop isn’t such a big deal any more. If you’re in a 1:1 school, what did you learn during the process of implementation?

Image Credits

• Laptops, Encased by superkimbo on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed
• Grade 6′s working on a super important secret project by superkimbo on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed

Related posts:

1. Life 'Round Here Learnings

I’m always looking for ways to build a sustainable, job-embedded, professional development model for technology. As much as I love running after school sessions for teachers, and even with all of the fantastic opportunities we have at YIS, like COETAIL and the weekend workshops we regularly host (our next one is coming up this weekend with Andrew Churches!), I still believe the most successful PD is takes place during a regular school day. So, for the last few months, my amazing Middle School Vice Principal, Susie, and I have been working on ways that we can support our teachers at all skill and interest levels, in addition to regular coaching through the Collaboration Cycle.

Here are a few of the ideas we’ve developed:

YIS Tech Pilots

Somehow it always seems that the technology leaders in a school end up with all the extra work – helping colleagues, leading professional development sessions, testing new tools – without a lot of the reward. Since we have a great group of very tech savvy teachers at YIS, this was the first group I wanted to start with. Basically, these teachers are highly independent in their use of technology in their classroom, and are always willing to try something new, so I wanted to offer them the opportunity to share, collaborate, and connect with their like-minded colleagues from other departments – during the school day.

My hope is that we’ll meet as a team at least once a month, if not twice a month (fingers crossed) for a double block (90 mins). The plan is to spend time sharing, exploring and discussing new ideas. We don’t want it to be extra work (that’s why it’s during the school day, and they’ll be provided with cover for their classes), but we do want there to be a bit of a reward for all the extra work that these teachers are doing already. I think the sessions will take on a life of their own, once we meet for the first time, and I can imagine us talking about creating a blended learning environment through our blogging portal, bringing in elements of challenge based learning, developing globally collaborative projects with other schools, and just generally taking advantage of all of the amazing tools we have available at YIS.

We just announced the idea last week and I’ve had 10 teachers sign up. In a staff of about 40 in our MS/HS, that was exactly the number I was hoping for. Ultimately, I hope this group can become a mini-professional learning community that supports not only the members themselves, but the other teachers within their departments.

Wired Workday

Although teachers can always make appointments with the Technology and Learning Coaches, or just drop-by the office, often they are busy and just need a question answered quickly. Even though our office is very close to the Main Building (where most secondary classes are held), we’re just far enough away to stop teachers from popping by in an emergency (especially if they’re rushed). Plus, because our office is shared, sometimes it doesn’t feel like a space where you can come in and chat for an extended time.

In order to make ourselves more accessible, and provide a little more privacy for extended support, we’re starting a rotational drop-in room schedule, where one of us will be available in a very central classroom for 3 periods a week (which ends up being at least 1 period a day). We’re going to start out with open, walk-in support, and see how that goes. If we feel like people are coming in with the same questions, or we feel like people aren’t sure what to do with the time, we’ll start running themed sessions – similar to what we would do during an after school technology training.

My hope is that the teachers who are less likely to stop by the technology office (for whatever reason), will feel more comfortable dropping in an empty classroom. I like that everyone will know which periods we’ll be there – they never have to worry about coming by and us not being there, plus they don’t have to make an appointment, or plan in advance. I’m also hoping we’ll get even more insight into what topics need support, and continue building quality relationships with all of our teachers.

Faculty Meeting Tech Tips

This is the first year of our Connected Learning Community (1:1 program), and the first year of using WordPress as our learning portal – both are going extremely well, but we do have lots of learning to do as a faculty. One way we’re making time for specific technology tips is to highlight an expected us of our blogs during faculty meeting time. Instead of expecting teachers to figure out how to use their blog in the most efficient way, we’re hoping to scaffold those skills, one at a time, during required meetings.

We started by developing a list of  blogging expectations for teachers, in an effort to be as clear and consistent as possible. Once we had our defined list, we started walking teachers through one item in each meeting, so that by the end of the year teachers will have successfully implemented all of these foundational skills. At the moment, I’m leading these short sessions, but we hope that our Tech Pilots can start to be the leaders as the year continues. We don’t want the technology to become a burden, and we want to leave opportunities for teachers to discover the ways that the platform works best for them, so this one-by-one approach is working really well.

In addition to the faculty meeting time, we are also scheduling regular TechTidbits and SpeedGeeking time for teachers to learn from their peers who have already implemented these ideas. Earlier this year, we found that having a specific list of skills to master (and teacher leaders for each skill) was a really effective way for teachers to build their technology efficiency.

Final Thoughts

We’re hoping that these ideas will reach the advanced, beginner and intermediate level teachers in a way that feels most comfortable to them, along with providing a network of teachers who can support each other. Ultimately, my goal is that the school builds a collaborative, supportive and engaged community of learners who take risks and try new things with technology because they know they have both the resources and the support they need.

These are just the first three ideas that we’ve started implementing, and we’re always looking for more. How do you build technology learning into the school day for all teachers? What strategies have worked for you?

Image Credits

• Tech Pilots original image by Kemon01 on Flickr, licensed CC
• Open by Lucca Zappa on Flickr, licensed CC
• Probably the best checklist in the world by mistersnappy on Flickr, licensed CC

Related posts:

1. Tech Tidbits: Increasing Teachers’ Digital Efficiency

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a year since we started using Google Apps for Education at YIS! Around this time last year we were still using FirstClass and just about to make the transition to Google, mainly for e-mail purposes, but in that time we’ve started to develop some great ideas for more efficiently communicating and collaborating with students, parents and teachers.

Along with Google Apps, this is the first year (starting in August) that we’ve required all teachers to have a blog on The Learning Hub (our school blogging portal). The previous two years have been voluntary, to give teachers a time to explore and see what works. Fortunately, we have a very enthusiastic staff, and they’ve seen lots of great opportunities for utilizing the blogs as a communication and learning portal for parents and students. By this time next year, we’ll be working towards blogs as e-portfolios for students, on the same platform.

Combining our use of Google Apps and our WordPress blogs on The Learning Hub has really started to create a dynamic and practical blended learning environment for our school community. Although I’m sure we still have lots of opportunity for growth, I’m really proud of what we’ve started to implement already:

WordPress Custom Menus & Categories for Efficient Blogging

Many of our teachers teach several different classes (Grade 6, 7, and 8 Humanities for example), which means that in order for a single teacher to maintain only one blog (instead of a separate blog for each class), categories are essential. We’ve been doing a great job of posting assignments in the correct category, renaming the category widget to something like “Choose Your Class” and then teaching students to always use the correct category when looking for updates. Even though this works, it’s not very pretty (categories widget being in the sidebar and all) so when the recent release of Custom Menus finally became available on our Edublogs Campus site, we were thrilled.

Now our teachers are able to achieve some consistency across all blogs with a custom navigation menu which includes the following:

• An about page with a short bio of the teacher, possibly a picture
• A Course Overview section with pages for each class, which include the course syllabus and basic information about the class
• A Choose Your Class section, with the dropdown menu items being the categories for each individual class
• An Assignments section with pages for each class, which include the larger assessment pieces and their rubrics
• A Calendar section with pages for each class which include an embedded Google calendar of assignment deadlines (see below)
• A Resources section with collaborative depart-based resources like MYP Criteria, helpful documents, and useful resource lists (see below)

It sounds simple, but the ability to mix pages and categories (and any custom links) into the menu bar (let alone being able to add a menu bar to any blog theme) really makes the blogs easy to navigate, and allows our teachers to use the natural organization structure of the blogging platform to it’s fullest. The one thing we’re really struggling with at the moment is that many blog themes on Edublogs do not actually show the full category in the category archives (so far we’ve tested about 50 themes and only 20 of them show the full category – frustrating).

Collaborative Google Calendars for Easy Communication

One of my favorite thing about Google Calendars is that they can be collaborative, so that more than one person can have the rights to create and manage events on a single calendar. Plus, that collaborative calendar can then be embedded anywhere on the web! Last week we took this to a new level at YIS by creating collaborative calendars for each grade level in the middle school.

Every teacher that teaches grade 7 for example, now has one single calendar to add assessment tasks. The homeroom teacher for the class (7A for example) creates one calendar and gives admin rights to all the other 7A teachers. Now everyone who teaches 7A can add their assessment events to this one calendar (plus, if the assessment description is online, they can easily attach or embed the assessment right there into the calendar event). From there, we embedded the calendar into every teachers’s class blog, so the students can view the assignments there, subscribe to the calendar themselves (or their parents), or embed the calendar into their own blog. Of course, this also provides the additional benefit of allowing teachers to get a birds’ eye view of assessment deadlines for a single group (always something I’ve seen schools try to do, but never seems to work out).

When students and parents subscribe to this calendar they can:

• see a model of how to effectively use Google Calendar to keep track of events and organize important assignments
• set up the type of reminders that are convenient for them (automated e-mail, pop-up or text message)
• always know what is due and when – for every class, from one central place
• with one click, see the attached assignment sheet for this particular event

Related posts:

1. Google Earth: Introducing Geography to Grade 6 Students
2. The Perfect Match: Technology Integration and Understanding by Design
3. It's Not Just A Tool: Technology As Environment

Last year, YIS implemented a Visiting Scholars Program, which basically means that YIS is willing to host educational researchers looking to conduct research in an international school context. Naturally, our very first visiting scholar was Dr. Mary Hayden, the leading expert, author and researcher on international schools. (Can you tell I’m a big fan? I have all her books – which I did, embarrassingly, tell her the first time I met her. Yet another geek moment, for sure.)

It was wonderful to have Mary at our school, not only because she is so knowledgeable about international schools and offered several sessions for our community (notes and resources), but also because she was always willing to stop and chat, and offer her excellent advice.  I had several great conversations with her while she was here, and one, more formal, meeting with our Connected Learning Community team that I think is worth sharing here.

Tips for Measuring Success 

At the end of last year, which was when Mary was at YIS, we were just in the final stages of planning for our Connected Learning Community implementation, and foremost on our mind (once the practicalities were out of the way) was how we could evaluate the success of the program. Mary’s extensive experience in research gave us a great foundation to start from, and our conversation produced several key ideas to implement:

1. Create a list of goals/desired results in practicalities, based on our Vision for the CLC (here’s how we developed our vision). Remember to focus on not just technology, but habits, including: social and emotional wellness, and digital citizenship.
2. Create an audit or survey to determine if we’ve met those goals, consider running this at the beginning, (middle?) and end of the year to see where we’ve started from, as well as where we’ve gone.
3. Create a form/format for all stakeholders to regularly record what they’ve seen based on the desired results – basically a way for us to continually gather evidence about our successes and challenges through multiple perspectives.
4. Develop a case study group, to ensure regular reflection and feedback with a specific group composed of students, teachers and parents (similar to the team that worked together to develop our program).
5. Add software to image that tracks when students are online and what they’re doing – we can ask students to run the software during orientation. (What does this mean for student privacy?)
6. Use student blogs as a record of their development, interest and use of technology tools to connect, communicate, share and collaborate.
7. Try some experiments: for example: run parallel classes: same class – one with tech, one without – to see the impact that technology is having on a day-to-day basis. Or use text messaging to see how students are using text messaging (What are you doing now? What do you think about what you’re doing?)

No related posts.

It’s hard to believe another Learning 2.0 conference has come and gone. Yet again, the organizers created an innovative and engaging learning environment. It’s fantastic to watch how this conference has evolved from year to year, and just continues to get better and better. Personally, I thought this year was the best yet. Here’s why:

Cohorts of Learners

This is the second year in a row that Learning 2.0 has followed a cohort model for part of the conference. I love the idea of spending a set chunk of time with a set group of participants. To me, this adds another layer of learning, connections, and conversations to an already very learner-focused event.

Last year the conference was organized so that we had just cohort time and unconference time, which was a little tricky. I felt, as a cohort leader, that I was responsible for teaching all the things that participants could have possibly learned in a presentation session, and I think the participants felt a bit like they didn’t really know what to do with the unconference time. This year, the amount of time in cohorts was reduced, and additional presentation time was added, for a fabulous trifecta of cohorts, presentations and unconference time. It’s so important to keep that presentation time – not only does it encourage other participants to present, but it showcases the amazing things that are going on in schools all around Asia. I think this year was a perfect balance of all three formats.

The cohort concept is also fantastic because it provides a lens through which the participants can view the conference. This gives a focus to what participants are learning and allows dedicated time to discuss and reflect on everything they’ve seen. This year I was asked to lead a cohort called Authentic Assessment and Digital Media. Thankfully, I (once again) had a superstar partner, David Larson (last year I had the privilege of working with Darren Kurropatwa), because it was a challenging topic to facilitate. For starters, I read the title and thought: “Fun! Project Based Learning and Multimedia! We can share ways that we’re transforming our classroom to bring in the design process and authentic student-led projects!” But, on the first evening, when I asked participants what they were looking for, they said things like:

• Strategies for formative assessment
• Revising rubrics
• How to ensure that technology skills are being mapped and assessed
• How to assess technology standards
• How to map technology standards

Of course, all of these things are very important, but it wasn’t quite the vision I had for the cohort – especially given the fact that there were 50 people from at least 40 different schools, all at different places and with different standards and expectations. So, we did our best to share our ideas, allow others to share theirs, and to provide time to work together to answer some of the questions the brought with them to the conference. I think (hope) they walked away with something useful, and I certainly learned a lot.

A few highlights for me were:

• We need time to re-frame what we’re talking about. Why are we doing the things we’re doing? Finding a few really great articles and allowing time for participants to read, and then jigsaw back to a new group where everyone read a different article is a very effective way to do this.
• It was clear that participants really wanted (and needed) time to share what they are doing in their schools, challenges they face, and solutions or opportunities they could take advantage of (we did a SpeedGeeking session and a department-focused session to facilitate this)
• Formative assessment is a big challenge for teachers – we need some quick and easy strategies that teachers can implement, especially in a 1:1 environment (lots of good ideas about this for another post)
• The MYP Design Cycle (or any kind of design process) really does fit for any subject, but it takes time and teachers need help understanding that a technology-rich project that’s done thoroughly usually means more time, rather than less (we need to stop saying “make a movie about this for homework”).
• Almost every participant in the cohort was either in a 1:1 school, or their school was moving in that direction. Most had heard of the ISTE NETS standards and were applying them in some form at their school. Everyone had a positive story to share about the use of technology in their school – although they were all at very different levels.

I love that feeling when you get to meet people you’ve been learning with for years online, in person. It’s amazing that you can kind of “skip to the good stuff” right away because you already know each other from so many different forms of communication. This conference has to be my absolute favorite for those kinds of connections. Walking into our cohort leaders planning session and seeing Wes Fryer, Rod Lucier, Darren Kurropatwa, George Couros, Alec Couros, Jess McCulloch, Kevin Honeycutt, Anne Mirstchin, Jeff Utecht, Julie Lindsay, Ann Krembs, Jabiz Raisdana, Jarrod Robinson, Toni Erni, Gail Lovely, Charlotte Diller, Sheldon Bradshaw, Michael Boll, and the amazing conference organizing team, is quite the buzz.

What’s even better is that when we did our mini-keynotes, all of our ideas built upon one another – and there was no collaborative planning for these presentations, no discussion of what we would do before we got on stage. We’re all thinking about the same things, and when we get together, we can get right down to talking about “doing bigger stuff” (as Jess likes to say). And on top of all that, getting the chance to see the wonderful people that are such an integral part of my personal learning network all together in the same place just can’t be beat! These connections are what it’s all about.

Momentum

It is amazing to come back year after year to this conference and see how teachers and schools are moving forward. Seeing former participants come back as unconference leaders, former unconference leaders come back as presenters, and former presenters come back as cohort leaders is fantastic! This conference has become a community of learners that connects and reconnects in many ways, and we’re all continually pushing ourselves and our schools forward. I love working in Asia because of this feeling of momentum we have, it’s contagious and it spreads from school to school as our teachers move around and share their learning.

I like to tease my good friend Jabiz about being my first protégé (sorry BZ), but all I did was give him a ball (in this case the ball was WordPress instead of Dreamweaver) and he ran with it. Same goes for Dana Watts (formerly at ISB), and Rebekah Madrid and Zoe Page (here at YIS). We had a few conversations here and there, and before I knew it, they were running with that ball so fast, doing new things in inspiring ways. It’s such a pleasure to come to a conference like this and see all of them together, knowing that there are groups of people all over the venue with the same kinds of stories and connections. We’re all moving forward together.

I’m especially proud to have brought a team of teachers from YIS to the conference this year too. Having a group of us at the conference, spending time thinking about these big ideas together, and then being able to share them back at school, is just one of the many ways the momentum continues to spread. Thanks for coming Zoe, Rebekah , Elif, Brian and Trevor! Looking forward to bringing this energy and enthusiasm back to YIS throughout the year.

Final Thoughts

Thanks Learning 2.011 team for inviting me back another year. It’s truly an honor to be part of the community that you have created. I’m already looking forward to Learning 2.012!

Image Credits

• Group Project Time by superkimbo on Flickr
• Authentic Assessment by superkimbo on Flickr
• #summercamp4life by Clint Hamada on Flickr
• Kim and the Protégés by Clint Hamada on Flickr
• YIS Crew 4 by Clint Hamada on Flickr

Related posts:

1. The Next Generation Conference
2. The Future of Learning in a Networked World

Thanks to Jess McCulloch for tagging me with this fun post idea. I decided to be a little creative and re-use some older pictures that I’ve already shared via Instagram, Twitter or Flickr, combined with a few recent ones. One of the highlights of living in Japan is that we have 4 distinct seasons, so here’s a glimpse of my daily “commute” (a 10 minute walk) through the seasons:

I start my mornings with a moment on the balcony, enjoying the breezes and (mostly) sunny skies, and the view of Yokohama harbor:

This one is from the day after a major typhoon. What a difference a day makes!

After heading downstairs (we live on the 9th floor of a 22 story building), we cross this busy street. Thankfully the crossing signals are unusually long in Japan so we rarely have to wait. Some days, I get extra lucky and I get to walk to work with a friend:

Then we take a short stroll across the canal:

and then up the steps:

through a little park with some super cool trees:

and an interesting statue (that I still don’t know the meaning behind):

and across the adorable mini-bridge:

And we’re there:

Of course, if the weather is not so great, or we’re feeling lazy, we take the escalator up the hill instead of the stairs:

which leads us through a short walk through yet another park:

Plus, if we go that way, we’re rewarded with a fantastic view of Mt. Fuji (on clear days):

And some stunning sunsets on the way home:

I must admit, I love my commute! What does yours look like Chris Betcher, Clint Hamada, Chrissy Hellyer, Brian Lockwood, Keri-Lee Beasley, Dana Watts and anyone else who wants to play along?

Related posts:

1. Off to work we go!

Once again, I’m teaching grade 6 MYP Technology. This is my absolute favorite class to teach, and I’m looking forward to another fun year with our wonderful new sixth graders.

One thing is very different this year, though. For the first time, ever, in my teaching career, I have a colleague who also teaches MYP Technology that I can collaborate with! In the past, I’ve always been the only middle school technology teacher, but this year, I am very fortunate to work with Damien Pitter, who will be teaching grade 7 MYP Technology at YIS.

We’re starting off the year by introducing the MYP Technology Design Cycle in a fun way, through a 30-minute design challenge, one variation for grade 6 and something a little different for grade 7. Usually I like to bring in hands-on, non-tech, activities in various places throughout the year to focus on the concept of the design process and this is going to be the first experience for this group.

Here’s the plan, with a *huge* thanks to Damien (I ♥ collaboration): The Great 30-Minute Design Challenge

Start the lesson with a quick discussion about the difference between art and design, helping students understand the fact that design must include function and not only appearance. Then, introduce the challenge. For grade 6, they will be designing and creating a house of cards using only the materials provided (recycled index cards and tape). They will have 30 minutes to use whatever resources they have to learn how to create a house of cards (including their friends and their laptops, if needed), and to successfully create their house.

As they go through the process of creating their house, they will document (on this simple table, created by Damien) each step in their process. During the challenge, students may ask questions and help each other, but in the end, they must each create their own house.

After 30 minutes, we’ll do a short “Gallery Walk” to look at everyone’s houses. A class discussion about  which houses have great design, which met the design specifications and which were most successful will follow. Ideally, this will prompt some thought about how to design: thinking about who you’re designing for, what the purpose is for your design, what will determine the success or failure of your design, and how effectively follow a process from beginning to end to ensure that your designs are meeting all of those needs.

Finally, we’ll talk through the various stages of the MYP Design Cycle in terms of this task, understanding the importance of each step. Students will fill in the table they started earlier by using the second column to label which stage of the Design Cycle they were doing for each step – even if they’re completely out of order. Hopefully this will prompt some class reflection about how important the process is, why each stage comes when it does in the Cycle, and help build their understanding of how they can apply it to all subject areas.

Final Thoughts

I’m excited to see how this lesson will turn out. Damien did his version last week (the grade 7 students designed a “Wanted” poster for their 30 minute challenge) and he said it prompted some great discussion. I’m kind of surprised I’ve never done a short introduction like this before. I think it’s because the Design Cycle seems so natural to me that I’ve never thought about it needing a specific overview lesson, but I’m sure this will help my students understand the purpose and structure of this course so much better. Maybe it’s just me, but I love the fact that this class focuses on the process over the product. Understanding how to manage a project, how to design for others (or yourself) and how to reflect on your own work is such valuable learning.

As Damien and I were discussing this activity, we kept coming back to the idea that the Design Cycle is visible in every subject area, like the writing process in English and the scientific method in, well, science, which is why I always use the Design Cycle when integrating technology into the classroom. One of my goals for this class ia always to help them see those connections more naturally, and to be able to be more effective “project managers” through their understanding of the design process. Hopefully, now that we’re moving MYP up through the middle school, there will be more opportunity for collaboration between departments to highlight these connections.

Oh, and by the way, how awesome is it to have a colleague who teaches the same thing as you?!

Do you teach MYP Technology? How do you introduce the concept of the Design Cycle to your students?

Image Sources, Creative Commons Licensed, Found on Flickr

• MYP Technology Design Cycle shared by superkimbo
• Building Castles in Spain by Ester Gibbons
• Intersecting Cables by David Paul Ohmer

Related posts:

1. Creating Independent Learners: The MYP Technology Design Cycle