Last week, I stole borrowed a page from my friends and colleagues at UWCSEA East and had students run a session with parents on social networking and other concerns. As I wrote in the school newsletter:

Thao , Tommy and Max did a fantastic job of presenting a student perspective and discussing their own personal use of social networks and other aspects of technology use, both in school and at home. It was great to hear them address the concerns raised by parents as well as share their experiences. According to one of the students, “It was helpful to listen to the questions from parents, and it helped me understand what kind of concerns parents have about the integration of technology into a student’s life.” Another added: “It was good for the students to see the point of view of the parent, so they would understand what the parent is seeing. It good to tell the parent about what we as student are doing on our tablet.”

The parents were also appreciative of the chance to speak to young adults and about the challenges and opportunities that are faced in an increasingly digital environment from their different perspectives. There was also a great roundtable discussion among the parents once the students had returned to class about some of the questions and concerns they have as parents.

One of the big discussion points that came from the parent roundtable (and actually, it has been brought up before) was the need for an online community for parents (primarily) to discuss some of the issues, questions and concerns that go hand-in-hand with the implementation of emerging technologies for learning.

I learned at ASB Unplugged 2010 that they are using a Ning for their parents. If I remember correctly, it is now completely moderated by parent volunteers and members of their PTA.

I’m wondering if any schools have successfully implemented BuddyPress as a community forum? As we are looking to finally start with edublogs, I wonder if this is a path that we can take? I’ve done some initial poking around, but I can’t solve the privacy issue: How do I make a BuddyPress installation so that parents can register themselves (moderated by an admin from the school) and so that the forums, groups and postings are private?

I’m also wondering if BuddyPress is even the way to go? Are there alternatives out there that you would suggest from experience?

How is your school engaging your parent community in discussion? Are you using social networking to improve parent communication and interaction? How concerned are you and your parents with the privacy of that social network? 

UNIS Hanoi celebrated UN Day back on October 7th. (Has it already been a month? How did THAT happen?) As one of only two United Nations schools in the world, it’s pretty easy to figure out that UN Day is a pretty big deal in these parts.

This year’s theme is Rapprochement of Cultures with the goal of

[demonstrating] the benefits of cultural diversity by acknowledging the importance of the constant transfers and exchanges between cultures and the ties forged between them since the dawn of humanity. As cultures encompass not only the arts and humanities, but also lifestyles, different ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs, the protection and promotion of their rich diversity invites us to rise to new challenges at the local, national, regional and international levels.

To help us work with students on the concept of cultural rapprochement, we invited Erica and Mark from Reel Youth to spend 5 weeks with our students in grades 4 – 8. The mission of Reel Youth is to empower student voices to make media about issues that they care about. Our goal was to give students a chance to voice and share their own personal cultural identities and to give others a chance to explore and connect with that identity.

Erica and students filming

In those 5 weeks, Erica and Mark met with each MS homeroom 3 times (about 85 minutes per meeting). In those 4 hours, students wrote and recorded a poem called “Where I’m From” (meeting 1); learned about lighting and angles for filming, shot multiple examples of each, and imported the footage onto their computer (meeting 2); and edited their footage to fit the poem recording, usually with enough time left over to get some great feedback from our creative experts on how to improve the edit (meeting 3), export and submit a finished film. I wasn’t sure if we could get all the students to finish on time (and some still wanted to make more edits at home to improve their work), but by the end of the that last meeting, ALL students had a finished product!

On UN Day, each grade level did different activities centered around the content of their student films. We also arranged for an exhibition in the foyer our new Performing Arts Theatre, showing all 500+ student films that were created on 15 different screens. Students from across the school as well teachers, parents and invited dignitaries had a chance to sample the work that our students spent so much time and effort on.

Mark helping a student edit

Reel Youth also played another huge role at UNIS with some high school students. A group of about 16 students were selected to work with them outside of class time to film and create documentaries centered around two of the major Community Service projects that we do here at UNIS. They spent their weekends going out to the Thuy An orphanage and up to Sin Chai Elementary School in a H’mong village in Sapa to tell the stories of some of these individuals. I’m still working on getting copies of some of those documentaries, but the films were amazing. In the gala premiere that was held to showcase these films, the students talked about this experience as some of the most meaningful learning experiences they had ever taken part in. I’m hoping to convince some of these students to submit their work to one or some of the many student film festivals that will be taking place in early 2012.

For those of you interested in exploring that confluence of film, technology and student empowerment, I cannot recommend Reel Youth enough. Film-making is such an amazing way of leveraging the technology that we put in the hands of our students so that they can create something that is truly personal, creative and meaningful. Erica and Mark showed such great respect for each student and their voice that it was easy for them to connect with them and gain their trust. That, in turn, led to some truly magnificent work by the students!

Below is a the ‘meta-film’ that was made by two visiting filmmakers from the UK about collaboration between Reel Youth and the UNIS Community and Service program. It gives a great glimpse of the work that was done with the two community service projects, the voices and thoughts of the students involved, and the philosophy of Reel Youth.

After my first attempt, I’m back with a new attempt to collect walkthrough data related to technology integration.

I’m currently working with Adrienne and Jeff on a presentation for ASB Unplugged on different coaching models and roles as related to technology. We had a discussion about our roles as data coaches and where this ranks on the list of things that we do. I’m hoping this form will act as a bit of action research for me and my school.

The walkthrough that I envision should take less than 10 minutes and the form is designed to support this. The data that I hope to collect should give me holistic data which can then be used to analyze departments, grade level and even specific teachers. It should be said that this isn’t about evaluation or appraisal (not that I have that power!), but rather about being able to target specific areas for support and PD.

I’ve chosen to use the SAMR model but this can be easily modified to suit your school’s needs or current practices.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and how it compares to how you collect walkthrough data at your school.

I love this idea from Jess McCulloch, who I got to meet at Learning 2.0. (Thanks Kim for tagging me!)

The idea is to share your commute to work with your network. I live about 800 meters from the back gate of the school. Almost every morning I walk the 12 – 15 minutes to school with my wife (PE teacher), my son (grade 1) and my daughter (Discovery/Pre-Kindergarten). Sometimes my other daughter doesn’t want to be left out and she joins us for part of the walk!

At first I thought this was just going to be for fun, but as I was thinking about it and then actually taking the photos it made me realize how use of images was really making me stop and take notice of things that I might otherwise take for granted. The act of trying to capture the essence of my ‘commute’ really made me think long and hard about what was important and what I wanted to share. I could definitely see creating a similar project for students. What a great way to bring students together from around the world!

I live on the third floor of a 20 story apartment block. If you know where to look, you can actually see my apartment in this photo!

There are plenty of places to stop and smell the flowers if you are looking for them.

Besides apartment blocks, there are some nice villas on the housing estate.

There are even some nice tree-lined sidewalks.

The choice of monuments around the place is… interesting.

Although it is a ‘modern internationl city‘, there is still plenty of old Hanoi to be seen.

The back gate of the school.

The Elementary School courtyard. This is usually teeming with kids running around and wreaking havoc!

One of the initiatives that has started at UNIS is a community garden. This one is right in the middle of the ES courtyard so that all the students can watch it grow and flourish.

The library (2nd floor) and canteen.

Finally. My door. Anything look familiar?

Yep. That’s me!

It’s a simple commute and one I usually take for granted. Not this morning though!

I’m looking forward to see the morning commutes of Adrienne, Jabiz, Keri-Lee, and Sean!

Another Learning 2.0 event has come and gone. I think I’m finally getting over my conference hangover – after such a full-on weekend my mind just sort of went blank and kept racing at the same time! – and can look back at all that I learned and shared. It’s hard to believe that I was skeptical about this conference when I first heard about the new cohort/unconference format. I’m so glad Simon May convinced me to go to Learning 2.010. Now I don’t think I’ll ever think about missing one as long as I’m in the region!

Capacity

As a member of the Technology Learning Leaders ¹ cohort it was great to get to know Charlotte Diller and George Couros. The two big points of emphasis from them were “Start with the why” and “Build capacity.” This really reaffirmed the work that I’m trying to do because, while not stated as eloquently, these have been foci ² for me over the past year. UNIS’ work on the Learning and Technology Plan, while not complete, is exactly in place to answer the “Why?” question and my focus on coaching and teacher-led workshops is about building capacity.

In our mini-sessions during cohort time, I took part in some great discussions about blogs and portfolios. A school-wide blogging platform is something that I have been pushing for a while and it was great to get so many perspectives at once on how they can be utilized effectively. There is no “right way” and so it is important that the “Why?” is discussed first! I also learned a lot about the various coaching models that are put into place at different schools. WAB seems to have a very strong model of offering skills-based coaching within the school day. IST puts a strong focus on self-assessment of needs and abilities. This year I am trying a system of working first and foremost with the new faculty by identifying one of the NETS Standards for Students and Teachers as points of emphasis. I’m hoping that we can shift the focus from an emphasis on technology skills to one of pedagogy, curriculum and best practice.

Connections

It sounds really corny, but Learning 2.011 felt a bit like coming home. There are so many people in Asia that I interact with online; #learning2 gave me a chance to catch up with a lot of them and meet some of them for the first time ³.

I was really honored to be one of the 20 teachers highlighted in Jabiz’s keynote. It’s amazing to think that it was only one year ago that we met at Learning.2010.

I was really excited to revive Twitter for Teachers with Keri-Lee. We ran this as an impromptu unconference last year and had a good response. We decided to run it as a workshop this year and it apparently was pretty popular: we were asked to run it a second time as well! My Twitter stream is overflowing with all the new connections that I made.

Camp

Thanks to Alec and George Couros for giving rise to one of my favorite hashtags of all time: #summercamp4life. With the ease of communication and collaboration, it is so easy to translate those conference promises of “Keep in touch” into actions. While Learning 2.011 may have officially ended on September 11, the conversations and the learning can go on forever. #summercamp4life.

Images

Welcome! by Clint Hamada licensed under CC BY NC SA
My Tweeps by Kim Cofino licensed under CC BY NC SA
#summercamp4life by Clint Hamada licensed under CC BY NC SA

To help facilitate our Twitter for Teachers session at Learning 2.011, we have decided to post the general outline of our presentation and any resources on both of our blogs. We’d love to hear your feedback and how you are using Twitter to interact with your PLN. Feel free to leave your Twitter name in the comments as well!

(Mis)Perceptions of Twitter

We’ve all heard the “I don’t care what you had for breakfast!” diatribe against Twitter. We’re curious to know what the perceptions our participants have about Twitter.

How We Use It

Twitter, like anything else, is simply a tool. Use of that same tool will vary widely from person to person and Twitter is no exception.

Top Tips

For those just starting out in the Twitter game or for those that started an account years ago but never really got into it, here our some of our top tips for using Twitter to expand your PLN:

• Public, Personal, Private – Just as we would tell our students, it is important to understand the distinction between public, personal and private information.
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• BPL – Bio, Photo, Link. It’s hard for others to separate the gold from the spam when you don’t fill these things out!
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• Tear Down That Wall! – Don’t protect your tweets! Again, it’s hard for others to decide to follow you back if they can’t see what you’ve added to the conversations.
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• Go Beyond Basic – While Twitter as a service is fantastic, Twitter as a website is less than desirable. Try a Twitter client like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, or Echofon (just to name a few!) that allows you to separate your Twitter feed into easy-to-monitor columns.
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• Lists - Twitter lists allow you to create groups within your Twitter stream. You can even include people that you do not personally follow. Even better, you can follow lists that others have meticulously created. (Kim Cofino has a great International Teachers list.)
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• Hashtags – #learning2 #edchat #scichat #mathchat #kinderchat These are all examples of hashtags. Hashtags make it easy to group and search for tweets about a specific topic. Using a Twitter client like Tweetdeck, you can even use a hashtag to create an easy-to-follow column in your client. @cybraryman has a comprehensive list of education-related hashtags.
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• Search For It – Is there something that you’re passionate about? Chances are there are others on Twitter who are passionate about the same thing. Use the Twitter Search function to find people who are talking about your hometown, your favorite sports team or anything else you might be interested in.
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• Lurking (aka Legitimate Peripheral Participation) – One of the best and easiest ways to learn Twitter etiquette is to lurk amongst some of your favorite lists or hashtags. Once you see how things work, it’s a lot easier to join in!
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• Retweet and Reply – For some, the highest compliment you can pay them on Twitter is to retweet them. For others, they prefer the conversation that comes along with an @reply. Either way, it is a great way to engage others and to add followers to your PLN.
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• Conversation is King – Twitter, first and foremost, is about connecting with people around the world who can help you grow as a teacher and as a person. This happens through conversation and through getting to know one another as you would a fellow teacher on your campus. Sometimes these professional relationships develop into personal friendships that last a lifetime!

I’ve realized that in all of the chaos surrounding the start of the school year, I never got around to blogging about Inbox Zero!

Like many schools and institutions around the world, email has become an integral tool at UNIS. If the email server ever goes down for even 10 minutes (which, thanks to our tech department, very rarely happens!) there is a hint of panic amongst the staff.

Unfortunately, even as our reliance on email as a mode of communication has increased to the point of being absolutely essential, our ability to handle the vast quantities of email that we receive on a daily basis has barely evolved if at all. In fact, one of the most common complaints/concerns that I hear amongst our teachers is that there are too many emails sent.

When I first heard about Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero presentation that he gave at the Google Campus in 2006, I was instantly intrigued. It was billed as the best hour that one could spend and I agree! I have probably saved 10 times that or more since I instituted this system 1.5 years ago.

While I highly encourage everybody to check out Mann’s original presentation, the basics are below. I presented this to some interested staff to start the year and it was pretty well received!

If I needed one sentence to summarize Mann’s idea, it would be this: Stop living in your Inbox! Instead of being a slave to email and living in your inbox, convert your relevant messages into predefined actions (mine are delete, do right now, to do later , and reference, in that order) and keep your inbox empty. Don’t use your inbox as a filing cabinet (it should be for new messages that haven’t been processed yet) and don’t spend a lot of time filing messages into subfolders (almost everything goes into that generic reference folder; if I need to find it I will search for it later).

One of the themes for my presentation on the subject (which, I admit, unabashedly steals large portions from Mann, including a few slides which I didn’t have time to prepare myself!) is to think about the analog equivalents of digital tools. This is why you’ll see quite a few references to Mad Men.

Nobody in their right minds (certainly not Don Draper!) would keep all of their correspondence stacked up in their “In Tray” on their desk. Why do we feel we can do that with email? If a phone message were to cross your desk, most people would act on it immediately, either by calling the person back, making a note in their calendar or throwing it in the trash. Why do we treat email any different?

Ultimately, Inbox Zero is about converting messages into actions and then disposing of those messages. It has helped give me a sense of purpose on busy days when I would have normally been overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of messages in my inbox. Now I know exactly where I need to go in order to find things I need to get done!

How do you handle email at school? What systems work for you?

Image credits:
Inbox Zero Presentation by Merlin Mann licensed under CC BY NC ND
Cuffs6 by banspy licensed under CC BY

As I explain over on my ‘other’ blog, I’ve never been very happy with how electronic gradebooks deal with criterion-based assessment, particularly as it relates to the MYP. So over the years I gradually developed my own for my math classroom using Excel and a few macros. Since then I’ve created versions for most if not all of the MYP subject groups. (Downloads below as .xlsm files (Excel 2007/2010 macro enabled))

Each gradebook should use the correct criteria and attainment levels for your subject so make sure you download the right one. If there is a mistake, or if there isn’t one for your subject, let me know and I’ll try and fix it ASAP.

I’ve also created a few short screencasts using Screenr on how I envision the gradebooks being used. (If you click on the full screen icon, it’s much easier to see!) Because I believe sharing makes things better, feel free to hack away at these and adjust them for your own use. Because I see these as being covered by a Creative Commons license (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike) all I ask for in return is that you attribute me, you don’t make any money off of them and you share what you create as well!

Adding Assessments to the Gradebook

Determining Quarter Scores

Collecting Formative and ATL Data

Gradebook Downloads

MYP Arts

MYP Language A

MYP Language B

MYP Mathematics

MYP Humanities

MYP Science

MYP PE

MYP Technology

This year we are rolling out a new Responsible Use Agreement ¹ to all members of the school community. In my mind this has needed to be done for quite some time and it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster getting here, but I would like to thank Andrew Churches for his excellent resources licensed under Creative Commons.

To introduce th RUA to the teachers, I was given 1 hour last Friday. My goals were to familiarize all teachers with the new RUA and to empower them to feel comfortable discussing the idea of responsible use with students since they are truly the front line on this. I worked along with the counselors to come up with some “grey area” scenarios in Responsible Use. We then modified the Visible Thinking Routine Circle of Viewpoints to get groups of four to discuss the scenario from one of four viewpoints: student, teacher, administrator or parent. At the start of each of the four scenarios, participants took on a new role. The idea, in my mind, was to highlight the “grey” nature of these scenarios and, by looking at them from various perspectives, encourage discussion and the teaching of responsibility rather than judgement and assuming students know right from wrong.

The four scenarios we chose were:

• A legitimate search for images in class returns an inappropriate image. The student then shares that image with others.
• After completing their work, a student starts playing a flash-based game unrelated to school.
• While working independently, the student is constantly “multi-tasking.” As the teacher walks around, the student minimizes programs and hides the task bar.
• At break time, a group of students is playing online games together.

I was ² blown away by the amount of discussion this activity created, both during the activity and for the rest of the day. It has brought the idea of responsible use ³ to the forefront of our discussions about community.

The next step is to run a very similar session with all students in the Middle and High Schools as well as sessions for parents in the first couple of weeks of school. I want this to be on everybody’s minds as we begin this school year and it will tie in perfectly with our visit from Robin Treyvaud in October!

What scenarios would you choose to include that would generate discussion in your community? How do you share and discuss your RUA with parents and students?

Back in February, I had the pleasure of working with the great staff at YIS for a few days. One of the things that we focused on was the use of blogs in the classroom. While RSS is a lifesaver for teachers using blogging, one of the issues identified was the need to wade through posts that weren’t relevant. As a math teacher, I don’t really want to be notified every time students blog for their humanities class. Wouldn’t it be great if teachers could use RSS to subscribe only to a specific category?

Fast-forward a few months, and I came across the solution! Turns out it is dead simple. The only requirement (that I can tell) is that the blog cannot be using a service like FeedBurner, which redirects all feeds from a blog into a single feed. Here’s how you do it:

• Click on the category you would like to subscribe to. It will give you a URL like: http://blog.misterhamada.com/category/tech-facilitator/
• Simply add the word “feed” to the end of that URL: http://blog.misterhamada.com/category/tech-facilitator/feed

You can use this same hack to subscribe to posts with a specific tag or by a specific author as well.

(h/t WPRecipes)