Technology to Empower Student Learning

Building Knowledge and Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:40:00 +0000

I'm sitting here early on a Saturday morning taking a look at what's going on in the world through the eyes of those I follow on Twitter.

I've had more questions and more conversations about Twitter recently and I'm asked about how it works and why I use it. Here's why... This morning, I'm came across a tweet from Wes Fryer (@wfryer) about a presentation he's sitting attending in China. (at about 7:45 am my time, Twitter shows that it was posted about 3 hours ago). I now have his notes from the presentation and links to several videos on Edutopia that I hadn't know about 15 min. ago. What's even more important to me is that I can now connect the teachers I support in my school district with this resource. I have some knowledge that connects with my personal learning but can also be distributed so others can gain new knowledge or build new connections in their own learning. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool!

So, here's what occurs to me...if I didn't have a Twitter account and didn't follow the people that I do, how would I have known about this? Why do I use Twitter? Because it helps me to build my knowledge and learning from the experiences of others. As a teacher and as a learner I can't think of any reason more important than that.

Image by mndoci on Flickr

Creating Conversations

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:59:00 +0000

As the school year has gotten under way here, many new opportunities for working in collaboration with teachers have come up. It’s been an exciting start to the school year!

Today I spent some time in another classroom helping kids (and teachers) to understand more about blogs. Last year, some of these teachers had begun blogs but they had had a difficult time sustaining their use throughout the school year. This year, as we talked about starting the blogs up again, I suggested that we work together to present a lesson (or lessons) to the class that would help students understand what a blog is. We talked about some guidelines for safety on a blog and we talked about their “digital footprint”, although we discussed that in terms of “character” or how you portray yourself to others on the Internet.

For the most part, the lessons have been structured in much the same way for both 4^th and 5^th grade classes. We get them thinking and making connections to their prior knowledge by talking about ways that we communicate on the Internet. When we did this with our first class of 5^th graders, we thought that if they could list at least 5 then we would be doing well. Of course, I’m sure you know what happened… We listed probably 12-15 ways of communicating – everything from email to playing online games. They definitely understand the concept of being able to communicate with people in the outside world!

The next part of the lesson is devoted to giving them new information – in this case, the blog which many of them have never used before. Now that we’ve sparked their thinking about communication, we begin to talk about an author’s purpose for writing. They’re well versed in that – inform, persuade, and entertain. Their teachers talk about author’s purpose throughout the reading and writing program. But, we add just one more to the list because it seems appropriate to blogging…”thinking out loud” or reflecting.

We have some blog postings from students who worked with Anne Davis a few years ago and we’re using those as sort of mentor texts for right now (and continuing to look for others). We use these examples and talk about author’s purpose. Students have also pointed out things like mistakes in spelling and punctuation and even one where the student used his full name (we have our students created pseudonyms for their blogs).

We’ve continued on with some guidelines for blogging. While it’s more meaningful for students to create their own guidelines, we’ve found it helpful to use some that were developed by 4^th graders in Thailand. (thanks to Kim Cofino for sharing her practices) Since most of our students have had some Internet safety lessons with our librarians, many of the guidelines are already familiar to them in that regard so then we can concentrate on the “digital footprint” aspect a little more closely.

In some classes, we wrap up this portion of our conversation by asking students to write down one question that they still have about blogging. This gives us a little feedback about the lesson and lets them consider what they’ve just learned and tell us what they still need to know more about.

As we continue on, we’re moving into talking about commenting. Keeping the focus on communication and conversation, we’ve pointed out to our students that one practice that can encourage conversation is to ask your audience a question in your blog article. Then we ask students what naturally happens when someone asks you a question? The answer, in terms of a blog, is called a comment. We talk about commenting first in terms of how you would answer a question in a face to face conversation. We’ve given them four reasons to comment:

“ I agree with you…”
“I (respectfully) disagree…”
“ I have some more information I can add to this…”
“I have a question to ask…”

Using the blog articles from the previous lesson, we go back to take a look at the comments these articles received. We have one article where the student’s Mom replied to him so now we can talk about how anyone can comment on a blog! We’re comparing the comments to our four reasons and finding that many of them conform to these with some variations.

Today, in a 4^th grade, we tried something different because of the time available for the two lessons. Yesterday, after we wrapped up our discussion about communicating and author’s purpose for writing, we had the students start a list of at least 2 topics that they could write about on their blog and note what their purpose would be for writing. Later in the day, the teacher had them choose one idea to write about.

This morning, after our discussions about commenting, we paired up the students, had them exchange their writing and asked them to write a comment. As we walked around to watch their progress we noticed that the students were quite thoughtful in creating their comments. Their comments were positive, they asked questions back to the author and some students had the time to write additional comments.

As we wrapped up today, students were asked to write down two things they learned about creating comments. Each of them were able to quickly write these down.

So…where do we go from here? I’m trying to comment on student blogs as often as I can. A mother of one of the students I’ve worked with has told me already that her daughter was impressed that “that lady” wrote to her. The mom said how personal that was to her daughter. Will I continue to comment? You betcha! How could I not with that kind of feedback. Let the conversations continue!

Image by Markus Koljonen

Brainstorming about eCommunication

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:41:00 +0000

Just saw a tweet about this article from eSchools News "Ten Tips for Building eCommunication." (Thanks @kylepace!) I'm thinking about their list and how it could be applied to a school district as well as an individual teacher's website but also about how these tips are really about creating "community." So I'm going to take a stab at brainstorming a few ideas for each of these and perhaps you might add more of your own in the comments.

1. Start Tweeting: We're seeing that school districts are jumping on the Twitter technology and using it as a way of communicating with parents. Wouldn't it be great if the district tweeted to:

welcome new teachers to the district
keep parents up to date with school curriculum nights
reminders about vacation dates, half days, testing dates, etc.
congratulate teachers or students on their accomplishments
communicate regularly with staff
point out outstanding classroom projects

2. Tell stories: We have a staff newsletter that comes out at certain times during the year. Instead of a printed newsletter giving us bullet points about new teachers, why not ask them to write a short story about themselves? Instead of bullet points about teachers retiring, why not have them write about their experiences as teachers and their plans for the future? How about featuring students telling stories about things they're learning in their classrooms?

3. Add more people: eSchool News refers to this as bringing a human dimension to communications. How about creating and sharing a VoiceThread about things going on in the district? It would probably take as much time for someone to record a message as it would to write, revise, print and distribute.

4. Keep it fresh: I think my school district's website does a good job with that but individual teachers don't always. People who are considering moving into the district almost always begin with the district website and then move on to look at what teachers are doing. Simple tools can help to make the updates easy to do and keep the pages fresh. How about enlisting older students (in an elementary building) to buddy up with students who are younger and help them choose pictures or class work that they'd like to display on the teacher's web page?

5. Survey your audiences: While eSchool News points out the use of online tools such as SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang "for less than $50 per year", Google forms provide a free way of surveying people quickly and gathering the results together in a spreadsheet for further analysis.

6. Use new tools in new ways: The article talks about building in feedback loops.

Seems like Google forms would be easy to use. It could be embedded in a teacher's webpage for parents to visit with ease. A survey form could be used for gathering names of parents to help with field trips or special events or for students to gather data to be used in Science, Math, Social Studies, etc.
How about presenting a math problem to be solved, then have a chat room such as Today's Meet set up for other classes to contribute their ideas and/or chat about the possibile solutions?

7. Start blogging, podcasting and video streaming

What if student's doing a Reader's Theatre were streamed live to other classrooms?
Blogs are easy to set up. Classblogmeister and Edublogs are pretty standard for classrooms and they're free.
Video streaming in-school events, evening concerts and other events would be a great way to bring the school and community together
Put a virtual bookshelf, such as GoodReads, Library Thing and others on your blog or website and invite others to talk about the stories you're reading with your students - your memories, what connections those stories have to your childhood, etc.

8. Free control of web sites from IT.

Does your network administrator or IT team know what's going on in your classrooms? Now is a good time to help them see what they're supporting. Send them regular emails, tweets or whatever linking them to class projects, blogs and other instructional work where the technology is key.

9. Improve site navigation: I like the site search engine idea...I don't think we have one. That would be a great addition to every school website.

10. Learn from the kids: Many of the teachers I work with have said that they feel like the kids know more than they do. So what? We can take advantage of that. We can create expert groups among our students to buddy up with younger kids or with other teachers for assistance. That would be a great way to promote community in the school.

Well...that's what I've come up with. Anything you'd like to add?

The Art of Possibility

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Since attending the Building Learning Communities conference put on by November Learning in Boston last week, I've been working to make some final edits to a wiki I'm working on to support a workshop on Digital Tools and searching for just the right way to present the information. Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra was the first keynote speaker. His point of view and philosophy about life and work and everything else was refreshing to me and I immediately found the inspiration I was looking for to move on with my workshop planning.

On Wednesday evening of the conference, we were able to see him demonstrate how his philosophy becomes performance when he conducted the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. I've been to a number of musical performances in my life but this one...this one was...absolutely wonderful!

I picked up a copy of the book he wrote with his wife Roz and just finished putting it on my "currently reading" shelf at GoodReads. If you haven't seen GoodReads yet, I'd recommend it highly.

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander

I need to give an "A" to more people in my life. Read the chapter 3 to learn more.

View all my reviews >>

The Power of Words

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Wordle is such a great tool. It really gives us the power to see the intent of a document. Here, at the Connected Classroom, is a Wordle created from the NETS-A document just released by ISTE. With that in mind, I thought I'd see what Wordle would do with the NETS -S. I removed the words "student", "use", "using" and "technology" thinking that it's a fairly obvious assumption that those words would occur frequently in the document. Here's what Wordle came up with.

I kind of like this: digital, information, and learning - all of those words are important as we help our students use the digital learning tools that are available and that help them locate, organize and use information.

Now, let's see what the NETS-T looks like. Once again, I removed "teachers", "use" and "using" as well as "technology" - again, feeling that those words should be pretty obvious. Here's the result:

Learning comes out on top - of course, that's really what I would have expected to see. But, I'm also noticing that model, tools, and digital are fairly large words here. That is what I hope we can continue to think about in our work in my district next year. Teachers learning to use the digital tools and modeling their use for our students in order for them to begin to use those tools for their learning.

Embracing Imperfect

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:12:00 +0000

I'm reading an article today on AssortedStuff titled "Imperfect is What You Want." This is making me reflect back on the work we've done in our school district this year in creating digital stories, having students blog and working with wikis.

It's always been the case that we want our students to achieve some level of perfection before they publish their work. But, publishing to the walls of the hallway is different than publishing to the world. It's when we start putting our work and our voice on the web that we begin to be even more afraid of the imperfect.

But, imperfect is the beginning of growth isn't it? It gives us a chance to go back and look at our work and reflect on what we can improve on or take stock of how far we've come. The web then is the perfect place for us to begin that journey since it provides a way of archiving the work that we do.

As I think back on the work done last year in my district, I keep thinking about the fact that we've tended to use our technology tools too much for just the end product - the "Project." I worked through this thinking a little bit in a previous post when I was reflecting about how the use of the technology became problematic in some of the "projects" when the inevitable glitches or lack of knowledge on the teachers' part prevented them from moving forward. We waited until the end product needed to be created before we taught students how to use the tools. I think this makes our work more difficult when we're at a point where we need to come to a finish on something, especially those projects that brings us right up to the end of the school year.

So, next year we should begin to embrace imperfection early on and learn together as we go. Imperfect is a part of life and a part of working with technology and imperfect means that we're growing.

The Technology is Getting in Our Way

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:26:00 +0000

Over and over again in the past few weeks, this idea that the technology can get in our way keeps coming up. Let me explain a little further...

This has actually been a really exciting and productive school year. We've had several projects going on incorporating the use of new technologies or software that have been introduced including PhotoStory, VoiceThread, and Diigo to name a few.

But, here's what I'm struggling with right now... It seems that these tools have been incorporated into projects at the point where the students need to be using them to support their learning or for creating the end product. In other words, we're not teaching the tool and refining the skills as we go along with smaller, manageable activities. We're teaching the tool as the learning needs to be occurring or as the project needs to be completed. And, because of this, I'm wondering if, when we wait until that point, the technology is getting in the way.

The tool is never the point, of course, but, the processes and skills needed to use the tool effectively have to be taught. How can we scaffold the teaching of those skills in such a way that, when it's time for that "big" project, our students already have an automaticity with the skills to the point where the technology isn't "in the way?"

Kim Cofino already recognizes this need when she writes:

One of my first tips for any teacher wishing to authentically embed technology into their classroom experience is always to start small. It’s easier to build on a simple, achievable idea, than it is to trim down an all-consuming tech monstrosity.

The automaticity with any tool is what helps us to use that tool to support our learning and to create. This is where procedural knowledge comes in. When what we need to learn involves following a specific set of steps in a process, we need to practice these steps to a level of automaticity then begin to apply the use of those skills to new situations. If we begin with "simple, achievable ideas" first, we can provide the scaffolding of procedural knowledge that will help our students become better users of technology in support of 21st century learning.

Flickr photo by Chrysaora

No News Makes a Difference

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:13:00 +0000

On the way into Panera for breakfast this morning, my husband commented that he'd been listening to something on the radio where they were talking about whether or not we would soon see the end of newspapers all together. Since he's retired, his morning routine begins with coffee and breakfast at Panera along with the morning newspaper. He jokingly said, "What am I going to do when I come for breakfast if there's no newspaper?"

In the last few months, that newspaper that we enjoy together over a leisurely breakfast on the weekends has changed. The number of pages is fewer, the focus of what's printed has changed and frankly, what we pay for it isn't worth the read anymore.

So, in response to my husband's question, I said that maybe places like Panera will have to build devices into some of their tables so that we can get whatever news we want digitally. I can just imagine not having to drag my laptop there but rather being able to just pop up some sort of screen that automatically connects me to the web so I can access the news in any way I'd like. What do you think? Is someone out there already thinking about this?

Create a New Story

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:14:00 +0000

This video on Teachertube is a really cute way of conveying a message using the format of a familiar story by Laura Numeroff, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." Enjoy!

A technology specialist took this one step further and made it a project done with first graders narrating. Nicely done!

In the Trenches...

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:21:00 +0000

Holy cow! It's been about a month since I've been here to update my blog. I never have set goals for keeping up the writing and sometimes the thoughts don't come when so many and varied things are going on. So...let's see if I can catch up a bit here with the events of life in the fast lane in just the last month!

Technology Site Visit
Each year, the National School Boards Association sponsor site visits to school district to "showcase innovative technology implementation." We attended a visit in Batavia that was really interesting. We saw the use of interactive whiteboards, document cameras, tablet PC's and we got to hear from district staff about how they've funded, planned for and implemented the use of technology in their classrooms. These were two well spent days. The NSBA did a fine job of organizing the visit and the staff in Batavia were very welcoming to those visiting from New York state, Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere. Oh yeah...and their music groups entertained us all along the way. Batavia can be very proud of their music programs as well.

Curriculum
Five years ago we began a curriculum process in which we created documents that would guide the teaching, assessment and learning in our classrooms. We've begun to take a look back at Social Studies to review the alignment between the documents and our state curriculum. We've found that we're doing well in that area but we need to provide some additional resources for some of the topics. I've had an active role in this process and it gives me a chance to get a better idea of exactly how Social Studies is being addressed by our teachers and to make some recommendations for technology resources.

Collaborative Projects
For the past three years, we've been involved with the PALS project through our regional school library system. PALS is all about the librarian and the collaborative relationships that can exist with the classroom teacher when we all have access to the data that informs instruction and learning. As an instructional technology specialist, it's a lot of fun to help plan this work with our great library media specialists and classroom teachers. But the best part is the problem solving we're doing together as we work through the collaborative process and the implementation of the technology tools that support all of the projects that are being designed. Our work with collaborative projects continues to grow and expand each year.

Literacy
This year, each grade level has had the opportunity to meet together twice to discuss small group instruction and the use of literacy work stations. As the basis for this, they've talked about the Daily Five (the excellent work of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) as well as the work of Debbie Diller.

We have an excellent group of teachers who are known as ELA team leaders. They have been charged with helping to facilitate these groups and have done a really spectacular job with it. We have a Blackboard site for Curriculum and Instruction which we're using to support English Language Arts through the sharing of lesson activities and resources. Since I help to maintain that site, I stay involved in this initiative. Again, a great way to stay in touch with teacher needs and a great way to bring the use of technology into the discussions.

Teacher Training
This year, the decision was made to switch our elementary computers from Mac to PC. It's difficult to see this happen for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we've supported the use of Macs in the district for more than 20 years. Nevertheless, some of our teachers need to learn how to use Word and understand the navigation of a networked PC. In addition, we have computer lab assistants who are learning to use new software tools such as Scholastic Keys. We'll also be working with Google Picasa and PhotoStory 3. These are the kinds of issues occupying a lot of my time not to mention planning for the removal, discard or reallocation of all those computers as we make this switch in stages.

Smartboards
For the past three years, we've slowly been installing Smartboards in our secondary buildings - grades 6-12. This year, for the first time, we're beginning to install them in our elementary buildings as well. Unfortunately, they've just come in - too late in the school year to make arrangements for full training on the use of the boards and the software. So, late this summer, we'll be preparing these teachers to make use of the Smartboard in their instruction to begin the next school year.

Data Analysis
OK...I'm a data geek. We have some cool resources for data in my district and I've been taking all the facts and figures and putting them together for building administrators. I really do like that part of my job but it's really labor and time intensive. And...wouldn't you know it? The data isn't usually available until right about now. First of all, it doesn't come in a timely fashion that allows us to use the data to have an impact on this year's learning. The best we can do is to look at the results, let the next year's teachers for those students see how they did and try to find some patterns in performance that help us to know what kinds of skills in general are in need of remediation.

So, I think that's about it. How about you? Is the end of your school year as busy as the rest of the year or does everything seem to happen at the end? Cheers!

Ahh....Springtime!

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Spring break...we look forward to it every year as a time to open the windows and let nature remove the stale winter air from the house replacing it with the fresh, clean air of springtime. While many of my colleagues take this time to travel to southern climates (which are not always all that warm at this time of year), we usually prefer to spend this time at home doing the things that we can't always get to when we're working.

Here are some reasons that I'm really enjoying this particular Spring Break.

1. A change from the work routine.
The work routine and time schedule is well established in our household. With the kids gone, we're thoroughly entrenched in our morning routine - out the door before 7:00 am; me to travel for 25 minutes and my husband to enjoy his coffee, doughnuts, morning paper and chats with friends before going to his school. We're into our work for the entire day then back home again - me to go exercise at a local establishment, my husband to work a little extra beyond the usual day and then we're both home to enjoy dinner and relax for the evening.

But this vacation, my routine has been to start the day with exercise then come home and do a little work at the computer - reading blogs, thinking about the tasks to be accomplished before the end of the school year and doing some writing. I could easily adopt this routine forever!

2. Time to read and actually process the information I'm getting.
I do a lot of reading both in and out of my job. The reading outside my job is mostly related to reading blogs, checking in on what those folks are connecting their readers to and sometimes, tackling a pile of books that I seem to find interesting enough to purchase but hard to read on a continuous basis. It's been very rare lately that I start a book and then read it all the way to the end. I guess I find that I read about half of a book and get the gist of what the author's thesis is then move on to something else. After all, it's going to be sitting on the shelf waiting for me if I ever have the need to go back to it.

But, what happens, no matter what I'm reading during the school year, is that I feel this rush to move on to something else. I log in to my Bloglines account, click on the latest updates, save some for "future" review, sometimes make a comment but, mostly I just skim through for new information that applies to my own work. Under those conditions, there's not really a lot of time to process what I'm reading - to think about it more deeply, respond more clearly, make clear connections to my previous learning.

So, on this vacation, when I come home from the exercise, I get my breakfast ready, fix a nice cup of tea and go to my computer for my reading and thinking time. I can spend all morning here if I want or I can spend a little time now and a little time later. I'm already feeling lots of cobwebs being swept from my brain as I replace them with the freshness of new ideas.

3. Make new connections for creativity and innovation.
I'm reading a book right now that I've vowed to read from cover to cover. It's called Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration by Keith Sawyer. I've kept a notebook at my side while reading this book.

A couple of quotes I've written down from this reading:
"The engine that drives collaboration is conversation." When make connection between this and my own learning, I think about the blog reading that I do on a daily basis. Whether we all know it or not, we're engaged in collaboration all the time with the end goal being to improve our schools and our students' learning. Blogs provide the conversation [no matter how many comments you're getting]. It's a conversation unlike the face to face discussions that we engage in with our work colleagues. This conversation is free for you to engage in or not - but the engagement in the conversation is where the learning really occurs. Comment on a blog, read what other people's reaction are. Frequently, I've written a comment on a blog then wished I'd stated my position a little more clearly or I've read someone else's point of view and a different side of the issue becomes more apparent than before. All of these interactions, whether we know it or not, contribute to our thinking in some way that may not become apparent for a while and, even when they do resurface, we may have no idea where the connection came from originally.

"Today's pervasive and high-bandwidth communication and social networks give us the potential to be far more creative than human beings have been at any time in history." Both the synchronous and asynchronous contributions that we all make to the "conversation" have an impact on someone else, somewhere whether we know it or not. The tools we have on this day in 2008 are the most powerful we've ever had for communicating with other. It's that ability to communicate our ideas to a wider audience that inspires creative thoughts and new ideas.

The book begins with an explanation about the inner workings of improvisation and groups that perform improvisationally. We've been to see some performances ourselves and are constantly amazed at how these people manage to create something from a single word, song title, or small suggestion. One of the things that Keith Sawyer points out is that these performers frequently use "yes, and..." as they work through the improvisation. "Yes, and..." keeps the performance following and keep conversations evolving. Makes me think about those meetings where someone inevitably begins a sentence with "yes, but..." - stops the conversation from evolving and the creativity from flowing every time doesn't it?

4. Read books that have been stacked up and waiting for a very long time.
My book buying decisions are usually made in at least two ways - by wandering around certain sections of my favorite bookstore or on the recommendations of others. I came across Group Genius via the wandering method. Using this method, I also located The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr as well as Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner. Both of these books are loudly calling out to me, just the titles alone made me buy them and make me want to delve into them - but that would mean I'd have to break my "read it cover to cover" vow. For now, they'll have to wait though because I have to find out how Group Genius ends first.

Image: The Purple Invasion of Spring http://www.flickr.com/photos/bogenfreund/428005735/

Reading Books Online

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:57:00 +0000

A while ago I posted about a site online where you could read children's book before you buy them. Thanks to an anonymous comment to that posting, I've been exploring another site that allows you to read books online - both fiction and non-fiction. As I peruse the site this morning, I notice that there are some great non-fiction books that would support topics that teachers are addressing in content areas so I'll be recommending this to them.

Best Children's Picture Books Online - BigUniverse.com

Excellent resource for fiction and non-fiction books that can be read online. Users may also create their own books or purchase using this site.
tags: literacy

In addition to reading books, you can also easily create your own books. Read the Terms of Use carefully if you sign up for an account and intend to create a book.

Who Made You Think Today?

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:40:00 +0000

It's become my nightly ritual to open my laptop, log in to my Bloglines account and read through the new postings for the day. Sometimes, I even sneak a look during a few minutes break at work. And, I believe I'm addicted because it sure is hard not to see what's going on every day.

It's not just that I want to see if anything at all new is posted. It's that I'm looking for new thinking all the time, new ways of looking at the issues that I deal with, new ways of approaching common themes that come up about technology and instruction. Sometimes, I store what I find in my brain's memory, sometimes I use my Diigo account to bookmark what I've found with a note to help me remember my thinking later. Other times, I comment on a blog or I send a link to that blog posting on to someone else who I know will enjoy the reading.

So...who made me think today? Well, it started with Miguel Guhlin who wrote in reaction to Ryan Bretag's article on the Techlearning blog. Here's what I'm thinking...

Yes! I can raise my hand. I spend time every day trying to enhance my professional practice, trying to learn something new. Does this take place in "a collaborative context with other professionals?" If you count reading the blog, commenting, or posting my own reaction on my blog then...yes! I can raise my other hand. But, I wish I were raising that other hand because those "other professionals" were the colleagues with whom I work each day. This is not always the case and it's where I struggle each day on the job.

Maybe instead of holding on to what I've learned or passing on those links to only a few people, I should instead borrow a little wisdom from Ryan's action items. So, here's what that might look like:

1. Dedicate a portion of each day to send out messages to teachers about what's going on in the web 2.0 world. Providing little tidbits of what's out there and what I've learned from my own involvement in my personal learning network might inspire more of my colleagues to ask questions and begin to raise their awareness of the possibilities that exist.

2. Encourage others to establish a professional learning network. By following step #1, this is possible. By helping teachers to connect to the best resources this is possible.

3. Establish and maintain a virtual professional learning space that fosters shared knowledge and resources. Just creating another blog space to feature what others are writing about or to point to good examples of what teachers are doing with web 2.0 tools could help to establish that space in the professional learning practices of others. Last week, I spent some time with a small group of teachers who learned a little bit about Diigo, Google Docs, and wikis. That was just a quick introduction. The professional learning space can be the follow up to that conversation and many others.

4. Make professional reflection and scholarly work a priority and make it public. We already have some instances of teachers using wikis (mostly in collaboration with their library media specialists) and we have some teachers who have started blogs with their students. Through our professional learning space teachers could engage in conversations about the use of these tools for instruction.

5. Model professional learning for colleagues. There are about 125 teachers with whom I can share what I've been exploring and learning about. Time to get busy and open the doors to a learning network!

Thanks to Miguel for pointing to Ryan's article and thanks to Ryan for making some very bold statements that we should all take to heart.

The more it's used, the more it grows

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:37:00 +0000

"More than any other commodity, information is everywhere. Not only can almost anyone access almost anything at almost no cost, but, unlike corn and wheat, information doesn’t have to be consumed to be used. Quite the opposite: The more it’s used, the more it grows."

Think Better by Tim Hurson ©2008

Using Technology in Teaching is an Act of Declarative Knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:21:00 +0000

Over the past few years, we've been learning a lot in my district about procedural and declarative knowledge. Do a Google search for these terms and you'll find more information about them. Basically, procedural knowledge is a set of steps in a process. We learn the steps, we practice the steps, we apply them in new situations. In terms of technology training, my main role in my district, I've recognized for a long time that this is how we learn to use computers. We learn where to click and when to make certain things happen. And, once we know the steps about where to click to make certain things happen, we can apply that to other technology tools. But, I've also recognized that, to follow steps and to act as if the procedural knowledge is all we need, pretty much defeats the purpose of using technology as a learning tool.

Declarative knowledge, on the other hand, is facts, generalizations and principles. We need to process declarative knowledge. That's what I'm doing right now. I've been reading through several blog posts this afternoon and now, by writing this post, I'm processing the information that I've read. So, as we process declarative knowledge, we can do that in a number of ways. As mentioned, we can write about it. Blogs and other online tools that allow others to create conversations around what we're thinking about our learning are important in declarative knowledge. So, we gather the information, we process the information in a variety of ways and then we construct a new idea - think Bloom's taxonomy.

This is, I think, where professional development for technology needs to reside. We've spent lots of time and effort in teaching the steps. Now, we need to teach the concept of technology in the teaching and learning process. If educators have the declarative knowledge, the means to process that knowledge and apply a thinking skill so that they can begin to construct new ideas about the use of technology, then I think we will have moved forward in a positive direction.

This blog posting was influenced by several things that I've read this afternoon, some of which are linked below. While you, the reader, may not see all the connections that I've found that's all right. The connections come not only from the reading, but from the background knowledge that I already have in regards to this concept. This is declarative knowledge in action.

Developmentally appropriate technology integration PD - Wes Fryer
Internalization vs. Utilization - Scott Weidig
"If the news is important, it will find me." - Mathew Ingram

It's Because I Read...

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:41:00 +0000

This morning before I went to work I logged into my Bloglines account for a quick check. The first blog posting I read was from Brian Crosby. Today, he was writing about a project that he'll be doing with his 5th graders in collaboration with Lisa Parisi. As I read through the post, I was struck by the number of technology tools that will be employed in the course of this project and how well they fit together to support the intended learning. The project will allow students to collaborate to write original stories based on the illustrations in the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. Not being familiar with the book, I went right to one of my super-duper librarians this morning to borrow it.

As soon as I read that post, the contents of a workshop that I'll do tomorrow suddenly crystallized. This workshop will be with a group of teachers that I've been working all year. They wanted to take another look at some of the web based tools that I've been talking about all this year. But I've been struggling with how to present these in some sort of meaningful context. That is, until I read Brian's blog this morning. And, it's because I read that this kind of thing often happens to me.

Tomorrow, we'll start by going to Diigo where I've already set up an account and bookmarked Brian's post. This will get us quickly to that post which I'll have the teachers read. [We'll talk about connections that this project might have to our own curriculum. I'd like them to also take a look at the NETS for students - this will expose them to a document that many of them might not have known about otherwise.] Now that we've gotten to the blog, we can learn how to annotate it using the Diigo toolbar.

Next up is Google docs. Brian and Lisa are going to use this tool as a way for their students to write collaboratively. We'll use it to respond to some questions that I've set up that are related to each of the tools we'll work with.

Then it's on to the concept of the wiki. By way of introducing this concept, I have Wikis in Plain English ready to show. Then we can go to Lisa's wiki page which will serve as one example. There are other samples that I've been collecting as well for us to explore. This will give us some food for thought about how wikis can be used effectively in instruction. We'll return to Google docs to record our impressions.

By exploring these tools within the context of this project, I hope that the teachers will be able to see the connections among these tools, and the value they add to learning. I also hope this will provoke some additional conversations about exploring the use of these tools further.

It's because I read that I learn from others and that I'm inspired by others. I can't imagine how I could do my job without access to the ideas and experiences of talented educators around the world. Thanks to all of you!

Collaborate or Perish

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:25:00 +0000

After having read Miguel Guhlin's account of the student who is being charged with academic misconduct, then another article online, as well as a lengthy IM conversation with my daughter this assignment occurs to me:

Students: here is [the assignment] for your homework and it's due by Friday. Here are the expectations...
1. You must arrive at a well thought out conclusion - all answers, if well documented, will be accepted.
2. You must work in collaboration with at least 5 other members of the class. Two of those must be someone you don't regularly work with. Real learning is a social process. So...get out there and learn from and with each other.
3. Record your reflections on the collaboration and the tools you used as well as how you arrive at your conclusion.
4. All of these are required in order for the assignment to be accepted. Good luck!

Winter Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:07:00 +0000

The snow has been falling since before we got up this morning at about 6:00am. My husband's school is closed, but mine, only 20 miles away is open. Not a flake in the air, I've heard, and the sun is shining but it's cold and windy. I chose to play it safe and glad I did. At noon today, the local weather report was that we had gotten 38" of snow. It's now about 3 hours later and I'll bet there's at least 6 more inches on the ground.

I've been working steadily since I got up this morning catching up on my own personal professional development in lots of ways: I've checked Twitter a couple of times, read through the feeds in my Bloglines account, checked the Google news, local news and weather reports and answered any email in my school account.

My newest learning for today is using Picasa for Windows. I've had it downloaded for a while but haven't had a chance to really use it. So, I've been taking pictures of the snow events outside our windows and using those to go through the features of the software. One really nice thing is that Picasa has a button labeled "Blog This!" I selected the picture you see above (not a great one, taken from our living room window), clicked on Blog This and it prompted me to sign in to my Blogger account then upload my photo then begin this post. There are also some other nice features - I can email a selected picture, print in a number of formats, create a collage or run a slideshow from a folder of pictures. Many of these features are also found in iPhoto but I'm trying to learn Picasa since my district is switching from Macs to PCs next year (long story) so I'll need to help teachers learn how to use Picasa instead.

What new learning did you experience today?

Defining 5 W's for Technology Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Jeff Utecht, in his blog post today talks about "Just in Time Learning." Realizing that there are only so many hours in a day, you just can't know all the tools, even if your role is to provide leadership to teachers in the use of technology. We frequently resort to learning something only as the need arises.

But Jeff brings up a good point: not only do we need to know how to use the tools but we need to know why as well - that's the most important point when it comes to working with teachers and supporting student learning. This point is also made in an article from the Techlearning blog by Ryan Bretag.

As I thought about Jeff's point and read through the article on the Techlearning blog, it just felt to me like there needed to be a little more clear definition put on those "W's", especially when working with teachers who are unaware of the many tools available. It also occurred to me that this might be a great topic for some upcoming professional development opportunities in my district.

So...if we go with the old standard 5 W's (+1) and relate them to using technology to empower learning, here are the questions that I've been brainstorming this morning. By no means perfect, but a start at least - they really all go hand in hand.

Who? Who should know about and use this tool? Who will benefit the most from the use of this tool? Students, other students, teachers, other teachers, the global audience?

What? What is the functionality of this tool? What thinking/process skills does it support?
(communication, collaboration, creativity, research/information fluency, critical thinking)

Where? Where in the curriculum does the use of this tool make the most sense and provide the most support for learning? (state, district, ISTE, AASL, etc.)

When? When would I choose to use this tool instead of something else (including paper and pencil)?

Why? Why should teachers be using this tool in our instruction? Why should students use this tools for their learning?

How? How will my pedagogy support the effective use of this tool? How will my pedagogy need to change in order to use this tool effectively?

Those are my thoughts...how about you?

Focusing on Connections

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:33:00 +0000

This morning, after enjoying a few moments with the Sunday paper, I started doing a little cleaning out of my home office space and came upon a piece of paper from probably last year some time. I had drawn a web called Social Software and as I looked it over, trying to recall my thinking at the time, it occurred to me that this might be useful for some work I'm doing right now so I recreated it in Inspiration. After that, I set it aside on my desk, opened up my computer and signed in to Twitter, my email, iChat and Skype. As I read through Twitter I noticed that David Warlick had posted a new article to his blog - "Is Pedagogy Getting in the Way of Learning?". Catchy title...not sure what my focus is for today...love to see what others are thinking early in the morning...why not?...let's go see what's up with David this morning.

As I read through this blog article and the comments, a few things started brewing. First of all, those involved in these "social technologies" such as Twitter, Skype, UStream and whatever else, are strong advocates for their use. After all, they connect us with others, they help us make connections between our knowledge and the knowledge of others, they connect us in ways that are new and exciting and weren't in existence when most of us were in school. These technologies really reflect a lot of what you might read about in books by Eric Jensen about the brain and learning. So, therein, lies my connection between David's post and the piece of paper I found while cleaning. This web that I drew was my attempt to begin understanding how the social technologies intersect with what we know about the learning process. As advocates of social technologies, how many are considering the way that learning takes place and how many are considering that kids, even though they take to these tools easily, really deeply understand the learning aspect of the tools? Are we as educators, being explicit enough about the learning when we advocate for or use these tools with students?

I'm finding, even at the elementary level, that these technologies [and the learning skills they support] need to be taught and the best ways to teach them will only come as a result of good pedagogical practices of teachers. I'm not so sure that technology is the platform as David suggests. We may be thinking about technology in a very limited scope here. When you mention technology to any teacher, I'm sure that the picture in their brains is a computer but computers are not the only technology we possess for helping our students to learn.

The definition that I'm working with right now is this: technology is an innovation that brings about a desired change. [Of course, as educators, that desired change is an improvement in student learning.] With that definition in mind then, pedagogical practices are a technology as are certain instructional strategies, cooperative learning structures, Bloom's taxonomy, habits of mind and many others. As a teacher whose title is "instructional technology specialist", this definition suits me right now. It allows me to approach my role in a different way. Instead of being the one who can figure how ways to use a computer in a lesson, it puts me in a position of being able to work with ALL of the technologies of instruction, seeking to find connections between and among them and helping teachers to understand where the use of a certain computer technology intersects with a particular pedagogical technology to improve student learning.

And...by the way, here's the web that I found and recreated in Inspiration. Now that these connections born from Twitter and the blogosphere have me a little better focused for the morning, I guess I'd better get to work!

Read It Before You Buy It

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:55:00 +0000

Here's something new that came to me today. A website that features picture books that you can read online. This site, LookyBook, is trying to give books a chance to be read that might not otherwise come to consumer's attention - there are also some books here that have been in publication for a long time such as "Corduroy." It's a great concept. With a free account, you can read books, create your own "bookshelf", and comment on the books you've enjoyed. And, if you'd like to promote or share a particular book, you can grab an embed code to feature it on your website or blog as I've done below. If you're an author who would like to have your work placed on this site, you can do that as well.

Right now, children under 13 cannot register at this site but they're releasing a LookyKids version sometime in the future.

This is well worth taking a look at!

No Such Thing as a Technology Activity

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:37:00 +0000

Using Statcounter to track visits to this blog is interesting. I can see where people are from and, if they're doing a search using particular keywords I can see that, too. I've written previously about that feature.

Today, in looking at my Statcounter account, I notice a search for "easy technology activities students can do." My blog is #5 on the list of search results. However, Google isn't taking this searcher directly to the link related to "activities." Instead, it points to my main blog page.

Here's the previous blog post that I wrote about the use of activities versus learning experiences. "Activities" per se don't do a couple of things:
1. They don't accomplish specific learning goals. Any "learning" not connected to a specific goal means that our students don't have much to connect to and to return to in the future.
2. They don't promote thinking. Thinking = Learning When our students have to apply particular thinking skills to content, there is more of a chance that they will retain that information for future use.

"Easy" only gives the teacher the opportunity to say that his/her students are using computers and releases that teacher from connecting the use of technology to thinking and therefore, learning. "Easy" only keeps a student "busy" in front of a machine as a management tool. If we really want to tap in to the power of technology for learning, we need to give our students learning experiences which require them to actually think their way through the information using whatever tool is most appropriate for the task.

Seizing New Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:33:00 +0000

The Literacy Workshop began this morning as all the other meetings had. An explanation about the intent, an invitation to share and discuss. They began by talking about struggles with literacy instruction – a time to vent, a time to express frustrations and, everyone who needed to say something had their chance. Then came the prompt to think about what successes were being experienced in instruction – now we’re getting somewhere. First, one idea is shared which inspires a connection or comment from someone else, then a new idea is brought up and more connections and comments are there as well. And so on, and so on. Good, inspiring, thoughtful conversations.

The wrap-up: comments all around about the morning’s collaboration, thoughts about the need to get together as a group more often to continue the conversation, someone jokes about having a “group hug.”

Sounds like all the elements of a learning network doesn’t it? Those of us who engage in blogging, sharing Google docs, creating groups in Google, Yahoo or Ning or gathering instant input from Twitter, experience this type of camaraderie, this conversation and professional development on a daily basis. This face to face encounter among these teachers is only the beginning of what it could be. They want more meetings like this but what they haven’t yet realized is that, they need only 5-10 minutes a day using the right technology tools to help them continue these important conversations, to develop their notions of best practices in literacy instruction, share their ideas, gather input from others who are dealing with the same challenges.

They’ve made some positive steps forward today. So, on Monday…comes a new chance, a new opportunity to help them understand new ways of continuing the conversation.

Personal Learning Networks as Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:24:00 +0000

There certainly are a wide array of tools out there that help us to communicate and collaborate with others. And there are certainly lots of educators out there looking to communicate and collaborate with each other via those tools. How many new tools have you discovered over the last year, month, week? How many of those tools have you integrated into your personal practice? How many blogs do you read? How many of the ideas from those blogs have you integrated into your own thinking?

The tools and the people that we connect with because of those tools become a part of our personal learning network. They all interact together in some way - and I suppose that makes them a system. So, to continue this line of thinking tonight, I'm referencing back to Classroom Instruction That Works. I'm looking at the thinking skills in Chapter 9 about generating and testing hypotheses - specifically the section about systems analysis. So, in doing a systems analysis, we need to understand the purpose of the system, the parts of the system and the function of each part. We also need to figure out how each part affects others.

Starting with this then: the purpose of the personal learning network (our system) is to support our own personal professional development and our continued learning. The system consists of a number of parts: people first of all and the thought and ideas that they generate as a result of all of their experiences, tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, multimedia, and communication tools. How does each part affect the others? As we share our thoughts and ideas via the tools, we continually examine points of view and either reject them or integrate them into our continued thinking or personal and professional practice. As we work with new tools we also either reject them or integrate them into our practices. For example, some of us look at Twitter and immediately integrate it while others reject it as not being of value to their own learning network.

Now, we take a part of that system and think (hypothesize) about how a change to that part might affect the rest of the system. Right now, this system consists of some trusted "authorities" that have been evaluated based on my personal learning needs. If any of my trusted sources are missing, I might hypothesize that the depth of my learning could be greatly affected both negatively and positively I suppose - I would either miss that point of view or be ready to move on to new ideas. This system also consists of tools. Many edubloggers have already been analyzing the changes to their learning networks with the addition of Twitter while others have been examining the affects of using other tools such as UStream.tv. So we hypothesize how each tool that we encounter might affect the rest of our already existing system.

Considering a personal learning network as a system puts a different light on it for me. But it also makes me consider how this concept is presented to others who don't yet have this "system" in their own professional practice. We can present our audiences with lots of information about how great it is to have a learning network and how powerful the tools are that help us to develop and maintain that network. However, our biggest challenge is to provide professional development opportunities that immerse our audiences in the information that they need then help them to think their way out - make comparisons among the many different types of tools, construct arguments about the value of one tool over another tool. Without the thinking, it's just information. Period. With the use of thinking skills, we can avoid the effects of "drive by training" and have a more positive affect on the learning of our educator audiences.

A Little Fun with Dylan

noreply@blogger.com (Diane Quirk) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:28:00 +0000

Just having a little fun trying to figure out if I can really synthesize some information into only a few words or a few characters. I wonder what kind of challenge this might create for students?