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"Surging Forward"
On my list of things to figure out how to incorporate into my classroom are QR Codes. Those tiny square bar codes are popping up everywhere, it seems. There are codes on the ketchup bottle in my fridge as well as on the pizza box that was delivered last week. As QR Codes become more ubiquitous, I become more and more convinced that I want to use them with students.
They are educators out there doing awesome things with them. The Daring Librarian, Gwynyth Jones, has them on her business card (one of which I scored at ISTE11…yay! You’re awesome, Gwynyth) and she also has been using them in her library to great success. (See her at-a-glance tutorial for QR Codes here and her amazing QR Code Scavenger hunt here.) I aspire to her level of greatness, so I asked her a couple of questions:
Why did you start using them in your library?
Cause they’re cool, easy to modify, instantly engaging, visually stimulating, utilizes mobile media, and did I mention they were cool?
How have students responded?
THEY love them! In my latest QR blog post one of my kids sent me an email with an attached QR code message about our school tech team! I think that proves they are into them!
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/info_grrl/6235313576/in/photostream/)New codes may come along like NFC tags (Google ditched QR codes in favour of NCF) which are more expensive to create than QR codes which are free – Google usually wins…..but I like my QR codes! They make great MOO cards!
Did I mention Gwynyth is awesome? If I wasn’t sold on them before, I’m sold now. I have dabbled a bit in the QR Code business in the past. My students made signs featuring QR Codes for the tables at our Poetry Cafe last year. I even have this sign outside my door:
I also have a code in my letterhead that I use for notes home to parents. I’m looking forward to finding new ways to engage students through the use of these codes. I’ll be chewing on it in the coming weeks, with some ideas hopefully ready to share with students (and blog readers) soon.
If you’re using QR Codes in an exciting way and you want to share with the masses, please leave a comment!
Surging Forward is our series dedicated to our educational goals. Surge forward with us by activating a free subscription to our blog today!
This is the sixth post in our series about our goals and ambitions for the coming year. We call it Surging Forward. Please click here to view the other posts in the series.
If I had to choose only one new thing to try this year, it would be to move to a more student-centered learning environment. I want to put my students in charge of their learning. I want them to be the directors, the facilitators, the managers. And I want to be there to guide them along the way.
In a standards-based world, a world where it’s hard to see the forest for the test scores, this can be hard to accomplish. There are certain things that I have to teach. There’s no getting around it. All I know is that it makes it challenging to put the kids in charge of their learning. Telling your students, “You can learn about whatever you want, as long as it’s X,Y, or Z,” might not exactly get a rise out of them.
So there’s the rub…how to pull this off in the world in which we live and teach? I have to tell you, I don’t know the answer, but I’m thinking I really need to figure it out. I owe it to my students to give them a voice, to put them in the forefront, to put them in charge, and to let them “own the learning.” (a borrowed phrase…apologies to the person who coined it) If they’re in charge of it, I think it will become more meaningful to them. And if it’s more meaningful to them, I think it will be more beneficial, as well.
So here’s how I’m approaching my move toward student-directed learning…if I can’t let them completely choose WHAT they have to learn, then at least I can let them choose HOW they learn it. And, maybe more importantly, how they prove to me that they’ve learned it.
I’m going to baby-step my way to this. One thing my fifth grade reading students have to learn about is different types of non-fiction texts (almanacs, atlases, etc.). So instead of just stand up in front of the class and talk about them, I’ve asked them to do the following:
- Choose five of the different types from a list of 12
- Learn about what they are, what they’re used for, and anything else you think is important
- Create something that shows me you learned about those 5 things (glog, podcast, video, wiki page, etc.)
Nothing too complicated. But I think it’s working. They’ve got another class period or so to finish it up, but I’ve noticed that they’re pretty engaged. And they’re not asking me for help or direction. They’re just working. On their own. In the way that works best for them. If I can expand this to some more meaningful content, it could be some really powerful stuff.
Right now, though, I’m still learning and researching. And I’ll keep trying the best I can. I’m sure I’ll make some mistakes along the way. But I’m even more sure that it will be great for kids.
If you have any tips or experiences to share, please leave a comment. If you’re interested in following along on this journey, please consider subscribing.
Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13661433@N00/97033289
Surging Forward is our series featuring a look ahead to the 2011-12 school year. As we “surge forward” into the new year, we are documenting our goals and ambitions. View our previous Surging Forward posts by clicking here.
Collaboration. It won’t show up on any standardized test. But can there possibly be any argument against its importance? To ensure our students’ success in the 21st century, we strongly believe educators must do all they can to help them develop effective collaboration skills. If students can collaborate successfully then at the very least they are prepared for college…but I’m not reaching when I say that students who can skillfully collaborate may have unlimitied potential.
So as I “surge forward” into the new school year, collaboration skills are front and center on my list of skills to teach. How do you teach collaboration? I’m not exactly sure, to be honest. But I’m willing to give it a go. It’s going to start with modeling and laying out clear expectations ahead of time. I am a firm believer that if you want students to successfully complete a task or master a skill, you have to teach them. (Revolutionary, right?) I think a lot of times we put students into groups and expect them to know how to master the complex frontier that is cooperation. What do you do when your group doesn’t agree? What do you do when someone’s absent? What do you do when someone isn’t pulling their weight? These are all important (and authentic) questions that even adults in collaborative groups struggle with. I’m no longer going to expect my 10-11 year old students to figure these things out on their own. I’m going to teach them. (Revolutionary, I know.) We’ll establish norms and protocols and carry these forward into meaningful collaborative projects.
The first month of school, I plan to engage them in activities which I will collectively dub “Collaboration Boot Camp.” This will be our intense study of how to best work together. I want to set the stage for meaningful (and amazing) collaborative efforts throughout the year. And even though I’m not exactly sure how this will work out, or how to pull it off, I’m going to wing it a little and see where it goes. Even if it’s not a rousing success, we’ll at least be talking about how to best work together…which is more than we were doing before.
I’ll do my best to keep you updated on how it goes. I have a feeling I’m not the only teacher out there who feels collaboration is important. I’m also extremely interested in hearing your own stories…how have you encouraged collaboration in your classroom? What collaboration success stories do you have to share? Please send them to us via tweet or comment.
Photo by mnadi: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22965089@N00/32325828
This is the fourth installment our Surging Forward series, which is dedicated to highlighting some of our educational goals for the upcoming school year. You can read the other posts in the series by clicking here.
As a teacher, there are three things in my own digital toolkit that I absolutely cannot function without: my Google Reader, my social bookmarks on Diigo, and twitter. I have become so hooked on these three that as I “surge forward” into the 2011-12 school year, one of my goals is to teach as many people as possible about the value of each one and how to use them to upgrade their teaching.
However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned when it comes to teaching teachers it’s that you have to do everything in your power not to overwhelm them. So I’m going to choose just one of the three to promote every chance I get: twitter.
Why twitter? Because by using it just a few minutes a day, you can immerse yourself in amazing ideas and helpful resources. Once you get everything set up and have built a solid list of people you’re following, you’ll be blown away at how valuable 10 minutes a day can be. Twitter allows you to become more than just a teacher. It transforms you into a teacher/learner.
There are certainly obstacles to convincing teachers to tweet. I’ve found most people are surprised to find that there is value in a service used by many to do nothing more than tell the world how little they are looking forward to dinner with the in-laws tonight. Twitter is also seen as a tool that’s useful only for monitoring the inner “thoughts” of celebrities. But just give me ten minutes, and I think I can convince you that there’s much more to it than that. And once you’re hooked, you find that, like me, you can’t live without it either.
So the challenge I’ve issued to myself for the 2011-12 school year is to get as many non-tweeting educators tweeting as possible. Being the numbers-obsessed geek that I am, I think I’ll even keep track of how many new tweet-ers I can personally take responsibility for. (This could call for a new blog widget, how exciting!) I’ve already gotten one, a friend and former colleague who teaches in the College of Education at a local university. And I’m working on another, the superintendent of our district. Can I get 50? 100? How many do you think you can get tweeting? Feel free to make use of this twitter guide we created that explains 10 things that every beginning tweeter should know…it even includes 50 people we consider “must-follows” for educators:
(If you are unable to view the embedded document, please click here.)
For those of you who prefer video tutorials, you can view our Twitter Basics video on YouTube. Keep us posted on your own personal “twitter count” (via twitter, naturally), and we’ll do the same. Good luck!
This is the third in a continuing series about our goals for the upcoming school year. Please check out the others by clicking here.
An overall goal for me this year is to be more of a change agent within my school and district. Others around me have picked up on some of the changes I’ve made to my teaching style: integrating technology, adopting a more student-directed approach, etc.–but the movement I believe needs to happen in education isn’t exactly spreading like wildfire. I’m beginning to realize that when it comes to change, just like when I’m teaching and I’m not getting the results I want, it’s my approach that needs to be modified.
So I’ll keep working at the grassroots level, helping teachers learn about digital tools that can help them become, as David Warlick says, “master learners.” But this year I also want to work from the top down. I want to help the administrators I work with see the value of tools such as twitter, blogs, and RSS and the importance of engaging 21st century learners in meaningful learning activities.
How can I do this? I’ll start by coaching them through the process of joining twitter, which is a tool I just can’t live without anymore. I’ll give them about 25 educators to follow, including passionate educators such as @coolcatteacher, @mcleod, and @InnovativeEdu, as well as forward thinking principals such as @l_hilt, @gcouros, and @bhsprincipal, among others. This, along with teaching them some twitter basics, will hopefully get them hoooked.
I also need to get them hooked on blogs, so they can see how indispensable an RSS reader can be. They absolutely must subscribe to blogs such as Connected Principals, The Thinking Stick, Dangerously Irrelevant and The Innovative Educator. And once they know how to use their reader correctly, they’ll be getting high quality content delivered straight to them every day.
Then, perhaps, they’ll see the value of being “connected.” And they will pass this down to their staffs. So, ideally, the movement will grow because I’ll be spreading the “gospel” of ed tech (and all it can do to help teachers grow) among teachers AND administrators.
Maybe there is no greater “surge” forward than getting education admins to buy in to the value of technology. If we can pull this off, it could be huge. Are you with us? Give it a try yourself and let us know how it goes! Let’s get this movement surging forward together!
This is the second post in the Surging Forward series, blog posts designed to highlight our goals for raising our teaching (and students’ learning) to the next level during the coming school year.
The benefits of tech integration are numerous. There are so many different things you can do, create, explore, and learn when you add technology into the classroom. But one thing teachers sometimes forget about technology is how fun it can be. Not only that, but I think teachers forget sometimes how much fun learning can be and how much learning can come from play, whether technology’s involved or not.
This realization hit me at the recent ISTE conference at my very first session. The topic was MIT’s free and amazing Scratch programming language. I watched as an 11 year old led the demonstration for about half of the hour-long session. He was energetic, well-spoken, and an all around terrific kid. The kind any teacher would want in their classroom. And it was clear he had learned Scratch–and all kinds of logic, programming, problem solving and critical thinking skills–by simply playing.
So, sitting there, I decided that my fifth graders (and the teachers that I train), will do a lot more playing this year. I’m officially adding “more play” to my 2011-2012 to-do list.
For my students, it can be things like Scratch or other similar technologies. Why stand in front of them and teach them all the time? Why not direct them to a website or technology tool and give them an opportunity to “play around” and figure it out? I think play doesn’t necessarily have to be tech-related, either. It can involve things such as logic and critical thinking puzzles or questions and problems with unknown solutions.
But what about the teachers I train? How does play factor in there? Well, I think they can benefit from play, as well. Instead of going through step by step the process of using Aviary or Garageband to make audio recordings, including highlighting every feature that I think is important, why not give them more hands on time to explore and play with these pretty awesome (and very fun) programs. There are countless ways I could incorporate more exploration, more hands-on time, more play into my training sessions. Because just because teachers are all grown up, it doesn’t mean they don’t like to learn…and to have fun.
So there you have it. One of the handful of ways I’ll be trying to modify the learning environment in my classroom this year. What are your thoughts on this? Please share them in the comments, especially if you’re able to tell us how you’re already incorporating play in the classroom.
I was not blogging the last time I went to the ISTE conference, last year in Denver. So after returning home I wasn’t feeling a pressing need to process and share all that I’d learned. I let it marinate, set some goals, and was excited and ready to start the new school year in August.
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I was not blogging the last time I went to the ISTE conference, last year in Denver. So after returning home I wasn’t feeling a pressing need to process and share all that I’d learned. I let it marinate, set some goals, and was excited and ready to start the new school year in August.
This year is a little different. My over-arching thought upon returning from ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia has been: “I’ve got to blog about this!” However, I’ve had some serious writer’s block and haven’t been able to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys in this case). My head has been swimming with so many thoughts and plans and ideas that I haven’t been able to draft anything that could be considered coherent. (Luckily my fellow Engaging Educator, Neil, put together two fabulous ISTE pieces that you can read here and here.) So instead of spending the past week blogging, I’ve been spending it trying to figure out why I haven’t been able to blog.
I think I’ve finally got it. Last year’s conference was all about me. Allow me to explain…last year I left Denver with a list of things that I wanted to try/implement in my own classroom. I wanted to use global collaborative projects, backchannels and more to create an exciting, engaging learning environment in my classroom. But my new tech-centric vision was limited to my own teaching.
This year, the scope is bigger. I left Philadelphia having attended sessions and met people that have shown me that my field of vision needs to expand. It’s time to start spreading the change and the philosophy I believe in outside my tiny room. It’s time to work to change my school, my district, my city, my country, my world. Whereas last year, my ISTE takeaway could be summed up as “Look at all the things I can do,” this year it can be summed up as “I’ve got to do more.” Last year was all about new ideas, resources and tools. This year, it’s about vision.
How’s this going to happen? I’m not quite sure yet. There are seemingly millions of post-ISTE thoughts buzzing around my head still waiting to be captured and processed. I’m starting this new blog series, Surging Forward, to share these thoughts as they become “available” to my conscious mind. In this series, I’ll be sharing my plans for 2011-12, plans that began to germinate at the ISTE conference.
If all of this sounds like a departure from the usual Engaging Educators fare–tools, resources, project, ideas, etc–fear not, faithful readers. You’ll still be seeing all that and more. I just want to make sure to take the time to focus on some bigger, philosophical issues as well. And, in doing so, inspire you to join us on our quest to make a difference in the world of education.
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Resolutions of an Engaging Educator
New Year’s Day has come and gone and posts are flying around the edublogosphere featuring resolutions and predictions for 2012. I may be a little late to the game, but I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own about what I’m hoping to accomplish in the coming year. I don’t know [...]
New Year’s Day has come and gone and posts are flying around the edublogosphere featuring resolutions and predictions for 2012. I may be a little late to the game, but I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own about what I’m hoping to accomplish in the coming year. I don’t know if “hopes” qualify as resolutions, but I think they’re in the same family. There are five areas I hope to make an impact in this year…
In My Classroom
My students are highly skilled when it comes to creation. I have helped them develop a toolkit for demonstrating evidence of their learning: podcasts, blogs, wikis, digital movies, and more. But this year, I need to help them go deeper. I want to find ways to boost their critical and analytical thinking skills. I want to do less “serving up” of information–providing it for them or directing them to it–and challenge them more to explore and discover on their own. I need more open-ended questions in my projects and activities. I will find a way to do this.
In My School and School District
I am lucky when it comes to where I work. It’s a small, progressive, urban charter district with small class sizes and administrators who will sit down and chat with me pretty much any time I want. They are also very motivated and passionate people who set the bar for teachers and students very high. But I need to find ways to show the leaders I work with how important it is to develop 21st century skills such as collaboration, curiosity, and critical thinking. I must continue to encourage them to connect with others and build their personal learning networks. I want to continue to be an evangelist of 21st century learning…sharing, helping, and inspiring these administrators in a way that will drive change. I will find a way to make this happen.
In Your Classroom
I want to make an impact in as many classrooms as possible, not just my own. Through our company and this blog, I want to continue to share ideas and spread knowledge so that you and others who read this and follow us on twitter and attend our conference presentations develop the skills necessary to change teaching and learning in your classroom, too. I think we’ve done a pretty awesome job of this so far, but I want to do more. If you’re reading this right now, please make sure you subscribe and follow and contact us for help, because I really think we have a lot to offer. I will be sure to work even harder to make this happen.
In Colleges of Education
I believe that helping teachers and administrators is incredibly important. But there’s an area of education that I want to build stronger relationships with–higher ed. I think improving teacher preparation and pre-service teaching programs is of the utmost importance. A vast majority of these programs are mired in the 20th century. I want to work to make connections with colleges and professors so that I can help and inspire them to prepare teachers for 21st century classrooms. I worry that many colleges of ed are missing the boat–teachers are graduating not knowing about RSS and twitter and Web 2.0. This needs to change. I believe I can make it happen.
In Our Cities
When I first entered teaching, I don’t think I considered myself very reform-minded. However, after teaching in an urban school for 7 years, I’ve realized there are schools in our nation’s urban areas that are in desperate need of help. These areas may be furthest behind when it comes to reform and providing engaging, meaningful, 21st century learning experiences for students (students who deserve everything that their suburban counterparts receive). Through projects such as Urban Ed Net and Urban Ed Chat, I want to continue my push toward connecting urban educators so we can unite to drive change. But I also want to forge ahead, making connections with like-minded folks worldwide who are as passionate as me about making a difference in urban education. I’ve met many, but there are so many more I haven’t and that I need to. I will do everything I can to make this happen and to see progress achieved.
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Thank you for taking the time to read my resolutions. When I started this post, I wasn’t really sure that I had any at all. Obviously, that’s not true. Now, like with any resolution at any time of the year, I need to plan and act. These things aren’t going to happen by themselves. I appreciate you joining me on this journey and I’d love to hear your thoughts and your resolutions in the comments.
It’s time to engage!
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