K12 Online Conference 2010

The K12 Online Conference 2010 is now in full swing.

Check out this amazing line up of presenters and their topics. No rush, no pressure for anyone. These presentations will be up and available to you whenever and whereever you will find the time.

All times are GMT. Direct links to presentations will be added as the presentations are published each day at 12:00 pm GMT. Presentations links will also be published to Twitter, Facebook and our conference video podcast channel and audio podcast channels.

Look at the schedule below. As presentations become available, the links will be added on the Conference’s Schedule page.

Web Literacy and Differentiated Teacher Blogs

According to Technorati, who published the 2009 State of the Blogosphere there are more than 133,000,000 blogs. In my Google Reader, I am subscribed to  and read over 500 blogs, on Twitter I receive hundreds of daily recommendations to read a this blog post or another. I am comfortable in reading and writing in a medium that I did not grow up with, nor I even have heard of 10 years ago.

But… we can’t assume…

In my recent blog post What Does It Mean To Be Literate, I wrote

We can’t just assume that every teacher is web “literate”. Before we start talking about how blogging can support 21st Century skills for their students, we need to step back and make sure that the teachers are literate (enough) to be able to read and write through this medium called a blog!

We cannot assume either…

…that parents are able to find and navigate a classroom site built on a blogging platform (reverse chronological order, categories, tags, etc) nor understand the pedagogical reasons behind blogging (beyond just using the latest buzzword of mainstream media). The lack of parent literacy in new media forms was what inspired me to write Dear Parents: Moving to a Classroom Blog.

Red Flag

As I was reading Will Richardson’s post “Reading Screens, Writing Screens, Teaching Screens” a red flag went up for me as he asks:

Are reading and writing changing in these linkable, screen centered environments? If so, does the way we think about reading and writing literacy have to change to embrace these shifts? If so, what are we doing about that?

Right now, I think the answer in most schools is “not much.” In fact, I’m not sure many even realize the extent to which this shift is occurring.

The sentence, I honed in on,  is the last one “I’m not sure many even realize the extent to which this shift is occurring“. I agree that many schools, teachers and parents are not realizing the gap that is widening in terms of reading and writing literacy. If a teacher is not aware of the shift occurring, nor is “literate in these new environments”, then how can we ask him/or to blog?

Can we “push” him/her into using a blog platform as a two way communication tool and global communication center and expect the platform to be more than simply replacing the papers in the “Friday Folder” or the static one way school website?

Richardson asks “What are we doing about this shift in reading and writing literacy”?

For the last weeks/months, I have been involved in addressing the BASICS of maneuvering a blog

• setting up classroom blogs, adding users, entering titles and taglines
• doing workshops for teachers on the Nuts & Bolts of logging in, posting and editing
• explaining the difference between posts and pages
• initiating some teachers in the world of widgets (and even a little HTML)

I am looking at my Langwitches Blog and its categories and am realizing that the “Blogging” category has the most postings (Over 100!). Part of these posts  is a “Blogging with your Students” unit to make it easier for classroom teachers to get started. Among them you will find post titles such as:

• Getting to Know Your Blog: A Beginner’s How-To-Guide
• Blogging -Connecting Your Class to The World
• Continue Blogging With Your Students
• Taking Student Blogging to the Next Level?
• Blogging Activities and Competitions
• Setting Up the Blog And Getting Started

I am also realizing that these posts are intended for teachers to get their students blogging. I have neglected to address the needs of the teachers to learn about

• Basic Vocabulary (addressed partly in What Does It Mean To Be Literate)
• A new writing genre
• Blogging Etiquette
• Online Safety
• Blogs as communication platform
• Blogs as information/material/resource hub for parents and students
• Blogs as global communication centers

What am I doing about bridging the gap of paper based reading and writing in our school towards the shift of digital, hyperlinked, connected and collaborative writing?

After having a thought provoking conversation about this topic this past week with the new Head of School, I am realizing that I need to take a step back, as a PD leader, and articulate a plan to guide teachers in their own journey. We need to differentiate Professional Development and individualize goals for steadily moving towards becoming literate in new forms of digital reading and writing and how this applies to instructional practice.

Image licensed under Creative Commons by Emilio Labrador

Image licensed under CC by Emilio Labrador

I can’t put the cart before the horse and throw teachers into blogging and expect them to use the “tool” beyond their own literacy.

Differentiated PD might have to “lower” the expectations (for some) of using a blog to its fullest instructional potential (right away). It is a process…The idea is that everyone is moving in the right direction.

Differentiated Teacher Blogging PD

• Using blogs might mean for one teacher to learn how to log in and update weekly homework assignments, upcoming class events, important information.
• It might mean to subscribe to and read, via an RSS Reader, other classroom blogs.
• Some teachers might be ready to extend the resources available in the classroom to pre-select links to outside curriculum related sites, activities and content.
• It might mean for another teacher to learn how to create and embed multimedia on the blog to include photo slideshows, VoiceThread, student created videos or podcasts.
• Yet another teacher might be ready to allow a two way communication to open on her blog, where teacher and students have a conversation and students are contributing to the academic content to their online classroom learning community.
• Maybe one teacher is ready to make their blog a global communication center that invites global voices to contribute multiple perspectives and encourages healthy discussion beyond the physical classroom walls.

I would like to hear your ideas and thoughts regarding Will’s questions:

What are we doing about this shift in reading and writing literacy”?

and what is your reaction to my statement “I can’t put the cart before the horse and throw teachers into blogging and expect them to use the “tool” beyond their own literacy.”

What are you already doing? Where do we start?

21st Century PD- Practice What you Preach

We are trying to teach our students 21st Century skills and  prepare them for a world with job descriptions “we can’t even imagine yet”. You have heard this over and over again.

How come we continue to support our teachers in their own learning (through Professional Development) with the same tools and skills than educators from the 60s, 70s , 80s or 90s? We can’t just throw up a PowerPoint presentation or a SmartBoard in front of the room and call that PD of the 21 Century.

How can we expect them to upgrade their teaching if we don’t allow them to experience their own learning through a 21st Century lens?

If we, like Sir Ken Robinson call for a Learning Revolution, then this MUST include a learning revolution for teachers as well.

The way teachers learn,  directly impacts the way they teach their students.

Practice what we preach

As Professional Development providers, we must practice with our students (in this case the teachers are our students) what we preach. We need to find ways to upgrade our presentations (see my Presentation21 Make-Over) and workshops and provide our “teachers” with:

• authentic ways to try out tools
• experience collaborative & connected learning
• reflect on their learning process and how it could relate to their teaching

In order to do just that, I was able to arrange an opportunity for our faculty to be part of a Skype call with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, author of “Curriculum21- Education for a Changing World (ASCD, 2010). The book was the assigned summer reading title at our school. Questions related to different chapters were posted over the summer on our School PD Ning for guidance and encourage discussion.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

During pre-planning week, teachers had a chance to discuss the book and its application in our school further. The following day we were thrilled to be able to have Heidi Hayes Jacobs “with us” virtually.

Introducing our School

Asking Questions

A few teachers had specific questions from the book or how the concept of Curriculum21, assessment and upgrade applied to our school or their subject area.

Collaboratively writing on Google Doc

In order to model the use of collaboration tool, we set up a shared Google Doc to collaborate with. Different teachers were assigned  to be the scribes in order to take notes for one of three columns:

1. Essential Education
2. Application for our school
3. Web resources and links

Editing Notes on Google Docs

The resulting word document with notes and resource links was now available for all the faculty to review in their own time.

Curriculum21- Skype with Heidi Hayes Jacobs

The following video clip (19 minutes) is a synopsis of our conversation.

Curriculum21- Professional Development with Heidi Hayes Jacobs from langwitches on Vimeo.

Being able to…

• bring in a subject area expert (virtually)
• model a communication tool such as Skype (including the hick-ups of a dropped call)
• collaboratively write notes
• document with images and video the connection
• share publicly the documentation to allow review and encourage reflection

… is modeling the kind of skills and learning  during Professional Development that we would like the teachers to take back to their classrooms and “translate” into their own teaching.

What are some examples you can share about practicing/modeling what you preach during Professional Development for your teachers?