Today we assembled as a faculty to kick-off the 2008-2009 academic year. This is an exciting day, especially for those of us who work most of the year, as old faculty return with tales of adventures from the previous ten weeks and we welcome in the new members of the teaching community at school.
Like many schools, we begin the year highlighting the themes and topics that we will address for the upcoming year. Last year, the school created a new strategic plan which outlined the areas of exploration for us for the upcoming year.
There are three areas of focus for us in the upcoming year. They are Diversity, Environmental Sustainability, and Service Learning. This is in addition to the technology agenda, of trying to create a cadre of teachers who will seed a professional learning community to talk and communicate about best practices, as we determine our future direction and whether we implement a 1:1 program.
What was interesting while listening to the various presentations from each of the leaders spearheading the initiatives was that our challenge is going to be how we progress in each of these areas, since we will be competing for attention and energy above and beyond the normal day-to-day classroom experiences. Many of the groups, including my technology vision, are going to ask teachers to meet, discuss, and develop priorities and action plans to further the initiative. It may be dangerous and we may be working at opposition to each other, which may cause neither of the initiatives to gain traction and momentum.
What is interesting is that the solutions, engaging students to take ownership, gathering buy-in from a diverse constituent base, develop curriculum that is more problem-based in nature, could be complimentary and brought together under a single umbrella.
Rather than being four different initiatives, we should try to consolidate our efforts into a single plan for 21st Century Learning. This way, we can combine efforts. There is no reason that they Environmental Sustainability project create service learning projects which utilize technology tools to create spaces for collaboration, communication, and allow for different groups to connect both synchronously and asynchronously to provide a wider group of diverse individuals to challenge and expand our assumptions, making the wisdom of the group greater than that of one part.
Instead of competing, we should consolidate efforts, so that each project can utilize the strengths of the complimentary other priorities while maintaining its unique identity.
That is our school’s challenge for the year, how to create a community and culture that is complimentary and builds cooperatively rather than compete against each other for the two most precious commodities for teachers, energy and attention.
This morning, I submitted my Google Teacher Academy application. The application process was fairly straight forward, with the exception of the need to create a one minute video on one of the following topics, either Motivation and Learning or Classroom Innovation.
This was the daunting part of the task, especially since I on August 11th, which coincided with the back to school rush. I had two weeks to figure out what my message should be, while at the same time I was having to create the variety of new accounts for each of the six virtual componenets of our North Shore community. What was the message I wanted to share and how could I make my presentation “sticky” enough to make others remember it, since the Academy is selecting only 50 individuals for this opportunity. There are a number of brilliant educators within a 90 minute commute of Chicago, so I know the competition will be stiff.
While riding my bike to work on Friday, I determined what my message should be. Influenced by our Middle School faculty summer reading of The World Is Flat, along the thoughts molded by the three most influencial books that I read this summer, Brain Rules, Here Comes Everybody, and Disrupting Class, I was able to shape a message which I am proud of, given two weeks to create the message.
Here is my message. I have my fingers crossed that the video and my application are worthy enough of an invitation to the Google Teachers Academy. Only time will tell.
It has been six weeks since I have posted my last reflective post. During those six weeks, I have attended NECC, the Laptop Institute at the Laussanne Collegiate School in Memphis, and a workshop given by Darren Kuropatwa at the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. At the end of these travels, I needed to back away from the immediacy of Twitter and time I need to create a post to spend both me time and family time.
I have been busy getting ready for the challenges of the upcoming school year. Over the next few weeks, it will become apparent what my two major projects, the ying and the yang, are for the upcoming year. After having the opportunity of meeting with our new faculty and spending more significant time with our new Middle School faculty, I am really excited about the possibilities for the upcoming year. Our new, younger teachers are coming into the school with skills and experiences that are deeper than in previous years. Many of them already have had experience with collaborative and visualization tools, blogs, Google Earth, and Google Sketchup. At my lunchtime conversations, the ideas are already beginning to flow fast and furiously. I know that I will have to be nimble to keep riding the surge.
I look forward to sharing our stories, my thoughts, and the obstacles that we encounter along the way during the upcoming year. I am looking forward to the wild ride.
There are several reasons that I love working during the summers. Part of the appeal is that the weather is still nice and there is still plenty of daylight left when I go home, so that I can still enjoy outdoor activities. I also appreciate the pace of the day, especially when the bells are not ringing every 45 minutes, often denoting the need to change the task that I am doing. I am able to immerse and become engaged in flow if the mood strikes.
What I really enjoy is the conversations that I am able to have with teachers and administrators during this time of the year. Since there are no bell schedules, no distractions to all of the essential aspects of school, like meeting with students and other faculty, we are able to have the deep conversations which have a greater chance of affecting change than we are able to have during the course of the school year.
During the first two weeks of “summer vacation”, I have been able to:
Meet with our new eighth grade humanities team. After introductions and hearing what their goals for the use of technology in the classroom are, we were able to have conversations about new technologies and communications tools which may help them meet their goals. They will now have the summer to think, play, and create to determine whether they are the right tools to use.
Have a Technology Refresh with the Division Heads/Principals at our school. I was able to show them the tools we have been using in various projects and conduct interesting and deep conversations on how these tools can be used throughout the various grades/departments in school. While we were showing technology, we mainly talked about how to change teaching and learning practices in the upcoming year.
Meet with our 9th and 10th grade History teachers, who are looking to reshuffle the history curriculum in 2009-2010. We have been able to talk from the beginning about how the new tools can help students learn and I have been able to shift them in their examination and development of new essential questions by using the principles of Understanding by Design. It is been great to watch their shift in thinking.
There have been countless other smaller conversations which I have currently had, with new teachers, administrators, and current teachers. I am also scheduled to meet with other groups as the summer progresses and other teachers visit campus. There are new units on the election, using uStream and screencasts in the classroom, and ideas to implement tablet pcs that are still be had. And I look forward to each and every one.
As all technology projects go, the 13 Days Project has not been without its bumps. The project is due tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28 at 10:00 a.m. This morning, we were having problems uploading the PhotoStory projects, created for playback in on a computer in .wmv format to upload into VoiceThread. Digging around the VoiceThread help (FAQs and forums), I could not find a solution.
So I turned to my del.icio.us network. Using the search terms “wmv” and “flv”, I found Media Convert, (word of caution – Media Convert is an ad supported network and several of the ads were of a questionable nature to view in a K-12 environment. For adult use only) a free online converter. Converting the projects from a .wmv to a .wmv format, I was then able to upload them into VoiceThread.
Embedded, you will see the current progress of the group, with about half of the projects turned in, converted, and uploaded. They are looking very good, for one week’s worth of work, especially when they have also been discussing the book that they have been reading, On Paradise Drive.
