The Rise of Online Professional Development!

This past weekend (September 6 & 7), CUE and the Learning Revolution Project held the first ever Online Summit Featuring Google for Education. This was a paid online event which used Google Hangouts on Air to host live and recorded keynotes and presentations. In leading up to, during, and after the event, I found the whole thing to be well organized and well managed by an amazing task force!

Over the past year or so, I've noticed an increase in the amount of professional development opportunities occurring online, including EdcampHOME, EdcampONLINE, Connected Educator Month, and the multitude of conferences by the Learning Revolution Project, like the annual Global Education Conference and the 2013 Global STEMx Education Conference. The popularity and the need for such PD is growing quickly. In my opinion, there are 4 reasons why this is happening.

Digital Learning Day - Take the Challenge!

http://www.digitallearningday.org/

Digital Learning Day is about giving every child the opportunity to learn in a robust digital environment everyday, with the goal of success in college and a career. We urge you to make a difference with digital learning in America's schools and take the pledge to support the effective use of technology to improve education for all students.

In essence, Digital Learning Day is a day to celebrate and promote all of the great things that you do in your classroom with technology and the opportunities you provide your students to grow and learn! It's not necessarily about doing something extra that day, but instead to continue to make an effort to integrate technology in your curriculum and to give you students the chance to explore what technology can do for them.

What can educators do to support and participate in Digital Learning Day?

Take the pledge for you and your students!

Add your class or school event to the list!

What can you do in your classrooms?

Here are some ideas:

• Continue to allow your students to explore the Hour of Code!
• Take the #Make4DLDay Challenge!
• Plan a classroom activity!
• Check out the Teacher Toolkits and choose a subject!
• Challenge yourself to integrate one technology in your classroom for the day (and BEYOND)!
• Borrow a Mobile Computer Lab and work on a project, start a new one, or explore a website or program!
• Borrow a Mobile Tablet Lab and allow students to explore an app!
• Display your classroom computer or tablet and explore an activity as a class!
• Sign up your class for an online Student Debate! (Great for persuasive/argumentative writing!)

Have any other ideas or want to share what you're doing! Add it to the comments below!

Observing a 1:1 School

Today, I had the privilege of observing 7th grade classes that participate in a 1:1 laptop program. I sat in on four periods, Science, Math, Social Studies, and Language Arts, during the school day at the University Laboratory School, a public charter school in Hawaii.

Each student in the 7th grade is given a Chromebook and a school issued Google Apps for Education account.

A teacher at my school initiated this observation in part because our school has been told that we will likely participate in a 1:1 laptop program sometime next school year, as some part of a Race to the Top Common Core Technology Initiative. About all the information we've received so far comes from a local newspaper article, Hawaii joins laptops-in-schools talks (if you can't view that link, the article can also be found at NPR, Main School Laptop Contract To Be Open to Others).

I made the following observations during my visit today:

1. GAFE (Google Apps for Education) is deeply integrated into almost everything the students do during class. 

• Teachers use Google Drive to display and archive the daily agenda.
• During a math class, students shared a Google Slide to work on daily math problems, with students working in groups, and groups were assigned to one slide that they were responsible for filling in with their observations, questions, solutions, and diagrams. 
• In a language arts class, students worked in groups of four and were wrapping up a Google Site full of student generated book reviews and novel excerpts. The students even created their own artwork with photo apps and Google Draw to match their reviews and excerpts.
• In a Science class, student took a quiz by creating a chart in Google Draw. They then added it to a shared folder with the teacher.
• In Social Studies, students created their own Google Slide presentation and a handful of students presented a current event they found in the news a few days prior. The rest of the class took notes on the current event in their own Google document, likely shared with the teacher for record keeping. They also created their own Inca Quipus using Google Draw and then turned it into somewhat of a game. They shared their game with another student in class through Google Drive.

2. Most classes took full advantage of the 1:1 program by going completely paperless. However, a few classes where about 50/50. I found this perplexing, because in one instance a teacher would have the students take a quiz in Google Drive, and then they would pull out their composition books and start writing down notes. I suppose this has to do with the level of comfort that teacher has with GAFE.  But why note keep those notes in Google Drive?

3. Work stored in Google Drive becomes an archive and a Portfolio. In a math class I observed, the teacher used one Google Slide for all the math problems the class worked on since the beginning of the semester. The file was shared with every student in the class so that everyone had access to all of the work and all of the notes generated during class. This creates a running record of the learning going on in class and shows how the math they are learning scaffolds through the semester.

4. Parents need to be stakeholders in this initiative. There needs to be some sort of buy-in from parents so that they are comfortable with their child's increased access to technology and the internet both in school and at home. The University Lab School approaches this buy-in by conducting the following:

• Students are given an extensive AUP and are also required to pass an AUP test before given a laptop. I think the idea of an AUP test is great! It tells the student and the parent, "This document is important!"
• All students go through extensive cyber-bullying and internet safety training/workshops.
• Parents also receive workshops on cyber-bullying and internet safety conducted during Parent Nights.
• Students create safety videos in school and then upload them to Youtube and share them with their families. I love this idea! It allows the students to be creative. It reinforces the training they receive and the purpose of the AUP. And they have an authentic audience.

5. Teachers need Professional Development before they receive the technology! I find this part so extremely important, as do the teachers and leaders at the University Lab School. And frankly, this scares me the most with our own 1:1 laptop program. You can't just give a class technology and expect them to understand it. Well, maybe you can with the students. But not the teachers! I think the approach that this school takes with PD is a great model. Teachers received one full year of PD. Teachers also became the leaders of their own PD and each teacher was required to learn a skill and then provide at least one workshop to their peers. Learning Communities were also set up, and based on the social structure of the school, "Pillars of the Community" were selected to provide the tech support within the school. I see a "Pillar of the Community" as an expert of sorts; someone that the rest of the grade level, or building, can go to for help.

Seeing a 1:1 program in action is exciting! And seeing GAFE integrated into that program is even more exciting! The process isn't easy, but once a school is organized and the students and teachers have received proper professional development and training, the possibilities are endless!

Has your school initiated a 1:1 program? What benefits have you found with you and your students? What pitfalls have you run into and how did you resolve them? Leave a comment below and join the discussion!

August is Connected Educator Month!

I'm catching up on this a little late, but better late than never!

I received an email at the end of June from The Global Education Conference Network, announcing August as Connected Educator Month. According to the Connected Educator Month website,

"Online communities and learning networks are helping hundreds of thousands of educators learn, reducing isolation and providing “just in time” access to knowledge and opportunities for collaboration. However, many educators are not yet participating and others aren’t realizing the full benefits. In many cases, schools, districts, and states also are not recognizing and rewarding this essential professional learning.

For these reasons, the U.S. Department of Education’s Connected Educators initiative is launching Connected Educator Month in August 2012. Throughout August, there will be coordinated opportunities to participate in events and activities in dozens of online locations to develop skills and enhance one’s personal learning network."

This is a great idea and I hope that it grows every year! I can testify that using social media and online networks is great for your PLN (Professional Learning Network). Most of the information I share through my social networks came from somewhere else and they are things that I found very interesting and helpful. I feel that PLN's are most often more helpful than the traditional in-school professional learning opportunities because it's learning on my time and geared towards my interests.

Connected Educator Month includes a wide variety of events and activities on a daily basis throughout the month of August, and even reaching through October and November. A calendar of events and activities can be found at: http://connectededucators.org/cem/ If you create an account and log in, you can sync your favorite events to your personal calendar and/or phone.

BYOC (Camera) School Project

For the first time at my school, we allowed students to bring their own digital cameras for a school project, titled the BYOC School Project. After attempts to purchase more digital cameras failed due to budget cuts, I had to find a way to get enough cameras so that every student in the fifth grade (around 170) would be able to use one for a currently running project.

The students' project is to create a movie using Apple's iMovie software that reflects their memories and experiences while in elementary school. Their project needs to include pictures of themselves, their classmates, their friends, faculty and staff, and the campus, so when they look back at their movie 5, 10, or 15 years from now, they will know what everyone and everything looked like in elementary school.

Instead of trying to share 14 digital cameras with each class of around 30 students each, I decided to attempt a BYOC (Bring Your Own Camera). I sent a letter home about a week before our next technology class that explained to parents the need for their child to bring a digital camera. If the parents were willing to allow their child to bring a camera from home then they would have to sign a permission form and return it to school. I had to make it clear to parents that if their child would not be able to bring their own camera, then the school would provide them with one during class time, but I also shared the advantages for students who could bring their own camera to school. Those students would have more freedom and flexibility with the amount of pictures they could take and the times in which they could take them. It also had to be made clear to parents that the technology teacher (myself) and the general education teacher would not be responsible for teaching the students how to use their personal cameras. With such a wide variety of digital cameras on the market, it would have been a major time waster trying to figure out how each student's camera worked and then showing them how to use it. I would only be responsible for teaching students how to upload pictures to iPhoto and then how to access them in iMovie. I also required that students bring the charging cables and the USB transfer cable for their personal cameras if provided. But SD Cards could also be used with our classroom iMacs. Surprisingly, only about 37 students were unable to bring a camera from home and every student that did bring a camera already knew how to use it. I figured as much already, seeing as how young kids these days already have smartphones and handheld devices and most are experts at using them compared to adults.

Before I started the picture taking/uploading phase of the project, I had each student take a quick 5 minute Google survey in which I asked them questions about their digital cameras.

Here are the results of my survey. Not very surprising to me.

The responses to this question were close, and probably the most surprising out of the entire survey. These are only 5th grade students, so it shocks me that so many of them actually have their own personal digital camera. I specifically mentioned to the students during the survey that I did not want them to count their family/parents' digital camera. I wanted to know if they, themselves, have their own camera.

Its great to see that most families allow their younger children to use their family cameras, let alone touch them!

Even though 43% don't own their own cameras, almost 100% of the students have used digital cameras before. Awesome!

I correct myself. This one is and is not a shocker. I love the fact that 98% of the students feel comfortable using a digital camera which relieved me when thinking of the wide variety of cameras that would be brought to school.

This response makes me happy! And then I wonder who the 4 students are who weren't excited and why. Oh, well...can't please them all I suppose.

Before allowing the students the chance to actually use their cameras during the technology class time, I had to go over some very strict rules and consequences. The fact that we were allowing them bring their own cameras to use during school was a privilege, therefore rules had to be implemented in order to prevent chaos and disruption.

(I am also allowing students to bring thumb drives with pictures they have taken on past field trips in which they were allowed to bring cameras.)

DIGITAL CAMERAS/THUMB DRIVE RULES

• Personal cameras are to be used by the owner ONLY. No one else may use the camera (unless you are having someone take a picture of you).

• Cameras are to be used during designated times only. You should not be using your camera while on school campus unless you are given permission by your teachers. (That includes before & after school)

• While on school campus, cameras are to be used for the Portfolio iMovie Project ONLY.

• The flash is to be used for picture taking purposes ONLY and should only be used when you are in a dark place, not outside or in a lighted room.

• Cameras and Thumb Drives may only be connected to computers with teacher permission and supervision.

• You may only take pictures of other people if they have given you permission. It is polite to ask a person first if you may take their picture.

FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE RULES WILL RESULT IN YOUR CAMERA BEING CONFISCATED AND LOSING THE PRIVILEGE OF USING PHOTOS FOR YOUR PROJECT.

 Overall, the first day of this BYOC project turned out very well. The students were excited and focused. Students will continue to use their cameras during the last few weeks of school to take those lasting shots of their final elementary days.