The 21st Century Teachers’ Toolkit by Alice Barr @alicebarr #cmtc10

These are my notes from Alice Barr’s breakout session, “The 21st Century Teachers’ Toolkit” at the the 2010 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, NH on 30 Nov 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Track conference conversations using the Twitter hash tag #cmtc10. Alice is the Instructional Technology Integrator at Yarmouth High School in Yarmouth, Maine. She is @alicebarr on Twitter. I’m recording this session with Alice’s permission and will share it later as an audio podcast. Alice is a member of the Seedlings, who share a regular, free, international webcast online.

Alice has been in instructional technology since 1985 when she met Seymour Papert in Dallas
– inspired to do her Master’s degree at Lesley University
– started as a kindergarten teacher, worked at the Greenhills School in Dallas
– taught overseas for 12 years
– started tech programs in Cali, Columbia, Mogadishu, Somalia, and Daka, Bangladesh
– came back to the states in 1997
– most important thing I want you to know about me is: I’m a teacher
– I’m a computer geek, definitely
– I’ve been an instructional integrator all the time I’ve been in Yarmouth, it’s my 12th year
– I work with teachers and kids about how to integrate technology into lessons and learning

I’m going to be talking about how these tools fit in
– there has to be a purpose for using a tool

Resources for this session:

https://sites.google.com/site/cmtcteachertoolkit/home

When I’m working with teachers, I don’t just show tools
– so what I did today

When Angus King considered giving all students laptops in Maine, he did a lot of thinking about global collaboration

35,000 students in the state have the same device (all 7th and 8th graders)

When it got to 2003, you could buy in and purchase your own laptops
– our high school did that, phased in year by year starting with 9th graders

We are able to tweak the “image” of software programs we have on our laptops

We have done a lot of talking in 8 years about moving to this new kind of learning
– what do our classrooms look like now that all our students have a device?
– now it is the norm to use laptops everywhere, for everything

What’s happened in this process
– teaching and learning is changing in front of our eyes every day
– we don’t have a plan in place that says specifically, “Next week we will be on the creativity standard”
– we are continually tweaking and improving our practice
– every teacher creates a portfolio
– that lends itself wall to reflecting on and changing our practices to promote student learning and creativity
– we know there is a different kind of learner sitting in our classrooms now

Our staff is at a very wide range of skills when it comes to technology skills
– we’ve realized we need to give more professional development for teachers
– our PD is more differentiated today more than ever

PD is not just done “by me,” it’s done together with students and teachers
– teachers who need help with iMovie

iMovie ’09: I haven’t learned it because I haven’t used it much yet. But our kids have. So they are the experts on that skill.

ISTE NETS 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity (examples)

Every teacher is required to have a “minimum online web presence”
– contact info and a place for parents to get assignments
– we use FirstClass for that, but we are also a Google Apps for Education domain so teachers can do that with a Google Calendar

Sample Assignment: Portfolio of Work, Creating your “online presence”

Example: Maddie’s Art Portfolio
– teacher gives a structure, but doesn’t tell them exactly how it must look

Google Apps has changed how we work as a community
– it is so easy to collaborate and share now
– by clicking the SHARE button, teachers can either

Example project on native American stories: Class time (with VoiceThread for Education)

Think about an assignment you’ve created in the past, and digitally tweak it
– similar to what was done in the past, but students are allowed to have some digital creative “process” in it
– the teacher didn’t say, “You must do an iMovie”
– the task was to create a product for a specific purpose focused on specific content

There are lots of moviemaking tools online now, Aviary is one

We have a YouTube channel now to showcases student work: www.youtube.com/YarmouthHS
– student projects are often predictable
– I brainstormed with the teacher, and we decided to challenge the students to create their videos as if they WERE the artist
– Example about Edward Hopper

People are now favoriting our High School YouTube channel, because they like the work which is shared
– that ups the ante for student work

We had YouTube blocked for a long time, and then we realized, “What’s the point? Kids are
– we should use it as a channel to push work out
– You should consider creating a YouTube channel for your class
– that way you can take student work and embed it on a wiki or Google Site, and share it with parents, grandparents, and others

Kids like sharing with Prezi: a non-linear presentation tool
– works well when kids are narrating

Animoto is fabulous

Education version of Animoto lets you create class accounts

We do a unit on digital citizenship, 9th graders create / produce products around the question, “What does it mean to be a digital citizen? How does that relate to our school’s core values?”
– kids go through a series of scenarios
– have you seen the sock puppet videos
– we break kids into core value teams
– kids come up with a product around internet or cell phone safety

Tools used by students for the digital citizenship project are client-based (downloaded software) and web-based

We then share this out in a film festival

ISTE NETS2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments (examples)

We still do bell work, but it looks like this: Why are these the top 3 news articles on Google News?
– using Wikispaces as the project backbone, getting an RSS feed from Google News embedded into the page
– kids take 10 minutes to put together and share with their group why this is important
– kids now send links to this teacher to related news articles all the time (kids continually sharing, saying “did you see…” or “did you know…”)

Current events are done by more than one person: collaborative current events / presentations
– students create presentations collaboratively, NOT in class, outside of class

Example project of a biology teacher who was NOT a technology user recently
– Biology Taste Test
– Data from the project
– Project Rubric
– Project Assessment
– all done with Google Docs, all done collaboratively in groups, all shared with the teacheer
– with groups of 4, this means the teacher has 20 projects to grade at the end (not 120 projects) at the end
– Google Apps domain has enabled this, it is truly changing the practice in our schools

We have 90 minute classes and an every-other schedule

Public Policy Project
– students are making a compelling presentation to someone who might be in a position to make a governmental change, and then they DO send and share it with them

We are so invested in our Art Ning we are paying for it this year (so we can keep doing group work)
– Edu2.0 is another website just like Ning, but FREE and very school friendly
– Edmodo works too, but it is more relevant for younger students

Teachers and students are really getting into using Screencasting
– example: Jing-created tutorials about Adobe PhotoShop
– Jing is similar to Screenr (but Screenr is web-based)

As a teacher look at Quizlet: Allows you to create online, interactive flashcards

Now ISTE NETS 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning (examples)

Senior Math Class learning portal example: This is a ‘landing space’ for students to engage in their digital work / learning

It’s very important that EVERYONE has access to these resources and tools

I work between 4 computers and a phone
– so having my bookmarks online lets me get to my links at anytime, anyplace
– lets me have my library of links available
– I can send a URL of links to teachers
– I use Diigo

YoLink: we’re just starting to use it for research
– highlights words you are searching for, and lets you put words from a webpage directly into a Google Doc
– great tutorials are available on the YoLink website
– YoLink Education site

Example tutorial: YoLink Share with Google docs

Readability: strips out ads and gives you JUST content

Evernote: Allows me to take notes on my phone, computer, etc.
– can tag notes

If you don’t have ways for kids to share documents outside school, Dropbox allows you to do this for free and access files from any machine
– If you invite more friends to DropBox, it gives you more space free

Browser add-ons: Huge time saver
– Read It Later
– After I find links on Twitter, I click Read It Later it makes a list for me
– that is what I’d do if I have an iPad

ISTE NETS 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

– NetVibes Summer Technology Course
– Google Site Summer Technology Course and blog posts
– Teacher’s Guide to International Collaboration on the Web

ISTE NETS 5: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership (examples)

I would not be standing up here today if it was not for Twitter
– if you are not using Twitter, really think about giving it a chance

Alice on Twitter: @alicebarr

Technorati Tags:
1to1, alicebarr, cmtc10, edtech, iste, laptop, learning, nets, technology, immersion, yarmouth