After school on Monday, April 22nd, we attended the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach STEM Education lecture series talk given by Jim Slotta from the University of Toronto. His talk presented "a recent theoretical model of collective inquiry called Knowledge Community and Inquiry, developed by Jim Slotta to guide the designs of complex collaborative inquiry curriculum for secondary science. Typical KCI designs are several months in duration, with students engaged in developing a shared knowledge base that serves as a resource for carefully scripted inquiry projects. In the past several years, Slotta and his team have advanced a sophisticated technology architecture called SAIL (Scalable Architecture for Interactive Learning) to provide scaffolding and real time analytic support for the sequencing of interactions amongst people, materials, tools and activities." His talk explained KCI and SAIL, as well as a framework for smart classroom research called SAIL Smart Space. He then presented three curriculum designs from current research projects. One thing we connected with was the 5th and 6th grade science unit on life cycles using wallcology.
As the school year winds quickly down it was truly a pleasure to hear some of our "launch grant" recipients reports to their colleagues at recent faculty meetings. At the upper school meeting we heard from three of this year's participants. Paul Ruhlmann spoke about his work with creating videos of common woodworking techniques, Rosario Sanchez-Gomez spoke about her development of SmartBoard instructional lessons, and Leah Cataldo spoke about her comparison of Google Sites and Haiku Learning Management software. This peer-to-peer sharing was one of the highlights of my year. Perhaps it is the fact that their experience resonates with colleagues, or perhaps it is the result of the active collaboration which these grants foster, but whatever the case, it is clear that peer-to-peer sharing is an extremely valuable part of our professional development efforts. We had similar results from the recent google apps training, in which several teachers at each campus were involved in delivering training to their peers on this new collaborative platform. The future of technology at BB&N is bright because we continue to build on the experience and expertise of our faculty.
I did it. This month I jumped on the twitter bandwagon. And I am thrilled with the experience thus far!
In the past, I had only used twitter at educational technology conferences as a supplement to a keynote speaker. As I took notes on the speech, I would leave my twitter page open so I could see what all of the attendees were tweeting about the speech to the rest of the room and those who were unable to attend. I copied important quotations and links from the twitter page into my notes. I found it incredibly useful for furthering my understanding. For those who are not familiar, twitter is “an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".” (Wikipedia)
As I type this blog post I can go to twitter and search for the hash tag #FETC to see what is happening at the annual Florida Educational Technology Conference since I am unable to attend. Even though I am not there right now, I know that Michael Wesch is talking about empathy, and one of the attendees just shared the following link: 50 Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom.
Have you ever heard of a PLN? It seems to be quite a buzzword these days. A PLN, or Personal Learning Network, is a network of people from whom one gathers information as well as interacts with, though that does not have to be face-to-face. While the acronym is relatively new, the idea behind a PLN is not. Teachers have always shared with and learned from each other. Some ways you can use a PLN:
1. I belong to a group of Massachusetts educators (MEMSET- Massachusetts Elementary and Middle School Educational Technologists) that just started meeting together and collaborating this past year. We have been gathering every month or so, using an email list for questions and for posting news, and using Google Aps to share our curriculum.
2. You can find a ning related to your interests:
• After a technology conference with Tom Daccord of EdTechTeacher, I joined his ning for the National Council for Social Studies.
• I am also a member of the Classroom 2.0 ning which often sends out announcements about live and interactive webinars.
• Lastly, I am a member of the Independent School Educators Network ning and a couple of its subgroups, including “Schools of the Future.”
3. You can use social networking, such as Diigo:
• I am a member of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch Users group to get updates about using handheld devices in the classroom.
• BB&N’s technology department members have created a group in Diigo so we can share articles with each other, and all of the pages we bookmark get posted on our technology department blog for the whole school.
4. You can follow members in your field through their blogs and tweets. Though I’m quite busy these days, I try to follow leaders in Educational Technology. I went to a presentation at BLC a few summers ago where Liz Davis and Lisa Thumann presented “25 Ed Tech Leaders to follow.”
How are you using your PLN? Please share your ideas below. Not sure where to start? Take a look at http://edupln.ning.com/, the personal learning network for educators.
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| NAIS 2011 Conference |
The Online School for Girls is an effort by independent girls schools to move into the digital delivery of courses. In addition to offering courses to high school students this organization also offers 6 week online seminars to teachers [for any middle or upper school teachers]. The seminars teach you how to use a "blended learning" approach to enable you to add an online component to your face-to-face courses. They use the same online learning platform as the school, which is a system named "Haiku." I have heard great things about this professional development offering!. A course website can support student learning by offering organized access to course content/resources, calendars, & grades, as well as instructional activities like discussion boards, online quizzes, small group activities, and the use of "web 2.0" tools. You can read more about the OSG professional development opportunity on this announcement (from last year) by their director or this blog post by a participant, or you can go to their site to register (click on "Register for Professional Development" on the right side of page. Please register soon. There are only 25 spots in their course. It may already be full, but if you register now you can get on the waiting list for the next round. If anyone has any questions, please let me know. This is one of the best opportunities for teachers interested in teaching online that I am aware of.
