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I write this post as I am stuck in the airport. Actually, I am only 45 miles from my home here in Northern Colorado, but I am trying to fly to Seattle this evening to do some blended professional development tomorrow with the Northshore school district. My flight got delayed nearly three hours, so here I sit.
In the past I have called it Blended Learning, but that term is being used so much with regards to teaching young students, that I prefer the term “Blended Professional Development.”
Anyone who has been in education for longer than a month knows about “PD.” It is what us teachers do to get better — or to get tortured — depending on how you approach it. By adding the word “blended” to the front of it I believe it gets much better.
Image via Wikipedia
The course I am teaching in Seattle (if I can make it there) is all about integrating 21st Century Skills into lessons and it is being offered by my pals over at Atomic Learning. Two weeks ago the teachers in Seattle got their assignment and access to the online component of the course. The teachers have been learning from these online lessons and when we get together tomorrow we will all be on the same page, which means we can get right down to work without having to spend a lot of time on instruction. This is so much better that the “old” way of doing PD.
Gotta go… I think I might be finally boarding.
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I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 11 for the week of March 28, 2011 (This week’s episode was recorded and edited on an iPad 2 using Garageband.)
“Bribing Teachers to Teach with Tech.”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
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So this morning I was presenting a webinar for Atomic Learning about technology integration secrets for administrators, things were going great. My ideas were flowing, my slides were looking great, I was the top of my game.
I checked the little scale that tells me how many of my participants are paying attention (meaning, my webinar is the top window on their computer) and I was at 97%. This means these hundreds of administrators were really watching my webinar and not off checking their emails.
Then it happened…
I’m about half way through, and I go to ask my third poll question, I like to poll the participants because it keeps them involved, when things suddenly went wrong. I’m still yakking away, when I notice that nothing is happening. Everything is frozen. I wait a few seconds – nothing.
I panic. I’m now trying every trick in the book – still nothing.
I know what I need to do next, but it is going to kill my webinar. I reach down and restart my computer.
Seven minutes later I reconnect with my webinar and see that only 9 people stayed. I put on a good face and finish the webinar.
So how could I have fixed it?
Preparation, that’s how. I know better than this. Technology will always have little hiccups.
Number one rule with technology: Always have a plan B!
I tell teachers this all the time… If the projector won’t turn on, have your students practice keyboarding for a few minutes while you figure it out. If your students can’t save to the server, have them save it on your teacher’s thumb drive.
When I do the same webinar tomorrow I will tell my participants all about plan “B.” I made a note on my first slide to warn my participants that if I ever drop off, they should stay connected, go get a coffee, and wait for me to return.
Technology plus and little patience equals a better chance at success.
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This past week I started to facilitate another blended learning course about integrating 21st Century Skills into the classroom. Blended learning, if you don’t already know, is a little online instruction mixed with a little offline (or traditional) instruction.
Let me explain a little bit about how the course I am facilitating works…
Participants, which in this case are teachers from a district in Washington State, sign up for the course which has a specific start date. They get a welcome email and a “kick-off” conference call to let everyone know that the course has begun. Then the participants are on their own for the first part to gain the background knowledge for the course.
In this case, they are learning about 21st Century Skills. There is some reading, some video to watch on YouTube and some tutorials to watch on Atomic Learning. During each part of the course the participants use a cycle of Learn – Do – Share.
Learn – they learn a new concept like what a Personal Learning Network is.
Do – they set up a Twitter account and find 10 people to follow.
Share – they then share things that they have learned in the course forum so that other participant can learn from what they have done.
Image by arvindgrover via Flickr
Two weeks after the course begins, I come to the school in person to meet with the participants face to face. We talk about the things that they have learned and then put them into practice. This is more like a traditional workshop except for one big advantage – all of us are on the same page because of the work that has been done in the previous two weeks.
The course concludes with a little homework where they get to apply in their classroom what they have learned in the course.
To me and my students (teachers) blended learning truly is the best of both worlds.
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I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 10 for the week of March 21, 2011 (This week’s episode was recorded and edited on an iPad 2 using Garageband.)
“Building your PLN is as easy as 10-5-2.”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
#edtech #edchat #elearning
A few weeks ago I blogged about how webinars have gotten a bad rap because some webinars have wrecked it for the rest of us (see link below). Well, as the saying goes, “Talk is cheap.” so I have been working on my upcoming webinar to make sure that it delivers.
Webinars let you learn where you want.
Last week I did my first rehearsal with Kathy from Atomic Learning. Most parts were smooth, but there were still a few rough spots. One of the big parts that we were focusing on is the audience participation pieces. Polls and surveys that, depending on the audience results, change how the webinar is presented. These polls are very valuable to me as the presenter, they let me know where everyone is at.
So I guess what I am trying to say it that great webinars don’t just happen, they are planned and rehearsed so that your audience gets the most of the hour that they spend with you.
One of the things that make our webinars so successful is that we don’t just do a “data dump” on the participants. Instead, we tell stories, stories about what real people are doing on the subject. In this case we tell about how one particular principal got technology integrated into her Montana school, and how she went from nothing to full integration in less than a year.
For more information on my upcoming webinar, just click the link below.
Related articles
- Webinars that don’t suck. (schooltechnology.org)
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I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 9 for the week of March 14, 2011
“The iPad 2 is an educational game changer.”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
#edtech #edchat #elearning #elemchat
Are teachers liable for the work that students post online as part of a class project?
The other day I got a tweat from a colleague asking me if teachers are liable for the online work that students do? She had overheard a teacher union rep tell a teacher, “Never allow your students to put things online — because you can be held liable for it.”
There went the baby and the bath water.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about things that students do online that are not connected to school. Things like Facebook and such that are not part of school work and have no connection to the teacher are not relevant for what we are talking about here. What I am talking about is student’s online work that is part of a classroom project.
Here is an example…
Let’s say you start an 8th grade classroom blog about the Civil War. You have each student start their own blog account with, let’s say Blogger, and then you start each student blogging about the Civil War as you give them weekly assignments. Soon your students are having a great time blogging and commenting on each other’s blogs and you feel like a great teacher — giving your students 21st Century Skills. A few weeks into the project you are asked to come to the principal’s office to meet with some angry parents who have just found out that their daughter has been cyberbullied by students in your class with posts that they have made on their blogs, their Civil War blogs. Or should I say — your Civil War blogs. They threaten to sue the school and you.
What do you do?
Does that mean we should never allow online classroom projects?
Here is what I think about it…
I think of student using the Internet like students using power tools, let me explain.
- Get Parent Permissions: I would never allow students to use dangerous power tools without getting their parent’s permission. So do the same with online projects. Send home a parent permission slip explaining the project and the risks that are involved. Invite the parents to be involved with online projects.
- Educate the Students: Don’t let a student use a table saw without explaining how it works and the safety rules. Train your students how to properly do work online, teach them about Internet Safety and how to be good digital citizens. Teach them about the rules — spell them out for them so they clearly understand. The school I teach at has a very clear policy on cyberbulling and my kids know it.
- Monitor Student Work: Watching students with power tools, keep them following the rules. Make sure to check in on what your students are doing online. Comment on their blogs, let them know you are watching and taking care of them online — just like if they were on a field trip. Don’t allow them to wander off and do other things, keep them close and focused on the project.
This is just simple “due diligence” on the part of the teacher when it comes to online classroom projects, this will keep you and your school out of a lot of how water. And most importantly, it can save a student from getting hurt online.
What do you think?
Related articles
- Facebook Posts causes 3 Students to be expelled/suspended. (erickaecourtney.wordpress.com)
- Bad Students or Bad Teachers? (socyberty.com)
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Just in the nick of time we finished the 3rd Quarter Movie Making Club’s movie called “The Bethke Gnome.” Each time we make a movie with these 4th and 5th grade students we look to do a movie with a message.
This quarter we drew the message of “resilience.” And then during brainstorming we came up with the “Ground Hog Day” type of movie that would keep repeating until the hero gets what he or she wants.
The movie is about a 5th grade girl who wants to play Juliet in the upcoming Romeo and Juliet play — she uses a gnome to grant her wish but her day keeps repeating until she does the work for herself and earns the role. We use the Video Storytelling Guide on Atomic Learning to help the kids with filmmaking.
Check it out on our SchoolTube account to watch “The Bethke Gnome”:
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I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 8 for the week of March 7, 2011
“Are teachers liable for what students post online?”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
