#edtech #edchat #elearning
Today I would like to tell you about an incredible project I did with my 5th grade students last year. Like many of you, I was struggling to find great tech projects that are full of 21st Century Skills, to solve this I turned to Atomic Learning. Soon I was searching through their ready-made lessons that are full of 21st Century Skills. It wasn’t long before I found a project that was age and tech appropriate for my students.
The project was called “What’s for breakfast?” and here is the description from the Atomic Learning website:
This project promotes health literacy and supports awareness of global health issues, through the exploration of how to make sound nutritional choices about the foods we eat for breakfast. The example project shown here was created using Excel 2007; however, any spreadsheet application would work just as well. We will be creating a spreadsheet to track and compare three breakfast menus. We will begin by searching for and evaluating Web resources about nutrition. After we input nutritional data into our spreadsheet, we will compare the nutritional value of different choices through the use of graphs and charts.
Student sharing data from "What's for Breakfast?"
Last week I got the email back from Atomic Learning saying that all of my teachers have been added to their database. It took them less than 24 hours from when I sent in my list of teachers and email addresses to being up and running. They said it might take three days, so I love it when a company gets things done quicker than expected.
Tom, my rep with Atomic Learning, sent me an email that outlined how to get things started with my teachers. I had to put all of this aside for a week while I got through the rush of back to school, but now my classes have starting to flow smoothly so I can shift my focus back to Atomic Learning.
So the first thing I did this afternoon after I logged in was to go to the Support section and then to Getting Started. I found toturials and training on how to implement Atomic Learning in my school. Tom did a good job with his training so I sailed through the video tutorials.
The next thing I did was print out the 21st Century Skills Professional Develpment Worksheet. It is a simple one page worksheet that took me less than 5 minutes to fill out. I probably could have breezed through the worksheet in 90 seconds, but I want to do this right, so I spend a little time on each question to makes sure that I knew where I wanted all of this to go. The worksheet asked questions like: “Who will participate in the program?”
Next up; a poster to promote using Atomic Learning. I printed up a bunch of their ready-made full-color posters and filled in blanks with my school’s information. I am planning on putting one of these in each teacher’s mailbox on Monday.
The final thing that I did today was to open on of their sample emails to introduce Atomic Learning to teachers. I copied it and I am planning on emailing it to every teacher this Monday morning. I decided that Friday afternoon is not a good time to introduce and new idea to tired teachers.
Yesterday I went over the initial interview with Atomic Learning to make sure that both of us were on the the same page with regards to technology training, and professional development for my teachers. Today is part two of that setup. I was impressed by how Tom finished part one by saying, “Anything we can do to save you time, that’s what we’re all about.”
Part Two: How To Use the Atomic Learning Account
- Image via Wikipedia
Tom explained to me that the best place to start when it comes to explaining what Atomic Learning is all about is just the “Learn More” link on the front page. The video is short and to the point, easily explaining the many facets of the Atomic Learning subscription.
Tom then took my through each section of the website. Most of which I already knew but there were still a few things that I had never seen before.
Once we had finished the initial training it was now time for me to learn how to be an administrator, something I had never done since I was only used to having a personal account. One of the cool features the ability to set up preferred filters so that your teachers only see the applications that are in your building. There is no use showing training for Office 2007 when you only have Office 2003.
I also learned how to search by state standards and by ISTE NETS-S, which is going to be another real time-save.
“The website is made to teach itself.” Tom explained as he showed me that when you click on any of the lirttle question marks that are on the website, a short video will pop up to show to explain what that part of the website does. Cool.
One of the parts that I really like is the ability to make assignments or recommendations for my teachers. I can assign a pre-assessment for 21st Century Skills and then some training so that all my teachers are all on the same page.
The reporting section is top-notch, there is also an entire area devoted to implementing Atomic Learning in your school, complete with posters and ready-made emails. These will be a real time-saver — it looks like Tom is really following through on his promise.
The last section he explained was the ePortfolio, which allows teachers to upload content and then select who they want to share it with. This is going to great for our teachers to upload future lesson plans that are 21st Century Skills ready.
Tom concluded the training by explaining that he will be sending me some follow-up emails that will explain everything we just did in a thorough step-by-step method as well as other helpful informatin (which he did).
I can’t wait to show my teachers next week.
Last week when our family was returning back from the annual pilgrimage to Walmart for back to school supplies I over heard my two teenage children talking in the back seat of the car. At first they were discussing all the new binders and pens they had just got but then my daughter said a really interesting thing.
- Image via Wikipedia
“I hope I get a great teacher this year,” she said.
“Yeah, me too,” my son replied.
As a teacher, that hit me hard. Are my two children the only ones who think this way? Or are children all over our country hoping for the same thing? Do our students really start off each school year hoping to get a great teacher?
And now for even tougher questions…
Am I going to be a great teacher this year?
How to I become a great teacher?
Can I be a great teacher for all students?
I hope you noticed that my children didn’t hope for the fun teacher or a goofy teacher or a let-you-get-away-with-anything teacher — instead, they want a great teacher. You see, both my children were in the same math class last year, and they experienced what it is like to truly have a great teacher. This math teacher is so passionate about her subject that it become infectious to her students, both of my children love math now because of a great teacher. And now they want more.
As an elementary tech teacher, I want to be that great teacher. I want my students to be excited about school technology as I am, I want them to develop life-long 21st Century Skills that will help them in a future that I cannot even pretend to understand.
Let’s do it! Let’s all be great teachers!
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When it comes to teachers and integrating technology, it is all about what you have — not what you don’t have. But some teachers get hung up on the later. “But I don’t have any Flip video cameras at my school, so my students can’t make movies.”
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Teachers need to do a tech inventory to see what is available for them when they go to integrate technology into their lessons and projects.
There are three specific areas that teachers must do a technology inventory…
- The Classroom: Write down every piece of technology you have in your classroom. ie: teacher’s computer, one student computer, tv, etc.
- The School: Now go and find all the technology in your school. ie: 1 laptop cart with 28 laptops, 5 digital cameras, computer lab with 32 computers, student response system (clickers), etc.
- The District: Some districts have technology just lying around for teachers to check-out. ie: video cameras, USB microscopes, etc.
Now that is a list you can work with! Now you can begin to integrate technology into your lessons and projects.
And for the teacher that said she doesn’t have any Flip video cameras, it turned out that she could just use the 5 digital cameras in her school in “movie mode” to record video or check-out a video camera from the district. And she thought her students couldn’t make movies.
Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking; “I would teach my students 21st Century Skills and technology, but I just don’t have the equipment.” Look around you, you might be surprised at how much technology is in your classroom, school, and district.
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Yesterday while I was re-reading 21st Century Skills by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel I came across a section that I had highlighted the first time I had read the book but I had forgotten.
The selection I highlighted was about how Singapore was very successful in updating and modernizing their educational system. They had chosen to focus on 21st Century Skills as the backbone to their overhaul.
The deputy director of Curriculum Policy and Pedagogy, Tay Lai Ling, is quoted as saying:
We have come a long way in changing our teaching and learning methods, but our teachers and students still have farther to go. We have a new slogan at the Ministry that will hopefully encourage further change. The new slogan is “Teach Less, Learn More.”
After reading this quote I really started thinking about their slogan. What the crud does it mean to teach less and learn more?
What it means to me is that teachers need to slide over from being just the teacher and take on more of a role as coach and trainer. Which got me really thinking about the new curriculum I have designed for my school technology class for this upcoming year. I started to look at each lesson through the eyes of teaching less — what I started to see was amazing. Soon I was scribbling notes on my lesson plans, ideas that would allow my students more freedom to direct their own learning. Less time with me lecturing and more time with me helping to “direct” their learning.
What can “Teach Less, Learn More” do for you?
When teachers shift to teaching 21st Century Skills in a more student-centric learning environment, they need to rethink the idea of assessment — or testing to see if students are understanding what they are suppose to be learning. In fact, 21st Century Skills should replace the need for tests and examinations as we know them.
The reason we have tested students in the past is to not only determine the extent to which students have understood a given subject to see if they should move on, but also to compare a student to their classmates to see where they might “rank” in their classroom.
The problem with this system is lag-time. The time it takes from when the student takes the assessment to when the grade is given. Days, if not weeks, have pasted and the students have all moved on regardless of the results of the assessment. What I like about project-based learning and 21st Century Skills is that most of this lag-time problem is eliminated. Using school technology in student assessment is one of the great keys to success in our future classrooms and schools.
Take for example; learning to add fractions in the fourth grade. When 21st Century Skills like creativity an innovation are added to the process, problems like lag-time are reduced. In this case students were taught the concept of adding fractions with a simple computer game using slices of pizza. A computer game which gave the students IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK, they knew instantly wether or not they understood the concept and the game would not let them move on until they had mastered the skill. After the initial concept was understood the students then had to create their own video game to teach about adding fractions using the Scratch programming language. So instead of just the vain repetition of adding fraction problems on a worksheet, students kept practicing the skill of adding fractions as they tested their video game, and as they tested each others (communication and collaboration).
So the point is that as we think of teaching 21st Century Skills to our students, we need to always be thinking about 21st Century assessment as well. The two are dove-tailed together.
The recent Vision K-12 survey given by Software and Information Industry Association shows only a margin of growth by our schools in our students acquiring 21st Century Skills (overall less than a 1% improvement). This got me thinking about my own elementary school and how we would fair in this survey.
The survey tracks five different areas of school technology progress by using 20 questions to get a national average of what is happening in our schools with regards to technology and 21st Century Skills. I now want to take a lot at each area to see how my school might fit it.
21st Century Learning Tools: We have worked hard this past year to embed and integrate 21st Century Skills into our lessons. This next year we plan to use Atomic Learning to help fill in any gaps that our teachers might have in their general tech skills. (My score: B+)
Anytime/Anywhere Access to Technology: We are really fortunate in my school that all of our students have access to computers at home. And since we have moved over to using Google Docs, our students can now get to their work from any computer in the world with Internet access. (My score: A)
Differentiated Learning: The teachers in my school have a strong focus on differentiated instruction, it is part of our teaching culture — so we have no problem with this one. (My score: A)
Assessment Tools: In the past we have done nothing but now that we have subscribed to Atomic Learning we have access to both their teacher and student 21st Century Skills assessment so we hope that this one will be improving this next year. (My score: F)
Enterprise Support: I am going to interpret this area as the support systems for both teachers and students learning these edtech skills. We are working hard in my school to make sure that teachers have access to online professional development that they can access anytime or anywhere that they need, as well as good one on one training to ensure that they use their current classroom technology correctly — like SmartBoards and document cameras.
Admittedly, I do not have access to the real 20 questions, but the survey did cause me to pause and reflect upon my own school and plan for some improvements.
What do you think of this survey and how would you score your own school?
Today I would like to focus my blog post on what I believe is the best what to teach 21st Century Skills and school technology to our students — projects.
The school I taught at before coming to my current school was a PBL or Project-Based Learning school. This meant that most of the concepts and skills that were being taught to students were part of a larger projects — students love to learn this way. Although most schools really do work this way, this school had made it part of it’s formal identity. Just to be clear, my current school teaches a lot through projects as well.
Here is a rough idea at how project-based learning works…
Step One: Define — give your students a real-world problem or process and ask them to make things better, easier, faster, cheaper, more effective or more enjoyable. This is usually done through a question. For example, in fifth grade this coming year my question might be: “If you lived during the Renaissance, what would you have done to get your work noticed? So that people would be talking about your work hundreds of years later.”
Step Two: Plan — students need to take time to understand information about the subject, through study and research students can use school technology to be better equipped to answer the above question.
Step Three: Do — using different techniques students then do the project, in the case of the Renaissance question, I will ask my students to produce a podcast.
Step Four: Review — student finish the project by reviewing each others work and by posting their projects online for the world to see.
If has been my experience that project-based learning can be one of the best ways to teach 21st Century Skills and technology to our students. Rather than just teaching them a random skill like how to edit audio — just make learning the skill part of a much larger project.
At the recent ISTE Conference in Denver I sat down with Kathy Schroeder of Atomic Learning and we had a great talk about different ideas regarding the future of education. At first we bantered back and fourth about the regular stuff like iPads and digital books, but they Kathy brought up blended learning, a concept I strongly believe in but I have never really given it much thought.
Blended learning is when the student gains an education from both a traditional teacher-taught lesson and an online lesson. Take my son for example, this year he is entering high school but will take 2 of his courses online — the school he attends does not offer some of what he needs. What also works for my son, and other students just like him, is that he can do is online classes when and where he wants to — the power of asynchronous learning.
I strongly believe that students need to learn how to take online courses and classes, this will prove to be invaluable for them in the future as they enter the work force.
The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those that cannot read or write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. – Alvin Toffler
What do you think about blended learning?
