Some Tech Sense » Conferences

Middle School Student Led Conferencing & Tech

Amanda — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:21:24 +0000

Our middle school has been doing Student Led Conferencing (SLCs) for four years now and we’ve been making it better each year. As a middle school, we’ve come up with a plan of action and have something that we are going to move forward with next year. It has worked so well, our elementary school dipped into SLCs this year as an entire division. In year’s past, the middle school has used several methods to have students showcase their learning using technology:

Blogs

Each student has a working portfolio with their school blog. Over the past couple of years, students would using the tag of SLC to showcase specific pieces of work to demonstrate their learning. Each subject was represented and the students would reflect on their SMART goals in password protected posts. While it worked, it still felt messy.

MS Office Notebook Layout Portfolio

Students and teachers took a shining to the Notebook Layout view in MS Word. The students could create a tab for each of their classes, create a tab for goal-setting and could use the record feature to record directly onto MS Word. While this worked fine, it had it’s bumps because it was completely tied to their computer so their audience and feedback was limited. Additionally, students liked using VoiceCandy in their classes as a quick way to record instead of Garageband, but VoiceCandy and MS World do not get along on a consistent basis.

iWeb Growth Portfolios

This is the first year we have pushed iWeb with our teachers and students. We now have dedicated server space on site so that students have the option of publishing to the FTP Server, making their iWeb public OR publishing to their Local Folder on their computer. Two of our grade levels chose to use iWeb this year for SLCs and the students included work demonstrating their learning in classes as well as their own reflections for our newly adopted Middle School Student Learning Profile. Next year, iWeb will be used at all grade levels.

Using iWeb as a platform to be the umbrella for their learning has proven to be a platform that we are going to continue to support at our school. We are very proud of the growth and reflections that students have demonstrated throughout the portfolio creation process. I want to stress, the most important component of the SLCs is the communication that occurs between the student, the parents and the teacher during the SLC time. iWeb was the perfect platform for our students to organize the conversation about learning.

View Jonathan’s Portfolio for an example:

The feedback from the parents was extremely positive. The students were more engaged using the iWeb platform and the teachers spoke favorably of the iWeb platform for its ease of use with minor technical difficulties. It was a win-win-win for everybody!

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Shifting our Schools – EARCOS Admininstrator’s Conference

Amanda — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:37:47 +0000

When I was on Jeff Utecht’s SOS Podcast a few weeks ago with Jenny Luca, Tom Barrett and David Carpenter we spent our time talking about what makes the shift happen school-wide. The Essential Question: How do we bring school’s forward at a more rapid pace? I keep coming back to the same answer to this question – we must educate and engage all stakeholders within the school community. Of course, we educate the kids – they are the point of first contact and focus. In my role as the Technology Integrationist, I also have been given the charge to educate my teachers, my administrators and my parents. I do not say “my” lightly… in my opinion the teachers, administrators and parents are just as important as the students when it comes to shifting our schools.

My partner, Andy Torris, and I presented at the EARCOS Administrator’s Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia where we focused our presentation for the administrators and the parents. Moving Principal Epistole’s to Blogs and Podcasts with Style highlighted how we have organized our communication plan at our school. I don’t mean to toot our own horn here, but the way we are communicating now is working and working well to have all stakeholders involved in the process of shifting our school.

At the end of last school year, we had 10% of our teachers and a single administrator blogging as a form of communication with the parents. As of now, we have over 90% of our teachers and 100% of our administrators blogging on a regular basis to inform parents and bring them into the conversation. We even have student guest bloggers to bring the communication full circle. As a result, the parents are taking notice. They are noticing the connections that we as educators take for granted that our deliberate actions are giving our students a well-rounded and reflective education. Through PTSA meetings, parent coffees and screencasts, we are educating our parents about RSS feeds, which is helping them stay connected to the administrators, their children’s teachers, and even their own children’s blogs. We must be having success because our PTSA just started their own blog!

The message is clear: administrators must set the example about what and how to communicate. This goes beyond the traditional website which focuses on building an audience. The blog focuses on building a community. I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here, but recent adopters need to clearly see the difference. This is what is exciting about communication with all of our stakeholders! When we focus on building community, the shift in our schools is inevitable… people will crave and EXPECT the connections. The 2000 student and teacher blogs at my school provide the proof.

Earcos Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: earcos)

Seth Godin - Let’s her it for the blog

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Live Blogging from EARCOS Admin. Conference

Amanda — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:43:37 +0000

I live blogged Jeff’s session today about communication. Great conversation from people all over the world! Thanks for participating and we’ll see you at my session this afternoon!

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Shanghai k12Online Conversations

Amanda — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:20:06 +0000

I am amazed by technology still… good thing too! Every time I use technology or even think about technology, I learn so much more about connections through conversations with people around the world. Over the weekend, we met at Jonathan Chambers house for the continuation of our k12online conversation. Remarkable really – we all turned on iMovie and recorded ourselves wrapping up the sessions of the day and then Jonathan did an incredible job of editing the movies into what you will see below.

Dean Shareski, Clarence Fisher, Brian Lockwood, Jeff Utecht – none of these gents were in Shanghai with us, but were part of our conversation through U Tech TV in Bangkok. At one point, we even turned the computer so that they could watch a session with us. They would hear us make our comments and turn around to comment on the U Tech TV chat which we were keeping our eye on.

Playing with technology is simply fun and it’s an added bonus that it’s always educational!

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Edublogger Con Learning 2.008 – Why I Do What I Do

Amanda — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:38:51 +0000

How lucky am I?

To sit in the room with roughly 40 educators, talking about tech, sharing our thoughts, discussing what works, seeking insights and knowledge from those that have been there before. THAT IS WHY I DO WHAT I DO! I realize I’m yelling, but the bottom line is that with the above, students will only reap the benefits.

Below are things that made me think from Edubloggercon….I use their Twitter names so that you can follow them if you are not doing so already. Of course, they said so much more and I’m not sure if I’m accurately reflecting what they meant to say. They made me think though and then I thought some more…

@glassbeed – Expose kids to as much as possible in the middle school years as it will allow them to make research bases choices about the specialties they go into in high school and university. Blogs, Wikis, Skype, Digital Literacy… that’s our job as Technology Integration Specialists. With that said, the teachers need to know about the toolbox, but they shouldn’t feel pressure to use ALL of them!

@bcrosby - Kids are writing, kids are making mistakes, it’s okay… make the connections outside of the four walls of school. It makes learning real for the kids when they have a wider audience.

@jennyluca – 1:1 laptop school’s always have the pressure to be doing more than they already are doing. Why is that? Is that right?

@dearlibrarian – staring to use Twitter with the kids to get the message out about technology. What an amazing lady – I need to talk with her more.

@nzchrissy – Keeps Skype on in the classroom and pauses when someone calls in because it keeps the learning is real and current. Boundless enthusiasm…

@djakes We need a systemic approach! Focus on the Learning….

@adecardy - that’s me…Doesn’t a systematic approach to technology mean that teachers have to have a starter toolbox before the learning happens with the students? I feel like I’m doing so much on the tool side and I want to focus more on the learning side, but I struggle with how much should be in each teacher’s toolbox. I want to move the whole school forward together – not as little pockets of success… I want so much more.

We then broke out into group sessions with about 10 people in each group. I headed into a session with @julielindsay titled: What was your tipping point? How did you get where you are now? Excellent stories that let us know each other beyond or short talks at Edubloggercon. We then broke out into a session with @mscofino where we talking about Shifting an Entire School. Ultimately, organization change will shift only if you have leaders in the school and you tap into all resources from teachers, students, parents…

The phrases that stick with me most from the entire day?

@djakes Focus on the Learning.

@djakes – Educate their brains and hearts together.

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HIgh School Assessment for the 21st Century

Amanda — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:01:58 +0000

Tom Schimmer, Vice Principal
~Penticon Secondary School, Penticon British Columbia

Rob Horner, University of Oregon professor says,

Effective schools strive toward a community that has a common vision of goals and objectives, a common language of procedures and processes and common experiences through routines and outcomes.

Conversations in high schools are difficult because they are often entrenched it what they have always done. Ian Jukes calls it TTWWADI (That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It).

High Schools in the 21st century

HS needs to be ready for all kids – It is now more critical for the HS to be ready for the kids, rather than the kids be ready for high school.
HS must finish what has been started – Most students arrive in high school now with different experiences, skills, language, routines, and have a self awarness about their own learnin.
HS need to take credit for the successes – only to level at which you take responsibility for the failures.

High School Assessment Misrules

The idea of giving students a second chance is soft, but life is full of do-overs.
Academic rigor means setting unreasonable expectations, but it should be about providing accountability and support.
The punishment paradigm produces the epiphany, but more likely it encourages kids to quit.
Students who were unsuccessful didn’t try, but it’s more often a “can’t do” rather than a “won’t do.”

Traditional System

Students are penalized if they don’t learn fast enough.
What you do at the beginning of the course will always count against you.
Grades include all student attributes.
Prior knowledge has the largest impact on your final grade.
Assign the Task

21st Century System

We KNOW learning is an individual process.
We KNOW students can learn from what they did wrong and understand how to prevent it from occurring again.
We KNOW that letter grades are expected to focus only on a student’s ability to meet the Learning Outcomes
We KNOW that kids come in with different prior knowledge but have the ability to reach the same goal through differentiated instruction.
Reach the Outcome by using differentiated instruction (ex: assign give most difficult first)

Does Prior Knowledge Matter Most or Does Most Improved Matter Most?

Teachers should focus on…

Learning instead of teaching
Quality instead of quantity – don’t build the case or the collective of evidence to impress the parents
Improvement instead of one-shot deal
Confidence instead of anxiety
Depth instead of coverage

The New High School Reality

Student Friendly Learning Targets – Rather than Use the Pythagorean relationship to calculate the measure of the third side of a triangle, given the other two sides in 2-dimensional applications use “I can use the pythagorean theorem to find out the length of sides of right triangles.”
Rewrites and Test Reviews – Do they “get it” now? High school teachers will say, what if they blow off the first test. So you must actively re-learn or re-do before you re-write the test through after school help or an alternative.
Student Self Assessment – Use pre-assessment checklists to build confidence around learning targets talking about what kids CAN do. Also use checklists for post – assessment. The Proof Of Knowledge….
Descriptive Feedback – Use rubrics that have clear descriptors. The scoring guide should say, “if you want to move up to a 4 or 5 your should do this….”
Alternatives to the Pen and Paper Test – If students can demonstrate their learning in other meaningful ways, let them!

Some have argued that formative and summative assessments are so
different in their purpose that they must be kept apart… However, it
is unrealistic to expect teachers and students to practice such
separation, so the challenge is to achieve a more positive relationship
between the two. – Phi Delta Kappan September 2004

Plan for 21st century schools

NO Grades for Homework – anytime a student makes a first attempt at new
learning it should not be put into the gradebook until the teacher has
given descriptive feedback on the student’s work.
NO Late penalties – students shoudl be graded on quality of their work.
NO assigning a zero – it’s arbitrary and reflects what a student hasn’t
done rather than what a student knows. (If you give a zero and I’m
still passing, I will never do

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PowerPoint Presentation Facelift – Live Blogging at NECC ’08

Amanda — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:59:43 +0000

PowerPoints Again??

I suppose we go into each of these sessions with our own point of view. We read a description of a workshop or session, perhaps do a little research on the presenter and then go in hoping to get our needs met. This time I head to David Jakes and Dean Shareski’s One Hour PowerPoint: A Strategy for Improving Presentations. I’ve listened to strategy after strategy at various workshops and conferences, but it’s always good to get a refresher because I see and sometimes still do some very wrong things concerning PowerPoints.

All presentation materials can be found on the following wiki – http://jakes.editme.com/

Teachers are still doing some pretty bad things with PowerPoint. In 10 steps you can dramatically change how kids produce visual presentations. It’s not what the software does, it’s about what the user does!

1: Teach users biology – there is a broadband connection from eyes to brain. 30% processes visually 3% processed auditory… ability to communicate must be visually based!

2. Do not use bullet points
Limit Text – “Why would you use words on the screen when they do just fine in your mouth” – Seth Godin

3. Teach about intellectual property
Use FlickrStorm because it allows kids to search through licenses. Apply Attribution license to the pictures you put online and give credit to those you use. Choose pics and add to tray then download to that tray. Take the URL and provide link to kids and in presentations. For other great photos use iStockPhoto.

4. Teach kids Creative Commons and talk about intellectual property.

5. Teach them design by giving their slides a makeover
The goal is to change slides to turn them into a more compelling presentation
Strip away templates and start with blank slate and text
Find an image that is a metaphor for the idea.

6. Teach them to craft and sell a message.
A great beginning project is to have kids write a personal narrative and write a script that includes mulit-media applications. Write the script first, extract a storyboard, and then film.
Transfer the emotion of the script is what communication is all about.

7. Color and font choice matters. Yellow is the first color we see. Green means renewal. Red-danger alert. Blues and yellows work together. Deep blue – trust. Fonts Serif Font has the hooks which helps your eyes track when reading paper. San Serif Font without hooks should be used for projection (Ariel). Don’t use Helvetica with adults in America because IRS uses it!

8. Teach them to incorportate multi-media
Embed – Zamzar will convert files online for free.
Add ons Youtube vidoes for MS World ’03 and ’07

9 Teach them PowerPoint secrets
Do a Keyboard commands search on google
B key – goes black
W key goes white

10 Teach them to share
slideshare.net has featured presentations. Have students critique them. What elements of design engaged you or were unengaging?
sliderocket – build presentation online
Google Docs
Do Photo credits at the end

An excellent resources for presentations is The Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam

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My First Take on NECC 08

Amanda — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:14:43 +0000

Leading up to NECC, all I heard about was Edubloggercon, Edubloggercon… people were excited about it, but everytime I went online to investigate, it just seemed huge to me. I felt like Edubloggercon was going to be about the philosophy of technology rather than talk about tools. For this reason, I decided to give it a pass and attend all all day session about digital storytelling.

Carol Anne McGuire who is the ISTE teacher of the year led the session and she did so brilliantly. It was everything I was looking for in a first day conference session. It was active, fun, fresh, challenging… I was learning something new. Jeff Utecht said it perfectly in his reflection after his first day:

We both used the time as “Beta Time” time to learn something new, to be taught something new, to take risks, laugh, and talk about how these tools, these ideas can be/might be using in a classroom. We were looking for something new not rehashing the old.

My first day was all Beta Time. We took our video cameras as soon as we walked in the door, made a few new friends and filmed a short scene with a rough script in hand. After watching all of our short videos, we talked about storyboards and made out first storyboards for what we had done and where we were going with out story. The real fun started when we had to had over our storyboard to another group and they had to film our story. In the end, we got our stories back and incorporated sound and lighting into our composition using point of view that made it real. The day was a blast which is exactly what I needed for my Beta Time!

We are all now connected with each other through Carol Anne McGuire’s Rock Our World organization and her Moodle site. Great resources – great people – great BETA!

So I attach my final product that is by no means great, but considering that I didn’t know much when I walked in the door, I’ll give myself some credit. I do ask myself one question though: how the heck do I always get dooped into being the actor?? It’s so not my next calling…

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Student Led Conferencing Success!

Amanda — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:47:19 +0000

A special thanks to the SAS parent and student community for logging into The Outside Looking In blog. Your comments have inspired me which is why I have started this blog. As many of you know, I will be stepping away from the math world next year and will serve as the middle school Tech Integrator. I am thrilled that I still get to work with middle school students and thrilled that I’ll be working with all teachers and students across middle school to bring tech into their world.

Thanks for attending Student Led Conferences! We had over 85% of our parents and students attend which are pretty good numbers considering that we have so many out at the Model United Nations conference in Beijing. Last year, only the 8th grade tackled student led conferences. Now, the entire middle school has embraced this dynamic event. Students are telling their stories and are becoming active and reflective learners.

I extend a special thanks to Alexi and his mom as well. The twitterverse and educators around the world have expressed their interest in how we at SAS use blogs as part of the student led conference process.

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