Over the weekend, the students performed at our spring drama event called Murder in the Air which is a comical dinner theater production. The play was presented well as the audience members were active participants throughout the whodunit production. The audience sat at round tables just as if they were at a banquet because we gave them a bit of group work during intermission.

As a group, we asked them to discuss who they felt was the culprit based on clues given throughout the first half of the performance. Rather than simply having them write their guesses down on a piece of paper, I used Poll Everywhere to set up a website that would allow people to vote. I opened the website on the iPads we use at school and then bookmarked the site so that an icon for Murder in Air was on the Homescreen of the iPad. The audience loved this little piece of technology by voting on the iPad and they enjoyed seeing the realtime results projected onto the wall.

To take it a step further, we allowed individual participants to vote for the culpret using their phones.

Individual Text Results

They would text a number and then identify the culprit in their message using a pre-assigned number. The adults and kids alike enjoyed watching the bar graph update by the second and they seemed to text several times just to see the graph change!

It was something so simple but yet so much. We were able to showcase a bit of technology and show off our new school App that is available on the iTunes App Store by placing the Murder in the Air icon next to the SAS App.  Just a pinch of marketing…

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Before the Apple Distringuished Educator Asia Institute began, I headed on down to Singapore with a few other ADEs to be part of Final Cut Pro training.  I’ll admit, I’ve opened Final Cut Express a few times but I haven’t really spent too much time with it.  It, along with Final Cut Pro, is the type of program you need to sit down with for a big chunk of time so that you can process and put all of its intricacies deep inside your head.  I’m walking out of the training inspired because I actually see a use for this dynamic program even at the middle school level.  As a teacher, I can’t wait to get back to school so that I can tape something with several cameras and put it all into Final Cut Pro.  My biggest question that I have is this:  What types of Final Cut projects are schools doing with their students?

Ripping, Rolling, Slipping, Sliding… I kind of feel like they are lyrics from a 60′s song but we are talking about a mighty powerful piece of software.

So, two questions:

What types of projects are you seeing from students using Final Cut?

Do you think it’s necessary to have Final Cut Pro for schools or does Final Cut Express do the job?

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We have been VERY busy planning the Shanghai Student Film Festival over the past several months. This has turned out to be such an amazing experience for so many of our middle school studentsin my school. This year, more than ever, students are creating content and displaying their knowledge using multimedia software on our Macs. The actual S2F2 event is tomorrow (more on that later) where we’ll have about 400 students from around Shanghai gather in one place to celebrate our films.  What is special about S2F2 this year though is that ALL students in our schools have been able to be a part of S2F2 activities.

This week, we have been fortunate to have Mr. Scott McCloud visit our campuses as part of the S2F2 lead up. Mr. McCloud works a great deal with digital comics and he is an incredible storyteller. Students listened to him give a student oriented TED Talk for a full hour and he had them eating out of the palm of his hand. He is a master storyteller! The way he demonstrates the use of an infinite canvas to share stories speaks to me.  He even wrote a recent blog post about Prezi – of course, I love that after my first prezi last month!

After the TED Talk, Mr. McCloud worked with all of our 6th graders in their art classes. The 6th grade students are staring a comic unit and they were able to learn from the best during class! Thank you so much to Mr. McCloud for visiting our campus. He’s a professional and better yet, he’s a genuinely nice man!!

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As we move into full swing for our 1:1 planning at my school, we find ourselves in the position of celebrating and over-communicating about what we’ve been able to achieve with a laptop cart program. I decided to use prezi as it’s like a Keynote, but it’s much more dynamic to share those big picture ideas.

The big picture about our cart laptop program is that we’ve been able to achieve a lot of in a short amount of time across all disciplines in the middle school… must be the great software and the great technology integrationist!

This prezi presentation has given parents, board members, our superintendent, teachers and our students the knowledge that we use tech everyday across the board… at least that’s the feedback I’ve received so far. Just imagine what we’ll be able to do when every child has a laptop in every class!

I think that’s another prezi!

To view the entire presentation, click here!

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The Shanghai k12 LAN Party kicked off today with a group of 12+ educators who met at my house this evening for the first of a four part series centered around the free k12 Online Conference.  This is the third year that we’re hosting this professional development event and I am still inspired by the mere fact that it’s even happening at all in Shanghai.  There are many reasons to avoid participating in this event:

• The main conference site is blocked in China most of the time.
• The internet in China can be unreliable and slow.
• One of the founding organizers, Jeff Utecht is no longer working in Shanghai.
• Teachers could be giving up to nearly 12 hours of their personal time on evenings and weekends to attend the four sessions of our LAN party

We’re pushing past all of the obstacles – they mean nothing to us!

With the help of my colleagues Jonathan Chambers and Simon May, we have or are in the process of downloading all sessions before we meet as a group.  Tonight, when the teachers walked in the door we handed them a USB that had Stephen Heppell’s Preconference Keynote on it as well as several of the first sessions posted early last week.  We took the internet out of the equations, giving alternate access to the presentations.

Through Skype, we brought Jeff into our conversation live from Bangkok.  Jeff then streamed our conversation live on his UStream channel U Tech TV.  At one point we had 25 educators from around the world, listening in on our conversation and chatting questions and replies to our real-time conversation.  Brian Lockwood from Japan… Allanah from New Zealand – we were having a global conversation around learning.  Jeff was and will continue to be part of our conversation.

The remaining obstacle is the amount of time educators are giving out of their personal time.  It’s our belief, the k12 Online Conference is a dynamic teaching and learning event complete with engaging presentations that draw life-long learning in for collaborative conversations. Andy Torris recently wrote about this his a recent post:

If you ask me, it is at least 50% the responsibility of the “leader” to have the “follower” want to be engaged.

All of the teachers part of our conversation this evening were engaged because we were all the leaders and we were all the followers – that’s 100% of the responsibility in Andy’s view.  Through building these types of Learning Communities, teachers become even more empowered to increase student learning.

Our next Shanghai K12 Online get-together will be this weekend.  If you just happen to be in Shanghai please visit our Shanghai K12 Online wiki and sign-up to join the continued conversation.  Thanks to Jonathan Chambers and David Gran for our logos over the years.  We’re making quite a collection!

If you are not in Shanghai, it’s not too late to organize your own K12 LAN Party.  One of the greatest attributes of this conference is the fact that you can organize your mini-conference around your schedule.  The presentations are online for anytime-anywhere access.  Keep the conversation going – download a flyer today!

Jeff joins our conversation from Bangkok

Pictures from the Evening

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This week my school was re-accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. These are my notes from the WASC Presentation on Thursday after school and I post them in hopes that some of you may find them interesting! I walked away from this presentation feeling validated and inspired to continue the amazing accomplishments Shanghai American School has achieved under Dr. Dennis Larkin’s Superintendency. I am very excited to be a part of this journey forward. Our charge is clear and WASC provided us a confirmation of our intended direction:

• Upgrade our infrastructure to support technology
• Integrate technology across all curriculum areas
• Track professional development, connecting it to student learning
• Develop an school-wide assessment plan

Tech, PD and Assessment – These are a few of my favorite topics in education!

On the techie side, we live streamed the presentation between the two campuses using our polycom video-conferencing equipment so that both the Puxi and Pudong communities could be a part of the presentation… very cool for such a large staff!

———–

Dr. Dennis Larkin opened the joint WASC Visiting Committee Final Presentation on the Puxi and Pudong campuses of Shanghai American School. Tim Carr, Superintendent at American School in Japan (ASIJ) and chair of the committee took the podium for opening remarks and immediately commented that WASC has never had a team this big before during the accreditation process. Through speaking with all constituent groups, the WASC committee and report supports the growth and learning of Shanghai American School…. we celebrate together the phenomenal accomplishments since the midterm visit in 2005.

Organization of Student Learning

Areas of Strength

• Mission, Vision, and ESLERS (EAGLES) are infused across the school culture
• Process of the creating of the above was intentionally sequenced and involved all members of the SAS community
• Board has clarified it’s role in policy setting
• Orientation process has supported the significant increase of new staff
• OSTC has been addressed using advance technology and presence of upper admin
• Align programs of both campus
• Professional Develop is a robust network
• The leadership team has managed significant improvements over a period of rapid growth

Areas for Followup

• EAGLES further integrated
• Mission made more aware in parent community
• Board of Directors need to strengthen momentum regarding direction setting and movement towards goals
• Further communicate and celebrate what is same and what is different between the two campuses
• Track Professional Development and link to student achievement
• Reporting protocols for standards/benchmarks and EAGLES need to be visited
• Admin structure needs to be reviewed to support a school of this size

Curriculum and Instruction

Areas of Strength

• Standards based curriculum k-12 in all areas created collaboratively with teachers
• Dedicated professionals tiredlessly work to create/develop across the board
• Teacher leaders work collaboratively to reflect on practice for student learning
• The Professional Development program focuses on developing an extensive learning community

Areas of Followup

• Use Atlas to fine-tune and ensure alignment between documented and taught curriculum
• Quantitative measures need to be in place to assess instructional strategies
• Increase the integration of technology
• Promote integration of collaborative learning communities
• School-wide assessment program needs to be in place to evaluate student learning

Support for Student and Personal and Academic Growth

Areas of Strength

• All programs reflect the core values and EAGLES emphasizing the whole-child education
• Multiple activities and programs are available for students
• Nurturing environment all the way through admissions to learning programs
• Qualified staff across the board
• Active and supportive parent community
• Leadership uses a wide range of communication strategies

Areas of Followup

• Investigate Professional Development for ESOL training for ALL teachers
• More connection between activities, China Alive and the EAGLES
• Strengthen ties between support services and teachers
• Use Tech for communication methods to make info accessible across the board
• Celebrate uniqueness
• Continue to find the balance between academics/social and emotional growth of child

Resource Management and Development

Areas of Strength

• A thoughtful plan exists for growth
• Leadership has positioned school for long-term financial stability
• Good professional development funds
• Works to retain high quality faculty through a compensation plan
• Budgeting is aligned with EAGLES
• Purpose built facilities
• Community involved in long-range planning
• leadership recognizes challenges of keeping stakeholders informed about finances
• SAS has identified a desire to enhance revenue sources and uses good marketing strategies

Areas of Followup

• Finance department and admin need to identify ways to streamline budgeting
• Track asset inventory
• Focus on school wide building maintenance
• Educate the community on long-range planning processes

School-wide Areas of Strength and Areas of Followup

Strengths

An EAGLES vision… old Shanghai vs. new Shanghai…the instructional program has come a long way in a short amount of time. SAS is the model of what this city is….

• Impressive and honest self study involving all stakeholders
• Inspirational vision that provides guidance for the community
• Recruitment of a talented, passionate and committed faculty
• Responding to new faculty, orientation supports Professional Development for newbies
• Excellent and purpose built facilities on two campuses to sustain OSTC
• Significant progress on curriculum articulation and mapping which has brought coherence to the learning program
• Rich Professional Development opportunities
• Collaboration of community
• Opportunities for parents to work with the school
• Initiation of an advanced model of comminucation, marketing, admissions, fundraising
• Admission overhaul excellent keeps families
• Strategic Financial Plan
• Effective management during extremely rapid growth which enabled uninterrupted quality educational opportunities

Follow-Up

1. PACE – The pace has been fast over recent years.
2. PRIORITIES – Think 3 years, 5 years for long term health of the school’s educational program
3. PERSONNEL – A school this size will be recruiting a minimum of 50 teachers a year. Stay competitive.

• Develop Tech Infrastructure that will support integration.. the wiring must support the computer usage.
• Promote a Learning Community to support ongoing focus on improved student learning
• Set in place a consistent Assessment program that aligns with outcomes
• Continue to work at integrating the EAGLES across all classes and activities
• Devise ways to track the efficacy of Professional Development and link to student achievement, evaluation and goal setting
• Streamline budgeting process
• Board of Directors must become a strategic thinking body focusing on the school’s vision
• Board of Directors should ensure a smooth leadership transition and empower and support the new superintendent

EAGLES – We will SOAR as EAGLES into the future…

Fly Like an EAGLE SAS!

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