It has been so long since I last wrote here. The teaching life is busy...I've had my students write blogs, and I have read theirs, and tried to keep up with colleagues, articles, new learning, classes, and so on, so I have really barely had time to write myself. Now I'm in the final couple of weeks with the Teachers for Global Classrooms course, I'm starting to realize how important it is to just reflect, and understand how I want to apply everything I'm learning about. I've had some great responses from the teachers I'm in contact with in terms of the mythology project I've embarked on - or we have embarked on, now, since at least three of them are fully on board now. Kankam from Ghana, Helen from Ukraine, and Sowmya from India. What I am finding difficult is getting the whole piece coordinated, because of course the other three teachers have their own ideas, but I think once we get the students connected and we start exchanging stories, we can find our course with more confidence. I already feel less tentative than before since I have seen their strong response. Sowmya wote that they are celebrating Diwali, and that she wants to get her students to dramatize one of their myths in a performance, so I can't wait to see that. Helen has prepared letters with her students, and voiced the concern that their English is not that great - well, it's certainly better, I told her, than our Ukrainian! Perhaps we can pick up a phrase or two. So during the course of this unit, I'm going to return here and keep posting, so I can keep the course charted.

Moving Forward with Technology Integration

Student Accessibility: An Essential Component of Leadership in Technology Adoption

One of the most important realizations that I had during this course was the reason for the failure of schools to effectively promote technology integration in the classroom: they were not, in fact, trying to integrate technology. Instead, they were attempting to adapt technology to curricula and methodologies that effectively were not altered. As Christensen and Horn (2008) put it, they tried “to cram the innovation into its existing operating model to sustain what it already does.This is the predictable course, the logical course—and the wrong course” (p. 14). In my school, most teachers have been using computers, if at all, for students to type up reports and complete research. We have a number of laptop carts that go largely unused because teachers have not been trained properly on how to use or take care of them. There is also a certain amount of frustration because the laptops do not hold a charge for very long, so they cannot be used all day among the different classes a middle school teacher meets every day.

This is where the concept of disruptive technology becomes very important. If I can be funded through a grant to have at least a class set of iPads, it is possible that the situation, at least for my classes and for other teachers in my department who care to learn and share with me, could be turned around. The battery life on an iPad is supposed to be about 10 hours, which would eliminate the problem of having to recharge computers. There are so many advantages: iPads are lightweight, fast, can be used as e-readers, can be used as cameras, for videoconferencing – the possibilities are fascinating. What is also useful to school environments are the built-in accessibility features for students with disabilities like poor vision and dyslexia. Possibly there are other tablet-type technologies that are more cost-effective and have similar capabilities. The reason they qualify as disruptive technology is that they are less expensive than either purchasing another cart of laptops or buying iPads, because they have certain limitations, such as fewer applications or a less coordinated suite of applications; all of the handhelds have reduced word processing capability, although I am sure that will improve over time.

With all this, what I am saying is that in order to proceed as a change agent for technology integration in my school, my students need to have access to reliable tools on a consistent basis; that said, the first effort I make needs to be in securing that access. This summer I am researching and writing grants to that end. Next, I need to make my students' work available to colleagues and administrators; I already have some collaborators set up for the next school year, and hopefully more will join in. The project in which we are collaborating is a grade-level wiki; this year my students developed a wiki based on a novel from the core curriculum, and next year I plan to implement my ideas for the mythology wiki for seventh grade students. One of the first ideas I had was to incorporate machinima from Second Life into the wiki, but I realize that students must be over 13 years of age to participate in Second Life, and even then their movement within the MUVE is restricted. I am trying to find some similar technology to use; Pixton and Go Animate so far look like the most likely candidates,since there are no age restrictions.

In terms of leading my colleagues and others in technology innovation and full integration, I have long reflected on the following statement by Fullan (2002): “An organization cannot flourish--at least, not for long--on the actions of the top leader alone. Schools and districts need many leaders at many levels. Learning in context helps produce such leaders” (p. 20). In fact. I am and have always been a hands-on learner, so learning in context harmonizes completely with my leadership style. I am pairing up with another language arts teacher next year to head literary competitions, and we have already begun to discuss how to use technology to make the process run more smoothly and become more exciting for the students: for example, interviewing student authors and broadcasting the videos, both to the school and on a language arts wiki, and using those techniques to disseminate recordings by the authors or by others of their own works. Having students read their own work aloud is also a great editing technique. I am also going to participate in technology workshops with administrators and interested teachers. I am going to pioneer a Ning-based classroom network this coming school year, and I will invite other teachers, as well as administrators, to view my progress. This brings me back to my first point: it is absolutely essential to find the resources for students to gain accessibility; while many students have access and reliable Internet service at home, many others, including many ELL students who are from immigrant families, simply do not.

References

Christensen, C., & Horn, M. (2008). How do we transform our schools? Education Next, 8(3), 12–19.
Fullan, M. (2002). The change leader. Educational Leadership, 59(8) ,16–20.

Online Learning Modules

Reflecting on Differentiation: My Classroom Practice

Every year, among my students there are a few who enjoy reading and read at a much faster rate than the other students. One of the resources that I have come to value during this course and those preceding it a wiki. According to research done by de Pedro Puente (2007) wikis have proven effective in enhancing the experiential learning and the collaborative knowledge-building skills of students by providing various platform for interaction. I now have two wikis in my classroom, one for 7th grade students, and one for 6th grade students; each wiki is dedicated to a core curriculum novel, and the initial work on the wikis was done by students like the ones I have described. On Monday morning, I am presenting these sites to my fellow language arts teachers as part of our professional development program, and I am hoping to draw some of them in to participate in the wikis, and join me next year in creating a school-wide wki for student exploration of literature.

Other students in my classes have gradually joined in, using tools like Voki, Voice Thread, Slide Rocket and Glogster to create pages that illustrate, query, and discuss aspects of the novels. As a result, I am experiencing a natural process of differentiation, in which students are choosing their sub-topics and their means of expressing opinions and discussing literature online. As this is my first real experience with using wikis, there are some glitches and many things still to learn, but so far the experience has been highly positive. I have made a real effort to apply the UDL guidelines of providing multiple means of presentation, expression, and engagement in my lessons.

This past week I have used differentiation in implementing the lesson plan I wrote last week, using Visuwords and Learner's Dictionary, an online offshoot of Merriam-Webster for English language learners, for students to explore vocabulary such as “external”. “internal” and “reflection”, as part of a new chapter in their year-long autobiographical project. Stemming from the 6th grade curriculum, this lesson prepares students to compare and contrast the way others see them with the way they see themselves. Some students enjoy being photographed, so I took two different pictures of them, one posed and one random, as they kept the assignment in mind. One student who had been disengaged for weeks suddenly came to life, and completed planning for the chapter by describing his two photographs. This turned out to be quite successful with many students, as they were literally able to “see” themselves, and then make the transition to description. This moving from the literal to the abstract is an important part of development during middle school years. Other students were interested in using electronically-produced graphic organizers, and they chose among Inspiration, and two different organizers from Read Write Think (readwritethink.org), one a Venn diagram.

Before they began the planning, however, they used the Promethean board to do a similar comparison, using adjectives to describe how Byron from The Watsons Go To Birmingham sees himself compared to how his brother Kenny sees him, finding similarities and differences. They also used the board to discover transitional words used for comparison. This generated some discussion, and students worked in pairs and small groups to decide on which adjectives were common to both points of view; they also generated more words ,which were shared with the whole class. Groups were arranged by mixed ability levels. As Sabia (2008) states, “This is a critically important aspect of UDL — it recognizes that ALL students learn differently. Therefore, students with disabilities do not have
to feel that they are the only ones with learning differences” (p. 15).

Since many of my students are auditory learners, I played Mp3s of the novel, interrupting for questioning and response; I allowed students who were already doing so to read ahead during this time.This allowed them the space to freely learn at their own rate. Since I do not have enough books to send home with every student, I made the recordings available on the class blog, and gave CDs to students who do not have access to the Internet at home. Some students do have the book at home (having purchased or borrowed it from a library). The school is purchasing more books for next year, although I feel it would be wise to invest in iPads or e-readers of some kind. Amazon Kindle, for example, not has a lending library which would make investing in e-readers all the more cost effective. I am going to apply for another grant through our district foundation to acquire either ipads or e-readers of some kind. I also plan to use the UDL tools for creating a class profile and for setting goals.

All in all, this course has prepared me to truly integrate technology with the curriculum. I had been struggling to understand just how to do that, but with the introduction to UDL that this course has provided, along with the deeper understanding of how to differentiate with the use of technology, I feel far better equipped to deal with all of my students on a more individualized basis.

References
Canter, L., & Winberry, K. (Directors). (2001). Program 2: Introduction to learning styles, part two [DVD]. In C. Arnold (Producer), Learning differences: Effective teaching with learning styles and multiple intelligences. Los Angeles, CA: Laureate Education, Inc.

Curtis, C. P. (1995). The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963. New York: Delacorte Press.

de Pedro Puente, X. (2007) New method using wikis and forums to evaluate individual contributions in cooperative work while promoting experiential
learning: Results from preliminary experience. Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on Wikis. Retrieved from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/_publish/dePetro_WikiSym2007_ContributionsInCooperativeWork.pdf

National Universal Design for Learning Task Force. http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/index.shtml

Sabia, R. (2008) Univeral design for learning and meaningful access to the curriculum. TASH Connections. 14-21. Retrieved from http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/UDL_TASH_Connections.pdf

UDL Class Profile Maker. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/classprofile.cfm

UDL Goal Setter. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlgoalsetter.cfm

Cultural Inventories

Recently I developed a pair of cultural inventories that I used in a classroom project based on autobiographical writing. The first one is actually completed after students have learned about and discussed the concept of culture as an iceberg, with the surface or visible part of culture represented as the tip of the iceberg, and the deeper, "invisible' aspects of culture as the part that remains below the surface. Here is the link to the file.

Click here to take survey

Reflection

My GAME plan was developed to enable me to respond more effectively to student lack of self-confidence about the use of technology, and to their resistance to work collaboratively with anyne except their best friends; to increase my level of engagement with peers who either want to know more about how to use technology in their classrooms, or who have information to share with me; and to engage parents more directly in classroom projects as participants, rather than as bystanders or peopele who micromanage their children by doing their work for them.

In the first area, I was able to encourage students who had never used GarageBand before to try it, however I left options such as using Powerpoint and delivering a face-to-face presentation or using Voice Thread open. Most students were able to successfully complete projects, however there was one class that remained highly resistant, and with whom I had more difficulty. I resolved this problem by assigning peer mentors who had already completed projects to assist them with the technology. In this sense they were exposed to collaborative learning as a necessary approach. The problem with this class was that probably the project was too overwhelming in the sense that they were unused to research projects, so they had the double burden of learning how to conduct research as well as learning ew technological skills.

I have contributed to the technological conversation in my department by introducing peers to blogging, to converting printable documents into documents that can be completed online, and by showing them how to use Google Docs and programs like Wordle, which students really enjoy. In addition, I presented a workshop at a district symposium on innovative ideas, was able to overcome technical difficulties, and showed teachers a simple blog site called Kidblog (kidblog.org).

In terms of parent involvement, the research project my students were working on was about their respective cultures; some students turned in amazingly detailed work about their family heritage; one boy filmed his mother making arepas, a Colombian snack. Since i love to travel, I allowed some of my students to use photographs I took in Rome and Costa Rica. One of my Italian students is interested in theater, so I suggested that she do a project on Commedia dell'Arte; it turned out that her mother years ago had dome some wonderful drawings of all the principal characters, which I scanned for her Voice Thread project. For the next phase of our yearlong autobiographical project, a couple of parents have already committed to communicating with our class via Skype about the work they do. What i have learned through this course is that flexibility and adaptability are key to going beyond the limits imposed by walls, and allowing the imagination rein.

In terms of immediate adjustments to my instructional practice, I am creating a wiki with my 7th graders about a book they are reading. We began by brainstorming questions they have about the book, and i am assigning research and blog discussions based on their questions. Throughout the course I have been steadily applying new information to classroom instruction, and I have learned much from reading the blogs and wiki pages of my peers. My ELL students have been using Inspiration to plan their writing prompts; I can see that having the visual in front of them really helps them to organize their thoughts.

This has been a very enjoyable and informative course, and I am sure that information I have learned here will follow me throughout my professional career.