Lessons Learned

We just started our two weeks of time set aside to build our learning community at Hsinchu International School (HIS). On Monday morning each staff member shared photographs that represented their lives outside of school. The new educators really connected with the returning teachers as they talked about photos of family, travel, hobbies and interests. We also enjoyed learning new things about returning members of our community. It was nice not feeling rushed and having to go and DO SOMETHING.

Our seniors came in for the afternoon to meet the new staff and to answer questions. It was something to hear them talk about our student learning outcomes, student Choice period, internships, community service, our tight school community, deeper learning, expeditions, etc. They really understand what our school is about.

Tuesday morning we enjoyed a discussion about change and the transition that follows it.  Rick Pierce of Rising Sun Consultants lead the discussion from Pennsylvania via Skype video. A big take away for me was that our school leaders took the time to validate the changes our new and returning staff are going (and will go) through. Rick reminds us that it is the transition after the change that we really need to be aware of and be ready to discuss within our community.

Our principal, Brent Loken, had everyone do a little homework reading Alfie Cohen’s article entitled Progressive Education: Why It’s Hard to Beat, But also Hard to Find. We listed on flip charts the 8 values Alfie writes about as being essential to be a progressive school. Everyone was asked to take time to respond to specifically to each value by writing on each flip chart a reflection, a question or an example of the value from their experience. We then broke into pairs with a returning and new teacher choosing one value to discuss. They then shared ideas and worked to rank how HIS is doing on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most progressive.

Each team then presented to the whole group their reflections and where they ranked our school. We will now look to set aside time each month to revisit one value at a time, review the gaps and look at potential action steps to take in getting us closer to 10 for each value. Our new educators really brought many new ideas and perspectives to the discussion. I am looking forward to digging down deeper with everyone as we further discuss these values and our efforts to support them at Hsinchu International School.

New educators to international schools around the world are arriving at their new homes with feelings of excitement and trepidation as they go through the transition process. Questions will come to mind…

“What will it be like living in this new country?” “What adventures await me?” “Will I connect with my fellow teachers?” “Are they open to collaboration?” “Will my creativity be allowed to grow here?” “Will we have a strong learning community?”

With human resources staffs working overtime to help new teachers set up their new homes and become familiar with their neighborhoods, it is important that we help with the emotional transition within our schools. The setting up of new teachers in their homes is just half of the transition process.

The second half of the transition is the supporting of new educators to feel accepted, appreciated and validated for what they bring to the learning community. This seems pretty obvious but think about how fast paced the start of school can be and how quickly we often start rolling without taking the time to build community and to reach out to new staff members to get their opinions.

We need to, from day one, ask our new partners in learning to share their backgrounds and to expand upon what they can bring to the collaboration table. What were some of their most successful lessons? What units of study at their previous school really hit a home run for the students? What areas of professional learning are they most excited about?

Then pull up the curriculum map for the coming year and share the first unit of study. What worked from last year? What do you want to improve? Does your new team member(s) have any ideas to help enhance the unit. Reach out and VALIDATE the new teachers. This effort not only helps improve your lessons but it supports the second part of the transition process by helping our new staff members feel valued.

To go a step further for coming years, think about setting up a professional development wiki each spring in your virtual learning environment/classroom management tool where returning staff members and new hires for the coming school year can post what they would like the start of the year professional development to be about and what they could possibly share with the community. Start asking the new folks for their opinions and expertise even before they arrive!

New eyes mean new perspectives offering opportunities to improve our schools. Work to make the most of them.

Chris O’Neal invited me last year to do a couple guest posts to his regular Edutopia blog. I wrote one again this spring after reading in The International Educator about the growing need for international educators. The post was eventually published in July and is getting several readers asking questions. It would be great if any international educators reading this could take a few moments and add your replies to the questions being asked. Thanks!

Edutopia: It Is a Great Time to Teach Abroad

I recently listened to the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast #110 which focused on teaching students good presentation skills. Joyce Valenza pointed to their efforts to get students to think about their message and the importance of using images over text whether one uses Powerpoint/Keynote, video, PhotoStory, etc.

This reminded me of an exercise that our 7th grade students did this past year. They were prompted to choose an emotion to then use images and music to express. They could use any digital delivery tool as the focus would be on the message and the audience understanding the depicted emotion. The students used GarageBand to create their own music and ArtRage to draw the final slide that named the emotion.

It was a starter assignment to get the students thinking about how to improve the design of their presentations and to prepare them for upcoming projects where they would take their persuasive, position and autobiographical essays and create image and musically rich interpretations of each.

With almost all of the 7th graders being ESL learners, this was an especially important music and visual literacy learning opportunity. Take a look at an abbreviated version of a student’s video on sadness.

Note: Also posted at U Tech Tips

Hsinchu International School (HIS) follows the common principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). One of these principles is the “demonstration of mastery” via the Exhibition. The Exhibition is the public demonstration of student learning. Our 8th and 10th grade students did their Exhibitions this past week before fellow students, faculty, and parents. Next year we will have our first graduating class who will join the other two groups in Exhibition evenings as they move on from Institute I (grades 7 & 8 ) and Institute II (grades 9 & 10).

I was very impressed with our students especially noting that most of them are ESL students who come to HIS with very little experience presenting before an audience. They quickly have opportunity for crafting their presentation skills as HIS students routinely share their learning from their class Expeditions during our twice weekly all school gatherings.

The 8th graders focused their presentations on how they were making progress towards reaching our Five Student Learning Outcomes. They used examples from their classes using images, video, audio recordings and text to document their learning. As one of the Learning Outcomes is “Effective Communicator”, I especially enjoyed how the students used good speaking skills, authentic images and excellent design in their presentations.

Three administrators will join us for our June 12th Shifting Our Schools podcast. We will be seeking to understand why from a leadership position it seems so difficult to shift our schools.  Rick Pierce, Educational consultant, Andy Torris from Shanghai American School and Struan Robinson from International School Bangkok will be our guests.

As I am not an administrator, I am not in a position to comment on this topic from a admin point of view. While Jeff and I have commented numerous times on what is needed to help schools shift, our number one conclusion is that administrators must lead the effort.

I really am looking forward to hearing what Andy and Struan have to say and how Rick might respond. Rick has been working with the leaders of my school, Hsinchu International School, over the past year and a half. Rick’s background as a professor at Penn State University and as an administrator at the Milton Hershey School puts him in position of really understanding how to bring about change and the transition process that follows it.

Rick points out that schools often put their energy into coming up with new programs leading to change but the do not think very much about and plan for the long transition that follows the initial change. The first season of our SOS podcast ends with this very important discussion. It should be a very good one.

Chris O’Neal will join us this Monday for the SOS podcast. We will be discussing the Essential Question of whether or not we need standards for technology as a subject area. If technology integration is the process of finding of ways where technology can help teachers of math, science, music, etc. reach their own subject area standards, then the answer seems pretty clear.

Thus, on first glance, it doesn’t seem that we need standards for technology. Yet, we need to ask ourselves where are we hoping the technology will take us? As we speak about in our the SOS podcast, we want our schools to shift from a 20th century learning focus to what EduBloggers term “21st Century Learning”.

It is these 21st century learning skills that do need standards and benchmarks that just like the technology, need to be integrated in all curriculum areas of our schools.

Three years ago we went through the process of reviewing and defining our technology standards at my old school of HKIS. A team of teachers, instructional technologists, librarians and administrators from the start looked at learning and not technology tools to drive our committee work. After months of research and discussion, we came up with the “Information and Communication Literacy” standards and benchmarks that focused as the name implies totally on the handling and communication of various forms of information.

What really drove home the point that technology is just a tool to support learning is that we didn’t spend one moment in standard creation or the dreaded wordsmithing. We simply adopted the very forward thinking “Academic” standards and benchmark that another committee had previously created! They already had begun the process of bringing 21st century thinking skills into our curriculum by making them the learning outcomes for all our academic efforts.

I wrote a short piece for our school yearbook describing how being a 1:1 laptop school affects our learning community. I cover just a few of the ways these wonderful learning tools affect the way we communicate, organize ourselves and learn.

The 1:1 Apple laptop program drives much of the learning at HIS giving students and teachers access to numerous software programs, online tools and the Internet. From early morning through the evening, our community of learners uses their laptops to communicate, gather information, organize their day, generate learning projects, and expand the learning community.

Students start their days by checking their Google email accounts for any messages from fellow students and teachers. The next step is to log in to our classroom management Web resource named Moodle. Moodle is a virtual learning place where teachers post homework assignments and use several tools like forums, wikis and Web site link directories to manage their courses. Moodle also brings our community together by listing important dates, links to our student-created videos and online photo slideshows.

Accessing information is central to the learning expeditions our students and teachers take together. Whether venturing forth in teacher created WebQuests or pursuing one’s own questions, the laptops make inquiry learning a significant part of our curriculum. Online textbooks, simulations and Web site resources add to the information rich environment.

The student MacBooks come with the iLife suite of multimedia software programs that provide the instruments to:

-edit and manage photo collections
-shoot and edit video
-create multimedia presentations
-generate original musical scores for multimedia projects
-record and edit podcasts

Moving into the evening, students check Moodle for assignments and updated information from their teachers. They might log into their Google Documents account to revise an essay they are sharing online with their teacher. Or maybe they are just starting an essay or video project so they go to their Mindmeister concept mapping Web site to brainstorm their ideas which can then be reviewed by their teachers. Finally, it is time for reflection and seeing what is happening in the world. This is when students check their favorite news sites, think about their learning and go to their blogs to record their thoughts.

We will be discussing this question in the SOS podcast this week. As an Instructional Technologist much of my work deals with the integration of technology into instruction and assessments. The integration process begins from the big picture (Macro) by looking at the needs of the students and teachers as we design the curriculum as well as when we create a learning and technology plan focused on student learning. The other approach is when we collaborate working on individual lessons (Micro) to reach the stated learning objectives.

The Macro:  Learning and Technology Plan || The Curriculum Development Process

We recently formed a committee and are working on our “Learning and Technology” plan right now at Hsinchu International School. The process centers upon how we work to have our students reach the five learning outcomes. The Learning Outcomes are:

• Effective Communicators
• Critical Thinkers & Problem Solvers
• Persons of High Character
• Active Learners
• Community Contributors

There are three main ways we work to help our students reach these learning goals:

1. Instructional Models
2. Assessment Techniques
3. Learning Communities

We are using Mindmeister to map out and collaborate as we develop our plan. The screen shot above is our initial effort to prime the committee work. As one can see, there is no listing of any technology tools at the primary level. It is all about teaching and learning.

Looking closer at the mind map, one category is “Instructional Models”. Two models that we use frequently at HIS are project-based and inquiry. Our next step is to define what each of these models looks like in our classrooms and then look for ways that technology and Information & Communication Literacy (ICL) can support and enhance each approach.  If we were using a multi-level concept-mapping tool like Smart Ideas, the technology tools would begin to appear on the third level. The technology infrastructure is down at the fourth level, way in the background, providing the foundation for the technology tools that support the learning at the upper two levels.

We will use the Learning and Technology plan to design our professional development goals for the coming school year. The focus will be on improving instructional and assessment techniques while expanding the learning community. We will provide the PD to help educators learn the technology and ICL tools/skills that our plan shows as needed to support the 3 main categories that support our 5 student learning outcomes at the center of our plan and school.

The curriculum development process is a part of our plan in the Learning Community category. We use the Understanding by Design process to create our units of study that also involves the integration of technology and ICL skills.

The Micro: When working with teachers one on one or in small groups, we again use the UbD approach to determine what the learning will look like and how we will assess it to then work backwards in creating the instruction and content. As the collaboration progresses, we discuss possible ways that technology and/or research skills can support and enhance the learning. Just as with the broad, school-wide approach of the Learning and Technology plan, the technology does not enter the picture until we are far along in designing how to meet the learning objectives.

The learning determines the technology. Not the other way around.

They complained a bit, giggled and balked but finally started their presentations. Three eighth graders stood in my classroom in front of their MacBooks speaking out across the room as the laptop built-in video cameras recorded their speeches directly to iMovie. To graduate from Institute 1 (grades 7-8) at Hsinchu International School, all 8th graders must give a an end of the school year forty minute presentation to fellow students, parents and judges where they give examples of their learning demonstrating growth in our five student learning outcomes. With their “Exhibition” evening fast approaching, we realized that the MacBooks could become versatile feedback and learning tools.

After the initial recording session, the 8th graders reviewed their videos while making notes about their presentation skills. Whether it was poor eye contact, low voice output or killer smiles, the students found themselves facing undeniable evidence of their weaknesses and strengths as public speakers.

We could have used a camcorder and had the students take turns presenting but this would mean taking time to transfer footage from the camera to each student’s laptop. Students would also spend even more time sitting and watching classmates present when they could practice themselves and get immediate evidence of their progress. While we do set aside time for whole grade practice sessions, we are hoping that our version of the valuable technique of videotaping presentations will help our many ESL students not only feel more comfortable in their speaking but will push them to practice more on their own.

A coinciding use of the MacBooks is taking place in our 7th grade Language Arts class where Thomas Perkins has his students constructing a presentation skills rubric. The students first worked to create the rubric on paper. Now they are “laptop” videotaping themselves presenting for each of the criteria at the different score levels. Score a “4 out of 4” on the teaching rubric for Thomas in having his students engaging and learning about presentation skills by using thinking skills at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Thomas also gets bonus points for using technology to support and enhance the learning.

This was first posted at U Tech Tips.