Category Archives: BJH

Organization is the Key to Success

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The final chapter of Christensen, et al provides some serious considerations to the types of changes and organization that a school can make in order to be effective and as the title suggests “innovative.”  As one of my teacher’s says on a daily basis to her students, organization is the key to success.

Available under Flickr Creative Commons from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/macbeck/3985839229/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Available under Flickr Creative Commons from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/macbeck/3985839229/sizes/m/in/photostream/

I think that that is a true statement for students that are looking at determining how to be successful, organizations figuring out how the make the best decisions, or keeping order within a household.  We all have our own organizational strategies that work for us; however, we are challenged as a collective unit to determine what is the most effective for our organization to become innovative.  What is best?

Within my district, we have an incredible amount of “lightweight teams” that make in-roads on various topics and some that do not.  Committees are formed to look at technology, Response to Intervention, department heads, writing across the curriculum, advisory initiatives, and a host of other options.  These lightweight teams represent various disciplines and grade levels in order to make the best decisions possible for the good of the students.  As students are our primary responsibilities and goals, teachers often overlook the importance of their committee work and the outcome that their decisions will have on students.

I look at our administrative team as the “heavyweight team” within my district because, coupled with the Board of Education, the primary decisions are made there.  Having a group coordinating the effort and goals of the district as well as making the major decisions is a collective good thing.  That being said, I feel as though this summer I have joined a “heavyweight team” with our technology roll out in the fall, I have been able to make decisions and assist in the planning across discipline, for all teachers. It has been an excellent experience!

What I think is often the hardest is to promote an architectural change within a school district.  These changes can often have a significant impact of teachers, their schedules, the number needed, and the like which makes it that much more difficult to promote an architectural change, especially in this climate.  However, the ways of the past are going to hold back students and teachers. Students must be exposed to 21st century learning skills, utilizing computers, and experiential learning opportunities.  As one of my colleagues said, so eloquently, last year – the train is moving out of the station, either jump aboard or get out of the way.  I am not a supporter for that extreme thinking because as educators we want to move forward together, as one, therefore we want to get everyone on board with change and innovation, especially with emerging technologies.

So, what’s the best way to organize a school?  Is it depending upon your school climate and culture?  Does it matter?  I think so.

1:1 Is Two Months Away

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I am excited and nervous about the fact that our 1:1 initiative will kick off in approximately two months, with the start of another school year.  There is much to do in order to get ready, but I am confident that it will get done.

We need to…

  • get the equipment
  • tag the equipment
  • update the equipment
  • provide professional development to the staff
  • discuss procedures and protocols with the staff
  • talk about how this will change teaching and learning (dramatically)
  • and a whole host of other items that go with this deployment

I am hopeful that we will be ready and excited for the challenge.  This initiative will be of significant benefit for not only our students, but our staff as well.  As many positive results we see with the students will be the result of many hours of preparation!  This all being said, I am also nervous about how the students will handle the devices and the educating that will be necessary of the students to understand the significance and the responsibility that our students will have with these devices.  It is an exciting time to be an educator in my district, but also what seems to be one of great change!

Mesmerized by iMovie

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With the end of any school year, students (and, teachers) begin to feel great excitement for the conclusion of a school year because of the looming three month hiatus.  Students take this opportunity to recharge their batteries in an effort to prepare for another exciting and invigorating academic year.  However, with this great anticipating for the end of the school year, teachers must captivate the attention of their students, draw them into the learning environment, and position students for success!

This year, I decided that I wanted to see how I could best captivate the attention and engage my students for the last week or so of school and so I decided to implement iMovie with my seventh grade students that had never utilized the program (educationally) before.  We were studying the Reconstruction Era, immediately following the Civil War, and for those you that might need a U.S. history refresher was the time period when the Union was attempting to put itself back together with much turmoil and continued racism.

I provided the context that their video would be playing at the Smithsonian Institution to commemorate their chosen topic relating to the Reconstruction time period.  We discussed the art of creating a video, documentary and what makes a good movie – thrilling, funny, special effects, the list went on and on for these seventh graders.  Their mission was to create a 2-3 minute video that best exemplified all of the qualities that make a good movie.

From that point on, they were unleashed into the world of iMovie, Apple computers, GarageBand, and other multimedia programs available to them.  I provided the guidance and the framework, was there to answer some questions, and assist with technical issues.  However, as I walked into the classroom each day I was amazed by how mesmerized my students were.  They were engaged, excited to come to class each day, couldn’t wait for me to finish welcoming them and answering any questions to that they could get to work!

I walked around the room in awe of how these students were taking still pictures, video footage they had filmed, music that they created on GarageBand, the Ken Burns effect through iMovie to make these movies come alive and truly represent their topic!  I was transfixed by how creative my students became and how much they enjoyed this assignment.  Students were proud of their accomplishments and could not wait to share their videos with the rest of the class!  It was a fantastic integration of technology, end of the year, and milestone for my students and myself.  I cannot wait to get back into the classroom to work on this with them again!

Interactive Whiteboards…Just Overhead Projectors?!

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Challenge

“Your Instructional Challenge is to revamp the usage of SMART boards within the school from glorified overhead projectors to aiding teachers in using them more interactively and for student engagement by providing additional resources and training to the faculty.”

Solution

So, how can I solve this?  I decided to take a four step process and narrow down the training for the teachers at my school.  I began the professional development by creating a Prezi that I could use as the focal point throughout the program.  At the conclusion of the professional development, I challenged our staff to think about where they are on the spectrum (apprehensive, projector, interactive and collaborative) and move themselves to a certain extent to the next level.  Obviously, I understand that this will take time.  As such, I created this resource that my staff members could utilize and refer back to in order to implement some of these changes.  Finally, I have set up 1:1 meetings with staff members to achieve their goals and show that I will do anything to help and support their professional growth within the area of technology.

My Reflection

So, what did I learn?  I learned that within any given professional development and new initiative, teachers need the time in order to feel fully comfortable and competent with any piece of equipment.  With the proper training and time, teachers can be empowered to do whatever it is they might want and can in turn enhance and inspire the minds of young learners across the globe!

Read Aloud

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With the title of the post, you may be wondering what is he going to write now about technology and reading aloud?

Throughout the course of a World War II unit with my eighth grade students, I have been doing a daily read aloud with my students so that I can model active reading strategies, incorporate a novel into the content, and have students work on their listening skills.  I am using Thin Wood Walls, which tells the story of Japanese American internment during WWII.  This topic is often overlooked when discussing the war efforts.

We ran out of time to finish the read aloud yesterday and we are transitioning out of World War II next week, which meant I needed to make a decision because I wanted the students to finish the text, but we only have one copy since I was reading the book aloud.  Thanks to technology, the students could finish the text.  I came home recorded the ending of the story in Audacity, exported the audio as an mp3 file and posted the file into a class folder within FirstClass.  Then, I sent an email to all of my students to listen to the five minute file in order to finish the text.

I am really excited to see how my students react and what their opinions will be come Monday.  But, I think about how without such technology tools this learning experience would have been solely within the confines of the classroom.  So, this is a step in the right direction to making learning materials available outside of the school building!  Hope they enjoy it.

My own personal triumph…

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I spoke in a previous post about teaching my students to “play” and achieve “personal triumphs” in order to have students be fully immersed and exposed to a specific learning technology. Glogster Sample I wanted to say that in response to those personal triumphs; my students exceeded my expectations for their Glogster assignment.

Here’s some background:

I introduced an assignment to my students using Glogster.  I hadn’t used it before in the classroom, so I was a bit apprehensive.  But, I learned about it first in this class and was amazed at the possibilities (after I spent time playing with it), so I knew I had to try it.  Within a matter of days, I had changed the way I was going to teach about industrial workers at the turn of the century (I know, it’s exciting stuff)!

  • Original Plan:  Take notes on the various labor unions, stage a mock strike (maybe 5 minutes in total), create signs to carry while we strike.  Exciting, right?
  • New Plan: Use Glogster to create advocacy posters for works at the turn of the century (Who is excited?? I know I am!)

So, I told my students that they would be creating a glog; to which I got a variety of responses.  Main responses were: “What the heck is a glog?”  ”Mr. Ryan, you’re kidding, right?”  ”Does this have something to do with Google?”

I think my laughter to these questions made my students realize that I wasn’t kidding.  I told my students that it was time to move away from getting paper, markers, pens, colored pencils, etc. to make a poster.  Times were changing and we were going to make online, multimedia posters (a.k.a. GLOG).

Well, folks, the glogs were presented today.  Let me tell you how excited I was about seeing the finished products.  My students really tackled these glogs with great enthusiasm!  I couldn’t have asked for any more creativity, excitement, or engagement.  I found my students loved coming to class, worked on their glogs at home (even on the weekend), and produced a high quality result!

Sample 2

In conclusion, I am calling this assignment my own personal triumph because my students were engaged, performed well, and succeeded in adding a piece of technology to their repetoire.  However, I do owe credit here to some for helping me get the ball rolling: Professor Vanna Pianfetti at the University of Illinois who sparked my interest in Glogster, Morgan Allen classmate and social studies teacher at  Lakes Community High School in Lake Villa for providing insight on how she utilized Glogster, and Barb Rebecca the Director of Technology at my school who gave me the go-ahead and supported my enthusiasm for this project!  And, of course, to my students that made this project a success because they believed in it and me throughout the assignment process!  Thank you for allowing me to have a true personal triumph with technology implementation.

Tip of the Week

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There are so many great resources out there for you to use in your classrooms.  I hope to provide you with an insight into some of them, especially as I learn more about these technologies in my graduate work.

When incorporating technology, we aren’t asking you to completely change your curriculum to include technology, but rather use a different medium.  Expand what you are already doing and think about it with technology as a part of the equation.

Here is a source that would be great to introduce to students:  Prezi

Prezi will teach students how to make interactive presentations online.  It’s easy; it’s fun; and, students will enjoy exposure to something new.  So, the next time you think about using PowerPoint for a presentation requirement, use Prezi instead!  It’s as simple as that.