Take a moment and think...

Something that concerns me with integrating digital tools into classrooms is making sure that they're used for more than "show". I hear a lot of stories about how awesome a tool is at engaging students...then disppointment strikes when the activity it's used for doesn't help students work towards learning objectives, it's an "add on", a carrot, a reward. There are times I have to admit that it's really hard to look the teacher in that situation in the eye and say "what a wasted opportunity."

As I take on more and more of a leadership role in terms of digital pedagogy in my school I've been looking at ways to ensure digital tools are being integrated authentically and to enrichen learning. I've found reflection tools to help educators measure how their planned activities fit in a scale of transformative learning and higher order thinking skills (one of my fav has to be the 'Technology Integration Matrix' from Florida).

But facilitating effective ICT rich learning experiences takes more planning and thinking then this. There's all sorts of things to 'manage' and admittedly, over the years some of these I didn't even know about until I was half way through an activity and something came up and surprised me. As I lead and support other teachers on their journeys I want to help make their journey a little less stressful and far less lonely than mine has been so far. So I want my colleagues to know about some of the "surprises" that have taken years off my life and damaged professional connections because of their timing and implications. Just being aware of things like relevant department policies, copyright (yours, mine, ours, theirs), digital citzenship concerns (cybersafety, data management) - to name a couple of things - puts a whole new level of thinking into my planning around the integration of digital tools. And now @shanetechteach and the comments on his post are opening a whole new layer of thinking and considerations..it's making me wonder if this is all worth it, I mean surely teachers think of this stuff...

That's what led me to start thinking about some sort of "risk assessment" scaffold for digital tools. It was my drama background and the management of physical activities (clowning's quite dangerous you know - and I won't even mention stage fighting) that made me think in those terms. Having come up with the idea I turned to a couple of my "gurus" and asked for their input, @shanetechteach has been my sounding board with a lot of this and it's been interesting to read the impact my questions and idea has had on his thinking, which he discusses in his latest blog entry here.

What I'm trying to develop isn't a "risk assessment" tool anymore, it's a thinking and planning tool. It's all well and good for teachers to find a fun tool they want to use in their classrooms, but they also need to ensure it's being used validly and in an informed way.

Ignorance is not an excuse, and the reality is that, as @cnapi5 points out in his reply to @shanetechteach's post, there is a murkier side to the internet and technology that we don't often discuss. My challenge at the moment is coming to terms with how I encourage my colleagues to integrate digital tools while also ensuring they've considered all aspects of authentic digital tools, digital citzenship, copyright, data management, and the complicated waters of conforming to departmental policy.

Honestly, at first I thought it would be easy - turns out it's not. I'm in version two at the moment (and two versions couldn't be much different and still orginate from the same idea if I tried) and I'm not content with it yet. I'm hung up on a couple of worries - how to shape it so that despite the seriousness of these concerns it doesn't just see teachers go "too hard, not doing it" (in relation to the tech or the document); how to give it the scope it needs (cause you can lay money on there being something I haven't even considered).

I admit there's also a degree of hesitation in putting forth the idea of a tool like this - I'm worried colleagues may see it as insulting to their professionalism, as though they don't plan effectively. It's not that, it's just that so many of us (and yep, I've done it) have no idea about some of this stuff, where do you even start thinking and planning for these things? I would like to give them a tool to help them start, to encourage them to pause for a moment and think about it...

Image: 'Pause and Think' by mabar @flickr.com

Fighting the Resistance

I procrastinate...a lot. I always have. I have been a last minute finisher since high school, throughout university and in varying degrees during my teaching career. It's not that I don't know what I need to do, often I spend a lot of time thinking and plannning what needs to be done - often writing a "To Do" list anywhere from three to ten times before actually starting it. I will agonise over the thinking processes behind things but then stay up till the wee hours of the morning the night before a big presentation to implement my big plans. A lot of the time this has worked for me, it's challenging and exciting for me to have to think quick and improvise. However, I must admit that there have been times when it's been an appalling failure and everything has fallen apart around me.

For example, the last three days I've known exactly what needs to get done before Wednesday (our first Student Free Day of the year, where I will be thrown into my new role with little to no preparation), I even had a colleague come over and help do some of the planning. I've written my list (three times to the count - once on paper, once on my touch and once on my igoogle page), I've got my random notations and footnotes to remind me what needs doing, I've had time...but nothing's happened so far. I literally sit down, open a word document, organise my notes and sit with poised fingers over my keyboard...waiting. As each day has ticked by I've gotten slightly more internally stressed about exactly how I make my rather long list get ticked off before the deadline.

The thing is this...I know eventually it'll get done but I need certain things to align and fall into place in order for it to happen. For example, the right mix of songs to flick through my playlist is essential to my productivity. The problem is I can't predict exactly which ones will work on any given day...what worked yesterday might not work today, then again, it might. Or I may have had just the right workout at taekwondo training - mind you, to hard a session and I'll be wiped, to soft and I'll have excess energy and I'll be squirming in my seat. Maybe I'm the Goldilocks of productivity.

Image: "Block it out" by dotbenjamin @flickr

In all honesty, I am making excuses. I am not being disciplined, restrained, focused and therefore I am losing a battle with the Resistance. I am resistant to returning to work, I am resistant to accepting a new role (I want the job, don't get me wrong - just nerves starting to hit), I am resistant to the idea of giving up some of the indulgences I've come to enjoy over the holidays (my pyjamas and I have never been so close). The Resistance is strong in me.

This morning as I wrote out my list in increased detail I realised I'm going to loose this battle and miss my deadline if I don't do something about it. So, it is now official - I am fighting The Resistance.

It started simply enough - I sat down and committed two nights a week to writing blog entries. I even have the topics picked out a week in advance with a vague outline of what I could talk about (my touch is synced and will remind me...it's so supportive). Now, I'm sure you'll realise how big a step that was for me - I _planned_ something. Guess what? Half an hour ago my touch buzzed me and I told the cat and hubby I had to go play blogger for a little while, plugged in my playlist and found a song that fired me tonight (it turned out to be Cake's "Going the Distance" tonight) and got on with the job.

I've broken my list down into smaller bites and with shorter deadlines - tonight it's the unit outlines and assessment planner dates (at the very least).

I am determined that I will win this fight. I started 2009 the way I intended on finishing it - ahead of the mad rush of an impending deadline, enjoying the creativity of those around me and the opportunities offered to me and this Resistance cannot be permitted to stop those plans.

So, what do you do to fight your Resistance?

Wikified English - Pt 2, HOW?

In my last post I wrote about the hypertext, "unconventional narrative" unit where students will publish short stories within a wiki with hyperlinks to show the intertextuality of their work with other texts. That post looked at WHY I am passionate (and more than a little excited) about this unit, in case you missed it you can read about it at - Wikified English - Pt 1, WHY?

Working past the WHY on this bright idea (please make sure you read that with a degree of self-deprecation...I have a feeling this project is going to become consuming) I'm moving into the HOW phase and I've been researching and collating resources for the unit the last few days and mulling over how to approach the task - with students and staff. Part of this is identifying what skills they're going to need I'm expecting a degree of resistance from students and staff and I'm trying to remember baby steps while I collate and plan.

Whenever I start work on a unit like this (totally new and included emergent - are wikis really emergent these days? - technology) I spend a fair bit of times brainstorming what skills and knowledge will we need to know in order to succeed? Usually I do this on paper, and it ends up fairly messy. Because I'm on holidays and I've had some time I had a play with Webspiration, the online version of Inspiration, a great mind mapping tool I've used with students in the past. This is how the first draft has turned out:

As I say, it's only a draft and there's probably a gazillion small things I haven't thought of, things I consider "basic" and need to consider.

So...HOW do I get my staff and students to the point where they have the necessary information? We get into the nitty gritty of the sequencing...if the above is kind of like my ingredients list, what's the method to use?

In the past I've started thing small - just my classroom, just one other teacher...this time it's eight classes of about 25 and the eight staff. I suppose I'm lucky in that I am one of the teachers and there's probably about 20-30 really competent students with our MLS from my classes last year that I'll be able to draw on for some help. There is also a couple of very keen staff who, while they don't yet have the skills want to learn. Given the situation my usual method isn't going to work.

Since the teachers need to understand what they're managing (notice a change in my usage here - for the majority they're going to be spending a lot of this unit learning, not "teaching"...oi, this is going to be a massive unit...is it too late to back out?) I'm starting with them on the student free days - doing some quick activities, providing a collection of resources, and workshops and support throughout the unit.

Then we work together on helping the students...this really will be a situation where we all need to collaborate to make sure this works...Staff and students are going to find it hard to approach this task in a 'traditional' way...or am I unduly complicating things?

That's a thought to ponder in tomorrow's post I think.

Planning for 21st Century

Through my Twitter network tonight I stumbled upon yet another blog of high interest for me. Shanetechteach over at My Journey with Digital Pedagogy works in the same system as me and it turns out he's one of the Advanced Pedagogical License holders (I achieved License level June this year) - so he's definitely one I'll be watching keenly from now on :)

A few days ago now (it's been reporting time...I'm behind on my twittering and blogging...four days till holidays...) he posted about the ways we plan and measure digital learning here. He points his readers to a fabulous wikispace looking at Blooms Taxonomy as revised for the 21st century. While this isn't the first time I've come across this wiki, or the concept of a Revised Taxonomy, it was a less than gentle reminder to "stay the course" with moving things beyond where they are currently with my teaching and staff.

Over the last few days I've started mapping out the Blackboards and online spaces for next year's classes and have been considering just what Shane asks - how do I plan it so that the ICT is completely embedded, especially when some staff are still resistant (afterall I got handed resources for one of my classes next year - NOTHING is digitised and I can't find anything on the network either...I'm scared about where to start with that one to be honest). Thanks to Shane's post ringing some bells in my mind there are a number of tools that spring to mind now to consider as I plan.

1. Blooms Taxonomy Revised
2. An analysis of the essential 21st Century Skills
3. and this great image I came across through my blog surfing a few weeks ago:

Thanks, Shane for making me think a bit more about this and connect some of the dots that have been eluding me all week!