GLOBAL PROBLEM SOLVING – From keynote to classroom

A key theme that emerged for me from the ISTE conference was the importance of collaborating to create solutions to community and global issues.


This theme was echoed throughout the conference in a variety of contexts including:







a) Keynote: Jean –Francois Rischard examined the role educators can play in global problem solving.
His key note (depressing at times) centred around 20 global problems that he believes we must resolve within the next 20years if we are to avoid massive and adverse planetary consequences.
To begin resolving these problems he thinks we need:
1) to approach each issue globally. Bringing the best people from all around the world together in one place to explore and create solutions.
2) to develop a mindset in the next generation… one that puts global thinking first and local and national thinking second.
His book: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2653


b) TEDx TALKS – Individuals Making a Difference





Fiona Grant and I were lucky enough to be guests at a live TED x Talks event. During this event several speakers shared their passions and commitments.
http://tedxdenvered.com/blog/2010/07/01/thank-you-for-making-tedxdenvered-a-success-post-1-of-2/

A highlight for me was the sharing from Dafna Michaelson. Dafna travelled the globe collecting stories about how communities have problem solved. See www.journeyinstitute.org
Dafna’s 7 minute TEDx talk illustrated how community problem solving might be facilitated.
This simple process involved:
1. Identifying the community.
2. Identifying issues
3. Suggesting solutions
4.Taking action.
We engaged in this process during intermission (see pics below) I was amazed at the diversity of issues and solutions that were generated. A positive feeling of working together to create solutions prevailed.
To hear more about Dafna’s project:
http://www.thebalancingact.com/show_segment.php?id=1844




c) Students Collaborating Across the World
Many high quality example of students involved in collaborate projects were shared throughout ISTE.
This is an important area that I believe needs to be explored further in New Zealand schools.
A fantastic resource to help communicate these ideas in numbers we can relate to is the miniature earth project: http://www.miniature-earth.com/
A selection of global projects that nurture rigorous collaboration and problem solving include:

Taking IT global

Rock Our World

ThinkQuest

Such projects I believe put the vision for our curriculum firmly into practice. They also provide a path for developing important relations and problem solving skills. Skills that may one take contribute to the maintenance of a peaceful nation.

How effective are the OLE's you engage with?

"You can build the Taj Mahal but it doesn’t mean anyone is going want to live in it”.
Source Unknown


The above quote rung true for me today during a workshop on ‘Online Learning Environments to Support Teacher Professional Learning’. I spent the majority of the time waiting for pages to load, losing my way and feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time required to participate in any of the activities.
This experience reminded me of the importance of continually consulting with our stakeholders on the effectiveness of our online learning environments.
Considering questions such as:
*Does supplementing ‘face-to-face’ with an ‘online environment’ enhance learning? How?
*What practices/conditions are associated with more effective online learning?”

Google Analytics may also be useful. Learn how to interpret and act on your data here: Beginning Analytics.


I would be interested in hearing what strategies you use to impact the effectiveness on the OLE's that you facilitate.

Poster Sessions at ISTE -2010

Posters are informal, booth-like interactions that involve teachers sharing a specific learning experience that they have facilitated.
In viewing these through a literacy lens the following ideas caught my eye. I was impressed with the ease in which these ideas had been implemented and the positive impact that they were having on student outcomes.

Photos, Videos, and Animation to Boost Language, Writing, and Comprehension
Adina Sullivan, San Marcos Unified School District
This poster session relates well to my previous post. It focused on how visuals help students increase valuable vocabulary, especially for reluctant or struggling readers and English language learners. It is well worth taking 5minutes to flick through these slides for key points from the research and ideas and resources to support the progression from oral to written language
http://adinaeducation.wikispaces.com/Conference+Presentations


I Can See Me Read – Using webcams for reading fluency
Timothy Frey, Kansas State University with Abby Houlton
This intervention includes having the student record as they read aloud in front of a webcam. The student then uses a self-correction procedure as they play back the video clip. The teacher then conferences with the student and the process is repeated. In pilot implementations, students have benefited significantly from this approach.
Click here to see the 1page research report.

Tiny Techies: Web 2.0 in the Early Elementary Classroom
Melodie Brewer, Dysart Unified School District with Cristy Diaz
Through the use of artifacts including student work and student voice this poster demonstrated the use of several different web 2.0 resources. Each resource focused on the development of one of the following three areas: communication, collaboration, and creativity.
See this fantastic resource for an overview, teacher support material and student examples.
http://www.melodiebrewer.com/ISTE%202010.html

Thanks to all those amazing teachers who shared how they are using technology to make a difference to student outcomes.

Learning with Primary Sources - Some Support

Workshop Title: Teaching with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress - ISTE 2010
Sharon Metzger-Galloway.

This hands-on workshop gave me an opportunity to explore the vast collection of primary sources available from the Library of Congress. See Fiona Grant’s Delicious links.

I attended this workshop keen to learn more about how teachers in New Zealand could be supported to facilitate effective teaching and learning with primary sources. Digistore is New Zealand’s storehouse of digital content and contains thousands of images, audio and video files. The future focus is on the development of further New Zealand content, through partnerships with cultural and scientific insitutions such as Te Papa. Digistore also provides links to further sources of digital content relevant to teaching and learning programmes in New Zealand.


Key Messages from the Workshop:
Examining primary sources gives students a powerful sense of history and the complexity of the past. Helping students analyse primary sources can also guide them toward higher-order thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills.

My Picks : Support Material for Teachers

Using Primary Sources Guide
Includes question prompts to:
a) engage students with primary sources.
b) promote student inquiry.
c) assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources.

Analysis Tools
Provides valuable and transferable question starters aimed at encouraging students to observe, reflect and question a primary source:
For a full list of these guides and examples of how they have been applied see:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/guides.html

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/document.html

NZ Examples

a) Year 13 Drama

b) The learning path function in Digistore allows these rich experiences to be packaged for direct student access. See the following example:
He Reo Komanawa:Viewing Image/Discussion

Useful Links:
http://tiny.cc/ufszh
http://virtualnorth.blogspot.com/2010/07/artefacts-of-assination-tweet.html
We would love to hear how other teachers are using primary sources to facilitate teaching and learning.

G-Man Greets Glogster Groupies

It was with great pleasure this evening that we met with Jim and Ivana from Glogster. This company is working hard to manage exponential growth. Last year users grew from 100000 to 5 million. They are committed to continuing to offer the basic version of GlogsterEdu free for educators and shared lots of future plans including student sharing, student portfolios and teacher libraries. Jim and Ivana are keen to receive feedback from educators, if you have any questions, comments,ideas for development or examples of student work please add to the comments below and we will forward them.

For further information on Glogster and to see examples in a New Zealand context visit Software for Learning.

Designing Learning Spaces

Over 16 countries were represented at today’s Leadership Symposium -ISTE 2010.
A powerful keynote facilitated by Karen Cator engaged us in exploring processes and strategies for designing learning spaces.

Take-away‘s for me included:
1. Architecture Precipitates Behaviour
2. We need to lead reflection on the design of new and existing learning spaces.
This process could include asking questions such as:
• What behaviour does/could our architecture precipitate?
• How does this space / could this space support desired learning principles?
ISTE Learning Principles.
3. To inform the reality of this process we need to keep asking a range of people: How do you learn? When you wake up and you need to learn something what actions do you engage in?

As part of this session we worked in groups, using learning design principles to create a visual representation of an ideal learning space.



This document has been designed to support school leaders to facilitate dialogue on the design of their schools’ learning space, both physical and virtual.
Through engagement in this process, groups reflect on effective pedagogy: How does ‘our space’ support teacher actions that promote student learning?

Open publication - Free publishing - More technology

Valuable Links:
EDUCASE - Learning Space Design

Design Share Case Studies

Design Observer

http://edinfrastructure.wikispaces.com/Tomorrow%27s+Classroom

http://classroom.4teachers.org/

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/21st+Century+Learning+Spaces

http://tinyurl.com/c2pm8n

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/lrm22/learning_spaces/
http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2008/5/21/classroom-technology-infrastructure-whats-needed.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ashs-learning-commons.ogv

The learning is set to continue as everyone is invited to add a photo to the ISTE learning space blog : " if you see a space or environment that strikes you , add it to our Learning Space blog by emailing a photo to this address: seems99level2blog@photos.flickr.com".

Smack-down:ISTE Conference, Denver. June 26th:1-2pm.

The ‘smack-down’ concept is a valuable strategy to facilitate short, sharp professional learning.
Basically a computer and a data projector were set up at the front of the room and anyone who wanted to share could do so. The time limit for any individual to share was 2minutes!
In the hour that followed rich, efficient sharing from educators all over the world took place.

I came away with the following 'tin of tricks'.
NB. For a comprehensive list of all that was shared please see Fiona Grant’s delicious bookmarks: http://delicious.com/f.grant/smackdown_ebc10


1. Storyboard is a free service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect people. Two (or more) people create a Storybird in a round robin fashion by writing their own text and inserting pictures. They then have the option of sharing their Storybird privately or publicly on the network. The final product can be watched on screen, interacted with or shared through a worldwide library.

2. A Trick for Wordle Users
Add a dash in between words if you want your sentences to stay together
i.e.
I –ran-quickly- to –the- motel.
The –dog-stared -with -furry.

3. Search Engines

Mashpedia a real-time, multi-media social encyclopaedia.
This powerful search engine integrates content from sources including: Wikipedia , youtube, twitter, flickr and news sources.

Sweet Search: Creates a list of credible resources, for students. Every Web site in Sweet Search has been evaluated by research experts. http://www.sweetsearch.com/
Soon to be released is Sweet Search for Me – this is recommended for even younger students

Goofram
Goofram is a mash-up of Google Search and Wolfram Alpha (Wolfram Alpha is described by many as a knowledge engine rather than a search engine)
Enter your search term(s) into Goofram and it will display relevant results drawn from both Google and Wolfram.

ISTE Conference Denver - Day 1

Wikispaces

Fiona Grant and I had the absolute pleasure of spending 10 minutes with the founders of wikispaces: James Byers and Adam Frey. Humble, young guys committed to enabling, even the most resistant, teacher to harness the benefits of web 2.0.

What we found out?

1. Setting up individual accounts for students has just got even easier! ( no student emails required)
This utility lets you quickly create up to 100 new accounts in bulk and add them as members of your wikis. Available for new and existing educator wikis.
Great for enabling private areas within a class/group wiki.
To do this:
Navigate and sign in to your wiki. Select: Manage Wiki – User Creator.


2. The Wikispaces editor has improved: Within two weeks it will be launched. This editor promises to rid the random and frustrating hitches that some of you may have experienced.
New features:
*Compatible with newer browsers
*Undo and Redo buttons
*the ability to paste in word documents without losing formatting
*improved ability to see who has visited/ edited wiki page


We thanked James and Adam profusely and let them know what a positive impact Wikispaces has had in New Zealand.
Click here for home-grown examples.