What Tech Tools are You Using to Support Writers?

I am preparing a three-part workshop for elementary teachers to familiarize them with different tech tools they could use to support their students as writers.

I am just getting started planning it. I know I will share some tools currently being used by teachers at my school. For example, one teacher has her students posting their poetry to a discussion board in Blackboard. I am amazed by the depth of the comments the classmates are leaving for the poets.

Another teacher is using Google Docs for working on mechanics and writing skills. The children follow a link from his website and then join in the activity, such as expanding a sentence, writing a better ending.

One class has research and then storyboarded movies on cyberbullying. Another uses Movie Maker to have the children create illustrated movies of their poems.

We have teachers using VoiceThread to create student book reviews. Others using Shelfari for students to recommend books to classmates. (NOTE: Most of these were not my ideas. We have a great staff so I am constantly learning from them.)

This will be a three part workshop that should show increasingly more advanced uses with each new sessions. I would very much like to crowd source it. Please complete the survey below to tell me your ideas for using tech to support, enhance, nurture student writers.

I know the survey doesn't work well with this Blogger template. Yet another reason why I need to move to WordPress. Please hit return any time you are in danger of typing off the page.

The last question is optional. However, if you give me your name I will be able to thank you in the credits of my presentation.

When you are done, please scroll to the end and press the submit button.

Thank you.

A Better Model for Tech Professional Development

Last year my principal recognized that our schedule lacked time for tech professional development. There were few built in times, and teachers have so many commitments that they rarely can attend offerings after school.

We had just moved to a new professional development model that required staff to be in some sort of training every Monday after school. Each month those Mondays were devoted to staff meetings, collaborative project meetings, or departmental meetings. This year, she took one of those monthly meetings and devoted it to optional technology workshops and asked me to develop the model.

Right from the start, she and I knew that a one-size-fits-all model didn't work because our staff's skills varied so from one person to the next. We also knew from reading research and from experience, that one-shot workshops tend to lack impact.

To provide differentiation and avoid the one-shot problem, we created a number of three-part series workshops. Each series had an introductory workshop labelled 101, a developing-level workshop labelled 201, and more advanced workshop labelled 301.

For the most part, 101 workshops gave an introduction to the topic and suggested ways it could be used. 201 workshops were more hands on. 301 workshops were largely work times where the participants could create their own resources or projects with someone their to offer assistance as needed.

For the first term of workshops, we wanted to focus more on teacher proficiencies than on technology integration. Thanks to a number of talented teachers stepping up to teach their colleagues we offered the following workshops this semester.

• AV - using our Vado cameras and our digital voice recorders, using that media in projects

• Interactive Whiteboard - helping teachers create start using the new ActivInspire software to create their own IWB resources

• OneNote - using Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, a program that is used extensively by our admin team

• Web Presence - helping teachers create an easy to manage web presence to use with their class (e.g. a blog, a wiki)

• Wikis - what they are, how to use them with your students, how to start one

All of the workshops were optional UNLESS someone lacked a skill they needed to do their job. Teachers were free to to attend any workshop as long as they had the pre-requisite skills. If a teacher already had basic skills, they could skip the 101 level and join for the 201 level. Likewise, if a teacher took the 101 level workshop, they were not required to take the 201 and 301 levels.

Although the workshops were optional, 31 (out of 55 possible) faculty members attended workshops on the first Monday. By our second Monday, we had people from central administration also attending the workshops. We will hold the third session next Monday.

Not all workshops were equally popular. Some had a strong showing for the 101 level but then had fewer people at the 201 level. Ideally we would have pre-surveyed staff to gauge interest, but the start of the year was so busy we didn't want to ask them to do one more thing at that time.

On post-workshop surveys staff consistently stated that the workshops were just right in terms of level of difficulty, amount of information and usefulness. A number of teachers indicated that wished they could clone themselves so that they could attend more than one at a time.

Equally importantly, many teachers went back to their rooms and put the knowledge to use. We could tell this was happening because they would ask for support during the month, or they arrived at the 201 workshop full of questions that arose from their classroom experiences during the month.

In preparation for semester two, we sent out an optional planning survey asking which (if any) of this term's workshops they would take if it were offered again, and which of the possible new workshops they would be interested in attending. It also asked if they had other topics they would like to see offered. Based on that survey, we will repeat a few workshops on one of our late start in-service days during semester two.

Equally informative to me was that fact that on the first day the survey was open, 31 staff members completed it. That tells me that despite being very busy people, our staff continue to value these workshops and want a voice in the topics offered.

Have you found a technology professional development model that works for your staff?

Tech Ideas for Elementary Music

The invitation was pure gold; the elementary music department asked for an hour of my time on the inservice day, to teach them about new technologies that they could use in their instruction. What tech coordinator would turn down an opportunity to work with the willing?

I really struggled with the agenda. It wasn't a how-to session, but I knew that getting them actively involved would be more engaging and more powerful. However I only had an hour before they had to rush off campus for an inservice in Little India.

I was tempted to show them Animoto, but it is so slow that I had to give up that idea. I also decided to steer away from good music websites since they are skilled at finding those on their own.

I started the inservice telling the music teachers, that I knew lots of tech tools that could enhance their curriculum, but I didn't know how to teach music. It was up to them to find ways to make use of these tools as they saw fit. To my delight, they did that all hour. In the end, here was my agenda. In green I'll give a quick explanation of what was discussed.

When to use tech

• Tech As Problem Solver: work more effectively, efficiently
  

• Tech As Enhancer, do things not possible without it, take lessons to next level, collaborate
  

Blackboard
Our school has Blackboard. You may have used it or something like it if you have taken an online course that required you to take part in asynchronous discussions. All our classes are automatically set up in Blackboard, thanks to a script that runs to pull data from Powerschool.

• Discussion Boards: Allow for discussions to continue outside of class. Allow you to hear from every student. Often children who don't talk much in class are very willing participants in written
  

• Voiceboards: Like discussion board forums but with sound! Teacher can upload music. Students can record themselves talking, singing, playing an instrument. Student posts can be listened to by entire class or made private so only the teacher can hear them. Already in regular use by high school language classes, the elementary music teachers saw many ways they could make use the voice boards, especially with their grade five instrumental students.

VoiceThread

I discovered that the link you see when you have found a thread by searching, does not get you back to that thread later, so the links below may not work for you.

• I showed them an thread of a Norman Rockwell print. Each student had left a comment to interpret the painting. http://voicethread.com/?#q+norman+rockwell.b5990
• I also showed them a very simple one of pictures of musicians playing stringed instruments. The children had each made a comment such as "Violins are made of wood." http://voicethread.com/?#q+music.b66062

Wikis

• Wikis in Plain English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
• Parent wiki: A parent has set up a wiki to make it easy for parents to sign up to bring the snacks to the boys varsity basketball games. She used Wikispaces and did not protect it with a password, so it is possible, but not likely that someone could maliciously edit it. Other than one parent accidentally adding extra cells.
• Class wiki: http://mrcarroll.wetpaint.compage/Any+Words+of+Wisdom+for+the+New+Class%3F
• Conference wiki: This password protected wiki is something we might use to facilitate parents signing up for optional spring conferences with specialist teachers. The music teachers cheered and immediately and saw ways to extend its usefulness. http://sasconferences.wetpaint.com/

You Tube
We didn't have time to discuss YouTube. I wanted to show them how it can be used for finding clips of ethnic music to support the diversity aspects of their curriculum. Can also find examples of instruments and their sounds, and other useful clips. If they view in Internet Explorer, the RealPlayer plugin will download the clip to their RealPlayer library so that their lesson is not sabotaged if our internet is slow or not working.


Voice Recorders
Like a thumb drive, these stick MP3 recorders are highly portable. They could be used to record a guest lecturer, to record ensembles, to let the class hear how their performance pieces are sounding.


Flip Video Camera

• One of my music teachers has been using the Flip video camera to record voice students. For example, possibly she signs along with the student and then they burn that clip to a CD so the student can practice with it at home.
  
• Another use was to have each stings player go to another room to record their performance piece. That allowed her to observe it outside of class, share the video with parents at conference time and offer suggestions for how to help the child improve their playing.

This session flew by. The teachers were great fun, enthusiastically trying out and discussing uses for each tool. An added bonus was that instead of preparing a Powerpoint presentation, I created the agenda in their shared department One Note notebook. They were happy to see they could go back later and explore the links I'd used, such as Wikis in Plain English again on their own.

What did I miss? If they invite me back, what other hardware and software tools should I show them? They already use Music Ace, Groovy Music, Finale Notepad. They already have iPods on which they create playlists for their lessons. They already have data projectors and wireless mouse and keyboard sets. What other tools would positively impact student learning?

A Few Quick Thoughts about Tech Inservices

A frustration of my current job is that I haven't figured out the staff inservice piece. Back in KL, I was pleased with the after school drop in sessions Kent and I held for staff. I think they worked because...

• No advance registration was required. Teachers didn't feel they were committing to something.


• Weekly session were held. Teachers started holding non-critical questions for the drop in session. This meant I could safely run to the loo between classes without fearing being dragged into a classroom to provide support.


• Reminders were sent. I sent out a reminder email and posted signs in the canteen each week on the day of the session.


• Studio approach rather than set agenda was used. People came in to work on projects and we were there to support them.


• Teacher-student ratio was high enough. Often Kent, Suganthy and I were all there rushing about to provide just-in-time support.


• We were a trusted source. Suganthy, Kent and I had been there long enough that teachers felt safe dropping in for support.
  

I don't think the same approach would be successful at this school because their are more initiatives vying for people's time. I've tried offering after school sessions when needs arise, but teachers are so tired that it isn't a great time for them to learn something new.

I've tried sessions during their team planning time. I felt my inservice wasn't very good, but I can work on that. I plan to do more with this option next year.

I've tried giving brief teasers during staff meetings on new items that I think can be of real use to many people, such as a very easy way to resize photos to free up more space in their server quota. This has worked well and people ask for more info, but this venue only works for very specific types of information.

Therefore, I was delighted by an idea I heard tonight. The technology directors from various international schools in Singapore try to meet monthly to discuss instructional technology. Tonight, the director from the Australian school shared an idea that I think is brilliant. Next year he is going to offer full day professional development sessions for staff members. He will lead them in house. As he said, we often send people out for professional development. Why not keep them in?

There is much to love about this idea...

• Cost effective.
• Total control over content so able to tailor exactly to the users' needs.
• Teachers will be learning when they have more energy, not at the end of the day.
• Sufficient practice time can be provided in class.
• It builds support networks among the users; after the class they can ask their classmates for support.
• It is on our computers so everything will look the same when they return to use it on their classrooms.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea (and my level of enthusiasm). To make it even better, he proposes we all do this and open our sessions up to each other's schools. Only cost will be for subs. Of course, I'd need to find lab space and at the moment, that's an insurmountable barrier. Hopefully I'll soon be back in my own lab.

Are any of you using this model in your school/district? Is it working?