Snookledorp Means Camaraderie

Jack:  I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.

Algernon:  Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

It is 9:34, and I am ready to go to sleep, but I know my night isn’t quite over yet.  Wait for it. . .I open my iPad, balance it on my stomach while lying flat on my back, and now:

“I’m so upset about my class today.”

“What is wrong?”

And the conversation begins.  My blended learning support group consistently meets at this time most nights.  Our iPad/texting/computer conversations sometimes continue for hours.  We are keyed up, and while we are exhausted, we can’t sleep.  Sometimes we are flush with victory:

“My students completed their group presentations, and two principals were there to observe them!”

Sometimes we are flush with shame.  .  . and booze.  Lots of booze.

“Seriously, does anyone know what proofreading is?  $@#!SNOOKLEDORP!!!!!”

“I told you not to use the ALL CAP SLAP!!!!  STOP YELLING AT ME ONLINE!!!!”

I’m just kidding about the booze part.  Maybe.

One day last year Fate threw us four women together, and as Erich Maria Remarque would say, “Camaraderie is one of the best things to come out of the war.”  By necessity, Christina, Shannon, and I would discuss our lack of knowledge about Blended Learning, and we soon (again, by necessity) came to a place where we realized there was no judgment, no competition among us.  We realized very early in the game that we are all deer in headlights, and this idea of Blended Learning was a huge Mack truck that was quickly bearing down on us.  We realized that the only way to survive this experience was to stick together, and that is what we’ve done.

Stacy is our biggest supporter.  She is more than a tech administrator; she is the lifeline for our program.  She encourages us in our growth, she keeps us from making foolish decisions along the way (“No, you really can’t punch your administrator.”), and she of course gets us whatever tech support we need even before we know we need it. Stacy established our Monday afternoon meetings right from the start,and we certainly didn’t realize how much we would need or look forward to them.  In these meetings, we complain, we argue, we cry. . .we innovate, we create, we experiment, and we laugh.  Thank goodness, we laugh a lot.

Christina, Shannon, and I are lucky in the fact that our classrooms are very close to each other.  Every fifty minutes, I know that I will step into the hall (to monitor the class changes), and I will be able to talk to one or both of them.  Sometimes it’s a quick reassurance (“Get in there--you’re doing a great job”), and sometimes it’s a technical problem.  I can’t tell you how many times one or all of us dropped everything we were doing to help out with a Blackboard, iPad, or Apple TV issue.  Our students believe that we are a package deal.  Beware; if you complain about one of these teachers in front of the other two, you will get an earful.

At one of our Monday meetings, an administrator wanted to discuss Christina’s course with her alone.  He meant it in the kindest, most considerate way; he didn’t want to embarrass her.  Christina got up from the table, closed the door to the classroom, and said, “These are my sisters.  What you say to me, you say to them.  We are a team.”

She is right.  We are sisters; we are a team.  We share our pain, our joy, our defeats, our victories.  This is the only way to create a Blended Learning course; this is the best way to teach.

Those of you who know me have figured out by now that I am writing this post under the effects of an eleven mile run (see my running blog post about endorphins).  Do not worry; in a few hours I will be back to yelling at you, shaking my finger at you, and telling you what to do.  Then, I will turn on my iPad at 9:34, and I will wait for our next collaborative session.  I might have a drink first.

What's Right with Education

What’s Right With Education

Originally published on ohedchat.wordpress.com on March 8. 2013

Earlier this week, I tweeted that we should focus more on what is good in education instead of what is wrong with education. Little did I know when I sent that tweet that I would be challenged to write a blog post on my thoughts. But it is this exact challenge that is central to what is good in education. We all know teachers who come to school every day to challenge and inspire students. They put aside the politics, the testing, the outside pressures, and choose to challenge and inspire students to become lifelong learners. If you know a teacher like this, and I suspect that you do, today would be a great day to let them know that they are central to what is right in education today.

Recently the school board in my district made a decision that angered many parents and community members. As a result there has been a contentious board meeting, negative press coverage, and a flurry of comments flooding social media. Through all of this, the staff in my office have come to work each day with a positive attitude and continue to strive to do what is best for students in our district. Today, a few of us decided to bring in breakfast and jot down what is great about education. Some of the positives that made our list included:

• Teachers on Twitter


• Collaboration and sharing ideas


• Authentic feedback for improvement


• Teaming with parents to meet the individual needs of students


• Involving students in goal setting


• Celebrating student success


• School garden projects


• Technology that engages and enables creation

By all means, our list is not all-inclusive. As a matter of fact, we hung the list on the wall so we could add to it everyday.

A few weeks ago Leah Lacrosse (@LLacrosse) from Huron tweeted that she was looking for another 5th grade science class that wanted to collaborate virtually. We immediately accepted her offer and Debbie Hicks’ (@FennHicks) 5th grade science class will be using a Google Hangout to meet Mrs. Lacrosse’s students. Jolene Speckman (@JoleneSpeckman) joined Twitter last month and has already had Twitter conversations with new Apple Distinguished Educator, Rebecca Wildman (@RebeccaWildman) on how she can integrate iTunes U in her second grade classroom. These two examples show the power of Twitter, collaboration, and technology – all of which made our list. These examples also exemplify teachers who are willing to challenge themselves and students to learn and grow. These teachers decided to do what was best for their students and to expand the walls of their classrooms to challenge their students.

So I conclude by challenging you to sit down with your colleagues, students, parents, or any other group of folks who are passionate about teaching and learning to write your own list about what is right in education. I encourage you to share by adding to this list (Google Doc). Together we can grow the conversation about what is right in education.

-Stacy Hawthorne (@MedinaTech)

File Transfer Incomplete

This has been a year of reflection. Actually, every year is a year of reflection, but this year is different. In fact, I have reflected so much that at one point (and maybe still), I felt as though I was (am) having a bit of a teacher identity crisis. You know, like that friend who hits 40 and suddenly she cuts her hair, starts working out everyday, and quits eating carbs? Yeah, you know who you are. My identity crisis has come from not knowing who I am or what I am as a blended learning teacher; I do not know how I fit into this new teaching world. I know exactly who I am in the face to face classroom, but I cannot seem to translate that into blended learning. My colleagues and I keep going back to the analogy of being a student teacher or a first year teacher. As a first year teacher, you had an ok idea of who you were as a teacher - what your teaching style/philosophy was. You were a risk-taker because you were young and unafraid of taking risks, and most importantly you had an older and wiser veteran teacher there to keep you in line and offer guidance. This veteran teacher didn’t have to have the same philosophy, mine didn’t, but he knew what good teaching looked like based on how the kids responded. In our case, there is no older, wiser veteran teacher to keep us in line. We are rookies, but other teachers and administrators tell us we are brave and amazing and brilliant... what about our students? This past week almost 40% of my enrollment dropped; I have lost more students this week than in the previous 10 years combined teaching my face-to-face courses. Those around me have been supportive by making up every excuse possible, that doesn’t involve me being the problem, to try and make it seem like this is ok. The fact is, I have failed to translate myself digitally. “File install failed. Parts of the program may not function properly”; we have all seen this error message and now I am living it.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now this weekend, looking at my reduced student roster, I am trying to find a way to fix this. I need to experience some sort of success so I can look at myself in the mirror again and not feel as though every student I walk by in the hallway is thinking, “There’s that shitty teacher who teaches that horrible online math class.” I need help from an older and wiser veteran who knows what the heck he/she is talking about to give me advice and guidance. Criticism does not hurt me; no, please do not be afraid.  I have 15 weeks of student journals full of information about everything I did wrong, so a faceless person offering criticism will not hurt me a bit.

Here is who I know I am as a face-to-face teacher. I teach students to learn how to think, how to learn. I do this through discovery and inquiry - when I learned about the constructivist philosophy as an undergrad, I salivated at the mouth. After my students have explored, questioned, and  have developed a good idea about the topic being learned, I follow it with the formal presentation of the concept and theory. Then we learn together by doing problems - the students practice basic skills at home and solve rich problems in small groups. I have flipped my classes intermittently to allow for more of the rich problem solving to be done in class. My favorite time of year is actually right now when my AP Calculus students are finally over the “I can’t answer your questions out loud, because I risk being wrong;” instead, they come to class and offer strong, firm feedback to each other.  They have learned to not give each other the answers; they guide each other through the thought process of finding the answers, and in special cases, they encourage each other to find the best way to the answer or even extend that idea to a bigger one. I literally had tears in my eyes this past Thursday when I heard a quiet, “never outwardly participate in the thinking process” student say to another student, “Yes! That’s right and why did you decide to do that? What is ‘y’? Ok then, plug it in! What do you see?” At the end of the year, my kids are successful - nearly 90% of my students earn a 4 or 5 on the AP exam.  Part of this is because they are good kids trained by highly qualified and amazing teachers before me, and part of it is because I think I do an ok job.

So why do I not translate digitally? Maybe the better question is, why would I want to? How can I do what I do better, or at least as good, in our chosen rotational blended model? 40% of my students have spoken. Yes, I know there are many reasons that students might drop a 5th level honors math course (especially if they had not taken an honors math course previously), but at the end of the day I did not deliver; I did not engage them. I did not teach them to think and I did not teach them how to learn in their digital space . So what does it take to be a good teacher in a blended environment? Tech savvy? (check) Successful in the face-to-face environment? (check) A risk taker? (check) Open to change and experimentation? (check) How about this list:  25 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers (from the blog TeachThought)? (check).

I had big ideas for this course and what I wanted it to be; my students and I were going to explore the unexplored together, but it is just not working for me. Maybe all highly effective, tech savvy teachers just do not translate to the blended learning environment to be effective blended learning environment teachers...file transfer incomplete.

Christina Hamman (@hammanmath on Twitter)
Mathematics Teacher

Starting Fires

Remember Billy  Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire?” My seventh grade Social Studies teacher Mrs. Hadgis used it to teach the Cold War. I don’t think I exposed too much of my nerdy self at such a precarious age to my peers, but I distinctly remember cramming the lyrics down my mom's throat. Without so much as an eye roll  she would countlessly repeat the memories of her childhood as they applied. And after catching a glimpse of the video, I understood why she wanted to replace the avocado refrigerator! Accidentally and unconventionally I learned the social revolution of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. By design, Mrs. Hadgis created an intentional process for meaning making.  She did the culturally relevant: she met us on our pop music-loving playing field and designed an environment in which we could learn deeply without minding too badly. Csikszentmihalyi refers to this in Flow (1990), “As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.” This was my Blended Learning vision: exploit my student’s desire to use computers. My vision has evolved. Luckily for my students, I attempt to model my approach with the good heartedness of Mrs. Hadgis.

Every teacher does this: we all try to connect with students. I harshly argue that teachers who don’t are ineffective. Yet, reflecting on my first semester Blended Local and American History course, I don’t believe I have done it.  At first glance, I thought I accomplished the connection to student lives easily: students were engaging online. Students love to be online. Simple. Done. Box checked. However, the blended student does not seem to want online as much as they want a unique experience. And this is what I am beginning to understand: Mrs. Hadgis didn't choose a song because we liked music; she chose a particular song because it fit her purpose. The same is true for the design of my course. Learning online will never replace being online for students. However, I must thoughtfully design the experience so that students choose my class over YouTube

So, how am I going to do this? My most direct answer is: better in the second semester than in the first. My intentions moving into second semester are twofold: create an engaged learning environment and create a unique space to explore historical content. Not terribly different than last August, but I move forward with clearer intent. In August, I was motivated by hope: I have learned that hope doesn’t cut it. I must move with intent in my design if this is going to be successful.

First, I must reorganize my own online space. I need to make the visual design of my course more appealing. My blackboard course remains messy and cluttered. I must approach this with more consideration for student interaction. This will be tricky for me in an online space since I fail re-positioning my own household furniture. When building in the Medina Historical app, I tell my students they have seven seconds to convince a mobile app user they should continue reading and investigating the site. I need to hold myself to the same standard.

Secondly, I liberate myself from the chronological events of which Billy Joel sings. I intentionally approach second semester in a non-linear structure. I purposefully embrace the three dimensional thought process that is critical thinking. I am steadfast in my belief that each of us has some element of ADD in us and that isn’t always a sign of weakness. I thoughtfully allow my students’ minds to wander so that more informed opinions and conclusions of what has been and what should be can be cemented. My intention is to allow my students to stumble upon (pun intended) their own historical interests and investigate multiple concepts in the historical structure of our country. I release the timeline and embrace historical thinking skills.

Moving forward from a very rocky and precarious first semester, I reignite my energy for taking this journey. History can no longer be the boring class. In the second semester, students should begin to build their own fires. I know that I should probably take credit for starting the fires, or at least providing the match, but only one thing is for sure at this point: unintentionally my students are learning a thought process that will serve them well in the 21st Century workforce because I intentionally teach skills not content.

I also intentionally empower myself to ignore the fact that I am bumping up against a well established educational paradigm that at times vehemently resists a non-linear, organic approach to history, but I will hold off on lighting that match: too much kindling results in a quick burn.

 

Shannon Conley-Kurjian

Social Studies Teacher

Is 1:1 the New One Size Fits All

“Is 1:1 the New One Size Fits All”  by Stacy Hawthorne was originally published on Getting Smart http://gettingsmart.com/cms/blog/2013/01/is-11-the-new-one-size-fits-all/.

Earlier this week I was having dinner with some fellow educational technologists. The conversation took the inevitable turn to discussing 1:1 philosophy. 1:1 is most typically defined as the ratio of one student to one device where that device is provided by the school. During our discussion, the question was posed as “1:1, Chromebooks or iPads?” While I am a fan of both Chromebooks and iPads, I was troubled by this conversation. Not, of course, because I am opposed to the student use of technology, but because I am starting to realize that 1:1 is a parallel philosophy to “one size fits all.”

Sure the reasons for adopting a 1:1 program are laudable. I understand that 1:1 levels the playing field for all students, that teachers appreciate 1:1 because every student has the same device, that maintenance and networking becomes easier when the device is standardized, and many other pros. People preferred the iPad because it was so much more than just a computer while others chose the Chromebook because they were easy to manage, were more affordable, and could virtually replace PCs. My internal conflict over 1:1 started to develop when I realized the technological needs of students are just as diverse as the students themselves, meaning that a school-wide 1:1 decision meant to benefit the students could be very limiting to some students.

I asked myself, “Would 1:1 would be right for my school district?” Our district recently implemented a blended learning program at our high school, funded in large part by a grant from eTech Ohio. This year we are offering three blended learning classes, Advanced Quantitative Analysis and Mathematical Modeling, Local and American History, and Composition and Rhetoric. Because of our grant, we have the funding to make our blended classes 1:1. The problem is that each of our classes has specialized needs when it comes to technology.

Our math class is focused heavily on statistics and uses statistical analysis software. This course was designed based a summer internship experience that our teacher, Christina Hamman, participated in at 3M. She wanted to be able to teach non-engineers and non-math majors some of the more practical business applications of mathematics that she saw utilized during her internship. The downside of this software is that it only operates on Windows-based machines. This meant that for students in her class they needed access to Windows machines, preferably laptops. So, we used some of our grant funds and bought a classroom set of laptop computers that students could both use in class and take home as needed. For this class, traditional laptops were the right answer to the 1:1 device question. Problem solved?

Definitely not! The students in Shannon Conley’s Local and American History class are capturing and digitizing the history of our town. This means that they spend a lot of time taking pictures, scanning historical records, recording videos, and interviewing local communities members to create content for their app discovermedina.org. It turns out that students do not like to lug around heavy laptops nor are these devices well suited for video capturing and editing. For these students, the iPad is exactly what they need. The iPad is perfect for original content creation, which is what these students are doing. But wait, we already bought laptops. If we were a traditional 1:1 school, these students would have to adapt to our one-size-fits-all decision. But that is only two classes; we have three in our blended program.

Stephani Itibrout’s Composition and Rhetoric students need a web-enabled device with word processing capabilities. The Windows-based laptops or the iPads could suffice, but neither was the perfect tool for the job. The Windows devices are slower to start up and again, are bigger and heavier than the modern student likes. The iPads are not the ideal device for composing long documents. For this class, it looks like the Chromebooks are the tool of choice. Sure, these students could make either the laptops or the iPads work, but why should they have to make do? Just like a carpenter chooses the right tool for the job, our students should have the opportunity to choose the right technology for their needs.

So, three different classes and we clearly need three different devices for our students. As I listened to the conversation this week it struck me how much we handcuff students and teachers when we tell them what technology they are required to use. If my district made a 1:1 decision we would clearly not be able to choose one device that is right for all students and all classes. 1:1 should not mean “one size fits all.”

If we are truly designing a student-centric learning environment and putting the students in the position to make meaningful decisions about their education, how can we justify deciding which device they are required to learn on?  When I look at my daily use of technology, there is no one device that could get me through the day. I’m not “one size fits all” and neither are my students.

Practicing What I Preach

“This is the time to experiment; this is the time to fail,” I tell my student teachers.  “Try something different.  Take a chance.  The worst thing that could happen is that you fail a lesson.  Then you will reflect on it and learn from it.”  Yeah.  This is stellar advice; it’s too bad that I have such a hard time following it myself.

 

When I previously thought about failure, I only thought about small increments of lessons, minutes of time where I felt that the students weren’t getting it or that I was off-focus.  I pride myself on being flexible during those lessons; I can change horses mid-stream, and you may not even realize it.  Don’t get me wrong; I take risks, lots of them.  I just never fail.  NEVER.

 

Until now. “Let’s do a wiki,” I said to my students.  “This will be a great way to collaborate and create a really useful finished project.  You’ll love this.”  God bless my Rhetoric and Composition students; they look at me with those trusting eyes, believing that I know what the hell I’m preaching.  Half of them were in my Sophomore Language Arts class, and they knew what they were getting when they chose me for their senior year.  They knew that I’d make it work, whatever “it” was, and then they convinced the other half of the class that this was so.

 

[caption id="attachment_39" align="alignnone" width="223"] Take a chance! What can possibly go wrong?[/caption]

 

Two weeks later, I took stock of our class wiki.  It was awful.  Disorganized.  Cluttered.  Ugly.  I looked at the rubric I had naively created two weeks before I had ever seen a wiki, and I realized that it had NOTHING to do with our wiki and that I had no way of measuring learning or growth.  Our wiki, MY wiki, was an epic fail.  Whose fault was it?  Mine.  When I confessed my sins to my class, the kinder souls pointed out some technical problems that were not in my control, but I knew better.  I wasn’t able to pull through on this one.  Now what?

 

I’m not going to lie; I have a huge ego.  Wait, are you laughing?  I’ve had many sleepless nights over this damned wiki.  I asked myself, “What will I do differently?  How can I make this meaningful next time?”  More importantly, I asked myself, “How can I pull a success out of this right now?”  It was with real relief that I graded my students’ video presentations (created from information gathered from the evil wiki), and I saw that the students really did learn.  They learned how to research and present in an organized manner; however, that presentation was not part of the wiki.  I failed, but my students didn’t fail.  I failed, and my students didn’t even care; they just went on with the lesson, which ultimately was very relevant to them.  I failed, and I need to get over it.

We all need one of these.

 

 

When my esteemed Blended Learning colleagues (Shannon and Christina) share their problems with me, I am the voice of reason.  I am the first to point out what the children have learned from this experience. I am the first to remind these young ones that they need to forgive themselves for the courageous risks they take.  I am the first to celebrate the silver lining.  I am the last to do this for myself.

Stephani Itibrout

English Teacher

When Blended Learning Becomes Calvinball

So, it took me a while to write this because I was waiting for the right words to come to me. I’ve had the topic for a while – it was just the vocabulary that was not coming. This past weekend, the authors of this blog were featured on the State of Tech podcast (you can download it from iTunes or online at thestateoftech.org) and it was listening to my colleagues that finally brought the words to me for this post. So with that, I begin with the end in mind.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

One of the biggest, unforeseen challenges that we have faced on our blended journey was teaching the students to learn in a blended space. How do I define a blended space?

•  A classroom where students are accountable for their learning and time


•  A place where students have to formulate questions then discover and evaluate answers in order to learn


• An atmosphere where collaboration is essential to success


• A setting where learning occurs in any space and any time


• An environment where mastery is shown through authentic projects or presentations

Haven’t you, even for a moment, dreamed of a classroom like this? We all did, which is why we embarked on this blended learning journey. The problem is that we thought our students were dreaming of this classroom, too. We designed high quality classes and marketed them to high achieving, good students. And that’s when we hit our first bump in the road.

High achieving, good students were defined as high achieving and good based on an antiquated classroom model. They were high achieving and good students because they came to class Monday through Thursday, listened to the lectures, took copious notes, on average raised their hands twice a week, and on Friday were fully prepared to regurgitate everything that they had observed back to us on an exam. But this definition of the high achieving, good student does not fit with the blended learning spaces that we were designing. In fact, our high achieving, good students struggled (at first) to fit into their blended learning space. In fact, a few even longed for the face-to-face lectures and weekly quizzes because that is what years of schooling had taught them to expect. They were good at the game of school and then along came a few teachers who started playing Calvinball with the rules and the students simply were not ready.

We had to take a few steps back and realize that we had to teach students to unlearn the game of school and really learn to think. I’m not trying to holistically denounce the game of school, because it got many of us to where we are today. It’s just that the world has changed around us, so it is time that we change the definition of what a high achieving, good student is. More importantly, we have to change what the high achieving, good student expects in the typical classroom. All students deserve to learn in a blended space (as defined above) but just like we taught them how to play school so many years ago, now we must reteach them how to excel in our classroom of the future.

So, that brings me to where I was inspired this weekend. I was asked on The State of Tech podcast, what innovation in education did I feel could make the greatest positive impact. I immediately knew the answer: “Teachers with open minds – ones willing to step outside what they are used to doing and make a difference for kids.” Our blended teachers are creating blended spaces for students to learn and everyday impact the lives of over 100 students. They are really making the difference. They are teaching students to stretch beyond what they thought was possible, to see learning in a new light, to contribute to their world and to challenge the status quo. In the words of Margaret Mead, our blended teachers are thoughtful, committed citizens who are not only changing the world; they are teaching their students to do the same.

By: Stacy Hawthorne

@Medina Tech on Twitter