Pedagogy First, Tech Second

I was reading a blog article by Darren Coxon about his travels through an iPad deployment.  The intent of the article was to save others from having the same frustrations as his school had, which is great sharing. What hit me, however, as a key point was in this passage:


"There are some schools that went all out, investing in one iPad per student from day one, but I have been to some of these schools and they are not using the iPad in a way that can be truly transformative. For me, it is about more than just the device; it is about getting the infrastructure in place. And this does not only mean things like wireless: it includes the intellectual, pedagogical infrastructure that brings with it an understanding of both the benefits and pitfalls of bringing these devices into the classroom. They have the powers to be truly game changing, but only if they are handled correctly. Remember the interactive whiteboard when it was first brought in? We thought it would change things completely. The reason it did not was that no one really thought through the pedagogy behind it. It became a glorified, expensive projector, little more. The iPad has the capacity to become nothing more than a glorified iPhone without the phone, or a nice way to look online."


Darren, you hit the nail on the head.  Don't get me wrong....I think technology rocks....but only when it fundamentally changes the thinking and learning of the students.  If we are going to have students taking lecture notes on an iPad or netbook, does that really change the learning?  Perhaps, as the students can collaboratively share the notes and hopefully build some knowledget together, but is that really a game changer?  If we have students taking quizzes with clickers rather than paper, does that change their learning?  Perhaps, as the teacher can get quicker results, but is it a major game changer?  If we have students playing an iPad app for Everyday Math instead of the same game with cards and paper, are we really changing what they are learning?


What I really see as the value of technology is when it allows students to think and learn in ways they could not otherwise do. For example, if we have students in the United States collaboratively trying to solve a water pollution problem in a third world country with students in that country, now THAT is a game changer!  How else could they get first hand knowledge of the problem?  How else could they see how their ideas would be feasible in another country?  Without the technology, they could not complete this task at the same level.


I would love to hear more examples of how technology is being used to really raise the level of thinking and learning of students.  What are you all doing out there to accomplish this?  What are the students doing differently?  Could they do that same thinking and learning without the technology?  

Student Technology Team

Our elementary school was lucky enough to win a $1200 WEMTA PET Grant from our state association for library media and technology.  This grant will allow us to implement a STAT - Student Technology Assistance Team.  We got the idea a few years ago, but are really seeing the need for it now.  Our school is blessed to still have a half-time library media specialist.  Teachers are starting to use more technology and our district has embraced more mobile devices and web 2.0 tools for use with students.  These are all wonderful things!

What we found as a struggle was meeting the needs of the teachers and students at the exact time they planned to use the technologies and other tools.  Even though our LMS has a flexible schedule, she cannot be in our building every time a technology project is going on.  Hence, we decided to leverage the knowledge of our students and their enthusiasm for learning technology!  We are planning to recruit 2 or 3 students per homeroom to be trained as STAT members.  They would be extra helpers and trainers in their classrooms.

This month, we are gathering names of interested students. They need to have teacher and parent approval to be considered for the STAT.  Although our student council requires students to be up-to-date on all homework, we don't want to exclude students because of that.  We are hoping that some disengaged students may want to participate, thus hoping to increase their connection to school.

Our LMS is going to check with the classroom teachers to find out what types of technology projects they are planning on implementing yet this spring.  Each classroom is also getting 2 iPads, so we can use the STAT to help implement and troubleshoot those.  I am very excited to get this started.  We are hoping that most kids can stay after school for training.  If not, we will use their noon recess/lunch block as that is our only other time to meet with them.

Do you know of any schools that have implemented a team like this at the elementary level?  I would love to hear what they have found that works well and any challenges they faced.

Striking a Balance Between Showing and Guiding

Over the past 15 years, I have provided a lot of technology staff development for educators.  Originally, I would create step-by-step handouts for the participants.  This was more in teaching like the "sage on the stage".  I would guide them through with "click here" and "click there".  What I found was that the educators generally felt very comfortable in the initial training and liked the step-by-step directions.  It seemed to work!

But....after they left the training, I found that they were very attached to their step-by-step directions. If they wanted to do something that wasn't in the instructions, they usually felt like they needed help from someone to do the task.  In the long run, this is not effective.  It might have worked OK when we bought static programs like Office 2000 and we kept the same program with the same features for several years.

Enter Web 2.0.......things are constantly changing like the leaves in the fall.  There are new tools each day.  There are updates to existing tools.  Take Google Apps for Education as an example. Google continues to update the product.  If I create step-by-step handouts this month, the screen shots and menu items may be different in one month.  How do I effectively teach educators about these tools?

I started to go the route of teaching them the very basics of a tool and then focusing more on how to find their answers within the help options of the program.  This seemed to work very well with educators who were comfortable with learning new technologies....those who were not afraid to try something.  I did, however, find a portion of the teachers who were less comfortable with technology who still wanted the step-by-step directions.  While I still strongly believed that I wanted them to learn how to "think technology" and figure out how to find the help themselves, I also recognized that some need the step-by-step to get past the uncomfortable feeling of learning a new technology.

I have now changed to doing a combination of demonstrating how to use a technology, providing some handouts (but just for the basics), and spending time teaching others how to learn new skills on their own.  I am finding that this approach differentiates the needs of educators just like we differentiate for the needs of our own students in our classrooms.

How do you best learn technology?  Please take my poll to let me know what works for you.

You Don't Have to Be a Pro Photographer!

I am not, by any measure, a great photographer.  I am very much an amateur. That is why it amazes me when easy-to-use tools come along that make my photos look great!  My latest tool is Picasa.  This is another Google tool that is free and very easy to use.  I logged into my Google account, clicked on More...Even More and scrolled down to Picasa.  There is a part that you install on the computer and another part that sits in my Google Account.  I decide if I want to upload a photo or an album to the web to share with others.  It is a great way to organize school photos for a website.

We have a deer cam on one of our wooded areas in northern Wisconsin.  The camera took this great photo of a mother deer and a yearling.  It looked very similar to the right with the camera info at the bottom and the photo looking a bit "blue".

I uploaded the file into Picasa when I was uploading all the photos on the SD card.  Picasa automatically put all the photos into a folder with the date.  I could easily change the name of the album if I like, but I left it with the date because that made sense to me.

Next, I double-clicked on the photo in the album and several editing options came up.  First, I clicked on "Crop" and quickly got rid of the camera information at the bottom of the photo.  Next, I clicked on "I'm Feeling Lucky" and it changed the picture into the great photo I now have.  (Please note this photo is copyrighted as I plan to make prints from it.)  That was so easy!

Because the photos are now uploaded into my Picasa  web album, it is really easy to insert into my blog.  When I am editing my post in Blogger, I click on the insert image icon, click on "From Picasa Web Albums", and I just had to find the photo in my Picasa Dropbox.  How simple is that?

We use Google Apps for Education at school, so I always have to check to see if the same features are available at school.  I was thrilled to find that Picasa Web Albums is there under under More....Photos.  Tomorrow, I will test it out with one of my student's accounts.  That would be really slick for sharing field trip photos and class project photos on our website.

How do you use photos for education?  What other free and easy tools are out there?  Please add a comment to share with others who read this blog.

Learning With Your PLN

I often get asked how I learned what I know about technology.  That is not a simple question to answer as there are so many different avenues I use to learn about new technologies or how to use older technologies in newer ways.  I think of the Beatles song "With a Little Help From My Friends".  Now, not all the lyrics support my process but the "help from my friends' part definitely is.  "My friends" are the people in my Personal Learning Network, my PLN.

I use a few different sites to connect with others interested in how to use technology to improve teaching and learning.  The most effective one for me right now is Linked In Groups. I have joined three groups: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Technology Integration in Education (TIE), and Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association (WEMTA). These three groups provide me with answers to questions I post as well as allows me to learn from others' postings and questions.  If you have not already joined these groups, I suggest you give them a try.  Create yourself an account at Linked In, join these groups, and start adding colleagues into your professional circle.

Another way that I learn about ed tech tools is to search sites like Slideshare and Prezi to find presentations created by others.  Often times, there are wonderful presentations posted there that make it easy for me to quickly scroll through the presentation, stopping only at the points where I will learn something new.

YouTube is another great place to search for tutorials and presentations to learn about any new ed tech tools. Create an account for yourself and you can save favorites as well as subscribe to "channels".  These channels are created by individuals or organizations and are gold mines for learning about ed tech.  For instance, if you subscribe to Google Apps channel, you can get an email each time a new video is uploaded. The same is true for TED talks and many other great YouTube channels.  Check out Michael Welsh's video on Reinventing Education.  It took me two minutes to find this on YouTube.

At times, I use Twitter to find information, although, I have to admit that it is less productive for me.  I use Tweet Deck to easily see others' tweets as well as to follow specific hashtags such as #edtech.  I also contribute by tweeting things I find on the Internet as well as retweeting posts that I think others will find valuable.

While these tools are not the only tools I use to learn on my own "with a little help from my friends", these are some of the key ones.  Look for a future post about how to use Google Reader to stay on top of the blogs you want to read the most.

Problem or Project Based....Does It Matter?

Photo by Tomasz Stasiuk on Flickr

For the past 5 years, I have been guiding teachers as they write problem based learning units.  I often get asked the question, "What is the difference between project-based and problem-based?"  While I know some people use these terms interchangeably, I believe their is a difference. 

In project-based, the students are working on a project with a product as the result of their work.  In problem-based, the students are solving a real-world problem and produce a product to show their solution.  While both approaches involve students working on developing some type of product, the problem-based task is focused more on the problem solving process and less on the product.  As stated on the EduTech wiki:

"Project-based learning typically begins with an end product or "artifact" in mind, the production of which requires specific content knowledge or skills and typically raises one or more problems which students must solve. Projects vary widely in scope and time frame, and end products vary widely in level of technology used and sophistication. Problem-based learning, as the name implies, begins with a problem for students to solve or learn more about. Often these problems are framed in a scenario or case study format. Problems are designed to be "ill-structured" and to imitate the complexity of real life cases."

I find that problem-based tasks are also more rigorous and often involve higher level thinking skills.  If the problem task is well-defined and "ill-structured", students need to work collaboratively with other students as well as experts to figure out the best solution for the problem. 

Designing the problem-based learning task scenario is often to most difficult part of the unit design.  You must begin with the end in mind, determining what you want the students to learn.  Then you must figure out what real-life scenarios would lend itself to this learning.  That is often tough to do.  You might want to contact your local Chamber of Commerce to see if they have a list of experts who are willing to help teachers come up with real-life problems related to the content they are teaching.

In problem based learning, there is a process the students' use to solve the problem.  The Illinois Math and Science Academy has defined the process as shown in this image:

There are also other problem solving models such as the Big6 Research Model and the 4D's.  While the Big6 process works well for initial teaching of researching information to  solve a problem, it seems that middle and high school students would best benefit from using either the IMSA model or the 4D's model.  It focuses more on the problem solution rather than specifically information research.  While information research is necessary when solving problems, these two models seem to work better for older students who have information research skills already.

Our district did a lot of work on problem based learning several years ago. We did a comparison of Big6, Super3 (Big6 for primary students) and 4D's.  While these all will work to some extent, I really like the IMSA model for upper elementary through high school. It seems to give enough guidance through the process without feeling to rigid.  I am teaching a graduate course this spring which is a one-credit introduction to problem-based learning.  As I prepare for this course, I will add blog posts with resources I find. I would also like to know what questions teachers have about problem-based learning.  Please share in the comments below or by emailing me.

Flipped Classroom - Is It Really Innovation for Elementary?

We are hearing more and more about the "flipped classroom" lately.  As I started hearing this in various places, I thought I better learn about this new innovation!  Of course, I don't want to miss out on a great teaching and learning strategy that uses technology, right?  Well, unless I am missing something big here, I don't think the "flipped classroom" is very innovative at all for an elementary classroom....unless you are still teaching with lectures. I do, however, think there may be some uses of a modified version of this for elementary.

If you are using problem or project based learning or engage your students in a lot of hands-on activities, you will not find the "flipped classroom" as a radical innovation.  I can't remember the last time I saw a teacher actually deliver an all out lecture in an elementary classroom.  According to Jonathan Martin's February 13, 2011 post on 21K12 blog "For those educators who never use, nor feel the need to use, classroom time for lecturing,  reversing learning probably has little significance; hence, extremely progressive educators and practicioners of pure PBL may find this innovation a bit passe." 

From: User Generated Education blog

According to Jackie Gerstein, the flipped classroom should be part of a bigger model as shown above.  The "flipped" part is in the asynchronous individual sections for "what" and "so what".  It is not just students watching lectures, but they are responding and sharing their insights in what they learned.  You will also notice in her model, that there are hands on activities and project based learning.  I like how she has blended the pedagogies and used the aspects of hands on projects during class while the more traditional teaching and reflecting are done outside of class.  This makes sense to me because it has the teacher working with the students during the time when they will need the most guidance...during the hands-on activities and project based learning.

John R. Sowash, on The Electric Educator Blog, explains how he had been using "reverse instruction" or "flipped classroom" for his anatomy and physiology class.  As he notes, he does a lot of lectures in this course so this shift in pedagogy made sense for how he currently teaches his class. While he is pleased with his new pedagogy, is that the model of education we really want in the 21st century?  He has recorded the lectures for viewing at home and now kids do the "homework" in class with his help. While this might be an improvement to classic traditional instruction, is this really where we want to get to?  How about revising the course more to include some problem based learning?  He does do a great job of sharing tips and tricks for making the "flipped classroom" work.  Again, this is a secondary class that typically used a lot of lectures as the main mode of instruction.  Check out his You Tube video on skin and body membranes.

By using this model, John has figured out a way to save the precious class time for guiding his students.  I do think this is an improvement over traditional instruction, but I would really like to see this morphed into the model Jackie has explained.  By using the "flipped classroom" for delivering content and reflecting on learning, class time can be freed up for doing problem based learning.

While I know I have more to learn about this model of teaching, I do think it may work in a modified way in elementary. For example, I know that when I preteach the math lesson to my special education students for 10 minutes just prior to math class, they are better able to learn during the math instruction in the classroom.  While the math class is mostly hands on work including team work, manipulatives, and figuring things out together, there are vocabulary words and prerequisite skills that help students prepare for the lesson.  I plan to experiment with using a modified "flipped classroom" model where the students watch the prelesson skills in a video either just prior to class or at home the night before.  If that works, it would be great to have the students watch the videos at home the night before.  It would allow me to keep them in their regular classroom for those 10 minutes OR it would allow me to use those 10 minutes to catch them up on other math skills that they are lacking.

When we plan our problem based learning unit for this year, I want to see if there are places within the unit where we could use the "flipped classroom" concept for some direct teaching and student reflections. This would free up class time for students to work in groups on their solution.

I would love to hear from other elementary teachers who are attempting a "flipped classroom" model.  Please share what you are using this strategy for and how it is working for you.