Independent Thinker!

Those who have been in the field of education likely recognize and have experienced the trends and pendulum swings of educational pedagogy and practices. Trends in education bring forward a variety of “buzz” words, such as project-based learning, differentiated instruction, collaboration, metacognition, digital literacy, critical thinking, global education, and so many more that have become part of our daily practices in the teaching and learning environment!

The trend of collaboration in education, while not new, is one that has taken on new facets as digital technology and communication has enhanced and evolved. Increased collaborative practices in education seem to be producing a culture of encouraging the development of more extroverted behavior and marketing it to learners as a desirable characteristic to possess, and a behavior that is highly valued in not only in school systems, but in life. However, I question if this same enthusiasm and encouragement for introverts and the talents they possess also exists?

Certainly engaging in collaborative opportunities is a natural part of life and should be included in educational curriculum. Collaboration in education is designed to promote inclusive behavior, and simply put, teaches students to “play well with others”.  On the other side of collaboration is the idea of independence, an equally important skill of being able to plan and think individually and reflectively without the reliance of social interactions.

As educators, we all need to tread more carefully when it comes to this current vogue of extroverted behavior as one that is attractive and sought out in schools and in society. With this obvious pendulum swing towards extroverted practices, schools need to remember to balance the approaches to teaching and learning in a way that is equally inclusive toward and promotes the value of naturally introverted people as well. The characteristics, talents, and skills of both introverts and extroverts hold great value in moving both our world and ourselves forward.

There is a wonderful Ted Talk where Susan Cain sheds deeper light on this topic. Her passion towards better understanding, recognizing, and valuing introverts in education and beyond is absolutely inspiring and should be watched by all educators!

International School Bangkok has nearly completed its first school year with a 1-1 laptop initiative, piloted with the current 6th grade class (Class of 2017). It has been both a growing and amazing school year, with countless positive gains in digital teaching and learning. I too have been working to contribute to the success of the 1-1 laptop implementation, applying both familiar and new practices gleaned from personal exploration and experimentation, as well as applying knowledge and concepts from SUNY’s COETAIL Asia courses (Taught by the incredibly talented, Jeff Utecht).

Digitally reflecting upon this school year brings to mind some applications, tools, sites or otherwise that have become fast favorites for enhancing both teaching and learning in a 1-1 learning environment.

Check out these top favorites:

Sketchbox: Digital Post-it notes!  Sketchbox is a free Mac download that creates an uncluttered Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac desktop. Many of our 6th grade students use these Sticky Notes to write down homework or other important reminders. And the great news is that as soon as they open their laptops, there it is, serving as a reminder!

Quizlet: Is a great study tool appropriate for upper elementary to high school levels. Quizlet has a flashcard mode, learn mode, and test mode. It is wonderful for building academic language, understanding new words, and powerful for English language learners continuing to attain the language (It can even be used for Modern Language studies). Quizlet has ready-made words and definitions for a wide range of subjects and topics but is also super use-friendly for creating your own words/definitions. Quizlet can be collaborative or individualized and contains both teacher and student features.

Tour of Quizlet.com from Phil Freo on Vimeo.

Edmodo: Is instantly popular because it has a Facebook look and feel to it. It is a free, secure, social learning platform for teachers and students. It is especially useful for schools that do not have a Moodle platform in place, or for individual classes that want a more personalized display place to work from. Edmodo is easy! Messages, links and video posting, assignments, calendars, networking, community building, mobile accessing, group differentiation, co-teacher plan sharing, libraries: these are just a few Edmodo features and perks!

Screencasting tools (Jing, Screentoaster are just a few that are out there for free)! Screencasts benefit all learners. A screencast allows students to watch and listen to at the same time, but the real power is the opportunity to playback, review instructions, information, ideas, and more. They are also super quick and easy to make. Both Jing and Screentoaster tools are free downloads and easy to share through embedding and/or publish via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook.

Flysketch is an application that allows you to draw on top of just about anything on your screen. In 6^th grade, we have used it for main idea highlighting, emphasizing words or paragraphs in online content reading. Flysketch also allows you to draw shapes or images to help define what you want to say, or further emphasize a point. Other cool perks: you can drag and drop the results of your work onto another application, or email it; you can bring up a window without ever leaving TextEdit to create diagrams and then add your creations to TextEdit. Or, if you come across a great interface that you want to check out in better detail later, you can use the screen capture button and tuck it away to a folder.

Mac faves:

Keynote,  Pages and Photobooth

• Keynote is a very cool Mac presentation tool. It has the power to really make a presentation come alive and look amazing. Our students have generated countless projects using Keynote. It is also great because one of the sharing options can send the project to YouTube.

• Pages is a word processor and layout tool. This means that before kids even start to write, their work looks polished and professional. There are also great templates, such as a storyboard for planning a digital story.
• Photobooth is a Mac application for taking photos and videos with an iSight camera by Apple Inc. for Mac OS X. (It was also recently announced for the iPad 2 tablet). Kids especially LOVE it for quick, easy photos and capturing video clips. Most of our students have also independently found out how to get the newest effects and have had (maybe too much) fun with this

Oldies But Goodies that continue to rock for classroom use!

Freeplay Music: CC licensed music to enhance projects

Creative Commons, Compfight: Awesome visual inspiration portals that have CC licensed images

Shelfari: Virtual bookshelf with a social twist! Maintain a bookshelf of books read (fabulous graphics), read and write book reviews, create an exclusive group for your class, chat with others about books

Netvibes is a living dashboard! I love this for housing all student blogs. It allows me to quickly see when a student has posted something new. I also maintain a private page to monitor all my favorite blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so much more!

Jeopardy Labs allows teachers and/or students to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games made can be played online from anywhere in the world. It is a great collaborative study tool where kids can “play” from their own homes, yet be studying together.

YouTube: Creating your own channel where student work/projects are housed, easily allowing for students to embed their projects/videos onto their blogs without creating their own personal account (Which is initially ideal for early Middle School kiddos).

It has been a fabulous and growing 1-1 school year. And there is so, so much more out there than just these featured faves! I would love to hear more about what other teachers love and have found to be affective and useful in their classrooms.

I recently read an article that discussed some research conducted related to change and how various age groups feel about the idea of change. It appears to be generally true, according to the article, that children and younger adults are generally more willing to accept change and overall find it easier to adapt to. However, once hitting the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s in age, the findings indicated that change becomes tedious, challenging and unwelcome in both personal and professional lives. This mentality of resistance toward change is thought to be associated with the pressure of child rearing and responsibility to provide for a family. The good news is that levels of tolerance toward change eventually evolve again once reaching the age groups of 60 and 70, when adults begin to once again embrace and accept change.

During those ages of resistance and intolerance is the time when most of us are in the prime of our careers. Educators, for the most part, fall within these age ranges that apparently recoil at the idea of change.  If there is accuracy here, how does the attitude regarding change affect teaching and learning today? Especially is a world where technological advancements are rapidly increasing, changing, and evolving.

How can we better recognize and eliminate the unchanging, archaic educational practices still in place? How can we overcome the resistance of maintaining inappropriate practices and better embrace the needed changes?

There are 21st century educators in existence and there is evidence of progressive movements toward change in education, but we all need to do our part to promote and model that today’s kids are the same kids from the industrial revolution era.

Many educators have heard the term “Third Culture Kids”. This refers to children/students growing up in another country (Or countries) other than their native origin of birth or culture. These kids’ experiences from various cultural exposures are often combined with those of their homeland, creating a third culture that is unique to their individual experiences and ideas.  Their lives in a single location can be temporary, filled with transitioning both in and out, and overall roving in nature, creating not only a Third Culture Kid, but also a Global Nomad.

International schools are filled with these globally nomadic children who have diverse and unique backgrounds and experiences. As an adult, I have often envied their upbringings that seem so filled with diversity, including a lovely immersion of languages, cultures, foods, activities, and experiences. I had never even traveled by plane until I was in my early 20′s and these children are so accustomed to air travel that the concept and words “road trip” are foreign. These well-traveled children seem so sophisticated and cultured, and what I have often referred to as “lucky”.  Yet are they really lucky?

Children, and even many spouses, often do not get a say in what happens. In a world with an unstable and unpredictable economy, the job post delegates the location. While their lives may look exotic and glamorous, plenty of challenges remain regarding identity, choices, relationships, changes, and more.

• What if I don’t want to go?
• Where is the place I consider “home”?
• How do I identify myself? By religion? Culture? Country?
• Who are my real friends and how do I maintain these relationships?

I consider myself somewhat of a global nomad. I have not lived in my native country for many years, and have traveled to many places across the planet. I love this globally nomadic life that I too have. However, it is important for me to also remember that I have chosen this lifestyle for myself as an adult and without the experience of imposing it upon a spouse or children.  Some of our international children have reflected about their lives as Third Culture Kids or Global Nomads and hearing their voices and reading their about their personal challenges and triumphs has provided a deeper understanding that their nomadic lifestyle can be exciting and new, but it also entails far more than exotic travels and adventures. It is about starting over again and again and sometimes without  a chance to make strong peer attachments to digitally connect with for support through the tough transitioning times.

Take a few moments to learn from a few of our own International School Bangkok global nomads/third culture kids to better gauge and understand who they are, how they feel, and how they learn about where they fit.

Caroline

Katy

Shafim

Kalin

The middle school years can be challenging, for both students and teachers alike. As educators, we often struggle to keep students academically engaged as middle school kiddos make their way through these (often awkward) years of tremendous change. As a Humanities teacher, supporting students to maintain a love for books and a desire to continue to read independently, has been an obstacle. However, technology has helped with this, inspiring teaching and inspiring reading!
Here are a few tools we have tried and experienced success with:
1. Shelfari:
Our 6th grade students all belong to an online, social book group called Shelfari. As a 6th grade Humanities team, we decided to create a group within Shelfari that includes all students in the 6th grade. However, it also allows students to explore outside the group. With this tool, students create a virtual bookshelf that has a social network atmosphere with great graphics, including actual images of the book covers. In addition, the students can also see what their friends are reading, read and write book reviews, rate books, and engage in chats/discussions about books. This site has helped transform reading into a socially engaging opportunity. The kids love it, and many previous 6th grade students maintain their accounts throughout middle school, keeping their bookshelves updated.

2. 5 Frames, 5 Minutes book talks:
Often, students (and adults) choose a book to read because of a peer recommendation. It is important to further foster these conversations and interest in books and reading by hearing what others have to say about a book, why they enjoyed it and recommend it to others. In our 6th grade Humanities class, we began a rotating schedule of brief book shares that allows each student to individually highlight a great piece of literature they personally enjoyed. The book shares are a visual literacy project consisting of 5 visual frames with a 5-minute book promotion talk.
Here are the steps the students took:

• Choose a recently finished book
• The book should be one that was enjoyed and the students feel comfortable talking about
• Use a Story Planner that will guide in creating a 5-frames book share.

Students were reminded that the 5-Frames, 5-Minutes book shares are not book reports. They are meant to be a visual enticement complemented by verbal promotion to read a book. The images chosen should represent ideas, thoughts, or aspects from the book that might engage others’ interest to read the book. The students were encouraged to choose interesting and perhaps abstract images that can share a message in an appealing and unique way, and with less than 5 words per frame. Most students have chosen to present using Keynote, but others have opted for iMovie or Voicethread as well, or chose the non-digital way of presenting their frames aloud in front of the class.

3. Book Trailers
The students watched several movie trailers, easily accessible from You Tube. These short videos engaged all kinds of excitement, enthusiasm, and most important – conversations about their interest in seeing some of the movies presented. The students then took a few minutes to talk to one another about what aspects/features of the movie trailers got them so excited. The students were then introduced to “Book Trailers”. (Just like a movie trailer, but related to a book they read)
The creation of the students’ “Book Trailers” was wide open as to what platform they would use (Most everyone used iMovie), as well as how they would create their project. Some students became performers in their own work; others put together a series of images with creative commons music, while others digitally created their own artwork and music to piece together their Book Trailer. The idea was for students to convey to their peers that their book is worth reading and worth getting excited about. Several of their trailers built up intensity or captured emotions with music, or simply grabbed their interest.

Reading is so powerful and with the amazing advancements in technology, there are so many ways we can access reading as well as many ways we can celebrate and inspire reading, making it more fun and more engaging during those tricky middle school years!
Happy Reading!

As a non-digital native, I do not have the innate need for technology as today’s young people often do. While I do love the power and connectivity of technology, both in my personal and profession life, I still have not reached a point where I am shaking from withdrawals when away from it for 24+ hours. However, in the past few years personal/fun travel always brings forth the question as to whether or not I should bring connectivity devices with me while I am away.
By nature I am a planner. I love planning my international adventures and travels. It is not uncommon for me to plan a trip more than 6 months in advance. While I certainly use digital tools to create these trips, I often do not technically need these devices or tools once arriving at my destination. My mental idea related to this has always been that these trips are already planned out, therefore I can simply enjoy the holiday without stress of planning as I go, as well as detach from my regular world, including the technology that is ever present in it. Besides, do I really need to connect to Facebook while camping alongside the amazing Okavango Delta in Botswana?
This being said, I have more recently been finding myself longing for the connectivity while away. I am suddenly afraid of what I am missing, how much email is building up in my inbox, as well as wanting to share my amazing experiences with family and friends as they happen. Furthermore, books and travel journals have started to become heavy and cumbersome – but not if I can carry several of them on something like the iPad, right? I have been trying to fight this urge to stay disconnected during travel/holidays for a while now. But, why exactly have I felt this way? Where and how did I get the idea I needed a break from technology? Is it really so bad when this connectivity has brought such goodness to my life? I still cannot decide my stance on traveling with technology, especially as the world continues to be so connected. For now, while not huddled in a corner rocking back and forth without it during my travels, it certainly has grown to a challenge to be without it.

Life in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

I have been a teacher in public and international schools for 14 years. The majority of these professional years have been spent working with young children in Early Childhood Education. As a result of years of daily interactions with curious, active audiences, I feel pretty certain that most early childhood teachers become adept, if not experts, at engaging learners and employing strategies that are hands on, captivating and motivating, yet still infuse quality learning. I often have said during my Kindergarten teaching years that I felt like an animated monkey.

As my career has reshaped and changed over the years, yet never removing my spirit and interest from the early childhood classroom, I began to wonder if today’s adult learners too need/want  a similar approach to teaching and learning in higher education. I think I recently discovered the answer while teaching undergraduate, pre-service teachers studying Early Childhood Education at Eastern Illinois University.

I was invited to facilitate a lesson to about 40 university level students, juniors and seniors, studying to become early childhood teachers themselves. Prior to developing the lesson, I was nervous about how to deliver the content to these young adults. I mean, by nature I am somehow who addresses my current students as “Little Stars” and “Peanut”, oozing with love for these lovely little people and knowing exactly what I need to do to connect with and engage them. But what do today’s young adults want and need as professionals heading into the field? What do they expect? (Likely not a cuddly teacher with “Good morning, Sunshine!” greetings) I left behind the fluffy side of me, but did go with the comfortable: Deliver it like you do in kindergarten!

1. Create a connection: Generate a way to briefly connect with the learners while also connecting them to the topic of learning. This is the engaging part that grabs their interest and draws them in, but is also kept short and sweet and allows them to participate or warm up.

2. Deliver a teaching point that ties into the connection, supporting background knowledge, but offering deeper knowledge on the topic.

3. Active Engagement/Involvement: The facilitator models an example of the teaching point also giving students a guided learning opportunity to practice the teaching point with the teacher supporting them through.

4. Link: Students then independently, or collaboratively with their peers, apply what they have learned, showing they have grasped the concept

5. Student reflection: What are the Big Ideas, Insight, Questions, Implications?

Interesting enough, this is the same approach to teaching I used in Kindergarten and not only did it work like a charm with young adults studying to be teachers, but it also kept the focus off (the very nervous) me, and on them as the students and learners. Are Kindergarten children really so different from adult university students?

In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is traditionally filled with turkey, stuffing, American football and family. However, it is a regular work day on this side of the planet in the international life I lead.  Despite the fact that I have not celebrated this holiday in nearly a decade, I find myself silently giving thanks for so many things today. This life has afforded me countless amazing experiences. How can I not stop to consider how lucky I am and express gratitude for this good fortune?

• Thank you for diverse cultural celebrations I have experienced that allow me to understand and embrace others
• Thank you for my passport that has had additional pages sewn in 3 times in the last 8 years to accommodate my travel
  

  My passport

• Thank you for a wonderful profession and job that has never ceased to bring a daily smile to my face
• Thank you for my family, especially my sister, who somehow always knows exactly what to say, and is the person I have most looked up to throughout my life.
  

  I've always looked up to my big sis!

• Thank you for nature and the humbling feelings it brings when I am in it
• Thank you for history that allows us to learn about the past, connect with the present, and predict the future
• Thank you for literature and the power it carries to transport me into different times and places
• Thank you for technology that keeps me connected and allows me to share my life in diverse ways.
  

  Facebook has connected and reconnected me with wonderful people

A lucky picture snapped in Botswana

Storytelling is one of the earliest forms of folk art, and has likely been around since people began to communicate with one another. It is a beautiful phenomenon that is both ageless and timeless, appealing to all ages, languages, and cultures.

What is storytelling?
Storytelling might be defined as one or more persons conveying events to others through gestures, words, actions, images, or sounds.  Stories can be real or made up events, and are often improvised and embellished to add elements of interest to engage the listener. Storytelling is often a part of our everyday conversations. The words “Tell me a story” remain a request of both children and adults today.

Stories are amazing in education and beyond because of the power they hold in sharing meaning, showing understanding, teaching, and communicating.  Stories might be representations of thinking, learning, a form of expression, and so much more. And thanks to advancements in technology, it is even more engaging, and exciting to tell stories because we are now empowered with digital elements that are innovative and can add versatility, uniqueness, and creativity to telling a story.

Let’s celebrate digital storytelling by looking at various forms of children and adults using media to tell stories that share about themselves, convey understanding, construct meaning, and so much more.

Digital Storytelling

5 Frames to tell a story or promote a message (Examples)

Early childhood samples:

Middle school student:

I have recently been enjoying some of the “Death by Power Point” videos, comedy routines, and other editorials that are out there regarding the inappropriate use of Power Point.

While these parodies are amusing to any viewer who has encountered a similar situation and can relate, they are also an incredibly frightening reality.  The startling truth is that these heavily bulleted and tiny, text dense slides remain a continued reality of teaching today.

As a doctorate level student at present, I have been faced again and again with these types of Power Point presentations. They are literally painful to watch and listen to. (Is it fair to say they also insult my intelligence? I can read). However, the most concerning aspect of these presentations is that if educators, such as myself, are being taught in this manner, aren’t we running the risk of teachers in turn presenting to and talking at students in this exact same, excruciating, ineffective manner?

When personally encountering such presentation experiences, my brain immediately conjures up the wah, wah, wah, wah sound of the Peanuts characters’ teacher’s voice droning on and on to uninterested kids who are tuning them out, not engaged, not motivated, and certainly not walking away with learning. Adults and kids alike feel uninspired by this style of presenting!

If we must instruct or present with Power Point, then we need to truly think about how and what message we are delivering, as well as how to breathe life into the presentation style. Remembering to engage the viewers, light up minds with creative, interpretative, and imaginative thoughts is critical in supporting and promoting the  absorption of content and learning.

Try some of these fabulous resources not only for yourself, but for your students to also learn how to present more effectively:

Petcha Kucha Presentations (Examples)

Presentation Zen

Ignite

Let’s learn to better listen to and read our kids and our audiences!