Using technology to personalize learning - part 5: mobile devices

As we discuss personalized learning at school, I'm often part of conversations about giving students a choice about how they express their understanding. Inevitably this may depend on the students' ability to choose the tools he or she wants to use. At school we have a BYOD programme, so students already have a choice of which laptop they bring to school. However, they do have to have a laptop as their primary device - just relying on a mobile device is not an option at this time. What we discovered, through various prototypes over the past 5 years, is that mobile devices do offer a different way of doing things - and that one device may not be the answer to all of a student's learning needs.

In our Grade 4 we have just completed a historical narrative which formed the summative assessment for the Where We Are in Place and Time unit. Students were given the choice of making paper slides, using Book Creator, iMovie and Voicethread. At the same time students were encouraged to use whatever devices they had for making these narratives. Some students continued to work on their laptops, others brought in mobile devices from home. Some students even used a mixture of devices, for example green screening on one device and putting the project together on another.

One advantage is that students are able to use the devices that they already have at home instead of or in addition to the laptops that they use in school. These other devices are likely to be the ones that they will be using in the future. Being flexible about the devices they are using is also a skill necessary for the future, as they need to adapt to the rapidly changing world of technology.   Students then published their narratives onto the Grade 4 blog - another tool that they are becoming increasingly confident in using and which supports the aim of the Grade 4 teachers to have their students become global communicators.

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A meeting in Bahrain

I was really excited to be invited to be part of the NESA (Near East and South Asia) Ed Tech Leadership collaborative.  This 5 person team from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Israel and India met in Bahrain last Sunday.  Our task to was to plan and lead professional learning for the NESA community.  Although this was only our first meeting I felt we got a lot done.  Below you will find our purpose statement along with the strands we identified as priorities for professional learning.  I felt a great rapport with the other members of this collaborative and look forward to working with them all again as we move forward.

Purpose Statement
The Ed Tech Leadership collaborative is designed to meet the needs of educational leaders by:

• Providing a variety of sustainable professional learning opportunities; 
• Nurturing innovative leadership; 
• Fostering collaborative partnerships; 
• Identifying and sharing best practices; 
• Aligning and contextualizing policies and procedures; 
• Defining areas and direction for professional growth;
• Inspiring purposeful pedagogical change. 
• areas of professional learning will your plan focus on?

Strands (the areas of professional learning we will focus on):
1. Technology leadership and coaching
2. Using data
3. Innovation and change
4. Personalizing learning
5. Technology and standards
6. Digital citizenship

I will be attending the NESA Spring Conference in Bangkok in March to be presenting on coaching and using data to personalize PD for self-directed learning.  I'm really looking forward to this!

Photo taken at the Bu Maher Fort, Bahrain

Using technology to personalize learning - part 4: different tech integration models

Last weekend I received an email from Jon Bergmann, a flipped learning pioneer, that contained a link through to videos he has made about the technological decisions that have to be made by a school when considering moving to a flipped learning model.  There are 18 videos in this series, and together they take about an hour to watch.  They contain information about various topics, such as the costs, infrastructure, interactivity, support, training and issues around student privacy and safety.   This course is free to join and can be found at this link.

Along with looking at these videos this weekend, I've also been reading more in my free eBook from ISTE about personalized learning.  As I'm in a 1:1 school, I was particularly interested in the chapter about how a 1:1 model can change the way teachers teach and so move instruction into more of a personalized learning direction as teachers have more ways of reaching and assessing different types of leaners.  The chapter basically deals with different instructional models, which as well as flipped learning also include blended, online and mobile learning.

Flipped Learning - is a pedagogical approach that moves direction instruction from the group space (the classroom) to the individual learning space (the home).  Students use their computers both at school and at home, though a lot of the instructional material posted by teachers such as videos, text files and so on is for students to access at home at their own pace, and class time is spent on guided practice, experiments and projects.  Often in class the Socratic method is used, so that teachers will pose questions and students will work collaboratively to solve problems.

Blended Learning - a combination of both online and face-to-face instruction that gives students some control over the time, place and pace of learning.  In this model multi-media technology can be used both inside and outside the classroom to give more interactive experiences.  With this model creating high quality resources is vital so that "students work at their own pace and experience success on an individual level, using a range of digital tools and resources to improve their ability to think, communicate and collaborate."  Blended learning allows the creation of more personalized learning experiences which in turn leads to much better results that traditional methods.  "By elegantly blending assessment with daily classroom instruction, technology-based learning platforms can serve as the cornerstone of revolutionary educational change.  They have the potential to personalize the learning process, support teachers in enacting best teaching strategies, and help students meet ambitious and rigorous standards."

Online Learning - this can be online classes, tutorials and wikis, and students can often take these courses to supplement the options being offered in schools.  For example I know of many IB schools who encourage students to take courses online that are not offered in school, in particular students who want to study a language for which there is not a local teacher.  In online learning, games, simulations and chat rooms are valued for the role they play in learning.

Mobile Learning - increasingly tablets and smartphones are being used in learning activities both in and out of school, often alongside laptops.  Studies have shown the dramatic impact of mobile devices on students who struggle with learning - at my school a mobile device is now a requirement for our academic support teachers.

One thing we talk a lot about in my school is student choice.  Certainly one way to personalize learning is to let students choose what and how they learn (for example in student-led inquiry) and in how they show their understanding through more open-ended assessments.   I'm thinking right now of our upcoming PYP Exhibition, where students have a wide choice in how they present their understanding and during the PYP Exhibition process the teachers monitor the students progress through blogs and shared slideshows.

Looking at the above 4 models of technology integration it does appear that technology gives teachers much more choice in how to personalize student learning.

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Using technology to personalize learning - part 3: meeting the needs of all learners

I'm back in Mumbai again, and reading on in the book Personalized Learning: A Guide for Engaging Students with Technology by Peggy Grant and Dale Basye.  This section of the book, on personalizing learning for all learners, has sections on at-risk students, students with disabilities, gifted students, and English language learners.  However because this is a blog about technology, the part I was really interested in was where the authors divide tech tools into 5 educational areas:

Literacy resources
What this is:  blogs, ebooks and discussion forums
How these help personalize learning:  students can use their own preferred learning styles to engage in topics of interest, and can also access multiple texts on similar topics.  Text-to-speech tools can make these resources available to a wide range of students.

Web tools
What this is:  podcasts, wikis, media editors and aggregators
How these help personalize learning:  students can use these to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways, they can share their work with an authentic audience, increasing motivation.  Students can use these tools to show what they are learning.

Digital information resources
What this is:  encyclopedia sites, podcasts, expert websites and blogs
How these help personalize learning: Web research is the most common use of technology in today's classrooms and students are able to use these resources to interact with content and experts to explore subjects and topics

Social networking sites
What this is:  sites that allow students to network with others
How these help personalize learning: Students with special needs can build up a network of similar students and connect with educators and experts.  This can help students who feel isolated because of problems communicating, and can help them to build constructive relationships with others.

Learning management systems
What this is:  systems that help teachers organize instruction and communicate with students and parents
How these help personalize learning:  Providing a platform for accessing content and keeping records of students' progress.

It was interesting to see how these tools have been divided.  From a PYP perspective, two of these categories are helping students to investigate and inquire, one is helping students to organize,  one is helping students to communicate and collaborate and one is helping students to create.  In the next post I'll be thinking about different types of tech integration and how these can impact student achievement.

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Using technology to personalize learning - part 2

I'm reading on in the eBook Personalized Learning: A Guide for Engaging Students with Technology by Peggy Grant and Dale Basye and am making a list about the benefits of using technology for learning:

• Opening up the classroom and connecting with experts
• Giving students choices about how, when and where they learn
• Enabling students to take online courses in subjects that are not normally offered in their schools
• The possibility for utilizing more frequent formative assessments
• The ability to extend the learning day and school year
• More collaboration with peers
• Enhanced research through electronic libraries and online tutorials
• The ability to engage with simulations, role plays and real-world models
• The ability to bookmark and organize websites being used for research

Of course for personalized learning it's also important to have face-to-face interactions as well as online learning - in fact studies show that these interactions lead to better accountability when students are online.  Teachers need to be mindful that meeting students' needs involve an alignment between online and offline instructional strategies.

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Using technology to personalize learning

Because I recently renewed my ISTE membership, I was given the opportunity to download a free eBook - my choice was Personalized Learning: A Guide for Engaging Students with Technology by Peggy Grant and Dale Basye.  During my last week in the UK before returning to India I decided to read through this book and share some of my thinking here on the blog.

One of the first things addressed in Chapter 1 of this book is the characteristics of personalized learning.  Briefly it takes account of:

• students' interests and abilities
• learning content/standards through real-world activities
• teachers' roles changing to become facilitators rather than dispensers of knowledge
• students being in control of their learning by setting their own goals for building skills
• technology that can enable student choices about what they learn, how they learn and how they show their understanding
• technology that can assist formative assessment, address weaknesses and build on strengths
• progress based on proficiency of skills and understanding
• technology being integrated to support learning

One new thing I learned in this chapter was about the 2010 initiative Project RED (which stands for Revolutionizing EDucation) which looked at the ways that technology can improve student achievement.  Project RED came up with 7 major findings, which are worth mentioning here:

1. Implementation factors that lead to success include:  technology integrated into every intervention class period, leadership providing time for teacher professional learning each month, technology being used daily for online collaboration, technology being integrated into core curriculum, online formative assessments being done weekly, daily searches for information, principals being trained in best practices.
2. 1:1 schools that employ all the key implementation factors outperform all other schools
3. When properly implemented technology saves money - on average a 1:1 classroom saves around $400 per student per year.
4. Change must be modelled and championed at the principal level
5. Technology-transformed intervention improves learning
6. Online collaboration increases student engagement, productivity and learning
7. The daily use of technology delivers the best return on investment

Project RED came up with 4 recommendations:

1. Technology should be frequently integrated into the curriculum to personalize learning for all students
2. Professional learning in the effective integration of technology for teaching, learning and assessment should be a high priority
3. Social media, games and simulations should be used to engage students and excite them about their learning.
4. Online assessments should be used to provide data to help tailor instruction, remediation and accelerated learning.

As Project RED is already 7 years old now, I'd be interested to know whether there has been follow-up studies done in those schools that implemented the recommendations.  Hopefully this will be addressed as I read through the rest of the book.

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When learning drives the use of technology

A little over a year ago, I looked at John Hattie's meta-analysis about the impact of technology on achievement.  As mentioned in that post about the value of technology, I used to work in a school where the Director told parents that there was no evidence that technology improves learning.  He brought in a consultant, Aric Sigman, to tell parents and students that using technology would make them sad and isolated - in fact one claim to fame Dr Sigman had was to publish an article in the Daily Mail about how Facebook can cause cancer! Thankfully I don't have to deal with this nonsense any more, but I'm always curious to read studies that look at the results of research about the impact that technology does have on learning.

This week, following a discussion of Facebook, I read the article Learning in One-to-One Laptop Environments: A Meta-Analysis and Research Synthesis that was published in February this year by Binbin Zheng, Mark Warschauer, Chin-Hsi Lin and Chi Chang from Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine.  The conclusions of this analysis were that the role of computers is marginal when they are scattered in small numbers throughout schools, but that when each student has access to an individual laptop, the effects of technology on learning are likely to be felt.  As well as this, the report concluded that teachers' attitudes and beliefs, school leadership, classroom management strategies, technical support and ongoing PD all play an important role in the success of a 1:1 laptop programme.

The meta-analysis looks at studies in 5 different subject areas:  English, reading, writing, maths and science.  Several of these studies show that the impact of laptops on student scores occurs after the second year of implementation.  Often in the first year teachers and students need to adapt to a new style of teaching and learning.  The following results were shown:

• English Language Arts scores were improved among students in both a partial and full laptop programme, compared with non-laptop peers.  Interestingly students who use their computers at home for recreation tend to have higher scores (though this effect diminished when socio-economic status was included in the analysis).
• In reading, the use of technology for home learning strongly predicted students' reading achievement.  Those who use computers more frequently at home have higher scores.
• There was a significant impact on students' writing performance when using laptops, both in the area of ideas and content, and organization and style.  There was no impact on writing conventions.  Some studies showed that at-risk students using laptops experienced significantly higher writing score gains than those students who were not at risk.
• In maths laptop students outperformed non-laptop students on computer based assessments, though there was no difference on paper-based assessments.  More frequent laptop use in the classroom tends to result in higher maths scores for students. 
• In science laptops were shown to have a positive effect on middle school students' achievements.  Both girls and boys benefitted from this, though the impact on girls was smaller. Again, a more frequent use of laptops was shown to have a greater impact on science test scores than students who reported less frequent use.

The analysis also looked at teaching and learning processes.  In general writing and editing, and gathering information from the Internet were the most common uses of laptops.  Other frequent uses included taking notes, organizing information, completing assignments and homework, reading on electronic textbooks and conducting research.  Many studies reported a change towards a more student centred or individualized learning environment, and that students had more control over their learning paths.  Several studies also showed that laptops fostered more project-based learning.

In classes where all students had laptops, students were found to write more, receive more feedback on their writing, edit and revise their work more often, and draw on a wider range of resources to write, publish and share their work with others more often.  It was also noticed that there were improvements in teacher-student and home-school relationships through the use of communication tools such as email and Google Docs.  Parents were reported as having more involvement with their children's schoolwork and homework after 1 year of implementing of a 1:1 laptop programme.

Students had positive attitudes regarding the effects of laptop programmes on their learning, with a high percentage of students indicating they preferred learning with laptops.  Many studies report higher student engagement, motivation and persistence in 1:1 environments.

Teachers beliefs and approaches are of course crucial to the effective integration of technology in teaching and learning.  Although many teachers expressed initial concerns, these were mostly about their own limited technology skills, lack of tech support, or fear of losing control of the classroom.  Some teachers do experience difficulties creating an environment where the learning drives the use of technology.  The meta-analysis shows that teachers who reacted negatively to the introduction of 1:1 programmes were those who had ill-planned PD.  When training and support were provided teachers became more confident of their ability to solve technical issues and integrate technology into their instruction.  Most studies showed that after a year of use, teachers generally had very positive attitudes towards laptop programmes.

Many studies showed laptop environments promoted learning autonomy, improved collaboration skills and the ability to independently organize their schoolwork.  They also showed that laptops were used extensively for problem-solving tasks, leading to enhanced problem-solving abilities in students.  The reason for this was an increase in research and project-based activities where students used technology to find information, identify approaches to solve problems and present their results to others.  There was wide consensus that the use of laptops promotes 21st century learning skills.

The conclusion of this meta-analysis is that laptops are leading to significantly increased academic achievements in science, writing, math and English, and that they lead to more student-centred and individualized instruction.   The really important thing is that the biggest gains happen when it is the learning that drives the use of technology - and not the other way round.

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Making global connections goes hand-in-hand with digital citizenship

This week I've been preparing for one of my presentations for next week's ASB Un-Plugged.  The presentation is about how we use data to personalise professional learning for our teachers.  We are asking teachers to make a short video reflection about this, and today I watched one of these, made by one of our 4th grade teachers, where she reflected on how looking at the data had allowed her to identify gaps in her practice, or concepts that she was not very intentional about teaching.  For example, she said that she did talk to her students about digital citizenship, but in the past this had been more reactive than proactive. She spoke about how over the past couple of years she has set goals based on digital citizenship and making global connections - the two of which go hand-in-hand.

I've also been reflecting on how our tech coaching initiative has led to more of an emphasis on digital citizenship.  One of our tech coaches is a Grade 5 teacher, and he has encouraged goals around digital citizenship for the Grade 4 and 5 teachers that he coaches.  At the start of the year, we always talk to the students about being responsible digital citizens, in the light of our responsible use policy, as we want students to be able to protect themselves and others and to respect others when using technology.  Following this, coaches can reach out to teachers, students and parents so that they best understand how to maximize the advantages of technology use, while avoiding the dangers.  Our coaches need to be at the forefront of investigating the implications of new technologies that our students use.  For example Skype can be used for good, to connect with others around the world in a global bookclub, where they encounter unique viewpoints and ideas that are different from their own, but at the same time we are aware that at times it has been used for private chatting at the weekends and evenings that has caused upset to some students.  We need to find a balance between using technology to build the understandings that students need for their future, while at the same time protecting students from its misuse.

In this respect we rely heavily on our tech coaches to work with our teachers to model best practices and to encourage them to talk to the students and parents to raise awareness about the issues.

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A new age of personal empowerment

Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez were visitors to ASB on a number of occasions last year, running Maker sessions with parents and students.  I was interested to read his recent article about the Maker Movement in the May edition of Learning and Leading with Technology.  Gary and Sylvia write about how the rise of civilization was defined by the progress of technology, and claim that the availability of affordable constructive technology and the ability to share online has led to what they describe as a new age of personal empowerment.  New tools such as 3D printers and wearable technology are giving students the power to become inventors - and it's easy to find and share instructions and ideas online.

Makers construct knowledge, and in the classroom making encourages children to learn by doing.  Being able to overcome the problems they encounter on the way helps them develop the confidence to become competent problem solvers.  When I first started teaching back in the 1980s, all the students in my high schools were exposed to subjects such as woodwork, metalwork, cooking and needlework, as well as subjects such as art, music and drama.  At that time in the UK schools were known as "comprehensive" schools, the days of sorting students out into academic or vocational tracks had ended with the abolition of the 11+.  The woodwork and metalwork rooms contained power tools, which students became quite competent in using.  Gary and Sylvia argue that these skills need to come back into schools - but this time into the classrooms as opposed to specialist "fablabs".  They point to the failure of computer labs that students traditionally visited once a week, and instead advocate for every classroom to be a maker-space with materials that encourage students to learn by doing and so produce "adults who are capable of understanding and mastering their increasingly technological world",

From working first hand with Gary, it's clear that he believes that children are competent, even though he claims many schools do not.  He argues that a student who has the ability to Google anything has a different sense of himself or herself as a learner:  one where learning is an active and personal process.  I tend to agree with Gary, that this could be a new age of personal empowerment, but of course working against that possibility is the experience that many students have these days, in standardized and standards-based schools, which work against individuality, creativity and innovation.

This brings me back again to personalized learning:  the recognition that students learn differently and have diverse needs.  Last year I did an online course about personalized learning with Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey where the focus was on students being responsible for their own learning.  Other consultants I've worked with over the past year such as Suzie Boss and Bernajean Porter have constantly stressed the need for student voice and choice.  Personalized learning, therefore, gives students a voice in what they learn, how they learn and how they show their understanding.   Technology can play an important part in this:  delivering instruction, giving immediate feedback and allowing students to show their learning using numerous forms of media.

One of the things we talked about in an R&D meeting last year was what if education was not EC-12 but EC-Life?  Empowering students through personalized learning can be one way of giving students the skills they will need for lifelong learning.  Other things we talked about was rethinking physical schools and school groupings based on age.  If we truly empower students then students could be "done with school" (though obviously not with learning) at any age not just at 18, and for those who are wanting this, we could provide other opportunities such as internships, for those students who feel they need a different experience.  

Do you think we are in a new age of personal empowerment?  How are you empowering your students?  Drop me a comment, I'd love to hear.

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Dream Fairs

As Scot and I thought more about our design thinking challenge yesterday, we realized that the end point of empowering students to puruse their dreams would have to be personalized learning.  We all have different dreams - so we all need different pathways and skills to help us to pursue them.  We had left Day 1 of our deep dive with the idea that dreaming is a "making activity" and that if we see school as a MakerSpace for dreams then we need to design and build a toolkit that can be used to facilitate students' pursuit of dreams.  Day 2 was devoted to this toolkit.

Most dreams are about the future, so we started to come up with a "Futurecasting Framework".  This framework would be made up of 4 parts:

• Collecting data:  through interviews, rubrics and measuring learning styles
• Displaying data:  through student infographics and a "Talent Treasury"
• Using the data to redesign learning: which could involve "Dream Coaches", internships, apprenticeships, curiosity projects and courses to give students the skills they need
• Sharing and inspiring:  Dream Fairs

There were several of these we wanted to flesh out a little more and we looked into what Futurecasting could involve.  The definition we found that we liked the best was this:  a framework of life skills that enable young people to connect who they are today with the person that they will be in the future.  We also discussed what the student infographic should look like - it should be something dynamic that visualizes data about each student's progress towards his or her dream (for example skills acquisition) and the evolution of the dream - these artifacts to be collected into a Talent Treasury.

Yesterday afternoon was spent diving deeper into the concept of a Dream Fair.  The two main purposes of these fairs would be to inspire everyone to pursue their dreams and to personalize learning.  They would give the opportunity to share and tell about dreams and the stories behind the dreams and at the same time would create awareness about the diversity of student dreams.  The students we interviewed about their ideas of a Dream Fair mentioned storytelling, showing the dream and the journey towards the dream including the hardships and challenges and what it took to achieve the dream, and one-on-one conversations about their dreams.  They also saw these fairs as a way of networking and connecting with others (experts, mentors, coaches) who could help them achieve their dreams.  I really liked the way one student described how he wanted to "feel the dream" and experience the dreams of others.  He told us that sharing makes dreams real, but that a Dream Fair can also be a place to explore how the dream can morph into something else.  The students felt that the fair could include both exhibition and workshop - about how to turn a dream into a reality.  They felt it was important to show how a dream has changed your life - both the way you view things and how you act and react.

Do you have any ideas about how to empower students to achieve their dreams?  If so, please leave a comment as we are hoping to develop these ideas further once we return to school.

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The pursuit of dreams

Bring a wicked problem to work on at Fuse14, my colleague Scot Hoffman and I were told.  The most wicked problem we could come up with was contained in our school's mission statement:

We inspire all of our students to continuous inquiry, empowering them with the skills, courage, optimism, and integrity to pursue their dreams and enhance the lives of others.

What does it mean to pursue dreams, we asked ourselves, and how can this be evaluated? By the end of the first day we had come up with an interesting theory:  that dreams are a making activity, and we asked ourselves if a school is a MakerSpace for the dreams of students, what happens in that space and what does it look like?  We decided we needed to design and build a toolkit that can be used to facilitate students' pursuit of dreams.

An early stage of design thinking is empathy.  We needed to interview people, both students and adults, to find out their thoughts about dreams.  These were the questions we asked:

• What dreams do you have for your life?
• What does it look like when you are pursuing your dreams?
• What gets in the way of your dreams?
• Do you talk with anyone about your dreams?

Having interviewed a variety of people we started to look at the common threads - and some that were not common.  For example we noticed that we don't all mean the same thing when we talk about dreams.  Some of us have big dreams and some of us have small ones, and the time frame that they are spread out over can be very large.  We were surprised to find out that most of those we interviewed said they didn't talk to other people about their dreams (some of them found it hard to talk to us about their dreams too!)  Dreams are personal and tied closely to identity, but eventually we found that after a shaky start for some, people did like being asked about their dreams.

Another thing that we came to understand from our interviews was that dreams can morph.  Most of the adults we interviewed did not have the same dreams that they’d had as teenagers - the dreams of adults were more about a meaningful life and making an impact, whereas the students’ dreams were more about doing/achieving something. We also discovered that the ability to change dreams was dependent on the skills that had been developed in pursuit of dreams.

Our dreamers talked a lot about networking - it was a theme that cropped up again and again as they realized that their dreams require other people to come to fruition. We also noticed that when we asked about how they were pursuing their dreams, the people we interviewed all talked about building skills. This seemed to be an interesting observation because while we realized it was hard to evaluate dreams, we believe that it is possible to evaluate the skills that people are building on the journey towards their dreams. We had a long talk about whether skills were more important than passions in this journey.

At the end of the first day of design thinking we realized the following things about our mission statement:

• Dreams are a Making Activity
• There is a need to make dreams understandable, more concrete and buildable.
• We can evaluate if someone has a dream.
• We can evaluate if they are pursuing that dream.
• We can evaluate how talking about dreams affects the prevalence of having them. 
• More students might have more dreams if they had more conversations about their dreams.

Today, in Day 2, we started to consider a "Futurecasting" framework and we talked about Dream Fairs. I'll be writing about this part of our design thinking deep dive in the next blog post.

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My 18 months of Superstruct

I've been at the American School of Bombay for about 18 months now, and I've recently started to reflect on just how far I've come in that time.  This thinking was provoked by reading Chapter 4 of Heidi Hayes Jacobs new book Leading the New Literacies - a chapter written by colleagues at ASB about the journey the school has taken in the 21st century.  This journey started long before I ever arrived at the school, so it was interesting for me to read about the history of these initiatives in changing ASB into probably the most innovative, cutting-edge school in the world, with a culture of innovation and using technology to transform teaching and learning.

ASB started this journey in 2000 with the introduction of a 1:1 laptop programme.  While at the time this was very innovative, the real move to excellence came in 2006 with the development of a new vision for educational technology for enriching student learning.  In those days this vision was supported by the creation of a Tech Leadership Team of teachers from across the elementary, middle and high schools, parents and students who prototyped new technologies for learning.

ASB is a school that believes in sharing, so in 2008 the first ASB Un-Plugged Conference took place where the school opened up its classrooms to show participants its experiences with technology integration.  At this time I was still working in Thailand and I can remember the buzz about this conference from friends who attended.  It was a school I knew I wanted to keep an eye on!

For me the most impressive thing I heard about ASB in the years between the first Un-Plugged Conference in 2008 and the year I started working at ASB in 2012 was the way that technology was simply ubiquitous and was completely focused on good teaching practice and student learning.  In 2011, when I was at my school in Switzerland, I asked if I could use my PD money to go to ASB Un-Plugged to learn more about tech integration, but this request was turned down because I was told the school was not intending to adopt a 1:1 policy.  More than anything else, this decision led me to decide that my days were numbered there, as there was a complete mis-match between my vision and the vision of the management of the school about technology.  Little did I imagine, however, that within weeks of being turned down for my PD request to attend Un-Plugged that I would actually be offered a job there!

In my previous job I'd spent 3 years working with teachers to move away from a one-size fits all approach to technology where all classes in the same grade were using the same tool, to one where students had more choice.  ASB had already made this shift towards more 21st century thinking and through a very intentional programme of parent education, had got parents on-board too about the need for change to prepare students for a future that we couldn't yet imagine.  Over the previous few years at ASB courses had been designed for parents so that they could learn the same tools that their children were using at school.  This evolved into the ASB Online Academy which now offers courses for parents, teachers and students.

The ASB Online Academy is a wonderful way of getting anytime, anyplace PD, and educators from around the world have designed courses for it.  As well as this in-house PD, teachers have been encouraged to attend and to present at global conferences and have led PD sessions at school.  Consultants have also been brought in to work with faculty on whole school initiatives such as project based learning, digital storytelling and the establishment of Critical Friends Groups as learning communities to reflect on changing practice.

In 2011 ASB started Superstructing.  This was not a term I'd heard before I came to ASB, but it is based on the ideas of Jane McGonigal for reorganizing systems and structures by building on the foundations that already exist.  The first thing to be Superstructed was the teaming structure, where two new teams were established:  Teaching and Learning (T&L) and Research and Development (R&D).  The T&L team's focus is on implementing research-based best practices, in particular personalized learning and 21st century skills, while the R&D team studies and prototypes new practices for the future.  The teams are open to anyone who is interested in being on them and many teachers volunteer.  I am a member of the R&D Core Team, which is further divided into a number of smaller task forces.  Over the past 18 months I have worked on task forces involved in studying and prototyping mobile devices, internships and new forms of PD.

As mentioned previously, one of the things that sets ASB apart is its focus on sharing.  This is a real contrast from some institutions who see other schools as "competition" and don't encourage the sharing of any ideas!  As well as opening our doors to hundreds of educators from around the world each year, ASB has also established an International Research Collaborative to study topics and share experiences such as 1:1 technology across international schools around the world.

I can hardly believe my good fortune at ending up in an amazing school like ASB.   Having accepted the job the school flew me out to India for a week for induction.  This happened 5 months before I even started there.  The rest of the new staff were flown out in the April for a week long 1:1 institute to get them ready for working at ASB.  I truly don't know of another school in the world that does this.  Teachers who are already at ASB are encouraged to share their expertise by become coaches - we bring in trainee teachers from overseas, mentor local teachers through a 2 year teacher training programme, and employ novice teachers to work alongside our master teachers as co-teachers, giving those new to the profession valuable overseas experience at an international school.  ASB really values its teachers and it's interesting to know what they are looking for when hiring:  the top qualities that are important are being innovative, collaborative and reflective, being open to embrace change and of course to have excellent skills in integrating technology.  In turn, ASB's new model of teaching and learning is attracting teachers from around the world.

I have grown and developed in so many ways over the past 18 months I've been at ASB.  It has been inspiring to be part of a teaching community that embraces change and where my colleagues are constantly thinking of better ways to enhance teaching and learning.  I love the whole ethos of collaboration and sharing and the way that the school invites feedback by listening to and respecting everyone's ideas.  And this year I'm so looking forward to being a part of the upcoming ASB Un-Plugged - and to sharing what I have learned with others who are coming to see what we do and how we do it.

Would you like to know more?  Here is a link to where you can purchase Leading the new Literacies.

Connected and perpetually current

To be adaptive is to be perpetually current - George Siemens

When I was an IB Geography teacher in Thailand in 2008-9 I was often asked by students how old a case study could be for citing in their assignments.  We talked about the fact that in geography, to be current, a case study should date from this century, and if that was impossible it should certainly be from within their own lifetime.  Any earlier than this would be history.  In subjects like geography, content can have a fairly short lifespan, which implies that it is the concepts that are important to understand, not the content.  Siemens writes about how in a connectivist approach to learning we create networks of knowledge to assist in replace outdated content with current content.

Tomorrow we are trying a new form of PD at the elementary campus of ASB - we are prototyping a PlayDate.  This is an unconference where educators can explore technology in a group setting.  Last week we sent out a survey to find out what types of tools teachers and TAs are interested in exploring, and we have come up with 8 different tools that people can explore.  Each space will have a facilitator who is not there to present but to support and guide our educators through the process.  We're hoping that participants will tweet out from the various spaces about the learning that is taking place, and that people will move from space to space, or even into breakout spaces, depending on where their curiosities and passions take them.

Today I was preparing for our PlayDate at ASB tomorrow.  I was looking for resources that would help the facilitators of each space of the PlayDate to get started.  It was important for me to find the most up-to-date examples of videos about the tools and blog posts about how they are being used in classrooms around the world.  I drew heavily on my social networks of educators to find some of the most current resources.

Filling the learner with content only works when the "half-life" of knowledge is long - when it takes a long time for it to lose relevance.  Tech tools are constantly evolving and the half life of these is incredible short.  I'm happy that the educators in my network have become content creators and that our learning is continuous (and our sharing of this learning is too).

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Personalized learning - can BYOD give students more voice and choice?

This is the third post in my series looking at what I've learned in 2013.  In this post I'm going to write about personalized learning and whether BYOD or BYOM can help to give students more voice and choice.  Earlier this year I started an online course called The 5Ws of Personalized Learning, and one of my first assignments was to look whether 1:1 learning was personalized learning.  I found that the evidence from various places indicates that students in 1:1 environments show an improvement in their learning, as measured in test scores and % of students who graduate though it is questionable whether or not these improvements are due to the technology, or the improved teaching practices that accompanied the adoption of 1:1 learning.  Research also shows that a 1:1 programme can certainly lead to more personalized learning, but it does not necessarily do so.  Many 1:1 programmes are focused on the technology, rather than the learner.  Personalized learning starts with the learner and his or her interests, but in 1:1 classrooms it's still possible for all students to be doing the same thing at the same time.  In these cases I would argue that a 1:1 programme is not personalized learning.

On the other hand, 1:1 learning can allow for students to participate in the design of the learning and give more voice and choice.  In personalized learning the learner selects the appropriate technology and resources to support the learning.  This would tend to suggest that 1:1 BYOD programmes which allow students a choice of device may be more successful at personalizing learning than a one-size-fits-all roll out of a particular device (laptop, tablet or whatever).  It's HOW the technology is being used, rather than WHAT technology is being used that leads to personalized learning.  Giving voice and choice into what device students can use, how they investigate and how they eventually show their learning and understanding, can lead to 1:1 programmes personalizing learning - and this involves moving from a traditional teacher-centred approach with direct instruction towards a situation where the learning is student-driven with teachers as partners in the learning.  Along this continuum are the following stages:

1. Teacher-centred, but giving the learners voice and choice:  In this stage it is the teacher who designs the environment for groups and individuals, and the teacher who designs the learning engagements, taking account of the students' choices.  The students work with the teacher to create their own goals and help design their learning plans and how they will express their understanding.
2. Learner-centred, with students and teachers co-designing the learning: In this stage teachers and students co-create personal learning plans, devise rubrics to measure understanding and keep ePortfolios of their learning.
3. Learner-driven, with the teacher as a mentor/facilitator:  these learning environments are inquiry driven, learning is about the students' questions and much of the investigation is online, therefore teachers must ensure that students have the necessary digital literacy skills to find the information that they are seeking.  Students select the appropriate resources for their learning and are therefore more engaged and motivated.  They know their strengths and weaknesses so are able to work at their own pace and reflect on their learning.  Learning is more likely to be "anytime, anywhere" and not confined to specific locations or times.  Students design their own projects, decide how they will show their understanding and how this will be assessed.

I've been thinking about this in the light of working in the PYP programme, and about how inquiry plays a role in the different stages that schools can go through as they move from teacher-centred to learner-driven education.

From a PYP perspective Stage One corresponds quite closely with what we call teacher-directed inquiry, as teachers come up with the questions that address the lines of inquiry for each unit.  Students do have voice and choice in that they are encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts and wonderings.  However the focus of the unit is not really on the students' questions if they don't match up with the pre-determined learning outcomes.  During the course of the unit, some of these questions will naturally be discussed and answered, but they will not be the focus of the inquiry.

The second stage in moving towards personalized learning is learner-centred.  Looking at this through the lens of the PYP, this stage would be one of teacher guided inquiry, where the students' questions are seen as more important and are combined with the teacher questions to decide the direction of the inquiry.  Students would work in groups based on their curiosities about the unit, and would come up with two or three broad questions that the group as a whole could investigate.  Students themselves would discuss how to go about answering the questions.  In teacher guided inquiry, students would have input into how their understanding of the central idea of the unit would be assessed;  they would also create their own rubrics so that they could assess what it is important for them to know, understand and do.  The summative assessment of the central idea could be the same for all students, but the way they demonstrate their understanding may be very different for each group or for individual students.  

The third stage of personalized learning is learner-driven with the teacher as a facilitator and mentor.  Looking at this from the PYP perspective, this stage would be characterized by independent inquiry.  In this case the central idea would be the same for all students, but individual students could come up with additional central ideas for their own inquiry.   In Stage Three students are also working collaboratively to decide how to organize and carry out their investigations, how they will show their understandings and how they will be assessed.  They mange their time and decide what resources they will need.   I was interested to see that at this stage the teacher is responsible for building his or her technology skills to support the learner and to assist them as they work in an online environment.  This points to personalized PD for the teachers and the importance of the role of the tech coordinators in providing this.

At the beginning of the year at ASB we ran 3 mobile devices prototypes, which have definitely led to more personalized learning fo our students.  In the prototypes we have run this year in Elementary, Middle and High Schools we have seen students using their mobile devices for research, to take photos and videos, to set reminders in their calendars about upcoming events or assignments, to collaborate with each other, to take notes, to use apps to keep their work organized and many other things.  Following this prototype the R&D team recommended that all students be permitted to bring their mobile devices and access the network.  At the same time we realized that we needed further  time to study and document the success of secondary mobile devices, so recommended three further prototypes for the next school year - one with teachers (up to 10 teachers in each division) who would be provided with an allowance to purchase a mobile device of their choice, one with teaching assistants who would also be provided with an allowance to buy a device to explore how they an use it, for example to document student growth, and one prototype for "App Explorers" who would be gifted apps to devices they already own to help promote greater experimentation with new apps in the classroom.  We started these new prototypes in August and alongside all of these prototypes is a further commitment to greater personalized professional development opportunities for our faculty, including online courses, to highlight the pedagogical approaches and instructional uses of mobile devices and apps.  Our aim in giving mobile devices to our teachers and TAs to prototype is to give them the opportunities to discover for themselves how effective these devices are in improving learning.

The 2012 Speak Up report highlighted how mobile devices can personalize learning :

• mobile devices combined with social media and wireless connectivity are enabling more personalized learning opportunities for both students and teachers
• a challenge to expanding mobile learning is changing teacher practice as the success of mobile learning depends on a shared vision for how to personalize learning

Around the world there is more interest in, and acceptance of, mobile technology and the role it can play in learning.  Parents, teachers, administrators and students who are using mobile devices to support learning already see the advantages of being able to choose the right tool for the task.  In our Elementary prototype, the majority of students were easily able to make an informed choice about which device was best for the task they were doing, and within the class I also noticed a collaborative "pick and mix" approach as students shared devices.  I frequently observed, for example, two students working together sharing one iPad and one laptop between them.  An observation from one teacher was that this collaborative work using two devices completely eliminated copying and pasting - students read together on the iPad, discussed what they were reading, and then used the laptop to make notes either in Google Docs or Google Slides that both students would then have access to later.  

Another important aspect of using mobile devices to personalize student learning is being able to use social media to meet their learning needs.  Elementary students already use blogs, wikis and some classes use Twitter.  In Secondary some teachers are using Facebook with their students (for example see this blog post by Rory Newcomb).  Research from Speak Up shows that

Principals that are adopting, piloting or evaluating the concept of BYOD are 17% more likely to see the value of students using their own tools as a means to create a more personalized learning environment

and these principals are also more likely "to increase the capacity of their teachers for using technology more effectively within instruction":

BYOD friendly principals are 24% more likely to see the inclusion of those devices in the classroom as a catalyst for improving teachers' skills and over a third increased teacher productivity. (the emphasis is from me)

More and more we are discussing the importance of supporting teachers as they change their practice.  At ASB this support has come as a result of superstructing:  we have reorganized ourselves into the R&D team and the T&L (teaching and learning) team which makes it possible to prototype and iron out  possible problems before implementation, and because we aim to give personalized professional development to our teachers.  With the introduction of mobile devices, teacher need both the pedagogy and the time to think about how to change their practices to incorporate these devices.  Both R&D and T&L are vital as it is not possible "to simply overlay technology onto pre-existing pedagogy and practice".  Technology provides both a challenge and an opportunity for us to rethink what we are doing and how we are doing it.

If you would like to know more about our BYOD, BYOM and personalized learning you might be interested in reading the following blog posts in full: 

1:1 programmes and personalized learning

Stages of personalized learning

Moving from teacher centred to learner driven

BYOM and personalized learning

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Reflection on my personalized PD

It's the first day of the holidays and I'm in a reflective mood.  As I look back over the past year I do it with a feeling of satisfaction, with the feeling that a lot was accomplished and a lot was learned and the knowledge that I have developed in many different directions as an educator.  At this time last year, I was reflecting too.  I was reflecting on my experiences in a very different place, on what I had learned about myself, about what I could and couldn't accept, about the kind of school where I wanted to work and the kind of school where I knew I would never work again.  I was reflecting on how when people respect, value and support you that you are motivated to work hard and achieve your best, and that when they don't - well, it's pretty soul-destroying.

Over this past year I have learned so many different things, basically by being in control of my own professional development and by being encouraged to grow and become a better educator.  I did a 10 week photography course through ASB's Online Academy - and I then went on to teach students about photography in our Day 9 initiative.  I learned about how to use data to inform decision making by doing a DataWise workshop with Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.  I trained to be an IB online workshop leader and then went on to facilitate 3 online workshops over the course of the year.  I completed 2 Google MOOCs on searching and advanced power searching and I was a presenter at Google's first ever India Summit.  That same month I also presented at a very different conference - Teach For India's InspirED about assessment techniques that DIDN'T use technology.  Through the R&D team I've investigated internships and prototyped BYOM.  I did a course through ASB's Online Academy in Creativity, Curriculum and Multimedia and another online course on the 5Ws of Personalized Learning.  I also participated in the Flat Classroom Leadership Workshop and learned a lot more about the brain and learning at ASB's Un-Plugged Impact Conference.  I considered doing a MAE in Educational Leadership, but on balance decided I didn't have enough time to do this along with all the other areas that I wanted to grow in professionally. I decided I'm more of a "Lonely Planet" kind of learner, rather than the "Club Med" type.  I'm happy to read about and put together my own itinerary of learning to make a personal PD plan for myself, rather than taking a university master's package.  I feel that my approach takes me where I want to go, to explore the things I'm really interested in.  I feel that I've learned more in one year - and have been able to share and give back that learning - than I have in the previous three.

Today I had the luxury of time.  I've come back to Switzerland to visit friends and spent the morning sitting on the balcony enjoying the fresh air, sunshine and spectacular views of the mountains and I had the time to read the latest edition of ISTE's Learning & Leading with Technology.  Because I have just finished the 5Ws of Personalized Learning course, I was interested to read the article by the workshop leaders, Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey.  The very first sentence jumped out at me - because it applies to both our students and our teachers:

Over the past 100 - or even 1,000 - years, learners haven't changed much.  They have always learned in their own unique and variable ways.  What has changed is technology ... now, perhaps for the first time, we have the ability to meet learners where they are, to teach them all in the ways that they learn best, and to facilitate optimal learning experiences for everyone, anytime and anywhere.

As Barbara and Kathleen go on to mention, the idea of personalized learning (or personalized PD) is focused on the learner's motivation, engagement and voice.  Next year our aim is to personalize PD for all our teachers, based on the needs that have emerged through our recent tech audit.  I've been considering how Open Badges might be used as digital backpacks as teachers build their own professional ePortfolios.  Although Barbara and Kathleen have focused on student learning, I feel that what they write is equally applicable to teachers - they too (just like I have done this year) need to be able to own their learning and to have voice and choice in how they learn. The first step is that all learners need to be coached so that they understand how they learn best.  Once they know this, then can start to "acquire the skills to choose and use the tools that work best for their learning qualities" and self-direct their own learning.

So today I started to think about what I want to learn next year.  As I was browsing for ideas I came across the new free Coursera Teacher Professional Development courses, which are 3 - 5 week courses that run throughout the year, each course taking between 2 - 4 hours per week to complete.  The first one I signed up for was Coaching Teachers:  Promoting Changes that Stick.  I quickly found another that also seemed interesting entitled On the Hunt for Feedback:  Self-Directed Teacher Improvement.  Here are some others that I'm considering:

• Student Thinking at the Core - this course explores how teachers can capitalize on what students bring to the classroom - their ideas, perceptions, and misunderstandings - to advance the learning of all students in the class.
• Foundations of Virtual Instruction - learn what it takes to teach a K-12 online course.  Investigate the history of virtual education, explore innovative tools, and examine key issues related to K-12 virtual instruction.
• Emerging Trends and Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom - investigate how we can more deeply engage students in the virtual classroom through the use of innovative practices and technologies.
• Tinkering Fundamentals:  Integrating Making Activities into your STEM Classroom - research-based insights into design principles and learning indicators related to high-quality STEM-rich tinkering.

So as one year ends, I've already started thinking about what I can do for next year to move forward and become the best educator that I can be, and I'm thankful beyond words that I am in a school that encourages and supports teachers moving forward through personalized professional development.

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The connection: BYOM and personalized learning

This week I've spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing for ASB's presentation at ISTE on our BYOD laptop programme.  At the same time I've also been involved with one of our R&D teams investigating the value of students bringing in and using their secondary (mobile) devices, which we are now calling BYOM.  Recently we also asked teachers to volunteer to be part of a prototype as we investigate mobile apps and mobile devices and have had an overwhelming response from our faculty.

Interestingly enough, I have recently heard from teachers in a previous school who asked for any information or research we had access to that showed that technology/1:1/BYOD could improve learning.  This caused me to go back through some previous research that I'd already submitted to the school when I worked there several years ago.  This week our High School Tech Coordinator also shared the Project Tomorrow Speak Up report on Learning in the 21st Century that provides plenty of evidence about how mobile devices and social media lead to more personalized learning.  This weekend, therefore, I've been synthesizing all of our experiences and all the research and thinking about how the BYO programme is leading us closer to our goal of personalizing learning for all our students.

In the 3 BYOM prototypes we have run this year in Elementary, Middle and High Schools we have seen students using their mobile devices for research, to take photos and videos, to set reminders in their calendars about upcoming events or assignments, to collaborate with each other, to take notes, to use apps to keep their work organized and many other things.  Following this prototype the R&D team recommended that all students be permitted to bring their mobile devices and access the network.  At the same time we realized that we needed further  time to study and document the success of secondary mobile devices, so recommended three further prototypes for next year - one with teachers (up to 10 teachers in each division) who would be provided with an allowance to purchase a mobile device of their choice, one with teaching assistants who would also be provided with an allowance to buy a device to explore how they an use it, for example to document student growth, and one prototype for "App Explorers" who would be gifted apps to devices they already own to help promote greater experimentation with new apps in the classroom.  Alongside all of these prototypes is a further commitment to greater personalized professional development opportunities for our faculty, including online courses, to highlight the pedagogical approaches and instructional uses of mobile devices and apps.

It always amazes me that in situations where the majority of students have devices that they are able to use completely independently of the school's network through their own data plans, that schools still believe it is even possible or desirable to block students from using their own devices.  Many students already have a clear idea of how these devices can and are transforming their learning by making it more personalized, and there is a huge body of evidence that shows trends in the link between the use of technology and student achievement, teacher productivity and parental engagement.  Speak Up 2012 notes:

As teachers and administrators have become mobile device users, or mobilists, their appreciation for how these devices can support and enhance learning is exponentially increased.

Our aim in giving mobile devices to our teachers and TAs to prototype is to give them the opportunities to discover for themselves how effective these devices are in improving learning.

In summary, two key points of the 2012 Speak Up report are :

• mobile devices combined with social media and wireless connectivity are enabling more personalized learning opportunities for both students and teachers
• a challenge to expanding mobile learning is changing teacher practice as the success of mobile learning depends on a shared vision for how to personalize learning

It is therefore important for our tech coordinators/coaches to support this change in teacher practice, so that it is more in line with our goal of personalized learning. (This actually brings me onto another conversation I've been having with one of our Educational Technology Specialists as to how we can further implement the NETS-Cs - but that will be the subject of a forthcoming blog post).

Around the world there is more interest in, and acceptance of, mobile technology and the role it can play in learning.  Parents, teachers, administrators and students who are using mobile devices to support learning already see the advantages of being able to choose the right tool for the task.  In our Elementary prototype, the majority of students were easily able to make an informed choice about which device was best for the task they were doing, and within the class I also noticed a collaborative "pick and mix" approach as students shared devices.  I frequently observed, for example, two students working together sharing one iPad and one laptop between them.  An observation from one teacher was that this collaborative work using two devices completely eliminated copying and pasting - students read together on the iPad, discussed what they were reading, and then used the laptop to make notes either in Google Docs or Google Slides that both students would then have access to later.  

Another important aspect of using mobile devices to personalize student learning is being able to use social media to meet their learning needs.  Elementary students already use blogs, wikis and some classes use Twitter.  In Secondary some teachers are using Facebook with their students (for example see this blog post by Rory Newcomb).  Conversations with friends at other schools, however, have shown me that many administrators are still reluctant to allow students to use their own devices at school as they are concerned about distraction, network security, theft and student internet safety - most of which could be dealt with through a more dynamic responsible use policy and better classroom pedagogy on the part of their teachers .  Research from Speak Up shows that

Principals that are adopting, piloting or evaluating the concept of BYOD are 17% more likely to see the value of students using their own tools as a means to create a more personalized learning environment

and these principals are also more likely "to increase the capacity of their teachers for using technology more effectively within instruction":

BYOD friendly principals are 24% more likely to see the inclusion of those devices in the classroom as a catalyst for improving teachers' skills and over a third increased teacher productivity.  (the emphasis is from me)

Our experience is also that parents are also largely on-board with using mobile technologies at school.  Quite possibly at ASB this is because of the fabulous job we do with parent education.  We have weekly Parent Tech Connection sessions on both campuses, require parents to take various online courses through ASB's Online Academy, and send weekly tech updates to parents.  We also give parents various books when they join the ASB Community, such as the Phillips and Fogg book Facebook for Parents.  Our parents are very supportive because they exhibit a strong desire to help their children achieve and be successful and because they understand how mobile devices can improve personalized learning.  They are also supportive because they see their children moving ahead and want to take advantage of the parent education we offer to keep up with what their children are doing.  Offering parent education has been a huge step for us in being able to move forward at the rapid rate that we have done at ASB.

Last week I wandered the Elementary campus with one of our Directors of Technology Support.  We are making a video about our BYOD programme to show at ISTE and so we interviewed teachers about what questions or concerns they had a year ago before we transitioned into BYOD, and what they feel now.  Teachers expressed that their greatest concern was that they would be unable to support the number of different devices that students brought in.  Now they feel these fears were totally unfounded because firstly we provided an IT Kiosk for tech support on every floor of the building where students were 1:1 (Grade 1 upwards) and secondly because they learned a lot from their students.  An inadequate infrastructure and not providing enough teacher training and support were two of the key findings as to why BYOD might not be successful in other schools - ASB has both of these things nailed!

More and more we are discussing the importance of supporting teachers as they change their practice.  At ASB this support has come as a result of superstructing:  we have reorganized ourselves into the R&D team and the T&L (teaching and learning) team which makes it possible to prototype and iron out  possible problems before implementation, and because we aim to give personalized professional development to our teachers.  With the introduction of mobile devices, teacher need both the pedagogy and the time to think about how to change their practices to incorporate these devices.  Both R&D and T&L are vital as it is not possible "to simply overlay technology onto pre-existing pedagogy and practice".  Technology provides both a challenge and an opportunity for us to rethink what we are doing and how we are doing it.

Speak Up 2012 ends with this:  "students, parents, teachers and administrators are all increasingly tapping into mobile devices and social media to personalize learning, enhance collaboration and increase professional productivity".  Some administrators need to rethink education, embrace the change and stop trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle.

Do you want to know more about our BYOD programme?  Our 2 Directors of Technology Support, our Middle School Tech Coordinator and myself are presenting BYOD in 4 Easy Steps at ISTE next month.  Our session is completely sold out, but if you are at ISTE and want to know more, we are happy to connect with you there.

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