Learning with my students: Grade 7 MYP Technology

On Friday I taught my first ever design technology class with two groups of Grade 7 students. I've been an IT teacher for 10 years, but have never taught all the components of MYP technology (information, materials and systems) before - so now that we are half way through the year it's time to stop teaching the information technology and start teaching the materials and systems. For the students this is also the first time they have ever had to construct anything from scratch themselves, all the other technology lessons up to now being entirely information technology. For materials I decided to try something that sounded relatively easy and that didn't use resistant materials like wood and metal (for sure I am not up to giving students lessons in how to use power tools like drills and electric saws!) Having racked my brains and been given several suggestions by colleagues, some of which included making go-carts or which involved food (a definite no-no), I settled on kites. Since I know nothing at all about the design of kites, this is a project where I am learning alongside my students.

The first thing we did was to discuss the history of kites - they were first built in China about 3,000 years ago - and the materials these first kites were made out of - bamboo and silk. We talked about the sorts of materials that were easy to get hold of and that we might like to try to use today such as different sorts of fabrics and plastics, wooden barbeque sticks, straws and so on. Next we used the internet to identify different kinds of kites. We talked about the fact that here in Switzerland it is not very windy (though as luck would have it, it was EXTREMELY windy here on Friday afternoon with branches being blown off trees and one of the playground benches being blown over - definitely not a day for kite flying!). Some shapes of kites are better suited to light winds and some are better suited to strong winds - we definitely want to try to make the ones that are most suited to gentle breezes - and in fact will probably have to run down the hill the school is on in order to get these kites airborne. We tried to identify all the different parts of a kite (the frame, covering or sail, tail, line and bridle) and think about what we might use to construct them.

It was an interesting afternoon, and we all came up with more questions than answers. Why, we wondered, do some kites have 2 strings and others only one? What is the purpose of the tail of a kite? Most seemed to have one but we didn't really know why so we had to do some research to find out that a tail keeps a kite stable and oriented to the wind. We're still a little fuzzy about the exact role of the bridle.

Next week we will start to sketch out some design ideas and plan how we will make the kites. We'll then start to construct the kites and finally at the end of next month we'll participate in a kite flying activity. I'm hoping the students will be able to launch and fly their kites successfully, and if not I'm hoping that they will be able to identify what the problems are and suggest some improvements or modifications that could be made to the kites.

Just like the last assignment using Web 2.0 tools, I'm giving the students an entirely free choice of what kind of kite they design and make. I'm really interested to see what the students come up with.

Photo Credit: Better Days by Tripleman

Let's go fly a kite - Grade 7 MYP Technology

Today was the day - we went out and flew our kites. When I arrived in the art room after lunch all the students were ready and waiting. I was a bit nervous as it didn't seem to be very windy and I wondered how successful we would be at getting the kites airbourne, but we trouped out to the playground, looked to see what direction the wind was coming from and then in pairs we launched them.

The students had to run in order to get the kites above shoulder level. We quickly discovered which designs would go up into the air and which would just spin around and eventually drop down and trail behind the students.

The paper kites didn't do at all well. I think many of them were too small and the students hadn't paid a lot of attention to where the strings were attached to the frame.

One of the most successful kites was made out of thin bamboo and covered with cling film. It was light enough to fly, but also strong. In general the kites made out of balsa wood had problems with the frames snapping. This kite was a hexagonal shape with a spider web shaped frame.

Because the playground is surrounded by tall trees on one side, we then decided to walk up to the top of the nearby hill and see if we could catch a bit more wind. This kite was very successful - it was made out of two pieces of balsa wood and was a sled kite design.


Some students tried various methods of getting the kites airbourne - running very fast downhill was quite a popular method!

The traditional kite shape was a popular design. This one actually managed to get quite high.

Generally a fun time was had by all, and now the task for the students is to evaluate their designs and suggest how they could improve them.

Learning with my students: Grade 7 MYP Technology (part 2)

The kite making saga continues with our Grade 7s. Last week the students were investigating different kite shapes and kite designs, this week they started to look at the materials they might like to use to build their kites. We collected together lots of different materials that they could test for the frame, the sail and the line. Students heard from one of the science teachers about aerodynamics and the balance between surface area, weight and strength. The heaviest of the materials for the frame is bamboo - we have 2 types of bamboo and the thick sticks are obviously much stronger than the thin ones - but are they going to be too heavy for the kites to be able to lift? We have balsa wood too - also different thicknesses and weights - but we tried some of them out and they break very easily. They are light and easy to lift, but how will these stand up to the wind if it is strong? We also have wire which some students are going to use to make the frames.

We've been looking at different types of materials for the sail - waxed paper, different types and thickness of plastics including cling-film, and fabrics. We're wondering about the best ways of attaching these onto the frame. Finally we are looking at the lines we can attach to the kites and let out as the kites (hopefully) rise into the sky.

The students have now finalised their designs and have made a shopping list for me of the materials they need next week to make their kites. I'm really excited to see how they are going to turn out and how the students are going to get on with the actual construction as most of the students have never been given the opportunity to design and make anything before or to handle tools such as saws. For all of us - students and myself too - this is a big leap into the dark.

Photo Credit: Tools of the Trade by Sarah Ross photography

Learning with my students: Grade 7 MYP Technology (part 4)

This week the kites were mostly finished - we have some amazing shapes and sizes and a variety of different materials being used with varying degrees of success. By the end of Friday afternoon some of the students were even ready to go outside and test them so that they could then make modifications to their designs.

One of our students used cling-film as the material on her kite, wrapped around a balsa wood frame. She was not very confident when she left the room, but within minutes she was back beaming - but holding a broken kite. "It flew really well" she told us excitedly, "much better than I'd expected .... but when it came down it bashed into Henry and broke". She immediately set to with repairing the damage and strengthening it.

A couple of the girls who had made kites out of paper and bamboo had the time to decorate their kites - most however had to make do with the basic materials they had chosen. Next Friday is a half day - there is no MYP technology lesson on Friday afternoon as the students all go home at lunchtime for the Easter break. Therefore we will have to wait until after the holidays to go and fly our kites and then evaluate which were the most successful designs. I can hardly wait!!

Learning with my students: Grade 7 MYP Technology (part 3)

I have been on a learning journey with the Grade 7 students to investigate, plan and design kites. This week we started to construct them. At the end of last week's lesson I had asked the students to enter a list of materials that they wanted to use into a spreadsheet - this week we started the lesson with distributing all these materials to the students and giving them the tools they could use (saws, knives and various types of glue).

Most students started with making the frames - attaching the wood and bamboo together. Some of them ran into problems with sawing through the bamboo - it was much tougher than it looked. Several of them had problems attaching the material to the frame. I tried to be helpful and to suggest different ideas to them if they ran into problems, but often I just asked them more questions and tried to point them in another direction without telling them what I thought would be the best way of solving their problems.

The idea of the MYP design cycle is that the students can modify their original designs if necessary, so I wanted them to experience what the problems were, before jumping in and suggesting different ways of tacking them. For me this was quite hard - when I could see students doing something that obviously wasn't going to work my first reaction was to go over and offer help immediately - I had to force myself to hang back to see if they could learn from their mistakes and come up with their own ways of fixing things.

One of the problems that they encountered was that the balsa wood, which many students had decided to use as it was so light, was also very fragile. A couple of the pieces broke as the students were trying to assemble their frames. I resisted the urge to give them more wood, and looked to see what they were going to do. Some tried to glue the pieces back together and others used selotape and string to attach them. I'm not sure how strong these will end up being! Some of them also discovered that the hot glue guns will melt the plastic. A couple of the students decided to try to use cling-film for the kites - this was very difficult to work with. Others decided to use bead wire to put around the frame and then attach the sail material onto that - only they found it extremely difficult to attach wire to bamboo. All of us learnt a lot from this, and all of us have plenty to think about before next week's lesson when we will finish off the kites.

Design

Today was my last MYP Technology lesson with the Grade 7 students. As this year I've moved away from information technology towards design technology with our Grade 7s, I have been thinking quite a bit about design recently.

I read a blog post by Kelly Tenkely today where she discusses the link between critical thinking and design thinking. Kelly says:

I believe that we are losing students as critical thinkers because in our current model of education, where we are standardizing education with tests, we teach kids that there is one correct answer to every question. We limit their thinking to what we have already determined is an acceptable answer to the question. This is extremely limiting. Critical thinking means that we aren’t satisfied with the easy answer, we think about multiple solutions to the problem and even think of additional questions. We approach a problem differently, more creatively.

Kelly uses Tim Brown's TED Talk to explore the links and similarities between design thinking and critical thinking. Tim talks about the differences between design and design thinking and urges us to focus less on the object of the design and more on applying design thinking as a new way of tackling problems and creating new solutions to issues such as global warming, health care, clean water and so on. Design thinking is human centred and involves participation and the active engagement of the people involved to explore new solutions and ideas to make their experience better.

This week I've also been reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. I'm right at the part where Dan is explaining that today, in what he terms the Conceptual Age, we need to develop more right-brain aptitudes - one of which is design. Although Dan is more focused on the design, rather than the design thinking, he does quote from John Heskett when explaining that design is "the human nature to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature, to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives." He talks about design being both useful and significant and about how design is a means of differentiation and a way to create new markets. For example almost every week we get flyers in our mailbox from a discount store advertising mobile phones and other similar devices. Most of them are very similar in what they can actually do (make calls, send messages etc) and most are a fairly similar price too - therefore the only thing that really distinguishes one from the other is design. And even though people may choose their phone because of the design, they continue to spend more money on other nonfuctional but decorative items such as ring tones and faceplates. Another example about creating a new market is that 6 months ago the iPad did not exist - nobody thought they needed one or were missing out if they didn't have one - but now there is a whole new market for iPads - they are seen as useful and beautiful and a way of getting a different experience out of, for instance, browsing the internet or reading a novel.

Later on in the chapter, Dan talks about design as being the "activity of creating solutions", which seems more in line with the design thinking mentioned earlier. For our students, design will continue to be increasingly important in their future as "to be a designer is to be an agent of change".

This brings me full circle: our students need to develop their creativity and critical thinking and need to be able to come up with many answers and solutions to the problems we pose them. I have now had 6 groups of Grade 7 students on Friday afternoons who have designed and flown their own kites. Some kites have been big, some have been small, some have been traditional kite shapes, some have been very odd shapes indeed, but all of the students who have created these kites have had to think in a very different way than they do in most lessons as there are no "right" answers, and what they have seen is that there are many different ways to make a kite, many different materials that work well and many different shapes that will fly. Above all they have learnt to be risk-takers, to try things out, to see what works and doesn't work, to modify their designs in the light of these early experiments and to keep on trying when the going gets tough. These lessons, I think, are the ones that will endure.

I'm a Lonely Planet kind of teacher

Over the recent "ski week" holiday I was reading a blog post by Hall Jackson about interactive white boards. Now this post is nothing to do with IWBs, though perhaps I may come back to this topic at some later stage. No, the real thing that caught my eye in this post was how Jackson likened teaching to being a tourist. As an international educator and traveller for over 20 years I've had the same sort of thoughts, but never really formalised them as such in the way he did.

The first type of tourist is the package tour type (think 18-30, think Club Med, think SAGA) where everything is organised: where you stay, what you eat, tours, information etc. Basically you just show up and everything is done for you. I've seen teachers (and students) who love this approach - they open the textbook at the beginning of the year, and at the end they are through with it. When I first started teaching in international schools we actually had big plastic packs that had come from the States - these plastic boxes contained text books, work sheets, tests, films etc in them and to be honest you didn't really even need to be a teacher - everything was planned for you, down to the sort of jokes you had to tell and when you had to smile! Coming from the UK where we wrote a lot of our own curriculum (in the days before there was a national curriculum!) this was quite a revelation to me. Sure it felt "secure" to have this pack, but somehow it didn't feel quite right. I missed the creativity of designing my own courses. I dipped in and out of these boxes for a couple of months, but to be honest, most of the time they just gathered dust at the back of the room. I've never been a one-size-fits-all kind of teacher.

There there's what Jackson called the JOJO type of tourists. The ones that travel on a bus going on a certain route, but who can get off and on where they like, stay where they like, eat what they like and so on. These people stay as long as they like in the places that interest them and then jump back on the next bus again. There is a set route, but you have to navigate and choose your own way along it. In international schools I have seen many teachers like this. Sure they know where they want the students to be by the end of the year, but along the way there they allow the students to set the pace. Some things will call for deeper inquiry than others. Some students will be more interested in some aspects than others. These teachers are flexible, patient and creative. They probably don't often teach lessons the same way twice. Now to be one of these sorts of teachers you have to be in a school that doesn't insist on every single class in the grade being on the same page at the same time. Probably this school is not heavily reliant on standardised testing. Teachers have to feel comfortable with the fact that they and their students have different strengths. Inquiry should look different in each classroom, though the learner outcomes will be the same as during planning meetings all teachers will have agreed on the central understanding they want students to have.

Finally there's the Lonely Planet type of tourist - they set off into the unknown and plan their own trip as they go. Sometimes things don't go quite according to plan, but on the other hand there are many interesting and quirky diversions that they wouldn't necessarily have come across any other way and it sure is a great learning experience. As a traveller I've realised I'm a Lonely Planet type of person - in fact once when my children were young we actually did go into a travel agency on our way home from school as I was booking a ferry ticket. To amuse my children, the travel agent gave them some brochures to look through while he was booking our ticket. The children's eyes grew wide as they looked at pictures of luxurious resorts and theme parks, then my son turned to the travel agent and said "We would NEVER go to a place like this for our holidays". Now as a teacher I'm thinking that I'm a bit of a Lonely Planet teacher myself too. I love it when the students go off and independently pursue their own interests, actually I actively encourage it. I always have a good idea of the end goal, but often am a bit vague about the way we are going to get there. I like trying out new things with the students and I feel we all learn a lot, even if things don't go exactly to plan. I'm quite happy to let students know that I don't have all the answers. I'm quite happy to inquire alongside them into things I don't know much about.

So this week I am starting kite design with my Grade 7 technology class. Right now I know nothing about kites at all, and though I have seen lots of people flying them in various countries of the world, I have actually never seen anyone flying one in Switzerland, which is not a very windy country. Right now I'm a little nervous about the fact that although I know nothing at all about how to get a kite airborne, by the end of this half term we will actually be out flying the kites that our students have designed and made themselves. Right now I don't even have a "Lonely Planet" guidebook, or a "Kite Making for Dummies" handbook. I think it's time to go and do a little bit of research on the internet ......

Photo Credit: Lonely Monks by Matt Murf and 70 kites on a single line by Ronnie44052

Modelling the IB Learner Profile

The IB Learner profile describes the type of learner that the IB hopes to develop through its programmes. Originally the learner profile was part of the PYP and was known as the student profile, though it later became adopted by all 3 IB programmes. At that point the focus changed so that it was not just for students:

The IB learner profile is the IB mission statement translated into a set of learning outcomes for the 21st century. The attributes of the profile express the values inherent to the IB continuum of international education: these are values that should infuse all elements of the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme and, therefore, the culture and ethos of all IB World Schools. The learner profile provides a long-term vision of education. It is a set of ideals that can inspire, motivate and focus the work of schools and teachers, uniting them in a common purpose.

One interesting aspect of the IB Learner profile is that it applies to everyone involved in the IB programmes (students, teachers and administrators), as the IB recognises that we are all part of a community of lifelong learners and the learner profile should be the shared vision of all involved in creating the learning environment of the school. The IB also promotes international mindedness and the learner profile is seen as a way of aspiring to this. How successful a school will be in promoting the learner profile mostly depends on the values, culture and ethos of the school. The learner profile should be apparent in each classroom, forming the basis of teaching and learning, and in addition should also be seen in the daily life, management and leadership of the school:

Individual teachers, faculty groups, school administrators and school governors should ask themselves “To what extent do our philosophy, our school structures and systems, our curriculum and units of work enable students, and the adults who implement the programmes, to develop into the learner described in the profile?”

Our staff meeting on Wednesday was different from the usual pattern - our task was to walk around the school in groups visiting the rooms of each teacher in our group to look at what was on display. In our school the learner profile is displayed in every room, and it looks slightly different in every room. In my computer lab I have tried to show what each aspect of the learner profile means for students using technology:

Inquirers: We are curious about new things and we like learning new skills

Knowledgeable: We know how to use the equipment safely and why we have rules in IT

Thinkers: We think carefully about decisions we make using the computers and we are problem-solvers.

Communicators: We share our ideas with others respectfully, using different media and tools.

Principled: We always cite the sources of our work and the pictures we use in our projects.

Open-Minded: In IT we listen to others and we respect their ideas and abilities.

Caring: We try to help others and we are careful with the equipment and materials

Risk Takers: We have the confidence to try new things in IT

Balanced: We know how to use the computers and other equipment for work and play.

Reflective: We think about our skills in IT. We know when we have done well and when we could have done better.

As a teacher I'm conscious that I need to model the behaviours I would like to see in my students. I am always interested to try out new ideas and love doing things in different ways. Today in my MYP technology class I had another group of students who were making kites. At one point the students needed to calculate how much plastic they needed to have for making the sails of the kites and one student asked me if it was OK for him to use the calculator on his phone to work this out. I was amazed he asked this, since as a technology teacher I would always encourage the use of any technology the students might have. I was surprised to find that phones and the applications on them are banned in most lessons.

I then started thinking about what the learner profile would look like for administrators. Are they open-minded, for example, to the new ways that students can use the technology that they have in their pockets? Are they good communicators, working effectively and willingly in collaboration with others? Are they caring and supportive, showing empathy and respect towards the needs and feelings of others? Are they risk-takers, exploring new roles, ideas and strategies and are they brave and articulate in defending their beliefs? Above all, what I really want in an administrator is someone who is principled - someone who acts with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of others. This is exactly what the IB learner profile expects of our students, and we as adults in the school have to model this too.

Photo Credit: These photos were taken by my daughter, Rachel

Free is the Nice Price (Part 4) - Grade 7 Technology

I teach Grade 7 MYP Technology every Friday afternoon. Every student has technology with me whenever they are not having their instrumental music lesson. In earlier posts I have outlined my struggles to come up with a meaningful programme for these students when my only brief was to "teach them Excel" and "integrate with what the science teachers are doing". For the past few weeks students have been investigating, designing, planning and creating ways to teach younger students how to use Excel using Web 2.0 tools. Each Friday for the past 3 weeks groups of students have come to show me and the rest of Grade 7 what they have created, and it has been interesting to see which tools they have chosen and their reasons for making those choices. To date, approximately 50 students have presented to the rest of the grade, sharing what they have done. The Wordle above shows how popular the different tools are. Up to this week the clear favourite of our students was Prezi, but today for the first time we had more students using Glogster. In total approximately one third of the students have chosen Prezi and one third have chosen Glogster, with the final third divided between a number of other tools.

Today I had two students who had obviously struggled over their presentations - both are new to the school. The first, a Japanese girl, has only been learning English for the past year. She found this a very daunting assignment as it was hard for her to actually explain in English. Last week she had come with a PowerPoint which I had to tell her was not a Web 2.0 tool. This week she turned up with Slideshare - she had uploaded her PowerPoint so that she could share it with us. She spoke incredibly quietly (and was in serious competition with the drumming lesson next door) but the other students were very respectful and listened hard. As she talked she grew in confidence - everyone wanted her to succeed - they were literally hanging on her every word. At the end the entire group applauded her. She did a fantastic job.

The second student who was clearly challenged with this task was a boy who only arrived in school a few weeks ago. He had missed all the earlier lessons at the beginning of the year where I was working with the science teachers graphing the experiments they did. He had never used Excel before, therefore he first had to learn it from scratch by himself and then secondly he had to teach it to someone else using a Web 2.0 tool that he was also unfamiliar with. He chose to use Prezi which was a great choice. Again, students were supportive and applauded him too.

Somehow over the past few months I have seen a definite change in this group of 7th Graders. At the beginning of the year they were the usual 13 year olds, fed up with school by Friday afternoon and looking forward to the weekend. The last thing they wanted to do was to spend the afternoon graphing science experiments! They laughed a lot at each other and basically were not motivated to learn very much. Giving the students responsibility for their own learning by giving them the complete choice of what tool they wanted to use and how to show their understanding has changed all that. Some of the students chose tools that I have never used myself. They had to play around with them and discover for themselves what to do as I stepped right back and didn't teach them anything, just encouraged them to have a go. What actually happened was that they supported each other in this learning - today some students said they chose the tool they did because they were able to get a lot of help from others in the class. They have definitely become more of a community supporting each other through this. What I have also seen is that although I never set any homework at all for this class, many of the students continued to work at home or else came in during the recess times to work on the computers. This week I have been teaching a lot of classes of Kindergarten, with any extra computers in the room being taken up by the 7th graders who wanted to make their presentations just that little bit better. It has been good for them to be with me when I've been teaching Kindergarten, and it has certainly been good for the Kindergarten students to see the "big kids" beavering away next to them.

Next week should be the last week of this assignment, and I'm wondering whether I'll be seeing the same "big two" tools being used again, or whether next week's students will have explored some other, different tools. Then after the holiday we'll be leaving information technology for a while and moving onto design technology - we'll be making kites. Now this is definitely going to be something where the students will also have to do a lot of independent work as I know nothing about kites and have very little skill at making things out of different materials. However I'm hoping all the skills that the students have been developing over this half year, the skills of research and cooperation, will be utilized once again so that they will once more be proud of their creations.

Directed -v- Self-Directed: Developing a Maker Mindset

We had our final R&D meeting of this school year today.  One of our items to discuss was the evolution of the library into a more creative space - perhaps a place for performances such as poetry readings, perhaps a place of recreation, perhaps a makerspace.  As our High School librarian pointed out - we want to move out of the pantry (storage) and into the kitchen (creating something).  A few days ago I was given the book Design, Make, Play by Margaret Honey and David E. Kanter, and when I got home I dipped into it.  I wanted to understand more about a maker mindset, and being in the elementary school I started to think about how playing, inventing, creating, exploring and so on naturally seemed to lead to curiosity, investigation, discovery and learning.

As I'm also part of ASB's newly formed Design Thinking team, I have been reading a lot around design over the past weeks.  In the first chapter of the book design is defined in the following way:  "the iterative selection and arrangement of elements to form a whole by which people create artifacts, systems, and tools intended to solve a range of problems, large and small."  Already, having been involved in teaching Design Technology some years ago, I was familiar with the design cycle which involves identifying a problem or need, planning different options, modelling and testing them.  Design always involved the students in critical thinking and problem solving of real-life problems, whether it was designing a physical object such as a kite in such a way that it would fly or a designing a process such as how to teach something to a different group of students.

Of course simply designing is not enough - one of the things students had to do in my MYP class was to actually make the kites and fly them.  In this way making is defined as "to build or adapt objects by hand, for the simple personal pleasure of figuring out how things work."  Now this was no easy feat - some people at the school where I was working were fairly dismissive of design technology as the focus was on IT and there were no facilities for making things - in fact DT was referred to as "shop".  In order to teach DT I had to take over the art room and use simple materials such as balsa wood, bamboo, cling film, plastic sheeting, paper, material, string and hot glue guns.  We had a few hand saws, some hammers and nails.  Looking back I find it ironic that from those small beginnings I have ended up on ASB's Design Thinking team and that this summer I'm off to the Henry Ford Institute to a Design Thinking workshop!

Among my friends who are also educators there seems to be a renewed interest in the value of play.  If the emphasis at school is on "work" and if play is where the discovery, innovation, creativity and learning actually takes place out of school, then it seems that the best way to develop a maker mindset is to introduce more play into schools.  In a chapter entitled The Maker Mindset Dale Dougherty writes:

The biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for the Maker Mindset is to transform education ... We can create a workshop or makerspace, and we can acquire tools and materials, but we will not have succeeded at creating innovative thinkers and doers unless we are able to foster a maker mindset.

A maker mindset involves having a can-do attitude and a growth mindset - a belief that your capabilities can be developed, improved and expanded.  It's not just a matter of what you know, it's a matter of taking risks and perhaps failing and learning from those failures.  It's a matter of being open to exploring new possibilities and developing your full potential.  There is a huge difference between giving a child a Lego kit complete with instructions as to how to make a castle with the expectation that the child will follow the instructions and build a castle, and giving a child a bag of wooden blocks and letting them explore and build whatever they want to.  In classrooms it's the difference between being teacher directed and being self-directed and deciding what you want to inquire into and what you want to do with what you find out.  Teachers who want to encourage a maker mindset in their students, therefore, need to let go and encourage the students to play, design and make.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks via Compfight cc

Tech Savvy Leaders -v- Lead Learners

Today I have been reading the Powerful Learning Practice blog discussion about how tech savvy all principals should be and how they should be taking on the role of lead learners in our 21^st century schools, understanding the needs of students and teachers in order to prepare them for the future.

Lyn Hilt, who wrote the post, draws from Marc Prensky’s book Teaching Digital Natives stating that it is more important for teachers to become comfortable with a different pedagogy, than with the new technology itself.  This involves empowering students to collaborate and to create using tools of their choice, in particular social media tools, which implies that school leaders have to consider the learning environments in place in their schools.

The IB Primary Years Programme encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning through inquiry.  As an information and communication teacher I see my role as encouraging students in their research and in helping them to discover the most effective ways of sharing their learning.  More and more I’m asking them to make their own choices about the resources and tools they use for their inquiries.  But reading this post I feel I need to do more. 

One of the things I’m reflecting on is how the teaching role is now becoming more of a partnership – between myself and the classroom teachers in setting up the right learning environment for these inquiries to take place, and between the homeroom teachers and the students as the teachers offer suggestions and guidance during the inquiry process.  What I see also needs to happen is that there needs to be a partnership between the administration and the teachers to develop a shared vision about what true inquiry looks like and how the needs of the students involved in the inquiries can be best met.  Support for mentoring and coaching, for in-school professional development and for building a professional learning network or community are all a part of this partnership so that teachers can develop new pedagogies to take account of the new technologies that students are using.

The idea of sharing is very important.  Developing a shared vision can only come about by listening to all those involved and by encouraging them to share with others.  Recently I was involved in leading a PYP workshop in Paris.  Feedback from the participants made me realize how valuable sharing my professional practice with them was – and sharing this knowledge was also extremely valuable for me as it allowed me to “dig deeper” into what I was doing.  In preparing for this workshop I had to revisit again the whys (the philosophy underpinning the PYP), the whats and the hows (the theory and practice).  Writing a blog allows me to think deeper too.  The feedback, challenges and support I have received from those who have read my various posts have led to more reflection about my own practice – I have become a better teacher by sharing what I do with others.

I am hopeful that the newly created Tech Director position at our school will attract someone who will be promoting new learning and pedagogy.  Perhaps we will be able to start looking at the NETS for administrators and teachers which include, among others, standards for digital age learning and culture and digital citizenship.  For me a lead learner is one who is not just encouraging his or her teachers to reach out to other teachers using social media such as blogging, twitter, wikis and so on, but one who is actively modeling the use of these as learning, communication and sharing tools within and outside the school community.  To me, a lead learner is one who is looking at how we can use these powerful tools to transform student learning opportunities too.  Being tech savvy is not really enough, leadership involves more than just walking the talk, it involves walking with others on their learning journey too.

Photo Credit:  70 kites on a single line by Rona Proudfoot  

First thoughts about using the iPad with my students

OK, so I've only had the iPad for 3 days but here are my first impressions:

On Thursday night I was very excited. I rushed home, unpacked the box and switched it on. I loved the size, I loved the touch screen and everything was working fine. I hooked it up to my wireless network at home and went to the App Store to download some apps for trying out with the students on Friday. My first thoughts based on the visit to the App Store were that it was not very easy to search for apps that would be good for different age groups in primary. I went to Education and found 880 apps which I then sorted into most popular, but these were not sorted into either subject or age range, though when I searched for Kindergarten I did get to 6 apps designed for this age group and when I searched for Elementary I got to 3 apps (all maths). I installed several of these apps to try out with the students.

I then went to Reference and again searched using most popular. Some of these apps would be very useful for me (for example the Swiss Phone Book) but not very useful for me to use in class with my students. I found a translator and dictionary that looked good and went ahead and installed those. I went to the Books category and installed iBooks and Kindle. Then I went ahead and got a book to try to see if I would like reading on the iPad as much as reading a "real" book.

What I have learnt from this: I need to have some suggestions of apps that are good to use with primary students. Searching around and trying out different apps is very time consuming.

On Friday I took the iPad into school. I was teaching two classes of Grade 2s in the morning and when the students had finished what they had to do on the computers, I asked them to try out the iPad and some of the apps I had installed. The most popular one I noticed was RushHour. I deliberately didn't give any instructions on how to use the iPad to the students, I just wanted to observe what they were doing. Generally I found they worked well together, shared and took turns. If one of them didn't know what to do, the others helped and made suggestions. Every single student was successful using the touch screen.

On Friday afternoon I had MYP Technology with Grade 7 students all afternoon. As soon as the students walked into the room they saw the iPad and asked if they could use it. Since some of the students had been away on the past couple of Fridays doing sports activities, they had missed the investigation and designing of kites. I therefore asked these students to go and sit on the couch with the iPad and to search YouTube for some movies on kite making that would help them decide what they wanted to make. They tried out various positions such as holding the iPad in their hands, putting it on their laps and so on but the favourite position seemed to be reclining with their knees up and the iPad propped up against them. Other students wanted to use it too. I asked them to search for some useful apps in the App Store. They came up with an app about the planets, a graphing app, one that showed historical maps, and a graphic calculator, all of which they installed on the iPad.

After school I went to the library to have a chat with our librarian. On the way there I met a teacher who noticed I was carrying the iPad who asked if she could "touch" it. I handed it to her and asked her to try it out. Earlier this year, one of the other IT teachers had shown her an app for the iPod Touch where students could practice telling the time. Her reaction to that had been that she thought the screen on the iPod was too small - however she was very happy with the size of the iPad and definitely wanted to try it out. She asked about typing and having it in a comfortable position for both her hands and eyes. She asked about balancing it on her knee of having it flat on a desk while working. However as we were in the library she sat down on a bench and put up one knee and used it that way. "Wow!" she said, "It sticks to my trousers!" Another happy customer!!

On Friday evening I went to visit a Kindergarten teacher. We spent some time looking for more apps for her students and I am going to give her the iPad to use with her class on Monday. I'm interested to see how the students get on with the apps we have installed.

For myself I have found that using the iPad to read a book or to surf the internet is relatively easy if I'm sitting down with one leg crossed over the other. It doesn't work trying to sit upright with it balanced on my knee. I find I'm reading a lot in landscape view, but when I read a book I turn the iPad round into portrait - though perhaps this is because that's the way I'm used to reading the internet on my computer and how I'm used to reading a book page by page. I like the touch screen and I like the way you can pinch to make things larger. Typing is more challenging for me, however (hence I am writing this blog post on my MacBook Pro). It feels very odd trying to type - perhaps because I am still trying to use all my fingers. When I am just using my index fingers it feels better (but of course it's much slower!) I'm still trying to find a good position to type in. Putting the iPad onto a table and trying to type definitely doesn't work!

So, does anyone have any advice for me, any apps that work well with primary and middle schoolers? If so please leave a comment. Thanks!

The future is mobile

Last year when I was doing kite making as part of MYP Technology, students were at the stage of designing and planning the materials they would need to make their kites.  As there were quite a few calculations involved, one student asked if he could use his phone as a calculator.  I was amazed that he asked this question and that he hadn't just automatically done it.  Having spent 4 years in a school with a tablet programme it was hard to think that any teacher might discourage a student from using any technology he happened to be carrying around with him.  And yet in many schools cell phones are banned in class.

The Horizon Report K-12, however, shows that the future is mobile.  Students are getting phones at a younger and younger age and the predictions are that in less than 2 years mobile devices will outnumber PCs - already in Japan 75% of internet use is on mobile "always connected" devices.  Phones that were at one time seen as a distraction in the classroom, that were at one time just devices for sending SMSs and for calling, are now the doorways to the vast content of the internet.  I would say it would be hard to find a high school student at our school who doesn't have such a phone.

The iPad has done a lot to transform the view of mobile devices into a tool for learning.  Already schools are using them with students as e-readers and places to view video as well as to connect to the internet.  Another feature of the iPads (or iTouches) is the vast number of educational apps that students are using and web content is now adjusting itself to being used on mobile devices too.  At the recent ECIS IT Conference I was talking to teachers and IT leaders from schools who said they were ordering hundreds of iPads for next school year.  They said they were leapfrogging over the 1:1 laptop programme and going straight into a 1:1 iPad programme.  Certainly this is much cheaper and needs less infrastructure and technical support, and it's even cheaper if students are allowed to bring in their own - schools won't even need to buy or maintain them.  In middle and secondary schools I can see iPads becoming part of what a student needs, in the same way that graphic calculators are used in maths and science.  I can see the hardware budget going the same way as the software budget has gone in recent years with the explosion of Web 2.0 tools.  This year, for example, our total spending on software has been less than $300.  If we are not having to buy desktops and laptops, I can see our hardware budget being dramatically cut too.

The great advantage of the iPad or other tablet is using them as electronic book readers with highlighting and annotation tools, dictionaries and so on.  Now they also have many apps for creation, images, audio and video which means students won't need to use a desktop at all.   Best of all is the size and weight of these devices - small and light enough to fit into a pocket or small bag.

Photo Credit:  iPaddr by Daniel Bogan  

Free is the Nice Price (Part 2) - Grade 7 Technology

This year at school I've been teaching Grade 7 MYP Technology for the first time. The course is a bit of a hotch-potch as it is taught by myself and 2 science teachers and is set against instrumental music - so we get the students who are not currently having their instrument lessons at that time. To make it even more challenging we have 80 Grade 7 students doing Technology all Friday afternoon, and it takes place in a room right next to where 8 students are having their drumming lessons. Does this sound like a recipe for disaster?

At the beginning of this school year I wasn't very enthusiastic about this class. Nor was I enthusiastic about what I was expected to teach and how I was expected to teach it. Clearly the people who set this course up at school had no clue about the real nature of MYP Technology which is to expose the students to an equal mixture of information technology, materials/design technology and systems. My brief was basically to teach the students Excel for the first 6 months of the year! For the first few weeks I went along with the flow and did what I was told - having the students graph the results of experiments done in the science lessons. Actually I quite enjoyed these experiments, especially the one where we were throwing metals into acids and then setting the resulting gas produced on fire! Of course then we had to come down to earth and graph this! But 6 months of this? Pleeeease!

It didn't take me long to realise that as the only IT teacher on the team, I was going to have to do something to bring us back into line with the real purpose of MYP Technology - the design cycle. To be honest, after 6 weeks of teaching Excel all Friday afternoon, I was longing for a break myself too! Therefore I decided to come up with the first design project of the year: now that the students were familiar with the various features of Excel, could they teach it to younger students by producing some sort of Web 2.0 presentation that would show them the main features of the software and how to use it?

I started with the Dominoe 50 Ways website and just let the students play. Actually I called it exploring, not playing, because after all the assistant principal of the school was teaching right opposite my classroom and I didn't want him to think Friday afternoon was playtime for the Grade 7s. I divided the class into small groups and had each group explore 10 of the excellent tools mentioned on the Dominoe website. They then had to report back to the rest of the class which tool they liked the best and which they thought was most suited to the task and why. Immediately I noticed a change in attitude: the students became more interested and engaged. They loved some of the tools, though thought some of them were not going to work for the actual task I had set them. They then spent some time taking screen shots of the various features of Excel that they wanted to teach to the younger students.

Following this we gave the students several lessons to actually work on the Web 2.0 tools they selected - each student had a completely free choice and we had a whole variety of different tools being used. When we left school for the Christmas holidays the students knew that on their return they would be showing their presentations. What I have seen in the past couple of weeks is a bunch of what used to be fairly switched-off Friday afternoon students coming alive. They have been in my room at break times, at lunch times and have been working hard at home too. They are happy and motivated. I am happy and motivated too.

Friday was presentation day for the first set of students. Initially they were nervous and reluctant to show what they had done, but after the first few students they all really got into it and were proud to step up and share their work - they were so proud of what they had designed and created. Comments from the students showed that they had really appreciated the fact that they were given a totally free choice of tool - some said this was the first time they had ever been given a choice of how to present their work! Students justified their choices saying things like "I chose Yodio because it is multi-functional and effective", "I liked the high-tech design tools of SlideRocket" and "I found Prezi to be an original way of presenting the information and it was easy to use". They were all totally focussed on the design and the way they could communicate their message effectively. Many said "I loved using it" about their particular tool. Some said "I will never, ever use PowerPoint again". Only one student came in with a PowerPoint and I told her she would have to redo this as it was not a Web 2.0 tool (which was the whole purpose of the task). Other comments students made showed that they really appreciated being able to work from any computer at school and at home without having to carry their work around on memory sticks or email it to themselves. The best thing, of course, is that all these tools are completely free - though some students noticed they could do even more with a paid version .... so they paid!!!!

We had some disasters too. One boy who decided to use SlideRocket before Christmas came back to find out his 30 day trial had expired. Not daunted by this, he created a new identity and did the whole project again. Some students tried out one tool and then abandoned it when they found it was too complicated. Luckily our rubric allowed for this as one of the descriptors said: The student was able to monitor progress and describe and explain the reasons for making changes to the plan if necessary.

So after the first 15 presentations I was interested to see which Web 2.0 tool was the most popular - I added them all into the Wordle above and you can see the results: Prezi is the most popular choice so far with about half the students choosing it. Glogster is the next most popular choice. I'm interested to see the presentations next week and see what other tools the students have used and whether Prezi remains the top tool.

By the way, our next venture is going to be to move onto the materials part of MYP Technology. Now bear in mind I have never done this before and would usually run a mile at the sight of a screwdriver or a hammer. We've decided we're going to design and makes kites and then go outside onto the hill behind school and fly them. It will be a steep learning curve for the students and for me. Watch this space!