BYOD vision planning Part 1

In the next few weeks, fellow administrators, both at the district and building level, along with teachers will come together to begin to think about where we want to be in the next 3-5 years when it comes to technology integration and a BYOD environment.

As Peter Senge has preached in his books, lectures and keynotes, shared visions must begin with our personal beliefs.  If our shared vision statements are built from our personal beliefs, we are more likely to follow them, aspire to them, rather than just comply with the mission.

Here is a short video on his idea:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaw_xAaxZPo


When the group of administrators and teachers begin to think what a school or classroom might look like in an ideal world in 3 years, we will pose the following questions:

• What are your personal beliefs/vision for BYOD in your school in the next 5 years?  What do you want to see?
• In a BYOD environment, students will be using technology to...
• Technology can be used by students to enhance learning by…
• What 21st century habits/skills do we want to continue to teach regardless of how technology changes in the next 5 years?  i.e. Collaboration, problem solving, etc.

How might you answer these questions?  What would you want to see if you were starting a BYOD school environment?  Please feel free to comment.  On April 7, we will hold our first meeting.  Stay tuned.  I will continue to blog following that meeting and share our story.  

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My Top 5 Recent Posts

I began blogging at the end of 2014, a little over 3 months ago.  I started this blog to push my thinking, share my experiences and open a dialogue with whomever wanted to talk about education, creativity and technology.  The best advice I received when starting the blog was to blog for me.  So I did.  However, my "blog for me", as a selfish action on paper was only a  misrepresented selfless act.  While I said I was blogging for me, each of my posts had an audience in mind...of which, I was only a small part of.  The audiences I spoke to included my administrator colleagues, the many teachers I am lucky to work with and my Twitter PLN.  Was it really for me?  Maybe, but that could be the subject of a future post.

Here are my top 5 most read Blog Posts:

1.  Stimulating Creativity 

2.  Google Classroom Part 1 

3.  Containing your enthusiasm...

4.  Are you "the one"?

5.  How to get from "I Can't" to "I will try"


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Google Classroom Part 1

Over a month ago, we began to integrate Google Classroom into a 4th grade persuasive essay unit.  I blogged about it a few times. Please see the end of this post for the titles and links to those blog posts.

Going Google happened at first by a chance encounter.  Instead of telling you the story myself, I wanted the teachers involved to tell it through their lens.  Here is their story:

Growing in age of technological advancements, the half-life of our devices seems to grow shorter with time. All too familiarly, we have experienced having an “outdated” version of a device, such as a cell phone, simply because a manufacturer was able to develop a new product before we necessarily needed one. Making the transition from a flip phone to a Smartphone is an experience where many of our retells include both troubles and triumphs. A similar pattern occurs as we introduce new technology into our 21st century classrooms. As we encounter these periods of transition, we ask ourselves: is the discomfort that comes along with change worth it?

Our experience, as educators:

At Harrison Central School District, we can confidently say that we are proud to be a part of an organization that embraces change and provides it’s teachers with ongoing opportunities to grow as educators. The idea of using Google Classroom with our students originally stemmed from a conversation about how to problem solve scheduling use of our school’s computer labs. Thanks to the support of both Brian Seligman, our Director of Technology, and Jeremy Barker, our school principal, we were able to use laptops to introduce Google Classroom to our fourth grade students as an online platform for revising, editing and publishing their opinion-based essays. Introducing this collaborative tool to students instantly sent waves of excitement, and increased engagement about writing, across three classrooms of fourth graders at Preston Elementary School.

Recently, Brian Seligman blogged about distinguishing the difference between fears and challenges. According to Maslow’s Four Stages of Learning, living in the first stage, unconscious incompetence, includes not having a certain skill and denying the usefulness of the skill (i.e. the adult who refuses to even go near a computer because they just “don’t need it”). Throughout the process of introducing the application to students, we worked to move from Maslow’s second stage of conscious incompetence to the third stage, conscious competence, by recognizing that we didn’t know everything about Google Classroom but understood the value of using this resource with our students. As a result, we collaborated to develop lessons for students and in turn, develop a greater understanding of this tool. Along with introducing this tool to our students came the challenges and discomfort that comes with change. Were there questions or glitches that we didn’t have quick answers to? Yes, many! Was it uncomfortable for us as educators? At times. Did we work to figure out the unknown? Yes. Were we supported while working through the stages of learning? Absolutely. Are we prepared to say we are at Maslow’s fourth and final stage of learning; unconscious competence? Absolutely not. We’re still working on it!

Our experience, with students:

When you have fourth grade students going home and sharing Google Classroom with their parents and a range of learners coming to school excited about Writer’s Workshop, you know that you have opened a new world of opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning. In developing lessons to support this work, we focused on aligning our work with Google with CCSS, other district initiatives around writing and our district’s core values: access, equity, rigor and adaptability.

In our sessions with our consultant, Diane Cunningham, we have been working to: create standards-based rubrics, increase opportunities for descriptive feedback, encourage growth of writing and develop authentic assessments. Throughout our persuasive writing unit, we took advantage of the “comments” feature in Google docs to provide students with rubric-based feedback in the early stages of the drafting process. We then used our feedback to students as a means of assessment FOR learning. Providing students with feedback in the early stages of the writing process allowed teachers to make meaningful use of the data to drive our small group instruction and individual writing conferences. As students worked to strengthen their writing based on teacher feedback, they moved to using rubric-based language to provide one another peer feedback about their work. The increased collaboration among teachers and students provided a more efficient and valuable opportunity for students to strengthen their writing.

Great start: what’s next?

Thinking ahead, we are continuing to explore further opportunities with Google docs and Classroom. We’d like to continue modeling examples of descriptive feedback and allow students to have additional opportunities to practice providing one another with feedback about future writing pieces. Additionally, we are working to integrate Google Classroom in the development of authentic assessments where students have clear purposes and audiences for their work. Throughout this experience as educators we lived through the motto, “if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.” In other words, we will continue to sacrifice comfort for growth because the cost we pay as educators is well worth the new learning opportunities it provides for our students.

-Veronica D’Andrea

Recent Posts on Using Digital Tools Creatively:

1.  We are Going Google, Are you? 

1.  How to get from "I can't" to "I will try"

1. Changing a culture - Digital Age Culture

1. Being inspired by a willingness to try something new 

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Containing your enthusiasm...

Like any waterfall, ideas can never be contained.  However, there is always danger in letting them go too fast.  The flowing of the water has the power to break through and erode rocks, creating new pathways for the water to flow.  Ideas can do the same.  Ideas can be so powerful that they change the course of history.  They can set in motion other ideas, but they can also scare away and deter many others.  There must be a balance between letting ideas through and holding them back.

In education, we are at a crossroads when it comes to integrating technology.  How much do we push new ideas through and how much should we hold them back and let them out slowly is a very touch question, for which I do not have an answer.  However, here are my quick suggestions/thoughts on the matter.

1.  Keep an open mind to all possibilities.
2.  Discuss ideas with colleagues.
3.  Think through the long term with respect to the most important "what if" scenarios.
4.  Don't give up, especially when there are roadblocks that look like they are preventing you from moving forward.

Having ideas and dreams are great, but they can often get squashed by logistics, technicalities, or leaders with short sightedness.  Don't let your ideas get squashed.  As Langston Hughes poetically wrote in 1951, "What happens to a dream deferred?  Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?  Or does it explode?"  Don't let your ideas or your dreams of a better tomorrow explode because they weren't acted on.


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Stimulating Creativity

I came across this info-graphic in my Twitter PLN in the past, re-tweeted it a few times, have it hanging in my office and refer to it often.  Here is my top 5 takeaways from this list of 27 ways to stimulate creativity.

https://twitter.com/WizIQ/status/538444752933240832/photo/1

5.  Change the way you do things.  There are no routine tasks, only routine ways of doing things.
   
       Doing things the same way each and every day can be monotonous, tedious and can definitely limit creativity.  I drive to work each and every day, taking the same route.  There have been moments during my drive that I realized that I had no idea where I was, when my mind was on other things and my driving became automatic.  Our minds can often act in this automatic way at anytime, mostly when we perform tasks the same way...similar to the way our muscles master the art of rhythmic contractions to perform all tasks (known as muscle memory), our brains function is a similar way.  To avoid this "automaticity of events", change things up.   Take the scenic route to work, change the way you do your "routine" morning tasks such as reading the paper, checking e-mail, blogging, etc.  By changing things up, you will find that your brain will think of things that it had not thought of before, allowing for your creative juices to flow.    


4.  Try something that you have never done before.
   
       I am the worst at trying something new.  In my younger days, I could easily be coerced or manipulated by my peers to try new things.  I think I did it just so I could fit in.  However, in my adult life, I try to be safe and stick to what I know.  In order for me to try new things, I need to come out of my comfort zone and really push myself to change.  Don't get me wrong, I do try new things, but it certainly doesn't come naturally and I have to remind myself each day to try something new.  What will I try to do today?

3.  When you have an idea, make a note of it, and later check to see if it happened.
   
       I use various tech tools in my office and on my smartphone to keep track of my ideas.  I use google, twitter, blogger and Evernote for almost everything I can think of.  Thoughts come at all times...on my drive to and from work, I may use a voice recorder to record a thought or idea.  In my office, I have post its all over the place, a whiteboard with notes and I am never too far away from my droid, iPad or chromebook.  Since I use google drive to store everything, I have folders dedicated to ideas.  I have ideas for iPads, google innovation, BYOD, and many others.  While I keep my ideas and thoughts somewhat private, I do share them to my PLN through Twitter and my blogging.  It is a great way to put them out there for feedback and support.  It also pushes me to keep moving forward and continue to work towards my goals.

2.  Go for a walk.
   
       I should walk more.  What I notice is that when I go for walks, I always am able to clear my mind.  There was a movie, not a very good one (historically), but it was about the Samurai and an American civil war veteran living among them to learn their ways in the late 1800's.  There is a line in the movie that I think of often.  It happened when the American was training with the Samurai and it was an utter failure.  One of the younger Samurai said to him, "mind the sword, mind the people watch, mind enemy - -too many mind. No mind." Some have translated some of the Zen teachings as "mind like water" or "empty mind" where the mind is not preoccupied by any thought or emotion. It is empty in the sense that it is unbiased, free and adaptable.  This is when you can be most creative.


1.  Play.
   
       I have 4 children, 3 of which are young enough to still play.  I watch them play all the time.  Occasionally, they will ask me to play along.  I have a difficult time, while they ease right into creative play.  They can be silly, laughing and giggling while they pretend they are monsters, or anything else they can think of.  My 3 year old can do a great imitation of me.  She would sit on the couch and in a really low voice, say, "Stop making all that noise!"  The girls all laugh at that.  They dance and sing all the time.  They can sit around all day and play with their lego blocks, building something, then tearing it down, just to build something again.  They color, they paint and they make things with clay.  They will run around playing "house", "school" or even play, "mommy and baby".  What I do find, is that when I play with them, that is, when I let go of my need to be serious and my need to be an adult, I actually love playing games with them.  It brings me back to when I was a kid, when I didn't have the same responsibilities I have now.  I guess playing games allows my mind to let go of all the things it is worried about, like bills, or replacing the leaky roof.  Being silly once in a while is not so terrible. 

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Are you "the one"?

I wrote a blog post last month on "believing in yourself".  However, this post is more about what happens when someone else believes in you.  Although I grew up lacking self confidence, there was always that one person who believed in me, and that made all the difference.

The first person that believed in me, much more than I believed in myself was and still is my mother.  No matter what I thought of myself, she always had the belief that I can do anything, that I could be whoever I wanted to be.  She still has that belief.

Growing up, other than my mother, there were a few people in my life who helped me become the person I am today.  Some were teachers, some were coaches and some, even friends or coworkers.  The point here is that there was always someone, that one person who had the faith, confidence and the belief that I could be successful.  I am even where I am today because a principal saw something in me that nobody ever saw and took a chance on me and made me an AP in his school.  The belief in something I could be opened a door that was had always been closed.   

As a teacher, I knew that I was where I ended up in part to those individuals that believed in me.  I made it my mission to always believe in my students.  I wanted them to know that I believed in them and that I knew they could be whatever they wanted to be.  As I think back to my days as a teacher, I know it was more than that.  I didn't just have this faith that my students would be successful, I knew that I had the power to influence their outcome.  Sometimes, influence came in the form of teaching and learning, sometimes, it came in the form of words of encouragement.  In the end, I hope I was that one...the one that believed in them, the one that helped them believe in themselves, the one that opened a door that had always been closed.

I hope to continue to pursue being a door opener and I hope for someone, maybe many, I was "the one", the one who believed in them when nobody else did.

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