Telling Stories

This week we held our annual iPads in the Classroom workshop. Laurie and I used last year's work as a foundation but added many new components. Most importantly like many other iPad academies around the nation we kept things open and let our learners guide much of the work. It is very interesting to start the week by asking everyone to set their own goals. In interesting ways we got a lot of "what do you want us to do" during the first two days. Then everyone settled into the routine and expectations and did an outstanding job learning and extending.

You can take a peek at the work we all did here.

The week of working with teachers has reinforced the ideas that have been guiding my work in the last year. Mobile devices are the perfect tool to enhance identity and literacy through shared story telling. We envision families recording oral histories, creating in vivo memories, and composing personally relevant texts. Using the affordance of the digital device itself and specific apps within it can create rich personal tapestries with fairly low user knowledge.

We now have a chance to try it out in Nebraska and perhaps within the year in a parallel project in China. I am excited!

iPads in China- Excerpts from the Chinese media (loosely translated)

Working in China exposes the cultural differences AND the similarities of concerns. Despite all the concerns and challenges our project just won first prize in a National competition for Technology Integrated classroom. This is a great boost to our work and I am excited to continue.
I think that in the following excerpt from Chinese media in Chengdu you can see what concerns the Chinese public and how my comments are interpreted.

WCC: With the introduction of technology into traditional teaching, whiteboard, book bag, IPAD all applied to the classroom, how do you see the development proceeding? 
　　Dr. Guy Trainin: Today's kids are exposed to smart phones, computers every day. Their parents and teachers are still from the 20th century. Without technology the teacher, the school can not meet the needs of 21st century child's development. So the idea of how we can use technology to help teachers to teach  21st century kids. 
　　WCC: Chinese schools require the exam, how will students do on traditional exams? Do you have parental support? 
　　Dr. Guy Trainin: In our classroom (with Du Yu as teacher) students have mastered more words, electronic production than other classrooms, their overall quality has improved significantly. Support from parents is not difficult to imagine, as long as parents to see the students really active and growing, parents will be supportive. 
　　Today, young parents are more willing to accept new ways of education. If schools do nothing to change the direction, either to promote any new technology or method, students will not be ready to learn and work in the 21st century. Technology integration with our project TechEDGE has been practiced for several years in the United States, transfer to other countries with different national and cultural backgrounds, ideas differences, makes us need to find a new path to our ultimate goal and effect. 
Link to original story.

iPads in Chengdu China

This spring I have sent Ji Guo to Chengdu to collaborate with the iPad classroom in a first grade.

His report seems to indicate that teachers are in the replacement and augmentation phases of technology integration. They very ably use iPad linked to projectors as agile white board applications for sharing content (through projection) and presenting.

At the same time we are seeing a few creation apps used to create videos that are then shared with peers. This is a huge development for all partners in the project. What we are having a harder time is having student discussions that include critical feedback. That said they are only first graders and they are busy creating video, writing, and sharing.

What is clearly emerging is that beyond the affordances of the specific technology, there is an overarching theme. Technology seems to create a non-trivial opportunity to transform instruction. This transformation is not just about technology integration (although it is also about that), it is about student centered, differentiated practices that focus on engagement, participation and creation. The question that still remains is what impact it will have on more traditional measures of achievement.

Technology, Creativity, and Windows of Opportunity

At another academic year's end I have much to reflect on so this post is the first of a few that will try to help me think through and share what I've been doing. Throughout my research, visits to schools and teaching I have a growing sense that we are truly at a crossroads. Technology is becoming ubiquitous and schools are embracing it. The working assumption of many early technology integration leaders was that technology will help open learning up. It will help teachers individualize instruction and students to learn independently and follow their own learning paths.
This option is still open but at the same time a second option opened. Technology in schools can be used as a top down delivery of curriculum and assessment that would stymie any creativity from teachers and as a result students. As I watch school districts I see both trends happen. Larger districts tend to be top down using technology to deliver content and increase centralized control. Smaller more agile districts tend to be more open to diverse practices. This week I visited Aurora Public Schools and saw some of that agility. Teachers were creating their own assignments, thinking through steps and allowing their students to do the same.
I believe that we have a window of opportunity, the call for 21st century skills may be enough to make sure that the top down approach does not win. For that we have to act, lead and show the options. In teacher education we must make sure that our future teachers are ready to use technology in ways that will promote creativity. We need to make sure that young teachers joining schools that are often called on to lead technology integration are ready.

5 ideas from our NETA Panel: This is how you should teach technology in Teacher Ed

Storm over Telluride Courtesy of Jay's Thought Stream Blog

We had a great panel @NETA14. We asked our panelists to reflect on what should be part of teacher education and how we might get there.

The panel quickly evolved to a group discussion that included teachers, administrators, board members and university supervisors and instructors. The feedback was fantastic and will help to go forward.
Here are some of the key ideas:

1. Its not about specific technologies, it is about affordances and pedagogies.
Everyone agreed that at the rate of change there is little value in "sticking with" one technology. Instead teaching the ideas behind what technologies afford can open up future teachers to flexibly adapt to change and keep innovating.

2. Teach Open Source mentality, teach students to be participants and contributors.
Future teachers need to learn to share their ideas learn from others and whenever possible move away from canned purchased curricula.

3. Teach flexibility- plan B. One of our panelists said: "It is my 33rd year as a teacher and I still need flexibility. We have to learn that it is ok to change, ok to learn from our students."

4. Technology needs to be in the hands of kids
Technology is transformational when students use it, when students learn, act, create. Need I say more?

5. Focus on the Why. Learn to integrate with learning in mind!

The Golden Rule of Professional Development

I got an email a few days ago announcing the potential for professional development in the areas that I have some expertise in. I actually produce research in these areas and so my first reaction was complete rejection. On second thought I re-examined the invite to see what the format was. It was the classic workshop where we will be given all the wisdom collected by beings with superior intellect and secret knowledge. Then we can turn around use the secret knowledge and transform our results.

This is the model of professional development that our own research would point to being highly ineffective. On second thought I realized this is how most teachers feel when PD from the outside is brought to the school or district. The Golden Rule should apply here as in all other social interactions.

As a professional I would like to be treated with respect to my expertise and knowledge I want to part of a change process not a subject of a program. The same could be easily argued is true of teachers. Instead of coming and talking at we can come and talk with and stay awhile. This of course is a much less profitable suggestion to professional developers and harder for schools to sustain. I have erred in the past but our work in the last few years supporting technology integration in school leaves no doubt- we have to abide by:

Develop other professionals like you would like to be developed. Not as a show but as a sustained discussion.

Grappling with Democracy and Technology in Teacher Ed

I have been trying out democratic practices in my Teacher Ed class for the past semester with the help of two researchers and my students. It has been a hard journey for all of us (well for me for sure). It feels very different, and the ways I think through instructional dilemmas are very different. At the heart of the change is redefining the relationship between instructor and students. The two components that I find most appropriate right now are participation and trust, and both have been supported by technology.


When I talk about participation, most students and teachers immediately conjure in their minds an orderly class and students raising their hand and waiting patiently to speak. This does happen at times in my class but that is not what I mean here. This semester I reworked my classroom interactions so we all would have as much time as possible to process together and think through instructional dilemmas. One of the best instruments for that was opening circle. In opening circle we raise a relevant question and everyone has to participate in the discussion at least once. At the beginning of the semester I initiated the discussion and we went around in a circle. At this point in the semester the topics are student generated and at the students request we stopped going around in a circle and instead they speak when they feel ready. This made for a much richer discussion and a sense of shared ownership. I think that this practice led to a very different relationship between me and my students that in interesting ways allowed me to discuss more things I care about, and say things I have never said to my students.

Trust is the second leg. The message I am trying to send my students is one of trust- in each other in me and in their students. An illustration of the ways trust can work is in group work. In our last class period we created annual plans for teaching reading and writing. It is a hard task and many of the groups were "frozen" for awhile. After spending their last few semesters focusing on the micro aspects of teaching, I suddenly asked them to zoom out and focus on macro structures. When trying something this new trust is a concern. My students have to trust me that they can do it (it was hard for them), they also had to trust that I will not grade them harshly. This is a really important point, in difficult/unfamiliar assignments students are looking for scaffolds and fear grading. Here, there was no grading to be done but students were still concerned with my evaluation of their efforts.

So where does TECHNOLOGY come in? Many people know that I integrate technology throughout my class. They have a sense that students in my class are always on their devices. They are not. In fact I would estimate that students are about 20% of the time on their devices- viewing documents, taking quizzes, creating presentations. Most of the time is spent on discussion, group interaction, and even some lecture (gasp) time. That said, technology has a significant part in what I am able to do in participation. I use discussion board to hear questions from all students. I can then have enough time to conduct opening circle and other participatory elements. Email and other communication have been used as a backchannel to discuss ideas and concerns in ways that I have never experienced in this class. It's been a challenge and I still wonder how my students see all of this.