Pre-Project/Brainstorming
One of the requirements of the grant was "reflection" so reflective thought was built into the process.
This page is still being edited.
Origins
The school years always seem to start with a week of in-service days before the students arrive and in 2011 this tradition held true. I remember one of the meetings that week was a department meeting with middle school staff over at Jefferson Middle School. During the meeting, Jeff Zeiders (our Social Studies Supervisor) mentioned Mt. Lebanon's Centennial Celebrations taking place in 2012. I had been carrying with me a conversation Michelle and I had back in 2009-2010 about using augmented reality for educational purposes. I rememered us playing around with the Layar app and was daydreaming about how neat it would be for students to create a layer for their community... perhaps to coincide with this anniversary? After the meeting, I pulled Michelle aside and shared the idea while Jeff packed up his presentation. In a sign of things to come, the three of us sat there chatting long after our school day was officially over. In retrospect, this collaborative process of re-imagining learning in the 21st Century was born on that day.
Food for Thought: Was the beginning of this project actually our joint presentation on Digital Media and 21st Century Learning (Gaming/21st Century skills)? Or, does it go back further to our Tech Menu Day presentations: Creative an Effective Backchannel and Death by PowerPoint? Hmm.
Food for Thought: Was the beginning of this project actually our joint presentation on Digital Media and 21st Century Learning (Gaming/21st Century skills)? Or, does it go back further to our Tech Menu Day presentations: Creative an Effective Backchannel and Death by PowerPoint? Hmm.
October 10, 2011
Full steam ahead.
The high school held a Technology Menu Day on October 10th. The middle schools had other things planned for the day. So, we decided to proactively seize on this opportunity to: 1) make this project become a reality, 2) individualize our professional development, and most importantly, 3) bring colleagues into the design process. It was a successful day on many levels.
The high school held a Technology Menu Day on October 10th. The middle schools had other things planned for the day. So, we decided to proactively seize on this opportunity to: 1) make this project become a reality, 2) individualize our professional development, and most importantly, 3) bring colleagues into the design process. It was a successful day on many levels.
- The AM Session was set aside for the two of us. We started from scratch and proceeded to walk though the Design Thinking Process (we would later use this process as a kickoff event for our students). We produced many physical and digital documents that were cornerstones of this project. We produced a driving question and a framework on which to build PBL.
- The PM Session was an open invitation to any middle school teacher. We had about a dozen teachers choose to collaborate with us in lieu of the other planned tech day events. While I believe it was a good session for everyone, it was an incredibly important moment for us. The group turned out to be both interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary and this gave us many ideas and directions we would never have thought of on our own.
Thinkspaces: How We Organized Our Thoughts
The next series of images are some examples of how we organized our thoughts using both digital and "analog" tools. Input could vary. Some of these resources were created individually, in tandem, or with colleagues and/or students. Access could vary. Some of these resources were public, some shared with colleagues and/or students, and some of it was accessed only by us.
Screenshot of Spaaze (edited by King/Holliday, but viewable to colleagues)
Screenshot of Spaaze (edited by and viewable to colleagues)
Screenshot of Trello (edited by King/Holliday and viewable to only us)
Unlike Spaaze, which was a constantly growing collection of thoughts and resources, this Trello thinkspace called "Digital Playground Project" was constantly evolving. This was basically our To-Do list and cards would be created, edited, and deleted (there is more info hidden "behind" each "card"). What you are seeing is a simply a snapshot in time. And, unlike Spaaze, we were the only ones with access to this resource.
Design Thinking Notes (edited by King/Holliday and viewable to "whoever had it in their backpack")
Chalkboard Brainstorming
Using the principles of Design Thinking, I had to first get to know the needs and interests of my users. Long before the official kickoff day in our classes, I taped a giant piece of paper to my chalkboard and sat a Sharpie on the ledge nearby. On the paper, I wrote two questions and asked the students to collect their thoughts on those two questions. It sat there for quite some time. I think they had more questions about the questions than answers. There are some good contributions here... there is also some "8thgradeness". The GigaPan will enable you to pan/zoom on their ideas.
What would we put in a "digital playground"?
How do "digital natives" tell the story of their community?
A Phone Conversation from 11.14.11
Michelle and I agree we both work best by organizing information visually. Often, the product of our conversation is a mind map. Here is an example of one from an evening phone conversation during our "grant writing days". We were trying to conceive of possible end products created by students and how we might showcase them. As we spoke, I doodled onto a clean, white piece of 8.5 x 11 paper sitting at my kitchen table. This mind map all began with the statement: "We need to write grant proposals!" Looking back on this process, we easily spent over a hundred hours on the telephone.
Other Modes of Conversation
Landlines, cell phones, texts... oh, my. Each mode of technology had its strength and served our needs/purpose at the time. You can add chat rooms, wikis, websites, Spaaze, Trello, emails, FaceTime, interoffice mail, and iPad messaging to the list of ways that we collaborated. I had to laugh at one point during one of our evening work sessions. On my PC, I had tabs open to a chatroom, this collaborative website, my school website, my school email, and my personal gmail account... my iPad lay on my computer desk in front of me... oh, and I was on my cell phone with Michelle. Yeah.
Here are a couple of screenshots of our iPad messaging from April/May:
Here are a couple of screenshots of our iPad messaging from April/May:
Don't Share a Physical Space? No Problem.
It took a lot of research and problem solving but eventually we figured out the best way to use our classroom iPads as tools of collaboration between our middle schools. As you will see in this screenshot of the "Favorites" screen in FaceTime, our classrooms were able to brainstorm, communicate, and collaborate despite the fact that they did not share physical spaces... a critical skill for 21st century learners. Whether it was teacher-teacher, teacher-student, or student-student interaction, it really transformed the learning taking place as well as the atmosphere of the learning environment. Let me tell you how odd it was as a classroom teacher to be circulating around your classroom from team to team... only to stumble into a team already engaged in a conversation with Michelle about problems with HTML (their prototype).
"Oh, hey there, Ms. King!"... "What's up, Brother Holliday?"
"Oh, hey there, Ms. King!"... "What's up, Brother Holliday?"
We set up our iPads so that teams could collaborate within and across physical spaces.
We wanted our 10 cities to work as one firm. We wanted our students to add a new digital skill to their toolkit.
We wanted our 10 cities to work as one firm. We wanted our students to add a new digital skill to their toolkit.
Two Powerful (but funny) Memories Concerning FaceTime:
The Grass is Always Greener
Our 7th Periods showed their prototypes to one another. Ms. King traveled around her classroom and had each of her teams describe their process and share their prototype. "What about your work?" Ms. King asked. "Please, Mr. Holliday, DON"T show them our projects... theirs' are so much BETTER than ours!" my students pleaded behind me. Well, I did go through each of my teams and we said goodbye to Ms. King's classroom. At the end of the day in our routine reflections on the day's events, Michelle told me that her Period 7 was blown away by how much better our projects were than their projects.
Kids are funny. |
The "Wow" Factor
Twice during the protoyping phase, FaceTime allowed each of us to impact educators. At one point, Michelle's administrator was visiting her classroom and came across a team explaining their prototype to me and I was providing feedback. When the girls were answering my questions, I heard his surprise/exclamation in the background: "Wait, are you talking to someone right now?! Is this recorded?! Wait, it's live?! Making sure my face was on camera and saying "hello" cleared things up.
A similar situation with Michelle.. she was on a field trip at the high school but brought an iPad so that she could provide feedback to my class via FaceTime. At one moment, she tucked herself away into the quiet copyroom, spent time with each of my groups, and turned to leave. A teacher who had been sitting there spoke up and asked: "Were you just talking to students through that thing?" That just blew my mind." Adults are funny. |
Designing Classrooms (Emphasize Student Voice)
A specific aim of this project was to emphasize the student voice. This should hold true not only in the final products but in the physical classroom as well. Typical classroom setups tend to inherently put the teacher (and his/her voice) at the "front" of classroom activity. We wanted to avoid that and empower students as contributors of content alongside their teacher... equal voices in terms of content creation. So we devised a plan...
The Traditional Concept:
Teacher-created content is broadcasted via PC, and using a data projector, it is viewed/manipulated on a SmartBoard. To broadcast a student/students' voice, the teacher content must be interrupted/replaced. In essence, there is one channel of thought at a time. This has been a model that has worked for some time now, but times (and student learning styles) have changed.
Our Proposed Concept:
Notice that the traditional setup is still in tact. This setup serves specific classroom purposes. But can't there by more than one mode of visualizing content? Is it possible to have teacher-created content and student-created content side-by-side as equals within the physical classroom? Is there a way to use technology that allows you to collaborate across physical environments? Yep.
Arm students with iPads. We did. Use an Apple TV device to broadcast student-created content on a flatscreen TV/monitor. One teacher/student can present content via SmartBoard, multiple teachers/students/groups can present content via iPad/screen. As an additonal use, the screen could also be used to broadcast a backchannel during any classroom activity.
We tried various means, and despite our best efforts, our concept did not become a reality.
Badges
The two of us have been long intrigued by the premise of using badges in learning environments and had been accumulating an arsenal of research and resources to make it a reality one day in our classrooms. While badges were a hot topic at the onset of the project (see Spaaze screenshot), more immediate items came to the forefront. Then, in early March, with the two of us dabbling with the badge system being implemented in the first Udacity course, I received this email from Michelle:
"Let's model 21st century collaborative, real world learning. We're currently building the plane while we're flying. The badges model had been on the back burner, but with seeing that a framework has been created...I figured we could give this a shot. Plus, it becomes a skillet or level of mastery each student can take with them as they move through life."
Looking at the email thread, I think it took us all of about 13 minutes to plunge forward with implementing a badge system as we re-imagined learning in the 21st Century. For the next two weeks, we began exploring the simplest, fairest, most realistic, and most cost-effective (free!) means of implementing a badge system within the 4th grading period on such short notice. The two of us and our students began compiling ideas for badges, the methods for awarding them, the methods of creating them, and the methods of displaying them. We looked at best practices in other learning environments.
One of the lessons we learned many times as educators throughout the implementation of this project aimed at "re-imagining learning in the 21st Century" is how powerful "20th century thinking" can be as a road block to innovation. Our badge system came to a halt in mid-March and it was never implemented.
"Let's model 21st century collaborative, real world learning. We're currently building the plane while we're flying. The badges model had been on the back burner, but with seeing that a framework has been created...I figured we could give this a shot. Plus, it becomes a skillet or level of mastery each student can take with them as they move through life."
Looking at the email thread, I think it took us all of about 13 minutes to plunge forward with implementing a badge system as we re-imagined learning in the 21st Century. For the next two weeks, we began exploring the simplest, fairest, most realistic, and most cost-effective (free!) means of implementing a badge system within the 4th grading period on such short notice. The two of us and our students began compiling ideas for badges, the methods for awarding them, the methods of creating them, and the methods of displaying them. We looked at best practices in other learning environments.
One of the lessons we learned many times as educators throughout the implementation of this project aimed at "re-imagining learning in the 21st Century" is how powerful "20th century thinking" can be as a road block to innovation. Our badge system came to a halt in mid-March and it was never implemented.
Never Invite a Vampire Into Your House
"Don't ever invite a vampire into your house, you silly boy. It renders you powerless." From The Lost Boys (1987)