Keeping the Learning Central

10/24/2009

0 Comments

 
Over the past eight weeks, we have embarked on a major undertaking to become a model School of the Future. Since our grant is anchored in digital storytelling, we have had staff development from Jason Ohler, Syliva Tolisano and our very own Mauli Ola Cook who is a Kennedy Center Teaching Fellow and our very own storytelling teacher. We have Skyped, Blogged, Tweeted, Flickrd, Photostoried and Vado'd. Teachers have embraced the new ideas and new tools and I have been thrilled to watch the initial projects emerge. Some of our first attempts have been easy and seamless but others have been a little messier. From all of them, we have learned invaluable lessons! 

However, I have a nagging concern about the learning! Our curriculum has units of discovery at the core. Each grade has six integrated units of discovery with an essential understanding and 3-6 essential questions. I wonder if the essential questions and understandings are getting lost in the glitz of the projects. Speaking with our technology teacher today gave me much greater insight into the implementation challenges the teachers are facing across all grade levels. We both agreed that we need to better guide the teachers in long range planning so that she has time for students to be introduced to and practice with the new tools before they start the classroom driven projects. We are thrilled at all the communication and requests to use the digital tools, however, some lessons aren't going so great because we haven't helped the teacher think through a complete task analysis. What do the students need to know and be able to do to complete the project? What do they already know? How and who will teach what they need to know for this project? When will they do it?

Today at our faculty meeting, we will be planning for our second units of discovery. We typically do a round robin planning that includes 10-15 minute brainstorms with each of our specialty teachers in the areas of Hawaiian studies, visual arts, music, technology, marine science and storytelling. This time, I am adding myself into the rotation so that I can better understand and support the teachers as they develop their next units. Here are the questions that I will pose to everyone before we start the collaboration session. 

Questions to Ponder When Planning

*To what degree to I consider the essential questions and essential understanding when planning my units of discovery?
*To what degree am I integrating language arts, science, social studies, the arts and technology to strengthen student learning during my units of discovery?
*To what degree am I planning on using our new digital tools to help strengthen student learning during my units of discovery?
*To what degree am I keeping student learning and reflection at the center of all that is happening in my classroom every day?
*To what degree do I consider formative and summative assessment strategies when planning my units of discovery? 
*To what degree am I using rubrics to help crystallize my learning objectives, to support student mastery and to help improve student chances of success on major projects? 

When teachers meet with me, I will ask them the following:

*What is your final project for this unit?
*What do the students need to know and be able to do to complete the final project? 
*What do they already know? 
*How and who will teach what they need to know for this project? 
*When will they do it?

If you have any suggestions, ideas or other guiding questions, please share them! I'll let you know how it goes.
0 Comments

Made a Movie!

9/9/2009

0 Comments

 
Today was great as we were able to try some of the tools ourselves. My biggest discovery is that the HP mini's aren't robust enough to support the more complex digital storytelling projects. Movie Maker freezes repeatedly whne you are trying to edit!  What a drag - I will have to reread the contract on the lease to see what can be done to solve this problem.  It's okay! Some of my biggest learnings are from my biggest challenges. I am excited about how much we were exposed to - I think some were overwhelmed but it's good to be stretched a bit and to move out of your comfort zone. Also just being exposed to all these new concepts and ideas and tools is wonderful.  It was terrific to see everyone's projects.  Totally fun to see everyone's creative side. I can't wait to see what the KPS students come up with. 
0 Comments

Digital Storytelling with Silvia Tolisano - aka Langwitches

9/8/2009

0 Comments

 
Wow! What a day! Today we had the first of a two day workshop on digital storytelling with Sylvia Tolisano, author of the Langwitches Blog.  We discussed 21st century learning skills, media literacy, Twitter, Copyright & Fair Use and a host of digital storytelling tools including Animoto, Mixbook, Photostory, Google Maps, Audacity, Voice Thread and Movie Maker. We are all supposed to create a short digital storytelling project to share with the group tomorrow. It was wonderful to see the collaboration happening not only among the KPS teachers but also with the teachers from Hanalei, Kilauea and Kanuikapono  School. We learned so much from Silvia and from each other.  What I REALLY appreciated was seeing all the examples of what can be done with elementary age students. Often, I read and hear things like, "Well my students won't be able to do that", or "My students are too young for that" so it was great to see/hear lower elementary examples. This was a perfect continuation of our work with Jason Ohler and Kumu MauliOla in early August. (has it already been a month since those session????). Another favorite thing was the creativity displayed with the Jose projects/trips. How wonderful for those students to be able to get a glimpse into other cultures through the eyes of a teddy bear!


Anyways, I'm pleased as can be with the learning and the teamwork. Again, I am so blessed to work with such amazing educators!  Can't wait until tomorrow!
0 Comments

Teaching Digital Tools

8/13/2009

0 Comments

 
Today we had a really fast paced morning session exploring all the features in our gmail. We went through how to manage and organize e-mails, how to do the calendar, how to use google docs and how to use the Sites feature within g-mail. I had planned on also showing the teahers how to use RenWeb and Learning A-Z but seriously the stuff in gmail along coould each have their own two hour session. It would have been better to just do e-mail and then have seperate sessions for calendar, documents and sites.  As it ended up, we did at least make sure everyone had an intro to each of the features. I will have to make sure to follow up with short tech sessions at each faculty meeting. I think most people got at least the e-mail and calendar down!  Check out our KPS teacher resource site!
0 Comments

Learning with Jason Ohler via Skype

8/11/2009

2 Comments

 
Today we were fortunate to have a Skype session with Jason Ohler, author of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom! Wow! Was I blown away by how much we learned with him in just over an hour.  Jason expertly led us through a mini-workshop  showing us the depth of amazing resources compiled on his web-site.  Jason is an engaging and personable presenter and easily set us all at ease as we settled into our first Skype delivered professional development experience. The session was lively and interesting. Jason shared with us his thoughts on teaching students to move from just words to collage. His 7 B's were wonderful and inspired all of us to consider the importance of teaching about visually differentiated text. Other gigantic takeaways for me included the following tidbits:1.  Never yield executive producer status with students. You should give them creative liberty but you should always reserve the right to ask a student to clarify, provide better clarity and to do more research if necessary.  You can gently use phrases such as, "Help me better understand this? What was the purpose of that?  Have you considered? This confuses me."2.  Music trumps everything so don't overuse it!  Encourage students to use it judisciously and with very thoughtful intention. Music is so emotionally compelling that it can completely & unintentionally alter, color or amplify a story component.3.  Remember that all digital storytelling projects are literacy projects - follow a process. 
  • Tell a good story
  • Tell a bad story - deconstruct it
  • Have students help build a story
  • Map the story - use graphic organizers
  • Remind students about story form/elements such as problem, solution, transformation, what did the character realize?
  • Use the Circus Tent 
  • Peer Pitch
  • Perform the Story - voice over narration (when they speak it and hear themselves, they will fix it automatically without the need for you to intervene)
  • Write! 
  • What technology will we use to tell this story?  Let the narrative drive the media rather than the other way around. 
After the session, we did a reflection responding to the following questions:
  • What surprised us?
  • What are we excited about?
  • What are we nervous about?
  • What support do we need?
  • What burning questions do we still have?
From the ensuing discussion, I was excited by the depth of understanding demonstrated by the teachers.  Even more amazing was the clear desire to begin integrating these techniques from the get go!  Teachers shared that they will need help learning how to use the equipment and tools but astutely they understood that they will also need collaboration and reflection time. We thought of some very creative ways to make time for this in our busy schedules  including making sure we have at least one 1/2 day per trimester to collaboratively plan on Wednesdays starting at 12:30 when students have electives so we don't really need to hire subs.  We also need to schedule time for the specialty teachers to support the projects. We discussed using some of the professional developments funds to support this.  We also thought it would be great to get a green screen set up!We are so lucky to have some amazing specialty teachers who are fully supportive of this - it will make the projects so rich!  We would really like to thank Jason for sharing his expertise. 
2 Comments

Day 1! We are off!

8/10/2009

1 Comment

 
Today I learned how lucky I am. The teachers that I get to work with are AMAZING and INSPIRATIONAL!  They are enthusiastic and fun! So open to new ideas and to collaborating. Perhaps my favorite activity was the "C" line up. It was a great team builder and we had a great debrief from it                             
 
I was really nervous about today but everything clicked. The projector and internet worked after a few little stressful moments. The room was beautiful. Michelle was so helpful so all that went great. I'm glad we were able to use Common Ground today! Thanks to Chris for allowing us to be here.   
                                                                                    
 I saw and felt many light bulbs going on but seriously I think mine were going off the most. Everytime a teacher shared, I learned something new and felt very inspired to learn more from that person.  My motto this year will just have to be "Listen More!".  


I hope the teachers liked the LOTI - they have one for instructional leaders which I didn't get to finish. Will do tonight. Questions came up about who should see our blog.  Wonder how we will go on this.  I can see advantages of sharing with the wider community but worry about everyone feeling comfortable with that.

1 Comment

The Launch...

7/29/2009

0 Comments

 
Okay! Here we go!  Last year we decided to apply for a School of the Future Grant. We worked hard all year to write a grant that we thought aligned with our mission and core values. The challenge was finding something that could be integrated into what we already with in our curriculum. We have worked hard over the last several years to develop Units of Discovery that are rich and project based at every grade level. Since the Units of Discovery are the center of our program, we wanted an angle that would be accesible to all teachers and students while promoting 21st century literacy. We came up with digital storytelling and our challenge this year will be to integrate a Digital Storytelling component into one unit of discovery per grade level.


So far we have identified the units, given each teacher a copy of Jason Ohler's Digital Storytelling Book, created a teacher resource Wiki, hired a technology specialist to help manage the grant and hired a digital media expert to support the teachers.  Additionally we have arranged for a Skype with Jason Ohler on August 11th and a 2 day Digital Storytelling Workshop with Silvia Tolisano who manages the Langwitches Blog and who has published a wonderful resource called Digital Storytelling for Educators.  


We have loaded Audacity, Photo Story and Movie Maker on all of our HP Mini Laptops. Next we need to figure out what equipment to buy for the students & teachers. We are thinking Canon Power Shots for still images and Flip Mini's for the video. We are also considering IPOD Touches for capturing audio. We also need to get everyone speakers and probably one more multimedia projector. Oh and tripods and cases and external hard drives etc. This is fun!!!
0 Comments