using social media to expand the classroom community
Posts tagged with the journey
by derrickwillard on February 25, 2011 at 1:21 pm · Filed under professional development and tagged: the journey, why
The 2011 the National Association of Independent Schools annual conference is winding down. I am still struck by a question asked by someone at the end of our workshop….”What is a Google Doc?” Wow. Really? Let me give you a little background…
I was privileged to present with an amazing group of innovators that includes: Sarah Hanawald, Cannon School (NC); Peter Gow, Beaver Country Day School (MA); Demetri Orlando, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School (MA); Jason Ramsden, Ravenscroft School (NC); Vinnie Vrotny, The North Shore Country Day School (IL). The presentation was on Creating Connected Teachers: Professional Growth Using Networked Collaborations. Here is the blurb about our session:
“Social media offers powerful tools to help educators break free of the isolation that can hamper growth. How can administrators support teachers who have made the leap to professional networking and encourage others to venture into this world? We will highlight resources available to networked teachers and learn how to encourage entire faculties to connect. Bring a laptop!”
So, we hit ‘em with the fire hose! Twitter, Nings, wikis, bogs, podcasts, Skype, Google Apps….I know almost a third of our audience considered themselves newbies to Web 2.0 in education. When the presentation was over, we broke into discussion groups so folks could ask questions about applying certain tools and about developing actions plans. Then the question, “What is a Google Doc?”
I was shocked that someone could not know the answer to this question in 2011. Then I thought back to last year when I first learned what a Google Doc was and more importantly, what a powerful tool it can be for collaboration. My school has adopted a suite of Google Apps tools and we are using them on a daily basis with students. Then I thought back to two years ago, when I had no idea what a blog, wiki, or Ning was–a time before I was @dwillard on Twitter. What a blur. My journey to this point (presenter at NAIS) has been fast and furious. But, my journey started with a toe or two in the water-a Twitter account and an exam review wiki project. All of this flashed through my mind before answering that question….
So, before I explained what a Google Doc is I explained WHY a student/teacher/administrator would use one. Then, I showed my questioner what a Google Doc looks like (our team built our entire presentation in Google Apps without meeting face-to-face). Then, our discussion turned to where to start “the journey.” I explained to my questioner that about 2 years ago I was asking the same questions and trying to find a place to start. I suggested she join the ISENET Ning and get a Twitter account. I wish her (and any other newbie reading) best of luck on the journey to becoming a connected educator! Once you connect, you will collect, collaborate, create and grow!
by derrickwillard on January 4, 2011 at 8:05 pm · Filed under blog, professional development and tagged: blog, the journey, why
So, the end of this month will be my one-year anniversary of joining the blogosphere…
I was nervous at first, putting myself out there in the most public of forums. Regardless, I set out to do several things:
1. Convince skeptical teachers of the value of social media for teachers and students.
2. Build an electronic portfolio of social media projects that I can show other educators.
3. Journal about my professional development journey.
I don’t have any quantitative measure of my success at goal #1 (since I don’t really think I have a following to speak of), but I have had a few strangers weigh in with comments from time to time. I didn’t set out to build a “brand,” and I probably don’t blog enough to maintain one if I did. At least I will get a chance be a part of a presentation to administrators at the NAIS Conference (scroll to item #W8) this year about the value of social media in education.
Now, I do feel much better about goals #2 and #3. By forcing myself to post my social media experiments online, I was putting myself in the position of one of my students completing a formal lab report–I had to explain my methods, to analyze my data, and to reach conclusions. Posting my experiments on the internet is in the best spirit of science (peer review). As for using my web-log as a journal, I have found that even if no one is listening to me that blogging forces me to listen to myself. Good stuff.
So, if you are reading this and are not blogging then I want to encourage you to take it on as a resolution for this new year…it’s not too late.
Finally, here are my favorite reflections/lessons from 2010:
Why Try? (my first post)
Student feedback (about my first experiment with a wiki almost 2 years ago)
Processing and PLNs (about why I value my Personal Learning Network)
Presentation on wikis and girls (about the potential for wikis to give “quiet girls” a voice)
Class Blogs: Looking Back at my “Blended Classroom” (reflections on a year of class blogs)
If you are new to all this and see anything you want to try, let me know. I’m glad to help-someone did it for me not long ago…
by derrickwillard on November 12, 2010 at 11:22 am · Filed under guest blogger, professional development and tagged: the journey, Web 2.0, why
Matt Scully is our talented Director of Instructional Technology here at Providence Day School. He is the reason I’m blogging today-I couldn’t have done all I have done without his support and encouragement. This is a cross post from his blog: Engaging the Learner.
Want to know why I love YouTube or more accurately streaming video? It is because of moments like last friday when I was struggling to decide what to do with my freshman English class. At the very moment when I was about to sign off on the easier lesson plan – the one I could do without any heaving lifting… you know the one where I do the work and the kids just watch, I heard Sir Ken Robinson in my head. I don’t mean I asked myself what would SKR do, but I literally heard his voice in my head. It was a snippet from his TEDtalk reminding me about creativity and student engagement. It was enough the get me thinking. In less than 40 minutes I had revised the outline for the entire unit and during the revision I consulted with Rives, Ian Jukes, and Sugata Mitra. These are the voices in my head and having heard the lilt of their voices, the strain of their excitement, and the depth of their passion has embedded them in what I do, how I do it, and why I do it.
Your mission if you choose to accept it is to collect the voices in your head. Search them out online, capture them with a Flip video camera, and digitize them from old cassette tapes. Check out my resources page for the beginnings of my collection.
by derrickwillard on August 12, 2010 at 2:49 pm · Filed under PLN, social media and tagged: social media, the journey
Time for school to start up again! I was just thinking about my journey into using social media to enhance my “classroom learning experience” and especially the sherpas in my personal learning network (PLN)…the folks I’ve met through Powerful Learning Practice or at conferences. I’ve met some amazing folks and I learn something new from them daily by reading their blogs or tweets. I’ve noticed that many times I stumble onto discussions about revolutionizing education via social media. These are great discussions and serve to challenge folks to rethink our profession. However, sometimes I find such discussions frustrating. Sometimes I feel that if we spend too much time in the stratosphere (thinner air up where the jets fly cross-country), then we lose sight of what is going on in the troposphere (the thicker part of the atmosphere where we live and breathe). As a classroom teacher, my current focus is on how to apply these social media tools with my students. So, if you do follow my blog this coming year, know that I’m going to try to keep my focus in the lower reaches of the educational atmosphere. Consider this space a place where you can find and discuss practical classroom applications. If you click on any of the tags or categories to the right, you should find projects I’ve already tried…
Anyone else share this sense of frustration?
by derrickwillard on June 14, 2010 at 8:23 am · Filed under blog, social media and tagged: the journey
Well, it is June, and I’m feeling the need for a walkabout…
Why take a hiatus from blogging? Well, I feel the pull to get outside more, to disconnect from this computer web and find a spider web. I’m a science teacher and outdoorsman, and I feel a need to exercise more than my eyes and fingers in front of this little glowing screen. Some bloggers I respect see Life 1.0 and Web 2.0 as seemless, but I have a hard time with that. Part of the beauty of the school year is the time to walk away and recharge. While a vacation does not help build a blog following, I gotta get away.
So, I’m leaving this blog post up for the summer as a signpost in hopes you’ll come back in August. Why come back? Well, I started this blog in January of this year as reflection tool and a “how-to” for teachers just beginning the journey into using social media in the classroom. My goal was to share, not to showboat. I say that because I know I have colleagues that might glance at a teacher’s blog and say, “that’s just showing-off!” Not so! The beauty of these relatively new software tools is that they allow us to connect, share, and collaborate. I learned how to do many of these social media projects (linked below) because another teacher shared “how-to” on his/her blog!
So, if you are a teacher that is just beginning the journey and finding my blog for the first time, I invite you to take a moment and explore some of the topics I’ve blogged about this year. I’ve really tried to stick to lessons learned from practical projects, not theoretical musings about the future of education. Here are some topics you might explore:
Personal Learning Networks
Using a Wiki for Exam Review
Guest Speakers via Skype
Using a Class Blog to Create a Blended Classroom
How Social Media Tools May Draw in Quiet Girls
If you have any questions about any of these projects, feel free to leave me a comment below. Or, if you have learned anything this year you want to share, leave me a comment below. Hope to see you back the first week of August. I usually get a blog post off each Monday.
Good luck on your journey!
*Wanna learn more about how to use social media for teaching and learning? Check out the Powerful Learning Practice web site today! New cohorts forming for the coming year! We are looking for partners in North Carolina. Email matt.scully@providenceday.org if interested.
by derrickwillard on April 9, 2010 at 8:12 am · Filed under blog, guest blogger, social media and tagged: social media, students, the journey
Ryan is a young, talented teacher colleague of mine at Providence Day School. Please give him some feedback on his first venture into the blogosphere…
Simone Weil, a 20th century philosopher, once wrote, “Two prisoners in contingent cells communicate by blows struck on the wall. The wall separates them, but it also permits them to communicate.” I’ve been thinking about this scenario in the context of classroom discourse (i.e. classroom reading, writing, talking). What am I doing as a teacher that enables students to have access to skills and opportunities to strike blows against the walls of their learning? How can I get them to notice these intellectual boundaries in the first place?
Early in my career, I taught students for whom these questions were matters of survival. Disenfranchised, socioeconomically disadvantaged students need to learn and acquire a discourse outside of the dominant discourse, which in turn would allow them to critique and counteract that domination. Currently, my students are already fluent in the dominant discourse. They need the critical discourse as much as any other student, but the impetus for them to push up against the walls they encounter is different. The same questions remain about what I can do as an educator to offer students critical discourse in a way that encourages without indoctrinating—empowers without overpowering.
The goal of empowerment through critical discourse tends to be a common enough objective for teachers. Like everything else, this goal and its realization seems to be dramatically affected by the way we as educators have begun to embrace technological advances in the name of pedagogical progress. Tools of progress for professional educators should be critiqued with the same kind of critical discourse we wish to encourage in our students. Having made my way to a technology conference or two (although now it seems quite hip to call them conferences on “curricular innovation”), I would challenge all of us to think a little harder about the ways technology as curricular innovation creates new cells and new walls. I think Weil’s prison metaphor remains apt in this case. Who are we excluding when we bring technology to bear on our teaching just for the sake of having technology in our curriculum? While technology allows us to tap out new messages in different ways to our students, we’re also constructing new kinds of walls and cells that imprison in novel ways.
To use an outdated example, I was working at Duke University when a grant was used to provide all first year students with iPods. Lectures became available as mp3s, music wasn’t just for music class, foreign language instruction could take place anywhere—the possibilities were endless. Yet, I couldn’t help noticing how I could always identify the first year students because they were the students on the bus or on the quad or in the library locked away behind headphones disconnected from students around them. I am all for curricular innovation, even in the form of technology. However, I think we need to recognize how all of our innovation locks and unlocks in ways that we may not even understand unless we stop to critically discourse about these ever changing prison walls. Our only true failure would be if we stopped discoursing or the walls changed so fast we forgot they were there in the first place.
So my friends…keep tapping on those walls.
by derrickwillard on March 28, 2010 at 8:20 pm · Filed under failure, professional development, social media and tagged: epic fail, social media, teachers, the journey
Recently I was at the NCAIS Innovate Conference at Cary Academy, and I heard a number of presenters speak about the value of an “epic fail” when experimenting with social media in their classrooms. Sounds reasonable. I work at a school where one of the core values is “We believe that students should be encouraged to try new endeavors and take risks without fear of failure.” Great in theory, but do teachers really do this in practice? Honestly? I want my lessons and activities to work.
What about you? Help me write this blog post by explaining your BEST “epic fail” using social media…what did you learn that others might benefit from knowing?
by derrickwillard on March 19, 2010 at 7:57 am · Filed under iPhone, social media and tagged: iPhone, Life 1.0, the journey
This week was spring break from my school. I told myself I would unplug, which was very hard to do after the all the excitement and stimulation from attending the NCAIS Innovate Conference. I dropped of Twitter (professional tool) for the week, but took my iPhone to NYC on my family vacation and could not keep from posting regular updates on Facebook (personal tool). Having the iPhone was so handy! I used apps (like yelp) for searching/reviewing/locating restaurants and entertainment. I found an app for the NYC subway system and got around without ever picking up a paper map.
Understand that my iPhone is my FIRST cell phone. I got it last fall, about a year after starting this journey into social media (at age 41). It seemed a logical next step with all that I was doing online. Unfortunately, my iPhone fell out of my pocket in a taxi during our last night in NYC. By the time I noticed, the cab was gone…
Yes, I filed a lost and found report with the Taxi & Limo Commission. Yes, I have mobile me service, so I’ve posted a lost and found message and hope to track its use if someone recharges the spent battery. Yes, I was really bummed.
But, losing my iPhone and constant access to the Web forced me to really unplug. So, what did I do then? I was more attentive to my family. I watched other people. I swear I could hear more detail of my surroundings. I thought about my NYC experience. I read a short book, Food Rules, by Michael Pollan (awesome). I noticed all the screens built into Times Square, like a website with pop-up ads. I noticed all the hundreds of people immersed in their phone screens while walking. I even saw a couple in the airport sitting across from each other at a table-both captivated by their phones and not even speaking for quite some time.
I was immersed in Life 1.0 having lost Web 2.0.
Since staring this journey last fall, I have felt this constant pull between Life 1.0 and Web 2.0. As we seek to shift educational experiences into this virtual world, we must be aware of the trade offs. Social media and access devices have great potential to encourage participation and collaboration in and out of the classroom. However, as access to Web 2.0 becomes ubiquitous, we stand to lose being present in the moment and valuable reflection time if we don’t unplug…
by derrickwillard on March 12, 2010 at 10:19 pm · Filed under PLN, professional development and tagged: conference, PLN, the journey, why
So, I’m back home after two very stimulating days at the NCAIS Innovate Conference at Cary Academy. Man, my mind is still on fire and I cannot sleep. I’m sitting here trying to let the flames die down a bit, so I can sleep by the coals. I’ve heard so many teachers who attend conferences like these struggle to process and reflect, but the only solution is time.
I think one thing I know for sure is that I met some neat folks–progressive educators who push themselves to innovate in order to better engage their students. For example I met arvind s. grover, the Director of Educational Technology at The Hewitt School in New York City. arvind (yes, he spells his name in lower case), was a part of the keynote panel and helps host a nifty online talk show called EdTechTalk 21st Century Learning. I also met Meredith Stewart, a 6th Gr LA & History Teacher at Cary Academy (and another panel member). Check out her insights on teaching and technology at her blog. I could go on and on. The point is, I found some really neat folks to add to my Personal Learning Network (PLN).
Why do I have a PLN? Why should you? A personal learning network allows a teacher to efficiently gather knowledge to improve his or her craft. I think Daniel Tobin explains it best:
How can your learning network help you?
By helping you to sift through all the data to identify the information that will be most useful to you.
By helping you to identify learning resources and opportunities.
By coaching you and answering your questions as you try to apply your learning to your work.
By sharing their wisdom with you through dialogue.
Building a personal learning network is requires that you not only seek to learn from others, but also that you also help others in the network learn. Even when you are a novice in a field of learning, you can still make contributions. Did you read an article that might be of interest to others? Then distribute it to other in your network with a short note that you thought they might find it interesting. Did you hear of a conference on the subject? Let others know about the program and speakers and, if you attend, circulate your notes and papers you collect to other network members.
How do you build a solid PLN? Well, here is a great blog post on 8 Steps of PLN Development by Liz B. Davis. Me, I started by subscribing to blogs and Twitter feeds of folks I learned are opinion leaders in the field. So, if you haven’t started building your PLN yet, now is the time!
by derrickwillard on January 31, 2010 at 11:48 am · Filed under social media and tagged: the journey, why
Why would any teacher (especially a successful, experienced teacher) investigate using social media tools like Nings, blogs, or wikis as a part of their craft?
Before I answer that, let me give you a little background on myself. I’ve been teaching fourteen years now (2009-2010 school year), after a four-year stint as a U.S. Army officer. I was raised by two career public-school teachers, and taught for one year in a public school system here in North Carolina. Since then, I have been teaching an independent school, Providence Day School, in Charlotte, NC. While I have a B.S. in Biology, I am currently teaching Advanced Placement Environmental Science to seniors. I LOVE the subject and the kids. Last year, I was fortunate enough to participate in an amazing professional development experience known as Powerful Learning Practice (PLP). During that year, I was exposed to many ways to incorporate social media/Web 2.0 tools into my pedagogy. The best part of the experience was being supported by a wonderful group of educators from all over the globe who encouraged me to experiment with these tools in order to improve the educational experience for my students.
So, to return to the blog topic for today…why try? Two reasons:
1. This journey is regenerative for teachers.
2. This journey is generative for students.
Tomorrow’s post, why this journey is REgenerative for me as a teacher…ya’ll come back now, ya hear?
