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Advancing Student Achievement Through Technology

Summer 2011 | Vol. 33 | No. 2

Change that Sticks: Using Stories Effectively

Learning Journeys: An Approach to Change

Changing the Face of Assessment with Digital Portfolios

Brokers of Expertise: Building a Model for Connected Teaching

Processes of Change

On

ContentsS u m m e r 2 0 1 1

Bits and Bytes:

Award Winners ........................................................................................... 14

Legislative Advocacy: Superintendent Tom Torlakson Advocates for 21st Century Education Reform Enabled by Technology ................................ 15John Cradler

Features:

Change That Sticks—Using Stories Effectively............................................... 6Karen Dietz, Ph.D.

Learning Journeys: An Approach to Change .................................................. 8Jane Krauss

Changing the Face of Assessment with Digital Portfolios ................................ 10Melinda Kolk

Brokers of Expertise: Building a Model for Connected Teaching ...................... 11Edward Avelar

Departments:

Tips & Tricks: PhotoShop Elements: Getting Help With the Magic ................. 18Linda Oaks

The CUE Review: CLRN Resources Encourage Concept Development and Interactivity ......................................................................................... 20Kelley Day

Professional Development: Changing Teaching and Learning from Teacher-Centered to Student-Centered ......................................................... 21Barbara Bray

Technology Coordinator: One thing is Constant for the Technology Leader…Change! ...................................................................... 25Tim Landeck

Columns:

Upfront: Technology as Change .................................................................... 4Mike Lawrence

The Bleeding Edge: Technology and the Child-Centered School ...................... 5David D. Thornburg, Ph.D.

OnCTAP: New Tools Inform Good Practice .................................................. 19Raymond A. Chavez, Ed.D.

On IT with CETPA: The Myth of the “Digital Native”: Why Generational Stereotyping Won’t Improve Student Learning ................... 24Fred Mindlin

Cue Information & Forms:

Rock Star Summer Camp ............................................................................ 9 Online Teaching Conference ........................................................................ 9 CUE Membership Application ..................................................................... 16Fall CUE Conference .................................................................................. 17Calendar .................................................................................................... 26CUEtoYOU: Google Workshops for Educators............................................... 28

AdvertisingPaid advertising accepted in accordance with editorial policy. For ad deadlines or additional information, please contact CUE Inc., 877 Ygnacio Valley Road, Suite 104, Walnut Creek, CA 94596, 925.478.3460 <www.cue.org/advertising/oncue/>

OnCUE journal (ISSN 0739-9553) is published and bulk-mailed four times during the academic year by Computer-Using Educators, Inc., and is one of the benefits of membership. Membership for CUE is $40/year, U.S. regular rate, $30/year, U.S. student rate, and $20/year retired rate. Corporate memberships are available.

Entire contents Copyright 2011 by CUE, Inc., unless other-wise indicated. All rights reserved. To reprint articles that are copyrighted by the author, you must contact the author for permission. All other items may be reprinted for educational use, but not for sale, with the provision that proper credit is given to OnCUE and to the author, if any.

2010-2011 Cue Board of Directors

mike Lawrence, executive Director [email protected] Educators, Inc.877 Ygnacio Valley Road, Suite 104 Walnut Creek, CA 94596Phone 925.478.3460 | Fax 925.934.6799 | [email protected]

editor Design Sara Armstrong, Ph.D. Kesler [email protected] [email protected]

Contributing Writers Barbara Bray, Ray Chavez, John Cradler, Kelley Day, Tim Landeck, Micheline LeBlanc, Linda Oaks, David Thornburg

Cue promotes and supports the effective use of technology in the educational community.

image to come

Micheline LeBlanc, [email protected]

Robert EM CravenVice President/[email protected]

Joyce Miller, [email protected]

Jerome Burg, Member at [email protected]

Sharon SuttonMember at [email protected]

Kyle Brumbaugh, [email protected]

Kurt Larsen, [email protected]

Cameron [email protected]

Diana Paradise, [email protected]

Summer 2011 OnCUE | www.CUE.org Summer 2011 OnCUE | www.CUE.org

TUpFrOnT

Changing the educational system, changing the roles of teacher and student, changing how we measure achievement—all of these are in play as meaning-ful and effective technologies available today become ubiquitous. Technology IS change.

As speculative fiction author William Gibson said, “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.” Find those pockets of innovation and you’ll find teachers, staff, and administrators who are embracing change, analyzing what works and what doesn’t, and moving their students’ learning forward.

The mission of CUE focuses on the use of technology to advance student achievement. Given the rapidity of technological innovation and its ramifications in society, in many ways this mission is about change more than anything else.

As a teacher, I was often confronted by fear and frustra-tion from my colleagues when I was presenting a new technique, tool, or innovation to them. I would work hard to explain myself better, demonstrate more ef-fectively, and listen carefully to their concerns before responding. What I came to discover was that they were not actually reacting negatively to the technology I was proposing, it was the change to the established norms these innovations represented.

I realized that I had become as much a “change thera-pist” as a professional developer, with training often morphing into discussions about the purpose of home-work, the merits of group vs. individual activities, and classroom management. The technology I was proposing challenged traditional teaching and learning in ways of which even I wasn’t yet fully aware. I found myself coaching my colleagues more in how to change their teaching habits than how to learn the technology.

This is not to say that all habits are “bad” or that all innovations are good. I’ve seen my fair share of “$2,000 paper weights” in which technology was used to “auto-mate” rather than “informate,” to borrow Alan No-vember’s paradigm. And I’ve been in a technology-rich classroom where the best teaching method was still a straightforward Socratic discussion. Good teaching is good teaching. The key is to be aware of the instruction-al choices you may have at any given moment, whether they have a power button or not.

The lessons I learned during those years are now being played out on much larger stages by educators worldwide. As described within this issue, we’re seeing the student-led revolution in learning brought by the powerful new devices students carry in their pockets onto campus, the quantum remixing of education through the potential personalization of online, hybrid, and digital content, and we’re seeing assessment getting a makeover as competency and project-based learning are confronting the status quo.

By mike LawrenceCue executive Director

[email protected]

FFor all our talk about teachers as learning coaches, schools are set up with the teachers (literally) front and center in most cases. The exceptions to this are so rare they are gener-ally the topic of newspaper articles that are read and then filed away as being “too far in advance of where we are” in many cases.

But against this backdrop of earnest debate, the students themselves have been quietly making their own revolution—a revolution that rocks the model of school to its core. This revolution was predicted and even championed by a few bold thinkers and practitioners in the field. True pioneers like Professor Elliot Soloway at the University of Michigan, kindred spirits at the old Palm corporation like Martha Rolley (now at Apple), and a few others including Norma Thornburg who said: “Watch out—children will be bring-ing their own technology to school in their pockets, purses and backpacks—and you’d better start thinking about the ramifications of this today before it happens.” When this message was broadcast over a decade ago, most people paid no attention whatsoever.

In the very early days, the Apple Newton was the nucleus of a new model of computing—the idea that a powerful device would not only fit in a (albeit large) pocket, but that it would be able to do useful things. But as the Newton waned, interest in this form of computing largely waned with it. When the Palm Pilot was released, the flurry of activity started again, but failed to reach critical mass. I and others made the point that when the cost of technol-ogy dropped to the price of a pair of tennis shoes, it would become ubiquitous. People laughed, and schools remained the same.

For decades we have argued about the proper role of educational technology—specifically, personal computers and their offspring—as devices inside our schools. This argument has raged for so long that some who were students when it started are now teachers facing the same questions that their teachers were asked to grapple with a genera-tion ago.

While some schools have managed to infuse technology into their buildings, much of this investment has been devoted to providing support to teachers, not to meeting the needs or desires of the learners themselves. For over a decade we have been treated to a constant drone of studies linking student technology use to test scores, presentations on how teachers can move from overhead projectors to interactive whiteboards, and conference sessions devoted to helping teachers see how PowerPoint can dress up classroom presentations—and incorporate student feedback through the use of Pavlovian clickers. Even so-called “one to one” schools have (in many cases) retained the core model of education that has been in place for generations.

Our students, ever resilient, have managed to sit through these “changes” without pointing out that, in fact, precious little has changed in most classrooms. Like passengers preparing to board a flight on most airlines, they are largely obedient cattle who stay in their rows until called and try not to bellow in frustration.

Technology as Change

4

Technology and the Child-Centered School

5

By David D. Thornburg, [email protected]

ThE BlEEding EdgE

... students themselves have been quietly making their own revolution—a revolution that rocks the model of

school to its core.

Continued on pg 12

Horsepower to Rocket PowerFifty years of history and 31,999,999 horsepower mark the difference in these two pictures taken at the front of Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The top image shows a 1915 horse and buggy passing in the front of the old Michoud Plantation. In the bottom image, a 32 million horsepower Saturn I booster passes over the same road. The brick chimneys, the remnants of the Antoine Michoud Plantation built in the mid-1800s, still remain as in 1915.

Michoud Assembly Facility built the stages of Saturn I, Saturn IB and Saturn V vehicles under the management of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/facility/images/ michoud-GPN-2000-000040.jpg

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Summer 2011 OnCUE www.CUE.org

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Summer 2011 OnCUE | www.CUE.org

This is what makes change stick. But which stories do you tell/share? Most people think of only focusing on the desire for change and launching the project. But every phase of the change cycle requires a different story, and every phase requires that stories be shared along the way. Whether you are teaching children or leading adults, we all need to hear the following stories in order to accept the change, get involved, and celebrate the results:

• Focusing the Desire for Change—telling and sharing stories about the current situation and the need for change.

• Creating a Shared Vision—telling and sharing stories about the vision for the future.

• Establishing Commitment—telling and sharing sto-ries about when change worked and what was learned.

• Mobilizing Commitment—telling and sharing sto-ries about ways the change can happen.

• Taking and Leveraging Action—once the project has started, telling and sharing stories about the plans, actions, and collaborations taking place.

• Sustaining Change—telling and sharing stories about barriers that are being overcome; light in the darkest hours.

• Monitoring Progress—telling and sharing stories about initial successes, and what was made possible.

• Adapting As We Go—telling and sharing stories about what we are learning, about adapting and meeting challenges, and going forward.

• Celebration—telling and sharing stories about suc-cesses, what was learned, what was made possible, and appreciations for the individuals and teams.

Hopefully this list and the three secrets of storytelling have taken some of the mystery out of how to use stories effectively and increase your success rates when confront-ed with change. As Robert C. Gallagher, Lead Director of Associated Banc-Corp said, “Change is inevitable—except from a vending machine.” Link stories to your change efforts and metrics. Become compelling storytellers and story listeners. Promote story sharing. Roll them all to-gether and your change efforts won’t stagnate and become like a stuck vending machine.

Karen Dietz, Ph.D., is a communication consultant, coach, and the former Executive Director of the National Storytell-ing Network, in addition to being a storyteller and artist. Karen has gained over 25 years of business experience and consulting. She trains emerging and seasoned executives in becoming influential leaders, and works in marketing to help for-profit and non-profit organizations stand out from the crowd. Karen is the founder of Polaris Associates Consulting, Inc. at <www.polaris-associates.com>.

Over and over again, it has been demonstrated that stories:• Make information more memorable and believable.• Increase the accurate recall of key points.• Quickly and successfully convey the meaning of complex concepts.• Captivate people’s hearts and minds.• Foster creativity and enhance problem solving.• Communicate information faster. • Enhance individual and group learning.• Strengthen connections and relationships.• Create an experience in which the listeners can see themselves.

So when you are launching a change project, and you want it to stick, tell sto-ries. It’s the invisible glue that keeps it all together and moving along.

The Three Secrets of StorytellingBut I really dislike the word storytelling. Why? Because it conjures up an image of someone standing before others and telling them a story. Yet here’s a secret to the power of stories that few will tell you about—all effective story-telling is based in effective listening. In fact, listening is the first fundamental for using stories effectively. I always coach my clients to model compelling storytelling, then realize that in a change initiative, 80% of their time will be about story listening to other’s stories, and only 20% of their time will be in actually telling theirs.

In other words, the best use of stories is getting others to share theirs. As pop culture reminds is so often these days, “It’s not about you!” It’s about them.

Tell your stories effectively, and promote others sharing theirs. That’s what Gaylord Hospital in New York did in 2005 to create a complete financial turn-around in one year. In 2003, the hospital was hemorrhaging almost $5 million a year. To stop the bleeding, they combined two powerful tools—metrics and storytelling. That’s the third secret. Once the metrics were in place, they told stories that helped staff think about how to meet those measurements. Then they captured stories from staff about the successes they were having in meeting those numbers. Innovative solutions emerged while momentum and energy kept building. Dorothy Brennan, a Gaylord hospital board member at the time, says in the book Wake Me Up When The Data Is Over: How Organiza-tions Use Stories to Generate Results (2006), “Storytelling led to financial results” (page 89). Imagine a child’s story linked to classroom metrics and how power-ful that would be. Imagine individual student and teacher stories being linked to school/district metrics and how powerful that would be.

aAs President John F. Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life.” And we know that every classroom and educational organization faces change—whether it’s changing class sizes, dealing with budget decreases, using new teaching methods, or rushing to implement new standards. It’s also true that change in most organizations of all types is often somewhat of a crapshoot. Having said that, when you are going through either a small or a large change in your classroom, school, or district, what are the essential ingredients that will tilt the odds in your favor and help bring about the desired result?

One essential ingredient that is often unrecognized and often left out is storytelling. For several years I worked with senior executives in large organizations, small companies, non-profits, and with community activists to rally people around a vision, inspire funding, or simply gain loyal fans. The larger companies would spend months and big bucks for me and my partner to conduct the assessments, create the reports and recommendations, help them plan for change, and help them implement the plan. When it was time for the big kick-off of the project with the staff, I repeatedly saw the same thing happen: If the leader and his/her team could tell a compelling story about what change needed to happen and why, the chance of the initiative succeeding was great. If they could NOT tell a compelling story about it, I could guarantee it would fail. Why waste all that money on research, recommendations, plans, and action steps when it could all go down the drain in just a few moments? So I shifted my business to coaching senior executives and organizations in the power of storytelling. The exact same lesson applies to classrooms, schools, and education organizations.

Why Stories and Storytelling? It’s simple. Stories are universal. They partly define what it is to be human. Our brains are wired for stories. We think in stories. We talk in stories. We live and die for our stories. It’s the way we make sense of our world.

Yet in the professional sphere, we love to talk numbers: test scores, achievement statements, budgets, advancement percentages. Consider this scenario: The head of a school district brought all of his teachers and staff together for an annual meeting. He and his assistant had toiled for days on prepar-ing his material. His PowerPoint® presentation was magnificent: It contained beautiful graphics, the district’s educational vision statement was in big bold letters; and charts, projections, and project lists were in plentiful supply. When it was all said and done, a teacher wandered home and men-tioned the meeting to his wife.

Wife: “Who spoke?”Employee: “The head guy.”Wife “What was his presentation about?” Employee: “Well, he didn’t say.”

We have been trained to ask for information as data. But as someone once said, “What tribal chief do you know who uses charts, graphs, and bullet points to tell the people where they need to head and what they need to be doing?” Numbers, ROI percentages, fancy charts, and data don’t capture the hearts and minds of students or adults. What tribal leaders are doing, of course, is telling stories. Stories are our single most powerful form of communication. This has been true all over the world for thousands of years and is still just as true today in our organizations, communities, and families.

Change That Sticks— Using Stories Effectively

By Karen Dietz, [email protected]

We have been trained to ask for

information as data. But as someone once said, “What

tribal chief do you know who uses

charts, graphs, and bullet points to tell

the people where they need to head

and what they need to be doing?”

Source Cited:Silverman, Lori L. (2006).

Wake Me Up When The Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Generate Results. San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass.

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BBefore taking a trip each of us considers what we want to experience. If only subconsciously, we also filter our choices based on the kinds of trav-elers we are. What kind are you? Do you prefer the certainty of a detailed itinerary and guided tour? Or, are you an experienced through-the-back-door wanderer? Let’s think about profes-sional learning as a journey and see how getting oriented can affect the success of anyone’s “trip.”

I do quite a bit of professional development around project-based learning (PBL) and tech-nology. Whether learning groups are focused on PBL, technology integration, or any other change effort, most are comprised of folks with a range of abilities, from novice to expert. Over the past few years I’ve found it helpful to start workshops by asking participants what kind of traveler they are in relation to the learning journey ahead. My colleague and coauthor, Suzie Boss, came up with the traveler metaphor and a range of descriptors.

Think about a topic of your current professional learning. What kind of traveler are you?

Armchair tourist: Curious from afar, need to know more Tenderfoot: Setting out on that first jour-ney, ready to try new things Explorer: Used to stepping out, ready for new frontiersScout: A seasoned traveler who can show others the way

These identifiers, in contrast to “novice” or “ex-pert” imply movement, or growth. A tenderfoot traveling even a short distance may be taking a more profound journey than a seasoned explorer or scout.

Once I ask folks to self-identify and we establish the composition of the group, I can begin to differentiate instruction for the learning ahead. Participants benefit from knowing the composi-tion of the group, too. It’s comforting for any learner to know he or she is one of an acknowl-edged group whose needs will be addressed.

During a workshop, just as you do in your classroom every day, I form small groups, assign peer teachers, and customize activities based on individual needs or strengths of the group.

At the end of our time together we revisit the “traveler” types and I recommend differentiated steps to take beyond the workshop. In the box below, you’ll find examples.

Armchair Tourist Keep reading and observing• Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age, authors Jane Krauss, Suzie Boss• PBL Handbook, Buck Institute for Education • Edutopia Project-based Learning site: <www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning>• Understanding by Design, authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

TenderfootJoin a well-designed project • Cornell Labs Citizen Science <www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci>• Pennies for Peace, an international service-learning project <www.penniesforpeace.org>• iEARN global network of projects <www.iearn.org>• The MY HERO Project <www.myhero.com>ExplorerExpand beyond your classroom; find partners• Classroom 2.0 <www.classroom20.com>• Edutopia PBL Group <www.edutopia.org/groups/project-based-learning>• ePals <www.epals.com>• Global Education Collaborative <globaleducation.ning.com> • Global SchoolNet <www.globalschoolnet.org>Scout Build buzz and go to scale• Buzz-builders: Twitter, blogs, Facebook• Alert the media!• Invite others to join your projects • Share your wisdom through webinars, conferences, formal or ad hoc PLCs

You and your colleagues might not be studying PBL, but try the “traveler” metaphor on for size with any learning initiative of which you are a part. How might you use it to look for differentiated learning opportunities for any change effort?

By Jane [email protected]

learning Journeys: an approach to Change

Whether learning groups are focused on PBL, technology integration, or any

other change effort, most are comprised of folks with a range

of abilities, from novice to expert.

Online Teaching Conference 2011Be an Open Learning Hero

http://otc11.org/

Jane Krauss is a teacher, author, and consultant who provides

professional development around the topic of project-based learn-

ing supported by technology. Jane is coauthor of the ISTE best seller,

Reinventing Project-Based Learn-ing: Your Field Guide to Real

World Projects in the Digital Age. She is writing a second book about inquiry strategies informed by the

methods of adults for whom inquiry is central to their work.

Online Teaching

cOnference

2011June 22, 23, & 24Orange Coast College

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• June 22 pre-conference workshops• June 23 Keynote + concurrent sessions• June 24 General + concurrent sessions

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Be an Open Learning Herohttp://otc11.org/

dOn’T delay - regisTer TOdayhttp://otc11.org/

Daily Sessions from 9:30am to 4pm

Small classes, limited attendance, 10:1 participant to leader ratiosHands on classes - not lectures

Three daily themes: Google Tips and Tricks

Digital Media

Innovative Pedagogy

minarets HS Central Califronia: August 2, 3, 4

3 Days for $199 Includes Starbucks, continental breakfast, lunch, and ice cream

Inexpensive local accommodations

iPad Option ($675 for a 3-hour hands-on workshop including a 16 GB Wifi iPad 2 to keep!)

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T WWhile many school reform projects are being performed successfully on an individual school or district basis, it is imperative in a state as large and complex as California that teachers share sound educational solutions to com-mon issues. The fact that some low-achieving schools succeed while others with similar challenges continue to struggle is persuasive evidence of the need to disseminate successful practices more broadly. Amid the current cycle of reduced funding and increased scrutiny, schools and districts across the state cannot afford to rely on pockets of excellence to sustain academic achievement. Part of the solution to these challenges will be a greater focus on con-nective technology for teachers.

One way to utilize technology more effectively is to bring educators together online and provide them with new opportunities to communicate and share valuable institutional knowledge that will assist them in preparing students for a rapidly changing world. Recognizing this urgent need to connect educators with one another, the California Department of Education (CDE) launched Brokers of Expertise (BoE)—a website developed to embrace technology and provide meaningful resources to schools and districts as they strive to boost student achievement.

In an effort to leverage technology and the wealth of educational expertise around the state, BoE was proudly unveiled in Septem-ber 2010 by the CDE. Spearheaded by Butte County Office of Education, Imperial County Office of Education, and the California K-12 High Speed Network, BoE was designed to help eliminate the longstanding achievement gap in California’s K-12 education system by connecting teachers to an online professional network. “Brokers of Expertise creates a com-munity of newly credentialed and experienced teachers who are empowered to further their own professional development and growth,” (CDE Press Release). Registration and access to the site is simple, free, and open to all educa-tors across California at <www.myboe.org>.

Online communities of practice like BoE are being positioned to transform how teachers share ideas and locate resources, and will become important assets as schools continue to reform (Owston, Zhang, 2009). The U.S. Department of Education contends in its 2010 National Education Technology Plan (NETP 2010), that professional development for teachers has been ineffectively provided through “short, frag-mented, and episodic workshops that offer little opportunity to integrate learning into practice.” This disjointed approach has not only proven insufficient, but also disadvantageous in an era of heightened accountability where policymak-ers ultimately hold teachers and administrators responsible for student success. In the book Learning by Doing (2006), the authors argue that “educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research achieve better results for the students they serve,” and that “professional learn-ing communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job embedded learning for educa-tors.” BoE will allow educators to fine tune their instructional skills by linking them to a system where good content and support is easily acces-sible. Moreover, BoE will help spread effective strategies that have long been constrained by isolated professional networks. Best practices on topics such as Response to Intervention (RTI) and Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), can be shared widely and easily.

BoE was structured to make it easier for teachers to collaborate and replicate innovation in their own classrooms. This includes allowing them to upload and share user created content, such as WebQuests and videos. The site also encour-ages educators to connect with each other via online Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) through the “Groups” feature on the website. The ability to flexibly cluster with other educators across different organizational settings, regardless of location, will help spur innovation and spark creativity by bringing stakeholders together to share and gather resources, and focus

Brokers of Expertise: Building a Model for

Connected Teaching

By edward [email protected]

By melinda [email protected]

Changing the Face of assessment With digital portfolios

The needs of life and learning in the 21st Century are changing rapidly. Technology project work can help us meet these demands by providing students with an opportunity to think critically, build creativity, write for a real audience, and manage time and effort.

While technology project work helps students acquire these important skills, the end product of project work only allows us to evaluate student content knowledge and communication skill. It doesn’t necessarily indicate how effectively students use and further develop problem solving, think-ing, and management skills during the process.

Student-created digital portfolios can help us evaluate students’ growth with these skills. A portfolio showcases both student achievement and student learning over time. Rather than a basic collection of work students completed in the classroom, an effective digital portfolio is a conscious selection of work that demonstrates progress, growth, and student reflections on the learning that occurs during the project-building process.

The process of developing digital portfolios transfers responsibility for assessment and the demon-stration of learning to our students. This helps to further engage students in the learning process and makes them active participants in their education.

Technology makes creation and distribution easyWhile collecting and reflecting can be done without “going digital,” technology makes this pro-cess easier than ever before. Unlike boxes of paper reports and collections of audio tapes, a digital portfolio is easy to store, access, update, and distribute. It is a wonderfully rich way to share student ability with college recruiters, progress with teachers and administrators, and success with parents and community members.

Authoring applications like Share (<tech4learning.com/share>) include tools that make it easy for students to include documents they have created, support those documents with photos, videos, and audio tracks of their performances, and reflect upon the process using text and recorded narration. Digital portfolios allow students to share their accomplishments online as HTML, Flash, or interac-tive PDF files.

What goes into a portfolio?In creating a digital portfolio, students select work they have done to demonstrate their progress toward academic goals as well as reflect on and explain their academic growth over time.

The work students choose to include in their portfolio should:• Reflect content they are studying• Demonstrate progress toward academic goals• Evidence personal growth• Indicate the development and use of a wide range of skills and abilities• Showcase exceptional performances

A portfolio should include a range of student work. A portfolio is a celebration of learning, not just achievement. To make it representative of the student’s development, the portfolio should include examples of their best performances as well as work evidencing the progress made toward a particu-lar learning goal.

Continued on pg 13, top

”We don’t learn from experience; we

learn from reflect-ing on experience.”

–John Dewey

Continued on pg 13, bottom

Source Cited:California Department of Education Press Release. “State Schools Chief Jack O’Connell Introduces New Online Forum for Teachers to Collaborate, Innovate, and Improve Student Achieve-ment,” September 22-23, 2010 <www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr10/yr10rel110.asp>

Zhang, J. (2009). “Toward a Creative Social Web for Learners and Teachers.” Educational Researcher, 38(4), 274-279.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, Thomas (2006). Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work™, pp. 2-4.

U.S. Department of Education. “National Education Technology Plan 2010—Transforming American Educa-tion: Learning Powered by Technology,” (Alexandria: ED Pubs). November 2010. <www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010>

Read More About Digital Portfolios

Dr. Helen Barrett - Using Technology to Support Alternative Assessment and Electronic Portfolios <electronicportfo

lios.com/portfolios.html>

David Niguidula - Digital Portfolio: A Richer Picture of Student Perfor-

mance. <www.essentialschools.org/resources/193>

Now, more than ever, technology in schools must be regarded as an effective in-strument of change and not simply a dazzling array of in-class gadgets.

12


13


Effective Reflection is EssentialWithout student reflections on their learning, digital portfolios are reduced to a simple collection of work. The process of reflecting is what builds student metacognition, helping them learn about learn-ing. After working on portfolios for even a short time, you begin to hear students include statements like, “I discovered that I learn best by…”, and “I thought… but I discovered…”

To help students better evaluate their own work and their own learn-ing, each performance task in a portfolio should correlate to clear evaluation criteria for the work. You might choose to attach a rubric and show how the performance scored against it. Students can use the rubric, your comments, and their experiences as a foundation for their reflections.

Classroom work that is meaningful, tied to clear and demanding as-sessment, and constant dialogue between students and teachers fuels effective digital portfolios.

How do you begin?Like any complex change you undertake in your classroom, start out simple. Before creating portfolios, add a self-assessment component to existing student projects to get them ready for the reflections required for successful portfolio assessment.

You will also want to develop a structure for your portfolio to facilitate management of materials as well as provide direction for the assessments you want to include. You might choose to develop a portfolio structure around your state’s academic proficiency goals or 21st Century skills. A portfolio template should include assessment criteria and obvious space for or links to student reflection.

As students begin to develop their portfolios, be sure to clearly articulate your goals for their use, as well as define what portfolios should include and how students should select their content.

The first act of choosing which pieces to include in a portfolio gets stu-dents to begin thinking about their learning. Including a voice reflec-tion about why they chose this piece will also encourage them to move from the “what” of the project to the “how” of the learning process.

As students become more comfortable with portfolio assessment and reflections, you will see them trend away from including only their best work as they begin to incorporate work that demonstrates growth. As your students continue to develop their portfolios, they become much more aware of their learning process, even when they aren’t working on their portfolios! In SummaryA digital portfolio is a great way to foster dialogue between student and teacher. As students gain more expertise in selecting and reflect-ing, instructors benefit from a clearer picture of student learning and are better able to tailor their instruction to meet specific student needs. The resulting awareness of their learning, and the discussions it promotes between teachers and students, cultivates an engaging and effective learning environment.

Digital portfolios require a significant time and training investment for both you and your students, but the improved engagement and metacognitive skills gained as a result will continue paying dividends long into the future.

Melinda Kolk is the Director of Professional Development for Tech4Learning, Inc. and the Editor of Creative Educator magazine.

During this time, schools intent on incorporating computers into the classroom argued about whether these expensive machines should be in labs, or placed in the classroom itself. MIT’s Professor Sey-mour Papert, the Johnny Appleseed of student-cen-tered computing, argued that the pencil would have had no impact on education had it been relegated to a “pencil lab.” He went on to say that computer labs were an institutional response to avoiding seri-ous technology use—much like the body generates defenses to surround an infection to keep it from spreading. He suggested that many were fearful of what might happen if students were to take a more active role in their own learning.

But, the seeds had been planted. With no support from above, stu-dents found technologies that were engaging to them—technologies that, if found, were confiscated lest they cause a “disruption” in the classroom or, worse yet, were used to “cheat” on examinations. This technology was the simple, compact, and cheap cell phone. When kids started bringing cell phones to class, the only thing they could do with them was make phone calls. But newer models included digital cameras, the ability to send text messages, and even to provide access to email and limited web browsing.

Today’s cell phones are less phones than they are mobile computing devices. The so-called “smartphone” has taken the world by storm, and there is no turning back. With this single device, students can do just about 80% of anything they would otherwise do on a full-sized computer—a device they generally have at home, or can access at the library or at a friend’s house.

And how did schools react when students were bringing devices that could access the Library of Congress? In many cases they tried to ban them. “I’ll never support student technology on our school’s network—it is too dangerous,” I heard one technology director say. Today his school has fully embraced BYOT—“bring your own tech-nology”—and the world still rotates on its axis! As if to prove that schools were not even close to being “child-centered,” the Chicago Tribune last year (October 12) published a front-page story with this headline: “After years of banning hand-held devices, many high schools are conceding defeat, allowing them to be used as academic tools.” This sad sentence says it all. No matter what the schools tried to do in the past, they are now willing to let students learn us-ing tools we should have been giving them for free!

And, as for free, that is exactly what is happening. In January of 2011, smartphones represent only 40 percent of the mobile devices in the U.S. But, with many Android-based devices being given away for free today from common retail vendors like Target (provided you

get a contract for the phone), traditional phones will be in the minority very soon.

I am not so naive as to think that traditional school-ing will concede defeat so easily. To start with, instructional methodologies need to be transformed in light of ubiquitous technology access. (A note regarding ubiquity: there are 6 billion mobile de-vices in use in the world and only 6.9 billion people on the planet. Do you honestly think that access is a real issue? And, if it is, can’t something be done about it?)

What kinds of changes need to be made? First, textbooks are dead. Use the money to get better

networks in your school. Second, if a question can be answered on Google, don’t ask it. Instead, think of the subjects you teach as being truly interesting domains of exploration—and provide ways for students to explore content through rich activities and proj-ects—ways that develop their own insights to a subject, and may even trigger a lifelong interest! For example, if you are concerned that Wikipedia is not an accurate resource for academic topics, have your students research relevant Wikipedia entries and post their own corrections.

And, as for projects, instead of just having your students use their mobile devices to research subjects, show them how they can create their own “apps” for Android using the very student-oriented (and free) App Inventor software created by Google.

In fact, instead of talking about technology, let’s move the dialog to education in a world where, at last, powerful educational tools are in the hands of children.

I always knew education would change—I just didn’t anticipate that the change would come creeping into the classrooms in our child-rens’ pockets. How cool is that!

David Thornburg, Ph.D., is Director of the Thornburg Center for Space Exploration and is currently design-ing educational holodecks for schools in the U.S. and Brazil. More information on his current projects can be found on the briefings page in <www.tcse-k12.org>.

Continued from pg 5

on topics of interest such as: • improving academic achievement for diverse learners• enriching after-school learning environments• collaborating with site and district leadership teams• mentoring new teachers

Some of the excellent content providers that have already made their materials available through BoE include the U.S. Library of Con-gress, Verizon Thinkfinity, Smithsonian Education, and Edutopia. Many of the resources, which include quality lesson plans, graphic organizers and interactives, are also linked to California’s Academic Content Standards and Career and Technical Education Standards. The site allows resources to be located by keyword, type, subject, or standard. Users can “favorite” the resources they find most valuable and build a digital collection that can be shared with others, thereby centralizing relevant materials while enjoying feedback from other practitioners. BoE also features professional development modules focused on topics of interest such as the implementation of EDI strategies and the design of proper learning objectives.

The establishment of BoE acknowledges that teachers are the linch-pin of the educational system, and that channeling their knowledge and collective creativity through an online community of practice will broaden understanding of the day-to-day mechanisms that impact student achievement and professional success across the state. Brokers of Expertise will be essential to reworking the teaching and learning practices of the educational professionals who already do so much and mean so much to students across the state.

Brokers of Expertise is an initiative of the California Department of Education. The website was created through the support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, the Stuart Foundation, the Verizon Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. More information can be found at <www.myboe.org>.

Edward Avelar is an Outreach Specialist for the Imperial County Office of Education and K12 High Speed Network. He has worked as a high school social science teacher and as a college outreach director.

Continued from pg 10

Continued from pg 11

15


Bits & BytesSuperintendent Tom Torlakson advocates for 21st Century Education reform Enabled by Technology

By John [email protected] www.cue.org/advocacy/

lEgiSlaTivE advOCaCy

T

15

Tom Torlakson is the first State Superintendent of Public Instruction to attend and participate in a CUE conference. He appeared and spoke at both the Fall CUE conference in November, 2010—three days after being elected—and again at CUE’s recent annual conference in Palm Springs. In 2009, (then) Assembly Member Torlakson received the CUE Advocacy Award for authoring legislation that would reauthorize the California Technology Assistance Projects (CTAP) and other bills related to educational technology. He also sponsored regional hearings with business and education leaders to discuss the need for making technology in education a high priority.

At the recent CUE conference, Supt. Torlakson visited and interacted with students and their teachers at the Student Technology Showcase demonstrations. Teachers and students could not wait to show their work and have their picture taken with the State Superintendent of Public In-struction. Supt. Torlakson also dropped in on several conference sessions, and addressed attendees at the closing session.

After observing students, Supt. Torlakson was interviewed and discussed topics ranging from his views about the current conditions of California education and the education budget crises to describing what he hopes will have been accomplished that he can report on when he attends Spring CUE 2012. He responded to this question by anticipating a desire that legislation will have been enacted that would: 1) allow districts to collect ADA funding for student participa-tion in online courses, 2) define instructional resources to include digital media as well as print materials, 3) ensure student access to state-of-the-art technology with Internet connectivity, and 4) provide sufficient professional development and support for educators to make instruc-tion more engaging and effective with technology. He also mentioned in the interview as well as in his closing speech that he is initiating a planning task force that will be developing a com-prehensive technology plan that incorporates the four points mentioned and much more. He referred to the plan as “No Child Left Offline” but stated that the title will probably be changed to something like “Online California.”

In addition to attending conference events, Supt. Torlak-son met with CUE President, Micheline LeBlanc, CUE Executive Director, Mike Lawrence, and CUE Legisla-tive Advocacy Co-chair, John Cradler. This provided an opportunity to provide the Superintendent with informa-tion about various CUE activities, including CUE’s new Leading Edge Certification for online instruction, the CUE affiliate structure, and the 33-year history of CUE and what it means to California educators. Also discussed was the need to address the significant reduction of regional support in accessing and using technology pro-vided by CTAP and the Statewide Educational Technol-ogy Services (SETS), and strategies for leveraging support for technology from other educational programs.

During his final remarks to the CUE conference audi-ence, Supt. Torlakson captured the attention of the group when he expressed his excitement and enthusiasm gener-ated by his experience at CUE. He again mentioned his desire to include CUE leadership in the design of his new plans and related legislation.

John Cradler is President of Educa-tional Support Systems and Co-Chair of the CUE Legislative Advocacy Com-mittee. He has been actively involved in developing policy and legislative pro-posals for educational technology at the state and national levels for the past 25 years. He has been conducting forma-tive and summative statewide evalu-ations of the state-funded California Technology Assistance Projects (CTAP) and Statewide Educational Technology Services (SETS) for the State Depart-ment of Education and Legislature, and is conducting an in-depth study of the impact of the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grants on teaching and learning. He has served as Director of Technology for WestEd, the Council of Chief State School Officers, a Teacher Education and Computing Center (TECC), and the South San Francisco Unified School District. John was awarded CUE’s 2010 Legislative Advocacy Award, and was also named ISTE’s 2010 Public Policy Advocate.

award WinnersThe Cue Awards Program honors outstanding educators and supporters in education through a variety of awards. The deadline for 2012 award nominations is December 8, 2011. See <www.cue.org/awards/> for more information.

14

Platinum Disk: marianne Pack

Gold Disk (left to right): Judith Dennington, Anna massi, Suzanne mitchell

Technology in Learning Leadership (TILL):Harry Bloom, ed.D., Director, CTAP region 9

ISTe/Cue making IT Happen Award: Sara Armstrong and Hall Davidson (shown here with California Superintendent of Schools, Tom Torlakson).

Outstanding emerging Teacher: Cristine Vo

Outstanding Teacher: Julie mildrew

Site Leader of the Year:Todd reed, ed.D., Assistant PrincipalTemecula Valley High School

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The two day event will focus on student achievement, new and emerging technologies, online learning and innovative uses of technology in K-12 environments.Hosted by the Napa Valley unified School District

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reGISTrATION OPeNS mAY 15, 2011

2011FALL Cue CONFereNCe

18


rA recent ATP participant in Region 11 stated, “Professional development decisions are driven by data and can be based on the actual needs of the staff. This type of data collection has given me a new lens on what is actually happening in the classroom. I am better equipped to provide what my teachers need and able to recognize the expertise of my staff based on data I collect regularly.”

Similar efforts are taking place in other regions across the state. CTAP Region 8 has also introduced a tool designed to assist administrators to gather data using mobile devices. Collect, Connect, Coach (C3; <www.c3kern.org/>) is a data collection, collaboration, and coaching tool designed to help administrators conduct walkthroughs, get an accurate snapshot of the classroom, analyze data, and share concepts

with staff. It is a web-based application that can be used with most web browsers, and is optimized for use on an Apple iPod Touch or iPhone. These tools and efforts are helping administrators to see the benefits of using mobile technologies.

In conclusion, utilization of these tools is helping administrators to transform teach-ing and learning through data gathering and analysis. It is hoped as administrators use these technologies effectively they will also develop the policies and programs needed for their adoption and integration into classroom instruction.

As we seek to meet the needs of our 21st Century students, we must acknowledge students are far more technology literate than ever before. We as educators must build upon this student expertise to enhance teaching and learning while increasing our own proficiency. Changing teaching and learning will occur as we enhance our own productivity, collaboration, and communication.

Raymond A. Chavez, Ed.D., is Director of CTAP Region 11 and the Instructional Technology Outreach division at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. He is CTAP Statewide Chair for 2010-11.

Recent surveys indicate that schools are still utilizing 20th Century models of teaching and learning for 21st Century learners. Project Tomorrow (<www.tomorrow.org/index.html>, in their annual survey of educators, students, and parents, reports that students still view their classroom learning experience as vastly different from the way they learn outside the classroom. The tools they use outside the classroom (i.e., smartphones and iPods) are readily available to them and are used daily to keep themselves informed, process information, and interact with their peers. These same devices can be powerful learning tools in the classroom as teachers adopt and utilize them effectively.

Advances in mobile devices have enabled students to gather information and communicate seamlessly 24/7, anytime/anywhere. Students are very comfortable using these technologies and have become reliant on them for their everyday lives. Unfortunately, schools have not yet fully embraced them for enhancing teaching and learning. One of the challenges is provid-ing the professional development teachers and administrators need to employ mobile devices in meaningful ways at school.

CTAP is providing professional development in a number of different regions across the state to help educators become proficient in the use of these tools and how they can be used in class-room instruction. In some regions, professional development has focused on helping adminis-trators see the potential of the devices to help support administrative tasks and gather data to improve classroom instruction.

In CTAP Region 11, administrators are exploring the benefits of mobiletechnologies through the Administrative Training Program (ATP) offered at Los Angeles County Office of Education. Principals use mobiletechnology tools like smartphones, iPod Touches, and iPads to accessstudent information, examine classroom walkthrough data, and utilizeproductivity tools. “Affordable,” “immediate access,” “ease of use,” “powerful,” “time saving,” and “necessary” are words often used to describe what these tools offer to an administrator.

CTAP Observe, a web-based observation tool developed by CTAP Region 11 (<ctap.lacoe.edu/>) guides principals through an informal classroom observa-tion process allowing for a focus on California Standards for the Teaching Profession (download at < www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ps/te/>), English Language Learner strategies, and the integration of technology based on ISTE standards (see the Standards tab at <www.iste.org/welcome.aspx>). Participants report that CTAP Observe empowers them to collect observation data digitally and provide immediate feedback to the teacher. Data can be viewed over time presenting the administrator with a “big picture” of what is happening instruc-tionally at their school site.

new Tools inform

good practice by raymond A. Chavez, [email protected]

On CTap

Spring 2011 OnCUE | www.CUE.org

p“Photoshopped” has become such a com-monplace verb these days that we know immediately what it means: something has been added here that wasn’t there before, or something has been tweaked to make it look different—either better or worse. Seems like a good idea to help our humble photogra-phy, so many of us weekend shooters end up with “the basics” or “Photoshop Elements.” Still, there are a daunting amount of tools that face the casual user. Are there tricks for those of us who are looking for help? Let’s start here.

SelectingA great deal of the magic happens after you select something, so spend many moments playing with the selection tools. They’ll give you the option of selecting basic square or ovals shapes or, using the Lasso tool, you can outline a complex shape. If you’ve spent a great deal of time selecting something, then make a false click, don’t panic if you lose your selection. Just go to Select>Reselect to get your selection back. If you know you are going to need the selec-tion again, go to Select>Save Selection and you can always go back to it.

Usually, when you use your Marquee selec-tor (the square or oval), you hold down your mouse and the selection starts where you first click your mouse. But let’s center that selection instead. Hold down the Option or Alt key and then drag with your mouse. You will see your selection lines move out from that point–especially helpful when using ovals. And if you decide you’re in the wrong place with your selection, just press the spacebar without letting go of your mouse and you’ll be able to move your selection to where it needs to be.

Cropping by the Rule of ThreeNow that you can select, you can crop those photos to make them more dynamic and keep the focus where you want it. Simply put, think of a tic-tac-toe grid and imagine it over your photo. Now, where do you want the focus of your photo to be? The “rule” says to have your focus at one of the places where the tic-tac-toe grid intersects. If you keep this in mind when taking the photo in the first place, a simple cropping may be all you need to make your photo come alive. The other part of the Rule of Three is to never put a horizon line in the center of your picture. Instead, put it on one of the horizontal lines of your imaginary grid. Give more space to the more interesting part of the image.

Favorites for FontsAdding text to your photos can mean add-ing personality, information, or emotion, and sometimes a simple text box just won’t do. Suppose you want to get a second line of text right next to another text box. When you try to do it, Elements assumes you want to edit what is already there. Instead, hold down the Shift key, and then click the Text tool, then click where you want your text. You can then move your text as close as you’d like it to be. How about the letters themselves? If you think there is too much space between the letters of your font, there is a Preference that can help. Go to Preferences>Type>Show Asian Text Op-tions, then press OK. Now highlight the text you want to change and the Asian Text Options in the Options bar. There you can change the percentage to change the way your text looks.

I always seem to like to warp my text be-cause that’s part of the fun. But it is hard to get the angles just right in the pop-up win-dow using the tools since I didn’t measure angles in the photo, of course. But all you

need to do is move your mouse back to your photo and it will automatically become the move tool. You’ll be able to move your text around and quickly go back and forth with the dialog box to get your type just the way you want it.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to play with the “magic” of Elements, and we haven’t even scratched the surface. If you need extra help, go to the Help Menu>Photoshop Elements Help when you are connected to the Internet. At the top of the screen, you will see “View Help PDF” which you can download and use as a user manual. There you can also find lists of handy keyboard shortcuts that you can print for quick reference. Try to learn a new one each week! Online, more help and ideas can be found at <www.photoshopelement suser.com>. So grab your camera while the sun is shining and enjoy the magic!

Linda Oaks is an Elementary Technology teacher and holds a Master’s in Educational Technology. She is a CUE Gold Disk winner and a frequent speaker at CUE events.

photoshop Elements: getting help with the Magic

By Linda [email protected]

TipS & TriCkS

Changing teaching and learning will occur as we enhance our

own productivity, collaboration, and communication.

19

20 21


Changing Teaching and learning from

Teacher-Centered to Student-Centered

prOFESSiOnal dEvElOpMEnT

By Barbara [email protected]


Title: Explorations Interactive Whiteboard Software Publisher: Okapi Educational PublishingGrades: K-5Media Type: Software and TextbookURL: http://www.clrn.org/search/details.cfm?elrid=8768 Subject Area: English Language Arts Common CoreExplorations Interactive Whiteboard Software K-2 contains: an electronic book; interactive activities that develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening; timed fluency activities; and print-able teacher resources. Nine reading activities focus on comprehension, vocabulary, and letters and sounds. Nine writing activities focus on how texts work, responding to text, and spelling. Three speaking and listening activities encourage children to respond to the text. The 3-5 Explora-tions Software focuses on how to read and write informational text using the text to model to student, and how to write various nonfiction genres such as argument, explanations, reports, opinions, and narratives.

Title: ExploreLearning GizmosPublisher: ExploreLearningGrades: 3-8Media Type: InternetURL: http://www.clrn.org/search/details.cfm?elrid=8781 Subject Area: Mathematics Common CoreExploreLearning Gizmos are designed to help students develop an understanding of key con-cepts in math through inquiry and exploration. Most Gizmos are open-ended and rich in con-tent, ideal for student exploration and discovery. They are perfect for the “what if…?” sort of explorations with students. The key is to guide students to what’s interesting and pertinent in a Gizmo, and to ask questions that will lead students to really think about those concepts. The more students are asked to “go deeper”—to analyze, connect, generalize, predict, explain, compare, etc.—the more they will be encour-aged to really use their brains. This, in turn, is more likely to help students understand and retain the content.

Title: Academic Earth: University Course VideosPublisher: Academic EarthGrades: 9-12Media Type: InternetURL: http://www.clrn.org/weblinks/details.cfm?id=3147 Subject Area: English Language Arts, History & ScienceAcademic Earth streams more than 2,400 lectures and 60 full courses from a variety of uni-versities including UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Courses may be browsed by subject, university, or instructor. An advanced search includes a filter by course rating. Lectures may be saved by clicking “Add to Favorites” and may also be downloaded as a QuickTime file.

Title: A Balanced DietPublisher: Intel CorporationGrades: 7-8Media Type: InternetURL: http://www.clrn.org/weblinks/details.cfm?id=4325 Subject Area: Physical EducationThis web-based resource provides information on the importance of a balanced diet to stay healthy and physically fit. Students can assess their knowledge of the topic by taking a quiz af-ter viewing the materials. This United Kingdom site is divided into three sections: Learn, Test, and Review. Requires a Real Player plug-in and/or Adobe Flash player plug-in (available for free).

Title: Approaching PlaysPublisher: The Open UniversityGrades: 10-12Media Type: InternetURL: http://www.clrn.org/weblinks/details.cfm?id=5302 Subject Area: Visual and Performing ArtsApproaching Plays is a theatre appreciation course using extracts from classical and modern plays. This unit is designed to develop the analytical skills stu-dents need for an in-depth study of literary plays. Users will learn about dialogue, stage directions, blank verse, dramatic structure, and conventions and aspects of performance. “Discussions” deepen understanding and enable the viewer to think first, and then click to reveal possible interpretations. A brief glossary of theatre terms is included.

Clrn resources Encourage Concept development and interactivity

Kelley [email protected]

ThE CUE rEviEW

CChange means something different to differ-ent people. It depends on each person’s prior knowledge, experience, values, and attitude about what it is they are changing. Teachers may only know what they have been taught; they don’t know what they don’t know. Some people resist change because what they learned at their home, school, or university is what they believe is the right and only way to teach and learn. The world is changing and many of our K-20 institutions are not ready or do not understand how they fit in the picture to change. Some parents and school boards resist change. At board meetings you may hear, “If it was good for me than it is good for my child.” Teaching and learning is changing even if edu-cators, parents, and students resist it.

In facilitating change for yourself or as the professional developer for your staff, it would be beneficial to know what concerns individu-als have about the change you may be initiat-ing. Here is one chart designed to help schools identify what a student-centered environment looks like.

TEACHER-CEnTEREd STudEnT-CEnTEREd

Rote knowledge Experiential knowledge

Standards-driven Curriculum-driven

Factory model Inquiry model

Breadth depth

Single Subjects and grade level focus

Thematic and multi-grade activities

Focused on Product Focused on Process

Short time on each concept

Block scheduling and flexible time

Isolated teaching and learning

Collaborative activities

Closed door Open door

Quiet and Controlled noisy with Controlled Chaos

Teachers as experts Teachers as co-learners

Students receiving information

Students owning their own learning

Quizzes and tests for assessment

Multiple forms of as-sessment demonstrating

evidence of learning

These characteristics are reflected in the new NETS for teachers (National Education Tech-nology Standards, <www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers.aspx>). Teachers become facilitators and co-learners with students in a more creative and innovative environment.

Bloom’s Taxonomy has been adapted from its original form (on the left). In the 1990’s, a former student of Bloom’s, Lorin Anderson, along with David Krathwohl, reassessed the Taxonomy and published a revision. Key to the new list is the use of verbs rather than nouns for each of the categories, and the naming of creativity as the top of the arrangement.

The Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM < www.nationalacademies.org/rise/backg4a.htm>) offers a way to consider how a person might be concerned with change. In 1998, I adapted the Stages of Concern from this model to identify teachers’ concerns with technology use, how to interpret them, and then how to guide change. Currently I am working with schools that want to move to project-based learning (PBL), use inquiry models, and engage critical-thinking skills, so I have adapted the Stages of Concern to reflect these changes.

Summer is the perfect time to look for new engaging resources to implement into your classroom. The fol-lowing resources have been recently reviewed and offer concept development and interactivity for you and your students. Do you have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom? Try these re-sources in your lessons to en-courage your students to re-spond and actively participate in your discussions. CLRN is now reviewing resources for both California State and Common Core standards in the areas of English Language Arts and Mathematics. You can see all reviewed resourc-es at <www.clrn.org>.

Change takes time, as does building a level of understanding where these types of activities are inte-grated smoothly into the curriculum—and where teachers are provided ongoing support and coaching to get there.

Barbara Bray writes a regular column on professional development for On-CUE and is President/Owner of My eCoach <my-ecoach.com>, an online learning community built on a coach-ing platform with communication, collaboration, content, and publishing tools all in one place. Read Barbara’s Blog <barbarabray.net>, or follow her on Twitter: bbray.

Church, Andrew. “Educational Origami,” <edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+digital+Taxonomy>. Available online. Retrieved March 7 2011.

The California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) is a statewide education technology service of the California Department of Educa-tion, administrated by the Stanislaus County Office of Education, Brian Bridges, Director. Search the CLRN database at <clrn.org>. Permission is hereby granted to California educa-tors to copy this material for instruc-tional use. The document may not be distributed for profit.

22


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STAgES dESCRIPTIOn STAgES TO guIdE CHAngE

Awareness • May or may not know about student-centered classrooms.• May or may not be ready for a student-centered classroom and PBL.

• Involve teachers in discussions and decisions• Share enough information to stir interest, but not to overwhelm• Provide open environment where all questions are allowed and lack of awareness is accepted• Minimize gossip and inaccurate sharing of information

Informational • Wants to learn about PBL and students owning their learning• Curious what a student-centered classroom looks like and the teacher’s role

• Share information through all forms of media• Find teachers who are doing PBL and have them share what they are doing and what is working• Help teachers see how a student-centered environment impacts their teaching practice

Personal • Has concerns about achieving all that is required of them and adding something new to their repertoire• does not want to look foolish to their colleagues or students

• Know these concerns are common and legitimize existence of concerns• Connect teachers with similar concerns and those who will be supportive of the change they will be doing• Share how PBL and moving to student-centered practice can happen through small attainable projects

Management • Wants practical suggestions on classroom management and how to set up students in groups• needs help with specific problems and how to manage technology

• Explain classroom management strategies for group work and “how-tos” for student roles• demonstrate practical solutions to logistical problems• Help teachers create a timeline or plan on how to use resources appropriately

Consequence • Wants to know how a student-centered classroom impacts student achievement• not sure how to adapt teacher-centered lessons to student-centered and get similar or better results

• Provide opportunities to attend conferences, webinars, or visit other teachers who do PBL • demonstrate example lessons and how to adapt an existing lesson to become student-centered • give positive feedback and access to resources

Collaborative • Would like to share lessons with other teachers• Looks for opportunities to collaborate with other teachers and classes

• Offer opportunities to sign up for collaborative projects• Provide common planning time for teachers• Invite these teachers to be mentors or coaches for other teachers• Encourage these teachers to try out and share new lessons

Refocusing • Looks for ways to improve the program• Serves on or leads professional learning communities• Thinks “outside the box”

• Encourage these teachers to research and test new ideas and strategies for student-centered classrooms• Provide access to all resources so they can refine their ideas and them into practice• Allow these teachers to take risks

“Stages of Concern for Student-Centered Classrooms” by Barbara Bray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-nonCommercial-noderivs 3.0 unported License. (Adapted from Hord, S.M., Rutherford, W.L, Huling-Austin, L., & Hall, g. E., (1987) Taking Charge of Change. Association for Supervision and Curriculum development (ASCd), Alexandria, VA.)

Taking these three models together, we can see that even wanting to move to a student-centered classroom, where we can offer higher level thinking projects, there’s a lot to deal with in terms of levels of change and ways to encourage growth However, as soon as teachers start devel-oping projects and seeing how much their students are engaged and motivated, they want to do more. Of course, any time you start some-thing new, it is scary. Your heart races because you are not sure how students will react, if these lessons will improve student achievement, and if you will be able to keep to the pacing guide. Change takes time, as does building a level of understanding where these types of activities are integrated smoothly into the curriculum—and where teachers are provided ongoing support and coaching to get there.

It is all about being allowed to take risks without being criticized. Changing the environment means there might even be students teaching the class and lots of noise. Some lessons may not work. Don’t let that stop you. Reflect on what worked and what didn’t. There will be resist-ers and even teachers and parents who might try to sabotage the program. Celebrate your successes and share what’s working. Write about it. Present at conferences and school board meetings. Create videos and use social media to promote your program. Build on your successes and learn from your challenges, and you may be surprised at how far you come over time.


25


CTChange in the data Center One of the most significant changes to the network operations center has been the virtualization of server resources. In Pajaro Valley USD, we have reduced our inventory of servers by over 60% with the assistance of virtualization software. In essence, we have consolidated our “server farm” to provide streamlined maintenance as well as reduced power and cooling requirements. Our server environment is faster, more reliable, and easier to maintain. We can quickly set up a new server for a new resource, usually with little additional financial investment. For more on server virtualization, visit the How Stuff Works site at <communication.howstuffworks.com/server-virtualization.htm>.

Change in Student Assessment and InstructionAs data centers have changed and data has become more readily available online, we have seen a systemic change in the way data is used in classroom instruction. Teachers and administrators today have access to vast quantities of data to help inform instruction and as a result we have seen major changes in teacher collaboration and formative assessment. With the help of new databases and web-based applications to help disaggregate student assessment, instruction can be informed on a daily basis to help meet an indi-vidual student’s learning needs. This change has had a profound impact on student achievement.

Teachers are integrating technology into their curriculum with a frequency and expertise which we have never seen before. Education is flooded with technological options to improve and enhance in-struction. New teachers are entering the profession with increased technical skills and students are not being asked to “power down” as much as in the past. School leaders are seeing the benefits of technolo-gy-infused instruction and are directing resources to support additional options for implementation.

Change on the networkAlthough wireless network speeds still lag behind the wired network, we are seeing more implementa-tions of wireless networks to support both mobile devices and desktop computing. Perhaps one day we will have wireless networks so robust that we will no longer need or use the wired networks. An enterprise-level wireless access point can support numerous computers and is quickly challenging the economy of wired computer labs and school sites.

Change on the InternetCloud computing has revolutionized the way we can store and access our files. With utilities like Drop Box (<www.dropbox.com>) educators can get free access to gigabytes of storage and can get to it from any computer with Internet access. As we move more in the direction of accessing information from the cloud, the local resources available on your computer become less important. Now we not only store our data in the cloud, but we can also employ applications in the cloud. With Google Docs (<www.docs.google.com>), cloud computing makes it possible to create or edit a file without a particular application installed on a local computer. All you need is access to the Internet and a web browser.

Change in the ClassroomMobile computing has made technology resources more ubiquitous than ever. The resources students and staff can access via their smartphone, slate, or other mobile device have helped to address the con-stant need for more computers and devices in the classroom. With the help of Web 2.0 applications, staff are using these mobile devices in creative ways, such as using cellular phones as student respond-ers with the Poll Everywhere website (<www.polleverywhere.com>).

By Tim [email protected]

TECh COOrdinaTOrOne thing is Constant for the Technology leader:

Change!trust, without ever a face-to-face meeting, into the vast and complex social web of deceit and chicanery and creativity, which it is still becoming. We all need each other, and all can contribute, and all need help of one kind and another from time to time.

The writer’s strike of November 2007 to February 2008 afforded a wonder-ful teachable moment, as the talk show hosts so admired for their wit and humor suddenly had nothing to say. It became much easier to identify them as performers dependent on “behind-the-scenes” creators for the cleverness once thought to be intrinsically theirs. One of our tasks as educators is to find ways to help these young people, immersed in the information sea, to stop and take time to look around and reflect on its implications and contours. Even more importantly, we must offer them opportunities to take control of the tools and use them to tell their own stories.

Here there is a point well taken in Prensky’s argument: blocking social media in the classroom cuts our students off from some of the most powerful of these publication opportunities. As technology using educators and administrators, we must find ways to comply with our responsibilities to secure networks and meet legal filtering requirements that nevertheless do not cripple students’ ac-cess to robust interactive and collaborative environments.

We must also acknowledge and confront the curmudgeons in our ranks, pro-viding rich staff development opportunities and ongoing follow-up interven-tions, to enable those colleagues who may be reluctant to embrace creative technologies. When teachers accept that their students may have superior skill levels to theirs in some areas of manipulating and navigating digital tools, it can help students to acknowledge, in turn, that there are critical and analytic skills they need to learn from teachers. I’ve had students angrily denounce me: “There’s no advertising in movies!” When I ask them to notice the way actors always seem to hold their soda cans with the labels towards the camera, and reflect if they take such pains to show their friends what brand they’re drink-ing, their perceptions begin to shift. The most important “technological” skill is judgment.

Teaching students how to evaluate the veracity and reliability of the Internet and other digital resources is another key skill. From reading Alan November’s classic analysis of a holocaust denial website (November, 1998) to acquiring a basic understanding of top-level domains, students need to know how the web is built and what’s behind the text and images on the screen.

Always asking ourselves about context and background helps us with another key information age skill: negotiation. Who controls this space I’m entering? What are its norms? What will happen to the information I share here? The importance of asking these questions and knowing how to find their answers is not generation specific.

The phrase “digital native” (Prensky, 2001a & b) has been much publicized by Marc Prensky, a video game designer. Its use implies that the current population of students younger than some age, based on whenever one decides to date the “birth” of the digital age, have somehow acquired an inborn mastery of and facility with electronic tools. Prensky has been criticized from many angles, from the implicit denigra-tion of immigrants as inherently inferior (Siemens, 2007) to his sloppy citations and the lack of a research basis for his assertions (McKenzie, 2007; Bennett, et al, 2008). Putting aside these and other questions about class, privilege, and unequal access, which make the usefulness of such genera-tional stereotyping problematic, there is a more basic flaw in the picture conjured up by the phrase “digital native.”

While clearly many young people are adept as digital con-sumers, their immersion in this world also heightens their susceptibility to the manipulations of advertisers, unless they’ve also acquired the critical and analytic skills needed to navigate our complex information landscape. And while today’s students certainly have a bigger menu of diversions before them than did their parents, entering the digital world as a creator and producer of content—and mastering the tools to do so—require a new and different skill set.

Mastery should mean having a depth of understanding and a historical perspective on the thing mastered, and facility with technology is merely facile without the motivation and opportunity to create in the digital landscape. While many youth are quite adept with these tools, as a generation, these digital consumers need lots of helpful context framing and coaching from many perspectives.

An assertion made by proponents of the “digital native” myth is that these kids who grew up with the Internet already a part of their lives are somehow Internet experts by birth. On the contrary, my experience working with students K-12 is that most have a limited understanding of the Internet’s power and potential, and lack the critical and analytic skills to harness it for their own uses. In terms of the Internet, I am the native, present since it was browsed with the original Netscape dragon.

I have watched it grow from a fascinating, but tiny, world of academic and community connections, where almost any-one could become a “friend” and quickly earn deep levels of

The Myth of the “digital native”: Why generational Stereotyping Won’t improve Student learning

By Fred mindlin [email protected]

On iT WiTh CETpa

24

Change comes with its challenges but also delivers the spice that keeps us coming back for more, day after day.

Tim Landeck is Director of Technology Services of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in Watsonville, CA, a national conference presenter, and a consultant with various school districts nationwide.

Continued on pg 26, rightContinued on pg 26, left

Technology and change seem to have become somewhat synonymous with each other. As new technolo-gies come onto the scene, we may see subtle changes or we may experience revolutionary impact, but one thing is for sure, there will always be this constant change cycle in the life of the Technology Leader. Technology simultaneously creates, modifies, and disrupts the educational landscape. New landscapes demand change in the technology, and the cycle contin-ues to evolve.

Here, we take a brief look at some of the changes that have impacted the technology arena in recent years and propose some ideas about what changes the future education tech-nology landscape might bring.

“On IT with CETPA” is a regular column that provides voice to K12 IT professionals throughout California, and is a direct result of the partnership between CUE and CETPA (California Educational Technology Professionals Association). In exchange, CUE leaders write the “CUE View,” a column that appears in Databus, CETPA’s quarterly journal.

26


Finally, making good use of technology requires what I like to call “tapping the well.” Ultimately, creative processes are all forms of narrative, and if students are unable to connect to and trust their own imaginations, there are no stories to tell. Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and the director of the M.I.T. Initiative on Technology and Self, says schools also need to allow students to experience still-ness, because the rest of their lives is not making it easy for them to find stillness (Turkle, 2009). Dialog in social media about the books we read can create rich interaction, but we still have to be able to sit still long enough to read the book in the first place.

Fred Mindlin is Associate Director for Technology Integration with the Central California Writing Project (CCWP). Visit <www.thedigitalstoryteller.com> to find out more.

REFERENCES

Bennett, S., maton, K. & Kervin, L. 2008. The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of educational Technology. Accessed in draft form at <www.cheeps.com/karlmaton/pdf/bjet.pdf>

mcKenzie, Jaime. 2007. “Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions, and Digital Deprivation.” From Now On, the educational technology journal, Vol 17, No 2, November 2007. Accessed at <fno.org/nov07/nativism.html#Generationm>

<www.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/eDuCAuSeNow19Implicationsof Soc/179382>

November, Alan. 2009. “Teaching Zack to think.” Originally published 1998. Accessed at <novemberlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/teaching-zack-to-think.pdf>

Prenksy, marc. (2001a). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prenksy, mark. (2001b). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II.” Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-6.

Siemens, George. 2007. “Digital natives and immigrants: A concept beyond its best before date.” http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=97

Turkle, Sherry. 2009. “Saving Stillness.” Video at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/concentration/saving-stillness.html?play>

Although not particularly new to the educational scene, the recent large-scale adoption in many school districts of the interactive whiteboard has helped to increase student engagement and the way teachers deliver instruction. Teachers are able to easily integrate this technology tool into their classroom curriculum, thereby helping to bring instruction alive.

Change in the Funding Change comes in many forms in the technology leadership arena. The present budget crisis has brought change to the all areas of education, including the Technology Services department. We continue to need to do more with less (a term and approach we are quite familiar with), but the technology department is also required to work with “pile on”—when items keep getting piled onto the list of responsibilities, but little is ever removed. The list grows longer as new initiatives and technologies are developed to address student achievement and business services. For example, a reading pro-gram that we implemented six years ago is still a “viable” product and enough staff and students are using it that we need to keep it around. But we also need to implement a new reading program be-cause it is so much better and students will benefit. Add additional servers, upgrade the old ones, virtualize what you can, but keep it all running. At the same time staff is being cut and we all have to do even more with even less.

It wasn’t that long ago we saw businesses offering lucrative grants to educational institutions. The quantity of federal and state grants were increasing and the technology initiatives were increasing, as was the available support. That was a change back then, and as these funding opportunities disappear, the change continues.

The technology leader must adapt and support change because it is one of the only constants he/she can count on. Change comes with its challenges but also delivers the spice that keeps us coming back for more, day after day. I welcome your thoughts and insights about this and other technology leadership issues. Please contact me and help to keep the change alive.

Continued from pg 24 Continued from pg 25

CALe

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