“Ready Fire Aim”A Conversation between

Dr. Joan E. Hughes & 21st Century Consortium Districts

“We all have been adamant that this is not an iPad initiative. This is about

transforming learning and so the kids own it and kids have

the ability to have those resources at their fingertips

and that’s I think what’s most important about it.” (District

leaders)

Transformation or ToolTransformative

•Developing global learners and future-oriented thinkers

•Supporting “a flexible, adaptable, individualized educational environment”

•“…personalization, individual learning, student directed, activity-based, producers of their knowledge, all could be accomplished with that one device, that mobility, that access 24/7.”

•Students work at own pace

•Project based; peer learning 24/7

•“Kids own it”

Tool

•“so kids …have resources at fingertips”

•“maybe try one new tool in your classroom and see how it goes over”

•“it’s just second nature”

•Access information

•Not just “a little toy, little gizmo”

From: Scott McLeod, dangerouslyirrelevant.org

“I don’t think we’re there yet as a district but in my

mindthe curriculum and

instruction kind of should be the center of it not the

technology.” (District Leader)

What are the goals of technology

integration in your district?

On mobile whiteboards, write up to 3 goals that underlie your district’s digital

technology integration efforts.

Meaningful Change

(transforming student

learning)

New materials:

iPads & robust

Internet

Provide only:

adoption of innovations

“We are ready. Let’s fire. We’ve got a general direction, but we’ll figure it out. The problems will present themselves and we have faith that we can figure them out.” District Leader

“I mean this was totally as Michael Fullan says, ‘Ready, fire, aim.’ ” District Leader

Do you go beyond providing new

materials?

Meaningful Change

(transforming student

learning)Teacher practices:

less teacher-directedness;

more high-level thinking projects with authentic contributions

Teacher beliefs: student-centered learning;

roles of teachers and

students

Apps in English

•Safari, PDF annotator, cloud-based storage, word processing, email, e-readers

•Less use of subject-specific apps (e.g., Poetry, Aesop’s fables, script-writing Celtx)

•Students used iPads to consume e-texts and web content; with some annotation

Activities•Developed new media literacies

•multimedia expressions of learning: wrote screenplays, films, PSAs – literature themes

•Authentic publishing (web, YouTube)

•Efficiencies

•Learning materials

•Quick access, less lost

•Just-in-time information (Internet)

SAMRRAT

RAT considers shifts in student learning, instruction, and/or

curriculum

My approach to teaching. Well, it’s very much you know presentation, lecture, give them practice while I’m up here. I try to stop throughout lessons and make sure they have time to work on stuff. Not just solid listening to me. That is pretty much how it goes.

Tom, math teacher

I started this year, I did this filming project for the iPad and we went outside and we just kind of explored with popping ropes back and forth and watching a kind of sine wave form and then we took that back and froze a frame and made it a little see through and put it on graph paper. This is all on the iPad and then they had to figure out well if regular sine goes from 0-2 pi and your rope is 9’ long you know the period of this one is 0-9. Get out the calculator or graphing software and what makes the same curve stretch, what makes it squish and what makes it stretch vertically and squish vertically and find an equation that will map your rope.

… No, we [team] all need to do the same because everybody needs to have the same thing and equal and all the same time so that makes it hard to be unless you’re spending your weekends dialing this up as a perfect unit. Actually that needs to be about three weeks in advance so you can present it to your team, see if they like it. If they don’t then you’ve got this discussion of well, if you don’t do that material and you don’t give them that quiz and that test, well that’s not fair. Your kids are making some frilly little project they’re going to get an “A” on and my kids have to factor something which is hell.…if they just say no we’re not doing that then I’m like oh good, I’ll just put this in a folder of things we’re not doing this year.

ra“T” Challenges

•Time

•Effort

•Standardized (testing) culture

•General tool focus (in PD)

•Competing reforms

a ra“T”ty proposalProblems of Practice

(POPs)

•Subject-specific or at least thematic/interdisciplinary•P.D. begins with thorny problems of practice (why change things that seem to work already?)•P.D. interjects ‘images of the possible’ •Involve assessment data

Professional Learning Communities

•Collaborative, collegial culture•Learning culture•Involve teachers, technology integrationists, and curriculum specialists•Lesson study or observational experiences•Longterm•TIME•TIME•TIME

“It was the first time I had really been able to look over student work and see what it felt like to put it into some type of framework. I found the experience …very worthwhile and I have a better understanding of the importance of teachers reviewing student work to determine if students are meeting the required outcomes. I can also see how a Professional Learning Community (PLC) could look at student work to determine how the work fits into the RAT framework and how to increase technology integration.” (Participant; Hughes, 2005)

RAT PACKS

Questions

A narrated version of this presentation will be available soon at:

http://www.slideshare.net/joanhughes

Photo Attributions 

Slide 2: Woman cuddling with technology. Photo by Jeremy Keith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cuddling_with_multiple_devices.jpg

Slide 5:Figure by Scott McLeod at www.dangerouslyirrelevant.com

Slide 11: A graph of Everett Rogers Technology Adoption Lifecycle Model by Natebailey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiffusionOfInnovation.png