Connecting Live With Educators

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December 15, 2015. That's the date on this draft post I was thinking about writing. It is the second of my 10 "draft" posts I have on my blog. I'm about to shift this blog over to Wordpress and away from Blogger. I have 276 blog posts altogether. Most were written over a 4 year period when I was actively writing (2011 through 2015). Additional Note: This is written from the distant past when classes happened in a school builiding - do you remember those days? 

Here comes another Tweet about "A Live Webinar....about to happen! Join Us!" -or- "Join us Tuesday at 2 PM PST for the next .... "  Who are they addressing this to and how are those people able to attend this event?

I get so frustrated and angry with these "incredible opportunities" to meet/talk/listen to incredible brains in the education world, when that "incredible opportunity" is during my school day. Even when I was an instructional coach and my hours were much more flexible, it was hard to make most  of these times.

I'm convinced that once teachers leave the classroom and become "experts" they forget that not everyone is able to hang out for an hour during a week day. When was the last time a teacher had an hour for lunch? And, should it occur during a conference period, how many teachers are willing and/or free to give up that time for something else besides grading papers/talking with parents/ or meeting with other teachers or administrators?

I'm not sure what else to do. I suggest via tweets that there should be a different time. I comment on this issue whenever I can. But, still, most of the great live stuff happens between the hours of 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM EST during week days.

People say, "there are always the taped and archived videos available to watch." Sure, and if you wanted to interact with anyone about a statement or question, how would you do that?  With connectivity better than at any time in my 58 years, there has to be a way to make these events available for ALL teachers in the US. I realize that there are awesome things going on in Australasia and in Europe and the Middle East. I can't expect those things to line up with my work day.

When I get up on a Wednesday morning and head off to school, I should be able to look forward to an event that is happening that day. To realize this it would have to happen sometime between 6 PM and 10 PM EST that night. If I have a personal conflict or a school event that is scheduled for the same time, then I won't be able to make it.  But if I am free I'll be able to be there - live.

Here are three possible solutions: (1) Have a webinar or GHO once a month that replaces a weekly Twitter chat. Why couldn't we have a #PBLCHAT, for example, once a month where people could see each other and there could be presentations to watch and interact with? The Twitter stream could still be utilized for a back channel. (I understand that some chats, like #edchat, are probably too big to do this).  (2) have a monthly webinar or GHO at set times and days (such as the third Tuesday of each month) with a web page outlining the agenda, days or even weeks, in advance. (3) Have more "live" podcasts that are streamed. There are some good ones now. Let's increase these.

There is a solution. And there are multiple ways to get it done. But to start we need those folks who insist on having mid-day live events to have a mind shift. Start thinking of the dozens (hundreds?) of educators who miss really great stuff because they are - gasp - in their classroom teaching!

2020 update - In our current state of online learning, educators have found ways to connect in new and different ways. Zoom is the most common tool being used. And, I am seeing so many more webinars and "conferences" being conducted this way. Maybe this will force us to understand the importance of being able to reach educators when they are actually available.

This Summer Put Something Into Your Sea Bag

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Early on in my 20 year Navy career I got great advice from a veteran sailor. He said to remember to put something into your sea bag whenever you have a unique experience. If that experience was bad, remember how it happened so you won't repeat it. If that experience was great, remember how it happened so you can replicate it or, at least, replicate the feeling you had when it occurred.


This Summer many (it should be most - don't get me started) of the teachers I know are busy attending trainings and conferences.  Ones I wish I were attending include ISTE, PBL World, and NTAC. There are also many great professional developments hosted by school districts and regional education centers.  In Manor, for example, there are some great hands-on tech trainings and trainings in backward design.

So what is your plan for taking away great nuggets of information and using these nuggets in your own professional growth? Don't have a plan? Then, other than great memories and, maybe, some great meals and networking, how will your teaching or leading change this coming school year?

Here are three ideas:

     1.  Use a recording device such as Livescribe, Notability or SoundNote. Then (the important step) listen to the recording and make notes on how these things will impact your classroom instruction.
     2.  Use twitter to tweet out important information using the appropriate hashtag. Then compile all of the tweets under that hashtag using something like Chirpstory or Hashtracking . Then (did I mention the important step?) make notes on how these things will impact your classroom instruction.
     3.  Write a blog post about the experience as soon as possible (same day) and explain how these things will impact your classroom instruction.

The common thread here is revisiting what you experienced and then reflecting on what you will use in your school and/or classroom.  It reminds me of what we tell our AVID students - you can have the best Cornell Notes, but if you don't do the final step of reviewing them each night then what good are they?

I hope you are one of those teachers who is out there experiencing all of the incredible opportunities that there are in the education world. I hope you are doing this with some old friends and, maybe, meeting many new friends. And, I hope, what you experience is going to be transferred to your students or staff.

So what have I done this Summer that I want to share? Well, for starters, I was able to facilitate 3 PBL 101's for BIE.org in Columbia, MS, in Glen Rose TX, and in Milpitas CA. I learned that there are some hungry teachers out there who are ready to improve their teaching strategies. They want to try an inquiry approach to instruction.

And I learned how I want to approach my own teachers this coming school year. I know my teachers are good at what they do but I also know they can even be better and that we need to raise the expectations of what we want them to do in the classroom.  We don't have to add anything new to what our teachers are doing. I need to help them plan better for PBL units; I need to spend more time in the classroom with them; and I need to model more lessons for them. Pretty simple really...

Gone are the days when teachers sat by the pool eating Bon Bons all summer long. Instead, those of us who are edumecated only sit by the pool for most of the summer. The rest of the time we're filling our brains (and not just our mouths).

The Post was originally published in December 2009

Assessment in a PBI Environment? How? 

     Whenever I talk with someone who is considering using Project Based Instruction (PBI) in their classroom I can be assured that the topic of assessment will be one of the first questions asked. Assessment, both formative and summative, is a topic that is guaranteed to bring out opinions from educators and this is magnified by teachers trying to visualize assessment in a PBI classroom.

So, what does assessment look like in my classroom? Well, we have tests and quizzes and daily "warm-ups" and written explanations and.......
Wait, that sounds just like a regular classroom? YES! That is exactly the point I am trying to make. Even though we are considered "100 % PBI" does not mean that we give up assessing the learning of our students.

There are a couple of items that we do assess differently and that, really, is all that we need to discuss. If you have options, in your bag of tricks, of assessing the learning that is going on in your class, then you are already at a point where you are ready to be a PBI teacher.

Some things that WILL look different or that you don't normally see in a conventional classroom include: Project Grades, Collaboration Grades, Oral Presentation Grades, Critical Thinking Grades, or even Group Assessment Grades.

PROJECT GRADES - A project is more than just putting together a pretty poster or a power point explaining some research that has been conducted. There needs to be definite demarcations for the beginning or introduction to a new concept or idea; a middle where research, hands-on learning, or direct instruction is going on; and an ending where the new concept or idea is presented by the students to show their level of knowledge of the material.

At each stage of this process there are chances to assess knowledge. There might be a pre-assessment to confirm the knowledge levels of each student during the introduction phase. During the middle stages there can be written quizzes, (or even tests for larger, longer lasting projects), there can be oral quizzes, there can be quick "knowledge checks" taken through clicker systems or surveys. We collect "Warm-ups" at the beginning of class or "Tickets Out" at the end of class as another way to check for understanding. Your imagination is the only limiting tool.


COLLABORATION GRADES - While we are walking around monitoring group work, we have an intuitive "grade" of individual efforts in each group. To put a numerical value to what we already know we can assign collaboration grades at the midpoint and at the end of the project. This might be done with a survey or Google Forms where each student gives the other students and themselves a grade (1 - 10, 1 - 5, etc.). Then you add them all up and determine the grade for each student. Don't worry about equity, students are both ruthless (about the other group members) and honest (about themselves). A fun way to do this is to give the groups a total score that the individual scores must add up to. Just make sure the total isn't evenly divisible by the number of students in the group.

ORAL PRESENTATION GRADES - Whenever we can, we make sure that the students are presenting their projects to an audience. They have worked hard and deserve to show off their new-found knowledge. The audience might be a panel of experts from a business, education majors from the local college or university, parents of students, other students, or whatever combination of people you want to come up with. We often hear "I haven't touched algebra in 20 years," or " I was never good at math." But these panelists don't have to grade on content, they can grade for how the students presented: did they have good rapport with the audience? did they have interesting videos/podcasts/powerpoint slides/etc.? did one member of a group dominate the presentation or were they equal partners? Just list the objectives you would like graded and let them do the rest.

Assessment, as should be no surprise, is done in a PBI classroom just like a conventional classroom. I hope this short post has dispelled any rumors that PBI means we don't have to do assessment. That rumor needs to go into the same category of unfounded myths as the one about PBI can't have direct teaching. Don't get me started on that one. Or, maybe that's a topic for another post.

Questioning Normalcy

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Educon 2.4 came to a close but is far from finished.  The conversations started there will continue in the hallways and faculty lounges around the world and in online discussions via blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  

The overarching word du jour was Innovation. We heard what it was and what it wasn't. We dissected it and defined it and even used it in a drinking game.  But, most striking was the fact that we never gave up on it. 

 Innovation, it seems, was a part of us throughout the weekend.  And why not?  Those of us in those rooms or following along via streaming are education innovators.  How many of us know more people who haven't a clue what Educon is than the number of people who were envious of us in attendance?

But how do we innovate once we return to our offices or classrooms?  For me I plan on bringing up these discussions with my colleagues.  I plan on addressing things that made me question what I, or my school, is doing.  I plan on having discussions with students about these topics and how they can help bring about change in our school.

As this transformation evolves I will be posting the "aha!" moments, the "holy crap we can't do that's," and the "let's get this baby rollings."   Throughout, I would love your thoughts and encouragement.  I'll be sharing this with our students and look forward to their input as well.  And, in a few weeks I plan on linking to our class blog as my students start down this journey.

Thank you Educon, Chris Lehman, and the staff, parents, and students of the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) for providing all of us with such an enriching event.

Educon 2.4 First Day Reflection

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"Wow!  My head hurts, but in a good way."  How many times did I hear some version of that statement tonight.  Yes, it hurts your brain to question what you are doing.  It hurts your brain to question what others are saying they are doing.  And, it hurts your brain to stand firm on something you truly believe in.

All of those things happened (and more) to my brain today.  Actually this pain in my brain started Thursday night as we sat talking inside of Con Murphys, until later than I would have liked, about things related to unstructured classrooms and democratic learning.  [Confession: my brain hurt too because the singer was a little loud - I'm getting old, sigh....]

This continued on Friday as I toured the SLA and talked with their incredible students.  But the best thing about seeing the SLA is that our students are just like those students.  Our classrooms are incredibly similar to the SLA classrooms.  I saw presentations and researching with technology.  I saw hands on exploration in a Calculus class.  [Confession #2: I was told I couldn't help the students but I did give them a hint about thinking back to their Algebra 2 days and maximizing area of a fenced in pen, sorry]

Then, Friday night, there was a wonderful panel of speakers who challenged our thoughts on Innovation. This later became "the I-word" and was worked into a drinking game but the fact is we were discussing until almost midnight what it means to innovate.

The pain today started early as I had to choose between about 15 conversations for each of the three sessions.  Luckily, for me,  Michelle Baldwin had tweeted me the night before telling me I had to come to her session where we discussed finding and nurturing the next Da Vinci in our classrooms. [Confession #3: Glad I didn't have to choose and it turned out to be an awesome discussion with Kelly Tenkely.]

The second session I went to was made easy because I didn't have to change rooms.  I really wanted to hear Liz Davis and Lisa Thumann and they just happened to be in the same room.  Their conversation was on Tradition Vs. Innovation.  This was an interactive session as we had to choose to "Dig It" or "Ditch It" on some dozen topics in education that were "traditional."  Great discussions by teachers wearing their parent hats in this one.

You know, I've heard Dean Shareski speak and I abuse the other Canadian, Alec Couros a lot on twitter so I had to go see them tag team the topic of Learning in Public.  This was definitely standing room only and there were no shy people in the room when it came to discussing this topic.  Somehow this was the only session where I was content to just listen.  [Confession #4: I almost raised my hand to see if I could be selected so I could tell them that Kelly Tenkely kept raising her hand to comment and they were missing her]

The SLA then provided a dinner where we continued to talk about what we had heard during the day and then we took the train out to the meet up this evening where we discussed stuff for another hour and a half and now, finally, I am back in my room and writing this post.

Basically, I have talked about education related topics every waking hour from my arrival to now and that's about 40 of the last 54 hours.  So, yeah, my head hurts.  But you know what?  I'm heading back tomorrow morning to do it all again.

Sometimes You Just Have to Drop Back and Punt

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     This week we came back to school and we were in mid-project.  When my co-teacher and I met on the return teacher work day we discussed the fact that we were not really happy with how the project had gone and we determined that we might just have to wrap it up and move on.


     We, literally, almost came down to an arm wrestle over whether to stop the project, when to stop the project, and how to stop the project.  We finally had our hand forced as we realized that the end of our six weeks marking period was going to happen within the next 7 class days.


     How did this disaster happen?  Simple actually: not being specific about what we wanted our students to accomplish and not understanding the time required to obtain certain skills.  And, without having to mention the subject, this could have happened in any project-based class in any school in the world.


     When you try to put too much into a project you run into the possibility of students losing interest in what was supposed to be the major end product.  That is what happened to us.  We had CAD (computer aided design) techniques that needed to be learned and we had a requirement for a specialized 3D printer that needed an upgrade.  Meanwhile the driving question was " How can students use their artistic talents in an engineering course to create a lasting symbol of peace and love?"  And their end product was a tile mosaic with each student creating a tile for the mosaic.  


     The concept sounded beautiful.  Then there came the set backs.  First the realization that we might not be able to make the tiles when they got to that point because our 3D printer wouldn't be ready.  Next the realization that the CAD techniques we were wanting our students to learn take time and we hadn't really planned the right number of days for this.  A day here, a day there, a Thanksgiving break, and the craziness that occurs near the December holiday break and suddenly it was January 3 and we hadn't completed the project.


     So what do you do?  Well, here's what we did.  On the first day groups created a presentation on where they had gotten to before Christmas.  This served a threefold purpose: we could discuss the fact that we weren't happy and wanted to terminate the project, students could remember why we were even doing the project in the first place, and they could practice their presentation skills (giving us a chance at an oral communication grade).  


     The second day we continued with groups drawing sketches of what the final product would have looked like and what CAD skills they would have had to use to create their design.  This gave us a chance to give a writing grade and a technology skills grade.   Finally we wrapped things up with a discussion of how things went in the project and what could be improved.  And, we took time to discuss the final product and it's potential for impact on the school and community.


     Here we have two teachers who have taught in a PBL classroom for a combined 8 years and their project flopped.  It happens.  And when it happens you need to get the students involved.  Have them help you understand what went wrong.  Then continue a discussion of what the final product means in relation to the work they have completed.  And then move on to the next project.  Incorporate skills that you were unable to get to with the previous project into the new project.  Use spiraling and scaffolding to connect the skills and before long you may be the only one who remembers this disaster.  Welcome to PBL.

National Day of Blogging for Real Education Reform

Courtesy Scooter-Flix

"A grassroots effort to help create and support education reform."  That's what they said it would be - this day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform.  In this time of financial crisis we need to figure out how to do this reform while minimizing any additional costs to our public education system.
      We could start by creating a new Professional Development system in our school districts.  If we took the cost of training our teachers and administrators and supplied the necessary technology required to take advantage of webinars, education chats, or other free, or nearly free, online discussion sites, we would have tens of thousands of dollars left over to put back into the school system.
     A great example of this would be Tuesday night's #edchat or Thursday night's #lrnchat on twitter.  Where else do you get thousands of people, from first year kindergarten teachers to 30-year professors of education, all commenting and bringing fresh ideas about key issues in education.  Nowhere do you get professional development like that and it's free.
     Another example would be the various online groups such as ning groups.  Two good examples  would be The Educator's PLN Ning-group (http://edupln.ning.com) and The Classroom 2.0 Ning-group (http://www.classrooom20.com).  I belong to both and find incredibly important information from the members of each group.  And, if you are involved in #edchat or #lrnchat you will find some of the same great "brains of education" as I like to call them.

     Webinars are my next cost saver.  If you Google "education webinars" you will find PBS, Discovery Education, Education Week, and Google on the first page and there are a number of good options in the first 2 to 3 pages.  In addition several organizations(including Ning Groups mentioned above) will have webinars at various times of the year that could and should be taken advantage of by our teachers and administrators.
     A final cost saving possibility is what I call Ninja Conferencing.  This is where you arrange your days around a conference with twitter, facebook, and any webinars associated with the conference.  You immerse yourself in the conference from the friendly confines of your home or classroom.  No one has to know you aren't there but you can receive and send cogent comments on the events as they unfold.  You ARE there but are never seen by those who have paid to attend.
     How do we record the hours our teachers complete in these alternate training events?  Well we may just have to trust them to complete a statement of completion.  Or we could require them to be at their school while attending the sessions.  Either way we do not need to be paying instructional coaches or an outside source to conduct the training.  And from many years of experience doing both the traditional method of professional development and alternative methods, I would much rather learn directly from people who are in the classroom and are experiencing all of the things I am experiencing.