Reading Review Blog Post #3: Let's Narrow it Down

After somewhat overwhelming myself with my topics in the last post, I whittled my interest down to the single idea of wanting to take more of what I've read in Why School? and apply it to my own research and practices.

According to Will Richardson's description of his vision for "new school" is:

        "...it's about asking questions, working with others to find the answers, doing real work for real audiences, and adding to, not simply taking from, the storehouse of knowledge that the Web is becoming.  It's about developing the kinds of habits and dispositions that deep, lifelong learners need to succeed in a world rife with information and connections.  The emphasis shifts from content mastery to learning mastery."

I'm on board.  I have never heard it said so succinctly and clearly.  Yes!  I want to do this!  My fear is that I don't know how to do this.  It's definitely easier to stick to the old school model, is it not?  In grade school, I was the kid for whom rote memory was no problem.  I'm not one to ask hard questions and, honestly, I had a terrible time thinking critically about the articles that I read in history courses in university.  Asking questions is not my forte.  I don't want to share my work with real audiences because what if they criticize me?  Who am I to add to "the storehouse of knowledge that is the Web"?  But after voicing all these concerns, I think to myself, I'm going to have to figure it out. Like I said, I'm on board.

So, HOW do I tangibly "get on board"?  It's not by researching some of those links that I posted in my last blog post.  This is almost a "re-do" of my previous reading response #2 but this time, I will break down the suggestions Richardson gives in Why School?, and find resources to begin "unlearning" what I know, and relearn these new school practices.

>> 1. Share everything (or at least something): sharing comes in many forms: blogging our reflections, capturing video of our process, etc.

>> 2. Discover, don't deliver, the curriculum:

"Teachers need to be great at asking questions and astute at managing the different paths to learning that each child creates.  They must guide students to pursue projects of value and help them connect their interests to the required standards.  And they have to be participants and models in the learning process." (Richardson)

Child-driven Education TedTalk

Mitra has completed many experiments in which he gives groups of children computers and watches what happens.  He describes the effect of a "Granny", who simply admires what the group of children are doing and asks things, "can you do that again?"  Other points of interest:
- children can learn anything that they are interested in
- a single child in front of a single computer will not retain as much as a group of children around a single computer because of the discussion that takes place.

Project-Based Learning Research Review
I think Project-Based Learning aligns with this section that Richardson is describing.  It's definitely a buzz-word around my school and I'm not sure I truly understood the sense of the term until now. This articles is an excellent overview of this term, recommendations for putting it into practice, tips for avoiding pitfalls, and a bibliography for further exploration.

How to Create a Personal Learning Portfolio: Students and Professionals
   Because we need a way to document, reflect on, and assess learning, Richardson suggested students prepare personal digital portfolios.  In this article, Morrison gives an excellent breakdown of the steps in which students should follow in order to do this.

>> 3. Talk to strangers: 

"The key, of course, is having the ability to find them, vet them, and bring them safely into the learning lives of your students. ... And, more important, it's a chance to teach kids how to do this for themselves."  (Richardson)

This is a tough one to research.  I think this would have to be a case by case project, to connect your student with someone in the field that he's learning about.

Classroom Champions
This website connects classrooms of students with professional athletes to teach health, career, and character-building skills via Skype or Google Hangouts.  Then they continue to connect that same athlete multiple times so that they build a relationship.

Is Twiducate worth looking into?  Has anyone used it before?  It looks like it could be a cool way to connect students to other groups of students for collaboration but I'm not spending a ton of time on the site.  However, I would love to hear your feedback if you've used it.

>> 4. Be a master learner.

"People who model their own learning process, connect to other learners as a regular part of their day, and learn continuously around the things they have a passion for."  "...[teachers] have to exhibit the dispositions that will sustain their learning: persistence, empathy, passion, sharing, collaboration, creativity, and curiosity." (Richardson) 

>>5. Do real work for real audiences.

   By doing this, students have to think hard about their audience, learn how to network and collaborate with others, and develop proficiency with the tools of technology.

  To assess, "teachers could co-create rubrics with students that identify what their work should address and what quality looks like," (Richardson).

For students, the importance of doing work that matters.
This is an excellent summary of this section of Why School? that I could easily share with others (mostly my students' parents, likely) to describe why I'm trying to find ways for my students to create a project with meaning.

>> 6. Transfer the power.

"If we expect our kids to be able to own their own learning, find their own teachers, create their own classrooms, and find other students to learn with, then we need to make sure they have opportunities to do these things in school." (Richardson)

****

Now that I have spent more time thinking about these six suggestions, breaking them down, and spending some time looking for what's out there, I know that there are lots of resources out there for me.  I was intrigued by websites like educurious.org which seems to provide project-based units and connects students with experts in their network as well as Sugata Mitra's School in the Cloud website.

Am I still on board?  Yes.  I have now assessed the possibility of unlearning and deem the task both worthwhile and doable!  As I went through each section, I was thinking about how I could share these six suggestions with my families who home school and possibly use my list of resources as tools for parents educating their kids at home.  I am excited by some new possibilities that have popped up in my mind for the Vision Project.

     WORKS CITED

Mitra, Sugata. "The child driven education." Newcastle University. TEDGlobal 2010, Oxford, England. July 2010.

Morrison, Debbie. "How to Create a Personal Learning Portfolio: Students and Professionals." Online Learning Insights.  Online Learning Insights, 30 Jan. 2013.  Web. 4 Oct. 2015

Richardson, Will. "For students, the importance of doing work that matters." Mindshift: How We Will Learn. KQED, 30 Apr. 2014.  Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

Richardson, Will. Why School?. New York: TED Conferences LLC, 2012. Kindle edition.

Vega, Vanessa. "Project-Based Learning Research Review." Edutopia.  Edutopia, 3 Dec. 2012.  Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

Classroom Champions.  Classroom Champions.  n.p., 2012.  Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

Reading Review Blog Post #2: the Great Search

As the assignment suggested this take one hour, I actually set my timer.  I thought that this would give me the most accurate reflection of how long searching takes and perhaps, give me a better idea of what to expect from students when they are searching a topic.

I broke my searching into 3 topics as blogged about in the previous post.  

MY USE of technology to communicate better with my families: 

Keywords:  "using twitter in the classroom", "teacher communication with parents", "technology for parents", 

"Using Twitter in the Classroom": 

Searching the UBC library for articles on this topic was very limited but simply searching through Google, there was LOTS of blog posts on this topic.  Too many to list but good to know more are out there.

BioScience article: Twitter: What's All the Chirping About?

TeachHub.com blog post: 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

KQED blog post: Guide to Using Twitter in Your Teaching Practice **definitely look into in more depth - tons of links here to articles of how to use with parents

"Teachers Communicating with Parents using Technology": 

When I searched "teacher communication with parents", it was too broad and gave me all kinds of articles about the studies on how parent communication improves student work.  I added "using technology" to the end of this search phrase.  I thought it might be too long of a phrase to search but it gave me some great results.  I guess it's best to start with a long phrase of exactly what you are looking for then slowly take words away until you find what you want.  

CITE Journal article: Enhancing Parent-Teacher Communication Using Technology

Technology, Pedagogy, and Education article: The state of affairs of teacher education with respect to information and communications technology

Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education article: Changing Instructional Practice: The Impact of Technology Integration on Students, Parents, and School Personnel

**It was interesting to look at the dates on some articles that I found.  If it was dated earlier than 2010, I didn't use it.  With this topic search, Google automatically turned my search into a "scholar" search which was very helpful in giving me educational research articles and not just any old blog posts.  I'm not sure how I'd make Google search that without it simply suggesting it.  Also, after searching for while in this scholar search, I noticed the sidebar gave me the option to check what years I wanted posts from!  No more 1999 articles about technology!  

"Technology for Parents"

"Apps for Parents"

These were too ambiguous and not related to education.  I switched to "Education apps for parents" and checked the box "since 2011".  Nothing related to what I was looking for.  Tried "parents communicating with teachers".  Nothing.  I gave up this section of my search because this had taken me 30 minutes. 

STUDENTS using technology for home schooling

"using technology for home schooling" (searched in Google)

eBook: Beyond Technology: Children's Learning In the Age of Digital Culture

While this book looks very interesting and I will research more for post #3, this search did not give me anything on home schooling.  But Google suggested: 

I thought this was interesting considering that I thought "homeschool" isn't a word.  A quick google-ask told me: 

I clicked the Google suggestion to search "using technology for homeschooling":  

Temple University Dissertation: The impact of mindsets on literacy teaching in homeschooling environments: A chat analysis

University of Southern Mississipi dissertation: Relationships of Parental Homeschooling Approaches Including Technology Integration

**my results thus far, prompted me to add "in Canada" to my search and then swapped "homeschooling" for "distributed learning" to my search:

Technology and Education: A Primer - this is a Canadian study and the same premise as Why School?  

Dissertation: DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF AN E-LEARNING GUIDE FOR THERELUCTANT HOMESCHOOLING PARENT Not Canadian but looks excellent.

After changing my search to "using technology in distributed learning" I stumbled upon this website: The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning  Within the search box in this website, I searched my search keyword phrases above and found that the site is more of a college/university level.  A good site to have found but will leave it for now. 

"using technology for home schooling" (searched in UBC online library) then "distributed learning"

Canadian Journal for Education article: Reasons for HomeSchooling In Canada **investigate more

The Clearing House article: Common Arguments about the Strengths and Limitations of Home Schooling

>> overall, mostly related to higher grades and higher level ed.  

MY ONE HOUR IS UP.  It is easy to get sucked into other websites and searching within THOSE websites and I realized afterwards that there were many more elements of this theme from Blog Post #1 that I should have been searching.  As my hour came to a close, I have realized that the work that I do with families who home school (homeschool?  ;)) is more of a traditional home school model with a teacher who guides it - I only have K - gr. 9 students.  I couldn't find an accurate description of what I am doing within any research at all.  Is it out there?  Am I using the wrong keywords?  I could probably research for much longer. 

Even though my hour is up, I spent a little longer on the additional keywords that I think I would be using more anyways: 

Poor phrases: 

"too much screen time for children" 

"risks of technology in education"

"encouraging parents in technology"

Then is occurred to me that I shouldn't be searching within the Google Scholar Search so I switched over to Google and searched the same key words above: 

eBook: Planning for Technology: A Guide for School Administrators, Technology Coordinators, and Curriculum Leaders

BCTF Research Report: Distributed Learning enrolment inBC private schools grows rapidly—and public fundingfor private DL schools is boosted

At this point, I feel like I am less interested in this topic than I was before.  I don't really want to know more about why distributed learning is growing etc.  I want to shift my search into tech that kids can use and will be more than just using an app to learn math.  

"technology for children in home schooling"

parentmap.com blog post: Homeschooling and Technology: The Allure for Modern Families

abouteducation.com blog post: Homeschoolers May Be Ahead of The Technological Curve

"technology in education "too much screentime""

techlearning.com blog post: Why You Should Let Students Have Unlimited Screentime

I have been blogging AS I do these searches to document my searching process as well as my developing thought processes.  The more I search and think about these topics, the more I want to spend my time breaking down the Why School? model of learning in today's digital culture and use that as my model for developing some new ideas for my personal DL practices.  I think I have found a key interest area and will create a separate blog post using what I've taken away from Why School?.

Reading Review Blog Post #1: Brainstorm time

Last year, I spent many months in career turmoil, wondering what direction I should be heading.  Do I want to eventually head back into the classroom?  And I've been contemplating the question, what IS my passion?  Why isn't this something I already know? How I determined that I wanted to begin my Teacher-Librarianship Diploma was the simple fact that I love children's literature.  Plain and simple.  Maybe naive? My thought process was that I can continue working at my current job as I work on this diploma and one day, should the opportunity arise, perhaps I will find a job as a teacher-librarian.  I can continue to teach but have a singular focus:  kids lit.

Currently, I work for a Distributed Learning school as a K-9 Home teacher working with families who home school.  My position has morphed dramatically over the course of the last three years that I have worked here.  While I used to only use Microsoft Word, Dropbox, email, then home visits for my job, I am now using an increasing amount of technology to keep in touch with my students.  

There is a LOT of digital technology incorporated into home schooling as well (in some homes more than others).  For example, families are using math programs that are completely online and I'm one who encourages kids to try out online reading programs like RAZ Kids and make suggestions for iPad apps that will animate their short stories.  I am faced with the challenge of working with a mom who tells me that her child has been building Egyptian pyramids or Roman aquaducts on Minecraft and I need to assess how much they've really learned from this.  I follow a number of students on DuoLingo as they learn a second language.  And there's many more examples. 

And speaking of dramatic morphing, there's more!  Families used to choose, locate, and purchase their resources on their own.  Now, I manage their budgets, guide curriculum choices, and do all the resource ordering.  Because of the way that the Ministry of Education has changed the amount of grant money that each DL family receives, my school has started a resource library and we have started lending non-consumable resources as opposed to having families spend their grant on textbooks.  The school hired a resource librarian to begin the monstrous task of building a resource library, do all our ordering and cataloging.  and while we can technically search for specific titles in our library's search tool, we Home teachers can't really tell what resources we have IN the library.  We just keep ordering more!  This summer, I invited families to meet me AT our attic-like room where we shelve all these books, games, manipulatives, etc. and we just looked at what we HAD.  And it was awesome.  The school already has so much and so many of my families walked away, borrowing all kinds of resources that no one even realized we had there. 

All of a sudden, I'm in this LIBE477 class that I thought was going to be the beginning of possibly directing my journey away from DL back to a bricks-and-mortar school library. BUT I am realizing that so much of what I'm going to learn in this class can and will directly affect my current job.  I'm getting excited about the possibilities!

Am I jumping around too much in this post?  What was the question again?  ;) "Issues, interests, and opportunities." What I am now realizing is the following: 

 > I use an increasing amount of technology in my job (interest)

 > Kids who school at home are using an increasing amount of technology in their education (interest)

 > Our resource library is one year old and needs some work to make it more accessible to our home schooling families because I can't hang out there with every mom or dad every time we need anything. (issue/opportunity)

These are my three themes (with keywords) that I'm currently thinking about as I approach this class in a whole new light: 

(1) MY USE of technology to improve my communication with families 

  -- Twitter?

  -- Google +?  

  -- how do I encourage parents to join my technological choices?  I can't communicate with anyone via one method if they are not also on board with that method. 

  -- how do I get kids online, communicating with me?  SHOULD I be attempting this?  

  -- FreshGrade? 

  -- assessing how VoiceThread is currently working for me - pros/cons 

(2) STUDENTS using technology for home schooling

  -- how is education changing?  DL is growing - why is that?    

  -- safety online

  -- too much screentime - how to balance

  -- learn more about Google Apps for Education

  -- what about email/texting ettiquette - the quality of texts and emails that I get from PARENTS, let alone students, are atrocious.  How do we improve this?  Or DO we?  Can we?

  -- too much out there - how can I help students/parents weed through the mess that IS the internet?

(3) The SCHOOL's RESOURCE LIBRARY 

  -- how can I help improve? Can I?

  -- what would a better program look like?  

Hopefully, this is a start.  Hopefully, I'm heading in a direction that looks promising. I DO feel a little naive about tech in education.  A lot of terms are getting thrown out there that are totally foreign to me and I have to keep Googling things that people are saying but I will catch up.  At least we know that I have a lot to learn!  :)