Tag: Google

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13 Subversive Questions for the Classroom

At the end of my recent keynote on the power of reflection at TechitU, I closed by saying something to the effect “… as a teacher you get to reinvent yourselves every year … if you want to change the status quo at school, know that everything is conspiring against you … testing, parent expectations, curriculum mandates, etc … so perhaps you’ll need to be a bit subversive.”

If state testing went away tomorrow, would we actually teach differently?

Since I made that “subversive” comment, I’ve been thinking about reflective questions that would challenge the status quo in school. My list was getting rather long, so I decided to split it into two posts. This post focuses on reflective questions for teachers to consider when thinking about their approach to instruction. Its companion post, 14 Provocative Questions for the Faculty poses disruptive questions for teachers and administrators thinking about reforming their school at the program level.

  1. If a question has a correct answer, is it worth asking?
  2. If something is “Googleable” why would we spend precious class time teaching it?
  3. When we ask students to summarize, do we actually want to know what’s important to them?
  4. What do you suppose students think they are supposed to be doing when we ask them to analyze?
  5. Do you ever ask your students questions you don’t know the answer to? Why not?
  6. Think about all those things we teach kids claiming “you’ll need to know this someday.” With the exception of teaching it, when’s the last time you needed to know any of that stuff?
  7. Do your students need more information, or skills in how to critically evaluate the information that surrounds them?
  8. How much of what’s really important in life, is taught in a classroom?
  9. Why do we usually teach all the boring facts first and save the interesting stuff for later?
  10. When we cover material, what is it that we think we have accomplished?
  11. Is being told something the same as learning it?
  12. What would content area teaching look like if it were taught the way an art teacher teaches art?
  13. If state testing went away tomorrow, would we actually teach differently?

Add your subversive questions in the comment section below!

“Subversive” inspired by “Teaching As a Subversive Activity” by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. You should read it.

“13” is a cool number and people love reading blog posts that are enumerated lists.

Image credit: Banksy subversive street artist.

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Join Us at edCampPDX – Portland, Ore Aug 2

Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT Directors, Principals, Admins and Teacher Librarians who live in the NW. Join us at Oregon Episcopal School on Thursday, August 2nd from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. for our fourth edcampPDX. In addition to the multiple, concurrent sessions you’ve come to know and love, this EdCamp will include sessions around the common theme of social media and its use for professional development and in the classroom.

Photos from our 3rd edcampPDX  - Check out those boot! We are a stylin’ crew!

What are the goals of edcampPDX?

  • Networking: Connect educators in the Portland / Oregon area
  • Instructional Practices: Learn new curriculum ideas, best practices,
  • and/or tech integration ideas from other educators
  • Personalized: You customize your own PD by suggesting, facilitating and attending sessions about topics that interest you!

What is edcampPDX?

An edcamp is a unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants. Those who are interested pitch an idea for a conversation or hands-on session. The day of the edcamp we organize the ideas into sessions and everyone chooses which session to attend.

@actionhero finds the best stuff! I will order this today…Cosmonaut stylus #speedRound at #edcampPDX ~ Tweet from edcampPDX 3

There is always something for everyone — and if not — sign up to lead a discussion that interests you! This is the best type of PD because its about what you want and shared with other passionate, innovative educators.

Bring a friend – or better yet – bring your IT director, Principal or Teacher Librarian. You can bring a laptop or tablet – wifi is available, as well as laptops to use at OES.

What does it cost? The day is FREE!!! Optional lunch cost: $5; register online & payable at the event. Sign up to attend

Follow our Twitter updates: #edcampPDX

Join the EdCamp PDX Google Group to network and keep up with our news and notes.

Location Oregon Episcopal School
6300 SW Nicol Road
Portland, Oregon 97223
OES Campus map
Who are the organizers?

  • Colette Cassinelli, Teacher Librarian & MultiMedia, La Salle Catholic College Preparatory
  • Rachel Wente-Chaney – CIO – Central Oregon Technology (High Desert,Sisters, Crook County, and Redmond districts)
  • Peter Pappas – PDX ed blogger @edteck
  • Mike Gwaltney, Teacher, Oregon Episcopal School, Online School for Girls @MikeGwaltney 
  • Melissa Lim, Instructional Technology, Portland Public Schools
  • Luann Lee, science teacher, Newberg High School
  • Corin Richards, instructional technologist, Willamette ESD
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How to Market Yourself Online? Freely Share Quality Content

 

Content is everything

This morning I responded to a question on one of my LinkedIn groups. “If you could use only one method to market yourself online, what would do?” After being asked to elaborate on my initial comment, I decided to turn it into a blog post and a demonstration (of sorts). Note: While the question addressed promoting “yourself,” my focus is on promoting your ideas.

Promotion begins with freely sharing quality content. I use the Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 license. Use it, share it, remix it. Just tell people where you got it, and don’t try and sell it. I’ve never been hesitant to “give my stuff away.” Remember, as the price of commodity drops, consumption increases. Who wants to go back to a site that hides all its content behind a paywall.

Freely sharing your material amplifies and “promotes” it in new ways. One of my most popular posts – Taxonomy of Reflection – has been modified for diverse purposes – from 2nd graders, to the SEC XBRL filing process. I would never have generated all those uses. I don’t even know what the second one is.

Remember, as the price of commodity drops, consumption increases

Each time I publish a new post, I use bit.ly to create a shortened URL along with a tweet pointing back to the new content. (I also send it to Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+). I then add the new post title and shortened URL to an existing text file – a running list of “bit.ly-ized” links to all my posts. I keep that text file on Dropbox, accessible from any of my computers and my iPhone. Your list of “bit.ly-ized” links is a great resource to add to your #edchats, conference backchannel tweets and emails.

I do much of my reading online, focusing on the space where digital literacy, social media, technology and education intersect. If sites offer the option, I’ve registered and created a reader profile – usually with an icon image, info about me and a link back to my blog. If I run across an interesting piece that relates to one of my existing blog posts, I’ll take a moment to leave a comment. I can easily use my text file of shortened URLs to include a link back to one (or more) of my relevant posts. If I happen to be one of the early commenters, I usually will detect a ripple of traffic in from that comment. My analytics show that often, these new visitors will continue on into my site to view a few more of my posts. Please note: I’m not suggesting you use comments as spam to paste a link back to your post. I’m talking about extending the conversation in a meaningful way, and including a link back to you, only if you have a post that’s germane. (I get loads of inarticulate, off-subject “comments” on my blog from sites like FreeTermPapersOnline.com. Does someone really think I’ll approve them?)

To help me find relevant content, I use RSS and auto notifications from a number of sites that steer me towards new material that I might enjoy and comment on. When I’ve written a particularly timely blog post, I sometimes will search on that news item and leave comments on other sites linking back to my post. For example, when the latest PISA test results were released, I placed comments with links back to my post Stop Worrying About Shanghai, What PISA Test Really Tells Us About American Students It was a unique take on the test results that sidestepped the typical “American education Sputnik moment” and drew lots of traffic. Plus the links in didn’t hurt my Google rating on “PISA test” searches.

So answer to the original question – if you could use only one method to market yourself (and your ideas) online – it begins and ends with freely sharing quality content. (And being able to easily access and add to your comments.)

Final note: When I’m done with this post, I’ll illustrate my method by adding a new comment to the Linkedin discussion with a link back.

Hat tip to Chris Wechner for his discussion group question.

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Free Webinar on Higher Order Thinking – the Student Perspective

Update 2013: The free pilot has concluded – but click here for info on my $275 webinar.

One of this year’s resolutions was to begin offering webinars. (not that I don’t enjoy airports) I recently completed my first pilot (description below) and I’m looking for three school sites who would like to try a free pilot webinar and offer me some feedback. More details on my free webinar below.


Live Meeting – My “teacher” view with presentation, video, audience, Learning Catalytics

I piloted my first webinar with a group of instructors from Southwest Wisconsin Technical College. (Hat tip to SWTC’s Kristal Davenport) We used Microsoft Live Meeting as a platform. Participants at SWTC were gathered in one room. We maintained webcam contact with each other throughout the workshop. (I’m not a big fan of watching webinar presentations delivered by a disembodied voice.) I pre-loaded high-quality video in advance that ran smoothly during the webinar. The webinar went very well and I think we were able to create the level of interaction that I strive for in my on-site workshops.

For years I’ve used a TurningPoint audience response system (ARS) in my on-site keynotes and workshops. When an ARS is used in a Socratic manner it fosters great conversation and reflection. So a key component I wanted in a webinar was a “distance version” of an ARS. I was pleased to discover Learning Catalytics. While it was designed for on-site classroom use, it was just what I needed to enliven the webinar.

Learning Catalytics is a web-based response system that allows participants to answer from any web-enabled device – computer, tablet, smart phone. It was easy to input questions (it even provides for copy / paste of text) and using it during the webinar was a breeze. It allows the teacher to ask a wide variety of questions. Not only the usual questions such as multiple-choice, priority, and ranking. But also some unique questions for an ARS where students use their devices to – draw vectors indicating directions, indicate the points on an image, and even aggregate student text into Word clouds. Imagine your students generating real-time Wordles from their devices!


Learning Catalytics: Teacher view and iPhone view

Learning Catalytics was designed from the ground up to foster student discussion. It most notable feature is peer-learning tool (which unfortunately, I did not use – my pilot group was too small). In advance of class, the teacher inputs a seating chart of the the class. Students log into their seat locations. After posing a question, the teacher can use Learning Catalytic to automatically create student discussion groups that direct students to talk to specific peers based on their response to the question. “Peter turn to Nancy on your left and discuss the thinking behind your answer.” After the peer discussion, the teacher can repost the original question and graph the changing responses.

I like to continue piloting this model so I will offer a free live webinar to the first three schools (or sites) that follow through with my registration process.

I think professional development should model what we want to see in the classroom.  So I’d like to start with an 45-minute experiential webinar called: “Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) - What’s that look like in the classroom?”
We’ll watch a few short video clips, do a few activities to model instruction at different levels of Blooms and then reflect on the experience. Our instructional goals for the webinar:

  • Develop a working definition of HOTS
  • Clarify how the tasks we assign students define their level of thinking
  • Leave with 3 ideas for fostering HOTS with your students

A few stipulations:

  • Participants: Minimum 15 / Maximum 30. Could be teachers or admin.
  • You’ll use with a single webcam at your end, so they will need to be located in the same room.
  • Webinar length – roughly 45 min. Plus about 10 minutes for webinar feedback.
  • Timing: Sometime between 8:30 AM and 5 PM (PST – Pacific Standard Time)
  • Feedback: Since this is a pilot. I will expect you to assist in evaluating the webinar, gathering feedback from your participants and helping me “document” the user experience.
  • Technical details: More to follow if you get a webinar. But for starters – ability to run a WebEx Meeting (web access), LCD / sound for display, webcam / microphone to record your end, participants with web-enabled devices, designated coordinator to manage your end.

If you are willing to meet these stipulations in an efficient manner, fill in the request below. Remember – this is just a request. I will select from requests that demonstrate you’ll be easy to work with.

After the pilots are completed and my webinar model is refined, I plan to offer a series of (paid) webinars. I think there’s a need for short, inexpensive, engaging webinar-based PD that can foster reflection and professional growth. Something you can use with admin, faculty, department or grade level to foster local capacity.

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Join Portland Educators at edCampPDX – February 4, 2012

edcampPDX is back! Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT Directors, Principals, Admins and Teacher Librarians who live in the Pacific NW. Join us at Catlin Gabel School on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm for our third edcampPDX.

Map | More info and sign up

What is edcampPDX?

  • It’s FREE, democratic, participant-driven professional development. Great teachers, interesting conversations and an excellent chance to network.
  • An unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants.
  • Follow Twitter updates at #edcampPDX  
  • Visit edcampPDX on Facebook.
  • More info on edcamps

What are the goals of edcampPDX?

  • Networking: Connect educators in the Portland / Oregon area
  • Instructional Practices: Learn new curriculum ideas, best practices, and/or tech integration ideas from other educators
  • Personalized: You customize your own PD by suggesting, facilitating and attending sessions about topics that interest you!

What does it cost?
The day is FREE!!! (unless you want to pre-order a $5.00 lunch)

Check these Twitter archives from edcampPDX I and edcampPDX II

edcampPDX II Storify
edcampPDX II Storify