Your Room... With a View

With today's digital learning tools you can easily bring the outside world into your classroom.   Cara LaVanway over in the Upper School used Skype with her "Modern World" class to connect with a friend who is working for USAID in Nepal.  This valuable experience provided the students with a wonderful global perspective and connected what they are discussing in the classroom with the real world in a powerful way.  Based on some of the questions the students were asking, I could tell that a few of them are thinking that International Studies might be the path for them!

Who Could You Skype?

Making real world connections is such an important part of bringing relevance and context to your classroom content.  With video tools such as Skype you can bring in authors, statisticians, scientists, diplomats, native speakers, World War II vets, even other classrooms directly into your room. Just imagine the educational value this type of activity can bring to your class!

Skype is actually interested in you doing just this (imagine that) and they have created the site Skype in the Classroom to help you make connections with people and groups around the world.  You should definitely check it out!  Additionally, there are Skype classroom directories out there specifically for teachers and I've found that if you email teachers located in International Schools they are often willing to engage in class-to-class discussions (studying China? Email Shanghai American School).  Just pay attention to the time zones.

A Few Skype Tips

1. Use cables - directly connect your computer to the projector and Internet (if possible).
2. Check the audio - make sure you have your computer connected to a nice set of speakers of classroom audio system.
3. Use a quality microphone - If students are going to be asking questions a nice microphone is critical.  With Cara's class we used a Blue Snowball (you can see it to the left of the laptop in the picture above) so students could ask questions from anywhere in the room.
4. Full screen video - If the bandwidth is working great, use full screen video for the best quality experience. If you notice things starting to slow down or get "jerky" go ahead and make the screen smaller, this should help tremendously.
5. Have a plan B - Sometimes there will be issues, Skype may freeze or lockup.  Sometimes the "call" gets dropped.  Plan ahead of time what you will do if you have these issues.  With Cara's class, the video worked most of the time but at one point we had to go audio only since the bandwidth in Nepal was not playing nicely.

Skype can literally provide a window to the entire world right in your classroom.  Amazing times we live in... take advantage of it!

Learn More

50 Interesting Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom 
10 Ways to Use Skype to Learn - includes a link to a Skype classroom directory
How Teachers Use Skype in the Classroom - From Time Magazine

Have You Used Skype for Learning?  If so, let us know about it in the comments below!

Water, water, everywhere?

We all know that the earth has a lot of water.  After all, 70% of our planet is covered in the stuff.  But how much water is really out there?  Turns out, there is not as much water out there as we think.  Today's visual from the USGS shows this fact very powerfully and concisely (click the image to enlarge).

The visual represents the amounts of water on Earth as blue spheres in comparison to the size of the Earth.  The biggest of the spheres is ALL water on the planet (oceans, lakes, ice, aquifers, even water in the air, etc.).  I don't know about you, but I was shocked at how SMALL the sphere is... there is not much water on the Earth.  More surprising to me is the second largest sphere.  This represents all the liquid FRESH water that exists (much of it we don't even have access to).  The smallest sphere (the dot above Georgia) shows all the fresh liquid water we do have access to... that's it... we all share that small amount of water.

You can imagine trying to explain how much water there is on the planet without using a visual like this.  Good luck!

You should take a look at the USGS page for the entire article.  It goes into much greater detail and shows the actual data.  I see a bunch of academic connections with this one.  Obviously, there are math, science and sustainability tie-ins but I'm sure there are more.  At the very least it should spark an interesting discussion among your students should you choose to share it with them.

Are We There Yet?

How fast could you travel across the USA in 1800?  

I'm sure this question has been keeping you up at night, and relief is on the way from the boys over at Chart Porn (don't worry, totally safe for work).   About a month ago, they featured some maps that document the change in rates of travel from 1800 - 1930.  Boy, do I get geeked out about maps. Click here or the map below to see the entire series.

I think a series of maps like these can engage the inquisitive nature of our students and it would be interesting to use them during a unit on westward expansion or industrialization.  Additionally, it might be fun to just show them to the students and see what questions they come up with on their own; what observations they make.  This could be a simple warm-up activity.

For example, I noticed that in the span of 30 years (1800 - 1830) the rate of travel doubled... amazing!    It pretty much doubled again over the next 30 years.  How did this impact growth in the United States?  What were the benefits and consequences of this type of rapid advancement.  I think it's cool that there were certainly individuals that lived through this time period and observed first hand the transportation revolution. Can you imagine living through this type of change?  It really begs the question about how transportation advances like this one have changed our perspective of the world... I can't help but think about how is this similar to the information revolution in which we currently live. 

My point here is that sometimes a simple, quality visual is such a powerful way to get students thinking about topics in meaningful and divergent ways.  These visuals are all over the place (a Google search away).

What do you think?  Any ideas on how you could use a visual like this with your students?  Could they expand the map to modern travel times?  How about to chart space travel?  What math connections, science connections, English connections can you come up with? Use the comments feature and share your thinking!

The next step is toward getting students to create their own visualizations based on this type of thinking.  I quickly created one that shows the area around McLean, VA in 500 mile increments (I used Google Maps, a screenshot program, and PowerPoint to accomplish this).  It's more of a proof of concept than anything totally useful but we should get out kids using available digital to tools to consume and create their own data artifacts.  Fun stuff!

The Importance of Visual Literacy

They say that the eyes are the window to to the soul but perhaps the more accurate expression should be that the eyes are the window to the brain.  Given that the brain is the center of learning, this is an important tidbit of information.  We all know this, but brain research continues to confirm just how important the connection between the visual and learning can be.

Try this on for size, research approximates that between 80 and 90 percent of the information received by the brain is through the eyes (Hyerle, 2000).  That's amazing!  How about this one, vision is by far our most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain resources* (Medina, 2008)  Teachers armed with this information know that the more visual an input becomes, the "stickier" it gets for our students.  

Let's Get Digital

Digital tools are very, very good at enhancing visual literacy. I would say that this is one of the reasons I was drawn to technology in the first place.  I frequently say "I'm not a tech guy"… maybe I'm a visual guy and the technology lets me achieve my visual goals.  In any case, ensuring that you UTILIZE a healthy amount of visual aids when working with students can make an immediate, positive impact on your teaching and learning goals.  Actually having students CREATE visual representations of their learning can be even more powerful (again, technology is really good at this but more on that later). I'll be blogging a lot about visual literacy and even hope to continue my "Friday Visual" series I started over a year ago on my personal blog.  

For now, I've got three videos that you should watch when you get a chance.  The first two videos are from the excellent Edutopia website (I first saw them over on Prezentation Zen) and they feature George Lucas and Martin Scorsese talking about the importance of visual literacy and visual communication.  George Lucas goes as far to say that we should rename English class and call it Communication (naturally, this course would introduce the language and grammar of visual literacy in addition to traditional literacy). I'm curious what you think of this... feel free to use the comment feature on this blog.

The final video is from Dr. John Medina, author of the best selling book called "Brain Rules" (I've seen it on a number of your bookshelves).

So, please watch the videos and I encourage you to reflect about the visuals you use in your classroom during teaching practice.  Are you using a wide variety of maps, charts, videos, diagrams, models, etc?  How are you presenting these to students?  How do they improve your teaching practices? Are you letting students create visuals that provide evidence of their own learning and understanding?  The academic technology team is happy to help you integrate technology into your own visual literacy goals.  Just let us know! Enjoy.

George Lucas on Teaching Visual Literacy and Communications

Martin Scorsese on the Importance of Visual Literacy

Brain Rule #10: Vision Trumps All Other Senses

Hyerle, D. (2000). Thinking maps: Visual tools for activating habits of mind. A.L. Costa & B. Kallick (Eds.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Medina, J. (2008). Brain Rules. Seattle: Pear Press.

*Thinking about Apple stuff constitutes the other half of my own personal brain resources.

Learning Fueled With Technology

I just returned from a large education technology conference and while it was a busy few days, I was constantly reminded of one thing: this is truly an exciting time to be a learner. There is no doubt in my mind that technology does to learning what lighter fluid does to flame… it ignites it. I don't mean to diminish the role of the teacher in this equation, far from it, actually. I firmly believe that the teacher plays a central role in the teaching and learning process… perhaps more than ever before (we're holding a can of lighter fluid).

In my post conference optimistic bliss, I want to encourage you all to make a resolution to try to improve the integration of technology into your teaching (and learning). This does not have to be difficult, time consuming, or complicated; it can and should be fun. To help you along, here are 11 tips that I hope you will find encouraging.

1. Go For It! - Step one is to commit to trying something. Be reasonable with your goal setting here, it doesn't have to be something revolutionary (although, that would be cool).
2. Keep it simple - pick one or two technology tools or resources to master. These should be your technology cornerstones, those applications & tools that have depth and can be used frequently (I'm currently trying to use Evernote more to keep organized). Everyone is in a different place here but I listed some ideas below.
3. Be Collaborative - Enlist a colleague or friend.
4. Be Deliberate - Work on it every day, even if it is just for a couple of minutes. Like many things in life, you will get out of it what you put into it.
5. Find Out More - No need to reinvent the wheel! Interested in how students can produce better presentations? Find a webpage or blog that discusses this and learn from those who have already done it.
6. Involve your Students - Let your students know what you are trying to do, they may have expertise here that you don't... and that's OK.
7. Be Creative - Some of the best tools (for you and your students) allow you to build your own content and products. Have some fun with it. 
8. Be Reflective - Reflection helps you make connections between the tools and your teaching objectives.
9. Be Meaningful - Don't use technology for the sake of using technology. The technology should be useful to you in some way; it should help you be a more effective teacher, make you more efficient, etc.  Honestly, getting good with technology may save you time.
10. Be Resilient - When using technology, there will be issues (have a plan B). However, as you get more comfortable it will get easier. Learning something new can take time and effort (something we understand and expect from our students).
11. Join Twitter - You can learn a lot in 140 characters. Follow some educators and relevant hash tags.

Some Tools / Resources / Ideas to try

• Learn some keyboard shortcuts.
• Master your schedule with Google calendar.
• Experiment with photo, video and audio possibilities on an iPod touch.
• Use Haiku to communicate more effectively with your classes.
• Start building your digital Professional Learning Network - PLN (I've got suggestions here).
• Incorporate more visuals into your teaching (pictures, video, charts, maps, graphs, diagrams, organizers, etc.). 
• Learn how to take a screenshot.
• Create a screen cast or two.
• Get organized (and mobile) with Dropbox, Google Drive, or Evernote and easily access your "stuff" from anywhere. 
• Have an in-class online discussion.
• Help your students create stellar presentations (and maybe make some yourself).
• Create books, magazines, posters, newsletters, brochures and more. 
• Watch some videos. YouTube is full of learning resources... so is TED (try these or these).
• Use surveys to collect data from your students... or have them collect and analyze it.

One of my goals for this semester is to share more often, after all, you can't integrate what you don't know. Since email is somewhat one dimensional, I'll share out using this Digital Learning Series blog. Hopefully, it can become an easily accessible, one stop shop for ideas about integrating technology and digital learning in general.

photo credit: Collin Anderson

To Flip Or Not To Flip?

In an attempt to keep discovery and discussions in our group moving forward, even if we cannot meet in person, I have posted a discussion starter.

Shelley Wright is a high school English, science and technology teacher in Saskatchewan in Canada. Last year she wrote a blog post describing her integration of the flipped classroom concept in her teaching. Shelley described her reasons for embracing the flipped classroom:

"I love the flip. I do. And I realize by saying this I’m making a controversial statement. I believe if used judiciously, in the right context, the flip can free up valuable class time and provide the background knowledge that is fundamental for students to then go forward and wrestle with higher order thinking."

This year, Shelley posted another blog entry entitled "The Flip: End of a Love Affair", and you might be surprised to see how Shelley has designed her class this year.

Please read her two blog posts. Then please take a few minutes to share your thoughts about the two posts. The following questions are only meant to get your thoughts going.

1. What are your thoughts concerning the concept of teacher-centered classroom vs. student-centered classroom? Is this concept worth further discussion?

2. Is there one unit of study in your curriculum where you feel you could successfully implement her student-centered approach? Why or why not?

3. Do you think the teaching scenario that Shelley descibes is possible at Potomac?

Is Tech Use Non-Negotiable?

In my opinion, Scott McLeod's blog is a must read for educators. I readily admit that some people view him as "a love him or hate him" kind of figure, but he will make you think (which is probably his point).  Two of his recent posts have really resonated with me and I'd love to talk about them more since I think the concepts he is discussing are at the heart of the "(why) is it important to integrate technology"? question.

The first one is a bit of a rant.   The comments, as always, are enlightening as well. Here is an excerpt:

In schools, we are supposed to be empowering children. We are supposed to be preparing our students to be not just competent – but hopefully adept – in today’s and tomorrow’s information environments, work climates, and learning landscapes. But instead of recognizing and seizing the affordances that these new tools provide us for learning, teaching, and schooling, we pretend that our students can be masterful WITHOUT learning how to use digital technologies authentically. Or meaningfully. Or powerfully. And by doing so, we do our students a horrible, sometimes shameful, disservice.

The second one is almost more interesting to me due to the authenticity of it (it's a real twitter conversation) and the fact that I hear (and am involved in) similar discussions all the time. There is more to this conversation but I didn't want to include all of the Twitter screenshots so click here to read them all.

There is a lot to unpack here.  Are we moving quickly enough from analog to digital?  Does it matter?  Can teachers be considered effective* without using any digital technologies?  What does effective teaching look like anyway?  What are we doing to help teachers make the transition from analog to digital?  What's holding us back?

Again, the comments are worth reading on that post as well.  I particularly like the comment "Add technology to an ineffective teacher and you’re left with a poor teacher and a poor learning experience".  I've certainly been known to  say time and time again that it is not about the technology.  Technology alone is not a solution to the effective teaching issue, but I firmly believe that the appropriate use of it is a non-negotiable element; an effective teacher who integrates technology adds more value than and effective teacher who does not integrate technology. I really believe this because ultimately we need to prepare students to be learners in the digital age; we need to prepare them for their future... not our past.  This doesn't mean focus on the technology, but it doesn't mean ignore it either.

* whatever "effective" means.