Search for 21st Century Skills

We have been spending a lot of time in Lower School thinking about how to make learning visible, also known as documentation. To this end, the faculty has been carefully documenting the learning story as it unfolds with both pictures and anecdotal evidence. Teamed with professional reflection and an explosion of creativity our walls have come alive in a new way. I have to qualify this. The walls of Abington Friends  have always been an amazing array of beautiful student work along with a description of the process of the final product. One of the differences here is that teachers have added their professional reflections of the learning, as well as a time line or narrative explaining, well, the time line.
Since I am the Technology Teacher, I presented my documentation as a video. Like all documentation, this is a work in progress and will change as the study continues.

As I was walking around looking at all the amazing wall displays , I was struck by how many of the learning stories reflected 21st Century Learning and Skills. If you search "21st Century Learning" you will find a host of articles, research and companies vying for your attention. In Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap, seven skills are listed:
1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination.

I would also add to this group:
8. The ability to work with a diverse group of people
9. Empathy

This is not something I am making up, Alan November took some time to speak with the corporate leaders and empathy was the number one skill they came up with. Vivian Stewart's essay " A Classroom as Wide as the World" in Heidi Hayes Jacob's  book Curriculum 21: Essential  Education for a Changing World addresses the need for students to have a global awareness and preparedness to work with different cultures.

I don't claim this as a complete listing of skills; fluency in multiple forms of communication including those which use technology and the use of design are two more I would add. Okay, so now I'm up to eleven indicators as a way to define 21st Century Learning. That seems like a fairly rich check list to use as I walk around and look at our displays. As we have many classes and therefore many displays, I will be sharing this information as a series of blog articles.

The first one, and the one which actually gave me the idea for this post is the second graders' emergent study of food waste. As part of their folk tale study, the students read the Nigerian folktale Why the Sky is Far Away. The story shares that once the sky was very close and people could eat it for food. However, they became wasteful and the sky became angry so the sky moved away. (This is obviously the abreviated version.) The students quickly made the connection to how much food they thought they saw wasted every day and devised a plan to find out if food was really being wasted. There plan was simple: they would monitor the trashcans at lunch and see what students were throwing away. They found that they were right, and students were throwing away a lot of food - both what they had brought from home and what they had purchased in the cafeteria. Now that they had the information, the class discussed why it was wrong and what they could do about it. Here is what they did:

• They spoke to Crissy, the Director of Lower School, to share their concerns and get guidance. 
• They spoke with Chris, the Chef at AFS to see how he felt about it.
• They asked to speak to the Upper School students during a morning assembly to both share what they learned and ask them to be more mindful of the waste.
• They created posters to let everyone know why they thought this was wrong and what  the second graders thought we could do to change it.
• Finally, they put up a blank poster asking for suggestions on how the rest of the school community felt they could help change the situation. 

The catalyst to this whole study is the use of the Nigerian folk tale, which is exposing them to cultures other than their own. There is the students' words of worrying about waste in the landfills, wasting their parents' money and hurting the Chef's feelings, which show empathy.

In Craig D. Jerald 's article, 21st Century Skills at a Glance, creativity in problem solving is listed high on the "expert" list of necessary skills. An interesting point in the article that is relevant here; superintendents, or school leaders, think of problem solving as the ability to creatively solve a problem; however,  employers consider the ability to identify the problem more important. These students identified the problem.

Collaboration across networks and leading by influence is also apparent. They used the networks of their second grade lives, their Lower School Director, the AFS Chef and even the Upper Schoolers. Speaking with the Upper School students, creating posters which identified the problem and possible resolutions demonstrates leading through influence.

Initiative and entrpreneurialism is obvious, as is I think accessing and analyzing information. They may not have weighed the food, or kept track over a large period of time; however for second graders their method of ascertaining this information was developmentally appropriate.

Curiosity and imagination are here too. As far as effective oral and written communication? Well I guess to be fair we will have to see if something changes. If some, a few, or many, take their message to heart. There is not a technological component, except for the pictures captured by Jeanne and Mike, their teachers, as they documented the process. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see one emerge, as I am the Technology Teacher.

Cyber Safety Projects In Progress

Now that we are back in school it is interesting to see how the projects discussed over the summer are coming to fruition. As with any project that moves from theory to reality, there have been many revisions. Here is an overview of some of the projects that are happening around the community.In second grade we have started with cyber safety.
We started by using the site Footprints.com. The first thing we realized is that the video was not sensitive to all of our students. The movie has great information in a format that is accessible and enjoyed by the students, but it is not diverse. Furthermore, one of the pieces of information to keep safe is mother’s maiden name. The term maiden name is explained as the name your mom had before she married your father. In our community, with students from all types of families, this comment was unacceptable. We adapted the sheet we are using for the students to compile the information they are keeping safe to read: “parent’s name” but also decided that these videos could not work for us. We have chosen to use another site and have the students work through the information with us. We also discussed having the students create appropriate videos for their peers. This is a project we are thinking of tackling in the winter as the teachers delve into the unit on communication. Finding materials that represent diversity and are inclusive to all member of our community remains a continuous problem.
Third grade has also started working on cyber safety. We are creating Internet Passports. We are filling the passports with the information the students can share on the Internet, a place to keep usernames and passwords, avatars and what they learn about cyber safety. We kicked this off with PBS Rules of the Road. The students will continue to use the passports to keep information on how to identify a reliable site and finally what they learn from the sites they visit.
Fourth grade started off the year with a photo scavenger hunt and then jumped into creating public service announcements on cyber citizenship and safety. After watching a Disney Video we got to work crafting our messages. Students are struggling with using video and narration to convey a message. It is fabulous to see them reach beyond their comfort level, take risks and keep trying. There is a large amount of scaffolding but the growth is evident.
I am working with Middle School teams to find appropriate material for cyber safety and citizenship. Currently, I am reading over curriculum from Common Sense Media to implement throughout Sixth through Eighth grades. We will be discussing which parts of the curriculum work well in our community and what we may need to drop or transform for our needs
The school year is fast paced, and it is difficult to find the necessary time to reflect. However, there is also a certain joy to working with so many people on so many projects. As the year progresses and the work becomes more integral to the curriculum the need for more reflection will grow. Deconstruction and processing of the work we are doing will become more of a priority but harder to schedule. It is something that I will need to be more vigilant about.

Making Conncections Across the Grades

This post is a catch up post reflecting on three recent meetings and some of the work that has developed from them.
Last week I met with fifth grade to discuss how to intentionally put into the curriculum cyber safety and citizenship. Originally, I wanted to have the fourth and fifth graders create public service announcements (PSA’s) for the sixth and seventh grade to review and discuss. Middle school students would be given a form to structure feedback. Questions for the student to consider would include:

1. What is the message?
2. Have you ever seen or experienced this before?
3. How have you dealt with this?

As you can see, the goal is more to ignite a conversation. The plan was for the movies to be reviewed throughout the year and feedback given to the fourth and fifth graders. The PSA’s were to add continuous fuel to the conversation. However, there was some feeling that younger students creating for older students could be too much pressure to impress. Also inhibiting the process was the possibility of the older students teasing the younger students. It was suggested that the older students create the movies and have the younger students review the work. I have discussed this some with Roseanne Sessa, who has been working this summer from the middle school perspective. We are looking for the best place to meld this into the middle school curriculum. As I reflected on this, a further concern occurred to me. Younger students creating movies for middle school students, for the most part, will not cross lines of age inappropriateness. However, do we ask the middle school students, if this is in fact the direction we move in, to be aware of the age of their audience? Does this help or hinder the conversation? Also, how will the student feedback form work to spark conversation? Will it work at all? This is an area that I would love any and all feedback, please. If you have an idea, a thought or a suggestion, please post it below so we can all benefit.
We also discussed the most natural fit for cyber safety and citizenship. This needs to be an ongoing conversation so both wellness and social studies were identified as areas this discussion could fit in. Speaking of social studies, we talked about what technology would further student learning. Jane and Anne plan to do government first, so we will be looking intently at campaign advertisements in print and on the screen. This is a perfect place to weave in media literacy. Since the elections will be happening at the same time students are studying government we will be able to gather real time information about the process and how this affects the students.
Anne and Jane are also exploring the use of a blog for student writing. As earlier posts have indicated, this is becoming more of a common tool throughout AFS. For instance sixth grade social studies is planning on using a social network to gather information for the students on what they are learning. Embedded in this network will be blogs. One of the purposes of the blog is for students to have a place to go for big ideas that have been developed. Students will take turns as the class scribe, responsible for collecting and posting notes. Another use is for the students to work in discussion groups, with one person responsible for summarizing the group’s posts.
If fifth grade incorporates the blog as well, we are adding another scaffold to the process. But what is really great about this whole process is that second grade wants the students to have more of a voice in their classroom blogs. With this in mind the teachers are going to write blog posts with the students, beginning as a whole class activity. Students actively participate in their blog while learning how to write for a larger audience. This is exciting because we are beginning to see this writing form develop across the curriculum and the grades. Creating blogs as a class is a perfect modeling of the skill while having a chance to actively participate. Since the three classes mentioned are using the blogs for different purposes, students coming up the grades will be able to see the tool from different perspectives.
Second grade is also planning on doing a Community unit with a Jenkintown focus. This dovetails nicely with the government unit fifth grade wants to do, also within Jenkintown. Second grade would still prefer not to use Twitter however, would like to follow another second grade class blog. I have developed connections in New Zealand and British Columbia and will be able to help establish that connection.
A new unit for second grade is the History of Communication. Sandy, Jeanne and Betsy plan to explore with the students how communication has changed throughout the years and the effects of the changing communication. This is a developing unit that has a lot of potential for teaching media literacy.
I had the opportunity to work again with Andrea about the third grade and the work that has happened thus far this summer. As I stated in an earlier post, the six areas of technology that are happening in the school, was a larger part of our discussion.
We also talked about third grade specifically. Cyber citizenship and safety are an important part of the curriculum in third grade for me. This is a time when students will transition into becoming much more independent school netizens
At a previous meeting with both Andrea and Felix we also discussed creating a PowerPoint for their animal research projects, and using iMovie again for Family History.
This summer is quickly winding down. Connections and opportunities are beginning to show. I am starting to have a better understanding of where we have the opportunity to create transformative moments using technology. We aren’t there yet, but it is on the horizon.

Beginning to Synthesize

The summer is already coming to an end and here I am feeling unfinished.  Three weeks spent working, reading, studying, meeting with teachers and administrators not to mention all the time put in both before and after the official three weeks from home. And still I feel as though I am only just beginning to establish a cohesive picture of what technology education looks like from kindergarten through eighth grade at AFS.  

This fellowship started with two major goals: map where we are and define where we want to go. I definitely have a better picture in lower school as to what is happening in almost every grade.  There remain holes, even at this late hour mostly because one to two hour conversations barely allow us to peek into the world of the students as they process across a year at any level.  In middle school, the many teachers that are actually part of the student’s educational journey in one week let alone the whole three years further complicate this.  However, together we have created at least an outline of the tools used by the students and teachers in all grades. I know they are not yet all published. All maps will be available, hopefully before the end of the summer.

From this research of current practice, coupled with conversations with teachers, reading and studying across the web I have developed an outline of the six major ways technology is integrated throughout the curriculum.  This is an unfinished work in progress and will be continually updated. The goal is to eventually have this information for all grades defined in one space attached to a calendar. This will allow us to easily see the progression of our students, educational career.  This is not a map of 21^st century skills but instead specific to technology although 21^st century skills are naturally embedded, they do not live here alone.

The schema delineates six areas of technology in our curriculum:

1.     Digital Citizenship and Safety

2.     Media Literacy

3.     Internet Research

4.     Software Proficiency

5.     Programming

6.     Keyboarding

Most of this was already in the curriculum, such as the Internet Research, Programming (Scratch) and Software Proficiency.  However, as there are no longer any formed tech classes there is a need to know where the skills are being embedded into the curriculum and what teachers can reasonably expect their students to be able to do when they come into their classes. Other skills such as Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship will need to have an intentional and spiraling focus through out the life of the student as they progress through the years. As I said in an earlier post, I felt this was a glaring omission and one I would like to fix.

There are other ways of approaching the curriculum that are not listed here, including e learning or learning online, design and gaming.  I thought that we should start with what we are doing and where we can move reasonably in the next few years.  For now these skills, as well as others live under other headings including Media Literacy and Software Proficiency.  As we continue to grow as a school this map will adapt to grow with us.

On a personal note, I know that I have not been so prolific a writer as of late and there have been several meetings and progress that has not been noted.  I hope to catch up over the next week before I go away with my family. I appreciate your support and patience as I work through this process over the next few weeks and the upcoming school year.

3:10 ALREADY?

Today was a whirlwind of conversations. I had the opportunity to meet with Raji and Kathy, our Kindergarten team. Unscheduled tech time gives us the opportunity to work together to create learning experiences for the children that will use tech as a way to enhance their teaching goals as well in a developmentally appropriate fashion. This summer we are purchasing ten digital cameras for Kindergarten to share between the two classes. The teachers are going to use the cameras to help create curricular moments. We discussed what developmentally appropriate technology looks like in the kindergarten setting. At this age children need to see teachers model technology as a tool. We are reaching out to other kindergarten classes in the hopes of making connections beyond the walls of AFS. Sharing videos that allow students to see in action a particular concept or event is another way computers can be used in the Kindergarten Class. Do teachers need to have a computer in the classroom for students to use? It is my preference that the teachers use the Mac laptops when they decide to use computers with students. Macs have a fairly intuitive interface. The icons on the dock make it easier for nonreaders to identify programs. When a student works on a technology focused project, such as creating nametags we are going to ask the third grade partners to work with them. This way the children will have one to one support and the third graders can strengthen their present knowledge.
I also had the opportunity to work with the fourth grade. We discussed the need to kick off word processing early in the year. The hope is that we will begin with the fourth and fifth grades and work our way back. As I stated in an earlier post, we are also going to implement a unit on digital safety, citizenship and footprint. It is important that we begin this conversation early in the year and then continually come back to the various topics it encompasses. We are hoping to have the fourth and fifth grade create public service announcements, quick one-minute message we intend to share with sixth and seventh grade. The Middle School students will view them to see if the message is clear. Feedback will be given back to the fourth and fifth graders. The duel purpose of this is to spark conversations throughout the year as well as work on media literacy skills including creating and interpreting content.
As I come to the final days of my structured time for this fellowship I am ever aware of how much work is still ahead. I have opened several strands and feel that there are areas that need deeper exploration. I always understood that this would not be a three-week process, but more like a three-week beginning. I will continue to work on this throughout the year and look forward to hearing from more voices as the summer comes to an end.

Meetings, meetings, meetings.

Yesterday was a day of many meetings. So many that I really needed to go home and process before I could post coherently. In the book some of us are reading together this summer, Curriculum 21: Essential Education in a Changing World, Jacobs strongly recommends reviewing the curriculum for relevance. I thought this was a wonderful idea when I read it and still do, but wow it is hard to actually do. Everyone has an opinion, a well thought out, based on years of experience opinion. And sometimes these opinions clash or need to be re-evaluated. Okay, enough stalling on to the meat of it.
If you have been reading this blog, you know that last week when I sat with fifth grade we discussed using Scratch, especially in the younger grades. The key question was: “Are second graders learning integers and the Cartesian plane through Scratch?” I opened myself up for this as I listed these under the skills section. We revisited this in my meeting with the second grade teachers who wanted to reevaluate whether it was developmentally appropriate, especially the use of negative numbers. This really haunted me throughout the last twenty four hours because I have been using Scratch successfully with the second grade for the last three years. I spent a long time on the Internet last night researching developmentally appropriate math and reflecting on my experiences as a classroom teacher, a technology teacher and my continued learning in this area. For me the question is, “Will my teaching Scratch and introducing integers and the Cartesian plane be detrimental to students learning in the future?”
“Fostering Children’s Mathematical Power” by Jerome Baroody speaks directly to the question of integers and young children. He cautions that students need to understand that the symbols used to show positive and negative numbers are not operations. Additionally, he feels that the introduction of negative numbers is dependent on the development of the child.
“In general, primary children can be introduced to negative numbers if done in a developmentally appropriate manner.” (p. 8-23)
“Ideally, a discussion of negative numbers would arise from a genuine need of such numbers.” (p. 8-23)

Scratch gives children an authentic environment to
begin exploring negative numbers on a visual plane. Children have a built in need to use the x axis and y axis to plan the animation of their sprites. My own experience is that Scratch is a way to differentiate learning of this concept. For some students there is the almost automatic understanding that certain planes on the grid are only positive or negative. For others, it is simply a way of defining a point and although they are using the plane they don’t further explore value. I don’t teach using negative numbers beyond the idea that they represent a place on the plane. Whenever students move their mouse the exact position of the cursor is noted in the lower right hand corner of their stage. (This is where they position the sprites.)

Can the children really work the program? As with anything else there are those that excel and those that need a lot of support, however, the critical mass can create basic animations. Here is a sampling of work done by this past year’s second graders:





What have I learned?

1. It is really important for my communication with classroom teachers to be clear. Now that I am going into their classrooms I think this will be easier as we work together to create relevant curriculum.
2. I need to be more aware of the language I am using when I introduce material to students. Anne helped me to identify better words to use to ensure that I don’t cause confusion. I will definitely be more aware of this in the future. For instance, defining negative numbers as numbers that come before zero is wrong, and instead I should use the term less than to help the students begin to understand the concept. Additionally, I want to make sure that I use the words positive and negative and not plus or minus.
3. Scratch is a valuable tool for giving students authentic practice with math concepts. It is also a great opportunity to help students learn how pervasive math is in our lives and how to problem solve.

Okay, I already knew/believed that last one but wanted to throw it out there anyway.
On a different topic that once again went back to a conversation I had last week, we discussed the value of Twitter in the classroom. Is it a worthwhile tool for students? I don’t recommend students in second grade having a Twitter account, however I think we have a wonderful opportunity to model using Twitter as a tool. I had hoped for classrooms to create Twitter connections with other schools. The idea was a low level investment of time posting relevant information we are learning and discovering what other students are learning throughout the year. The hope was that meaningfully relevant curricular collaboration would ensue. Why not use blogs? I thought this would be too time consuming for teachers to maintain on a regular basis. However, I am not opposed to creating and following other blogs around the world.
What are your thoughts on this discussion?
On to Middle School and the best place to introduce Digital Citizenship. Where and when do we introduce it? How do we continue to stoke the discussion? Do we keep it mainly in the MESSFlex (Math, English, Science, Social Studies flexible time)? Do we use advisory time? How much time will we need? The idea of using MESSFlex for issues pertaining to plagiarism and piracy was proposed as a natural fit and safety, citizenship and digital footprints in advisory. However a counter argument was made that all should take place in MESSFlex because there is more time available and the students need to have the same message brought to them from different disciplines to ensure there is real learning. This is a conversation still in progress.
Finally, I met with the first grade yesterday and began to consider what makes sense with their curriculum. What can we keep? What do we need to re-evaluate or postpone? We are beginning our year with a PowerPoint based on a book the students write about themselves. This is a rework of a project that first graders have been doing in the tech lab. The students will create the book first in the traditional way and then from the book create a PowerPoint, exploring how to use multiple ways of telling a story. We are going to continue with the story theme and students will again create movies sharing the content they learn about Day of the Dead. This will begin shortly after the unit wraps up and we will work together on a daily basis for a week or two.
Again, it was amazing to work with teachers, share what I have been doing in the lab and aligning it better with what happens in their classroom. There is some anxiety on both sides. For me there is the sense that this is what I have been doing, and everyone has an opinion on what is the best way to do it and what is developmentally appropriate. The great thing about working with teachers is I get to make my curriculum better. The hard part is my practice is under a microscope and for someone who often inhabits the world of insecurity it can be a little scary.
I appreciate all your thoughts, suggestions and challenges. It is a growing process.

Sixth Grade Social Studies

Two days ago I met with our Sixth Grade Social Studies Teacher, Mark. Mark’s themes of the class are Bias and Perspective and his essential Questions are:
1. What is bias?
2. How do bias and perspective affect history?
There are two major units in the class, one on the Romans and another on Medieval Times. Additionally, Mark covers smaller units on the Mongols and the Vikings. Skills Mark emphasizes in class include note taking and how to conduct research. Mark has two areas that he wants to work on this year:
• A more intentional integration of current events that he can parallel with the units he studies.
• An online space the students can use to keep gathered information and changing ideas as they grow throughout the year.
There were two resources that seemed to fit into the need to emphasize current events as well as begin to give students a more global perspective. This is exciting for me because it is authentic use for the technology as well as emphasizing a skill we are hearing is more of a necessity everyday – global perspective. Also, I love the idea of paralleling some of the events happening around the world today with what the students are studying in history. Global Voices is a blog space developed by Ethan Zuckerman. He explained his reasoning for creating this blog on TED. There is also a journal from England that was recommended, Understanding Global Issues. I have read in other online communities that this journal is written in accessible and easy to understand language and is unbiased. There is a free copy that can be reviewed on line and it seems inexpensive.
We reviewed WackWall, a social networking environment that doesn’t (yet) have an age limit listed in the terms of service. This is a ning like environment that is still in beta. Like most freeware in beta the user should expect some glitches, but normally when testing a beta tool there is also a high degree of technical support-at least that has been my experience.
The actual use of the online environment is still being worked out. Since Mark doesn’t use a textbook, he does want the space to be a place students can reference notes. His vision is to have a student responsible for recapping important points discussed in class. It could also be a place to post resources for the students. We also discussed using the space to have students converse about central topics in the class including perspective and bias. Since this is going to be an exceptionally busy year for Mark professionally, he needs to have a way to keep up with the conversations without having the discourse become overwhelming. Online group work could help him manage the student posts more easily. Essentially the way this works is to break the students in to small groups and have them form smaller online communities. One student is responsible for monitoring the conversation and posting a summary reflection of the points discussed. This would have to be modeled in class and may take a while for students to get down the process. The skills the students develop in this process, reading for understanding, picking out main points and synthesizing information as well as communicating the information to a larger audience are valuable. Grouping also relieves students of the burden of having to follow all of the online discussion.
Mark’s responsibility becomes one of mostly reading, picking out points that he wants to either emphasize or clarify in class face to face. As long as Mark brings back topics discussed on line in the class, the students will be aware that he is reading the discussion and considers it to be valuable.
Assessment was the piece touched on in the meeting. How does Mark evaluate the online discussions? How does he grade the process of the work done by the students? I’m not sure what other modes of assessment are employed in this class; so that is something I need to ascertain. For students I think a short punch list will help them structure their work and may change dependent on the nature of the work. However it may include something like this:

• Did I fully answer the question?
• Did I support my answer with examples from the class or text?
• Did I spell check my work?
• Does my work make sense?

Another punch list would need to be developed for responses and could include the following:

• Did I explain my agreement or disagreement?
• Did I support my reasoning?
• Did I spell check my work?

For these lists short and direct works best. As I reflect on the above post/response model I am thinking about a recent post by Alfie Kohn. He writes about transitioning our teaching practice from having students take an “adversarial” position on a topic and transform that to one of evolving thinking and understanding. It is something to think about.
Mark’s assessment can take several tacks and will depend on what he is actually evaluating. If he wants to make sure all salient points from class are understood he can evaluate the weekly scribe from that perspective and can create a rubric to support this process. He can also have group grades based on the summary posts of the group. The person summarizing group response would change every week. It will be harder for him to determine how students understand the impact of perspective and bias from summary posts of information, however if he lurks on the blog he will glean some of this information. The digital recording of the information will give him a place to go to check student understanding. A component of posting in a timely manner would also be reflected in the grade. Online learning environments work through different topics throughout the year. This necessitates having a starting and ending date for discussions where students are not expected to revisit conversations once they have come to an end. This frees students from having to keep up on too many conversations at one time.