Teaching Content through Technology

I have been struggling to consistently integrate ICT into my daily classroom program for the last 3 years.

Now I know what is missing in my classroom practice! According to Mishra & Koehler, 2006 I need a new special kind of expertise: TPACK! (Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.)

"True technology integration is understanding and negotiating the relationships between these three components of knowledge. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator)."

When I first started reading this article, my first thought was: 'Yeah, right. I've got to figure out the new curriculum, get my head around National Standards, meet assessment deadlines, and then still have expert content, pedagogical and technological knowledge.'

So how does this relate to the reality of teaching in my classroom?

Let's take Writing. I may need to teach the text type Recount Writing. First step would be to find out about the text form. I will need to look up resources such as exemplars, matrices and language features for a Recount. (Content). After that I need to decide how I'm going to teach the framework in such a way that my Year 5's will get it, and be able to apply the knowledge. I may use different strategies, like modelling, scaffolding, writing frames, peer-writing or collaborative writing. (Pedagogy). Now I can decide which ICT tool is best suited to meeting my needs. I may decide to let them blog about an event, create a ComicLife recount, or have different options for different ability or interest levels within my class. (Technology)

The paradigm shift has to take place in my head first. I need to get away from the idea there is only one tried and trusted way to teach specific content. And after 22 years of teaching, that is a real challenge. Fortunately the Digital Natives that I teach have no boundaries or pre-determined expectation of how their learning should be presented. To illustrate this point, I will share what happened in my class this week: I needed to have my students give evidence in their ePortfolios of how well they had reached the goal of 'being able to apply a range of word-identification strategies'. We talked about it for a while, and I had them make individual lists of the strategies they were using. They then explained the strategies to each other. The kids got the idea of putting their ideas on a poster. "Fine", said I, "get out the sheets of coloured paper". The horror on their faces! "Why?" they asked. "Why can't we just do it in Glogster?" Why indeed? They could. And they did - every single on of them managed just fine, without any support from me. What's more, they could continue work on their glogs at home, and are commenting on each other's work in a positive way.

This is a prime example of TPACK. I have managed to transfer my knowledge of Word Identification Strategies to my pupils, I have used effective pedagogy to have them self-assess their knowledge, and I have taught them a techology tool which they could effectively use to illustrate their skills.



Image: http://tpack.org/


Reference: Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2008). Introducing Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. In AACTE (Eds.). The Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Educators.Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Ten Tops Tips for Teaching with NET

"Innovation is the process of altering existing practice in order to achieve more effectively certain desired learning outcomes" (Fullan, 1985). You can read a summary of his book here. Without these three dimensions of change in ICT, these desired outcomes are not likely:

• Teaching materials
• Teaching strategies
• Teaching beliefs

These days we are extremely fortunate in that materials for teaching are readily available online. Our biggest challenge in the classroom is implementing our known strategies in new ways, and adjusting our beliefs to accommodate the new set of skills our 21st Century Learners need.

To help you in your quest to be a 'change agent' the George Lucas Foundation has posted a handy booklet, Ten Top Tips for Teaching with New Media, on it's website. You can download it for free, and it's choc-a-block full of tips for integrating ICT in the classroom:

What's Inside:

• Break the Digital Ice
• Find Your Classroom Experts
• Get Off to a Good Start
• Think Globally
• Find What You Need
• Make Meaning from Word Clouds
• Work Better, Together
• Open a Back Channel
• Make It Visual
• Use the Buddy System

I've been using some of these strategies and tools in my classroom, and they certainly do make integrating ICT into the daily program much easier. There are also heaps of ideas and websites, that I'm looking forward to trying out!

The next challenge of course, is getting the school to let me try out all these new and exciting disruptive innovations (Clayton, 1995)....!

Image: http://www.edutopia.org/ten-top-tips

The Digital Generation

Mark Prensky (2001) so aptly describes the new generation of learners as 'Digital Natives'. This video illustrates beautifully just how seemlessly our learners are immersing themselves in the New Educational Technologies.




Read what I had to say about the Digital Native / Digital Immigrant debate in a previous post: I'ld rather be a Digital Pioneer.

Video retrieved from:
http://www.schoolwaxtv.com/welcome-digital-generation
Reference:
Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved 9 August 2008 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Cool Tools for Classes!

Kellow (2007) discusses some of the difficulties with using computers for Inquiry learning.  I've found a cool new tool for creating interactive games that could be used successfully in Inquiry Learning. It's called Classtools, and I used it today, both for a reading comprehension task, and for a general knowledge quiz we're getting ready for. Best of all, my kids helped me set it all up in no time at all!

My class has had a very disrupted week, with me being away for two days, and a number of other out of the ordinary activities happening around the school. I wanted a Friday afternoon activity that would be short, but that would have a high level of engagement for all levels. Creating our interactive games certainly did the trick!

You can see the comprehension game on my class blog, Sparkle. It's based on a fun newspaper article that we read this morning, and is loosely based on the comprehension facts we focused on, as well as on some of the vocabulary we learned. It took as long to create as it takes to type in the ten questions and answers!

We are also getting ourselves ready for a New Zealand General Knowledge quizz which is being held schoolwide, and my class have been learning hard! Using the Flashcard Generator tool we've been able to create an interactive game based on the first 10 questions, and on Monday each group will take a section of the rest of the questions, create the games and then embed them onto our class website, which runs on KnowledgeNet. Here's the one we did collaboratively:

(To get the full benefit, you will have to click 'play' in the full screen version. You will have the choice of several games! Go on, have a look!)
Quiz One

Click here for full screen version

There must be loads of other uses for this cool tool, and I'm looking forward to looking at some more of the templates shown. (You can read more about this in the July Interface magazine on p37.)

Kellow, J. M. (2007). Inquiry learning in an ICT-rich environment.
Computers in New Zealand. Schools, 19(1), 24-31

Back to the future with Skype Screen Share!

My class and one of my fellow students, Debbie McSkimming's class, just had the most awesome Skype audioconference! The Year 7 and 8's from her school are studying 'What's New?' and my Year 5's were eager to share the technology we have been using!

Both Debbie and I stayed well in the background, and the whole call was run by the kids. We knew what questions were going to be asked, which was just as well, as we were having sound difficulties.

From my side it was really easy, as I just had to get the kids on the mat, let the office know to do no speaker calls, and plug in my laptop to the Smartboard. I know Debbie had to book a room, and maybe she can tell you herself how her technical setup worked.

I had the new version of Skype downloaded, and it has a great new feature: Screen Sharing. My kids were able to share their projects, like digital animations, digital storybooks, blogs, Glogs and so on, by just sharing our screen. How cool is that!

As a child I remember watching Star Trek and they had all sorts of special communication methods, long before Skype. Remember? Well, beam me up Scotty ... we're in the future!

Learn IT! Teach IT!

I found this super website off Larry Ferlazzo's website of the day blog. (A great resource for ESOL teachers!)

It's called Learn IT - Teach IT, and it has loads of information for teachers to implement Web 2.0 tools into their daily practice. The videos and 'How To's' should be really helpful for use for teachers and for students. Have a look!

Let me know what you think!

Te Reo Maori Week

As many New Zealanders will know, this week is Te Reo Maori week. (Maori is the indigenous language of New Zealand.) Each year at our school we have a school wide Maori lesson for every day during this week. In the past it has been done in various ways, but this year one of our ICT lead teachers, Kerry Tetupu, has used her students to present the lessons in a really inventive way!


Korero Mai

Each day's lesson has been made available in video format on the server. Teachers merely have to drag the day's lesson on to their desktop, and show it using the IWBs or dataprojectors that we have in every class. The whole school participates at the same time.

Our students were able to participate in the Waiata, the lesson itself and the karakia at the end. Words of the song and key vocabulary are included, and the presenters have been really good at creating long enough pauses, so that the students watching can interact, and repeat terms and words. They have even used praise and motivation, to encourage their learners! These video's have been scripted, filmed and edited by the children themselves. Each lesson includes a seperate digital story, in the form of a podcast, that was scripted and created by the students themselves. A competition question is asked at the end of each video, and a daily winner for each year group is announced later in the day by that morning's presenters, using our speaker system.

The videos are currently being uploaded onto a wiki, and I will add a link to it as soon as possible.

Well done to Kerry, and to Room 22. Ka Pai!

Share your links with Sharetabs

For my online university paper on Literacy (EDPROFST 702) I'm looking at ideas to use for teaching phonics to struggling readers. I needed a tool where I can list all the websites I've found. Usually I use my De.lici.ous account, but reading Hey.Milly's blog I got the idea to use Sharetabs.

Here are some interesting games and links that can be used for Phonics. I prepared this list using Sharetabs. I can see this tool being quite useful in class for inquiry or when wanting to focus on a specific skill for a specific group. My tabs are here.

ShareTabs - Share your links as tabs

What other uses can you think of for this tool?

Skype in the classroom

We have been experimenting with using Skype video calls quite a bit in the classroom lately, and I have found it to be such a useful tool.

The added bonus is that I have 100% student participation and focus! I use the interactive whiteboard, with a MacBook with built in webcam for our calls, so all the students can see the video, and can see the participant on our side.

Last year I Skyped my cousin, a quadriplegic,who I had grown up with in Zimbabwe. Until the very end of the conversation the students did not realise that he was physically disabled. We spoke about his childhood and growing up in Africa. He also told them that as a child I had stolen his ice-cream, which delivered roars of laughter, and made it all very real for my students.

Last term we were having a look at World Geography. I contacted my 14 year old nephew in Michigan, and my class were able to ask him questions about the climate, population, schooling and so on. What worked really well, was that we planned the questions before hand, and I forwarded them to him, so that he could prepare answers. Each child had a turn to introduce him/herself and then asked the question assigned to him. We practiced listening and responding to the answers. At the end of the conference some of my boys performed the haka for him, which was a great hit at the other end! I have many other friends all over the world, and if I repeat this unit, I will certainly draw on my contacts to talk to my students about their countries!

This term we are focusing more on health and body issues. Yesterday we had a call to a colleague, Sue Hodge, who is at home with a back injury. She had a discussion with the students about back injuries, possible treatments and prevention. Although we had not prepared questions this time, it went really well, and the student participation was once again excellent.

Success depends very much on good organization. You need to have informed the participant on the other side of your learning intentions, and what type of questions they can expect.Remember to work out the time difference and agree on a suitable time and date! America is particularly tricky, as the time difference can be up to 16 hours! Also make sure that your students are prepared with questions, and understand what procedure is being used. A chat about protocols and ettiquette, and also interview techniques is very important. I like to send a quick chat message about half an hour before our call, just to make sure the participant is standing by, and that connectivity is OK.

I'm looking forward to Skyping more often, and will keep you posted. I would love to hear from anyone else that has used Skype in an interesting way!

I found this interesting post by Vicky Davis (Coolcat Teacher blog) on how she has implemented Skype in her classroom: Skype in the Classroom. She has a great video, so have a look!

Skype to Singapore

I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Singapore last week, but it overlapped with an exciting ICT expo hosted by my school. Fortunately Alicia and I had a plan!

The two of us hosted a breakout called 'Skype to Singapore' and delegates were able to set up their Skype account, learn to use text and video functions, and take part in a live audio-conference with me in Singapore and Alicia hosting from Auckland.

We had really good feedback, and delegates were excited about the ability to have first hand real time experience in the use of Skype!

Of course, I breathed a sigh of relief that the hotel's rather unstable wireless kept going for the entire 45 minutes!