This is the follow up post of the survey results I shared in “Do Student Jobs in the Classroom Affect Learning?”

The concept of the Digital Learning Farm is based on Alan November’s work.

Years ago, when farms dominated our landscape, children were responsible for performing meaningful jobs that were vital to each family’s success. Depending on their age, children would care for animals, repair farm equipment, prepare food to sell at local markets and more. Children were essential to the very survival of the family. At the same time, these jobs taught children the value of hard work, leading them to become more productive citizens within their communities as adults. [...]

If our children are to grow up to make important contributions to our society,it is essential that we provide them with powerful tools and experiences across the curriculum. This will require a new culture of teaching and learning that engages students as contributors.

The Digital Learning Farm

I have taken Alan’s call to engage students as contributors to heart. Coupled with the desire to put learning, not passing quizzes and exams, at the heart of a classroom learning community, I keep 21st century skills, literacies and Digital Learning Farm’s roles to empower our learners in mind at all times.

Mr. Curran outlines on his Classroom Blog of Room 302, the different teams and responsibilities his students participate in each week. I love the thought that went into setting his teams up and by the look of his blog the consistency he integrated the roles into his classroom (instead of being a one-time project).

• Official Scribes–Each week the official scribes take notes on the things we are reading and learning. They post these notes to an internet page that everyone can view if they want to review what we’ve been doing.
• Global Collaboration Team–This team is in charge of making contact with classrooms around the globe. They will be emailing other teachers and classes, trying to make as many contacts world-wide as possible. They will also be managing any projects that we’re working on with other classes. Finally, they’ll be keeping track on several maps so that we have a record of where the schools and people we’ve contacted live. Oh, and they’ll have a blog they have to post to, too!
• Society Contribution Team–This team will select a fundraising project to work on. To do this, they will use the website www.kiva.org. Kiva is a site set up for donors to locate projects around the globe to help to fund. (e.g. building a school in a poor town in Africa, etc.) Once they choose a project to help, they’ll manage the fundraising. Oh, and they’ll blog about it, too.
• Research Team--We have a class of curious thinkers. And they have lots and lots of questions. Every week, the Research Team will collect our questions and post them to our class “Wonderwall.” Then they will help find the answers to those questions. They’ll also be given certain research tasks along the way to complete so that they build their research skills.
• Learning Documentary Producers–Each week this team will produce a “learning documentary” of all the things we’ve learned about and done during those school days. They’ll produce a podcast and post it to the web so that everyone can see the exciting things we work on from week-to-week.

The following are references to websites and blog posts that show The Digital Learning Farm concept with its roles to empower student learners in action.

Ethical Treatment of Animals (7th Grade)- Contributors to Society, Researchers, Collaboration Coordinators, Curriculum Reviewers

7th graders wanted to learn and understand how humans in our society treat animals today. To gather the information, they interviewed two veterinarians and representatives of different associations and local businesses concerning their research. They hope that the people that take the time to read their website will benefit from the information and then pass it along to another person. Their  hope is that their research will help inspire people to treat animals with respect and understanding.

Navigating our Classsroom Blog Tutorial (2nd Grade)- Tutorial Designers

After the classroom teachers started to use a classroom blog as the primary means of communication between school and home, the importance of teaching parents how to navigate the new blog environment. Second grade students took it upon themselves to create a video tutorial for their parents explaining to them the basic blog vocabulary and navigataion of their classroom blog.

Quality Commenting (3rd Grade)- Tutorial Designers, Collaboration Coordinators, Contributors to Society

The first Seminole Swamp Morning Show. Students interviewed several bloggers of our school community to learn about quality commenting. They formulated questions, storyboarded, wrote scripts and recorded a news show to share with the world.

Jacksonville: For Kids by Kids (3rd Grade)- Collaboration Coordinators, Contributors to Society, Curriculum Reviewers

As part of their unit about “Our Community”, students wrote a script and recorded a video to suggest places to visit and things to do in Jacksonville, Florida. Recommendations for kids by kids.

Jacksonville Reads (3rd Grade)- Collaboration Coordinators, Contributors to Society

In the third installment of the Seminole Swamp Morning Show, students interviewed members of our city’s community regarding their reading habits and their favorite childhood books. From the mayor of Jacksonville, a police officer, a chef, a 100-year old man to the city’s baseball team’s mascot.

Math Tutorial Designers (4th Grade)- Tutorial Designers, Contributors to Society, Curriculum Reviewers

We asked our students to create a tutorial explaining multiplication to peers, future fourth graders of our school, etc. We started out with a lesson on Becoming good Tutorial Designers to show them examples of tutorial design techniques as well as to give them an understanding of the importance of clear and precise step by step directions.

Florida Explorers (4th Grade)- Researchers, Official Scribe

4th graders created a storybook, using Mixbook , where students contributed different parts from a common storyline. Students collaboratively worked on ideas for a possible storyline and how each explorer would be represented and how groups would be able to research and contribute their portion of a story.

Christopher Columbus Creates 21st Century Explorers (5th Grade) Researchers, Contributors to Society, Curriculum Reviewers, Collaboration Coordinators, Official Scribe

Follow along an “upgrade” process from textbook to globally connected learning. Students connect via email, face-to-face interviews, online surveys, Twitter and Skype with people from around the world to learn about different perspectives of one historic figure. They research, analyze and share their learning in a

Facebook Pages for American Revolution & American Revolution Myths (5th Grade) Researchers

Students showed their research and knowledge about historic figures of the American Revolutionby creating a fake facebook profile page. Since the students are under the age of 13, they created them offline in a PowerPoint slide, which we later uploaded to their classroom blog. In addition to the Facebook pages, the class  created a Snopes- Urban Legends inspired video. What myths about the American Revolution could they debunk? Students used the a range of programs (their choice)  to produce a short intro video

It’s About Learning Style and Collaboration (5th Grade) Official Scribe, Researchers

5th graders experiment with different types of note taking as part of creating “Official Scribes” for the classroom while taking into account the students’ different learning styles. From individual note taking with paper and pencil, individual note taking on a word processor, collaborative backchanneling to visual note taking (on SmartBoard and paper)

Tutorial Designers- Empowered Learners- Contributors (5h Grade) Tutorial Designers

We divided a 5th grade class into two groups (Quantity vs. Quality) and asked them to create a Grammar tutorial/practice for “Contractions” with the SmartBoard notebook for the first graders of our school. The Quantity group had to create as many separate tutorial/practice slides as possible, while the other group was told only to turn in ONE slide with a perfect tutorial/practice.

Taking Notes- Summarizing Information (2nd Grade) Official Scribe

2nd graders are learning about different communities. As they are watching a video they are learning to take notes in different ways. From paper, pencil and clipboard to “screenshooting” visuals that will be organized and categorized in a Venn Diagram.

Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking-Information Scribes (Middle School) Official Scribe

Middle School students watch a movie about copyright as they are using Today’s Meet as a backchannel tool. Collaboratively they create the “perfect notes”, then review the content by formatting, editing and organizing the information.

Take a look at these third graders who are creating their own “textbooks” on LiveBinder (3rd Grade) Curriculum Reviewers, Contributors to Society

Michael Thornton decided to have his students create their own “textbooks” using Livebinders.  ” The class and I go over the curriculum and/or standards.  We discuss what it is they are expected to learn.  Now armed with that knowledge, they find websites that fulfill what is expected of them.  In addition, they search for websites that engage, enlighten and enrich their learning.    This year my students created four unit “textbooks”.  I am going to continue this process with my new students next year.  In addition, these current textbooks are adaptable and will change with time.  This was a specific request from my students.”

If you have written about or documented “The Digital Learning Farm” in action, please leave a link in the comments. It is important to gather examples and resources to model for others.

Through a tip from Twitter, I requested a beta invite from a promising new iPad app called ShowMeApp

It promised to screen capture AND upload the video recording AND then provide me with an embed code. That ability was the one that caught my attention. I have been working with several grade levels over the course of the school year to Become Good Tutorial Designers. Although the emphasis for the younger students is learning how to envision and script step by step tutorials, it has been a challenge to easily produce them. From capturing media with digital cameras, Flip videos, SmartBoard notebook software, Skitch (Screen capture), Garageband (audio), etc. to importing, editing, converting and then uploading them has been somewhat of a hassle ( and there is NEVER enough time!). The more we can hand the process over to the students, the better!

Although ShowMeApp suggests the following reasons for teachers and educators to use their app and community site…

• Reach more Students
• As an Online Business Card
• Being found as a Tutor

…I immediately wanted to see how easy it would be for students to use and to create simple tutorials which could then be shared on classroom blogs and/or wikis.

Initial Screen

Create your Recording

Manage your recordings: Save, upload and choose to share

Grab an embed code from Showmeapp site

We have been working with 4th grade over the last few weeks to create multiplication/Math tutorials. We are finally ready to record the tutorials. I decided last minute to give one group the option of using my iPad with the ShowMeApp. They jumped at the opportunity and immediately were into it. It was super-intuitive, no instructions or help needed from me!

Exploring the ShowmeApp

Testing out recording the script

Engaged...

Testing...Experimenting...

This group tested and experimented with timing, changing of colors and the overall flow of the step by step guide. All three members of the group were collaborating (two were recording their voices, while the third member of the group was following their directions and visualizing the solution to the problem). Towards the end of the class we had several of the other groups standing around the iPad group and observing. We need one more class for a final recording in quiet surroundings and the tutorial will be ready to go:) So stay tuned for their example (coming soon…).

Here is my initial impression of the app:

I liked:

• very intuitive
• simple interface (not many distractions)
• easy way to upload and get an embed code
• good sound quality for recordings
• can use image from photo gallery as background.

What could be improved?

• more color options including highlighter
• different brush sizes
• option to type text
• different background fill colors to choose from
• undo button
• export button of final movie clip

I am thrilled that more and more app developers are remembering that CREATING is the highest level of all Thinking Skills!

Thank you ShowMeApp, you are on the right track.

Here is another post in the series of showing Alan November’s Digital Learning Farm: Students as Contributors in Action.

Previously I have posted about

• Tutorial Designers- Empowered Learners- Contributors
• Taking Notes- Summarizing Information- 2nd Grade Style
• Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking-Information Scribes

Today I wanted to share our experimentation with different types of note taking as part of creating “Official Scribes” for the classroom while taking into account the students’ different learning styles.

Students were starting a unit about the American Revolution by watching an introductory video clip. We discussed different ways to take notes and came up with:

• individual note taking by paper and pencil
• individual note taking on a word processor
• collaborative backchanneling
• visual note taking (on SmartBoard and paper)

As the video was playing, one student was in charge of pausing it when a visual was displayed that he felt was an important visual to describe what was happening.

Once paused we used the SmartBoard notebook tool of taking a screenshot and importing it into a notebook slide. After the movie was over, the class sorted through the images and discussed which ones would stay and which ones could be deleted.

We then used a timeline from the notebook gallery and copied and pasted the appropriate screenshots onto the timeline.

I had shown a few minutes of the RSAnimated TED talk “Changing Educational Paradigms” with Ken Robinson to the students. The reason for showing it was for the drawing technique used and how the illustration captured what Robinson was talking about in a visual way. I was very surprised to see how “into it” the students got. They did not want to stop watching it. I am pretty sure that these ten year olds were not interested in Robinson’s message…

Drawing/Illustrating Notes

Visual Notes

Several students volunteered to wo(man) the backchannel on Today’s Meet. They are pretty sufficient in the process by now. They set up their own room, summarize what it happening in the classroom and then “clean up” the backchannel log (which is then shared as a Google Doc).

The more we podcast and have our students create video clips or other digital storytelling projects, the more we need to teach storyboarding as part of the process. Being able to pre-visualize how your story will unfold is becoming a vital skill to have for storytellers.

Storyboards are defined as:

Graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity.

In the book by Roger Essley “Visual Tools for Differentiating Reading & Writing Instruction: Strategies to Help Students Make Abstract Ideas Concrete and Accessible”, he says

Storyboarding, or picture writing, is the origin of all written languages, used by ancient cultures before text evolved and as a natural bridge to text. The Chinese language was built using pictographs. Egyptians used storyboards, or hieroglyphics, first etched in stone and later written on papyrus, to organize a complex society and to rule the ancient world.

Pre-Writing is defined as

Pre-writing is the first stage of the writing process, typically followed by drafting, revision, editing and publishing. Elements of prewriting may include planning, research, outlining, diagramming, storyboarding or clustering.

I have experimented with several storyboarding tools, from the paper and pencil method to iPad apps. Students and I are both finding the creation of the storyboard extremely helpful as we are collaborating on creating podcasts and movies.

I created a Word Doc, that is easily edited with the title of the storytelling project and printed out to be distributed to students. (Download the Word Doc Template)

Storyboarding Template Created in Word

We have also asked students to directly use their writing journals to storyboard their ideas for a script. Students use their storyboard to write their script in sequence and to supervise and help as we edit the movie together.

Individual Storyboarding in Journal

Storyboarding in Journal

One of my favorite places to create a storyboard together with the students in on the SmartBoard. We use the Notebook software to draw the different scenes that will need to be filmed and which actors will be participating in each scene.

Collaborative Storyboarding on SmartBoard

The following storyboard  was also created with the SmartBoard Notebook. This time we used screenshots to illustrate the images we were imagining for the green screen background replacement.

Collaborative Storyboarding with Screenshots

We printed the storyboard out for all students to have and to use as they were going to write their parts of the script. It helped them understand their individual role in the collaborative whole of the story. Once we finished recording the script (which often happened to be film completely out of sequence) , I made it a point to involve students in the editing process.

As the storyboard area of iMovie was displayed on the projector, students were using their paper storyboard printout to help me drag and drop individual video clips in the correct order , add sounds,  transitions and text. The storyboard made it possible to pull all the individually written scripts and out-of-order filmed video clips into a coherent sequence.

I am just starting to experiment with storyboard apps on my iPad. I am sure similar apps exist for the Android market or other tablet computers.

Storyboards Premium allows you to create a background scene, insert actors and text.

StoryPages HD allows you to draw your own board and add text in a different pane. You can move different pages in order on the page grid and email the final board as a pdf file.

How about inviting the Art teacher at your school to teach a lesson on storyboarding techniques to your students?

For more examples of storyboarding, take a look at the following article and posts:

• R.Alfonso’s blog EETT & Making Movies
• What Are Storyboards?
  Storyboarding, or picture writing, is the origin of all written languages. Storyboards are widely used because we know pictures combined with text offer a rich synthesis of information that can entertain and inform. The pictures in picture writing can be simple cartoons, photographs, or sophisticated technical diagrams. This technique can be an invaluable tool when differentiating reading and writing instruction….
• Differentiated Instruction: Developing a Storyboarding Classroom
  Tips on how to use visual tools, such as storyboarding, to differentiate instruction in a reading program….

As a former World Language teacher, I know of the importance of hearing the target language as much as possible. In order to internalize a new vocabulary word, you have to hear it at least 70+ times. By hearing I mean not only the sounds of the letters that make up the word, but also the context the word is embedded in… the melody of the sentence that embraces that word… the words that lead up to it and the words that follow it to make meaning and conclude the sentence.

When learning a language, it is especially important to attach a feeling to a word in order to make meaning of how it will be used in the future with maybe other words surrounding it than the ones originally learned. It is equally important to give language learners the opportunity to practice using the words, sentences and melodies and help them be comfortable in pronouncing them and feeling and hearing them come out of their mouth.

Recording a podcast and the EDITING of the podcast is a great tool, especially for language learners to play with the mechanics of the language. It gives the learners the opportunity to see their voices, read the sounds, manipulate the sequence of sentences, sounds can be deleted, edited, emphasized and re-arranged similar than a word processing program can do this with the written word.

Our second graders were learning the story of Purim a few weeks ago. Their teacher and I planned to have the students record the story as a podcast to be shared with their parents on their classroom blog. Students had had experience with podcasting the previous year as they produced Flat Stanley and a Magic Tree House podcast as first graders.

Their Jewish Studies teacher worked with each of them to write individual parts in Hebrew to create a script of the Purim Story. Collaboratively the class had to make sure that the entire story was told between them.

Then we started recording them in Garageband. We recorded each student’s sentence, but were careful to record the sentences completely out of order.

The children loved listening to their recordings over and over again. Once all the parts were recorded it was time for the students to edit the podcast file and move each clip into the correct order to tell the story of Purim.

Putting audio clips into order

We connected the computer to the SmartBoard which allowed students to come up to the board to use their fingers in order to find a certain place in the recording, play, pause, start, listen and decide to which position the clip should be moved to.

Listening Comprehension

Again, I would like to emphasize that this project was NOT about using Garageband (the tool). It was NOT about producing a podcast (the genre) . This lesson was about writing a script, listening, comprehension, collaboration, speaking skills, and fluency in the target language. The tool allowed us to manipulate sounds, re-listen, think critically and logically about the best way to present the story- all in the target language. The genre allowed us to share our work, amplify our reach, gain an authentic audience and motivate students to create and be creative.

Even if you don’t speak Hebrew, take a moment and listen to  these 7 and 8 year olds. Listen to their fluency, melody and motivation in their voices. Maybe you want to leave them a comment to let them know you “heard” them.

If a teacher is lucky enough to have a SmartBoard at their disposal, it is their responsibility to use it beyond a “glorified projector screen”. It requires a shift in thinking from the teacher’s part to see a SmartBoard not “only” as a teaching tool, but as a learning tool.

I am taking a particular look at best practices of using a SmartBoard in the World Language classroom. My interest lies in how to best teach language teachers to go beyond a “drill and kill” vocabulary-translation type exercise and to use the SmartBoard in a way that allows students to experience the target language. In order to be able to use a SmartBoard with more than lower level thinking skills (remembering) involved, the teacher will have to have basic skills in order to manipulate and existing notebook file  or create new personalized ones.

While there are many notebook files being shared for commonly taught languages such as Spanish and French, there is a lack of examples for languages such as Hebrew, Chinese, Russian or Arabic. Partly because of difficulty with the non-latin alphabet, partly because the are just “less commonly taught” languages.

Learning to Tweak SmartBoard Files

What are the most important SmartBoard skills for these ‘less commonly taught” world language teachers to learn? What are the basic skills so they can tweak notebook files that don’t work perfectly for their students? What are the skills they need to ultimately create their own files ?

1. Take a look at the main toolbar.

Become familiar with

• moving between pages (slides)
• creating new pages (slides)
• opening and saving notebook files
• copying slides or objects
• undo/redo
• deleting
• screenshade
• full screen/split screen
• screenshot

• tables
• selection pointer
• pens
• eraser
• arrows
• shapes
• bucket fill
• text

2. Organizing Content in slides/pages and groups

3. Gallery-

• searching
• Interactive and multimedia
• Pictures
• Notebook files and pages
• Background and themes

4. Object manipulation

• drag and drop
• selecting
• rotating
• resizing
• cloning
• locking
• grouping
• order

5. Screen Capture Tool

Drag the cross hair across the area of the screen that you would like to capture.

• write in your target language in another program and insert into notebook to use as any other object
• capture an image of text in your target language and insert into notebook to manipulate further

6. Video Capture Tool

Click on red button to start recording.

• record in your target language
• share and review lessons or recorded stories with your students

7. Download  and open someone else’s notebook file

• SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
• SmartBoard Exchange- Search for the name of your target language to see if any pre-made notebooks are available
• Make sure that your downloaded file has the “.notebook” extension. If it doesn’t try to rename the file by adding the extension manually in Finder or Explorer
• Tweak individual pages to customize learning for your student

8. Share your created notebook files with other teachers of your target languages

• Upload the file to your blog
• Send file as e-mail attachment to colleagues or listserve
• Offer to share files as you participate in conferences, workshops or webinars
• Submit the notebook file to a database -
  • SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
  • SmartBoard Exchange-

What are some skills you would consider important for a World Language teacher to learn in order to create, tweak and use the SmartBoard software to bring their target language to life.

We are trying to teach our students 21st Century skills and  prepare them for a world with job descriptions “we can’t even imagine yet”. You have heard this over and over again.

How come we continue to support our teachers in their own learning (through Professional Development) with the same tools and skills than educators from the 60s, 70s , 80s or 90s? We can’t just throw up a PowerPoint presentation or a SmartBoard in front of the room and call that PD of the 21 Century.

How can we expect them to upgrade their teaching if we don’t allow them to experience their own learning through a 21st Century lens?

If we, like Sir Ken Robinson call for a Learning Revolution, then this MUST include a learning revolution for teachers as well.

The way teachers learn,  directly impacts the way they teach their students.

Practice what we preach

As Professional Development providers, we must practice with our students (in this case the teachers are our students) what we preach. We need to find ways to upgrade our presentations (see my Presentation21 Make-Over) and workshops and provide our “teachers” with:

• authentic ways to try out tools
• experience collaborative & connected learning
• reflect on their learning process and how it could relate to their teaching

In order to do just that, I was able to arrange an opportunity for our faculty to be part of a Skype call with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, author of “Curriculum21- Education for a Changing World (ASCD, 2010). The book was the assigned summer reading title at our school. Questions related to different chapters were posted over the summer on our School PD Ning for guidance and encourage discussion.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

During pre-planning week, teachers had a chance to discuss the book and its application in our school further. The following day we were thrilled to be able to have Heidi Hayes Jacobs “with us” virtually.

Introducing our School

Asking Questions

A few teachers had specific questions from the book or how the concept of Curriculum21, assessment and upgrade applied to our school or their subject area.

Collaboratively writing on Google Doc

In order to model the use of collaboration tool, we set up a shared Google Doc to collaborate with. Different teachers were assigned  to be the scribes in order to take notes for one of three columns:

1. Essential Education
2. Application for our school
3. Web resources and links

Editing Notes on Google Docs

The resulting word document with notes and resource links was now available for all the faculty to review in their own time.

Curriculum21- Skype with Heidi Hayes Jacobs

The following video clip (19 minutes) is a synopsis of our conversation.

Curriculum21- Professional Development with Heidi Hayes Jacobs from langwitches on Vimeo.

Being able to…

• bring in a subject area expert (virtually)
• model a communication tool such as Skype (including the hick-ups of a dropped call)
• collaboratively write notes
• document with images and video the connection
• share publicly the documentation to allow review and encourage reflection

… is modeling the kind of skills and learning  during Professional Development that we would like the teachers to take back to their classrooms and “translate” into their own teaching.

What are some examples you can share about practicing/modeling what you preach during Professional Development for your teachers?

The job title “21st Century Learning Specialist” does not give the same clear picture to many people as  the title of 2nd grade , Librarian or Spanish teacher might. I get many blank looks when I answer the innocent question of “So, what do you do?

I blogged about my last Job Title “What Does it Mean to be an Technology Integration Facilitator” before. Maybe it is time to post a description of a day in the life of a 21st Century Learning Specialist.

My students are not only the ones that have the “official” title of “Students” at our school. I consider all teachers, assistants, educators, administration, parents, and staff as my students.

My classroom is the hallway, the school’s office, the faculty lounge, the computer lab, the principal’s and school office, a virtual Skype room, the library, the staircase, an officially designated classroom, anywhere on campus and sometimes on the cell phone too…

I wear many hats, since learning in the 21st Century happens anytime, anywhere and in so many different forms. When I tried to “categorize” what I do, I came up with the following diagram.

Professional Development:

• Teachers
• Administrators
• Staff
• Parent Education

Teaching:

• Plan
• Co-Teach
• Model
• Coach

21st Century Skills & Literacies:

• create
• communicate
• collaborate
• connect
• Basic Literacy
• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• Network Literacy
• Global Literacy
• Digital Citizenship

Technology Team:

• Software
• Hardware
• Web based tools
• Basic Troubleshooting

Social Network Channel:

• School Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• iTunes Podcast
• Flickr
• Slideshare

Curriculum Liason:

• Curriculum Mapping
• 21st Century Teaching & Learning Voice

So, how does a typical day of mine look like?

I am usually in my office at 7:30 am to take advantage of the quietness that only a school can have, shortly before students arrive.  This allows me to catch up on e-mails, Twitter, write my “famous” to-do lists for the day after checking and updating my Google Calendar that is shared with faculty and administration at school.

Weekly Google Calendar

The morning hours are sometimes the perfect time bracket to skype another teacher from the Eastern Hemisphere (timezones!) to plan future collaboration. Sometimes it is the perfect time for an early meeting with a colleague to start planning a new project, coach them as they are venturing out to use web 2.0 tools or just sit beside them as they are exploring Google Apps or other communication and collaboration tools.

Typically, I will go into classrooms to observe or support a teacher’s lesson by leading “just in time” discussions about 21st Century skills and literacies or give an introduction to various tools. Observations in the classroom usually lead to a planning time with the teacher on how to upgrade a lesson, start or participate in a project, co-teach a future lesson or a 1:1 tutoring time on a specific tool. Discussion time with students usually lead to follow ups to future classroom visits, searching for further resources for students or their teacher and ideas for involvement and collaboration of (global) projects.

I might also meet with teachers and their classes in the computer lab to support them as an additional “hand on deck” as students are working on projects, such as wikis, voicethreads, digital storytelling, etc.

I document my work as much as possible by maintaining the 21st Century Learning Blog of the school. This requires me to keep up to date with writing blog drafts, take supporting images or videos of the progress of projects and post updates. I spend a regular portion of my day working on storing, categorizing and editing  media (images/video/audio) taken around campus for marketing purposes or student projects.

Professional Learning Network

Most days, I have at least a few Skype calls scheduled throughout the day. These calls usually fall in the category of making initial contact with subject matter experts, potential connections for classes, collaboration and planning calls with participants of various projects any class is participating in and calls to foster, support, nurture and maintain my Professional Learning Network. My PLN has become a vital part of the work I do. Without this network of professional educators around the world, I would not be able to connect to, collaborate with and disseminate my students’ learning to an authentic audience. The contact to my PLN via various Social Network sites keeps me up to date with the newest trends, content experts, tools, educational discussions, projects and professional support.

My day is sprinkled with meeting various teachers for 1:1 or small group Professional Development opportunities. Some of these meetings are scheduled weekly (with great success) or on an as-needed-bases. Some of them are with a pre-set topic  (blogging, podcasting, RSS, SmartBoard, etc.) while others are impromptu in nature and guided by current units of study. I also prepare small group or whole faculty PD workshops throughout the year

Preparation for and follow up for these meetings in terms of collection of resources, step by step tutorials, making authentic global connections, set-up and maintenance of collaboration platforms (wikis, google docs, blogs, VoiceThreads, Professional Development Ning etc.) for teachers and students are also part of my daily work.

Debriefing and collaboration sessions with my colleague and other half, Andrea Hernandez, about projects, grade level curriculum, school visions,  and curriculum upgrades regarding 21st Century Teaching & Learning is vital to coordinate school wide involvement, support and advancement of vision. I am also part of a technology team by attending meetings and lending guiding support to technology related matters.

Another one of our coordination efforts includes the area of Parent Education. We have successfully implemented a monthly Parent Coffee Talk. Every month we offer a different topic for parents to be exposed to/ learn about 21st Century learning and/or have hands on experience with web 2.0 tools/platforms. In the future we want to expand our offerings to different days and times (morning/evening) in order to appeal to a wider variety of parents.

The power of connecting is one of the pillars of 21st Century skills. Communicating with your students,  parent community, school community and global community by using different social network platforms is quickly becoming  a necessity. The development, supervision and update of the school’s Social Network Channels (School’s official website/blog, Classroom blogs, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, Flickr, etc.) are part of a daily routine. Pushing out information, as well storing, documenting, tagging and connecting in “the cloud” is simply a way of 21st Century working.

I wear many different hats...

I am hoping that I am not omitting any special hat of mine  in this  “Day in the Life of a 21st Century Learning Specialist”. My job has become less a list of duties and responsibilities and more the way we simply teach and learn.

• 25 Killer (iPad) Apps | Learning is Change.
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Vicky Davis wrote Fail Forward- Move Forward a few weeks ago.

I was inspired by an art teacher’s experiment on his grading system that she describes.

The ceramics teacher told the left half of the room that they would just be graded on the quantity of what they produced. If they had fifty pounds of pots on the last day, they’d get an “A,” forty would get a “B” and so forth.

The right half of the room would be graded on “quality” and “needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A.”

An interesting thing happened when it was time to grade.  The HIGHEST QUALITY came from the HIGH QUANTITY side of the room.  The author tells it like this:

“It seems that while the ‘quantity’ group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than gradiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

I shared the experiment story with one of my teachers and she was immediately game to work with her 5th grade students. We decided to tweak it a little bit. We told the students about the original experiment and outcome.  We divided the class into two groups (Quantity vs. Quality) and asked them to create a Grammar tutorial/practice for “Contractions” with the SmartBoard notebook for the first graders of our school. The Quantity group had to create as many separate tutorial/practice slides as possible, while the other group was told only to turn in ONE slide with a perfect tutorial/practice.

After students created the tutorials/practice slides, it seemed that the groups who produced quantity slides also produced the most creative slides compared to the groups who had to only produce one. The latter group seemed to have used the flash gallery items instead of creating their own.

In the back of my mind, I continued to have Alan November’s Six New Roles for Developing Empowered Learners and Contributors, which I have written about before: Math Lesson? Empower Learners? , “Skype Jobs” for Students & Students as Meaningful Contributors

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

Due to school scheduling issues, it took several weeks to schedule a time when 5th graders could present their final tutorial/practice slides to first grade. The best scenario would have been to meet at the computer lab and allow first graders to “play” with the tutorials to observe them in action. Unfortunately, time ran out and we had to meet in the classroom with a SmartBoard. The older students became the “teachers” to their younger schoolmates by letting them “play” with their tutorial slides on the SmartBoard under their guidance.

Take a peek at the slides students created.