February 23rd, 2020

Reflecting on the past five weeks immersed in my Professional Learning Network

Educators are passionate. They are selfless, they are intrepid, and they are clear in their objectives and convictions. Educators are also stubborn. This particular quality (and I am going to call it a quality) allows us to continue to search for ways to help our students be successful. It allows us to reach out consistently to even the most reluctantly involved families or other educational stakeholders. But it can also prevent us from shifting our path to achieve a clearly sought after destination. Over the last few weeks, my own thinking has changed drastically. I realize now I don’t just need more technological “tools” for my classrooms, I need to help us as a faculty move towards a more equitable and purposeful use of technology throughout a student’s day, starting...now! 

Seeing so many successful examples of “next practices” (R. McNulty, 2011) through the Twitter book chat on Learning Transported: Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality for All Classrooms has greatly inspired me to jump in and “unfreeze”. I recently read Mr. Thomas Daccord’s article regarding Lewin’s model of change after reading a Tweet of his on the #etcoaches book chat. In his article, he writes “In the first stage, termed unfreezing, individuals overcome inertia and an existing "mind set" is broken down.” (T. Daccord, 2018). This idea of unfreezing I found to be very much connected to the way the Heath brothers illustrate “motivating the elephant” in their book, Switch. Humans need to be motivated emotionally and feel the purpose for change deeply, if they are to try something new or change the way they currently do something. They need to overcome fear and take a risk when changing a practice or method. Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) can do just that. (ISTE Coaching Standard 2B) They can break down the psychological barriers teachers face, helping them overcome fears of incompetence, inadequacy, and fears of failure as they see their colleagues from around the country and globe jumping in and trying new things. My own PLN has included new Twitter lists, #etcoaches Book Chat, Reddit /rteachers threads, and literacy Facebook groups. As my PLN continues to grow, I have seen so many wonderful uses of technology, not just to deliver content but to create content with students. My colleagues’ exuberance and willingness to share their experiences has changed my mind about initiation. Implementation doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be initiated! Being a connected learner means continuing to stay curious myself, learning from others and researching new methods that are shared.

After reading about Nearpod in our text, Learning Transported, I knew it would be a terrific tool to help our young people in rural Vermont see parts of the world that they might not otherwise get to experience. In a mostly racially homogenous setting, I seek to help my students see other parts of the world and other cultures. After one of my students very curiously asked, “Wait, Mrs. Ledwidge, you’re asian? Then why do you live here?” I knew it would be imperative that I help them see our own country is made up of incredibly diverse communities and individuals. The first step in doing that would be to help them see the world. But how? How could I possibly afford to take all 48 (two sections) second graders on a trip around the world? And yet, how could I not? I saw a post on Twitter that one of my colleagues had used Virtual Reality (VR) to take her students on a field trip. I had already tasked my students with researching a country they were interested in, practicing the use of an online encyclopedia coupled with the plug in ReadWrite for accessibility. But after seeing her Tweet, I thought to myself, “Wow I could have them each ‘travel’ to these places and see first hand what it looks like.” 

Nearpod is a wonderful tool but it is a little out of our price range for all 48 students to select different countries. My incredible technology integration teacher and I sat down and explored other options for our school. We found 360cities which is a free tool our students can use and together, we have created an idea to help our students go from consumers to content producers. Our second graders will use 360cities along with a green screen and tablets to create their own news segment, highlighting their country of interest with the VR behind them. We hope this will spark our students’ curiosity and help them develop a sustained interest in learning about our ever-increasingly connected world. Without this powerful Professional Learning Network of educators, innovators, and leaders, I would not have even known that this was possible. 

I am scared. When I think about filming in the next coming weeks, my palms are noticeably moist. But my excitement surrounding this project far outweighs my nerves. It is enough to help me “unfreeze”. I know it doesn’t have to be perfect the first go around. As Raymond McNulty states, “Focus on being different first and then on being better,” (R. McNulty, 2018) Our students will be collaborating and competing on a global scale. They will need to take academic risks to be true leaders in whatever field they choose. Therefore, we need to coach them and be agents of change who help all learners access these important and perspective changing tools. (ISTE Coaching standard 1b). They will need to be the kind of citizens and digital citizens who know how to make difficult, ethical decisions and empower one another to change our world for the better. I am grateful to my online PLN for the innovative ideas and bright spots from which I continue to learn and be inspired. 

Links to Evidence

https://wke.lt/w/s/WF2vl9

https://wke.lt/w/s/DODXI2

https://wke.lt/w/s/oqPXRR

https://wke.lt/w/s/i0Ji0Z

Work Cited

Daccord, T. (2018, April 5). "Unfreezing" Teachers:  Why So Many Technology Initiatives Are Stagnating. Retrieved February 23, 2020, from https://www.tomdaccord.com/home/2018/4/4/unfreezing-and-freezing-teachers-why-so-many-technology-initiatives-are-stagnating

Donally, J. (2018). Learning Transported: Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality for All Classrooms [ePUB].

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2013). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Random House US.

McNulty, R. (2011). Best Practices to Next Practices: A New Way of “Doing Business” for School Transformation. International Center for Leadership in Education, 11–12. Retrieved from http://dropoutprevention.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Solutions_Jan2013_13.1_next_practices_white_paper.pdf

This week, we were charged with sharing a "destination postcard" of what we'd like to see in the future for our students. Please see my rational and link to my postcard below.

Destination Postcard

After watching and reading the Essential Elements for Digital Citizens, and hearing young students and participants share how they are using  technology during the live cast #DigCit conference, I have been completely inspired to change my thinking about digital citizenship and participation. I started this course thinking students needed to be proficient in their technology use to find information and connect with others. Now, I can see they need much more.

I believe our young people need to see themselves as owners and active evaluators of their digital production and consumption. Creation of responsible content needs to become a practice and skill our young people learn. After reading Chapter 7 in Learning Supercharged, the shift from just utilizing and evaluating content to creating and innovating aligns with the highest levels of thinking and understanding in Bloom's Taxonomy. 

The destination I hope to see for our young learners will be to have  student created online portfolios as early as grade 2, with family access to portfolios from school age on. These student created content portfolios could be shared with one another and a broader outside community as students get older, eventually showcasing growth and dedication. If students chose, they could link their portfolios to an ongoing service project that could include their own destination they might seek at the end of their k-12 career. I believe this would be highly motivating for our students to track their own progress and reflect on their learning in an authentic way, while helping to teach them in a semi-safe context about online etiquette when commenting on another's work or collaborating with someone on a project. Knowing the human behind the ideas as a peer they go to school with, students would grow with technology always bearing in mind the real person behind the words. Responsible discourse would be a school wide expectation, and hopefully become a habit by graduation. Of course, this would be linked to their appropriate developmental level with teachers helping to scaffold what they keep in their portfolios at a younger age.

The first shift towards this venturesome goal would be to find the bright spots. In our school district, students are expected to show evidence of proficiency of VT standards. They are moving towards an online portfolio at the high school level so many are already on board with this idea for older students. Also, as young as 5th grade, students are choosing Capstone projects to follow a particular interest outside the academic schedule.

The bright spots then lead me to the Critical Move, which would be to suggest that each grade level teacher begin to collect 3 pieces of writing (or storytelling in the youngest grades) a year, at the beginning, middle and end of the year. The collection could be kept in a student's file on Google Drive and submitted through a platform like Google Classroom. The writing or storytelling could be done orally, pictorially, handwritten and photographed, or typed. But this specific and attainable expectation could help shift people's minds and alleviate some trepidation surrounding starting this collection task. My hope would be that as students' curiosity and access to new programs and ideas grows, their projects and submissions to this portfolio would become increasingly sophisticated and apropos to their own interests. Our goal, after all as educators, is to create lifelong learners. 

It would be challenging to shift this thinking with a staff without being able to see immediate results. We'd have to go through the shift from "best practices" to "next practices". But I believe this would really allow our students not just to have a collection of their work for each year, but to help them see their growth and reflect on their thinking.  Perhaps, if we as a faculty become inspired, we could shift towards more interactive content collection tools, such as RSS feeds. No matter what the platform, hopefully as our students grow, they would have increasing opportunities to collaborate with one another, seeing the benefit of sharing ideas and learning from one another's work and content. This will build their capacity to see others' perspectives, gain them empathy, and help them grow as digital consumers, creators, and ultimately citizens.

On Bright Spots Utilizing Technology:

"Can I get my red thing?" my student asks when it is time for Reading Workshop. Today, our learners read nonfiction texts, mining them for main ideas and supporting details. Some will write these ideas in the form of boxes and bullets in their precious Reader Response notebooks, and others will type them into Google docs designed for immediate feedback with Literacy and Library/Technology teachers. Nothing about this technology is groundbreaking, except everything about it evens the playing field and helps everyone lift the level of their learning.

A few years ago, a learning specialist I worked with asked me if I knew much about Dragon Software. It was new, it would help some of our students with writing because the handwriting was so laborious for them. We tried it; it truly did feel like a disruptive innovation since one of my young friends couldn't resist shouting into it during Writing Workshop. At the time, I was very new to teaching, working in an independent school. I felt scrutiny burn hot on my neck when this student's parent seemed still dissatisfied with the writing her child was producing. I abandoned the technology after one trimester, citing that it seemed too cumbersome and frustrated the student. Truthfully (and regrettably) I was frustrated. I couldn't find the bright spot that another student had been, using the software to write a beautiful letter to her grandmother for Grandparents' Day. I couldn't examine why it worked so well there because I could only see the dark spot where it hadn't worked as well.

Flash forward a few years and at the behest of a highly engaged parent, a colleague and I went to an Assistive Technology training and learned about simple tools such as the bone conductive headphones with built in microphone (the "red thing" aforementioned). Along with the Google Read& Write plug-in, this student would be able to access high quality written articles at grade level and beyond, and communicate his comprehension and connections with the text through speaking. Of course, the first day of implementation my supervisor came in for an observation. Again, I felt that uncomfortable feeling of being judged but this time, the joy that erupted over the student's face completely shut out any trepidation I might have felt. He was reading. He looked as though he could fly. As he saw his own words light up on the page, I realized how powerful and necessary this technology would be for students like him. It nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Of course, this is an obvious bright spot. I can see it now. As I grow in my profession and as a human being, I will try to be the kind of person who will choose to see the bright spots and study them. I know there are incredible educators who put themselves out there, trying new technology win or lose. I know that the willingness to innovate far outweighs any negative outcome. I hope to join those leagues of unabashed professionals who know that the "best practice" has to be blended with the ever-changing "next practice" that is yet to be tried. Our children deserve it.