Category Archives: Educational Reflection

How To Get More Twitter Followers

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I was recently asked about my strategies for getting more followers on Twitter. I’ll give you my best guess as to why I have close to 6,000. It is definitely a combination of things.

  • I have always tried to be active on Twitter & to tweet regularly. Even if it is only 5-10 minutes a few times a week.
  • I try to share at least one link per day that people might find useful.
  • I often retweet at around 2:00 am (Seoul time) so that I maintain contact with my western hemisphere PLN.
  • When there is a conference that interests me I usually follow and participate in the feed.
  • I try to RT useful tweets, but I always check the link before retweeting. I don’t RT just to have more tweets or contact with anyone. I only do it if I feel it is quality stuff.
  • I thank people for retweeting me.
  • I answer people who contact me & try to help if they ask.
  • I keep my tweets professional, even though that becomes more challenging the better I know people.
  • I direct message the more personal stuff, or things that aren’t of interest to more than a few.

I don’t know if it has had an effect on my increase in followers, but I unfollow inactive people or those who tweet too much non-ed stuff. Also, for the most part I only follow people who are working in ed tech, people with a specialty I’m interested in (fantasy football, app creation, or FCP, for example), or people who I know personally.

Honestly, I don’t do any of this to get more followers, it is just how I like to use Twitter. I think that momentum is a big factor in gaining followers. Once I hit 4,000 followers, I noticed that my number of new followers each day was increasing. Twitter Counter is great for tracking followers.

I started tweeting in 2007. Follow me.

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Intro to the Flipped Classroom

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From the start I was not a big fan of the flipped classroom. My greatest hesitation toward the flipped classroom is that it becomes way too easy for teachers to use this as an excuse to dump more (disengaging) homework on students, by reinventing the lecture using technology. After reading more about it I believe that there is some merit to this method when the practice is used to differentiate the instruction, and place the responsibility for learning on the students, not just simply flipping homework and classwork. Below are some of the articles that gave me a better idea of what flipping is about, and more importantly, what it should not be about.

The Basics

Flipped Classroom Infographic

In depth explanation of the flipped classroom

The History

The Vod Couple – Aaron Sams & Jonathan Bergmann started it all.

Salman Khan

The Discussion

A Better Version of a Bad Thing?

Educators Evaluate Flipped Classrooms

Three Questions to Consider

Technology Can Reduce School Costs

The Strategies

5 Strategies to Flip & Engage

Free Tools for Flipping

Beyond the Classroom

Flipping…It’s Not Just For The Classroom

Flipping Parent Communication?

Connecting Teachers

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I am currently teaching a masters course that focuses on technology integration. I have an outstanding group of students with a variety of expertise and experience. From preschool teachers to university professors, these teachers have been working hard to create meaningful assignments for their students. They are also blogging daily, and have a lot of interesting perspectives. Please take a moment to read & comment on a few of their posts.

Aga Suzdorf Preschool
Estella Duan Mandarin
Curtis Colegrave University ESL
Melissa Hubley Aquatics
Robbie Sawlor University ESL
Ruth Yang Mandarin
Tim Munro Middle school P.E.
Alex Lopez-Barton Middle school social studies

Lisa Barnhart 3rd Grade
 Richard Ball University ESL
 Katherine Thomas Middle school science
Sarrah Abassi 2nd grade ESL
Kristina Chipping 1st Grade
Jonathan Mueller 4th Grade
William Song University ESL
Sarah Segal Middle school language arts

Thank you!

Should I integrate tech?

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I’m often asked by teachers if they should integrate technology into certain lessons. I’m not one who recommends adding tech to make projects look cool or more “21st century,” or to do the same old thing (with tech). For me, the answer to the question is simple. If I can answer “yes” to either of these two questions then I should use technology in the lesson.

1. Will the technology improve student learning?

2. Will the technology make the lesson/learning more efficient or organized?

If I answer “no” to both questions, I don’t use technology in the lesson. Simple.

Good Vibrations – Learning About Sound

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Recently Jay Hopp, a middle school science teacher told me he was going to teach a unit on sound and asked me if GarageBand might be a good tool to use to help the students understand sound better. I had no idea what he was teaching about, so I borrowed a text book and read the chapter. An important part of the unit is sound waves, so an obvious use of GarageBand is to record sounds and analyze the waves. I thought that it would be an interesting idea to record various types of instruments and analyze the pattern they make. The other 8th grade science teacher, John Patrick (J.P.), and I borrowed ten different instruments to test record and see what happens. What I found when I recorded the instruments was that most created a very distinct pattern when recorded in GarageBand.

The idea I came up with was to print out each of the sound waves and give them to the students and have them record the instruments (the same way we did) and try to match the instrument with the sound wave that we printed out for them.

At the start of class we demonstrated how to play and record each of the instruments, and then in groups the students had to look at the cards and predict which cards went with which instruments before recording any. Once they were done with their predictions they began recording instruments and discussing which sound waves they thought matched. They had great discussions both during their predictions and the recording stages, and it was interesting to listen to them “negotiate” about which instrument matched which wave. The groups averaged 80% correct matches.

Mr. Hopp demonstrating the instruments.

Making predictions.

During the activity I suggested to Jay that we should look for more distinct sounding (pattern producing) instruments, but after the students did so well, I don’t think that is necessary. Something that JP did seemed to helped the students with their predictions. After giving them a few minutes to struggle with the predictions, we played each instrument again. Their attention was much more focused on the task this time. We think we could improve the activity by creating a movie showing us playing each of the instruments, without sound of course, so they could refer back to it. This would make it easier for them to reproduce each sound more accurately. Another way would be to do another movie as the “answer key,” to play at the end of class.

 

Recording the instruments.

Recording the instruments.

Comparing sound waves.

 

Below are the handouts that Jay, J.P. and I created for the lesson. Feel free to use these materials under Creative Commons license. We would love to hear your feedback if you use this lesson.

  Sound Lesson Handouts

Laptops at the Sleepover: Over/Under 4.5

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My 12-year-old daughter is having a sleepover with 8 friends. They all own laptop computers.

I have set over/under for how many of her friends will bring their laptops at 4.5. What do you think? I’ll let you know the outcome in a few days.

(If you are unfamiliar with this type of wagering: You select if you think the final number is over or under the specified number. In this case, if you think that 5 or more of my daughter’s friends will bring their laptops to the sleepover, you bet “over.” If you think that 4 or less will bring their laptops you bet “under.”)

PS. Just a fun bet. No money will be exchanged.

Top 10 US Presidents Challenge

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I have a friend in Costa Rica, Harry, and it seems that whenever we get together we talk historical politics. I haven’t seen him for over a year, but today I received an email from Harry’s wife & she passed along a question from him. He wants to know who my top ten US presidents are. Harry is very well read, and he knows a lot more about US history than I do. I was a political science major in college and have taught United States history for over ten years, but I haven’t ever given much thought about which presidents were the best in history. My first thought for first & second are Lincoln and Washington. I’m not a big fan of Kennedy (for bringing humanity to the brink of nuclear war), and William Henry Harrison won’t make my list (he only served one month of his term). Beyond that I’m not sure.

This is the type of discussion/debate I love to have in my classes. It really forces the students into a deeper understanding of the history in order to be able to argue in favor of their favorite. Of course, we must define what we mean by “best.” Is it based on leadership, popularity, winning a war, economic prosperity, integrity, crisis management, or some other factor? How would these factors be measured?

I’d like to ask for your help in answering my friend’s question. Leave a comment letting me know what you think are the criteria I should use to judge the presidents, and who your top presidents are. Also, you can collaborate on a Google Doc by adding why you think a president should or should not be included on the list. I’ll post my list when I finish it.

Programming With Scratch – Learning 2.011 Takeaways Part 3

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This is the third of three blog posts about my experience at the Learning 2.0 conference.

Last year the KIS ed tech team began planning to develop critical thinking through programming in all three divisions. Mark Page started using Scratch in the elementary school during an EPP. Mark plans on continuing this and I have begun working with the middle school Tech Gurus and an high level math class in the high school. I was fortunate enough to connect with Jane Harris from Chinese International School in Hong Kong, who has been working with scratch programming for several years with her students. What follows is how Jane suggested we set up the projects. Most of this post are her exact words, not mine.

Jane suggested that we structure the programming as challenge-based learning projects, where the students design and build a game to build connections between Maths and Music/Art/Science. Something which will influence the way players think about Maths and Music/Art/Science. The app Soundrop is a great example of the type of projects the students should attempt.

Some of Jane’s other ideas for the course include:
1. Groups will use the Scratch environment to build the game.
2. Groups will identify their Big Idea, Essential Question, Guiding Questions and Guiding Activities: these will help to define and structure the projects.
3. The Essential Question should be answered by the Scratch game; the Guiding Questions should help to shape the process the group move through to design the game by providing their context and the “so what?”
The Guiding Activities should help the group to better understand what they need to know before they can build the game; these activities are ongoing upskilling – research, connecting with experts, tinkering with ideas, etc.
Groups should use a range of tech tools to document their learning and the process they go through.

Groups should create accounts on the Scratch website and a class gallery should be set-up where group projects can be uploaded and shared with the Scratch community. This is fantastic for eliciting feedback, problem solving and having projects beta-tested. Groups can develop their own wikis/blogs where they can post, collect and document their learning process.

The high school math class is finishing up their projects. I will post links to them soon.

Learning 2.011 Takeaways Part 2 – iPad Implementation

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This is the second of three blog posts about my experience at the Learning 2.0 conference.

A very informative session I attended was on the implementation of iPads. The presenter, Sheldon Bradshaw from Western Academy in Beijing had recently implemented iPads into the school and was sharing with us some of what he learned throughout this process.

His recommendation on iPad covers was to weigh the cost of the cover versus the cost of the iPad. Some of the best covers cost close $100 (otterbox.com & goballisticcase.com), meaning that with a class set of 20 iPads, the cases could add another $2000 to the purchase, or in other terms, take three iPads out of students’ hands. His suggestion was to find something reasonably priced, that when closed covers the entire iPad.

His suggestion on carts was that a homemade solution is going to be more cost effective without losing functionality. Some of the carts can cost $1000. His school built one for a little over $100 that works well.

Syncing and charging has brought some challenges to his school. Apple did not follow international USB standards, meaning standard USB hubs will not both charge and sync the iPads. WAB chose not to buy expensive charge & sync ports, but to use two processes. The have USB strips on the cart to charge and bought an extra set of cables to sync (with D-Link 7-port powered hubs). They only sync every couple of weeks. When OS 5 comes out there will be wireless syncing, so this might not be an issue very soon.

App purchases are a challenge for WAB to do legally. Apple does not have volume licensing internationally and in China the app store is very different from the US app store, and does not carry all of the apps they need, or at least does not carry the English version of the app. The way they resolved this was by having someone who was traveling to the US purchase iTunes Store gift certificates for the budgeted amount. Then they set up a “master” iTunes account for the school that they used to make the purchases and sync the iPads. They also set up a sub-accounts for each iPad, to legally purchase one license for each iPad. The master account “gifts” money to the sub-accounts to purchase the necessary apps.

Another topic of discussion was app evaluation. He recommended that the school come up with some type of process for making the decisions on the purchases, including who decides, what criteria is used for evaluating an app, how to track what has been tested, collection of information, and how to keep track of what apps are purchased and what version of the app is on the iPads. Sheldon also recommended these two sites for iPad app reviews: iear.org and momswithapps.com. He said to remember to focus on purpose. Don’t get caught up in the hype. These are the apps WAB uses. More detailed notes from this session by Wes Fryer.

You might be interested in my post on teachers’ favorite iPad apps.

Learning 2.011 Takeaways Part 1

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This is the first of three blog posts about my experience at the Learning 2.0 conference.

For the second year in a row the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai far exceeded my expectations. The opportunity to learn, share, and network provided me with a rich variety of experiences that will make me a better teacher and leader. This year the conference began each day with several 7 minute keynotes, as opposed to the traditional 30-40 minute keynote. Most of the presenters used the Pecha Kucha style of presenting. The keynotes were from teachers, professors, educational leaders, and students. Jabiz Raisdana shared his experience and growth through his personal learning network.

Learning Leaders

I participated in the Technology Leaders Cohort. Charlotte Diller and George Couros led this cohort, opening the first of our five cohort sessions by renaming it the “Learning Leaders” cohort. The underlying thought being that what we are doing isn’t about the technology, it is about the learning. The cohort was made up of about 45 leaders in various positions such as tech directors, facilitators, administrators, & teachers, from schools in Asia & North America.

The Learning Leaders cohort had several focus groups, including coaching (professional development), implementing 1:1, cloud computing, and blogging. I spent my time in the coaching group. The gains I experienced in this group were not so much about taking what we are doing to the next level, but fine tuning our PD plan. Two of the big ideas I took away from this group:

  1. We as leaders need to “build capacity” in our teachers.
  2. To do this we must cultivate relationships with our teachers.

This year we started doing professional development sessions during the school day. We run enough sessions each week so that all of our 162 teachers have at least one chance to attend. At first it seemed as though we were the only ones doing during the school day PD, but I eventually found one other school that is also doing this. Ivan Beeckmans and Jay Priebe are doing a similar training model at New International School of Thailand. NIST is doing during the school day PD, but only on Wednesdays. They have used this model for years. The first sessions of the year are for new teachers and are mandatory. Then they move on to more advanced sessions. Ivan told me that in exit interviews the teachers rave about the PD opportunities. In general, what I learned about our PD model is that we are on the right track.

Some areas I will continue to think about for our ongoing PD:

  • Make sure that it is meaningful.
  • Keep the groups small.
  • Decide what should be required, especially for new teachers.

Some ideas to consider for the future of tech integration and PD at KIS:

  • Let teachers know what we have and what it can be used for. (hardware & software)
  • Document the help we give to teachers. Review at the end of the month.
  • Make screencasts for the greatest needs and post them.
  • Use the “Lab-Site” model. Co-teach with someone while others observe.
  • Find other leaders & cover their class while they help a colleague integrate tech.
  • Experts on campus are a resource that is underused. Develop and promote them.
  • Date night with your Mac, unconference model.
  • Speed geeking (example from Clint Hamada)
  • Begin listing NETS in PD.
  • Can we add some tech questions to the teacher interviews?
  • Get Ed Tech and IT into the same location. If that can’t be done, improve communication & meet together.
  • Teach the students to teach the teachers.

Some ideas for helping people to help themselves:

  • People don’t try to figure things out on their own. Teach them to use Help in the applications.
  • Make a checklist of what to do when something doesn’t work. For example:
  1. Check the cables
  2. Quit the application (command-Q) and restart it
  3. Restart the computer

*These could be turned in to questions we ask a teacher when they call us for help.