Innovative educators will often share that one of the best ways to discover and implement innovative practices is by learning from others who are doing this work. Hearing about and seeing promising practices from those who are engaged in them is powerful. I encourage school leaders interested in hearing from others who are on the path to Realizing the Promise of the 21st Century School to attend Teaching Matters annual school leader forum: A Roadmap for Innovation which takes place Wednesday, July 15, 2009 from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm at 475 Riverside Drive.
At the forum they’ll be asking, What is a 21st century school? For the most part technology is radically changing every sector of our society, yet schools remain largely unchanged. However, there are schools that are breaking the mold and engaging in innovative practices to engage learners and prepare them for the world in which they live. The forum will provide participants with the opportunity to hear from a panel of innovative NYC school leaders on the vanguard of rethinking urban education. They will speak about their experiences regarding what is important, the challenges and what's possible! Featured guests include: • Alisa Berger: Principal, NYC iSchool • Sarah Scrogin: Principal, East Bronx Academy for the Future • Gregg Korrol: Principal, PS 101 • Julian Cohen: Director, New School Development
Teaching Matters will also provide a new and simple assessment tool for gauging where your school lies on a continuum of the 21st century school outcomes. It will help you evaluate your school's readiness and offer a roadmap of ideas for innovation in those areas you deem most critical.
This event is free to school leaders who can attend by rsvping to lmorris@teachingmatters.org or calling 2128703505. Wine and cheese will be served and all principals who attend will be eligible to enter a raffle to jump-start a 21st century classroom with: 15 FREE Flip Video Cameras or 5 FREE Netbooks.
To get an idea of what happens at these 21st century schools, check out the students at PS 5 in the Port Morris section of the Bronx and their amazing documentary about the history and impact of Nicholas Negroponte’s ground breaking XO pilot project in their school.
I am often asked what I recommend for educators who want to learn the basics of using technology. You know, how to get started with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. Of course, one of the best ways to learn to use an application is just using it in an environment with other experienced users that you can ask questions as you need them. Having students around to assist is a terrific option.
There are also many great resources to get going solo. One of my favorites for those interested in getting started is MicroSoft Office Training where you will find FREE self-paced training courses for Office programs. The classes are quite good. Here is a sampling of applications: Access; Excel ; Outlook; PowerPoint; Project ; Publisher; Word. The tutorials provide audio, text, and animations, and are rated by those who have taken the class. This is a terrific and free resource for those interested in learning to use Microsoft applications.
For educators who want the personal touch there are training centers like New Horizons. NYC DOE educators can contact their New York City office by emailing d_ludwig@NHNY.com for special rates as low as $100 per class for educators.
For teachers who are using applications with their students, a terrific resource is Atomic Learning. The resource is created to appeal to students at their interest and ability level and enables them to become self-directed, independent learners who can engage in their work on-demand. This resource frees the teacher from feeling like s/he must be an expert in every application.
Another option for schools is to have a staff member designated to provide professional development and support to his/her colleagues. They can use MicroSoft Office Training, Atomic Learning resources, or use these professional development resources created specifically for educators, or create their own training.
------------------------------------------------------------- Here's Marc Prensky's advice from my Facebook page.
Here's how I answer that question: Educators going off on their own to learn technology is time that could be far better be spent partnering with students with even better results. If an educator who wants to learn finds the smartest kid he or she knows and works with them, they all will be much better off, because learning to work with students around technology is far more important for educators than learning any skills by themselves!
Editors Note: As you may have noticed, I list blogs I follow on the bottom right side of The Innovative Educator. From time to time I like to feature posts from these bloggers that I encourage my audience to read as well. Here is one such post.
In his blog, the Techominivore recently wrote a post on the new ISTE Classroom Observation Tool. He shares, "ISTE has developed a wonderful tool to help schools assess their technology integration efforts. The Classroom Observation Tool provides a checklist to guide you in observing how education technology is affecting classroom instruction. The tool is built on top of Adobe Air and allows you to work offline and then upload your results so you can access them from anywhere and share them with your instructional teams."
Wikis are a great tool to help a school enrich instruction, and increase communication and collaboration among staff. They are also free (for educators using wikispaces) and provide unlimited storage for digital materials including video, screencasts, presentations, pdfs, etc.
When I explain these benefits to educators and their administrators they often nod in agreement, but still want to know the nuts and bolts of what this looks like in practice. The best way to explain this is to use examples of actual school wikis in use here in New York City. I've selected examples of how schools are using wikis in the following ways:
Decrease Disruption of Instructional Time with Digital Daily Announcements
More Efficient and Effective Team Meetings and Planning
Collaborate On Important Documents Like School Comprehensive Education Plans
Enhance School Professional Development Using a Wiki
Share and Collaborate On Curriculum Maps
Save Trees /Save Time and Unclutterize Your Room or Office by Posting School Resources
Know Where Everyone Is When Schedules/Programs Are Posted
A Portal for All Your Lessons
Information on How to Get Started
Decrease Disruption of Instructional Time with Digital Daily Announcements
Each day daily notes are posted on the school wiki. Gone are the days when instructional time is stolen from students with announcements that often don’t apply to them. Instead, each day staff knows where they need to look to find out the important information. The template Jason Levy, Principal of CIS 339 uses for his daily notes includes:
-Announcements and Reminders by Department
-Staff Attendance
-Out at PD / Visitors
-Staff Recognizing Staff
-Celebrating RED (Rigor. Engagement. Differentiation) in Practice
-Other Stuff:
Notes also may contain surveys and/or forms for teachers to complete, readings, or other important news and notes of the day. Many of these items (i.e. recognizing staff, celebrating RED) are dynamically populated using Google docs. This provides an ongoing reinforcement of staff priorities and vision.
After the staff member has read the daily notes they digitally sign a Google document with their initials indicating they have read the daily notes and they can also indicate if there are any questions, issues, feedback or concerns. You can see what this looks like here and here.
More Efficient and Effective Team Meetings and Planning All team meetings and planning can be coordinated right on your wiki. This gives staff and administration a one stop shopping spot to see exactly what is happening and how work is progressing at various team meetings.
At CIS 339 the team meeting pages include team norms and activities in which teams should be engaged followed by a listing of each team and a link to all their meeting notes, agendas, documents, and materials. Each team meeting page also has a discussion board where conversations can continue. You can see an example of what this page looks like here.
Collaborate On Important Documents Like School Comprehensive Education Plans CIS 339 uses their school wiki to collaborate on the creation, revising, and updating of their school’s comprehensive education plan. The wiki is organized with general planning and process documents, then each department has a section for their piece. This enables everyone to see where anyone is at any time and the discussion tab allows for ongoing conversation while the documents are being created. You can see an example of what this page looks like here.
Enhance School Professional Development Using a Wiki
Anytime your school is having professional development all the materials can be loaded to the wiki. No more copies to run off, folders to buy, teachers sharing if there aren’t enough copies, or worrying about writing on your only copy. Additionally, a discussion forum is associated with each wiki page. This is a great way to elicit feedback during professional development and to keep the conversation going afterwards.
Share and Collaboratee On Curriculum Maps Wikis are a great tool for schools involved in curriculum mapping. Washington Irving High School (click thumbnail on right) posts their English department curriculum maps on their wiki. At the Marta Valle Secondary School, curriculum maps for each content area are posted on their school wiki. Departments begin with the curriculum mapping template that teams can collaborate on to complete. Department members can easily put links to all materials and important documents required for each piece of the map. This also allows for planning across grades and department since all information is transparently posted. The discussion tab provides a powerful communication mechanism for those implementing the curriculum to collaborate. You can see a sample of what that looks like here.
Save Trees /Save Time and Unclutterize Your Room or Office by Posting School Resources Wikis are a clutter terminator. If you're like most educators, your classroom or office desk or bookshelves are filled with documents, memos, guides, etc. that while important, rarely need to be accessed. You know, the school handbook, conference handouts, flyers, guides, articles, etc. etc. All those documents, boxes and boxes worth, can be posted in an easily accessible format, right on the wiki. In addition to saving space, schools will save time by not having to place all these documents in everyone’s mailbox every day.
At MVSS you’ll find documents such as the opening day packet, school handbook, school safety plan, principal’s letters and presentations, frequently used forms, instructional resources, discipline code, quality review documents, the vision statement, the mission statement, school brochure and more. You can see an example of what this page looks like here. At CIS 339 you’ll find many of these documents as well as a compilation of relevant articles and links which you can see here.
Know Where Everyone Is When Schedules/Programs Are Posted
All teacher schedules, bell schedules, meetings, etc. can be posted right on the wiki so any staff member can locate their colleagues at anytime. This combined with the posting of staff absences and class coverages in the daily notes ensures that staff will always know where and when their colleagues can be found.
A Portal for All Your Lessons At many schools there may be more than one teacher teaching the same subject/unit of study. However, there never seems to be enough time to collaborate. A wiki solves that issue. All lessons can be posted right on the wiki and using the discussion tab, teachers can connect and collaborate. I used a wiki to do this for teachers across New York City who were running iSquad 21st Century Student Support teams. The faculty advisors and I brainstormed lesson ideas and posted all the lesson topics on the wiki, then faculty advisors signed up for the lesson they were writing by placing their name next to it and posting their lesson. Each advisor wrote one or two lessons and we instantly had a bank of lessons accessible to all. You can see what that looks like here. I also coordinated curriculum integration teams responsible for creating technology-infused lessons in literacy, science, social studies, math, and fitness. Teams met in person from time to time, but most of their work was done remotely where they collaborated to write a bank of lessons that can be used and accessed by teachers anywhere which you can see here.
How to Get Started You can have your own free school wiki in 30 seconds or less by visiting http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers. Once there you select your wikis name and click create, then Voilà , you have a wiki. If you want to know more about using wikis in education, TeachersFirst has created a handy Wiki Walk-Through which steps you through using wikis in education in a clear and easy to follow way. You can also, take a look at the Educational Wikis space. It has examples, a guide, and links to other resources.
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This post was picked up in the August 2009 edition of Tech and Learning Magazine .
Educators in New York City and beyond have been following the news around what is taking place in Albany as the gridlocked Senate failed to take up a bill to reauthorize mayoral control of the public school system. Today School Chancellor Joel Klein spoke to his staff and shared this email about where the NYC DOE currently stands.
Dear Colleagues,
I am sure you have been following the events in Albany and have many questions about the future of our school system. While we obviously have many questions, we cannot put the education of New York City’s students at risk because of Albany’s inaction on mayoral control of the public schools. In this e-mail, I will outline what we know and what we don’t know.
Community Education Councils: The 2002 law that put the New York City mayor in charge of the City’s public schools expired yesterday. This same law also created the Community Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. Since the law has expired, these education councils no longer formally exist. However, I am urging the Community Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education, as well as the Citywide Council on High Schools, to continue meeting, at least until September when we hope to have more clarity. During this time, we will continue to support their administrative assistants. If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we’ve asked them to notify us immediately.
Panel for Educational Policy: The Panel for Educational Policy also ceases to exist today. The borough presidents and the Mayor have reconstituted the Board of Education to replace the Panel for Educational Policy.
Board of Education: The newly reconstituted Board of Education met at Tweed Courthouse this afternoon. It approved two resolutions: -First, the Board appointed me to continue serving as chancellor and delegated to me all of the powers that can be delegated under the law. This allows us to maintain continuity in our school system. -Second, noting that the State Assembly had adopted Assembly Bill no. 8903-a, which would extend Mayoral Control until 2015, while the State Senate had failed to act on an identical bill, Senate Bill no. S5887, the Board urged the State Senate to take immediate action to enact S5887.
Summer School: Summer school started today, as planned. School staff is expected to report to work as usual and serve our schoolchildren.
Support: Our central and field operations also remain in place and continue to support schools. This means School Support Organizations, Integrated Service Centers, and central staff are continuing to fulfill their responsibilities. We have instructed principals to call their SSOs and ISCs with any questions about the current situation or any regular issue related to school operations.
We have made great strides over the past seven years, and, together, we have implemented significant reforms that have improved the City’s public schools and our students’ academic results. I know we are working in an environment of uncertainty and that we all have many questions. I will work to keep you updated as we move through this period. I thank you all for your continued efforts to serve the students of New York City to the best of your ability, even during these uncertain times.
The New York City Department of Education has a new web filtering policy for employees. It will expand the use of its web filtering software, currently covering instructional computers, to cover all DOE computers, including those located in school administrative offices and in all central sites.
This software, called Websense, will transparently monitor all internet traffic and will automatically block content that is inappropriate, such as adult sites and those containing known security risks. Internal Department of Education websites, as well as internet sites that do not fall into the above categories, will not be affected by the filtering process.
If employees feel a particular website has been mis-categorized and/or is needed to perform job-related functions, they may contact the help desk at (718) 935-5100 to request an exception. When attempting to access a page that has been categorized as inappropriate, users will be re-directed to a block page like the one posted here.
Innovative educators will often share that one of the best ways to discover and implement innovative practices is by learning from others who are doing this work. Hearing about and seeing promising practices from those who are engaged in them is powerful. I encourage school leaders interested in hearing from others who are on the path to Realizing the Promise of the 21st Century School to attend Teaching Matters annual school leader forum: A Roadmap for Innovation which takes place Wednesday, July 15, 2009 from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm at 475 Riverside Drive.
