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Scaling Down to Ramp Up Learning: How to Bring the ISTE 2013 Conference Model to Your School

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to be in San Antonio at ISTE 2013. I had the amazing opportunity to present some research around how high school teachers take up technology with students. Though I was worried about the flooding in Calgary, my home survived unharmed and the city came together with tremendous spirit. (Quick shout-out: I have to share this great video of how the Calgary Stampede worked so hard to clean up in just 14 days).

Alright, back to the topic at hand.

me_and_iste_banner

Me + the ISTE Banner in San Antonio!

We are all a part of a shift in approach to professional learning. There are many lessons to be learned from the model that ISTE 2013 executed so well. ISTE is a huge organization with many hands, funds and experience. This year saw over 13,000 attendees, 800 concurrent sessions and 500 exhibiting companies. This is no small gathering! But it doesn’t have to be intimidating or overwhelming to apply the successful strategies that ISTE has, and keep the fires of excitement burning long after the event. I believe there are ways in which you can scale down and apply ISTE’s model without excessive effort, time, or money.

Current research into effective models for professional learning include characteristics like:

  • Choice and flexibility in topics, formats and approaches
  • Participation in a PLN, community and/or network
  • Ongoing, long-term and supported professional learning
  • Shared learning and improvement goals for staff, students, parents and the community
  • Research-based strategies
  • Focus on student data to determine needs and paths

Here are some ideas for how you could adjust the ISTE model to fit your own needs in a team, school, or district, and use activities to foster professional learning by teachers, for teachers. The key here is that you don’t need to plan for hours to pull it off. Based on the types of sessions offered at the conference, I’ve put together ideas that require little pre-planning and do not focus on formal presentations. All you need is to set time aside throughout the school year and select a few of the activities to try (I recommend trying an activity several times over a few months) and learn as you go. I hope they are useful!

  • Keynotes. ISTE featured keynote speakers who are leaders in the education field. Take advantage of their websites, books, publications, TED Talks, and YouTube videos (not to mention the many blog posts that have been written about their ideas) as a team, staff, or district. Delve deeper than a single speech and share the free resources.
  • Networking Fairs and Lounges. The conference hosted a number of events that brought together various groups, including young educators, newcomers, Tweeps, and special interest groups (e.g. focused on topics like mobile learning, edtech coaching, edtech in early learning, edtech in the arts, etc.). You can host regular get-togethers (as opposed to meetings) that encourage informal and creative discussion and sharing. Create spaces and times that allow people with specific interests and ideas to come together face to face and/or virtually.
  • Technology Infrastructure Pavilion. The conference included a space aimed at technology administrators, IT professionals and infrastructure planners. In my mind, infrastructure is just as important as the application of effective pedagogy in edtech. As educators, we should be able to plan for and evaluate the state of our technology infrastructure. It would be useful to invite those who are involved in infrastructure decisions to visit your school regularly and speak with students and staff as part of the technology planning, acquisition, maintenance and professional learning process, and to maintain open communication between IT professionals and educators.
  • Playgrounds. One of the largest areas of the conference featured hands-on opportunities to ‘play’ with software, apps, and hardware. Following the notion that everyone has something valuable to offer, I would suggest that educators bring something they are already using in their classrooms to share with others, such as a web 2.0 tool, social networking tool, or website that they find useful. Playgrounds can also be organized by topic, such as social networking, video conferencing, blogging, etc. Let’s say a few staff members share something each month in an informal playground setting. This would allow staff who are not sharing that month to select which playground to attend. Students could share too!
  • Learning Stations. This is one of my favourite ideas! At ISTE, these were informal two-hour sessions where students often led the conversation and shared short and long-term learning activities that they were engaged in. This idea can be expanded to include student sharing opportunities at lunch time in a learning commons where staff and other students can learn together. Wouldn’t it be terrific for students to share how they use Google Docs to collaborate with others, blogs to reflect on learning, or share their in-progress work to gather feedback from students and staff that they don’t normally interact with?
  • Start-up Pitch Fest. Edtech innovators pitched their ideas to the crowd in a fashion similar to the show, Dragon’s Den. In schools, you may not be pitching your idea to business investors, but both staff and students could present tools and apps that they are using in a quick, 2-minute format, or they could pitch  ideas such as a proposal for a student advisory board, or an edtech student-teacher support group.
  • Edcamp-style Sessions. If you haven’t experienced an edcamp event, you should look for one near you! Edcamp or un-conference events aim to flip professional learning upside down by encouraging educators to lead informal discussions on particular topics that are determined and facilitated by the  participants themselves. Un-conferences require little organization. The entire group of participants sets up a time to meet and brainstorm the topics they would like to discuss and share. Then they select which ones to participate in and the time(s) for the sessions that they will hold. Here’s an example of a first-time edcamp setup by my amazing buddies at Edcamp YYC. Though they solicited topics of conversation ahead of time, the facilitators were exactly that–they came to the table with some thoughtful inquiry questions, not formal presentations.
  • Ignite! Sessions. These were engaging PechaKucha presentations (20 slides in 5 min. where each slide appears for 15 seconds) in which presenters prepared something fun, inspirational and valuable to share. This would be a great way for students to share their ideas and inspire other students and staff.
  • Iron Chef. A new feature of ISTE this year was a hands-on event where groups set forth to create a solution to a challenge such as, “How would you design a program to facilitate digital citizenship in your school?”. Groups were given a couple of hours to work on their solution and then presented in a fast-paced PechaKucha style session the next day. Not only would this support fast iterations of prototypes and fuel brainstorming to solve challenges in the school, but it could also support team spirit channeled toward school-wide goals.
  • Roundtable Presentations. My roundtable presentation (along with my first ISTE conference) was an incredibly exciting experience! I shared my research into how high school teachers use technology with students and ended up meeting some incredible educators and app developers at the session. The roundtable session lasted for an hour and allowed for both the presentation of information as well as time for discussion with a group of 10-12. I prepared for my presentation, but believe that you could use this sharing format in a way that encourages the exploration of real examples and collaborative planning.

To sum it up, my ISTE 2013 conference experience showed me that there are ways in which we can harness the power of everyone’s experiences, and provide low-prep, collaborative opportunities for a variety of different types of professional learning. Could you select a few of the above items, work them into your team, school, or district’s calendar several times during the year, and watch the engagement around professional and peer learning grow? Share your thoughts below!

I’ll post more about my reflections on ISTE soon! For now, it’s back to the Calgary Stampede. I’m going to try deep fried butter and Doritos this year…

Ultra-networked Semantic Services: Are you ready?

Thanks so much for stopping by to check out TechPudding lately! If you just happened to be bored enough to keep track of my blogging, you’ll know that I wrote almost every day from February to April and then virtually disappeared from the blogosphere until now. This is because the end of the year brought some exciting and time consuming changes. I found out that I will be joining a team in the fall that is responsible for planning and implementing technology integration and use throughout a school board of over 200 schools. I am extra excited because I get to share ideas and learn with and from some very insightful brains. So needless to say, the last two months of the year were very busy as I wrapped up my technology lead role in my school. When I finally had the chance to catch my breath, I took full advantage of it and have enjoyed a summer of laid back relaxation.

So now it’s time to wake up my circuits and get back into the swing of things. Here it goes!

I found this video titled, The Future Internet: Service Web 3.0 by semantictechnology, that not only talks about the increasingly interconnectedness of Web 3.0, but also what it could mean for our future.

The number of users and the amount of content being produced online is growing exponentially. Furthermore, each user has an increasing number of access points to the Internet including multiple computers, mobile phones, tablets, and more. Not only are we increasingly connected as both producers and consumers of content in the digital universe, but the devices that we use to connect to the Internet are also connected to each other.

web connection imageNetworked, hyper-personalized digital services will use the information from every action, location, and interaction that we make in increasingly subtle ways. These services will continuously learn about our patterns of behaviour, wants, needs, and actions, and make recommendations to us based on our behaviours. The future economy will be sustained through the connections that personalized smart systems have with each and every user.

This is where semantic technologies come in to make sense of the many ways in which we communicate digitally. Semantic technologies will de-code user-created content and actions and help other pieces of technology to use it in the creation of personalized recommendations. The everyday objects that we interact with will make up the “Internet of things,” where each object will play a part in monitoring what we do, where we go, and what we buy. Unified, networked services and processes on the Internet will help businesses reach consumers, markets, investors, and other businesses more efficiently and seamlessly.

The video predicts that the Internet will be pervasive in our lives, and offers that we will have to develop boundaries and limits to protect our personal information. This raises serious questions that already exist about personal privacy, as well as how much we should rely on such services in case they fail. I am also concerned about the hyper-personalization of services, information, and applications. I feel as though this will contribute even more to the isolation of people from each other when they become attached to only a handful of “realms” online, if you can call them that. However, the Internet of things may also help to organize like-minded individuals to connect and pursue positive endeavours.

I believe that educators will need to understand the nature of the connection between users and the technologies that we use. We will have to learn to think about the consequences and connections that are translated through our devices and everyday objects every time we interact with them. Our digital footprints will not only leave information about our preferences, actions, and wants, but will also influence future recommendations and in effect, our future decisions, are made. Communication, collaboration, and creation will be the most valued skills because it is the integration of information from multiple sources that will influence our decisions. We should be teaching our students to use the semantic web to combine multiple pieces of information in order to make well thought out decisions because if we don’t, someone or something else may do it for them…

What are your thoughts on this vision of Web 3.0? Please share!

Image: Design by connection, by Dave Gray. 2011. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Three Approaches to Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0) including a Marshall McLuhan Moment

Lately I have been thinking about what the term Web 2.0 really means. According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 “allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them” (para. 1). The description of users as passive consumers refers to Web 1.0, the era when most people did not create content online; they simply used the Internet to research information so it travelled only one-way, from the computer to the person.

The following YouTube video posted by jleister titled, 3 Phases of Educational Technology, does an excellent job of explaining the progression of student and teacher technology use from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 by breaking it down into three parts. jleister emphasizes that all three phases are equally important in the learning process, and that during a single lesson, all three may be present.

Briefly:

  • Phase I – teachers use technology as one-way mediums for disseminating information, such as showing video clips or PowerPoint presentations to a passive student audience. The visuals help students to understand concepts more clearly. This use of technology maintains the teacher’s role as the disseminator of knowledge and controller of the structure and organization of the classroom.
  • Phase II – students begin to interact with the technology to acquire content knowledge instead of full reliance on textbooks or teacher lectures. They conduct online research, read, or view media that they search for themselves. However, the structure of the lessons may still mimic phase I.
  • Phase III – students become producers of media. They create images, presentations, audio, and/or texts, and what’s more–they share their creations with others and interactively review others’ work. jleister argues that we need to focus on modern skills of communication, collaboration, and creation during this phase and think of students as producers of information, not just consumers of it. I feel that this is the essence of Web 2.0.

Next, I found an excellent animated video titled, Evolution Web 1.0, to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 by davidEPN. It highlights how Web 2.0 is moving into Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is:

  • The development of an intelligent, omnipresent web that is an extension or continuation of what we presently understand the web to be
  • Involved in a continuous learning process that anticipates users’ preferences, such as the recommendations that Amazon provides as you shop
  • Increasingly interconnected appliances including cars and phones that communicate with each other, becoming more and more present but less visible. They learn about our lives and make individualized recommendations in increasingly automatic ways
  • Web 3.0 opens the door to machines converting data into useful, meaningful information, otherwise known as the semantic web

Finally, I will refer to the thoughts of someone who was way ahead of his time. Marshall McLuhan, considered by many to be the father of media theory (and a great Canadian thinker, I might add!), contributed to our understanding of technology’s influence on us before we even knew it was happening in the 1960’s and ’70’s. In the following clip, marshall mcluhan on the media posted by matsutakneatche, McLuhan explains:

  • All media is an extension of human faculties: the wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing is an extension of the skin, and electric circuitry is an extension of the nervous system
  • The extension of any one sense displaces the other senses and alters the way we think of ourselves and the world
  • The literate (book) world emphasized the visual, and made us detached and isolated from the other people since reading is a relatively private activity. McLuhan calls it “not involved”
  • The electric revolution and the information age is where “involvement is total”
  • The information explosion becomes the culture
  • Artists are the only ones who live in the present on the edge of change while most people live in the age just behind them because it is safer

Takeaways:

I am completely intrigued by each one of these videos and thinkers, but even more interested in what happens when we take them together in the context of Web 2.0, 3.0, and beyond. My thoughts are:

  • Perhaps after the information explosion (that McLuhan identified), the semantic web will begin to limit our access to information by bombarding us with only the ‘recommendations’ that have come about from the complex programming that goes into semantic systems. There will be a semantic culture if you will, that will develop from the interpretation of billions of tiny bits of information that users input into the web connecting everything, without even knowing it. And this semantic culture will not only be invisible, but will continue to evolve until what began as ‘recommendations’ will become automatic ‘decisions’ that are made for us.
  • After jleister’s phase III, we must consider students themselves to be learners as well as teachers in a never-ending learning cycle of researching, learning, synthesizing, creating, and reviewing. McLuhan’s term, “total involvement,” defines the role of schools as helping students develop their skills and understanding of this cycle. Furthermore, we will have to re-think what we refer to as curriculum, since the value that we place on particular ideas or knowledge isn’t half as important as how we interact with it. This draws upon McLuhan’s famous idea that “the medium is the message“. Instead of focusing on curriculum, we will have to focus on the learning cycle.
  • What does it mean to live in the present as opposed to the age that has just passed? I believe that technology has become a medium that extends our thinking and the way in which we connect ideas, learn, and think. Our concepts of time and collaboration have also changed through the immediacy of information and access, the range of people that we can collaborate with, and the permanent nature of what we share online. Perhaps living in the present means accepting that we will be forever less private and more connected with people, things, and places, even when we think that we aren’t.
  • Will there still be phase I and II learning in this world? Of course! If I know nothing about a particular topic and ask someone about it or look up an article online, then I am engaging in the first two phases. However, I believe that our notion of ‘baseline understanding’ of any given topic will change completely. After all, with so many more sources of information, the lines between opinion, educated opinion, and fact will become increasingly blurred. Baseline knowledge may decrease in importance while sound arguments based on a wide range of sources will become more important. Thus, phase III will become much more prevalent and may put ‘untouched’ baseline knowledge to the test.

I will definitely delve into the thoughts of McLuhan and the road to Web 3.0 in future posts. This topic is incredibly intriguing to me! What are your thoughts on our journey into the future? What about living in the past or present? And what of technology as extensions of ourselves? Please share!

(Image: Brains, by neil conway. 2009. Available under a Creative Commons Generic License.)