Groups+All+Together


 * A listing of all the wiki responses from 2/18/08**

Group A • More laptop carts – must have laptops for our students (or look into having MS and US have their own laptops) • Time as a school to look at how we can move forward in technology – what subjects, etc. • It would enable our students to connect globally with people who have like minded interests • Communicating with strangers – continue to tell our children not to talk with strangers. • Safety? Plus, stranger is influencing our children’s thinking in a blog. • Realize that we are all in it together • No one is the “master” of all knowledge • Information changes constantly • Help to teach kids how to find information • Important not to ignore how our world is changing, but look for ways to implement these • Changes in our classroom. Ask –1) how can we better prepare our students; 2) what do we • Want our students to know before they leave our Collegiate campus and go out into the world? • Who can we collaborate with to enrich our classrooms – explore the options! • Educate our children to exist in this changing world without losing personal interaction, • Respect for others, kindness (face-to-face) • Take advantage of all the technology – but how do we know what’s accurate? Are some of these people quacks? How do we know that we want these people to influence our children? • For teacher -- time allotted to technology • We need time to learn “new” technology practices • We need to have time to implement these new practices • We would need a “blog planning period” – time to maintain new practices

Group B • Have more computers in the classrooms • Hire Will Richardson immediately • Educating teacher and students on current computer programs • Faculty myspace/facebook pages? Modeling appropriate use. • Consistently reliable and working technology in our classrooms • Get comfortable with the language of technology (hypertext, etc.) • Try to balance increased comfort with technology on the one hand with real interpersonal • connection on the other (i.e. actual conversational skills) • Force ourselves to start a blog and learn along the way • Have the school decide what technologies we ought to include • Collaborate • discuss or identify what we need to be ready to give up to make these changes happen (professional and personal lives) • Find ways to share content and thoughts • Human connection: can we have a real conversation over internet video? • Find ways to teach values in a world which is no longer centralized • -there is a difference between information and values. How do we define words like "cheating" and distinguish them from "sharing"?

Group C • Administration needs to think of what’s important for faculty to do. • What does the school want to do. • The school needs to determine how to teach face book and other current technologies. • Be willing to take risks, Just Try! • Over coming fear of the unknown, and relinquish some control • Time to create, understand, out of class time • New tools as opposed to something extra to do • Remove some of the old administrative paper work to make more time. • Re-evaluate the curriculum. • School needs to determine where less paper can be used and act. • Allow teachers to be co-learners with their class. • Better utilize Professional Days and meeting times to give teachers time to demonstrate, create and use new technologies.

Group D • We need to educate ourselves re student choices and uses regarding the web. • Educate ourselves and then our students re validity, ethics, appropriateness of what is available on the web. We could use more professional time to explore and learn about the opportunities available - for example, this morning showed a wealth of sites, uses, etc and to find similar opportunities in our own discipline seems like an overwhelming challenge. The one-on-one collaboration between teachers can be a great learning opportunity. We need to look at more examples of successful online collaboration. • Teach students how to form and navigate through relationships that are made solely online. What is the new definition of "relationship"? What is lost by forgoing the face-to-face nature of the classroom? How do we strike a balance between the inside and the outside of our classroom? How do we ensure the environment is a safe as well as educational one? Are we interested and willing to lose the part of teaching that we love – the interaction between and among the students around us? • If we are savvy with the tech that our students use, we can strengthen the relationships we have with our students. We need to give up some of our autonomy to gain a greater autonomy. • We need to make chances of what and how we teach – we need to model the appropriate use of what is available. If everyone makes one small change, how different the experience can be for our students. • If acquisition of content no longer defines “success” – how do we change our definition of success in our classroom?

Group E • Teachers must become more facile with technology • Bring parents along with the school’s discussion of technology, so they will be supportive • Students should be encouraged to envision the skills they will need in their future • Teach collaboration and reduce the emphasis on the teacher-centered classroom • Consider how to assess student work in collaborative projects • Teach students how to evaluate websites • Consider the developmental stages in teaching use of technology • Encourage faculty to share their successes with technology; set up appropriate forums

Group F • Be willing to change and open to using technology • Do our web homework by us researching sites and coming up with information pertaining to sustainability issues. • Change the way exams are designed • Construct a critical awareness of “what rises to the top” in the realm of information visibility • Teach students how to “hack” without moralizing. • Construct own measurement of success and failure • Create open source tests and quizzes • Start with something small • Spend more time in classroom on things that are not look “upable” – i.e. narratives and case studies. • Recognize it as one tool. • Teachers rethink acceptable and unacceptable use of outside sources • Create opportunities for students to articulate a position and defend an argument. • If content is cheap, what is rare – that’s what we need to focus on in the classroom • Teach students to think about accountability and ethical uses of contents – awareness of global responsibility.

Group G • Recognize change has/is happening. • Model learning • Can’t immerse in electronic connections. Face to face is important – need the human interactions. • Digital natives versus digital immigrants – Students are already doing this and have different ways of learning, sharing, interacting, and networking than we do. • Start small with connections through pageflakes, etc… don’t have the time to do all of this. • We must continue to encourage and re-instill that to be a literate thinking member of a modern cultured society one must NOT confine learning or appreciation to only the parameters of one’s passion. • Model for students the creation of our own knowledge and demonstrate authentic learning and assessment.

Group H • Share our work for comment. Display your artwork for comment and to allow others to share their work also. • Start with a topic and allow students to develop their own content. • Use technology to create artwork and post online. • Teach faculty ways to use technology to collaborate. Find out how is doing this well and how we can efficiently teach in this manner. • Encourage faculty to collaborate and promote various ways of learning instructional technique using technology. • Use resources and techniques for instructional purposes that are beneficial for all types of learning styles. • When a question arises, use technology to investigate even if the result may tangential. • Use the technology to model to students ways of finding information, and provide opportunities for students to share their techniques as well as their content / results. • Embrace change – teach content and skills (global, collaborative media) necessary to the 21st century but also teach the universal spiritual virtues of honesty, respect, tolerance, justice, and compassion. These are best taught through dynamic human interaction. FACE to FACE! Not just FACE to FACEBOOK! • Does face to face on skype count?

Group I • mandate that every class should have at least one outside connection (off campus). • We need an off campus mentor, international connection or something that gives the kids an ongoing, outside source of information. • Teach our faculty to be comfortable with this new way of knowing and not reject such things offhand. It is very different from how all of us were educated and it won’t be an easy task, but we run the risk of becoming as outdated as scriptoria were at the onset of printing. • Use senior seminar to create “thin walls” and teach students to be wise consumers of internet information. Perhaps find one outside, offsite mentor for the class. • The role of the teacher: changes in the role of the teacher; sage on the stage; guide on the side recently. Now the connector is as a facilitator of learning. Moving beyond classroom walls to become a global village of learners. Moving from traditional curriculum – one course at a time – to a cross-curriculum and beyond the school to a global classroom of collaborative learners. • What about video games? Will we ever use them meaningfully to teach through simulations? Why are they so hypnotic for kids? Do they make them active or passive learners, since they are ultimately artficial? • Covering content concisely and efficiently is a challenge. Bringing together fast-breaking and divergent sources is an intellectual challenge -- a bit scary, though necessary. A lot of work!

Group J • We must first become the student that our students need to be. • We must teach students to analyze all forms of textuality: novels, plays, poems—standard stuff—but also online resources, blogs, and the like. • We must be willing to not know something. • We must adapt our expectations in terms of “outcomes” – citation? Using library resources? • We must figure out how to catch up with our kids. • We must find the time/be given the time to take part in this new learning environment. • We must not be afraid to learn from our students. • We must reconfigure how teachers do their jobs, so they can better partake in, and learn from this environment. This is yet another hat…

Group K • We must read and write outside our own bubble. • We must stop imagining ourselves in a hierarchy. I am not the king in my classroom anymore. • We must change how we teach. Changing how we teach changes what we teach. • This stuff is natural for the kids. We have to catch up to them and learn about the technology. • We must get on board and keep up with this fast-moving train before our students are left at the station.

Group L • Teach students to know what a reasonable answer is • Teach students to how to tell if information is reliable • Provide learning activities on the web and to connect the students to people all over the world. • Admit that there are other/better methods to do what we do • Be more discriminating when we determine what content is necessary to memorize • Adjust to the changes that are constantly taking place • Understand that the students know more about the computers than we do – use the kids as experts • Think outside convention – be ready to try new experiences and techniques • Be willing to indulge the students in their interests and curiosities rather than being tied to the assignment sheet and curriculum • Collaborate with other teachers • Teach students how to think – so that they can analyze, evaluate, and respond to new ideas • Be willing to decide what we will have to give up - assemblies, coaching, clubs.... in order to have the time to try new ideas

Group N • We seem to be developing the cerebral part of the individual, what about the physical and the world which we can touch? • Get our kids to create a new Wikipedia entry • Don’t give up authority to student just because they are more tech savvy—don’t be afraid to teach. Still offer guidance. Collaborative learning. • Spend more time learning how to utilize content since it’s readily available • Flexibility. Time involved in re-writing curriculum • Connect with experts for first grade projects • Spelling, abbreviations, etc. how do we evaluate literacy?

Group O • Let the students become the teachers – get out of the front of the class. • Rethink how we learn in our own lives, and what we are modeling to our students. • Navigate the question of whether assignments for this type of work actually help inspire passion or kill it. Those students who will fulfill the assignment will do it anyway, and participation grades don’t really motivate in the most effective way. How do we motivate those students who are not automatically interested in a way that is not an assignment (we noted the difference between wiki assignments and the Perspectives folder). • Discover how to rethink our curricula to integrate with the passions of each of our students, rather than always expect them to be passionate about ours. We need to learn to listen to our students on a variety of levels. We should teach MySpace, Facebook, and wiki pages that excite us, and this will often require us to expand our own concepts of what qualifies as 'respectable' academia. We need to spend more time figuring out our students rather than waiting for them to figure us out. • Keep up with technology - we'd like to have a Wii!

Group P • We must reconsider, specifically, Advanced Placement Testing, whose current emphasis is on document based questions, essay and multiple choice questions (employing memorized content), and strictly independent (as opposed to collaborative) performance. • Further, we must redesign our approach to teaching writing and research. • And perhaps we must look at changing the “ideal scholastic product.” • Students should continue to place emphasis on their ability to write, but their ability to tell stories in a visual way is also essential.

Group Q • Identify what the students are doing and teach it effectively. • Teach parents what students are using on the web so that they can participate in the 24/7/365 learning/teaching process. • Teach at a young age how to use the search engines process. • How to analyze information. • Teach more intentionally the social dynamics involved in working as a collaborative and productive member of a group of people from many backgrounds and cultures. • Teach original thought. • Use the knowledge of the students as teachers/leaders of technology. • Teach students to be the technology mentors for classes/grades. • Connect to parents about what we are teaching in technology so the kids get the same message. • Becoming familiar with blogs of our own topics. • Realize that we are not the only or the best teachers out there for our students… someone always knows more.

Group S • Learn to teach primary students the basic skills while connecting outside the classroom – need to learn these concepts • Learn to use the resources available to teach the basic skills • Make sure children understand how to identify the intellectual authority • Learn more as educators to adapt to this environment • Still focus on the value of relationship in and out of our network • Recognize the inherent risk in knowledge sharing is that there must be time for one’s original thought before ones shares, borrows, and reconstructs • Content is not what is important – knowledge and understanding how to build knowledge

Group T • The notion of some kind of discussion board / open forum was a consensus in the group as to its usefulness. Used in a course it could be better than one-on-one emails since each student in the class gets to read what others are asking and can answer the question themselves or elaborate on other questions. • Content is NOT cheap in science; online sources such as the MIT courses are still just a person lecturing on the screen – no opportunity to ask questions or to interact. • Opinion-driven world-wide resources have little to do with education in many arenas. • Teachers need to be educated on all these new things so that we can for example find out in 3 minutes or less the source of websites like the MLK page; we need professional time to be brought up to speed.

Group V I must.... • Change my attitude, keep an open mind • Further my personal education about the different technologies • Set the short term goals for myself- realize that I will always be behind current technology • Recognize that the students might be my greatest resource • Recognize that although 75% kids are on social networks, I still need to teach social skills and respect for others for real-life face –to-face connections. Maintain a balance between cyber relations and face-to-face relationships. • Be a mentor and help kids to realize that everything is not instantaneous and to develop patience in learning. Mastery takes time. • Use technology as a resource • Keep a Balance • Kids still need to have the opportunity to think and struggle with something before collaborating. Kids need to take time. • Importance of connecting with others around the world with the support of technology. • Also need to learn skills for intercultural competence.

Group W • Heighten critical analysis of net info sources • Embrace technology kids are using and increase personal web skills • Provide kids opportunities to collaborate and challenge each other and adults with respect to information and technology • Find ways to blend tradition with the future • Create links to others and experts with same passions • Never forget that technology is simply a tool that allows people to perform tasks.

Group X • Start creating more collaborative-friendly classrooms (example- monarch butterfly migration wiki to interact initially with our partner school in Mexico but then to extend to others who are studying this migration.) • In the lower school, we need to build awareness that the learning that happens in the classroom extends beyond the classroom community and the school community, and involves a global view. We want to communicate with others with a purpose and share information with others in meaningful ways. Classroom projects, therefore, need to include a global component. • We must use the global community to enrich our teaching to make real impact. • Instead of sending home paper reports, students share information learned from research via podcasts. (example -1st grade polar research project) • Share with parents via websites and/or email. • Blogs/wikis – Example about global warming, author studies • Keep a balance between “locally tactile” learning and “globally remote” connecting, where contact can be virtual but never actual. • Connect with right brain areas sharing art, music, interactive discussions of collaborative areas. Ex – For an impressionism project – one group uploads original art in genre. Another group adds music, and other adds dance. • Find balance of investing energy into the high content informational age and investing energy in Daniel Pink’s defined age of creativity. • We must realize the need for balance between human connection and technological connection.

Group Y (Lower School) • Collaborate with fellow teachers in general • More education for teachers to use various technology in the classroom • Find “experts” in the fields • Educate parents and students on the ethics and how to use technology • Students collaborate with each other • More access to technology (for adults and students)

Group Z • Start with our own experience as life long learners…where does that lead? • Are we sharing how we learn with our students? • Look at these options as part of the curriculum not as an “extra” • How do you tap into the passion of students….they are finding the time to do this even if we don’t do it at school. • No sage on the stage as the world is the stage! • “Jump off” knowing that you will end up in a place you might not expect • Dialogue is the means, not getting the “right” answer • How do we help them interact with all that is on the web? • Web literacy is something we need to address