A "Missionary Summer": Call to Edtech Specialists
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[This post has taken me a few days to write. I apologize for its length, and hope you'll read it to the end.
When I started reading edublogs last December, Karl Fisch was my first. His Fischbowl frankly blew me away. I read it obsessively during my Winter Holiday vacation, started blogging my reactions to Karl's "best of 2006" selections on my first fumbling posts as an edublogger.
This was on the original Beyond School (which I now lovingly abbreviate), on LiveJournal.
Reflectively blogging on Karl's best, I felt ideas for classroom implementation bubble. They came to a boil before the holiday was over, and I returned for second semester ready to launch my first large-scale wiki project--the French Revolution Ant-Farm Diaries, a writing-to-learn history mini-wikipedia combined with historical fiction-writing in the form of diaries.
While this was a collaborative project, with another teacher and his learners, and while it did explode the classroom walls, it did so in a very limited way: the only wall that went down was the one between my own classroom, and Mr. Spivey's room next door.
My point so far? I didn't need the edublogging network to help this collaborative classroom project happen. I found Jason myself, which was easy. He was in the lunchroom. I pitched the project idea and he said "Okay, sure" with a mouthful of kimbab.
Still, even though this "flat classroom" project was literally as global (and flat) as the 100-odd square meters of our two adjacent rooms, the lesson was a hit for the students. They loved collaborating with all the ninth graders in the school, and not just the random group in their period. And their summative assessment--traditional analytical essays on the course of the French Revolution--demonstrated a very solid grasp of the content.
(Strangely enough, I think the writing was overall stronger for this than it was for the much more intensive 1001 Flat World Tales, but that's a topic for another day. I think it has to do with something Alan Watts points to with the Zen maxim, "When you try to float, you sink; when you try to sink, you float.")
While Jason and I were managing that project, I started blogging "teacher think-alouds" about how I could do a collaborative wiki project based on The Arabian Nights that extended beyond my hallway, beyond my school, and out into the "flat world." I'd discovered Julie Lindsay's and Vicki Davis' Flat Classroom Project (and it's relevant to my point, which I only manage to arrive at several paragraphs down, that both Vicki and Julie are also edtech specialists, not core-content teachers), and after seeing how the students took to the French Revolution collaborative writing, thought it would be incredible to do a global creative writing workshop on a wiki, using the 6 Traits of Effective Writing. A few "think-aloud" posts later, the idea for the 1001 Flat World Tales was firm enough to start hawking here on "B.S."
But this time--and this is my main point here--I did need help from the edublogosphere. I needed teachers in other countries to sign on. So I kept hawking, inviting, pleading, and hawking some more. And within a couple of weeks, edubloggers started helping out.
Jeff Whipple, an edtech specialist in Canada, and Jeff Utecht, an edtech specialist in China, plugged the project on their blogs. I believe Karl did too. NextGenTeachers were even nice enough to host a podcast about these projects. And while the attention was nice, I still had no classroom teachers to connect with.
Jeff Whipple then went beyond the moral support by persuading Chad, a middle school English teacher in his district, to throw his hat in the ring. Chad's students were a grade below mine, and he only had a handful, but it was a start.
Then Karl, responding to a few emails I'd sent, came through maybe a week later with a teacher in his school who was willing to play. And Michele, like me, taught ninth graders. Things were looking up.
Around the same time, Chris Watson in Hawaii signed on (I don't even remember how we hooked up--maybe I left an invitation on his blog, or he on mine?).
So within three weeks of floating the idea, Chris, Michele, and I started our students writing together. (We just finished, and we learned loads by doing--but that's a subject for a later post, since we're giving the "almost publishable" writers one last week to revise to meet our standards.)
Meanwhile, another edtech specialist in Malaysia, Kim Cofino, hooked up one of her teachers with Chad in Canada to start a middle school workshop; soon, a Serbian English teacher signed on too. I met her through ePals. (Since all workshops are self-contained, I don't know how this one fared. Stay tuned for a "lessons learned" on that one as soon as final exams are over.)
Also meanwhile, an elementary workshop got off the ground (but how high it flew, again, I don't yet know) between Terry Smith in the US and a teacher pulled in by edtech specialist Jeff Dungan in the Dominican Republic. Stayed tuned for reflections on that one too.
And finally, a second high school workshop between Shanghai, Serbia, and Australia began a month after our first Hawaii-Denver-Seoul one. A glimpse at that wiki a month or so ago tells me that the collaboration hit some considerable bumps. I can't wait to compare notes from all of these first attempts to find out what those bumps were, identify patterns, and isolate principles for smoother flat classroom collaboration in content-area classrooms next year. The mistakes, mis-steps, and brick walls all these English teachers experienced should provide a motherlode of lessons learned for all content-area teachers in the future. But again, that's summer homework.
Why I'm writing this now, though, is to point out how difficult it was to actually find content-area teachers to collaborate with. Many edtech specialists, as you've just read, took an interest and tried to help by plugging the concept on their blogs (and once the workshops got off the ground with the participating teachers on board, many more edubloggers started writing about their "discovery" of the project -- leading me to feel a bit like the Native Americans must have felt to learn that Columbus had "discovered" them), but very few were able to actually expand the project by bringing in participating classrooms.
And this, I suggest, is a huge challenge for getting "flat classroom" projects out of the salons and into the schools. All of the blogging about new edtech finds and possibilities is genuinely helpful and interesting, but until more teachers are connecting in the content area classrooms, it seems less vital than facilitating those connections.
It's fairly certain that the reason for this dearth of participating teachers is largely due to this unfortunate truth: most classroom teachers would sooner brave the gates of Hell than those of flat world collaboration. Try as they may, the evangelical edtech specialists surely find content-area teachers a hard lot to convert.
But there has to be a way we can improve this situation. And since (drumroll) I'll be joining the ranks of edtech specialists next year at my school (except for two sections of an AP Lit class I'll be teaching), I want to suggest this one: Let's make it a goal to find and connect teachers in our various schools between now and the beginning of the '07-'08 school year, and to help them set up and sustain collaborative projects. Patrick, Scott, Jeff, Jeff, Karl, Chris, Pat, Kim, and anybody else: what do you think? Do you have any content-area teachers right now who might be open to connecting with other teachers over the summer to explore starting the fall semester with some global collaboration? Here in Seoul, I've had one history teacher, four English teachers, and one drama teacher express interest. Our school will launch a 1:1 program next year (with Macs) to make such collaborations more easily manageable.
If we start talking now, we've got a good part of the summer to lay the groundwork for classroom 2.0 (or at least 1.5) in practice. I hope to hear from some of you. (And I guess I'll put this out on the Classroom 2.0 Ning as well.)
[Two afterthoughts:
1. Maybe there is such a network for such a purpose already. If I'm reinventing the wheel, please let me know so I can join that one instead, and promote it in a follow-up "never mind" post.
2. If you're a content-area teacher reading this, and you want to nominate yourself for inclusion in this network--Bing, Nate, I think you already have, yes?--then by all means, leave a comment or shoot me an email.]
If you like this post, please spread it: 
(But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
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- Late Response to "Missionary Summer" Comments Bulletin...
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Clay,
The nobility of this endeavor is unquestioned, and I can’t imagine what your school is in for next year when this sort of thing becomes your almost-full time job.
My take on this echoes yours: teachers are going to resist this for the most part, but we all have a few that are willing. I am running a two-day workshop this summer for teachers who are interested in connective writing, mainly blogging, plus I have severa l teachers who have had great experiences with wikis.
So, I am ready with at least three teachers, all from grades 6 and 7. Hopefully, I will be able to persuade some high school teachers to come in as well.
Quick question: Which AP’s are you teaching? Our AP teachers are very willing to get into some critical dialogue with anyone. Maybe we can set up something there?
P.S.- iShowU is infinitely better–thanks.
[Reply]
Patrick Higgins
1 Jun 07 at 11:06 am
Hi Patrick,
If you want me to approach any grade 6 and 7 teachers, let me know.
Unfortunately, our 1:1 will only pertain to grades 9 - 11 next year–though this will free up a good forty additional HP laptops on our carts for middle and elementary school use.
I’ll be teaching AP literature and composition. And I’m definitely game, though again, my AP’s, being seniors, won’t be part of the 1:1 program.
One thing I think we all learned this year on the 1001 Tales is that carts and computer labs are pale substitutes for 1:1 solutions.
But I’d love to explore lower-maintenance (and possibly higher yield?) connections with your AP teachers. So I’d love to talk.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Jun 07 at 2:06 pm
Patrick,
An afterthought: rather than create a new wiki or other site for our “coalition of the willing” content-area teachers–along the lines of the “Support Classroom Blogging” wiki–what do you think of adding a page to your “NewTeacherGeekDay” site to do the job?
I’d love to talk to you about making your wiki “Collaboration Central.” Interested?
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Jun 07 at 2:51 pm
I don’t really like being called an “ed tech specialist” — I teach Computer Science, Graphic Design (Art), Accounting (Math), Computer Fundamentals (some would consider edTech), and Keyboarding (likewise), however, since doing our projects, our English department has started a blog for the AP English Class, the fifth grade has begun blogging. I think a person like me is a natural place to start, although my school may not be your typical in that we require 2 1/2 years of computer science/ technology skills. Also, I am required to do several cross-curricular projects with English/ History/ Math/ Science — but you do have to start somewhere and usually it is where the computers are.
[Reply]
Vicki A. Davis
1 Jun 07 at 6:48 pm
Clay,
This is the problem. Finding teachers who are willing to take that jump into a world they do not know and do not understand. It’s all I can do to get teachers to backup all of their data for this summer.
We need to get more teachers to take risks, to understand what a flat world, flat clasroom can offer them. How do you do that?
A question I’m still trying to answer.
[Reply]
Jeff Utecht
1 Jun 07 at 8:05 pm
Patrick and Vicki,
(Vicki: When I say “core content teachers” (a term which includes me and doesn’t bother me), it’s convenient shorthand for us all. “Edtech specialists” was the best umbrella term I could come up with for the mentors, computer teachers, tech resource specialists, coordinators, ICT specialists, etc. Give me a better term and I’ll be glad to use it.)
More to the point, the focus here is to try to make core content classroom collaboration more of the norm than the exception. Semantics aside, most flat classroom work I’ve seen has not taken place there. If we want schools to change, it surely must, and the sooner the better.
“Starting somewhere” is where we are, and you’ve been obviously stellar in that respect. As I said, you, Julie, Karl, Jeff and others inspired this English and history teacher to bring flat classroom collaboration into his English and history classes.
Finding a way of “going further”– beyond the non-core classes, and into core content flat classroom collaboration among English, history, and (though I’m less at home here) math and science teachers, and as a common practice instead of a special event–this is the purpose of my post.
I agree with you that “starting where the computers are” is key. That’s where a network of 1:1 schools, where the computers are in all of the classrooms and go home with the students, and are not just limited to the computer lab, interests me. Those schools are prime candidates for “normalizing” flat classroom collaboration across the curriculum.
And it’s the techies in those schools (and others, of course) that I’m hoping can coordinate in order to connect their teachers and help this wave gain momentum.
Patrick,
Have you played with compression settings on iShowU yet?
C.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Jun 07 at 8:14 pm
Hi Jeff,
“How do you get teachers to do it?”
I say by doing as much as is humanly possible to lay the groundwork and basically team-teach with them until they get the hang of it.
SAS is going 1:1 next year, isn’t it? It’s official as of next week that we are too. That fact–plus the fact that you and I are separated by only one hour, as opposed to the 12 and 17-hour lag in the 1001 Tales–makes me think we could hook some Shanghai-Seoul connections up next year.
(And what do you mean, “How do you get teachers to jump in?” You got me to a couple years back, didn’t you? And that Welker guy in economics is doing some fantastic wiki work. So they are jumping. It’s a question now of getting them to swim together.)
C.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Jun 07 at 8:21 pm
Patrick,
By all means, hook me up with your AP Lit teacher if possible. I’d love to play with ideas.
Sorry I didn’t answer that clearly earlier. School’s not out over here yet, but my mental candle almost is.
Clay
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Jun 07 at 8:43 pm
Hi Clay, I would definately be interested in linking the students in my class with those from anywhere else. So count me in by all means. Next year, with the state grant I received, I will have access to a classroom set of laptops for my sophomore classes.
Like Patrick said, it may be difficult to drag a critical mass of teachers into this. However, what I’ve found in my school is that there are some who say they are willing… I’ve tried to forge ahead on my own, hoping that others will naturally follow. My next big goal is to collaborate on a flat-world project, ideally based on a text we read in class.
Keep me posted.
Bing
ps - The inclusion of comments on the student blogs by you and others has added an interesting learning opportunity wrinkle to the project. Unfortunately, being the end of the year, I do not feel I have taken full advantage of it. Just remember, the students are mostly new to this and still a bit unfamiliar with all the intricacies/protocol of commenting etc…
[Reply]
Miller
1 Jun 07 at 10:02 pm
Hi Clay
I’m interested but I have 11 - 13 year olds (accelerate class) but we are not in the same school year cycle as you guys in the north. I do want to get my students involved in some sort of online collaborative project. Let me know if you think its possible for us to be involved.
[Reply]
Lynne Crowe
2 Jun 07 at 3:33 am
Clay,
To answer all of your questions:
If you could, throw the idea out to the 6-7 teachers and see if they might be interested in an authentic learning experience. You and I might brainstorm on this later.
Our AP LANGUAGE and Composition teacher is who I had in mind, but give me a day or two to seek out the lit teacher and I will get back to you on this one. What I have in mind is something of an international consortium of AP classes where they can share resources, but most importantly where the students can write critically and reflect on meaningful works of literature or prose. We did it within our AP class this year and it was extremely successful.
I think making the newteachergeekday wiki a starting point is a great idea. We can add resources to the first few sections and create whatever we need off of those pages. Feel free to add resources, as it is completely open now.
As for iShowU, I have not gotten too deep into the compression settings yet. What do you have?
[Reply]
Patrick Higgins
2 Jun 07 at 7:09 am
Hey, thanks for the change but I think perhaps it hit a raw nerve with me because it is precisely the term “ed tech specialists” and not teacher that people use to pigeonhole such projects. It is so important that we move such projects to the mainstream.
As long as technology is relegated to being treated as “non core” we will have issues — I think it should be viewed as important as other subjects because it will be used to learn in all subjects.
[Reply]
Vicki A. Davis
2 Jun 07 at 10:09 am
hey clay,
you know i’m in for just about anything tech-related! however, as i’ve mentioned to you in a previous email i’m not certain exactly what tech resources will be available at my new school in kuwait. based on my previous experience in kuwait i know that students will be well-equipped at home. i could potentially become the poster child/teacher for the minimalist approach to getting tech into the core curriculum! no laptop carts for sure…however, i have an agenda!
getting teachers on board with technology is a challenge. it’s those of us who like to ‘tinker’ with technology and teach ourselves who are on the front lines (in my experiences thus far) to serve as models and recruiters. i am still surprized that many teachers still see their computers as word processors with email. back in the mid-90s i was a bit of an anomaly when i (an elementary specialist teaching french) decided to (on my own) create a web page for my classes that then led to creating a web-page for the division i worked in (all self-taught wysisyg). at that point the tech dept seemed to be more about procuring machines and keeping them working than developing the concept of ‘instructional technology’ for the purpose of instructing! even tech teachers of the present are teaching stand-alone classes of how to create a power-point…am i ranting?
clay, you said, “But this time–and this is my main point here–I did need help from the edublogosphere.” the edublogosphere is an obvious place to find tech-inclined/curious teachers to get involved–preaching to the choir, if you will. the bigger challenge is to bring the teachers into the fold who are not currently using technology. i believe that in order to get more teachers on board with technology and the amazing collaborative options it offers classrooms around the world, it’s necessary to spread the word. i do think there is ‘missionary’ work to be done with our colleagues. there are those who are willing to dabble with the guidance of a trusted colleague. i also think that it’s really important for teachers who use technology like you (clay, et. al.) do to get the word out by presenting these projects at local, national, and international teacher conventions. many teachers don’t even know what’s out there waiting for them, nor where to even begin!
i look forward to future readings and collaborations! this is so exciting for me because i know the students involved benefit beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
christina
[Reply]
Christina Botbyl
2 Jun 07 at 3:00 pm
Hi Clay,
I agree that 1:1 “schools are prime candidates for “normalizing” flat classroom collaboration across the curriculum”. Most schools who have taken the decision embrace a 1:1 environment do so because they value collaborative and constructivist approaches to learning and the development of post-industrial skills, such as multi-modal literacy, critical thinking and problem solving.
Global interaction has the potential to engage students in a way that hasn’t been possible before and to add an authenticity to ouctomes such as “students become global citizens”. However, there are a number of issues that can undermine these kinds of projects and I’m wondering whether your focus on linking “core content” teachers might help overome them.
As you have noted, the second Flat World High Schools project, hit some considerable bumps. These included three different sets of holidays, which meant that there was a six to eight-week lapse, which fatally undermined the flow of the project. From my end, our three-week holiday was followed by an excursion week and an exam week, meaning that whole endeavour came to a halt. To borrow and extend your “we’re building this mid-flight” metaphor the wings on our jet fell off and we crashed. Having said that, students in my class were still checking out the site, reading other people’s stories and comments this week even though the project had stalled and there had been little activity for weeks. This demonstrated that in terms of engagement, students are very excited by the prospect of global collaboration and communication with students from other countries. I’m sure this is probably the case for most students, but as a school in regional Australia (five hours from a major city in any direction), we are aware that we are geographically isolated in a national and international sense and this is a reason why using laptops to facilitate genuinely international communication is potentially very powerful.
The main problem stemmed to a lack of planning and also the difference in the school year in the southern and northern hemisphere- in Australia we run from February to December, so by the time we were ready to resume in early May, the end of the school year was closing in on schools in the nothern hemisphere.
Another key problem was that this was essentially an “extension” project that was in addition to syllabus (”core”) content my class was covering. One of the main impediments to initiating these projects succcessfully is that teachers, and students, are “time-poor” and that’s why working with teachers who are teaching in the same area may be a way to address this issue. For example, imagine if students studying World War One or the French Revolution could interact and discuss these topics. Or students reading “To Kill A Mockinbird” or “Hamlet” were able to analyse and explore concepts together, and compare how their cultural contexts can lead to different interpretations and critical readings. There are many teachers who can see the value in these projects but I think they are unsure about how to proceed. Modelling successful projects and sharing tips and guidelines on planning and implementation are practical ways to make these types of projects more mainstream.
I’m also going to embrace the maxim that “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” until we can use our shared experiences to address the inevitable hiccups that arise from trying new things.
Cindy
[Reply]
Cindy Barnsley
3 Jun 07 at 12:46 am
Bing, Cheryl, Cindy, Patrick, Christina:
Bing, you say:
“My next big goal is to collaborate on a flat-world project, ideally based on a text we read in class.”
I also look forward to shared reading collaborations. I’m sure you’ve scratched your head over how to beat the odds that different teachers would be teaching the same novels or plays at the same time.
So what do you think of trying (a) short story and/or poetry text(s) for a first run-through? Another benefit of that is its shortness of duration. We learned some lessons about overly-long projects this year. I think starting short at the beginning of the year (or at least early), and expanding into longer projects once everybody, teachers and students, have their feet, is probably prudent.
Thoughts? AND….will those laptops be a daily fixture in your grade 10 classroom?
—
Lynn:
If we coordinate calendars and keep our scope small, we might have some interesting “vertical collaboration”–18-year-olds interacting with 11-year-olds–in some way. I’d love to explore the possibilities.
—
Christina, you know I know you and trust that you’ll make things work with whatever resources you have. So we’ll definitely talk~
—
Cindy,
I’m a firm believer in making the first 1000 mistakes in order to have them out of the way. We all learned by doing this time out, and your situation in the southern hemisphere actually increased the learning value of the project immensely. Now we know. So we can plan within the constraints of the calendar, and as you so rightly note, be sure that our collaborations are not “add-ons,” but rather core activities. I’d love for us to hook up, especially since we’re both 1:1 Mac schools. Some tasty possibilities there.
LOVE your closing maxim
See my reply to Bing above, in this same comment.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
5 Jun 07 at 1:05 am
Clay: I like the idea of a shorter text earlier for the reasons you mentioned. I’d like to get the kids set up with blogs early and this might be a good start…
The laptops will be a daily fixture in class via a laptop cart etc. The purpose of the grant is to pilot MyAccess online writing evaluation software, the hardware etc was thrown in to make that happen.
This summer, I plan to sketch out a rough outline of my year with another teacher who shares a room with me, so I hope to have a clearer idea of what I’ll be doing and when. I’ll keep you posted.
[Reply]
Miller
5 Jun 07 at 10:52 pm