We are making progress. In the past, my colleague and I wrote a semester tech plan and brought it to the staff. Most teachers approved it as written. A few would ask us to work on other projects with them.
This term, I am meeting with each of my teachers to create a semester plan. In most cases, this isn’t the deep, rich collaboration I envision since my class provides them with prep time, but it is a good start given time constraints. It means I no longer have every class in a grade level on approximately the same lesson. I’m looking at 15 potentially unrelated preps a week, but since I was a classroom teacher for 11 years, I’m used to far more preps a week than that.
None of this would be possible without the teachers being willing to work with me. They each either gave up a prep time or met with me after school. This may not sound like much, but our school is a fast-paced place and they are all involved in many projects, meetings and conferences beyond their regular planning for lessons and assessing their students. With so many tasks competing for their time, I am appreciative of their generosity.
I’m happy that what I’m doing with the students is more closely integrated with the classroom curriculum, and that this process allows me to help the teachers see ways to teach with technology. In some of our plans, they will book time beyond my class to work on the projects. Other teachers will team teach with me some of the time. For other classes, the entire plan is contained in my weekly class.
Ideally, I want to move towards the type of integration and collaboration that Kim Cofino blogged about here>and here. That change requires a different staffing model. My principal has made a staffing request for next year, but their are many competing requests so we will have to wait and see if it is funded for next year.
As happy as I am with the progress made, I keep mulling over the words of one of my teachers. As we finished the semester plan, she lamented that it wasn’t very Web 2.0. She attended the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai last year and embraced the need for teaching 21st century skills instead of the old consumer model of information.
She’s right. While many of the semester plans do allow students to create content, show their learning in new ways that involve higher-order thinking, there is not much connection with the rest of the world. Except for a few YouTube videos and VoiceThreads, there isn’t much in these plans that connect our students with the world outside of our school. Does there need to be in an international school where the children are sitting in class each day with other international children? Does there need to be at the elementary level where so much of what we do with technology is still new to them?
My first response is, “Of course!” However, I need to think more about the whys and hows. If you are using Web 2.0 tools to connect your elementary students with the larger community, what drives you? Why do you personally think it is import? I’d love to hear what you have to say.
I would love to see the plan that you developed. I have recently been named a Technology Trainer for my campus, and I want to take us to the next level in Web 2.0 skills. I have tried teaching elementary students the fun that is blogging because it engages them to better writing and higher thinking skills. The problem that I have is I do not have a classroom of students to work with. I “borrow” students from teachers who are willing to try something new. I have to start over each year with a new batch of students. I hope to one day be able to work with a group over several years.
Great news about the potential for a slight shift in your position next year, Susan! You are such an amazing resource for your school, they will benefit so much from freeing up your schedule to allow you to work with more teachers in a more flexible model.
The thing I find most powerful about global collaborations in school is that it’s our opportunity to bring the world into our classroom – and not just in the sense that we’re inviting other classrooms in, but in the sense that this is the way the world functions. Schools can no longer be isolated pockets of learning, that’s not the way the world works anymore (or did it ever?)
I remember growing up and my mom, who worked for IBM, having conference calls with colleagues all over the world. Her daily conversations didn’t just take place in her local office, but spread across time zones and continents. And that was in the 80s and 90s. If we’re still that far behind, what is going to happen when our students graduate?
Great point, Kim. I appreciate you making it here. Now to find ways to bring that into a room full of 8 year olds!
Mr. James,
Congratulations on your new job. Thanks for your interest in our semester plans. I’m not sure how to share those with you. They are in OneNote and I could export them all as PDF, but they will be large and probably not very useful to someone else since they are written as notes, not complete lesson plans. I’ll think about this. Maybe I can give an overview in a blog post.