Bray’s Education Blog

When Greg Israel and I sat in on a session about hosting a student film festival at Learning 2.008, we both looked at each other at the end of the session and said, “We are so doing that at our school!” So it gives me great pleasure to accounce that the Phoenix Film Festival is now a going concern at Korea International School. The first people I’d like to thank are the folks at Learning 2.008 who shared their experiences and know how with us and others. I believe student film festivals are going to be popping up all over the place. The next person I want to thank is Rich Boerner, the director of KIS, who gave Greg and I the chance to pitch the idea to him and afterward replied, “Sounds great, guys. What do you need?” He also actually came up with the official name of the festival from our school mascot, the Phoenix. Greg and I were struggling with what to call the darn thing for days.

In the last few days, we have established a Youtube channel for the festival, a wiki at Wetpaint, and a gmail account. So on top of having a student film festival, it is entirely developed online. We are even encouraging emailed submissions. If you have students interested in entering the contest, please visit our wiki, fill out the application, make a film, and send it in, because it is open to all students every where.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

To continue the thoughts of Sir Robinson about schools killing creativity, I think one must look at how schools develop rules and why the system doesn’t work. The fact is that most school rules are made to address an issue for about 5% of the student body. For example, let us look at something rather innocuous — chewing gum. I can’t think of an issue more ridiculous than the issue of chewing gum; why on earth do schools have rules about something so trivial? Because some administrators, teachers, and students find the sound of someone smacking gum to be very annoying and also because no one likes to clean gum off of chairs and desks. What is that anyway? Who puts gum under a desk? I mean honestly, what sort of an activity is that? Why do they do it? I believe that most students don’t do it. We are talking about a small minority of gum smackers and stickers, but we make a rule for everybody. Why? How is the better good served by punishing all for the acts of a few? It isn’t! It is that simple. The greater good is not served. Instead of punishing all, why don’t we educate the few? Is it really that difficult? When a student is caught smacking gum or sticking it to a desk, punish them, but not for chewing the gum — punish them for disrupting the class or vandalizing school property. Teach them why it isn’t acceptable. If necessary, go old school and make the gum sticker clean the gum off all the desks in the room where he/she was caught. Isn’t that more sensible? If we look at discipline as a form of education and teaching, instead of strictly punishing people, it is clear that the school should have fewer broader rules that can be applied to many situations, than a multitude of exact rules that turn teachers and administrators into prison guards as opposed to educators. If gum chewing isn’t working for you, substitute cell phones or iPods or MP3 players and the problem remains the same. In many schools even websites are limited in an attempted to police the greater good, but have the students learned to discipline themselves? Have they understood right from wrong and what the difference is between the two? I find that the answer is no. I say an end to silly, trivial rules! Open the doors to more understanding and you will open the doors to more creativity.

If you haven’t watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on Creativity, I high recommend it. He brings up some important points about how schools actually remove creativity from our lives by driving us away from activities we enjoy and toward activities that will get us jobs; however, as he points out, the old, pre-Internet and pre-technology days are slipping away and creativity is becoming more important than a degree is a certain field.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

During the Learning 2.008 Conference one of the most interesting workshops was about Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). A PLN is your own personalized educational virtual environment. It is made of blogs you read, people you connect with, videos you watch, podcasts you listen to, and how you process this information and share it in a new and creative way of your own. Of course, you can also use sources that are normal print, people you interact with daily, workshops you attend, and courses you take. Here are some examples of people and places in my PLN:

Online:

TeacherTube, Edutopia, ASCD,  United Streaming are sources for me. I read articles and  posts and watch movies about administration and teaching in order to continually think about education.

Jeff Utecht’s Blog the The Thinking Stick is full of interesting ideas and great information about technology in the classroom, the school, and life. I try to read something from his blog on a weekly basis.

Dr. Larry Creedon who I email and exchange ideas with about Educational Leadership.

Dr. Richard Cunningham is another former professor of mine that I continue to dialogue about education with.

Online courses at Lehigh University. I’m earning my second Masters degree through Lehigh while in Korea.

Offline:

Conferences and workshops: I engage in professional development activities both as an audience and as a presenter.

Discussions with Colleagues: It is incredible what can be learning and shared at even simply in-house faculty discussions. Too bad that administrators rarely capitalize on this resource. I receive the best tips, advice, and suggestions from people I work with on a daily basis.

Committees: Chairing and co-chairing committees in the school community is an excellent way to improve the school. Too many teachers think of these activities as wasted time, but it is only wasted if you make it that way.

In addition to these things that I engage in, there are forums and groups to join. The Internet is a vast environment where literally millions of people can be accessed for help and information. Start exploring!

Continuing on with follow up about the KORCOS conference, I thought a list of websites that I use for work with explanations of what they are for would be a helpful post. Here is a list of the different websites in no particular order and how I use them in class. Something to remember is that technology is simply a tool for helping communicate the curriculum. It is a way to help students engage, process, and create with information. Websites are the same; they are only tools. Any tool can be used correctly or incorrectly; they job of educators is to guide students in correct usage, to help them understand the world around them and their place in it. To do anything less is unethical and a disservice to them. I’m not going to use the term 21st century learning, because as Jeff Utecht has pointed out many times in his presentations and on his blog, the 21st century isn’t the future anymore. Let me just say that the future demands that students begin using this tools and skills; it is their future, not ours and it will be full of change.

Wikispaces: This is where my class is organized. I place assignment and assessment information here, online discussions and feedback for students, students upload projects, and comment on their own work and the work of others. It is laid out unit by unit with each student or student group having their own page for assignments.

Youtube: Yes, for those who don’t know, it is a very useful site for education. It allows students and teachers to upload videos to the Internet and then embed the videos in a Wikispaces or other website. You are thinking, “Why bother? Why not have the students upload directly to a wiki?” Many sites have limited amounts of storage space and videos use a lot, so embedding uses virtually no storage, but makes the videos easy to access in one location for management, reviewing, and sharing.

Podomatic: Basically this is the podcast version of Youtube and I use it for the same reason — save storage space on my wiki. Students and teachers upload the actual podcasts to Podomatic and then embed in our wiki.

Slideshare: Again this is a place to store student and teacher presentations without eating up space on the wiki. My students upload their Keynote and PowerPoint presentations to this site and then embed it in our wiki.

United Streaming: The school I work for has a United Streaming account. It is full of videos on different topics that are designed for educational use. Great classroom resource. You can use the videos best by downloading them directly to your own computer and then using them whenever you want/need.

TeacherTube: Similar to Youtube, but with reliable content added by educators. I don’t actually post much content here, but I find videos to use in class; especially if I can’t find the thing I’m looking for on United Streaming.

Edublogs: This is where I have my students blog and where I have my professional blog about education. I have the students embed links on the wiki to make for easy access.

Diigo: It is a social bookmarking tool. You can share resources, leave notes on website, and make groups to share websites. Diigo helps remove a level of junk from the Internet. Students and teachers can share reliable and useful websites that they have discovered. Great for helping students with group research for projects, because they can share resources and take notes collaboratively.

Voicethread: This site I haven’t use much myself, but I feel it can be a great resource for classes. You can post up a photo and students and teachers can make comments centered around the photo with a built in podcast producing device.

Facebook: Believe it or not: Facebook can be used in educational ways. Students can join groups or causes that allow them to connect with people around the world who have similar interests. They can share information and knowledge and teach each other.

Certainly the last website on my list is going to draw fire from several people in education. But as I stated before, these are tools and students need to learn how to use the tools. Tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year these tools will probably change; in fact, they will change. But change is the only constant in the universe, my colleagues and friends. Isn’t time we start acting like it?

I will write a follow up post to this about different programs I use and how I use them for class in the not too distant future. Stay tuned!

We finally had a chance to get together and have a conversation about our jobs at KIS. We are the junior administrators at the school: Jamie, the associate high school principal, Allan, the elementary dean of students, and myself, the middle school dean of students. It started off with some general settling in discussion about shopping in Korea, which may sound way off task, but when you are living aboard much of the battle is dealing with the little daily life situations that become major difficulties due to the language barrier and cultural differences. After discovering the Allan had already explored the Garak Market, the conversation moved into the realm of language learning in general and some comparisons between life in China and Korea (supplied by Allan) and between Turkey and Korea (supplied by me).

Jamie brought us to the real task with some information about his normal routines as the associate principal. Allan and I followed up with a brief breakdowns of our days. I enjoy reflecting on meetings like this and finding the things a can take away and spend more time on. My takeaways are the following to ideas from my colleagues:

• Jamie shared some interesting food for thought about strategic planning. I realized that due to the 1:1 initiative last year and a general lack of people-power in administration, our school went an entire year in crisis mode; but now, with more administrators, the future, long-range strategic planning can actually begin. Moreover, it must begin! We need to move out of that crisis cycle and into the realm of long-range planning in ordered to improve our school. Jamie, also, developed a nice organizational tool with areas for immediate actions, weekly actions, long-range goals, and a great reminder area in the center. I’ll get a digital copy and post it later.
• Allan provided a great point about our roles as support administrators. We are often taking care of the small and time consuming jobs, so our immediate supervisors can focus on the long-range goals of the school. Our job is essential, because otherwise the building principals would be bogged down with little cases of discipline and dealing with small problems that we can handle. It helps to know that our position is tied to the bigger picture.

In the end we made a plan to meet again and discuss more about our roles and what we are doing on a monthly basis. For my part, I plan to share this brief reflection with my colleagues by posting it on my blog. I have came to understand that the sharing of knowledge, no matter what it is, is connecting to others and learning. I want to continually share my learning with those I know.

Funny video about podcasting on Teachertube.

During the job-a-like session at KORCOS, several people were looking for basic information about podcasts, vodcasts, wikis, and other resources. This post is in response to those questions and holds several useful links.

What is a podcast? It is a recording of a persons voice that is uploaded to the Internet and available for other people to download for listening. A podcast can be as simple or as complex as you like, but the important part is that the file is shared with other people. There needs to be an audience for it to be a podcast. Tools you can use to make a podcast could be GarageBand on a Mac, or you could download Audacity for a Mac or a PC. All the equipment you need is a microphone, which you can purchase at any Hi Mart in Seoul (Sorry to those in other countries). You can also create and post podcasts to PodOmatic.

What is a vocast? It is a recording using of a person that captures their voice and image and uploaded to the Internet for people to view. As a podcast, there has to be an audience in order for it to be a vodcast. You could use iMovie (Mac), Movie Maker (PC), or Photo Booth (Mac). You need a microphone and a webcam, both easily and cheaply purchased at any Hi Mart (again, sorry to those who live else where). You can create or post vodcasts to Youtube or Teachertube.

What is a Wiki? A wiki allows more than one user to edit/add content to a webpage. I answered this in my previous post, so take a look there for the sample wikis. You can build wikis at Wetpaint or Wikispaces.

The day of the conference came and went, and, as usual, I met very wonderful and enthusiastic teachers who all want to learn new methods of teaching; exploring new possibilities with student learning and finding new ways to reach all students. During the Job-a-Like session, I facilitated a discussion about technology use in the classroom. Great questions came up and people seemed to get a lot out of the conversation that went on in the room. During my afternoon session, a smaller group discussed the reason for metacognitive activities and how podcasting and vodcasting could be used to help students think and process their learning. I also attended a session on Comic Life (you can download a free 30-day trial here) and learned that I wasn’t the only teacher to see the educational applications of the program. Finally, I closed out my day with a session about becoming an administrator for DOD schools; although it was focused on advancement within the DOD structure, there was excellent advice for professional and career development.

Several of the people I met at KORCOS asked for follow up information, so this post will be providing some extra information for those folks.

For those interested in the potential of a wikispace you can check out any of the following sites:

Ms. Digges Yearbook Wiki Good beginning wiki by a teacher who is new to using Wikispaces.

Mr. Brightman and Mr. Bray’s World Literature Page 2007-08 You can track the evolution of our skill with a Wiki over the previous school year. Includes examples of student writing, podcasting, collaborative exercises and movies.

Mr. Spivey’s Social Studies Wiki Here is a shameless plug for my friend and colleague — this is the third most edited Wiki in the world. Seriously! His wiki is basically the way his class works. You can find examples of just about any type of student work involving technology.

If you aren’t nesscessarily interested in wikis, but want see examples of student movies, vodcasts, or podcasts the following will be helpful.

These is from a project where my students used the play A Doll’s House to make a modern adaptions. They were only given five minutes of actual movie time (doesn’t include title, credits, and outtakes).

Stuffed Happiness Overall concept of this film was great. Very original and creative work; especially how the one girl plays two different roles by use of camera angles.

A Pet’s Life The opening film segment where the girl is primping her hair and the boy looks up at her in shakes his head from the background is a brilliant shot. That moment is a wonderful example of digital story telling; without even one word spoken, we understand the relationship and the two characters.

Rat Race Another one that overall hit the nail on the head. A little melodramatic, but it works.

The following examples are first time efforts with metacognition about the writing process and using vodcasts and podcasts.

English Seminar Scroll down the page and click on student names to find different examples of podcasts and vodcasts.

Hopefully everyone will find a little something that will make that inspiration spark for lesson planning. If you have further questions, want to contact me for support, or want to get together and discuss technology and teaching just email me at tsbray@internationalteacher.info.

I finally had a chance to sit down and make my presentation for the KORCOS conference on October 17th. I will be presenting on using podcasting and vodcasting in metacognitive excerises in the writing process — it doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, right? Anyway, I hope to generate some interesting discussion and inspire a few of my fellow teachers. I have put my Keynote presentation on Slideshare for others to view and use, and here is a link to it for those curious about the idea… Better yet, I’ll embed the bugger.

For those not fimilar with Slideshare, I highly recommend it. It is easy to use and allows you to view, use, edit your slideshows as well as those of other members. Absolutely awesome for educators of all types.