Educational Leadership & Technology » podomatic

End of Another School Year

tsbray — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:08:20 +0000

Well it is time to say goodbye to another school year, but I think 08-09 will be one I remember for a very long time. It was an action packed year for me as I learned the ropes of administration and worked closely with teachers to encourage and support their use of technology. The list of achievements for the Technology Integration Specialists at KIS is quite impressive:

First ever Phoenix Film Festival
First ever Korea International School podcast
First ever Korea International School Youtube channel
First ever Technology Showcase
Development of the Middle Matters KIS MS publication for parents
Several on going Wiki projects like our technology sharing wiki and middle school advisory wiki
Not to mention the countless hours spent planning and supporting teachers

I feel like it was been a productive year with technology. Teachers are trying new things in the classroom and students are making amazing collaborative projects with technology. It is actually working!

2009 — The Year Blogging Died

tsbray — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:16:03 +0000

First, trust me, I see the irony about writing a blog post about blogging being dead. I wrote it for all the bloggers out there, not for myself. Second, just as God was declared dead quite some time ago, and billions of people are still going to churches, mosques, and temples, I doubt that my proclamation will stop many people from blogging. So then…

“Why,” you ask, “why is blogging dead?” Blogging is the Internet’s newspaper. Just look at the competition — multi-media, video, Twitter, and podcasting websites all offer a richer exeperiences to the audience than blogs. Sure there will be some old professors somewhere in universities that continue blogging, but the majority of us will move on to other forms of communication. We will use Twitter, PodOmatic, and YouTube to micro blog, podcast, and share our self created videos. Who will blog? And more importantly why? With more and more teachers assigning blogs to students and grading the blogs like assignments, less and less students will blog for pleasure or personal reflection. It will become just another assignment to do and, as Clay Burell said, “It will be full of too much schooliness.” So goodbye blogs! Rest in peace.

Reflective Practice in Teaching & Administration

tsbray — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:46:30 +0000

Of course we have all read about the powers of reflection and reflective practice in education. Teachers should reflect on what they have taught and how they have taught it in order to improve instruction, but how often does it really occur? How many teachers are truly reflecting on their practice? Does anyone realistically have time to be reflective with all the other required segments of the job? And, more importantly, do administrators reflect on their practice and share it with teachers as a model? I have a feeling that we know the true answers to these questions, but avoid those answers. The fact of the matter is reflection needs to be encouraged, modeled, and time must be provided for it to occur in a meaningful way.

Here is a short collection of some of the reflections I am currently working on.

1 — The Phoenix Film Festival — The festival hasn’t even happened yet, but Greg and I have thought of some improvements for next year. First, we plan to start promoting and planning from the beginning of the school year with a calendar of dates with different tasks that need to be accomplished and time frames for finishing those tasks. Greg and I want the festival to live beyond our time at KIS, so this type of planning is necessary for the future of the festival. Second, we plan to offer clubs at the middle and high school levels, so student can begin to take over the process. After all, it is their festival. Third, we plan to reflect on the festival once it is over.

2 — Recent communication — I had an unfortunate communication with one of my colleagues recently where I inappropriately communicated my frustration with a situation involving a duty schedule for our parent-teacher conferences. Due to the great demands on my time as the Dean of Students and the Technology Integration Specialist, I try to plan ahead at least one or two weeks in advance so I can focus my time correctly. Robin Schneider, my principal, had came up with a great idea of having a showcase of digital work done by students on display during the conferences. Sadly, his idea came the week before the conferences, but because I felt the idea was great, I told him we should move ahead with the plan. It required me to collect a lot of student artifacts in a very short period of time and then compile those artifacts into presentations. We looked down the road at what else was coming and saw the Middle Matters staring us in the face. At that point we both felt that it was manageable because during conferences I could work on the layout of the Middle Matters. On Wednesday, the beginning of the conferences, I received an email with a duty schedule for the conferences. I was surprised to find that I was listed on the duty schedule with 12 hours (four hours per day) of supervision duty during the conferences. Instead of taking a deep breath and counting to ten, I exploded and shot off one of those emails that you aren’t supposed to write when you are angry. I have apologized to Jamie Otis, but still can’t believe my own behavior. We all make mistakes and the best thing to do is to admit the mistake and apologize to the appropriate people. In addition to my unprofessional response, I do feel that the problem highlights one of the major concerns at the school — time lines and planning. Why was the duty schedule handed out on Wednesday morning of the conferences? It should be out at least one week before the required work so people can plan accordingly. This doesn’t excuse my behavior, but it does place a framework around it.

3 — KIS Podcast and KIS YouTube Channel — Both are off and running and the important point now is momentum. We need to continue interviewing teachers, students, and administration about the 1:1 program for the podcast and continue uploading student samples to the YouTube channel.

4 — Discipline — I am currently trying my best to add a guiding and mentoring approach to our behaviorist/control discipline policies. This is an example of merging two philosophies together to make a livable situation for everyone concerned. Our school-wide discipline approach is very much from the behaviorist philosophy of education — a system of rules and punishments. My personal philosophy is more to the guidance or constructivist approach, so each major discipline case is coming with some serious discussion of appropriate behavior and what can be learned from the situation. I’m feeling better about the situation, and the students involved so far seem to leave the room feeling better about receiving discipline.

Reflection is an important part of education and we must all engage in it.

Korea International School Podcast and Youtube Channel

tsbray — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:24:48 +0000

Recently we added a couple of new features to our school’s online profile. The ADE’s (Apple Distinguished Educators) who work at KIS decided to add a podcast to share our experiences with 1:1 education. Hopefully this will be a useful tool for us to share some of the awesome student, teacher, and administration work that has been accomplished so far at KIS. The Korea International School ADE podcast is open for business! The first episode is an interview with Rich Boerner our director about the reasons for going 1:1 and the successes and pitfalls of the process.

Also, we have a Youtube channel now up and running. We will be adding some content in the next few days. I was busy, busy, busy dealing with wave of student discipline last week as well as collecting samples of students’ digital work to display during the parent-teacher conference going on this week. The whole thing almost killed me, because I also came down with a cold in the process, but it is finished. The parents and students are enjoying watching the short movies I put together with iMovie about different things that have happened in the middle school this year. After the conferences I will upload the movies to the Youtube channel. The idea for making a school channel came from a colleague in Shanghai — thanks Amanda!

Recent Events at KIS

tsbray — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:49:44 +0000

It has been a busy few weeks here at Korea International School and let me tell you, it isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. We returned from our winter holiday with finals staring the students right in the face, which also meant massive grading and report cards for the teachers and administrators. Then we dove into our Lunar New Year holiday, which found Aysem and I in Saipan visiting our old friends and school, Saipan International School. And now I’m back behind the desk for a couple of days before Aysem and I blast off to Australia to attend an orientation program at University of Southern Queensland for a program Aysem will be taking from them. Whoa! But it has not been an unproductive time, Greg and I have officially launched the first ever Phoenix Film Festival for students. Please encourage your students or children to join the competition, because it is open to the world, not just our students. Also, we launch the school’s PodOmatic account with an interview about 1:1 education with the director of KIS, Rich Boerner. In addition I’ve posted some of my own personal material to my Podomatic account and to Youtube. I’m looking forward to making more movies with the hundreds of photos I have from Saipan and the photos I will be taking in Australia.

Websites I Use for Class and Why

tsbray — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 06:32:50 +0000

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!