Google Teacher Academy and Collaboration

“If you walk away learning one new thing, it was a good workshop.”

Really?  Are our standards so low in the world of educational professional development that we’re willing to spend hours on sub. plans to waste 6 hours at a workshop where we’re hoping to learn ONE new thing?  I’ve heard many veteran teachers (whom I deeply respect) talk about the cycles of educational pedagogy.  Techniques they used their first year of teaching are suddenly “in fashion” again under a different name.  How would a typical lecture based workshop ever expose these experienced teachers to anything new?   If so many educators are proficient in content, teaching styles and of course… the oldie but goodie, classroom management…. why are so many professional development sessions dedicated to those topics?  Why not aim for:

“If you walk away learning all new things, it was a life changing workshop.”

That’s how I felt about the Google Teacher Academy.  Obviously, I had test-driven many of the Google Apps. before.  I’m not a proficient user of any of the tools, but the sections of the day that were dedicated to “how” to use the tools simply built upon my prior knowledge.  Here’s the best part:  although the day was “officially” dedicated to teaching educators about these tools and how to use them in the classroom, that’s the topic I learned the LEAST about!  Believe it or not, that’s a good thing…I’ll explain.

I am sure that some of the GTA attendees were proficient at using Google Apps. with their students and in their personal/professional lives.  Obviously, there was a promise of learning bigger and better things at the academy.  So what made it the absolute best day of professional development I’ve ever had?? 

Collaboration

from: http://www.everydaygivingblog.com/enthusiasm/

 I watched this video posted on Edutopia this morning and made some connections.  Randy Nelson, from Pixar University, spoke about the difference between collaboration and cooperation in the workplace.  Collaboration allows people to amplify others they are working with.  That is the perfect way to explain how I felt at Google.  I was with my own people.  Some people knew more than I did and some people knew less.  But we all managed to amplify each other in one way or another.  Ideas, stories, concerns and solutions were shared during breakout sessions, lunch, dinner, bathroom breaks, on the stairs, you name it!  The atmosphere set by the GTA team inspired me to learn from and about the person next to me.  There was no underlying competition to look like the “smartest” person in the room.  I felt like I was part of a living, growing organism. 

It was life changing and I plan on putting that
inspiration and amplification to good use!

“Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Break My Stride”

After a somewhat disheartening end of the school year and an uneventful summer, I feel the blogger-bug biting again.  I apologize to those of you (all 3 of you) who follow this blog, for the 3 month lapse since my last entry.  However, I now feel refreshed..humming, “Nobody’s gonna slow me down…oh no, I’ve got to keep on movin’!”

Here are few things I’ve been working on:

Google Teacher Academy NYC 2008:

It’s all over my inbox and my PLN, Google is accepting applications for a November training session.  Fifty teachers are accepted, so I’m doing my best to answer the questions with as much thought and creativity as possible.  Still working on my video…will post when I’m happy with it.

Student Blog:

Well, it’s more of a completely impenetrable fortress/discussion board.  I convinced our curriculum director to allow the technology teachers in our district to create and administer a WordPress blog for our gifted/talented program.  Our fifth graders are taking part in the Stock Market Game and they’re using the blog to reflect on their progress and share tips/strategies.  I’d love to post a link, but for this pilot program we agreed to keep all of the posts “in house”.  It’s a great first step, in my opinion.

Elementary Tech. Teachers Ning:

Thanks to my good friend Maureen, I was invited to join a fantastic Ning for Elementary Technology Teachers, created by Nedra.  So far, it looks great and I can’t wait to browse for ideas and share some of my own!

Wikispaces for Teachers

Our teachers had created web pages on www.think.coma few years ago.  We thought it would take off like a runaway train, but unfortunately, only about half of our teachers created and updated pages there.  We were dismayed to find out over this past summer, think.com paired up with ThinkQuest and changed its format.  We are no longer able to link from our school website directly to the pages the teachers created on think.com.  Only members of think.com are able to see the web pages that have been designed.  I definitely see the purpose of that move, but we were given no warning of the change.  If we were to stay with think.com, we’d have to encourage every parent in the district to become a member in order to see the teacher web pages.  Do-able, but not probable.  Our solution:  switch to wikispaces.  I trained a few teachers today after school and hope to offer another training later in the school year.  Currently, our teachers will use wikispaces as a one-way communication tool.  However, I hope to encourage our administration to allow teacher to start parent discussion boards on their pages.

Next Hurdle:  Unblocking Sites for Teachers

I’ve been disappointed by the fact that our administration continues to prevent access to certain types of sites for teachers.  I understand strict filters are important when students are using computers.  However, if we really want to treat our teachers as professionals, we should give them greater access to useful tools.  Currently, in our district, all games, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis are blocked.  It is possible for a teacher to ask for a site to be unblocked for instructional purposes, but that process takes a few days at least and smothers “just in time” teaching.   Our IT director says that he’s uncomfortable unblocking the sites for teachers because of this and similar scenarios:  a teacher leaves a computer, forgetting to logoff.  A student begins using the computer under the teacher’s username and accesses the restricted sites and “causes trouble for him/herself or others”.  He feels it would unnecessarily put our students, or our district, in harm’s way.  Our response has always been:  we have a solid AUP that covers such things.  The student would clearly be breaking the contract and therefore have computing privileges revoked. 

So far, we’ve made little progress in changing the minds of our administrators on this topic.  Any suggestions?