geek.teacher

Today I finished up my final session of Professional Development to explain to some of the teachers in my school basic concepts behind building a Personal Learning Network and the tools they need to do it. I previously wrote about my first sessions here, under the lofty opinion that I, and I quote, “don’t suck.”

I think that I chose appropriate terminology there, because my performance was admittedly rocky in following weeks. The last two weeks in particular, I found myself not so happy with my performance on the first day of the session, and more pleased with the repeat the following day. Would more practice have been more beneficial? Quite possibly. But having never really on my own developed a scope and sequence like this for adults, I think I also kind of needed to see the places where people got confused the first time so that I’d have a better handle on it the second time.

I ended up choosing a sequence of Docs > Diigo > Reader > Twitter, figuring that I’d move them increasingly from a position where they can just interact with people in the building to further interaction with a larger community.

General observations, in no particular order due to impending brain implosion from too many things running through it*:

• I scheduled an hour for each session, but I should have probably made them each at least 1.5 hours. The first day stretched naturally to 90 minutes without complaint, but the later sessions people had places to go and I had to let them go at 60 minutes. Especially the last two sessions, I have absolutely found myself kicking myself with the stuff I didn’t have a chance to get to, especially in regards to the important parts about really interacting with your larger PLN
• Seeing the teachers “get it” is just as awesome as seeing the lightbulb turn on in a child. I knew I had hit something today when one of the teachers in my group independently started to send @ messages to the other people in the group, which got all of them then sending messages to each other. Serendipitous.
• There is an awful lot of vocabulary to explain to a bunch of technological neophytes.
• My Twitter network is awesome. I asked for some shoutouts yesterday, and over 90 people responded. Brilliant. More than anything else, the international tweets truly wowed some of my group.
• When you’re showing off Twitter to your audience, it’s pretty comical to open it up just in time for them to see Ira Socol calling Diane Ravitch a “war criminal.” and then have to explain that, no, he’s not joking.
• I loved it when they realized that someone took really good notes in Google Docs, and they could ask her to share it with everybody at once.
• Some people had to miss the session today but asked if I could still show it to them anyway next week. So they want to know!
• I’m honestly not sure how many will go on to use these tools on a regular basis. If I get one or two regular Twitter users out of the 15 or so people I started with, is that a success or failure? Sure, it’s two more than we had before, but that’s a pretty horrible ratio.
• Piggybacking on the last point: could I have done more to get them using the tools, or is exposing them to the tools enough?

I have a lot to reflect on, and I’m sure I’ll have more in another week or so when I get the Evaluation Form together on Google and ask them to fill it out. Right now I’m a bit worried that they’ll be too soft on me and not point out stuff that I need pointed out to me. Conversely, I’m also worried that they’ll confirm my worst fears about doing a terrible job. For the record, I don’t think I did a terrible job, which is why it would be terrifying to find out that I actually did so. When I get some results back, maybe I’ll post a followup assuming that I haven’t died from mortification.

*Big big announcement coming real soon. I might explode from not telling the world yet.

I got an e-mail today at work informing me that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has declared March 2010 National Middle Level Education Month. According to this site here, that means that we middle level educators join in on an already jam-packed month, teaming up with National Craft Month (PDF), National Frozen Food Month, and National Peanut Month.

I’ve decided to celebrate this glorious month by freezing artfully-created peanut butter sandwiches. I’ll also tell you about one of the best parts of my job as a middle school teacher: advising Student Council.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy my work in the classroom. It’s hard but rewarding work. I work with students that have some serious learning issues, and I thrive on finding ways to help them understand something they didn’t get before.

The problem is that in my school, I’m pretty isolated. I’m one of a small handful of teachers in my Middle School that has the same students for most of the day. While other teachers work with a wide variety of students, I work with a much smaller number. The advantage, of course, is that it does give me a real chance to get to know my students. The negative is that I sometimes feel left out of the action, as I clearly don’t know nearly as many students as most of the other teachers in the school.

Student Council is a great counterbalance for me. I get to work with an additional 45 students who are very different from the students in my own classroom. This gives me an opportunity to see a much wider range of student than I would otherwise see on a daily basis.

One of my favorite parts about working with Student Council is that it really concentrates the best aspects of Middle Schoolers. The students are intelligent, creative, funny, and passionate. Over the now six years I’ve spent in Student Council, they’ve taken on two different initiatives to contribute to the fight against cancer. For several years we participated in the Relay for Life, a great 24 hour long event that is equal parts fun and moving. In more recent years, we have taken charge of our Alex’s Lemonade Stand in the cafeteria. Between the two, the students that I work with have raised almost fifteen thousand dollars to fight cancer, in addition to the money and time they have donated to other worthy causes in our area. They don’t do it because they’re going to get fancy prizes or awards. They don’t even get a lot of recognition for it. They just do it because they can, and because a world where people can die of cancer is an unfair world. It’s something to be fought with conviction, and is done better while having fun and working together with others. In spite of the image of the jaded, dispassionate teenager, these young adults care about the way the world is, and are convinced that they can help fix it.

That’s why middle schoolers rule, and just one reason of many that I’m proud to be a middle level educator.

Watch. Love.

This week I ran my first Professional Development sessions with content completely designed by myself. In previous years, I’ve either worked together with somebody to train teachers in a topic, or have basically delivered content that was deemed essential by my administration. This time I have to sink or swim all on my own.

I talked with my principal a few months back about offering training sessions to show people how to communicate with other teachers online. I then promptly spent several months pondering what I wanted to do, and outlining the basics. After Christmas Break, I committed myself and sent out an e-mail to everybody in my school offering to teach them about “Using the Internet to Communicate and Collaborate.” I gave them a Google form to fill out to gauge interest, and got enough that I planned to do each session on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I then had to take a bit of a sidetrack as I jumped through bureaucratic hoops to ensure that the teachers who come can get their Act 48 (Continuing Education) Credits.

I have two missions for the four sessions I’m planning on running:

1. Primary mission: help teachers to learn about the tools they can use to build their own Personal Learning Network.
2. Treat them like adults. I’m not going to just read to them.

The first part I spent months planning out. The second part continues now as I truck along. I decided to, whenever possible, use my own photos or screenshots to demonstrate ideas and concepts.  Almost all my slides will be heavy on images and light on words. Words will be in a large font. If I use somebody else’s work, it has to be Freeware or Creative Commons. I did rapid prototyping of my slides in Docs, then I made the refined versions in Keynote. I imported back into Docs for easy sharing and adding links as needed.

Here’s my first slideshow, showing what building a PLN has done for me. This was the most me-talky phase of the whole thing, but I wanted to get it right out there why PLN has been so great to me, getting them to understand why it could also be great for them. Fortunately, it was short.

I’m really glad that I started this the week after EduCon, since I’m still on a bit of an education high from it all. It’s no coincidence that the first session I went to was “Subversive PD.” It helped focus me on the need to make sure that I engage the people I’m working with in conversation as much as possible. When talking about my nerves the morning of my first presentation, Bill Ferriter reminded me of that in response:

So I tried. I didn’t always succeed, but I did my best to bring people into the conversation. There were plenty of good questions as some of the people there really wrestled with the idea of uses for Google Docs both in our teaching community and in their classrooms. Whenever possible, I did my best to point them int he direction of ideas I know others have tried, and I frankly admitted when I didn’t know how to do something. For me, the not knowing was a strength in many ways, because as I pointed out, I may not have done a certain activity, but if I wanted to, someone in my network would probably be able to point me in the right direction.

Here’s the Google slides. Structure: Show them a tool, we talk about the uses in school. Next slide, another tool, more discussion. Finally, get them to sign up for Google accounts and start collaborating on a Doc sharing their contact info to start.

So how do I know that I didn’t suck? Both days we went a half hour over the allotted time and nobody seemed to be restless or needed to rush out right at the official stop time. They stuck around, we got everybody signed up and they all edited the document.

Today I e-mailed them all and gave them homework to add everybody to their contacts list. I’m feeling upbeat, so I added this:

Extra credit: create a document saying something nice to somebody in our network, then share the file with them. Smile.