From the archives ... I started writing this post in November of 2007.
A LONG TIME COMING
A while back, Dean and Bud got me thinking. Bud's tweet contains more than a kernel of truth.




Shortly after reading Bud and Dean I was listening to David Suzuki on the radio. He mentioned in passing the idea of "in depth news reports" on television. Generally, that means they're going to talk about an issue for about two minutes. Some issues need to be explored in more depth than that. I think pedagogy is one of those issues. In particular, I think I need to explore my own teaching, articulate my own pedagogical practices, open them up to scrutiny and shore up the weak bits.

George Polya's ideas have been very influential on me and my evolution as an educator. Since reading his Ten Commandments For Teachers I have tried to model them in my practice. Although Polya (1887-1985) is no longer alive, I consider myself one of his students. This series of blog posts is my record of what I'm learning about the craft of teaching.


IN BROAD STROKES
In chapter 14 of Polya's book, Mathematical Discovery, he talks about the teacher's attitude and structures his thinking around what he calls The Ten Commandments For Teachers. This is the first in a series of posts digging into this in depth; maybe four, maybe ten; one for each commandment. We'll see.
Although I've been thinking about it for a long time, I've got more questions than answers about these commandments. I want to share my thinking and questions here because:
(1) I want to capture my where my thinking is at today so I can come back and reconsider it in the future.
(2) I'm hoping people wiser than I might share some of their insights. I'm hoping the give and take inherent in blogging about it might push my thinking and practice; make me a better teacher.
So push back at any weak bits below or share your own teaching tip.


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR TEACHERS
In chapter 14 of Mathematical Discovery Polya lists his Ten Commandments For Teachers. They have been a guiding light for me as a teacher since I first read them.

1. Be interested in your subject.
2. Know your subject.
3. Know about the ways of learning: The best way to learn anything is to discover it by yourself.
4. Try to read the faces of your students, try to see their expectations and difficulties, put yourself in their place.
5. Give them not only information, but "know-how," attitudes of mind, the habit of methodical work.
6. Let them learn guessing.
7. Let them learn proving.
8. Look out for such features of the problem at hand as may be useful in solving the problems to come — try to disclose the general pattern that lies behind the present concrete situation.
9. Do not give away your whole secret at once — let the students guess before you tell it — let them find out by themselves as much as is feasible.
10. Suggest it, do not force it down their throats.

MODELING PASSION: Be Interested In Your Subject
Polya identifies the single most powerful and infallible teaching method: "If the teacher is bored by what he is teaching it is a certainty that all his students will be too." I believe the inverse is also true: If a teacher is interested in what they are teaching their students will be too. Actually, "interest" by itself may not be enough; passion is a virus. There is a contagion in passion that can be passed on. I would rewrite Polya's first commandment as: "Be passionate about your subject." If you can't do that then I guess interest will have to do but if you don't have even that, do something else.
If you were a student in grade 8, and your teacher began a new unit of study like this what do you think your engagement with the material might be? Passion Based Learning is powerful stuff. There's something magnetic about a teacher who is passionate about what they are teaching. Passion leads to Interest leads to Life Long Learning. Kids need to see that their teachers are interested with their subject and constantly trying to get better at what they do. If we don't model the drive for excellence in what we teach why should they be interested in doing excellent work in our classes?

The teacher's most powerful pedagogical tool in their toolbox is tucked away in their attitude, demeanor and engagement with what they are teaching; we call it modeling. It's such a fundamental idea. Surprisingly, some quick searching on the net reveals very little written about the importance of modeling in education as a general pedagogical practice. Even wikipedia has very little to say about it; the closest article to this idea is called Modelling (psychology). It seems to me we need a few good educators to flesh this article out a bit on wikipedia.
A while back Dean asked, Can A Fat Man Teach Phys. Ed.? His answer: "Yes, but ..." It all comes back to the importance of modeling.

I'm reminded of Benjamin Zander who says:

Our job is to awaken possibility in others ... You know you're doing it when their eyes are shining. And if their eyes are not shinning, then we have to ask ourselves, "Who am I being that my [students] eyes are not shinning?"

Cross posted from a ning community I'm in.

---

Watch this first:

OK, so this is going to sound weird coming from a math teacher — I'm liable to be run out of the club for saying it — but, in most subjects, does every kid have to learn exactly the same stuff?

Here's what I'm thinking (and I don't think it's an original thought):

Don't send them home to read and listen to the lecture, send them home to take in a short (10-15 min video) or even a micro lecture. Then change the classroom into more of a lab or studio environment. Each kid produces a paper or other artifact of what they've learned and shares it with the rest of the class either face-to-face or online; they become expert in the area they've chosen to explore and at the same time develop the research skills to learn related content when needed.

The question I try to ask myself is: What is the value added for my students by being in the same room with me? If I recorded my lecture (video or audio) and they watched it at home, did the assignments and handed them in, would they be missing something by not being here physically?

I do think my students gain value by being in the same room with me, but most often when I speak very little. I let them work through the problem(s), debate and defend their work with each other, and only towards the end, when they've collectively sucked the marrow from the bones of the problem do I either ask another question that fires them all up again or draw their attention to the finer points of how best to share their thinking on paper.

This is what the video I embedded above suggests to me. I know I'm not there yet, but man! I'd like to be.

... not all, but many of them. What I really like about this set is that the fellow who puts them together often references and links to the source articles or research where the snippets are taken from.

If one of these images (all cc, I asked) strikes you in some way, follow the link back and copy it to the comments here maybe sharing what struck you. I'll start it off below.

I'm not sure if images will embed in the comments here (I'm testing this with my first comment below) but I've got apture installed on my blog so linking to the image should create a popup view of it when you hover over the link; like this.

I've been using a SMARTboard in my class for a little more than two years now. I know I've seen dramatic growth in the way I teach and present information to my students in no small part because of it.

I'd like to publish a series of posts transparently sharing how I use the SMARTboard to teach math and encourage anyone who reads/hears it to leave me suggetsions on how I might better use the affordances offered by the SB. Please share your critiques, comments, concerns, questions, complaints, confusions, uncertainties, anxieties, and suggestions for improvement with me by leaving a comment on this post or directly in the VoiceThread I've created to share my process.

I'd encourage other teachers to do the same; we could learn a lot from each other this way.

LINKS FOR THIS LESSON

Teaching Slides
Student Authoured Scribe Post

Thanks!

Friday's interview with Richard Cloutier was fascinating from a few different perspectives:

The View From The Studio

Richard was a wonderful host and I found myself taken with the entire process of putting together a radio show. He started working on this show months ago when we met over coffee. He than came to see me teach a couple of times and we had a chance to talk about how it went after each class. In one class my SMARTboard was broken so he really wasn't seeing any technology in the classroom per se other than mentions of what was happening online in the class blog. The second time we did have the SMARTboard up and running but the class was a very "meat and potatoes" algebra lesson. We did get a chance to look at how I used the SMARTboard to refer to the previous night's scribe post on the blog, how I pulled in a video from YouTube to link the dry content they were learning to some useful mental math, and how I tried to have the kids on the board more than I. (Actually, I've decided to begin analyzing my lessons and sharing that online. I hope to garner suggestions for my instructional design and more effective use of the SMARTboard. That particular lesson will be the first in that series which I'll publish here shortly.)

Richard had every minute of the show planned to the second. Nonetheless he was constantly communicating with his producer to change things midstream in response to the feedback from the audience. He was taking in email live, on the fly, working the phones, planning the upcoming sequence, coordinating those of us live in the studio with Sheryl, Dean, and Wes on the phones as well as the other callers on the phone. We wanted to also monitor the Chatterous space but couldn't get through the network filter; an issue, it seems, that's not exclusive to education. I think there's work for Clarence in the world of mainstream media professional development. ;-)

In the last week and half since the show it seems to have made a small splash online. The audio has been dowloaded over 500 times and blog reflections have come in from around the world:

Wes Fryer (Edmond, Oklahoma): pre-interview post

podcast recording

post-interview refelction

Donna DesRoches (North Battleford, Saskatchewan): A Day of Learning

Stuart Meldrum (Hawick, Scotland): Teachers take over the Canadian airwaves

Neil Winton (Perth, Scotland): New Year, New Connections, New Learning

Chris Harbeck (Winnipeg, Manitoba): A day listening to Darren on the Radio

John Evans (St. Francois Xavier, Manitoba): Darren Kuropatwa Interview on CJOB Friday, January 2, 2009

Wes Fryer - follow up post (Edmond, Oklahoma): Contrasting recent Oklahoma City and Winnipeg morning radio coverage about education

Alice Barr (Yarmouth, Maine): Week 1 of 2009 and already some amazing learning!

One common thread through all these reflections was the engagement everyone felt in the online chat. It was an opportunity to continue meaningful conversation during commercials. Over 1000 comments were shared over the three hours of the show. Here's some of what happened in the chat:

There were between 30 and 50 people in the chat at different times. They came from:

• Maine, USA
• New Hampshire
• Edmond, Oklahoma
• St. Francois Xavier, MB
• Perth, Scotland
• Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Harrisburg, PA, USA
• North Battleford, Saskatchewan
• Winnipeg , MB
• Charters Towers, QLD, Australia
• Farmington, Maine, USA
• Fort Gratiot, MI, USA
• Wales UK
• Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
• Philadelphia, USA
• Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Folks shared links & tips (kick youtube, snackr.net, and many more) and quotes from the show that resonated with them.

A real sense of community developed by the end. Many participants in the chat added new people to their blogrolls, exchanged twitter usernames, and contact information.

What's Next?

A number of other people are thinking about ways to engage the mainstream media in their communities around the world. What will happen here in Winnipeg? Well, maybe more people reading and commenting on edublogs, joining the conversation, more local attention for the good work my students have done and are doing. Or maybe not.

The Last Word

... in the chat was about penmanship. A valid point I think. Emphasis my own.

There is no excuse for the lack of skills of today's students. Successful handwriting can be taught to anyone in a short period of time, with a little effort on the part of the teacher. When I taught school, I reduced handwriting down to ten easy lessons, and with a plan of attack for the students to use on their own. I can boast an unusually and significant success rate. One of my lessons was entitled "One Letter at a Time". Pick a letter. Decide how you want it to look. Learn how to write it very slowly and deliberately. Then for a week or so, every time you write it, take the time to do it properly. When satisfied, choose another letter, and repeat the procedure. No student ever gets through the whole alphabet. However, overall penmanship improves drastically.

Last night on twitter I tweeted:

That started the exchange below between myself and Gary Stager. Chris Lehmann joined in and we had a lively debate. I've decided to archive it here in response to the various communications I've received about it. Maybe extend the conversation a bit.

Gary and I

Chris Lehmann joined in. Chris' tweets should be interlaced with those of Gary and I above but summize.com doesn't do that. You can probably figure out where Chris' tweets fit in from the context of what came before.

Ian Hecht added this to the debate:

These things happen on twitter. While it's happening it feels like something of moment. Time passes, passions cool, and we realize we haven't necessarily added something new to an age old debate but perhaps we've articulated our thinking, and reasons for believing as we do, a little bit better. We might also come to respect the reasoned positions of colleagues who disagree with us and walk away having learned something about ourselves and each other. Identifying Similarities and Differences is one of the most powerful instructional strategies don't you know. ;-)

Why YouTube?
In the comments to my last post I was asked why I chose to use YouTube instead of TeacherTube as a platform for my students to share their videos. I answered:

I chose YouTube for three reasons:

(1) That's where the kids go for video. They feel comfortable there and have their own accounts from which they publish video outside of school. This allows me to model some digital ethics vis a vis what do you and what don't you publish on YouTube.

(2) That's where all the people are. There is a significant math community on YouTube and I am hoping to draw their attention and perhaps participation which would add value to the assignment in terms of authenticity and audience.

(3) Kids think TeacherTube is for teachers, not them. That detracts somewhat from the value added by publishing publicly online.

A number of people have left comments for my students on their class blog. Thank you so much for that. In one of those comments pirategirl mentions how slow TeacherTube can be. I guess we can add that to my list of reasons above.

Copyright
As part of this assignment we talked about copyright and I emphasized that using copyrighted material (music) is considered stealing unless they have permission to use the content. Generally, I believe that using 30 seconds or less of copyrighted music falls under Canadian Fair Dealing guidelines. (If I'm wrong about this I welcome the correction.) As part of this discussion I pointed the students to Jamendo where they could find free music to use without worrying about any copyright infringements.

I'm really proud of the way they all dealt with copyright issues and how they credited all the sources they used. Click through to their YouTube videos (see below) to read the details they included not only in the videos but in the informational text that accompanies their work.

The day before the deadline for students to publish their videos one of them left this comment on their class blog:

Maybe JAMENDO should be my name =D

it helps a lot.. thanks..

STATUS: currently cutting down 1:30 to 0:30 s.... 0__o

I was particularly chuffed about that "status update." (See the short podcast below.)

The Videos & The Podcast
Here are the four videos that the student groups generated (the 30 second time limit did not include credits) followed by a brief podcast reflection we did on the last day of classes before the winter break. Give it a listen, this project isn't over yet ...

Ben and Zeph: Calculus Commercial

Kristina, Jamie, & Joyce: YE OLDE DERIVATIVE

Paul, Shelley, & Yinan: Team PSY Derivatives Commercial

Francis, Lawrence, & Justice: Calculus commercial complete

The Podcast Reflection

(Download mp3 file, 3.3 MB)

One of the things we learned was that 30 seconds is too short. The next round of videos will have a 60 second time limit. They'll all be published by the end of January. Stay tuned. ;-)

I was listening to the radio in the car tonight on the way home from a parent info night at my kids school and thinking about email. Many people don't regard email as meaningful communication; it's not really connecting because it's so transient. Like online ecards. All this online stuff is so ephemeral. It's not as meaningful as stuff that takes more time to do, like sending a "real" card.

I don't buy that.

The ephemera of online "stuff", stuff you can't touch, is an illusion. Places like the Internet Archive and OurMedia.org (actually, they're in cahoots with each other) allow you to store an unlimited amount of your digital "stuff" online for free, forever.

This got me thinking about my students class blogs. Some of them are four years old now.

Those students (who were in grade 12 at the time) are in University now or have entered the workforce and are living their lives far beyond the boundaries of the classroom where we met. The papers they handed in, the exams they wrote, the assignments they did in class, all the "real" stuff they did is long gone. Irretrievable really.

The digital stuff they did, the scribe posts they wrote, their reflections on where they were in their learning and what was going on in their lives as it impacted them at school, the digital photographs they took, the projects and assignments they published online, they're all still there and they will likely remain there for a considerable amount of time to come. They will likely be able to show off their finest stuff to their kids. Perhaps even their grandkids some day.

It seems to me these digital ephemera have a lot more permanence than any of the paper and pencil work they did in school.

I received an email from a student of mine from about four years back. It was a thank you note. The kind of note a teacher is blessed with rarely. Perhaps once in a career. I'm keeping it. Backed up in two different online spaces. I don't know why, I just want to. It hasn't added any clutter to a busy household with four kids in it. It has added meaning to what I did four years ago and what I'll continue trying to do tomorrow morning.

Just because digital "stuff" is easy to create doesn't make it less valuable. In many ways it adds value, and permanence.

Then again, maybe it isn't so easy to make "digital stuff"; meaningful digital stuff. I'm still trying to get my head around it all.

Last year, one of the people in my aggregator, D'Arcy Norman, published a video to share the results of his year long experiment: he took a picture every day for a year and published it to his flickr account. He called the experiment 365 Photos. Actually, an entire community has grown up around this idea on flickr; it wasn't D'Arcy's idea originally, there are over 1200 "365 Days" groups. I don't know who started this originally but it seems like a natural extension of publicly sharing your photos.

D'Arcy said a switch got thrown in his head. Watch his video of the results; as you watch you'll get a sense of what his year was like, when and where he went on vacation, his love for his son, the things he finds interesting, but pay particular attention to how he uses perspective, how sets up his "shots", and the things in his world he notices:

As the new year rang in for 2008 several other people in my aggregator decided to join D'Arcy in his new experiment: 366 Photos (2008 is a leap year). After several weeks many started writing about how their visual perception changed as a result of doing this. They started noticing things they hadn't before, the quality of the photos they took (of things, family, friends, events, etc.) improved dramatically, and a switch in their heads flickred.

I came late to this party for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the "every day for a year" commitment intimidates me. So, in March I started my own experiment: 31 Days.

There's a bit of folk wisdom that says it variously takes 21 or 28 days to create (or break) a habit. (15 minutes a day every day. If you miss a day just keep going until you get to 21 — or 28 — days in a row.) I've been able to find no verifiable research to back this up so make of it what you will. In any case, I did find that my 31 Days experiment lead to a change in the way I see the world and use visual imagery in my teaching.

Now, this part wasn't planned, but as I've used flickr more and more I've become more and more interested in taking "interesting" pictures.

As a math teacher I was fascinated to discover that photographers have long known of and used a mathematical definition for beauty. It's based on the number φ, phi (one H of a lot cooler than π, as my students say), which it turns out is embedded in the the natural world in all sorts of ways including the various dimensions of our own bodies. I digress, that's a post for another time. ;-)

I stumbled upon an online photography course over at morgueFile.com. I've only read through Lesson 1: Composition And Impact - It's A Beautiful Photograph, But Do You Know WHY It's Beautiful?. It had a significant impact on how I take pictures and view the world. That was almost a year ago. I'm about ready to move on to Lesson 2: Aperture And Shutter Speed - How They Work Together.

Here's how I did my 31 Days experiment:

 » All pictures were taken with my cell phone. (Because it's always there, and it's easy.)

 » All pictures were uploaded to flickr (almost) daily. (You can send directly from your phone if you like.)

 » All pictures were tagged with a unique tag for the experiment. i.e. 31Days.

 » All pictures were aggregated on my blog using a slideshow tool, SlideFlickr.com (also allows you to embed music).

 » I took at least one picture every day. (Some days I took more and picked the one liked best.)

You might wonder: Why all this photography stuff from a math teacher? Well, the short answer is that I wanted to model what I asked my students to do — check out the flickr assignment I designed.

The long answer is: It has enriched my life. I used to leave taking pictures to others; my wife or mother-in-law. Now I take more pictures than anyone, and the skills I've developed have lead to some striking pictures of my kids (sorry, we don't publish publics pics of our kids online ... yet). More than that, it has effected the way I read to learn. I recently finished reading John Dewey's Experience and Education. I decided, as a mnemonic and a way to help me move everything I read into long term memory swiftly, I would mentally construct an image that summarizes the content of each chapter. I hope to publish it as a slidecast (slideshow + podcast) on Slideshare in the near future. I know that little book really well as a result of doing this. Creating the slidecast will really embed it in my brain.

Anyway, I think I'm ready to try this experiment again in October. October in Winnipeg starts with colourful leaves on the trees and ends with snow on the ground. This is going to be fun!

My main interest in teaching and learning on the web centers around exploring the effective use of social media to deepen our pedagogy and our students learning.

In Clay Shirky's recent book, Here Comes Everybody, he closes by saying that there are three "rules" behind the effective use of any social tool: it "relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the [students]".

The promise is about why would you use a certain tool. i.e. begin by asking yourself, what do you want to accomplish with your students? What do you want them to learn?

The tool is about answering the question: how do you want them to learn it?

The bargain, in Clay's words, "sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you (the students) expect and what will be expected of you?"

This is not a recipe for success. It's more of a framework to pin your thinking on. There are infinite paths to any goal; every teacher and student may start and end a course at the same place but the path they follow to get there is unique to each individual.

These three ideas can serve as a framework to guide our thinking as we try to answer the question: So, exactly what am I going to do differently with all this stuff in class tomorrow?

What do you think? Is this a helpful framework for thinking about using social media in the classroom?

First an update on this podcast: While we have received few comments on this or any of our class blogs the number of times the audio files have been downloaded is remarkable ...

Episode 1: Jessie 2440 downloads

Episode 2: Tim_MATH_y 1766 downloads

Episode 3: Chris, Craig, Graeme 1367 downloads

Thanks to all our listeners. We might get one more published during this school year but this may be the last until September. In any case feel free to let me or my students know your thoughts about what they had to say; every comment is appreciated. As their teacher, I'm awfully proud of them. I can only imagine how their parents must feel.

In this episode of Student Voices three Pre-Calculus students talk about how they put together their Developing Expert Voices project and what they learned in the process: how they they best learn math, how it can best be taught, and many other incidental things like team work and organizational skills.

All three of these students are in Grade 11 (about 16 years old). They are taking their grade 12 math course this year so that they can take AP Calculus next year.

They have titled their project with one of my favourite reminders to all my students: Mathematics is the Science of Patterns. If you watch any of the video content they created you'll hear several "in jokes". I'll let you "in" on a few of them:

• I eat a lot of yogourt. Between 1/2 and 3/4 of a litre most days.

• I HATE when students come late to class.

• I tell lots of stories in class; always with a mathematical slant or moral.

• To encourage students to move quickly I often say: "Hupsha, hupsha, quick like a bunny!"

• When students ask permission to miss my class to attend other school related events I almost always ask: "What?!? You want to miss my honey dripping words of wisdom?"

• You can see some more of my "famous expressions" here.

Let Justice, Lawrence, and Richard know what you thought about the podcast by leaving a comment here on this post or on the mirror of this post on their class blog.

Without any further ado, here is the podcast. A copy of the poster they made for their work is below.

(Download File 12.2Mb, 25 min. 30 sec.)

In this episode of Student Voices three Advanced Placement Calculus students, Chris, Craig, and Graeme, talk about a wiki assignment they did to prepare for the exam. Then the conversation transitions to a discussion of the many things they learned while doing their Developing Expert Voices project. It ends with a challenge, the result of which will be featured in a future podcast.

You can find their project on this year'sDeveloping Expert Voices blog or scattered across YouTube; it's called DEV: Watch and Learn; soon to be aggregated on the project blog.

Let Chris, Craig, and Graeme know what you thought about the podcast by leaving a comment here on this post or on the mirror of this post on their class blog.

(Download File 31.8Mb, 26 min. 30 sec.)

The video mentioned near the end of the podcast is called Daft Hands. Here it is:

... it's really important how we speak to kids. Give them a consistent message; and keep it positive. Good advice for everyone really.

In this episode Timothy, a grade 12 AP Calculus student, comes back to high school on a Friday afternoon to talk about his week attending the miniUniversity program at the University of Winnipeg. He talks about the differences he finds between teaching and learning at high school and university and describes learning in the university classroom using a thought provoking metaphor, listen for it. Also, we have a cameo appearance by two very special people at the very end.

Please feel free to leave Tim_MATH_y your comments here or on this post on her class blog. You can find the archive of his most recent online work in his class blog.

(Download File 7.2Mb, 15 min. 3 sec.)

I was talking to one of my students earlier this week while helping her review over the lunch hour. I found her comments so compelling I asked her (and later her parents) if I could record and publish her comments so other students could hear what she had to say. I've long thought students need to hear from other students how they best learn to help them all learn.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of podcasts called Student Voices. I'm hoping to have one of these short conversations with a student published each week.

I was inspired by the powerful presentations done by my students on Monday at the Pan-Canadian Interactive Literacy Forum. Hearing how students talk powerful learning experiences in their own words fascinates me; I find it very compelling when I begin to doubt if "all this web 2.0 stuff" is worth mine and my students efforts. Listening to Jessie talk gave me a shot in the arm at a time when I really needed it.

In this episode Jessie, a grade 12 Applied Math student, shares how she uses her class blog to learn and describes her personal "tipping point" from being confused to understanding the class material very well. She also discusses the value of learning conversations and how sometimes being a "teacher" and sometimes a student helps her learn.

Please feel free to leave Jessie your comments here or on this post on her class blog. You can also find the archive of her most recent online work in her class blog.

(Download File 5.6Mb, 11 min. 40 sec.)

UPDATE

I cross posted this to all my class blogs. I'm thinking this might be a way to help build community between them and encourage cross commenting by students.

It was the worst presentation I have ever given. It's all on a wiki.

Embracing The Edge
or getting comfortable with disruptive learning technologies

Uncomfortable with technology? This is for you ... you will have your boundaries pushed. Explore the changing face of teaching, learning and professional development in an age of rapid technological change. Probe the intersections between leadership, change and fostering good pedagogy. A very interactive session. Bring your own wireless laptop. Download & install skype (skype.com) VOIP software before you come; it's free.

WHAT HAPPENED

It was advertised, because the plan required — followed up with "reminder email" — that everyone present have a wireless laptop. 40 people registered for the workshop, maybe 30 showed up. Only about half of them had laptops. Also asked for high speed wireless internet at the venue. Access wasn't high speed, then, there was no access.

I had arranged for Chris Lehmann and Dennis Richards to join us as guest speakers. This was a presentation for school administrators and leaders. I wanted them to hear from two outstanding leaders. When Dennis connected via skype I was booted offline line within minutes. After the break only about 1/3 of the attendees came back.

I tap danced for 2.5 hours.

When we couldn't get connected I did my offline introduction and asked my host to see if the on site tech support folks could help us out. During my intro the tech support guys came and a few people were able to get online. I continued my introduction. When that lead to requiring net access it wasn't there. I tried to get folks organized for the learning activity I had planned and again asked for some help from the tech support guys. The hotel manager(?) (at least he was dressed like the manager) came in and said he'd restart their server. He did. It didn't help. I was about 45 minutes in now so I switched to the slides for the second half of my presentation thinking I might be able to do that bit entirely offline.

We went on break for 20 minutes. I moved the laptop around until I found a spot where I could get online. I preloaded a few pages and crossed my fingers. My plan included both a "low impact workout" and a "high impact workout." I switched gears and decided we'd go with only the low impact workout and move to a show and tell presentation; instead of the "do and reflect" I had planned. I had intermittent access at best for the last 90 minutes of the presentation. Basically, I kept dancing.

WHAT I HAD PLANNED

First, I wanted to give these school leaders some hands on experience using web 2.0 tools to:

• »get connected with a local network (the folks in the room in a skype chat).
• »bring in experts from around the world "just in time" using twitter and skype.
• »understand the power of a professional learning network.
• »learn the basics of a few different tools like skype, flickr, pbwiki, and voicethread.
• »learn the engagement that comes with collaboration.
• »experience the excitement that comes with creating artifacts that share what you know with a global audience.
• »learn that you "don't need to know it all" to be able to use the tools to create and learn.
• »expose them to thinking about how to use new tools to amplify kids learning and teachers teaching.

Second, I wanted illustrate how a suite of free online tools can be woven together to create engaging hybrid (online and offline) learning experiences for students in the classroom and teachers ongoing professional development.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED or, what I'd do differently next time

I'm not sure it was such a good idea to plan a technology intensive workshop for a conference that wasn't specifically an Ed. tech. conference. I think people end up in some presentations by default (as opposed to preregistering) and the laptop requirement may have been an unreasonable expectation on my part; regardless of any reminder email.

I should assume the net will go down. I know this expectation is unreasonable in the business world but in the world of education it's perhaps more common than not. This being the case, I should structure my slides to allow for an easy transition to "show and tell" even though I personally hate when it's done to me.

Some ideas to access my online content are:

• »download all video content using KeepVid.
• »archive/download all websites that are critical to the presentation as web archives in Firefox.
• »capture all streamed slideshows using Jing and save to my desktop instead of online.

And, on top of all this, I think I would also have a "back up talk" that I could share if all else fails and I find myself doing a lot of hand waving as I felt I did on Thursday.

THE AFTERMATH

For all this, I have to say that my hosts at the conference were very gracious and accommodating when I arrived. The folks that did stay until the end of my session were also very kind. It couldn't have been all bad. Several people complimented me on the "tap dance" I did, one asked if I've considered walking away from my teaching job to be a private educational consultant, and a few asked if I'd be willing to come out to their schools or divisions to give workshops on education and technology.

Maybe I'm too hard on myself but I expected so much more of myself than what I delivered on Thursday. I learned a lot from this. Next time (if there is one) will be different.

We've just completed a unit of study in my grade 12 Pre-Cal 40S class. I call the kind of lesson we had today a "workshop." I prepare a series of problems as slides for the SMARTboard. The class is divided into groups of 3 or 4 students each. (Actually, this class is very big. All groups had 4 students and a couple had 5; not ideal working conditions but we do the best we can with what we've got.) They collaborate in their groups to solve each problem. Whenever they feel ready, anyone in the class spontaneously walks up to the SMARTboard and shares their solution. Other groups continue to solve the problem and analyze the work on the board for errors and "good form".

I'm really proud of how they work together and engage with the content and each other. It wasn't like this from day one but we've been working together for more than three months now. I was admiring their work today and wanted to share it. (In the back of my mind I was also thinking about how I would answer a question Ben Hazzard had thrown my way from this week's SMARTboard Lesson Podcast.) Anyway, I tweeted what they were doing as they did it. Ben Wilkoff suggested (tweeted) I share it here. Thanks Ben!

When the young lady working on the last problem hit a snag, several people spoke up to help her sort it out. Eventually, as time was running out of class, I helped them finish it off. After they solve each problem the first questions I ask are:

So, what do you all think?

Have they got that right?

How does it look?

Anyone want to change anything?

Any questions students ask are redirected to the student(s) who shared their work. They usually correct any errors with little or no prompting from me. If I do notice any errors they have missed I'll say: "There are X errors there. Can you find them?" or "This is good but it would have lost a few half marks. Can you see where?" Most of my comments focus on the wee technical details regarding how their work should be presented. I also point out the sorts of common errors that come up in tests and exams.

When I plan my lessons I try build them around these ideas:

Watch it. Do it. Teach it.

How can I make their thinking transparent to each other; and me?

They should touch the SMARTboard more often than I.

So, this is one way I use the SMARTboard in my class. It's just one piece of a larger whole in the way we use technology to support student learning. I'd love to hear what other folks do with their Interactive White Boards (IWBs).

Your thoughts?

The last three years have felt like a long ride in the Tilt-a-Whirl. Every week, sometimes every day, opened my eyes to new possibilities for what could be accomplished in the classroom. Scads of new (free) tools became available each day. My head snapped as I tried to assimilate new ways of thinking about teaching and learning.

I got used to it though. I've begun to generalize the way I think about each new tool. Does it have RSS? Can I link to it? Does it allow for tagging? embedding? The blog is still the hub for all these functionalities.

Most recently, Dean pushed my thinking a little further with his K12 Online presentation Design Matters. I've been thinking about the ideas he talked about there daily. They're slowly weaving their way into my classroom.

But now, it feels like the learning is slowing down. I've reached an inflection point; still growing, just much more slowly. I know from playing guitar that you reach these stretches where it feels like you're not really advancing anymore. Just doing the same things you've already learned. It feels like the learning stops. What I've found, playing guitar, is that a moment comes. Unexpectedly. Like a bolt from the blue. All that "quiet" time was really just my fingers getting ready to take the next leap.

I'm turning inward a bit now. Mulling things over. Thinking about how my teaching practices have consolidated over the last few years. Turning back to my roots.

I'm wondering what the next inflection point is going to look like. And when it's going to come.

Patience.

We had a great night! There were over 60 people in the room, some familiar faces and lots of new ones too. My only regret was that I didn't get a chance to talk to and meet more of the people who were there. The real hero of the evening, IMHO, was Andy McKiel, the president of our provincial Ed. Tech. association, MANace. Andy organized the evening and made sure all the technology ran flawlessly. This never would have happened without him. At one point during the evening, all of us who were presenting were chatting; we unanimously shared how grateful we were for all of Andy's hard work. Thanks Andy!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I've just updated the Manitoba EdubloggerCon wiki. We had a live Twitter feed and UStream feed. All the videos of the unpresentations can be seen from the Manitoba Edubloggercon UStream account or the wiki.

The next day, yesterday, Chris, Clarence, Dean, John and I had lunch together to catch up and chat. Unfortunately, John had to leave early but as we lingered over the end of the meal, Dean fired up his laptop and started streaming video and audio on his Ustream channel. We were joined for lunch by over 20 people from across the world. We forgot to click the record button so we've lost the video archive but Clarence saved the chat which you can download from his blog or read directly on the MBEdubloggercon wiki (it's easier to follow the links off the wiki page). There was lots of interesting discussion and some good links shared. One of them led me to a voicethread archive of lots of math content that's giving me ideas for how I can use it in my classroom. That's also a resource I can link to and use in my Consumer Math 20S (grade 10, approx. 15 y.o.) class. (My daughter (7 years) and I watched this one this morning and left a comment on the last slide.)

Dean took some photos at lunch. I aggregated them into this voicethread. (I know Dean wants to hear lots of comments about the salad (slide 2) I had with my lunch.) I haven't had a chance to add any comments yet. Feel free to add yours before I do. ;-)

One thing that came out loud and clear (you can see it in the chat transcript) is that our ideas about what good professional development should look like have changed dramatically. It's not worth our time unless it provides an opportunity to engage with what's being shared by dialogging about it. And that dialogue should include global participation via twitter, UStream or some other way to access our learning networks. More than that, archiving the experience somehow is also important. The archive provides people who were there the opportunity to go back and reflect on what they heard/learned/participated in and offers other educators around the world an opportunity to participate vicariously after the event and add their voices to the conversation.

Having been immersed in "networked learning" for a while now, the power of the network to connect and amplify learning still amazes me every time. Even my 7 year old daughter got something out of all this. Thanks to an email I got from Brian Metcalfe (who attended the event on Thursday night) while I was chatting with Dean this morning we're talking about an idea that may make math a little more fun in classrooms across the world, in March ... on the fourteenth, to be exact. ;-) I'll share more about it here as we flesh this out.

Like I keep saying to my students, again and again, "Learning is a conversation. If you're not talking to someone about it, you're not learning it."

So much to blog, so little time ... but this is exciting (at least it is to me) and I wanted to archive it here in my outboard brain.

I have had online mentors working with my classes for about two years now. Lani Ritter-Hall has been there from the beginning and continues to model the art and science of effective blog mentorship. (This latest example was fantastic! The kids faces as they heard her voice for the first time was priceless.)

Alec Couros and I are collaborating with his two classes of student teachers mentoring my classes via their blogs this year as well. For the last six weeks they have worked mostly with my Consumer Math 20S (grade 10, aged approx. 15 years) class and recently begun expanding their work to my Pre-Cal 40S and AP Calculus classes. I think it has been something of an eye opener for the student teachers to compare the nature and pace of work and the character of the online interactions in the different classes.

The students in my AP Calculus class have been mentored online going on three years now. I have had the good fortune to teach this same group of kids for three years in a row; I have taught them all their high school mathematics. The group is much smaller now; we're at 11 students down from nearly 30 in grade 10, one of whom is new to the group.

Anyway, their learning has been enriched via these online mentorships and they have started to think of ways they can pay it forward and maybe get a good reference for scholarship applications they will be making in the near future.

Clarence and Barbara are pushing the boundaries of education this year in their Thin Walled Classroom. The students in "this class" are learning at least one thing together each day. Using a suite of online tools, they are creating a classroom with very thin walls where the kids have teachers in two countries and two time zones; one they see face to face, one they don't. (Man, how I wish my own kids were students in this classroom.)

When three of my AP Calculus students approached me with the idea of of taking on the role of blog mentors I tweeted about it and got three bites in short order. I shared the urls of the people who were interested and my kids chose to work with Clarence and Barbara in the Thin Walled Classroom. I have letters of permission from their parents that I keep on file and am keeping tabs on their work from my end. Clarence asked them to be positive in their comments but also to push the younger students and challenge them in their work to help them amplify their learning. They are not to act as cheerleaders but as catalysts for growth. (After their experiences being mentored by Lani for these last few years they knew exactly what the expectations were.) Clarence also asked them to archive and email him with the comments they leave behind every five or six comments or so. It struck me that it would be much better to use a blog to record their comments.

Using Blogger allows the functionality of emailing a post to a unique, user determined, address where the subject line becomes the post title and the body, including all formating, become the body of the blog post. (See my recent test.) Each of my student/mentors is building a blog where they will archive their comments and post urls to the students in the thin walled classroom. After they have done this for a few weeks they will go over the comments they have left behind and post a brief reflection about the work they have done and how they can improve it in the future. This also makes it really easy for Clarence, Barbara and I to monitor their work and creates a concrete artifact they can point to when they reference this work in their scholarship applications.

Yesterday, the first of the new student mentor blogs went live. Grey-M's new blog is called Advice Through Ethereal Walls. He left his first comment to Hannah whose blog is called Believing is Succeeding (great name for an edublog).

I was so taken with this idea that I went to share all this with my principal and discuss how I see this evolving in the future.

How would it be if students who begin grade 9 or 10 at my school, in blogging classes, are mentored via their blogs so that by the time they reach grade 12 they can assume the role of mentor as well to pay it forward? Commenting/mentoring students in the younger grades in our school and our feeder schools builds a self sustaining model so that by grade 12 we may have a cadre of blog mentors that can support the learning of students in our community and abroad. After all, thanks to blogging, we live in a thin walled world.

He liked the idea. We'll see where it goes.

In the mean time feel free to mentor the mentor by dropping in on Grey-M and wishing him well on the launch of his latest blogging adventure.