Off and running

Since week four of the 2009-2010 school year starts tomorrow, it's time for me to complete a progress report. It's not a progress report for my students; no, those will be completed for Parent Teacher Conferences in another week or so. This progress report is for myself. How am I doing at teaching my students German and 21st Century Skills?

Well we'll see how the German is going after this week's unit tests. But my students have gotten to know me and each other, successfully completed a variety of activities during our first unit, and generally display an enthusiasm for working together. That combination makes for one very pleased teacher and I feel confident in saying that they are learning communicative German and can speak and understand more than they could four weeks ago.

As far as technology and 21st Century Skills go, I am currently teaching German 1 and German 2. In the past, I have really pushed our language lab software and experimented with Moodle in my upper level courses, rarely used them in German 1, and sometimes used them in German 2.

So far this year, all of my students have begun using the language lab software. German 1 students listened to and answered personal questions, and German 2 students recorded an introduction of themselves. All of my students have logged into Moodle and started blogs to reflect on cultural and language similarities and differences. German 1 students have also participated in a discussion forum, and my German 2 students have virtually visited some German grocery stores. These seem like such small steps. I'm definitely using more technology with my students and expecting them to use more technology for academic purposes. I've also already noticed some things I'd like to change. For example, I know now which assignments would work better as a private Moodle journal than a blog.

After taking several courses in the last year, I had very high hopes and probably unrealistic ones about how I was going to differentiate instruction, teach to all learning channels and integrate essential 21st Century Skills into my classroom. In my enthusiasm, I expected to hit the ground running and overlooked the fact that changes take time and small steps are significant. I'm progressing towards my goal. I'd tell a parent at parent teacher conferences that Jennifer is working hard, reflecting upon what she's learning, should keep up the good work, keep her eyes on the goal and continue striving to reach it. As hard as it may be, I'm going to try to take my own advice. If I celebrate the small successes along the way and learn from the road blocks, I'll enjoy the journey no matter how long it may take!

Starting a personal blog

Part of being a 21st century teacher--the first step, really--is getting "out there." No, this isn't a post about dating or even online dating. This is a post about getting on the world wide web and getting familiar with the tools that today's students and today's citizens are using.

Many of my friends have had personal blogs for quite a while now. I enjoy reading about my friends' adventures in other states and other countries and watching their children grow up through my computer. But I'd been hesitant to start my own blog. Is it dangerous to make my digital footprint too big? Does my daughter, who can certainly say "no" but probably can't really think through the decision (at age 2) want to grow up online? Is it safe for her to grow up online? Do I have time to keep up a personal blog? Would anyone want to read it?

Those are all important questions. I can't pretend to have the answers (or to have thought about all the questions), but I think anyone who decides to blog (personally or professionally) should answer them for him/herself. So I did.

#1 Is it dangerous to make my digital footprint too big?
No more dangerous than living and breathing and leaving real footprints. How I conduct myself online reflects who I am as a person. I won't put any information online that is private, unprofessional or disrespectful. Just as I am myself when I meet new people in person, I can be myself on the web.

#2 Does my daughter want to grow up online?
I'm not sure. At some point, I am sure she'll be able to tell me. But for now, I know that she is growing up as a digital native. She is already comfortable with some technology and in the near future, I predict that she will be helping me with my technology troubles. I imagine that she will be similar to my current high school students who seem to be able to text, myspace, tweet, and facebook in their sleep. So she'll probably feel quite comfortable growing up online. I'm sure I'll embarrass her at some points in her life online and in person. That's what parents do. But if I keep the dialog open, I can always change how I blog about my family as she grows and shares her feelings with me. Or maybe she'll take over the family blog someday!

#3 Is it safe for her to grow up online?
Is it safe for anyone to grow up? Yes, I'm horrified when I hear stories of children meeting dangerous adults online. I'm also horrified when I hear stories of children coming in contact with dangerous adults in person. In fact, I'm horrified and scared when I watch my toddler's feet get ahead of her and see her take a tumble on the playground. In the almost two years that I have been a parent, I have realized that yes, the world is a dangerous place (more dangerous than I imagined when my parents taught me that) and that worry is a part of a parent's daily life (sometimes a very big part)! But no parent can stop a child from growing up. In fact, we want our children to grow up to be healthy and happy. So while she's growing up, I intend to teach my daughter how to be safe in person and online.

#4 Do I have time to keep up a personal blog?
I don't know. We'll see. I post pictures online. I update my facebook status. I always loved to journal but haven't journaled in many years. This may be a great way to share some of our family experiences with friends and family who don't see us very often and also to reflect on my daughter's childhood and our growth as a family. And as far as I know, there are no rules about how often you have to blog. :)

#5 Would anyone want to read it?
I'm sure there are at least some grandparents out there who would be interested.

So I answered the questions to my satisfaction and started the personal blog. I'm a little more "out there" now. When I return to school in the fall, my German students will be using Moodle to blog about culture, language, and in the upper levels, their own thoughts in German on various topics. Since I'm making blogging, an important 21st century skill, a focus of my instruction, I'm also making it part of my life.

Since I know better, I'll do better

We did the best we could with what we knew and when we knew better, we did better. ~~Maya Angelou

I know she wasn't describing my teaching career, when she made that quote famous, but it seems like she could have been. I first read this quote by Maya Angelou when I was an undergraduate student preparing for my certification in secondary education. At that time, I was discovering books like The Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen, You Can't Say You Can't Play by Vivian Gussen Paley, Savage Inequalities: Children In America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol, Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn, and Affirming Diversity by Sonia Nieto. I was examining the classrooms in which I had been a successful student, developing my own vision of education, and beginning to fill my teacher toolbox with strategies. The crux of my vision as a new teacher was to create a safe place where every one of my students felt respected, valued, supported, challenged, and safe to use his/her voice. I was emailing, I was creating my own handouts, projects and activities using my computer, and I had an internet connection. My first school had no open computer labs. If I wanted to use computers with my students, I could sign up to take them to library, where they could share a total of 14 computers. I was a brand new teacher, developing my curriculum, testing out classroom management strategies, and trying to successfully swim in the sea of school politics. Integrating technology into my classroom, if it even seemed possible, wasn't even on my radar. Those students I taught in my first years learned German. I hope they also learned how to learn and that I cared about them. I taught them the best I knew how at the time.

When I started working on my Master's Degree a few years later, my classroom management strategies had definitely improved. I was more comfortable with my curriculum and more confident in my ability to revise it. In addition to wanting to provide my students with a safe and comfortable learning environment, I wanted to teach my students how to truly communicate and be confident communicators in German. I chose a program in teaching second languages and explored theories of acquisition, examined and tested methods of teaching listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and created my own assessments for my classes. During this time, I switched schools and took on a leadership position in my building. I was using the internet to find lessons and to virtually take my students to German speaking countries. I was grading online and part of a listserve. I was filming my students' work and researching digital language lab software. The students I taught during these years also learned German. I hope they also learned how to learn and that I cared about them as well. And I sensed they learned how to communicate better in German. This hypothesis was supported when a past student returned from college and told me he couldn't believe how much his sister was learning. "She speaks better than I do," he said. Both siblings had had the same amount of German instruction. When I knew a little better, I taught my students a little better.

Over the past few years as I have been finishing up my Masters +15 and now my Masters +30, I have taken a variety of courses to help me learn more about what is best for my students and to teach them even better. I've taken continuing education courses in Classroom Management, Merging Educational Goals with Technology, Teaching 21st Century Skills, Teaching through the Learning Channels, Differentiated Instruction, Teaching English Language Learners, and Developing 21st Century Skills. I've grown to realize how very important my students' interests, backgrounds, and ability levels are and how I can design my instruction to help each student be more successful. Fortunately, each course I have taken has balanced research and theory with practical applications. As I completed a project in a course, I could turn around and use it in my classroom the next day. When I think about what I knew when I started teaching, I'm sometimes amazed that my first students learned anything at all, until I think of Maya Angelou. Those students received a good education, but now that I know even more and better, I can provide my current and future students with a better one.

When I think of what I knew in June and what I know now, I'm amazed. Just this summer I have learned how to use many multimedia tools I didn't even know existed, much less for free! I've learned how to use many Google apps include Google Docs and Google Reader. I've learned how to mindmap for free using MindMeister. I've learned how to create with Audacity, Picasa, and Movie Maker. I've learned about editing and embedding in a Wiki. I've learned how to define and articulate the need to teach and assess 21st century skills. And I've integrated 21st century skills into units I currently teach. I've also learned a little bit more about living in my students' world--a world that has really never existed without technology. I can't imagine going back to teach how I taught on Day One of my teaching career. I can't even imagine going back to teaching the same way I did in June. Not that the students who graduated in June didn't get a good education. At the time I taught them how I knew best to teach them, now that I know better, I'll do better.

I'm not sure who said it, but another quote that has always stuck out in my mind is that a person can never step into the same river twice. The person and the river are always changing. I believe that quote describes teaching too. One of the most amazing parts of my job is that it's never boring. As I teacher, I can't teach the same lesson twice. The more I teach, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I change. If I ever stop learning, that will be the time to stop teaching. My vision of education is still the same. I still seek to create a safe place where every one of my students felt respected, valued, supported, challenged, and safe to use his/her voice. The steps I take to get there are just a little different!

It's not the End

This is the last week of my class on developing 21st century skills. That means this is the last week of assigned readings, posting in the class forum, collaborating with others on small group projects, and meeting deadlines. The course is over. The work is finished. The grade will be reported. That's all she wrote; it's the end.

Or is it?

Now that I have had a chance to examine frameworks for 21st century skills, develop my own framework, test a small group of the many free media tools, spend some time critically reviewing and writing rubrics, and integrate 21st century skills into one unit of my curriculum, what may appear to others as an end, feels to me like the beginning.

Developing my own 21st century skills, most specifically my multimedia skills was my first step toward change. I believe change always starts at a personal level. For me, this change started with the strong desire to be a better teacher and to reach my own students in a language that "speaks" to them. I knew technology was an important part of my students' lives. I've seen the look they give me when I ask them to please take their I-pod earphones out of their ears. I've observed how quickly they can text a friend while standing in the lunch line. And I've listened to many conversations about Youtube, MySpace, and Facebook. I've marveled at some of the final projects my students have turned in. Many students in the past couple of years have opted to film their final project instead of presenting it "live" to the class. I thought I was somewhat "up" on the times and technology, until my students informed me that they prefer to text over talk on the phone and that they don't email, they facebook. I knew Facebook was an online social networking service. I even have an account! But I didn't know it was a verb. My students are truly digital natives and they adapt to technology much quicker than I can learn about it. While some may lament about today's teenagers and their obsession with technology, I wanted to learn more about their technology and figure out how to use it in my classroom. The title of the course, "Developing 21st Century Skills," intrigued me and seemed to promise to do just that, so I signed up.

The course has not disappointed me and I have learned more than I could have imagined not only from the instructor, the course materials, and the assignments, but also from my classmates. Learning more, not everything, about the free technology available to me and my students and 21st century skills was a first step of what will be a challenging, but rewarding journey towards change.

As I return to school in September, I need to share my new knowledge with my students, their parents, and my co-workers. One of the best ways to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with others will be not only to tell them what I'm doing, but to show them. As I integrate more 21st century skills into my classroom, I anticipate my students will become more excited about learning and using German and more confident about what they can do. Our classroom will grow beyond its physical walls as my students use read/write web tools to collaborate with other students learning German around the world. Parents and community members can virtually visit our classroom and see what their children can do using video publishing software and sharing sites. As I'm integrating more 21st century skills, I'll also be introducing and using more performance assessments with my students, their parents, and my colleagues.

After I have begun implementing changes in my own classroom and have been able to share some of my experiences and my successes with my colleagues, my next step will be to initiate and encourage change beyond my classroom. Our building has been developing Professional Learning Communities and we also have a Career Focused Education Program. Integrating 21st Century Skills would logically fall under both of these initiatives. I need to continue serving on both of these committees to help facilitate change within my own school and district.

Throughout the process, I need to remember that teaching and learning are a continuous cycle of risk-taking, adapting, reviewing, and assessing. As I am changing and as my school and district are changing, I'm excited that we can be part of an online community of individuals, schools, and communities who all have the same goal--to prepare today's students to be successful in tomorrow's world. I'm confident that personal change is already occuring in teachers throughout the nation, who are initiating change in their buildings and districts, and as we all work towards change together, 21st century schools will become vastly different from 19th and 20th century schools.

My relationship with "Assessment"

As long as I have been a World Language teacher, I have had a love/hate relationship with the word "assessment." I can certainly understand the benefit of having an easy-to-grade test that gives you a meaningful score (percentage which matches the traditional grading system of most schools in the United States) at the end of a term, especially when you start teaching new students the next day. Paper and pencil multiple choice tests are easy to grade and they can and do tell me something about what my students know, but they don't tell me what my students can do.

My goal as a language teacher, is to teach my students to listen, read, write and speak in German. A multiple choice test can tell me if students understood the main ideas of an audio or written text, but cannot tell me if my students can write or carry on a meaningful conversation. So although they may be more difficult to create and more time-consuming to grade, I have spent a considerable amount of time developing a group of assessments to supplement my multiple choice and short answer tests including role plays, projects, and journals. My current assessments give me a better picture of both what my students know (understand in German) and can do (in German). So "assessment" and I are on pretty good terms most of the time now.

However, as a 21st century language teacher, my responsibility is greater than teaching my students how to communicate successfully in German. My responsibility now also includes preparing my students to be risk-takers, to be flexible and adapt to changes, and to be able to use, evaluate, and create using technology. Which brings me back to my "challenging" relationship with "assessment." How exactly do I integrate more 21st century skills into my German curriculum and how then do I assess them?

I've already started the task of integrating 21st century skills into my German curriculum. I'm taking an online class on developing 21st century skills, I've developed my own framework of 21st century skills, and I've discovered many free tools that I can use with my students. The wheels in my head seem like they are constantly turning about how I can now integrate technology into many of my existing lessons and projects, and I've been brainstorming some new lessons and projects as well. This task seems exciting and not so daunting.

Yet assessing 21st century skills seems very daunting. How exactly do I document that my students engaged in higher level thinking skills and contributed equally while working on a wiki? What are the characteristics and qualities of an excellent podcast? How will I assess how my students use an emerging technology in six months that doesn't even exist today? Thankfully, all of these questions do not have to be answered overnight. And I do have some ideas about where to start.

1. Some of the tools I am already using can be "tweaked" to incorporate the evaluation of 21st century skills. The rubrics I am using for my performance assessments can be redesigned to include categories such as "collaborative effort" and "use of multimedia tools." I can use student portfolios (or even better--e-portfolios) to document students' development of skills, reflections on their learning, and growth over time.

2. There are some resources out there to help me. Partnership for the 21st Century Skills has launched "Route 21" which provides resources for teaching and assessment. Although the project and site are relatively new, a search for "assessment" brings 5 pages of results. One of the most inspiring was a sample e-portfolio created by a 15 year-old female student. Dr. Helen Barrett has also collected many samples of e-portfolios created by K-12 students, college students, faculty, and education students which can serve as guides for me. (To access her links, click here.) And I'm following the blogs of my colleagues as well.

3. I can collaborate in person and online with other educators facing the same challenges of integrating 21st century skills and then assessing them.

4. I can be patient and realize that teaching (and life in general) is a process that involves making decisions based on best practices, taking a risk, reflecting on experiences, being receptive to feedback, revising as necessary, adapting to each situation, and trying again, if necessary!

While "assessment" and I may be heading through a few rocky passes, I think we'll work them just fine.

Starting a blog, following blogs, RSS, and comments

It's been one day since I started my blog. I've been pleased to share it with my colleagues in my 21st Century Skills course and read their comments here and also in our class forums. I'm sure I'll also be very excited when I get a comment from a non-classmate, since it will mean that others are reading my blog too!

It's been fun reading my colleagues' blogs, subscribing to them, and commenting on them. I've developed a personal connection with these people as I've been getting to know them and working with them over the past few weeks and I'm looking forward to following their blogs as the next school year starts and we all start to integrate some of the technologies we've been exploring into our classrooms.

In addition to staring my own blog and reading my colleagues', I have started using GoogleReader to help me manage the blogs I'm following. GoogleReader is a free application which manages my blog "subscriptions" and lets me know when a blog I'm following has been updated. I'm thankful for an "alert" system like this. Now I don't have to visit each blog individually to discover new posts. Anything that saves time and helps manage all the information out there is a great tool.

I'm also using GoogleReader and Google Blogsearch to help me find other professional/educational blogs to follow. There are so many blogs out there. Yesterday I lost track of time searching until my stomach told me it was way past lunch time! I found a few I wanted to follow and some I even commented on yesterday including:

Free Technology for Teachers
This blog reviews free technology and suggests use for each tool in the classroom. I found the entry on Podsafe audio very interesting as I am struggling to learn about licenses, Creative Commons, and were to find music and visuals for multimedia projects. I appreciated the entry and the comments and posted my own comment thanking the writers and readers for their suggestions and asking if anyone had an essay lesson or outline for teaching students about copyright. (To go directly to the Podsafe entry and comments, click here.) I was a bit nervous because my comment had to be "approved," but it was and I hope to get some answers to my question/comments on my comment and am also looking forward to exploring some of the resources mentioned on the site.

Linda Zins-Adam's Blog
This blog is created by German Teacher, Linda Zins-Adams. She blogs in German and her students write comments. She also has a blog page for each course she teaches and one which she and her students use to get to know their exchange partners in Germany. I commented on her most recent post and will definitely be using this blog as a model and inspiration for what I can do with my own students. (To see my comment, click here.)

Arnaba's Weblog
This blog is in German and is a teacher's collection of resources for Web 2.0 and teaching German as a foreign language. The most recent entry includes downloads for teaching about online social networks. I subscribed to the feed and am anxious to go through the past posts to explore the other resources.

DaF-Blog
This is another blog in German that features ideas, resources, and comments about teaching German as a foreign language. One post that caught my attention was about using 5 frame stories from Flickr collections to help students practice their oral speaking/storytelling skills.

100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers
This list was posted on a blog in Classroom 2.0, a community for teachers seeking to integrate Web 2.0 skills into their classrooms. This list is organized by subject and can be a huge timesaver.

I'm still a blog-newbie and have lots to learn, but the exploring I've done so far has been both informational and fun!

Technology is expensive, or is it?

About three years ago, my department began researching digital language lab software. We were looking for ways to help our World Language students practice and gain confidence in their speaking abilities in a second language. Until that time we had been focusing mainly on in-class speaking opportunities and we had been using Windows Sound Recorder to record short answers to questions. Sound Recorder allowed the students to hear themselves and rerecord themselves, but they could only record about a minute of speech. We conducted our research and decided on Sony Soloist software. We're pleased with the software and what our students are able to do, but we do have a problem. The software is expensive and our district could not commit to funding a complete lab. We've been piecing the lab together through grant money and department funds each year. We currently have about 2/3 of a complete computer lab.

Question: Doesn't good technology always cost money?

Answer: No.

Through my Teaching 21st Century Skills class, I have been able to learn about, experiment with, and create both audio, visual, and multimedia using tools that are available for free! I have been able to organize my photos, create collages, try my hand at making a movie, and could even order prints to be picked up at a local store using Picasa. I have been able to record myself, edit my recordings and export them to .wav or mp3 files using Audacity, and I was able to create a digital story about my deceased grandfather to share with my family and daughter who never got to meet him.

So the new question is: How do we find the best of the best free tools out there and begin using them with our students today? None of us has time to test everything, but we can share the task. I suggest the following:

1. Our students are already using media tools. Ask them what they use, what they like and to help us learn about it.
2. Get recommendations about successes (and frustrations) from our colleagues in our districts and buildings.
3. Make use of web resources like Free Technology for Teachers and the Top 100 Tools for Learning.
4. Become friends with your IT staff and media specialists; they are the ones who will be able to help you follow district procedures for new technology, go through the process of having applications installed, and connect you with other staff who may also be using the same resources.

What can my students create with free applications? Check back this fall, and I'll let you know.