Techlearning blog

In an effort to collaborate on their blog sharing, Terry, in the UK, and Cheryl, in the USA, skyped ( an internet phone call) on Saturday December 16, 2006. As in most SKYPE phone calls there is the obligatory, time check in each time zone, weather or season check, and setting the mood for the conversation to follow. It is really a conversation, just a 21st Century tool. Cheryl wanted to get more information about the SmartBoards that are appearing in classrooms in the States. She had read about how many schools across the UK have been using these tools for over a couple years. Here is a summary of the conversation. During the conversation, which seemed so natural, Cheryl was impressed with why it seemed like a friendly conversation, she had listened to Terry's podcast before, so she knew his voice already, only this time it was a 2 way conversation. Grab a cup of tea and enjoy the discussion.

Cheryl: How did England get involved with the SmartBoards in classrooms?

Terry: Interactive whiteboards is all I know about, Smartboards and Mimio boards are a brand name. Enter a contest to win a Mimio or go here for grant information.
Here are some ideas and lessons for smartboard users.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency encourages us to call them electronic white boards because they maintain, correctly in my opinion, that the devices are only made interactive by the intervention of a teacher.
Terry: Funding was made available for interactive white boards in classrooms, in London's secondary schools at first as part of an initiative called The London Challenge. They had been around for a long time before that, of course, but I think it was that which really started to spread the news as it were. It can make education more exciting and engaging.

Cheryl: What are the benefits of using electronic white boards in classrooms? Our Wells Junior High School, in Wells Maine, has electronic white boards in all the classrooms as part of a recent school renovation.This conversation will help in our next planning for staff development.
Terry: At first some teachers may be used to using the whiteboard as a chalkboard, where the teachers stand at the front of the
classroom. Where it is used really well, it becomes interactive with the students. Dr. John Cuthell has done quite a bit of academic research into this, and his website is well worth a visit: http://www.virtuallearning.org.uk, as is Mirandanet's website, where a lot of teacher research/case studies are published: http://www.mirandanet.ac.uk.

He discovered, for instance, that where the teacher used the white board well, boys
who were turned off to mathematics began talking about mathematics outside
of their classrooms. He found also that students had the impression that the teachers who had resources available via the whiteboard were better prepared than other teachers. The reason seemed to be that by using the electronic boards it capitalized on the very visual aspects of teaching. It is exciting where it is used well in the classroom. Also, electronic white boards are great for going over what has been explained in class. I summarised the benefits in a newspaper article I wrote.

Terry Freedman:
In UK, there are different levels of training for example, you automatically get a one day training course for whole
school, in basics but then you can do advanced classes in whiteboard techniques and
also in subject-specific use. I was commissioned to write a newspaper article about that too.
New schools in the UK, especially secondary schools, have an IWB in
each classroom, especially through the Building Schools for the Future programme.
Terry Freedman: I think what's important is the appropriate use of the tools. Some headteachers insist on teachers having the whiteboard active all the time. So what happened to the concepts of personalisation and appropriate teaching methods to match particular learning styles?

Cheryl: This gets back to the notion of using the appropriate tool for the instructional task. A few years ago when connectivity first arrived as a usable tool in schools a great tool for kindergarten classes would have been to have a fax machine in the classroom. Kindergarten students are curious, can draw their questions, and with a fax get immediate responses from the police departement, fire department or grocery store. This kind of purposeful use of technology needs to be considered all the time.

Cheryl explained that currently the junior high teachers collaborate weekly about how to make use of the interactive electronic whiteboards in their classes. That kind of opportunity for teachers to collaborate weekly and daily is a much more effective use of time than the one time a year workshop.

Terry: What other kinds of opportunites do your teachers have for staff development?
Cheryl: Our school has built in a half dozen days where our students are released early and we have workshops with our K-12 staff. It is an opportunity for vertical planning which happens K-12 about 3-4 times a year with all the content areas so the social studies teacher, science teachers and math and English language arts k-12 teachers can meet and plan.

Terry Freedman:
In one school, I saw in a newspaper, the teachers have 0.5 days per week for continuing professional development. That seems to me like a great model. In most cases in the UK we have a day's training at the start of the school year, when all teachers want to do is get their room ready and sort their timetable out, so they can't focus on something they may or may not need to know about. Or they take place at the end of term when everyone is shattered. The best model, surely, is to have regular slots where you can get off the treadmill and learn what you need to know?
Cheryl:
In the US, we have No Child Left Behind ( see the entire technology brief here and in the UK there is Every Child Matters
The paragraph describing the technology impact of No Child Left Behind is here:
Overview
Technology will have the greatest impact on student learning when
integrated into the curriculum to achieve clear, measurable educational objectives
(Hawkins, Panush, & Spielvogel, 1996). In order
for meaningful, sustainable school improvement to occur, school
reform initiatives that involve technology need to coordinate five
issues—leadership, core vision, professional development, time, and
assessment (Honey, 2001). It is clear that technology tools and
resources must become an integral part of both the teaching and
learning process if they are to have an impact on student achievement.

No Child Left Behind, NCLB, is all about leadership, core vision, professional development, time and assessment. If you look at the Every Child Matters in the UK, that program is more about the child, whereas, NCLB is more about the outcomes.
ECM is more about child safety and health and welfare than just grades.

ECM has 5 outcomes:

- Stay safe
- Be healthy
- Enjoy and achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic well-being
(This is in a different order to the order in official documents, but
has the advantage of being easy to remember because it spells the
acronym SHAPE.)
Terry Freedman:
I wrote a book about Every Child Matters: www.lulu.com/terryfreedman,

and also a paper (free) from my website:www.ictineducation.org

Terry Freedman: I get the impression that teachers are scared to try new things because so much emphasis is placed on results. We in England have more interest in web 2.0 tools at the highest levels. For example, I was approached by Becta to do a presentation about Web 2.0 at one of their 4-yearly future-gazing seminars in which they invite the top policy-makers from the various educational and other agencies to consider what they need to be thinking about over the next 2 or 3 years and beyond, so as not to be caught unawares.

Terry: As Cheryl has intimated, having the conversation was challenging -- but not in a technological or a financial sense. Technically, all you need is Skype, which is very easy to install, and a microphone. In fact, much of the above text was copied and pasted from the instant messenger chat dialogue we had whilst Skyping, (also included in the Skype package), so structurally speaking we didn't even need microphones. As for the cost, well Skype is free to install and free to use, if all you want to do is talk via computer and not real phones.

The good thing about having a Skype conversation with chat, as opposed to an email discussion or chat or Skype on their own was that producing a joint article from it was very easy:

* The voice combination helped to build a rapport which was more personal than the rapport you get from just writing to each other via email. Or maybe it's just different, or perhaps it's just that it builds up faster.
* The chat dialogue is automatically saved, so all you have to do is delete the time stamps and you've got yourself a transcript of the (typed) conversation.

We used Google docs to collaborate on the finished article. Because the article in its developmental stage was online, both Cheryl and I had access to it whenever we wanted. Since we operate with a 5 hour time difference the collaboration with google docs worked well.

Happy New Year 2007, and as Terry and Cheryl say, continue the conversations!