Over the last few months, Sam Moser and I hashed out a system for EdTech Specialists to help guide their work with teachers. From a Technology & Instructional Coach at Flint Hill and an Academic Technology Coach at Lowell School, comes a mission statement to help ensure that our work with other teachers results in not just the use of technology in the classroom, but a pedagogical shift that yields engagement, risk taking and sustained interest. Below is our diagram that we hope other EdTech Specialists adopt and embrace. We recognize that this is aspirational and challenging but also exciting and rewarding.
Our diagram and ensuing explanation was published by EdSurge this past Monday, 11/6. If you click on "read more" below, you can read our original article. Also be sure to follow Sam and check out his blog. Please reach out to us if you have any questions or if you'd like to adopt this mission at your school!
In the last decade, schools have dedicated tremendous resources to deploying technology into the classroom. They have invested in technology--hardware and software--and employed educational technology specialists to incorporate technology that improves pedagogy. Ideally, these specialists partner with teachers to design unique and creative experience using new technology. Successful partnerships result in collaborative instruction and yield authentic engagement, risk-taking and sustained interest and initiative.
In practice, however, teachers tend to seek EdTech Specialists for a technological solution that makes an assignment or grading practice more efficient. A teacher takes a new tool or technique and applies it to previous content or assignments. These interactions are transactional rather than transformational; they enforce the status quo when it comes to teaching and learning. Specialists have no administrative power. They’re always working on another teacher’s terms. As a result, it can be extremely hard to live up to the the ambitious goals of the position, as well as a specialist's personal goals to transform pedagogy with technology.
In order to achieve the former and not the latter, specialists must codify a transition from transactional connections with teachers to transformational classroom experiences. To create a successful system, 1) it must be simple. 2) both parties must collaborate and must be willing to try something new, 3) it must apply to all disciplines and all divisions, and 4) it must be self-sustaining. Enter: the Mission of the Create & Share Department.
Collaborative Instruction
Inevitably, any successful partnership between teachers and specialists depends on mutual interest and equitable effort. Both parties have to commit to building something interesting and unique. This requires collaborative instruction. A teacher asking for a piece of tech to employ in her own way, or a teacher just asking for a second pair of eyes when using tech in the classroom just won’t do. That’s a transaction, not a transformation.
Specialists should insist on planning with and teaching alongside the faculty with whom they work. The instruction doesn’t have to be perfect; the assignment doesn’t have to work exactly as planned. Optics are half the battle. Collaborative instruction indicates to students that the adults are working together, taking a risk, and producing something new and meaningful. If anything it probably helps for there to be a few hiccups along the way. That way students get to watch two adults model resilience, compromise, and quick, adaptive thinking.
The simplest example of Collaborative Instruction is co-teaching. Specialists can also connect the teacher’s classroom to another teacher and classroom inside or outside the school; that collaboration can happen with a peer classroom or with a classroom of younger students eager to learn from their peers. Specialists can also act as facilitators connecting a classroom with a professor, a journalist, or an expert in the field of study.
Authentic Engagement
Our diagram and ensuing explanation was published by EdSurge this past Monday, 11/6. If you click on "read more" below, you can read our original article. Also be sure to follow Sam and check out his blog. Please reach out to us if you have any questions or if you'd like to adopt this mission at your school!
In practice, however, teachers tend to seek EdTech Specialists for a technological solution that makes an assignment or grading practice more efficient. A teacher takes a new tool or technique and applies it to previous content or assignments. These interactions are transactional rather than transformational; they enforce the status quo when it comes to teaching and learning. Specialists have no administrative power. They’re always working on another teacher’s terms. As a result, it can be extremely hard to live up to the the ambitious goals of the position, as well as a specialist's personal goals to transform pedagogy with technology.
In order to achieve the former and not the latter, specialists must codify a transition from transactional connections with teachers to transformational classroom experiences. To create a successful system, 1) it must be simple. 2) both parties must collaborate and must be willing to try something new, 3) it must apply to all disciplines and all divisions, and 4) it must be self-sustaining. Enter: the Mission of the Create & Share Department.
At the most basic level, the goal of the EdTech Department is to help teachers and students create and share unique activities, projects, and opportunities, and to extend instruction into new contexts. The proper way to think of these specialists evangelists for “The Create and Share Department.” The diagram above is a road map to help department members ensure that their work results in transformational classroom experiences for students and teachers alike.
Collaborative Instruction
Inevitably, any successful partnership between teachers and specialists depends on mutual interest and equitable effort. Both parties have to commit to building something interesting and unique. This requires collaborative instruction. A teacher asking for a piece of tech to employ in her own way, or a teacher just asking for a second pair of eyes when using tech in the classroom just won’t do. That’s a transaction, not a transformation.
Specialists should insist on planning with and teaching alongside the faculty with whom they work. The instruction doesn’t have to be perfect; the assignment doesn’t have to work exactly as planned. Optics are half the battle. Collaborative instruction indicates to students that the adults are working together, taking a risk, and producing something new and meaningful. If anything it probably helps for there to be a few hiccups along the way. That way students get to watch two adults model resilience, compromise, and quick, adaptive thinking.
The simplest example of Collaborative Instruction is co-teaching. Specialists can also connect the teacher’s classroom to another teacher and classroom inside or outside the school; that collaboration can happen with a peer classroom or with a classroom of younger students eager to learn from their peers. Specialists can also act as facilitators connecting a classroom with a professor, a journalist, or an expert in the field of study.
Authentic Engagement
When provided instruction and mentorship from the teacher and the specialist, and when primed to take risks using technology to build something for a larger audience, students stop thinking about what they have to turn in. Instead, they begin thinking about what they’re going to publish, including how their expanded audience will interact with their content. This authentic engagement yields unique, creative, and detailed projects. It also increases retention and the likelihood that students will go above and beyond in terms of effort and output. If executed correctly, students become intrinsically motivated to apply a new skill to the real-world, or provide a solution to a problem provided.
In MS math, teacher and specialist created an interdisciplinary, maker-and-technology-infused experience covering scaling, common denominators, and equivalent fractions. The school had recently constructed several new playgrounds, so the teacher and specialist collaborated to revamp the unit by designing the new playgrounds in CAD modeling software. Students reached out to the playground construction company to acquire architectural drawings so they could match these drawings with their own measurements. By combining math instruction and new software, students applied their math skills to an authentic scenario.
Applicative Risk Taking
Successful partnerships inherently requires a little risk-taking; a teacher has to give up “normal” instruction time or a “normal” project in order to embrace a technological initiative. But the most successful collaborations increase the risk-taking factor considerably because it has to inspire students to take risks as well.
One important way to elicit risk-taking in students is to take something they have been learning in class and apply it to a real-world scenario. Specialists must be able to make the connection between classroom technology and the outside world. Consider the following: How does the instructional technology connect the classroom to other classrooms, to the school community, to the local community, or to the global community?
In MS Social Studies, one teacher decided to transition from her analog, interactive notebooks (papers, glue and crayons), to digital notebooks. Not only did the Specialist show her iBooks, he planned several meetings for instruction and experimentation. The new notebooks provided similar assessment data while also allowing for the demonstration of comprehension through multimedia. Students jumped at the opportunity to record themselves reflecting on their assignments, demonstrating creativity, excitement, and analysis of their progress from a metacognitive angle.This transformation empowered the teacher to assign projects with multiple means for demonstrating comprehension--including through the recording of a song or acting out of a short play. Students felt empowered to include more multimedia creation in this class and beyond.
Sustained Interest and Initiative
A truly successful classroom collaboration between teacher and specialist represents just the beginning of what students will be able to do with this new instruction, these new tools, and this new audience. When projects go really well, they imbue in students an interest and initiative to pursue a cause or passion beyond the classroom. But it’s important to remind our students that in order to be understood as such, they also have to continue to create and share.
Teachers and specialists should push students to network with those who have a similar passion or curiosity. Depending on age, this could be peers within the school, other teachers, or professionals. In addition to providing real world connections, assignments should include examples from real-world practitioners. In an age of social media, often those practitioners produce quality content and their reflections on each other’s work in real-time. Often they will respond to requests from teachers and students!
There is no way teachers can solicit this type of engagement and output on every project, which is fine. But we should design this into projects anyway, because it is hard to know what, when, how, and why a student gets motivated to work beyond the classroom to satisfy his own passions and curiosity.
Many US classes create digital portfolios based on student projects and interests. With the help of a Specialist, teachers have asked students to reach out to a professional and interview him about their research paper, to build a lab notebook online and share it with other students, and--in one elective--to not only contribute to a digital portfolio but also to make an effort to get published on another site, publication, or conference. Digital portfolios ensure our students are producing their best work for an international audience. They push our students to creatively brand themselves and publish in diverse, unique ways from tweets to podcasts to videos. Finally, they help students become understood as a learner and creator in a space that they are passionate about beyond the confines of a class.
Not only does this process satisfy the needs mentioned at the outset, simple, collaborative, new, applicative, but perhaps most importantly, it’s self sustaining. While it’s not feasible to accomplish all of the steps perfectly, it is important for our students to see how the education they’re getting and the tools that they have access to can help them break down the classroom and school walls and connect their work to the real-world. And it’s equally as important to help teachers understand that with their EdTech Specialists, they have the support and expertise needed to take an idea, lesson, or project, and make it into something unique, status-quo-busting, and transformational.
In MS math, teacher and specialist created an interdisciplinary, maker-and-technology-infused experience covering scaling, common denominators, and equivalent fractions. The school had recently constructed several new playgrounds, so the teacher and specialist collaborated to revamp the unit by designing the new playgrounds in CAD modeling software. Students reached out to the playground construction company to acquire architectural drawings so they could match these drawings with their own measurements. By combining math instruction and new software, students applied their math skills to an authentic scenario.
Applicative Risk Taking
Successful partnerships inherently requires a little risk-taking; a teacher has to give up “normal” instruction time or a “normal” project in order to embrace a technological initiative. But the most successful collaborations increase the risk-taking factor considerably because it has to inspire students to take risks as well.
One important way to elicit risk-taking in students is to take something they have been learning in class and apply it to a real-world scenario. Specialists must be able to make the connection between classroom technology and the outside world. Consider the following: How does the instructional technology connect the classroom to other classrooms, to the school community, to the local community, or to the global community?
In MS Social Studies, one teacher decided to transition from her analog, interactive notebooks (papers, glue and crayons), to digital notebooks. Not only did the Specialist show her iBooks, he planned several meetings for instruction and experimentation. The new notebooks provided similar assessment data while also allowing for the demonstration of comprehension through multimedia. Students jumped at the opportunity to record themselves reflecting on their assignments, demonstrating creativity, excitement, and analysis of their progress from a metacognitive angle.This transformation empowered the teacher to assign projects with multiple means for demonstrating comprehension--including through the recording of a song or acting out of a short play. Students felt empowered to include more multimedia creation in this class and beyond.
Sustained Interest and Initiative
A truly successful classroom collaboration between teacher and specialist represents just the beginning of what students will be able to do with this new instruction, these new tools, and this new audience. When projects go really well, they imbue in students an interest and initiative to pursue a cause or passion beyond the classroom. But it’s important to remind our students that in order to be understood as such, they also have to continue to create and share.
Teachers and specialists should push students to network with those who have a similar passion or curiosity. Depending on age, this could be peers within the school, other teachers, or professionals. In addition to providing real world connections, assignments should include examples from real-world practitioners. In an age of social media, often those practitioners produce quality content and their reflections on each other’s work in real-time. Often they will respond to requests from teachers and students!
There is no way teachers can solicit this type of engagement and output on every project, which is fine. But we should design this into projects anyway, because it is hard to know what, when, how, and why a student gets motivated to work beyond the classroom to satisfy his own passions and curiosity.
Many US classes create digital portfolios based on student projects and interests. With the help of a Specialist, teachers have asked students to reach out to a professional and interview him about their research paper, to build a lab notebook online and share it with other students, and--in one elective--to not only contribute to a digital portfolio but also to make an effort to get published on another site, publication, or conference. Digital portfolios ensure our students are producing their best work for an international audience. They push our students to creatively brand themselves and publish in diverse, unique ways from tweets to podcasts to videos. Finally, they help students become understood as a learner and creator in a space that they are passionate about beyond the confines of a class.
Not only does this process satisfy the needs mentioned at the outset, simple, collaborative, new, applicative, but perhaps most importantly, it’s self sustaining. While it’s not feasible to accomplish all of the steps perfectly, it is important for our students to see how the education they’re getting and the tools that they have access to can help them break down the classroom and school walls and connect their work to the real-world. And it’s equally as important to help teachers understand that with their EdTech Specialists, they have the support and expertise needed to take an idea, lesson, or project, and make it into something unique, status-quo-busting, and transformational.
