Sunday, January 27, 2013

Classroom Reset and Teacher Leaders


     What an awesome few weeks it has been.  +Joanna Antoniou and I along with 4 pilot teachers from the middle school and high school, had the awesome experience of seeing a 1:1 in action.  Pascack Hills High School has had a 1:1 for the past nine years and they shared with us many of the challenges and successes which they experienced. The team that attended took notes in a collaborative google doc so that we could capture the day's experiences in one place and to allow us to go back and reflect on the day with ease.  I will share with you some of the highlights captured in the google doc.
Pascack Hills student describes his Italian class
The day began with a keynote delivered by 3 Pascack Hills High School students who have experienced technology integration first hand and the ways in which it has enhanced their lives.  They filmed a video approximately 5 minutes in length highlighting technology integration at Pascack Hills. The video concluded with the students asking their peers to describe technology at PHHS in one word.  Some of those words were, "fantastic," "revolutionary," "overwhelming," "life-changing," "great."  They continued their keynote by describing their typical day and how technology has affected each of them in their classes personally.  Two of the three students described how their language teachers connected with foreign countries through skype and google maps, and how having a real time experiences in a different country made the class so engaging and relevant.  They also spoke about how teachers used blogging and VoiceThread and how those tools allowed students to respond to content both in and out of school.  With VoiceThread, the teacher would post a question or comment and students would listen to the question/comment and respond by either posting a video, a sound clip, or by typing a response.  One student explained how it was easy for students to respond to this format without the pressures of talking in class.  It gave all students the opportunity to participate, not just the talkative ones.  The students also described turnitin.com, ebooks, and easybib in their language arts classes.  Turnitin.com allows students to comment on each others works while teachers can determine whether any part of their students' works were plagiarized.  Easybib is an awesome tool which helps students create a bibliography for their research papers, which many would agree is a challenging, cumbersome task.  Finally, one student described the fact that he had to do at least one presentation a month, which explained the ease with which all three students were comfortable addressing an auditorium with nearly 100 education professionals including their superintendent of schools and their principal.

Kristina Kochan, an LMS pilot teacher, provided this reflection on Classroom Reset. "When thinking back on my visit to Pascack Hills High School, what sticks out in my mind the most is the presentation created by three students.  These students worked incredibly hard to create a presentation that explained how technology has impacted their education.  It was truly inspiring to not only hear their stories, but to see their confidence in presenting and in their technological abilities.  I am so excited for our students to be offered these same experiences!"   

     It was really nice to see, and as Joanna and I went from session to session throughout the day, we talked about how awesome it would be to host something like that at PHS and LMS in the future.  As it turns out, this week Gregg Festa from the group who organized classroom reset, reached out to Joanna and our team at Passaic Schools and asked if we were ready to host classroom reset in 2014.  In the words of Joanna Antoniou, "Bring it on!"

     The following week was highlighted by Stephanie Garcia and Michael Lauricella, two teachers at Passaic High School.  They requested a meeting to talk to administration about twitter, a social media tool that they felt very strongly about and something that has helped them connect with their students and other professionals in our field.  They expressed the importance of using twitter both in the way it has helped them grow professionally and how it has helped them to better reach their students during the course of the current school year.  They asked that administrators help to model exceptional technology integration by opening up their own twitter accounts and tweeting to connect with other administrators, teachers, community members, and students.  Almost every high school administrator attended the meeting and listened, asked questions, and genuinely wanted to know what twitter was all about.  It was a great experience both seeing the teachers express their feelings and seeing how open and receptive our administration was to our teachers.  The definition of collegiality.

     Finally, this week, 93 Chromebook Carts from Datamation arrived at the middle school and high school.  These carts were designed with the input of Jason Smith and myself and were specifically made to support our needs.  Jason did an exceptional job designing the graphic which is displayed on all 93 carts. AWESOME JOB Jason!  The ball continues to roll forward!  Exciting things to come.
Chromebook Cart with design by Jason Smith

1 comment:

  1. Mike, thank you for sharing your post. The most important take-away from this one for me is how important it is that you and your colleagues, are being given time to visit what "this change" might look like in the classroom. Because no two schools are the same, no two deployments are exactly the same, But while the path may be different, the end result, students engaged in work, able to work collaboratively, publishing, creating, and sharing their voice with others, is all you can ask for. I'm also excited that the day of deployment is almost here. We will soon put into practice what we've been working towards. Keep learning...

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