Mobile Learning Mindset: The Coach's Guide to Implementation - Softcover

Hooker, Carl

 
9781564843753: Mobile Learning Mindset: The Coach's Guide to Implementation

Synopsis

The Mobile Learning Mindset series offers practical knowledge and strategies for successful implementation of K-12 BYOD programs and 1:1 initiatives. This six-book series provides district leaders, principals, teachers, IT staff, educational coaches and parents with the information they need to make any mobile learning program a success. The District Leader’s Guideto Implementation and the Principal’s Guide to Implementation share lessons learned and provide many examples and activities that will help school leaders who are about to implement a mobile device initiative or already have.

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About the Author

Carl Hooker is director of innovation and digital learning at Eanes Independent School District  in Austin, Texas. He is the founder of “iPadpalooza,” a three-day learning festival in celebration of the shift iPads have brought about in education and beyond. Hooker was named Tech & Learning Magazine’s 2014 Leader of the Year and he is a member of the Apple Distinguished Educator class of 2013

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

 
Chapter  6: Finding Learning Opportunities

As a classroom teacher, I always felt like time was continually being compressed. I would always start the year with the best of intentions interms of teaching content, but then at some point in the middle of year things would become unraveled. Maybe it was a particularly challenging student added to my class, some extra job duties thrown at me, or a new initiative by the district that ended up eating up a majority of my time with my students.

Knowing that time is finite with students, most districts (including ours for the most part) try to cram all of their professional learning into either the beginning of summer or the end. This practice has been tried and true for those districts on the traditional calendar. Schools that have adopted
year-round calendars see the benefit of year-round schooling in not only the students’ capacity to learn but also the increase in opportunities for adult learning. But what do you do if you are on a traditional school calendar? How do you find opportunities for learning throughout the year? Let’s look at these questions and others that may arise when planning professional learning, as well as some ideas and solutions.
 
Where Does Learning Happen?
One of my favorite questions to ask a group of adults is to identify places where learning happens or where they go to create. Many will identify a soft chair at home, sitting on their porch, or visiting the local coffee shop. Our classrooms and professional learning spaces are not necessarily environments that are conducive to learning. The traditional “desks in rows” design was great for disseminating information to individuals and an efficient way for custodial staff to clean in between the desks.
 
The “all-in-one” desk itself is really isolating and uncomfortable in its design. I’ll get more into learning spaces and the classroom in book 4, but we need to consider learning spaces when we train adults. too. I’ve visited a few districts that have designed professional learning rooms with comfortable chairs on wheels and movable tables. However, many districts don’t have that luxury and use whatever space available to them (usually a library, cafeteria. or classroom) to host teacher inservice.
 
I think we as educators can be trapped by our own past experiences when it comes to where learning takes place. Since our last years of learning as adults happened in a college classroom, usually lasting for a 3-hour chunk, we do the same thing as professionals—having professional development from 8:30 to 11:30, with a break for lunch, followed by another 3-hour chunk starting around 12:30. The only indicator that teachers are getting professional learning is a sign-in sheet, generally in the morning and afternoon, that indicates their presence in the room. It’s almost as if just being the room means they are getting the training they need. Having attended and presented hundreds of professional learning sessions, I can tell you that for some people, while they may be physically present in the room, they aren’t really active learners.
 
How Do You Know They Are Learning If They Aren’t in the Room?
Knowing that learning can happen anywhere and anytime, I proposed an idea that I had learned about from some other innovative school districts— that teachers could get credit online in a couple of different formats. One was taking an online iTunes U course where they created actual classroom projects to turn in as proof of learning. The other was the idea that teachers could attend online Twitter chats for professional development credit. After proposing both of these ideas, I was approached by a fellow administrator
(who oversaw much of the professional learning in the district), who asked me, “How do you know they are learning if they aren’t in the room?” My response quite simply was, “How do you know they are learning if they are in the room?”
 
Simply being somewhat attentive during a 6-hour workshop means that you have learned something just by being there. I’ve seen teachers in the back
of rooms cutting our letters for a bulletin board, grading papers, checking Facebook, and even shopping online. I’m not sure that in those cases being present guarantees any learning is taking place. Adults can still get learning done while doing all of these things, but I’d hazard a guess that your profes- sional development isn’t that compelling if someone in your audience just spent 30 minutes updating their latest Pinterest board with birthday party ideas for a 4-year old.
 
Online Courses for PD
I’ve tried the online course model a couple of different ways. The first was very much intended to be a “flipped” concept for professional development.
Teachers would watch a series of videos on various topics and tools, and then we would convene in a physical space as group to spend time applying what we had learned. Although well intended, this ended up being a failure, as many teachers didn’t watch the videos before attending the workshop as I had hoped. As a result, we spent most of the workshop going over what the training videos went over, frustrating those who had done their preparation. Although I gave teachers credit for attending and taking part in the “flipped PD” experiment, I’d say this method for professional learning wasn’t very effective for those  who attended.
 
For my second iteration, I decided to stick with a solely online concept. I’ve had some experiences with these courses using iTunes U, with the parents  in the community taking my “Digital Parenting 101” course (http://mrhook. it/101—must be on an iOS device to view). However, there were negatives attached to that course: All you had to do was pass a quiz at the end of each section and participate in the community forums to qualify for credit.
 
To truly make the learning embedded, the course enrollees must demonstrate their learning of the topic or tool in a variety of formats. These series of chal- lenges would be open-ended in terms of content but intended to showcase a particular tool or app while enabling and encouraging the enrollees to inte- grate their own curriculum into the completed projects. I found a far greater success rate in terms of completion using this model, and the feedback from those who completed the course indicated that they felt that they learned quite a bit more because they were forced to demonstrate understanding, rather  than sitting and listening to someone tell them about a particular tool. While there is still some room for improvement on this model (there was virtually no collaboration between the students), it was a good next step into the realm of online professional learning.
 
Twitter Chats for PD Credit
One of the more innovative ideas I’ve heard districts try is the idea that staff participate in six twitter chats to earn their 6 hours of credit. I first learned about this from our neighboring district in Manor, Texas, who regularly  hosted a weekly twitter chat using the #ManorISD hashtag. In the spring of 2014, a small group of teachers offered to participate in a six-part series of twitter chats using the #EanesChat hashtag. We had multiple people moderate the chat based on their area of expertise and had a wide range of teachers from kindergarten to AP Calculus participating in the chat.
 
This was a great first model, but it lacked some of the flexibility that comes with online learning. In some ways, it wasn’t really embracing learning “anytime,” even though learning could happen anywhere. For the next itera- tion, we adapted a model that had been shared with us by Lewisville ISD, so that teachers could attend any chats that they wanted to and could focus on some that were more around their subject area. Then, after they completed the chats, they would fill out the form to show not only that they participated, but that they also had identified takeaways from the chats that they would use in their classroom. Not only were they accountable for their learning, but they also had ideas they could put into practice right away in their classroom.

Job-Embedded Learning for Just-in-Time Training
Before the launch of our initial iPad pilot at Westlake High School, the state of Texas had decided to cut the educational funding budget, resulting in the loss of 100,000 teaching jobs. For many districts, including ours, that meant cutting support staff such as instructional coaches or educational technolo- gists. So, on the brink of rolling out a few thousand devices to students, I was asked to cut my department from a team of nine to a team of four.
 
BRAIN BREAK: Yes, And
Materials Needed: None
Concept: Using the improve concept of “Yes, And” to contribute positively to a conversation.
Audience Size: Any size
Set-up: In partners, discuss an idea or topic on which you may have differing viewpoints. In the first round, start every sentence with “Yeah, but.” Do this for about a minute, then ask the participants to stop and have the same conversa- tion, only this time starting each sentence with “Yes, and.” Discuss the differences in  their conversations and the outcomes of their discussions.
Example Scenarios: You and your partner are planning the end-of-year staff party. Or a more difficult scenario would be: One partner plays the role of someone against the use of mobile devices, and the other sees the value.

As a result, most the effort that went into training had to happen at the high school, and other campuses were left without much in terms of technology integration. With the expansion of our 1:1 into all the campuses, principals saw the power and potential of having this job-embedded position avail- able on each campus. Educational Technologists  (affectionately referred to as an “iVenger” based on the Marvel comics series of action heroes) are very much the face of technology on the campus. They help coordinate repairs, train teachers, work with parents, teach
students, and help with campus web and social media presence.
 
Most districts can’t afford to have a professional position such as an ed tech on each campus, but having someone as the face of the initia- tive is invaluable. In my previous book focused on campus leadership,
I wrote that it is imperative that the principal own the initiative. However, with the many other duties that principals have to fulfill on a daily basis, there also needs to be a person on campus who acts as
a “point” person. We were fortunate to have a very tech-savvy librarian (Carolyn Foote) at our high school to help us with our pilot year. She was able to gather data about issues students and teachers were facing as well as share stories of success.
 
Every campus traditionally has a librarian on staff. With the transition to more digital text, in some ways, the library is shrinking in how it was previ- ously used. Even the title of “librarian” has now transformed into a more modernized “library media specialist” on many campuses. At any rate, this point person should be available for just-in-time training throughout the school day. They should also advertise pockets of time throughout the year where training over a particular application or strategy can be featured in a short, bite-sized segment.
 
Even though they come in small doses, some of our best-attended training sessions are “Lunch ‘n’ Learns” and “Appy Hours.” I’ll address the “Appy Hour” concept in more detail in the next chapter, but the basic concept of a Lunch ‘n’ learn is to give staff an opportunity to pick up a tidbit about an app or have a discussion around a new program. They grab their lunch, and
in 30 minutes or less, we go over a single tool or concept. In some cases we’ve even used these to host facilitated discussions on topics from classroom management in a classroom full of mobile devices to ideas on how to get started “flipping” some content in a video format online. We’ve also used lunch ‘n’ learns as opportunities to introduce a new feature in a program
like Google Drive or perhaps a new formative assessment app like Kahoot! (http://getkahoot.com).

Training With TPACK in Mind
Every district has a set of initiatives it’s trying to push forward with staff and students. Not all of these initiatives have direct impact when it comes to tech- nology integration and mobile learning. However, I’d argue that every training session, regardless of topic, is an opportunity to model effective technology integration. There seems to be a natural dichotomous split—“technology- based” training versus “curricular-based” training—but they don’t need to
be mutually exclusive.
 
The TPACK model (www.tpack.org) really addresses the idea that a goal of teaching and learning should be a blend of technological knowledge, pedagog- ical knowledge and content knowledge (Figure 6.1). As with the Redefinition level of the SAMR model, not every lesson can be a perfect blend of all of these, but that should be a goal when creating learning for adults or students.
 
Think about this: A training that just covers technology tools with no curric- ular or instructional application is a very shallow way of covering the effect of mobile learning in the classroom. I’ve been to many a session that touts “60 apps in 60 minutes” as kind of a shotgun approach to covering as many apps as possible in the hope that a teacher in the audience finds one to grab hold of.
I’m not dismissing these types of sessions as shallow, as I do think they have a place in staff professional learning. Staff need to be exposed to a variety of apps, considering the variety of ages and subjects they cover, but this can’t be the sole source of training when it comes to mobile learning.
 
The counter to that is a curricular-focused training with no technology or real instructional ideas embedded. I’ve seen this before when you purchase a textbook from a big-time publisher and they bring in a former classroom teacher to show you how to use the textbook. Just as with the technology-only sessions, this is a missed opportunity with staff by focusing on just one part of the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. We are all experiencing a sort of “time famine” when it comes to the day-to- day learning that happens in schools. So why not integrate multiple types of knowledge into a training session when you have the teachers in front of you?
 
Here are just a couple of quick examples of ways to do this. Obviously every district has it’s own set of goals and missions, but I’d bet there is some compo- nent of that mission that involves integrating technology (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book).
 
Example 1: Ignite a Staff Meeting
Next time you have a staff meeting planned, take the first 15 minutes to have three different staff members share something they are doing in their class- rooms that is engaging students. This does not have to be technology focused, but the very fact that teachers are sharing images, slides, and resources from their lessons will model some level of integration. Doing these sessions in an Ignite! format (5 minutes max to present their findings) means that staff don’t need to feel pressured to run an entire training. The added bonus to this is that various staff members also begin to be seen as experts around a particular tool or idea, which builds leadership capacity among staff.
 
Example 2: Take a PLC Online
The professional learning community, or PLC, concept has really grown in schools over the years. At it’s core, the PLC helps leverage best practices from other teaching the same subject or grade level as well as guaranteeing a viable curriculum. Many districts (mine included) use this time at first to cover common assessments and data of how students are doing on certain learning objectives. Although this is a perfect use of PLC time together, it shouldn’t be limited to just looking at assessment data. This is also a time to discuss instructional strategies and technology integration (think the other parts of TPACK). One of the better uses I’ve seen of this recently is an entire campus
leveraging Google Communities (http://plus.google.com/communities) to put their PLC online. The principal is invited to be a part of each of these commu- nities and see the resources and interactions shared asynchronously among members of the PLC.
 
Example 3: Make Formative Assessments Digital
Many curriculum resources have some assessment component. This could be in the form of a chapter or unit test, or maybe just a typical scantron-based final exam to check content knowledge. Formative assessments, when used correctly, can be a powerful tool for gauging students’ knowledge of certain contents and learning objectives. Digitizing these makes the results more dynamic and instant. Teachers no longer needs to lug an entire briefcase full of papers home to grade every night when they can use an online tool like Socrative (http://socrative.com) or Kahoot! (http://getkahoot.com) to quickly gather data and make an adjustment to what is happening in the classroom.

Badges
One recent trend in professional learning is using a system of badges to identify which teachers have completed various levels of training. The idea  is simple: A staff member completes a challenge or set of challenges on their own and turns them in to earn a badge. For example, a teacher could earn a “Google Calendar” badge by showing how to send invites, add attachments, change views and colors, and so on within a Google Calendar.
 
The advantages to this system are that it gives teachers a somewhat tangible item to show progress, and it really feeds on their competitiveness. The badges can be worth hours of PD credit and in some cases include a chance to win
a prize or two. To make this type of professional learning system even more effective, the campus administrator needs to make a minimum level of badges mandatory for all staff. Otherwise, you’ll have just the same 10% to 15% of vanguard staff members completing the challenges.
 
Although I’ve seen badging systems primarily focused on technology tools (the “Technological Knowledge” component in TPACK), there is no reason it has
to be just focused on technology integration. Badge systems can work for PLCs (“Collaborative team” badge) to Social-emotional learning (“SEL” badge for conflict resolution) to flexible learning environments (“Coffee shop” badge for the classroom that looks most like a coffee shop). I do think that starting with the basic technology tools and covering district systems (like online grade book or web design) is a great way to knock out some low-hanging fruit and really get at more in-depth learning when you do have face-to-face training planning. Knowing that everyone in the room has earned the “Google Docs” badge means that you can now collaborate online and have some common vocabulary when discussing technological knowledge.
 
Student-Led PD
One of the most effective models of professional learning that I’ve ever witnessed is when students train teachers on a concept or technology tool. As an adult in a training session, I’m somewhat skeptical of what other adults can offer me in terms of how I can improve my teaching. I equate this to a parent telling another parent better ways to raise their child, it’s intensely personal in many ways.
 
Students on the other hand have an innocence to them that tends to make adults a little more open to the concept they are teaching (assuming that all teachers like kids, which I realize could be a big assumption.) To test this theory, I employed my then nearly 3-year old daughter Sophia (Figure 6.2) to lead some training on the basics of an iPad. Her audience? High school teachers.
 
Sophia showed them the ins and outs of a few built-in apps on the device, with an extremely limited vocabulary. I know this was a bit of a schtick, using my own daughter to show them features, but the effect was palpable. The ease with which she could navigate the device showed them that while they may be skeptical of some of its uses, they couldn’t deny that there was soon going to be a whole army of Sophias gracing the doorway of their classrooms.
 
Taking this student-led professional learning concept a bit further (and deeper), it doesn’t take long to imagine other scenarios where students could help lead professional learning on a campus for teachers and students. One middle school campus took this a step further and actually reserved two days out of the school year for students and teachers to flip roles. Early in the year, students (mostly eighth graders) would train both new teachers and students on some of the basic apps that are used regularly in class. At the end of the year, a day was reserved to showcase some innovative uses of technology and learning. While these are great first attempts on this student-led concept, I think there is some real potential in outsourcing parts of professional learning to our own students in the future.
 

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9781564843784: Mobile Learning Mindset: The IT Departments' Guide to Implementation

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ISBN 10:  1564843785 ISBN 13:  9781564843784
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