Technology in the Lutheran Classroom

Re-thinking Conferences

As a part of the Missouri District Educator's Conference planning committee, it has been a joy to work with some folks who are willing to take risks! Many conversations, ranging from what we want our conference to look like, to changing formats, changing locations, and even changing the number of days the conference convenes, where all important as we decided the future direction of our District's professional development opportunity.

The thing that is most clear coming out of our planning process is that our conferences need to change! No longer can we decide to end sectionals early on a Monday so teachers can go shopping at the outlet malls. Especially if this is the only professional development opportunity they have all year!

We purposely chose to follow the lead of other successful gatherings: This year a major part of our time is going to be a Learning Galleria (like poster-board sessions). We have wonderfully talented teachers in the Missouri District, but most of them would never present for an hour in front of their peers. But if we could encourage them to be at a table with hand-outs and have conversations about their projects or units, they would be more than willing to do that.

This year we are also culling our sectional load down to six. We believe we have assembled six wonderfully talented presenters that we want as many of our MO District teachers to be engaged with. The most exciting part, at least for me, is that we will get to enjoy a virtual presentation from Will Richards entitled "A Web of Connections."

God willing, this will be a powerful experience for everyone involved. We pray that the change in format will be well received the greeted with open minds.

Below is a video that I stumbled upon several months ago about re-thinking conferences and how we can better engage teachers in a more meaningful learning process. I wish we could have implemented more of their ideas this year, but as Bill Murray repeated over and over again in the movie "What About Bob," it's about "Baby Steps!"

Conference Logo "By All Means" created by Jon Fiala and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license.

Why do YOU blog?

So...Why do you write a blog?

Why do I blog?
(As a side note, can you really call yourself a "blogger" if your average posting rate is about one every two months? Not sure, but I'm hoping YES :-)

So why do I blog?

Do I really want people to read what I write? Most definitely, but not for narcissistic reasons. For with increased readership and recognition comes responsibility for more posts, and with more posts comes more time needed for blogging. Frankly, I am having trouble making use of the time I've got now.

The reason I bring this up, is that I'm struggling with how to frame my student's blog work for this coming school year. In the past, each student has had a blog and they were in charge of writing articles that correlated to assignments and occasionally write a post about something of self interest. It was really just a form of blogging direction instruction? So how do we blog then?

After reading "The Element" by Ken Robinson, I recognize the importance of letting students write about their passion. I hear folks like Will Richardson talk about allowing kids to be surrounded with other folks who are passionate about the similar things and forming networks. So how can I encourage my students to write about those things that they are passionate about while still providing a format for classroom reflection? This is my struggle!

Our students use Classblogmeister as our blogging engine and the kids don't seem to get many comments on their writing (With the exception of Lisa Durff's class in Maryland!). It is the comments that I know encourage kids to keep writing, after all, it's nice to know you are writing FOR someone else and not just the teacher.

What are your thoughts???

I think maybe we will have students keep a blog of personal interest this year and just have them write about things they know and love. It's nicer to read something when it is engaging and written because someone wanted to, not because they had to. That's not to say that there won't be the occasional blogging "assignment," but at least it won't be the blogs ultimate purpose.

Also, my thinking is that student comments will be more worthwhile and of higher quality because they are commenting about things of interest to them as well.

Does this mean that I'm going to change my blog because I don't get any affirming comments? :-) Nope, like I said before, I write to process....but it IS nice to receive a comment every now and again.

That just means I've got to start reading and commenting more on other people's stuff. After all, community is an "All Way" street, not just one way!

(image: "blog" by inju)

Changing the teacher or changing the teaching?

I'm sure that the answer to the question posed in the title is a false dichotomy, because you can't really do one without the other. It does make for an interesting discussion starter though!

I was confronted with this questions while doing some SMARTBoard tutoring this week. We were walking through the hows of using the SMARTBoard when it became apparent that my colleague's teaching wasn't going to change. The addition of a new tool was the only thing that was going to be new. Was the fact that students could now underline words during direct instruction make them more engaged learners?

So at what point do you stop the learning with your peers and really have the discussion about adopting a new teaching pedagogy. I know I don't have to be the smartest person in the classroom when it comes to content, but I had better be the smartest person in the room when it comes to leading, facilitating, and mentoring colleague and student learners. This forces me to be the pedagogy expert, not the knowledge expert and it is this "expertise" that makes us teachers...and that is new for some people, including ME! It's like learning how to teach all over again. It's times like this where I wish I wouldn't have had Ed. Psych. my freshman year!

This idea of change, as it relates to the practice of teaching, is going to have to be a common thread in all of the professional development I take part in, either as a leader or learner.

I have the opportunity to provide some in-service for a very small Lutheran school for a half-day the last Monday in July. They are getting a laptop cart and want to know if I can work with their staff and teach them "what to do with the computers." Not sure how much I can get done in 3 hours? They want me to teach them tools, but I wonder if the time should be spent working through teaching strategies? There is not enough time to do both?

The one thing I can NOT do, is teach them the same old way. Maybe modeling effective strategies will be enough? Can I differentiate enough to make the three hours worth while or will the old "spray and pray" strategy have to do for this one time meeting? Who knows how many of their minds will even be open to a new teaching paradigm with new tools?

Along these lines, I ran across an article from Educause entitled: "The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change." It does an awesome job of addressing the introduction of new technologies to the 92% of technology users who really need to be convinced!

Well, I don't really know where I'm going with this blog, but to say that I'm learning that being a teacher is getting harder and not easier. The rules and tools have changed so much that you can't just sit idle anymore and not be part of the change.

These are interesting times to be a teacher!