March 2, 2014

Edcamp Columbus Reflection: Derek

It’s going to be tough to keep this one short.  Sorry.

My wife, Julie, and I attended our first Edcamp this weekend at Clark Hall, Lincoln High School in Gahanna, Ohio.  Edcamp Columbus was awesome!  It was everything we thought it would be and more.  It began with some wifi issues and I admit, I was fearing my engagement throughout the day would severely decrease as a result of no wifi.  I was looking forward to peeking in on other sessions through #edcampcbus on Twitter.  I also had intended to keep regular posts on Facebook as more of my colleagues back home are active on Facebook, rather than Twitter.  Thankfully, Julie and I were able to get both of our devices logged on successfully.

Clark Hall is an incredible learning space!  I could tell immediately this school was a place I would like to teach.  EdcampCbus decided to put their session board on a Google spreadsheet.  I actually like this idea!  It makes it so much easier to share the session board with others that were unable to attend.  It also makes it easy to refer back to the board while in the middle of a session.  I found myself pulling out my phone often just to see if anything new had been added to the board, or if I was trying to decide what session to attend next.  Without the Google spreadsheet, I would have been making trips back and forth to the session board all day.

Though I did want to facilitate a discussion myself, I didn’t add anything to the board because each hour had something I was really excited to see.  Julie and I are hosting our own Edcamp in Parkersburg, WV on April 5 so we really wanted to absorb as much of the experience from Columbus as possible.  It was their 4th Edcamp so we were sitting among several veteran Edcampers.  The first session I attended was titled “Design your own school”.  The facilitator began the discussion by introducing himself.  @mrmacraild isn’t an administrator and he didn’t appear to be starting his own school, but the discussion was one that was extremely necessary and led to many points of view being shared.  I shared on Facebook that the discussion included at least 1 attendee from almost every corner of public education.  Administrators and teachers of all kinds engaged in a discussion about designing schools in such a way that would produce the best possible thinkers.  One of my favorite parts of the discussion was when teachers began discussing ways to allow students to take control of their own learning.  A high school chemistry teacher shared that he may have spoke a total of 5 minutes in his classes Friday.  The theme was get out of the way and allow our students to do the sharing, the presenting, the teaching, and the doing.

Session one went so well for me that for session two I attended a session titled “Redesigning the school day: Successes and lessons learned.”  This session was created by a teacher who appeared to be in his mid-20s.  He introduced himself and stated that he didn’t really have anything to share, he just suggested the topic in hopes that he could learn some innovative ideas that were being used in other schools.  His school was attempting to carve out more time for teachers to collaborate and learn from one another but adjusting the schedule of the day was becoming difficult.  The discussion immediately took off with an attendee sharing research that suggests students retain new information much better when that information can be revisited within 3 hours of it’s initial activation.  We all began brainstorming ways for students to engage in new information in a math class, for example, but then be able to revisit that topic/concept before the school day ended.  I wonder, how effective could that be?  During this session I met some awesome young educators from Hilliard City Schools in Franklin County, Ohio.  They shared for several minutes how their school had carved out time to allow teachers to observe each other and share resources and best practices.  As I sat listening, it appeared that what was going on in their school daily was the type of learning I could only engage in during Twitter chats of an evening.  It was so neat to hear them talk passionately about how their school learns from each other, respects one another’s practices, reflects honestly about what works and what doesn’t work.  Never did they mention test scores, data, or assessments, though I’m sure those methods are used at their school.  I spoke up and asked them to share a bit about the culture at their school and how they were able to sustain such an innovative learning environment for their teachers.  Their response was not surprising to me.  It all starts with an administrator who modeled all those behaviors prior to asking the staff to engage in them.  Even when other educators spoke up, it seemed they all had administrators who were willing to lead their staff into these reforms because they were already connecting to other great administrators outside their school and district, they were already reflecting on their own practice, they were already implementing tools and resources that were proven in other places.  It seemed easy for these educators to follow a lead like that.  As I was walking out of this session, the educators from Hilliard stopped me to encourage me to continue being the change in my school and my district.  They were excited to hear of the opportunities I had been given in #wvedchat and Edcamp Parkersburg.  They asked if I had my administration certificate and encouraged me to invest into gaining that certificate.  Before we left, they invited me to join them on Tuesday nights for their district’s chat on Twitter.  Before Julie and I met in the common area, an administrator from a small, rural k-6 elementary school in Ohio introduced herself to me and encouraged me just as the Hilliard folks did.  These couple experiences were worth the hotel stay and travel to Edcamp Columbus.  Julie and I came because of the conversations and that was affirmed during those first two sessions.  It was so encouraging meeting other educators that were passionate about their students and their schools.

We walked into the restaurant for lunch and were waved over to a nearby table by what would have been a total stranger prior to Edcamp.  Our new friend, Ryan Macraild invited us over to his spot and we ended up sitting with two tech integrators from school districts nearby.  Even lunch involved conversations that have never occurred in our schools.  We sat at the same table with Bobby Dodd, principal at New Lexington High School.  Bobby was there with a few teachers from his school.  If I didn’t recognize him from Twitter, I wouldn’t have been able to tell who was the principal and who were the teachers.  Edcamp really levels the playing field and removes all titles.  Everyone present is there to engage in the same quality learning experiences to transform their classrooms and schools.

Edcamp Columbus ended with a “Smackdown”.  The smackdown was awesome because it allowed any participant the chance to share a brief statement or two about how they were impacted as a result of coming to Edcamp.  You got to hear all the innovative ideas and changes that educators were going to implement as a result of the day.  Before we left, we were able to connect with some educators from Shelby City Schools who want to bring a van-load to our Edcamp on April 5.

*Edit:  I intentionally did not write about all 4 of the sessions I attended.  That was an effort to keep the post shorter.  However, my final session was led by @mrwheeler and it was extremely enlightening for me.  Sean spoke mostly about he gets his students to solve real problems.  He’s an ELA teacher, but he spoke about attending city council meetings and asking them to share some the city’s problems.  His thought was a simple one: why aren’t we using public schools to solve more problems?  In fact, one of the attendees said “public schools should be a think-tank for communities.  I began to think of all the problems I, a math teacher, ask my students to solve throughout the school year.  Are any of them related to our community in any way?  Will any of the problems my students solve have a lasting impact?  Sean also got the attendees thinking about WHO our students submit their work to.  One statement he made impacted me: “tell a 3rd grader they’re going to be on Youtube and see what happens.”  He’s absolutely right!  My students aren’t currently sharing anything globally.  In fact, I’m not sure I could classify my students as risk-takers, not afraid to fail, learners, and doers.  I left that session wondering, if more teachers in my building, starting with me, started providing students with real problems, started connecting them to their community, started giving them an audience, started giving them a voice… What type of students would we be sending to the high school?

October 22, 2013

My Connected Learning Post

See my updated about me page.

This month is Connected Educator Month and I’ve been reading some really incredible posts from educators reflecting on becoming connected. See It’s not a must to be connected – but it helpsl or PD roadblocks control complainace and permission posts about transforming Professional Development with collaborative learners.  Tom is probably my favorite blogger of all things related to The connected educator culture.  The link will take you to his post about the connected educator culture.  The post he made after that one is about having patience with the unconnected.  I sure needed to read that one myself!

This blog has become way more than what I originally intended when I started building it over the summer.  I never imagined my blog would make it to places like India, Australia, British Columbia and many places across the United States.  I want to share my feelings on becoming a connected educator and hope to shed some encouragement to those who are curious enough to entertain the idea.  First, a connected educator is one who leverages today’s technology to connect, communicate, collaborate, and create in an effort to improve their practice.  All of this sharing can be done in a variety of venues, such as Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more.  This post is about me, so I’ll share my experience.

I connected via Twitter last spring, 2013.  I decided to dive into Twitter after realizing that was the social media haven where most of my students resided.  I originally thought I would just offer my students another method of contact in hopes that I could also build relationships, make connections with students/parents, find out what’s going on in their lives, and use Twitter as a way to provide positive feedback, inform students about upcoming assignments/projects, etc.  I had read of many schools leveraging the power of social media.  My favorite example would be New Milford High School where principal Eric Sheninger has become an expert on leveraging the power of social media in schools.  See Eric Sheninger’s posts about the use social media in schools.

Before I knew it, I was following a collection of educators who consistently shared tweets, links, and resources on educational technology, Google apps for education, increasing communication with homes, standards-based grading, blended learning, and flipped classrooms.  The power of Twitter, for me, was in whom I was following.  I was definitely more of a “lurker” than a participator.  My personality doesn’t allow me to lurk for long, however.  I wanted to engage and start communicating back and forth, even if it was 140-character conversations.  My first chat I participated in was #edtechchat.  It was really fast, but I learned about Google Forms that evening.  You’ll find some parent communication forms on my blog were made as a direct result of that chat.  I have since shared Google Forms with my wife, an English teacher, and she’s put them to use in her classroom as well.

Soon my passion for learning more about improvements I could make in my classroom was creeping into my typical evening routine.  Over the summer, my wife and I would typically try to relax of an evening, but instead of watching a show, I could be found with my nose in Twitter chasing links and saving resources in my Evernote portfolio.  Evernote was also a direct result of becoming connected.  I started my Evernote and began sorting links, PDF’s, blogs, etc. into categories in Evernote.  I can now easily search by tags I created, such as connectededucators, SBG, math, googleapps, edtech, and more.  It didn’t take long until my connectedness had become streamlined.  One would think I was consumed and spent the majority of my day on my phone or staring at a laptop.  This is not true.  I still had a family and I still had a very active 18 month old.  My family even decided to sell our house and move 40 minutes away at the beginning of this school year.  Talk about busy!  I had taught myself to use the power of Tweetdeck, Evernote, and Google Chrome to sift through the constant stream and read, save, and share items that I could find in a short amount of time.   Becoming connected had changed me into a self-directed learner and I wanted to help my students become self-directed learners as well.

I would like to share some ideas I’d like to see come to fruition in my district.  These are all ideas to increase connectedness, collaboration, sharing, and self-directed learning.  At the risk of challenging traditional powers of administration, I’d like to help make these ideas a reality.

  • Groups of educators, either by department, school, grade-level, etc. interacting via Edmodo.  I see a need to start small, so I’d like to involve other schools so that the educators who have a desire or are at least curious enough to get involved can.  I imagine the power of becoming connected will take over and others will eventually become involved.
  • More schools leveraging the power of social media.  There is an extreme potential being missed by teachers and schools that still put the lock-down on social media.
  • Monthly or weekly Twitter chats, again, by department, grade-levels, elementary vs secondary, or by school.  The idea of carving out more time to meet face to face is becoming antiquated, ask any principal.  There simply is no more time.  However, the digital environment lends itself to more friendly collaboration.  Not to mention it can be done at your own convenience, often from home.  Twitter is built for this, though Google+ or Hangouts could be used as well.  Edmodo is the simplest to use and friendly to those who are already familiar with Facebook.  Hashtags could be created for easy access to prior chats, discussions, etc.  Perhaps #woodcoedchat could be used for a district-wide chat weekly or monthly.  And more specific audiences could collaborate via #resavmathchat or something similar.  These are just ideas.

All of these ideas require the involvement of educators willing to think outside the box.  It also means the traditional style of professional development, herding teachers to the library or auditorium and lecturing to them for an hour, has got to change.  Current methods of professional development have created a generation of teachers who are no longer self-directed learners.  It really is not the teachers’ fault that they require 1:1 spoon-fed treatment to gauge effective professional development.  How many students do you have that require spoon-feeding in order to learn?  How many students do you have that are self-directed learners who would prefer to try things themselves instead of listening to the teacher force-feed information to them?  Have you ever wondered why?  Or who created such a generation of learners?  It’s no more the teachers’ fault that they refuse to use the power of connections to learn new tools themselves, than it is the students fault that they require a steady dose of spoon-feeding in order to learn new concepts/skills.  Professional development can and should be personalized.  No longer should professional development be documented by seat-time, rather work samples, portfolios, and evidence should be treated as proof of professional development.

In closing, I hope this doesn’t intimidate anyone.  I fear that I’ve done that in the past and that is definitely something I want to avoid.  Connections can be made in a variety of ways.  My experience thus far has mostly occurred via Twitter, but there are other ways to become connected.  Choose the one that fits you and start learning.  If you’ve only got one connection, use them.  Connected educators are the most giving group of educators.  The very definition of the term infers a responsibility to share freely, give advice, receive criticism, etc.  Thank you for reading as I didn’t intend for this to be so long.

 

October 18, 2013

Real and Practical Classroom Management

I read this somewhere, someone may comment on its origin, “Will what I’m about to say bring me closer or push me away from the person with whom I’m communicating?”  I try to keep that thought in the front of my mind all day at school.  My wife and 2 year old daughter would say it tends to leave my mind on my way home!  Either way, I like to think that’s my classroom management theme.

My teammates at school would say I’m ultra practical.  I really am.  It’s tough for me to buy into something that isn’t practical.  For example, why should students come to my room first and ask to get a drink from the fountain, when they walk right by the fountain on their way to my room?  Even little situations like that could become unnecessary situations if more teachers exercised some practicality in their classrooms.  Just recently, I was asked why I don’t meet 1:1 with my students to discuss their end-of-the-year state-wide test results.  The numbers don’t make sense to my students.  They aren’t practical.  If a student is 12 points away from the mastery level, what do 12 points really say?  No one seems to know.  That isn’t practical to me.  Why discuss a student’s test score when neither he/she or I know what that score really means.  I can discuss strengths and weaknesses with a student, but they probably already know those as well.  Providing an opportunity to build on those strengths and weaknesses is what I’d like to talk about.  Back on topic Mr. Oldfield!

Harry K. Wong emphasizes that classroom management is much more than discipline.  Unfortunately, a lot of teachers think of effective classroom management as effective discipline.  CM goes beyond discipline, it should be something that positively affects the entire classroom and everyone in it.  When classroom problems arise, consider what you have done to prevent such a problem from arising?  That’s a loaded question that requires reflection on the activity, assignment, instructional method, seating arrangement, location of the teacher and location of the student.  Sometimes there just isn’t anything that could have been done to prevent it.  When that’s the case, what did your reaction convey?  Was your reaction one in which your students could clearly interpret?  Did your reaction support the correct behavior?

Thoughts to consider when assessing effective classroom management:
Are you building relationships with the student and how?  Are you building a relationship with the home and how?
Are you communicating purpose in what you’re asking your students to do?  Is your classroom relevant?  Is it rigorous?  Is learning clearly defined?
Have you built credibility with your students?  I think that’s overlooked by teachers who say “well I went to school for 4-5 years, isn’t that enough credibility?”  Students still need to see that you’re asking them to perform x, y, z, because it’s in their best interests, and you do know what you’re doing.
How much do you know about a students home life?  How can you apply effective classroom management if you aren’t aware of some of the burdens your students bring to your classroom?
A Tale of Two Classrooms
October 18, 2013

Can your students fish?

Can your students fish? 
“Give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day.  Teach a man how to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.”

What an awesome post by Oliver Shinkten.  I’ve connected with Oliver a few times on Twitter and I’ve enjoyed his tweets a lot!  I haven’t made an official “guest post” yet on my blog, so this is it.  I can’t think of a better topic.  I have similar conversations with students every day in my own classroom.  One of the skills my students become really good at throughout the course of a year is perseverance and learning how to learn.  I stress to them that learning how to learn, and learning how to teach yourself is really about perseverance.  But teaching students how to learn is an essential and often overlooked skill.  In fact, how many teachers can say they know how to learn?

August 29, 2013

Glow Dance

 I think everyone had an awesome time after school at the Glow Dance.  Made me feel so old!  I think I could name 3 songs that played lol.
On another note, it seems like this is going to be a really good year.  I’m blessed with some really good kids!

IMAG2259 IMAG2235 IMAG2225 IMAG2222

August 27, 2013

First day in the lab

These pictures are from one of our computer labs in the school.  My students typically spend 2 days a week in a computer lab as part of a blended learning strategy.  In addition to face to face time in my classroom, I have really enjoyed the time my students get to spend at a computer.  There are some things a computer does really efficiently and Khan Academy provides me with a tremendous amount of data that I can’t imagine teaching without.  Just from today, I can tell which students need extra time converting 1-digit repeating decimals to fractions and vice-versa.  By tomorrow, 90% of my students will have demonstrated they are ready to move on to the next skill.  Back in the classroom I will try to incorporate engaging activities that reinforce what we’ve learned, while building on the next skill or topic.  It’s difficult to share in pictures or words, but already today I saw students helping other students.  This isn’t something I ask them to do, they just do it.  The atmosphere we create inside the computer lab is unmatched.  I’ll try to share more about my students’ experience in math class.  Ask your students about their experience thus far and feel free to contact me with questions or feedback.

Derek Oldfield

First Day in the Lab

 

July 14, 2013

Mobile Learning and Blended Learning

A Tale of Two Classrooms

In my classroom, I incorporate a blended learning approach that utilizes a flex schedule from computer lab to classroom. Last year was my first attempt at this change in teaching style, so I’m confident that this year will be much smoother.  I want to share some information with everyone that has helped me design the best possible learning experience for your children.

mobile-learning (1)

 

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2013/03/26/fp_woodward_blended.html

If you are completely clueless about what blended learning means, than check out that video.  The second is a nice article that reminded me of myself.

May 6, 2013

School Improvement Response

If I could change one thing at my child’s school it would be…

Students you may post as well.  I’ll try to comment on as many as possible.  Anonymous comments are fine.  Emails aren’t seen by anyone, including me.  Be appropriate please.  I’m doing this in an effort to give students and parents a voice.  I’m hoping to gain some insight into some things that my team can improve on next year.
Just make your response as a comment.