3 Transformational Learning Activities

Often we hear about how technology is going to transform education. The world isn't the same as it used to be. Information is no longer expensive or difficult to obtain, so it makes sense that we should be helping learners develop ways to use and create knowledge rather than memorize it. Now that the entirety of human knowledge fits into one's pocket, it's time to prepare students for a world in which they will be expected to innovate, create, and solve complex problems.

Yet, this transformation has been slow to develop. For those who have used social media tools to curate a professional network of teacher innovators, innovative and transformational learning experiences seem to be commonplace. In reality, they are not. Despite spending over three billion dollars per year on digital content and providing countless devices for students, the majority of learning experiences that students get in schools are not much different than those they had before. According to the EdWeek article linked above, 

"...a mountain of evidence indicates that teachers have been painfully slow to transform the ways they teach, despite that massive influx of new technology into their classrooms. The student-centered, hands-on, personalized instruction envisioned by ed-tech proponents remains the exception to the rule."

I would imagine that for many teachers, it's difficult to imagine ways to bring transformational experiences to students when you haven't experienced them yourself - especially if you don't know what you don't know. Few districts are using professional development opportunities to model this type of experience for teachers.

Teachers need a place to start.  They need a few easy options to see the value of using the tools we have today to turn control over to students, and some simple ways to get their feet wet. Below are 5 of my favorite ways to help teachers begin transforming their classrooms so that students can be prepared for the world in which we will be sending them.

Take a Virtual Field Trip

We all wish that we had a Magic School Bus like Ms. Frizzle that would take our students anywhere in the world (universe) that we wanted to give them experiences that match our content. Now we do. The combination of Skype (the program) and Skype in the Classroom (the website) make it possible to take your students anywhere you want to go.

Using Skype is easy enough that my 93 year old grandmother has figured it out and uses it regularly to chat with her great-grandchildren. It shouldn't be a problem for teachers to learn how to use.

The Skype in the Classroom website, which is part of the larger Microsoft Educator Community, has hundreds of free virtual field trips available. Taking part is simple - use the filters to search for the experience you want for your students, use the scheduling tool to pick a time, confirm with the presenter via email, and then connect on Skype at the time you chose.

My students have had so many amazing virtual field trips this year that it's hard to highlight one here as an example. They've traveled to outer space with astronomer Dean Hines from the Space Telescope Science Institute, met a live penguin and learned about plastic pollution in our oceans from SANCCOB in South Africa, took a tour of a village in rural Western Kenya to learn about the engineering problems of replacing the village bridge, and interacted with live elephants at the Ringling Brothers Center for Elephant Conservation.  Most recently my students learned about how scientists classify animals based on their unique adaptations from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Give Students Opportunities to Share Learning

We know that feedback is vital to learning. The more meaningful feedback we can give students, the more opportunities they will have to grow and learn.  Yet, at a time when connecting to others is easier than ever before in human history, the teacher remains the sole source of learner feedback in too many classrooms.

Students need a space to share their learning with others and to get feedback from multiple sources. Several free tools make this easy to do. For middle school and high school students, Blogger (which I'm using to write this blog post) is easy to use.  Others I know have lot of success using Office 365 Blogs from Microsoft and tell me that it is very straightforward to use. This is a great option for schools who are already using Office 365. As an elementary teacher, I have used KidBlog in the past with a lot of success, but it is no longer a free site.  Many former Kidblog users I know are making the transition to SeeSaw which now offers a free blogging feature.

Blogging allows students to be creative in how they share their learning.  Many creation apps and websites have embedding features that allow students to share their work on their blog. Videos can easily be included, so students can share documentation of science projects, classroom activities, or evidence of learning. The more creative the culture of a classroom is, the more options are available to kids.


Global Projects to Connect with Others

As it has become more commonplace for teachers to build professional networks on social media sites, it has also become more common for teachers to develop projects that allow classrooms to connect with each other in ways that fit required curricula.  These projects tend to be easy to join, fun for students, and simple for teachers to adapt to their content.

To find a project for your class, there are a few places that you should look.  First, check out the "Live Lessons" page on the Microsoft Educator Community Website. Here, teachers from around the world have posted project ideas in which they want you to connect your students to theirs.  It's easy to use the filters to find the subject and grade level that matches your need.  Also, have a look at the EdTech Chat 'n Chew Podcast Facebook page.  The podcast that I co-host with other Skype Master Teacher global learning experts creates easy, curriculum based projects each month or so that make it easy for you to connect your students to others.

Another great way to find these types of opportunities for students is to look on Twitter. Hashtags such as #GlobalEd, #GlobalClassroom, #Skype2Learn, and #iearn are great places to look for connections.  There are also many other teachers and organizations that excel in creating this type of opportunity for students. Check out Projects by Jen, Hello Little World Skypers, Global Classroom Project, and iEARN.

Here are examples of great projects that are happening right now and are accepting registration:

1. Virtual Valentines Project - designed to teach students geographical awareness and cultural understanding by connecting classrooms around the world for Valentines' Day. 
2. Global School Play Day - Join 100,000+ students around the world in remembering the joy of unstructured play and how important it is for children's development.
3. Same Day in March Project - Language Arts, Math, and Science are embedded in this activity in which classrooms from around the global will be reading a book, learning about weather, and sharing weather data in a group spreadsheet, and connecting to learn about different locations on the planet.

Transformational learning happens as a result of transformational teachers creating environments in which the learner is in charge of the learning. Technology is providing us with tools that make this easier than ever before. If you have had success with any of the above ideas in your classroom, or would like to give us some other ideas of easy ways to create amazing experiences for learners, please let us know in the comment section below. 

Skype in the Classroom Lessons Inspire Global Citizens

After two years of working as a curriculum coach, helping teachers and students find really incredible learning experiences, I have switched roles this year.  For the first time in my 19 year career I am teaching 3rd-5th grade science.  In many ways this is a dream job for me. My philosophy that learners should be encouraged to wonder, experiment, learn from failure, and connect with others around the world fit perfectly in an elementary science lab.  Since I am in the same school, I have the added benefit of working with students who have learned with me for the past two years.  They know the power of using their learning to do good for others, and they feel empowered that they can make a positive change in this world through their actions.  They know they don't have to wait until they are adults to make a difference.

It is this culture of service and student empowerment that led to the post I am writing today. Two recent Skype in the Classroom lessons were such powerful learning experiences that they inspired my students to take action to make the world better. I am so proud of my students, and so convinced that these type of global videoconferences with passionate experts are vital to 21st Century learning environments that I had to share. 

Earlier this year I was searching on Skype in the Classroom for lessons that fit our state science standards.  I saw that SANCCOB, a sea bird rehabilitation facility in South Africa, offered a lesson that showed students the effects of plastic pollution on penguins with a live penguin on the Skype call. I booked this virtual field trip to help my 4th graders learn about the way animals interact with their environment. I also came across a lesson from the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher that showed students the effects of ocean acidification on sea creatures.  This fit right along with our 5th grade studies of human impact on the environment and wildlife.

Both calls were amazing experiences for my students. Student engagement was off the charts, and the kids learned the exact concepts that I was hoping they'd learn. The aquarium actually did demonstrations with sea shells and vinegar to show how acid affects ocean animals, and showed live echinoderms and shelled mollusks on a document camera so kids could learn about them.

 Tamyln from SANCCOB was equally amazing and along with Princess, a live penguin who helped out, she shared pictures and examples of sea birds who have been harmed by plastics in the ocean.

As incredible as those calls were, it was my students' reaction to the learning that made me happiest. After students have a Skype experience, I always ask them to share their learning in some way with other classes who didn't get the same opportunity. My 5th grade students decided to create posters for my science classroom sharing ways to reduce factory production of carbon dioxide, which leads to ocean acidification. As they were making their posters, they started talking about ways to reuse materials in school. 

At the same time, my 4th graders were so inspired by their call with SANCCOB that they were seeking ways to solve the plastic pollution problem outside of science class. In between our Skype call and their next science class, several of the students got together and requested a meeting with my principal to demand we start a school recycling program. He told them that we would start a program if they planned it and agreed to run it.

When those 4th grade students came to their next class, they saw the posters from our 5th graders and saw that a "reusing" program would do even more good than a "recycling" program.  Together, the two classes began collecting water bottles at home and at school, and they began to look at ways that the bottles could be reused instead of discarded or recycled. 

The 5th graders are in the process of using many of those bottles to build a walk-in cell museum for their parents during parent-teacher conferences in an empty classroom.  Most of the organelles are being built by students out of materials that otherwise would have been thrown away. The 4th graders have begun planning ways to use bottles as planters and to build a drip irrigation system for the vegetable plants that will be planted in our school gardens in the spring as part of the Global Garden Project. 

One of the concerns I had when I switched roles this year was that the culture of student empowerment and service that I had helped develop in our school during my time as a curriculum coach would start to fade. I'm so proud of my students for showing me that my fears were baseless, and that they are continuing to look for ways to take action to make the world a better place. 

Friday's Five - Diversity and Understanding

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Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best.  Then I ask you to share your thoughts in the comment section.  For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. 

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

I love that Mark Twain quote.  Being open-minded, leaving behind one's own ethnocentric biases, and experiencing another culture is by far the best way to understand others and their points of view.  Unfortunately, it's not possible to travel with our students in a way that would allow them to have those experiences.  Many of my students growing up in rural Pennsylvania will go their entire childhoods without even visiting New York City or Philadelphia, both of which are a two hour drive away.  With school budgets being cut, even local field trips are becoming a thing of the past.  Certainly a class visit to a totally different country and culture is out of the question, and seems even ridiculous to mention.  

The challenge for us is to find ways for our students to interact, be exposed to, and appreciate the differences of other cultures. It's exceedingly difficult to do in a country where 95% of the news coverage is about domestic matters.  With the increasing bullying problems we seem to be having in our schools and online and the seeming lack of acceptance of anyone different in our society, finding ways to understand others is of increasing importance.  How, then, can we travel, meet others, and learn from them without leaving our classrooms?  Here are five suggestions.

1. Virtual Field Trips - While it doesn't allow you to interact with others, virtual travel is a great way to experience other locations without spending any money or travel time.  As an added benefit, you aren't limited to the present time.  If it fits your studies, you can visit Ancient Rome or Colonial Williamsburg.  There are many resources out there that will allow you travel virtually.  A few weeks ago someone shared a "List of 100 Incredible and Educational Virtual Tours You Don't Want to Miss."  That's a great place to get started.
2. Find a class in a very different culture and connect as pen pals.  Up until the past decade, this would have been an expensive and time consuming option.  Now, with the technologies available to us, the cost of postage and the time it used to take to send letters is no longer an obstacle.  Use e-mail, Google Docs, a wikispace, or some other technology to instantly communicate with other student around the globe.  Exchange pictures of schools, classrooms, and pets.  Discuss upcoming holidays and favorite dinners.  Share family traditions.  Talk to your students about how "different" doesn't mean "wrong."  Your students will start to see that while many of the things that people do around the world may be different, we have a lot more in common than many people realize.
3. Videoconference with other locations.  If your students are studying King Tut, who better to conference with than an expert in Egyptian Archaeology who is currently digging in Egypt?  If you are discussing addition and subtraction, why not Skype in with students from Europe who learn to add and subtract from left to right and ask them to explain why that makes sense to them?  If we want our students to think about solutions to problems from many points of view, we need to expose them to many points of view.  Videoconferencing makes that easy and fun to do.
4. Collaborate with students from other cultures on a project.  The number of web 2.0 tools that make it easy to collaborate is exploding.  Instead of only using those tools to allow for in-class collaboration, connect with other classes in foreign locations and collaborate with them.  If you are studying the rainforest, maybe you can connect with a class in Brazil and figure out how you can work together to make a difference to save species.  If your class wants to know the effects of climate change on glaciers, why not connect with a class living in the Alps, Rockies, or Himalayas and study it with them?  We don't know a lot about the future world we are sending our graduates into, but we do know that it is getting smaller and that global collaboration is becoming more important.  It's important to give our students opportunities to practice those skills in school.  
5. Model the skills you want your students to have.  How can you find classes, experts, students, and teachers in other cultures and countries?  Build a global professional network of educators with whom you regularly collaborate using social networking sites like Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, and Google+.  Regularly seek out different ways to do things and be open to change.  Share new ideas that you stumble upon with your students.  If you want your students to be life-long learners, model for them what it looks like.  

Now it's your turn.  How do you teach diversity and understanding in your classroom?  How do you connect with other cultures?  What tools have you found most helpful for collaboration with others around the globe?  How have you build your Professional Network, or what difficulties have you faced in doing so?  Do you find that your students are lacking understanding of other cultures?  Please share with us your ideas and pass the post on to others using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Plurk so that we can hear their ideas as well.