Global warming will change the world we live in and love.

As the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference unfolds I wonder about my professional responsibility to translate the global importance of this event into concepts that my students will understand. Especially when I am not totally sure I understand the ramifications myself. I have been increasingly turning to the Manchester Guardian newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/ for information and unbiased clarification. The Manchester Guardian has long held a reputation for quality news reporting and a fair examination of the topics. It is also one of the few major newspapers that has a designated Environment section.

Copenhagen is about global warming and global warming is about the increase of CO2

in the atmosphere. A two degree increase over the next century would cause international disruption and dislocation. Four degrees would be disastrous. According to a number of peer reviewed studies http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/17/global-temperature-rise , if humanity remains on the present accelerated course of fossil fuel consumption we could see a six degree increase in earth’s temperature − devastating.

The stakes are high and the future possibly grim for this present generation of elementary students. So, what am I going to do as a teacher? Well, I certainly don’t want to traumatize ten year olds with a cataclysmic view of the future, although I will show them Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth http://www.climatecrisis.net/aboutthefilm/ . This is a long video so I’ll abridge it. The film always stimulates interesting discussion. We will also watch a video created by local kids that describe the immediate impact of global warming on their lives http://teachertube.com/members/viewVideo.php?video_id=32896&title=Pine_Beetles_and_Global_Warming .

The concept of one’s carbon footprint is key to understanding the goals of the Copenhagen conference. This site http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/what-you-can-do/1245.jsp provides a calculator that kids can fill out to get a sense of how consumer decisions affect their personal footprint and therefore the health of the planet. Hopefully, this will lead to some positive discussion around the dinner table.

As for practical steps in the classroom we will be looking at ways to reduce our footprint by 10 %. This is both a realistic and meaningful goal based on the 10:10 Project. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/10-10 . And what if the whole climate change discussion is a hoax or a conspiracy? Well, we will be well on our way to cleaning up a badly polluted world and creating a sustainable civilization before we run out of oil. And that makes sense! Unless you don’t believe we are going to run out of oil.

Technology is a wave crashing over us all.

Cayoosh Kidz were asked to create a video about how we use technology in the Connected Classroom. We started, as we always do with a storyboard. As we brainstormed themes and content for the video, I became amazed at the quantity and quality of digital experiences these kids have already been exposed to. These kids were born digital and have no memory of a world that wasn’t.

Jill is ten, she got her first cell phone at six. Today she has a Blackberry. Tassy started using social media at six, four years later she has her own Facebook account. Jessie lives in a home where there have always been computers, there are four now. She has had a laptop since she was six. Almost half the kids have a cell phone that they can use when they want. One quarter have their own cell phones. The biggest Christmas present this year is going to be netbooks. These children are different from past generations.

In the Connected Classroom kids have their own netbooks, participate in online virtual conferences, and classroom video conferencing. They easily create, manage and share multimedia files. I often ask students to solve technological problems. The kids are faster than me. They think outside the box when looking for a solution. They definitely are not afraid of making a mistake or breaking something. For them buttons are meant to be pushed; there are no boundaries to possible solutions.

These kids cheerfully state that they are the smartest generation that has ever lived. Don’t believe them, just ask one something and they will Google it for you. Smarter or not this generation, with their technical devices and constant access to the internet, will require a different education from those of the past. The kids who were born digital are ready for the future now. Is their educational program ready?

Photo Paul White

Technological Challenges

We experimented this week using Elluminate http://www.elluminate.com/ . We used it to connect kids together, in groups both large (50 students) and small (4). We found that our internet bandwidth was barely sufficient to handle 50 individuals and in one of our conferences connections were constantly dropping making meaningful communication difficult. Even in the session where bandwidth was not such an issue it became clear that the medium required very focused educational outcomes with clearly defined and simple tasks. Despite the problems the students were extremely motivated and took the technological glitches in stride. They were patient and attempted to complete the assignments to the best of their abilities.

The experience with Elluminate left us feeling confident in our plans to use it as a tool to facilitate online literature circles. Groups of 12 participants should work well. We will continue to practice with small groups in our own schools so we become proficient working and sharing in the virtual environment. Having someone in the same physical room as you makes is much easier to trouble shoot if something unexpected happens.

Photo: Paul White

Cayoosh Kidz record an News episode.

I’ve taken a break from writing report cards. Why don’t the people that design report card writing software ever think to ask a classroom teacher what they need? It drives me crazy when software developers produce substandard products that are less useful and more time consuming than paper and pen. People, we have the technology, get it right. However, all is not darkness and doom.

An interesting product that has just come out is the Owle http://www.wantowle.com/Welcome.html . It is an adapter for the iPhone and markedly improves the video quality. While this product is designed for the iPhone, the principle could be applied to any smartphone. A smartphone can become a useful information gathering and sharing tool. With online video editing such as Movie Masher http://www.moviemasher.com/ you can take decent video clips, edit, and share them on the web, in minutes. If you want to brush up on your video skills try Video 101 http://www.video101course.com/Editing/e_50.html

Copyright is always a thorny issue when you are trying to illustrate a blog or some other work you want to share with a public audience. There is always creative commons which allows certain uses of images. Flickr  http://www.flickr.com/photos/grade5/ offers such a service. I recently found a site that claims no copyright and has a selection of excellent photos http://aksinya.wordpress.com/ .

The connected classroom project has started to use Moodle http://moodle.org/ . Moodle is the FaceBook of education. It is part of an emerging class of social media that has the potential to change the way children are educated.  Moodle offers a way to manage all the tasks that teachers and students need to accomplish in a totally digital format. Moodle is not perfect but it is functional. Colleagues at my school are beginning to transfer all their assignments onto Moodle. With Moodle, a Smartboard, Bridgit and Elluminate we can provide a powerful educational experience without paper and possibly without a bricks and mortar classroom.

Well I guess it is time to get back to the report cards. Writing the blog has reminded me of all the great technology available and has restored my faith in the web 2.0 future. Hopefully, by this time next year I can report that report card writing has left the dark ages behind.

A parent teacher meeting in the digital age.

Sunday night I was doing a little work when a tweet came in from twitter.com/NewMediaDude about a U2 concert being streamed live from LA  http://www.youtube.com/user/U2official#p/u/ . The word used to describe the event was historic. I had a look and was amazed! It was a spectacle of sight and sound. The quality was amazing and it was being streamed live around the world. It marked a shift in how we can participate in cultural events around the globe. That brings me back to the real world of the connected classroom. We have been battling glitches in our video conferencing system and our Bridgit connection. When you are working at the edge of your ability and the capacity of the technology even a minor drop in system performance can spell disaster for your lesson. Kids can be patient only so long.

We are coming to an end of a series of Connected Classroom lessons. Aislinn is doing one on Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power – Quality of Connecting. Aislin is using the book Those Shoes http://storypockets.blogspot.com/2008/04/book-review-those-shoes.html

She has the 75 students riveted by her presentation. The other ongoing lesson is called the Revenge of the Tree Octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ . In this lesson students were asked to help save the endangered Tree Octopus and have been sent off to make posters, octopus feeders, and do research. Tomorrow a small group of skeptics will take over the lesson and assert that this octopus is a fake. Students will be sent off into cyberspace to find out more information and decide for themselves. Our third collaborator Brooke will pick up the thread next week and teach a series of lessons on research skills for the internet.

Finally the real world is about falling flat on your face. Being part of Connecting Classrooms is like being a first year teacher again. Ever day we are trying to do something that we have never done before and maybe don’t understand very well. Most of the time we manage, but we do stumble and take a spill. This usually occurs when someone we wanted to impress is watching. Tonight after finishing this post I am going to study SMART Boards – very intensely. I have a few nasty cuts, scrapes and bruises to nurse.

Students explore the Web 2.0

I am caught between two worlds. I have a functioning traditional classroom with most of the things you would expect in a progressive learning environment. But I step next door into the connected classroom and I am met with a shadowy vision of what the future will look like, only it isn’t the future. It is where I teach half the time. It is like half my brain is analog and half is digital. I feel disconnected.

I don’t know how to teach in this web 2.0 world. It is cold comfort to realize that nobody does! There are pioneers out there doing amazing things, but no consensus exists about which is the right way to go about this digital adventure. The technology, medium, and philosophy are new and evolving. The netbooks we use are more powerful than the laptops of 4 years ago. The flow of information through email, Elluminate, Bridgit, and video conferencing is different to traditional classroom interaction. With internet search engines, such as Google, students have instant access to a vast knowledge base. We don’t need to teach knowledge; we need to teach process. But what does that mean?

And so everyday I take those two steps to the connected classroom and leave the familiarity of a 150 year old traditional classroom and move into the future. A future where I struggle to create a scope and sequence of skills and experiences to shepherd the students. I flounder setting multimedia assignments for them to create. And I am perplexed as to the best way of collecting and grading those assignments.

But I do wake up in the morning excited about the day’s challenges and opportunities. The kids are enthusiastic, parents are supportive and administration is confident about the program. A measure of academic success is discipline issues requiring attention. There has been no discipline issues in the connected classroom. Even when dealing with 75 students in a virtual conference the kids are engaged. Parents have had nothing but positive things to say about the program. They openly express their gratitude for the opportunities that the students are receiving.  Administration has bent over backwards to make this program a success. There has been no pressure, only encouragement and support. So why do I feel like my right and left brain are heading off in different directions?

Connected classrooms places the connected team somewhere that we haven’t been before. It forces us far beyond our comfort zones and asks us to learn new skills and invent others. It makes us reflect and question everything we do in the traditional classroom. We ask ourselves constantly, does this need to be done and if so, could it be done better in a digital format? We see the future and it challenges our assumptions of who we are as teachers and what we do. It is both uncomfortable and exhilarating. And some days it makes me feel a little crazy.

Learning by teaching others in a teaching train

This week Cayoosh Kidz walked down to the restoration site for a field day.  Part of the educational component was a teaching train – where two students at each station were taught something about local animals, plants or the restoration work done by the team.  They then in turn taught their classmates as they moved through the “train”.  It was fun and a great way for students to learn from each other.

Kim North and Odin Scholz along with the dedicated restoration team showed the kids what they did at the site and then taught them how they could help out too. Students volunteered to do a number of jobs including planting over 56 native shrub species.

It was rewarding to hear students saying “this was one of our best days yet!” as they laboured to restore the site.

The Power House Restoration Project is a partnership between BC Hydro’s Bridge Coastal Restoration Program, the Lillooet Naturalist Society and Cayoosh Creek Band.

If you would like to see a short video of the day’s activities go to www.cayooshkidz.net and select video, then click on “Foreshore Restoration Day”.

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Ms. Mulholland guides the students in a self discovery lesson.

We took three major steps forward this week linking our Connected Classrooms. The first event was the successful hosting by Aislinn Mulholland of a Reading Power lesson. This will be followed by several more lessons as she develops the theme of Connecting with the students. I think we were all impressed by the degree of engagement shown by the kids. They eagerly participated, and there were no behavior issues, which is a sure sign of good teaching.

Bridgit http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/Bridgit/ is a software package that allows for remote sharing of SMART Boards. Simultaneous transfer of information among the classrooms is key to the success of our endeavour. The system worked well. Audio sharing remains a challenge, but we suspect that it is a server issue. It is magic to watch the conference screen as your desktop or SMART Board content appears at the other remote locations.

The greatest success of the week was the Friday Connected Classroom rendezvous. Kids travelled to Ashcroft to participate in a day designed to create bonds of friendship. Bonds that we will use to accelerate the virtual connections back in the classroom. It is hard to grasp how much the day meant to the students unless you are familiar with the isolation of a small rural community. Again Aislinn did a magnificent job of orchestrating the day with both planned activities and adequate free time. From the nervous kids that filed into the Ashcroft gym to confident friends, the transformation was amazing.

Students are beginning to use multimedia to document and share their experiences with each other and the world. This week Cayoosh Kidz created an October news video

http://www.vimeo.com/6908719 , a field trip video http://www.vimeo.com/7017080 and a photographic essay of their adventures http://www.flickr.com/photos/grade5/ . All told it was a good week for Connecting Classrooms.

Week four of the Connected Classroom has passed. We connected with our first video conference in the second week and took delivery of the net books shortly after that. The Kidz were over the moon with excitement at having their own net book. These aren’t dinky little play things. They come with almost a GB of RAM and a 1.6 MHz processor. You can even do video editing with them! The Smart Board is being integrated into daily lesson plans. With Bridgit software the Smart Board will reach across the internet into other Connected Classrooms. The virtual conferencing software program Elluminate is being used for peer to peer student conversations. Its video ability is a great attraction for the students.  With a bit more practice we will integrate Elluminate in a wide range of  educational interactions. We have done some multimedia work too. The Cayoosh Kidz vlog has been updated and new pictures are on Flickr. The students wrote about their summer on the netbooks, saved to their flash drives and then printed the stories in the computer lab. They have created posters, business cards and Wordle art and a host of other digital content. We finished a video on the forest fire above Lillooet this summer and have started planning our first news cast. This is an exciting project!

Students watch a frog in the school's wetland pond.

Connected Classrooms has begun. Despite minor setbacks the enthusiam and commitment remains high. The students especially are excited about being involved in the process. They seem to sense that it is real and relevant to their lives. They can’t wait to get their hands on the new netbooks!

We found that the video conferencing facilities were excellent; we easily connected with another classroom. Despite the fact the buddy class was seven years advanced, there was a remarkable level of connection. Somehow the digital filter of video conferencing negated much of the social distance you might have expected. Tanberg makes an excellent video conference system.

Our use of Elluminate Live has been a little slower. This is because the netbooks have not yet arrived. They are absolutely promised by this Thursday. I can tell you that the kids will riot if they aren’t in by then. Now the organizational dust of the first week has settled we are busy learning about flash drives, email addresses, netbook management protocol, etc. Of course to begin with, we are practicing these skills in the school computer lab.

Strangely the area that has caused the most frustration is the lowly Smartboard.  Our IT department’s resources are stretched so thin it is amazing how much they do accomplish. Without a dedicated IT support team this project would never get off the ground.

So after a week with Connected Classrooms we are, if anything, more excited by the possibilities of creating a new digital environment to learn, grow and develop all our skills in.