Team Work

Our third professional cluster group focused on the theme of "Team Work".  After I put in a plug for Downplayer, we discussed the Creative Commons.  I pointed to two rich sources of media that are licensed to the Commons:

1) Magnatune - we are not evil, a generous source of CC music if it is used for educational purposes.  Our school now has a subscription and I am urging all teachers plumb its 10,000 songs.

2) Flickr CC photo searches.  The Yahoo Advanced Image search in order to find cool images for use with attribution.  It is my go-to source of content for images in s;ide presentations, photo/movies and blog art (like the photo featured on this post).

The "team work" portion of the PCG involved a discussion of classroom group activities.  My memories of "group work" as a student were pretty negative, so I prefer to have my students work in "teams." 

The discussions were interesting, because the five cluster groups took their conversations in very different directions.  Teachers were generally eager to share positive group experiences.  Also common concerns were raised about free-loaders, group chemistry, and fair assessment.  I tried to be a good listener , so that I could address some of the concerns, later.  After all, since we share the challenge of "design[ing] a challenge based learning project which develops [Tony Wagner's Seven] "Survival Skills" for at least 15% of [our] students we need to arrive at a sound comfort level with team work.

Coincidentally, for the "CBL Group Think" at Apple tomorrow, I've been asked to give a ten minute presentation on The importance of reflections and why we need to measure more than just the solution and implementation (learning is bigger than a grade).  I think that this is one area where both the Apple and Mercy High School educators share considerable common ground.

Here are the slides from PCG #3 (licensed to Creative Commons of course).

Team Work Slides

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Flickr Creative Commons photo by Paul Williams

Collaborating on the Cloud

I have recently completed my first set of professional cluster group presentations. The "PCGs" consist of five inter-disciplinary groups of teachers and administrators from our school who meet with me once every six school days. All staff are included.

The PCGs are intended to foster Challenge Based Learning and technology integration. In order to familiarize themselves with the process the staff has undertaken a challenge of their own:

Collaborate departmentally to design a challenge based learning project which develops [Tony Wagner's Seven] "Survival Skills" for at least 15% of the students that your project team serves.

Recently, I termed this, "Challenging the Challengers".

I wanted to get off to a good start. My greatest concerns were

1) making tech novices feel as though the train had not already left the station.
2) boring tech savvy attendees by slowing down aforementioned train!
3) clarifying the confusion stirred up by the CBL launch.
4) roviding implicit reassurance that these PCG presentations would be purposeful and engaging.

I took a thematic approach for both CBL and tech-- beginning with collaboration and cloud computing. Here's the slide presentation:

Collaborating on the Cloud(PCG #1)

It starts with a cloud productivity tip. Box.net is an old favorite of mine. I find that it is a wonderful place to store files that I want access to across platforms. It's easy to link the files to different locations. The uploads are fast and sweet. 1GB of memory is offered for free.

After this warm up I gave an overview of cloud computing, suggesting that attendees complete a survey posted to our staff wiki, indicating their level of interest in some tools we might investigate at future sessions.

The most important piece was left for last: A review of the CBL model and a detailed discussion of the types of "guiding questions" that project groups should start generating. There was more discussion during this portion of the presentation (the five sessions varied greatly in terms of the quantity and tone!).

Assessment
Regarding my initial concerns, I felt that I did a better job meeting the needs of attendees with beginner skills than advanced (It's hard to stay down the middle). I felt that I achieved a good level of engagement overall, though I think some of the teachers might be surprised how much their body language resembled that of our less enthusiastic students! While I'm satisfied that the presentation set a tone of purpose, the give-and-take will definitely be the best part of the PCGs. Even though they intrude into everyone's busy schedule, these sessions will offer an opportunity for us to leave our daily routines and discuss some significant educational topics. I'm looking forward to round #2.

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As of today's blog post, Larry's Opinion Drive-thru returns to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule.

Suggestions for Group Research [Video]

Group research can be a tricky bit of business. What kinds of steps may be taken to encourage accountability, communication, and quality? I recently produced a short video for the specific purpose of helping out teachers who are venturing into Challenge Based Learning. However, the suggestions apply to other types of group projects as well.

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This movie was made with the following tools: Dragon Dictation (iPhone), Voila, Evernote, Flicker Creative Commons, Photo to Movie, and GarageBand.