The Old Professor

This summer I will turn sixty.  How odd that my professional career would have taken such twists and turns at a time of life when most of the folks at my last high school reunion had either talking about retirement or had already done so.

Two years ago I became an administrator at Mercy, and now I've decided to do a little moonlighting.  On Friday, I signed a contract as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Teacher Education Department at Madonna University.  I'll be instructor for a small section of Masters Degree students in Leadership in Technology.

"Classical Scholar" CC photo by lisby1

I'm very excited to teach the course, and I feel like I do have some experiences to share in this area.  Nevertheless, it has been about thirty years since I attended a university class.  And though I logged lots of college classroom time as a student, those traditional academic qualifications have little to do with my new role.

I think that it is very telling that I find myself in this position due to factors like this blog, being an Apple Distinguished Educator, and my professional learning network.  

Ironically, many moons ago I entered (but eventually abandoned) a doctoral program in Instructional Technology-- a field so new at the time that my advisor pretty much had to create my program as we went along. I do not regret some of that coursework but of course it has little bearing on the course I will be taking.  What I view as my strong areas for Leadership in Technology have largely come through collaborations with folks like Lucy Gray, Katie Morrow, Tom James, Susan Smith, and so many others.

Well, this will be another fun challenge and I expect that I will learn more than I teach.

Webinar on Implementing Best Practices in Planning 1:1 iPad Programs

On March 19, 2013, I presented a webinar on "Implementing Best Practices in Planning 1:1 iPad Programs".  I had participated with a group in a Challenge Based Learning webinar at Apple, but this was my first solo experience.  Lynn Scott at edWeb.net and Lucy Gray (moderator) helped to make this an enjoyable experience for me.

I now subscribe to a couple of webinar threads at edWeb and encourage others to do the same!  Here is my recorded webinar:

http://tinyurl.com/c5g3a7z

The Arc of Mercy's iPad & Google Apps Training

I hosted visitors from another high school, recently.  Since our adoption of 1:1 iPads, this has become a frequent experience. I was explaining how much emphasis we had placed on professional development with Mercy 2.0.  This caused me to consider how our P.D. process had evolved over the past one year.  Fortunately, we did not try to predetermine every step.  Some of the best features of our training have been based on the feedback we received along the way:

Workflow Analysis -  Our consultant, Lucy Gray, urged us to begin the staff development process by focusing on "workflow".  Lucy and administrators held conversations with members of every academic department, discussing how the new tools could accomplish and improve the way they conducted their classes on a daily basis-- assigning, collecting, and evaluating student work for instance.

Unboxing- We had a special "unboxing" basic training event for the staff when they received their iPads.

Super Tuesdays- Our own advanced teachers conducted voluntary after school workshops on key apps  like Dropbox, Evernote, and iAnnotate PDF.  These were extremely well attended.

Creative Commons photo by jeanbaptistparis

"Ten Things" - We wrote learning modules for ten activities that would serve as milestones for staff technical competency.  The activities were required and included using Google Cals, Evernote, iMovie, Moodle, iPhoto, Dropbox and Explain Everything.

Summer Labs

In order to support the quest for the "Ten things", we hosted several drop-in "labs" during the summer.  These were staffed by volunteers, whose only reward was a free lunch.  The turn-out was terrific.  and by summer's end some of the learners had become trainers.

Boot Camp

Our ten new staff members attended three summer mornings of "boot camp", specifically designed to raise the technology bar high for our newbies and to give them a head start on  the iPad.

Rock Stars

For a full day of August in-service we flew in Cheryl Davis from California to give us a keynote address on "retrofitting the Classroom for the iPad."  She, Lucy Gray and some of our in-house technology exemplars conducted workshops through the day.

Design Foundations

All ninth graders were required this year to take a course called Design Foundations.  Much of their time is spent in our new Mac Lab learning how to use photoshop, design web pages and edit using FinalCut Pro X.  Next year we will be offering a Set Design course and a video editing course which have been made possible by this introductory curriculum.  We will also have a second Mac lab next year.  The entire staff was given a presentation on Design Foundations.  The Curriculum Council is exploring ways for courses of all disciplines to reinforce the skills learned in our new course.

iWizards

Our focus on training has shifted to utilizing student expertise.  We have identified, trained and branded a group of iPad users named iWizards.  They will assist in tutoring all members of our community in iPad skills.

Ninth Grade Tech Orientation

The iWizards will be spending a full day together with Lucy Gray at their elbows, creating the Curriculum for this year's Ninth Grade Tech Orientation.  They will create multimedia tutorials to support their presentations on topics like Dropbox, iPhoto, Pages, and iAnnotate PDF.  You will be reading more about this activity on these pages after March 4.

Surveying the Staff

The staff have not even had their iPads for a year, but it is not too early to plan more professional development with them.  Before long we will return to where we started, surveying them to discover what they need to rock their classes with the iPad and Google Apps for Education.  After all, for all the great technology, the teachers remain the key to great instruction.

Rockin' with our Ninth Grade iPad "Wizards"

Lucy gets the girls organized

Last week, 26 MHS ninth graders spent a full school day with our Mercy 2.0 professional development consultant, Lucy Gray.   Lucy has facilitated staff PD with the staff through the year.  On Friday, she spent a day challenging and organizing this enthusiastic group of freshwomen who had applied or been invited to join this group.  Lucy put them through the paces with a number of activities:

Ice Breaker
Lucy has a great idea for helping our ninth graders become acquainted-- She asked each one to name her iPad "superpower" and favorite app. There was an unanticipated benefit to this conversation.  The girls served as a window into the classroom usage of the iPad and to what degree it had been integrated into their teachers' instructional methods. Their nominated apps were interesting, and I will share them in an upcoming post.

Doing the Research
In anticipation of the day, Lucy, Tom James, and I developed an agenda that we shared with the girls in the form of a Google Doc.  Included in the agenda were links to sites which featured student technology groups which were active elsewhere.  Consequently, after the ice-breaker, the girls did some online research and brainstormed about the mission and activities of our particular group.

Kern Kelley streamed live to us.

Video Conferencing

Before and during lunch our ninth graders visited Utah, Maine, and Chicago by teleconferencing with Steve Hargadon, Kern Kelley, Jason Markey.  These three esteemed educators shared their ideas about the formation of student tech groups such as ours.  Kern's description of the Tech Sherpas was particularly helpful.

Taylor shares her group's ideas.

Plotting a Game Plan
The girls came up with the following consensus on the types of activities they would explore and develop:

• Tech Support
• Live streaming events
• After school drop in sessions
• Screencasted tutorials
• Blog posts with tech tips and advice
• Advocacy
• Help with tech orientation for new students
• Co-teach with orientation leaders
• Weekly tech tips in a blog, on twitter and other social media
• Skits, commercials, and movie trailers around tech use  and being a good  digital citizen
• Promote informal use of tech  outside of school
• Communication
• internal
• external
• Geek spirit
• Advisory
• Communicate with faculty and ststaff  about issues of coincern
• social media
• apps
• procedures

Ms. Smith shares a comment while Wizards work on the Ning

Building the Ning
The group spent considerable time discussing the platform for future online collaboration. Drawing on Lucy's rich experience in social media we decided on a Ning.  

For the last hour of our day together, the group went to Mercy's new iMac lab to work on building the Ning. The Ning is ideal for the group, because it is private, serves as a marvelous place to store media and conduct discussions. The girls also joined task forces on the Ning

Throughout the day I took advantage of my relatively passive role to take pictures and record video about the wizards and other Mercy 2.0 matters.  

Without a doubt, November 30, 2012, was one of my favorite all-time days at Mercy. 

Mercy iPad In-Service August, 2012

We have set up a very special professional day for our staff, today. The focus will be on integration our iPads into the Curriculum. In fact the general keynote presentation will be titled, "Retrofitting the Classroom for the iPad. Cheryl Davis will be coming from the San Francisco Bay area to deliver her presentation and two other elective workshops Lucy Gray of Chicago has guided us in developing the in-service event. She will also be presenting workshops as will three of our own talented staff members-- Anne Eddy, Susan Smith, and Alison Kline-Kator. Each Mercy staff member will experience three of the following workshops:

Book Creation on the iPad

Collaborative Tools for Notetaking and Mindmapping

Creating Video

Exploring Instructional Uses of YouTube

iPads in the Moodle Environment

iTunes U Content and Courses

The In-Service will be a paperless experience. Lucy has helped us build a public Google Site in the interest of making our efforts transparent and helpful to the greater educational community. Feel free to visit it:

Mercy High School Professional Development

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Screen Shot from one of Cheryl's Workshop web pages

Experimenting with a Google Apps Lab

As we shift into a summer mode at Mercy, we are also going to shift our professional development format. In May we presented some "Super Tuesdays" (and Thursdays) -- These were after-school workshops dedicated to the introduction of specific iPad apps like Dropbox, Noteshelf, Evernote, and Explain Everything. These sessions were very well attended even though they came at an exceedingly busy time for our teachers. Volunteers presented the workshops and it was unreasonable to expect them to give make-up sessions or post lots of resources.

So for summer, we will try to slow down and individualize. In June, we will host two "labs". This was the suggestion of our incredibly tech savvy, Alison Kline-Kator (someone you will be hearing more about in an upcoming post). She suggested a "drop-in" environment where folks could come for the 1:1 or small group training they desired. About eight staff members answered my call to serve as "trainers" for these two hour periods.

The first lab will be held on June 4, and it will focus on anything Google. Going to Google Apps was a key facet of our transition to Mercy 2.0. During a Keynote in April, Lucy Gray gave us a taste of all the interesting instructional possibilities for Google Apps. In addition, since across the school we are transitioning to Google Calendar, fluency in that environment will become essential for all staff. About 25 staff members have indicated that they will probably or certainly attend.

Two weeks later we will present a lab for all things iPad. I will be very curious to see how many people drop by, and that will pretty much determine whether we will offer another couple of labs during the summer.

In my next post I will describe a scheme for our newbie teachers that is a little more intense!

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CC illustration found at http://bit.ly/LTaWcl

Unique Professional Development for a Unique School!

I have been researching for Mercy 2.0 since July of '11 and I still have not found a school which matches our educational technology profile. Most schools who are considering the iPad as a 1:1 device (1 device for each student) are going to this model for the first time. Mercy, on the other hand, was a pioneer in 1:1 computing. We have invested several years of experience with technology and it is is already a fundamental feature of our school experience. Consequently, most of the "packaged" presentations and workshops that we might investigate for training are ill-suited to our staff's needs. Nevertheless, our experience has taught us that professional development (PD) is crucial for a successful technology roll-out. Therefore, we are putting investing considerable time and money in customized PD that will position us to be leaders in iPad 1:1 instruction.

I thought members of our community (and visitors!) might be interested in seeing an outline of this plan:

April 2 & 3 - Staff iPads Deployed. Just days after the new iPads were announced by Apple, our technology wizards-- Tom James and Gary Bank -- had devices in the hands of our staff so that they could become acquainted with them at their leisure over Easter Break.

April 17 - Unboxing the iPad Staff members became acquainted with their new iPads with an after school orientation program by Dean Haratsaris from Macprofessionals of Novi .

Lucy Gray

April 23 & 24. Department PD with Lucy Gray. Lucy will meet with departments separately to discuss how they iPad may enhance their "Workflow". In anticipation of these meetings, Lucy has provided shared documents, so that everyone will be thinking about our conversations before she arrives. (Too often, I think, PD takes the form of an expert presenter attempting to "Wow" a passive audience). This portion of the professional development is a critical attempt to view her visit as an interactive process that will evolve through the end of this school year, into the next, and beyond. Her stay will conclude with an all-staff presentation on Google Apps, a critical component of our Mercy. 2.0. At this point, Lucy will be firing out lots of application features for teachers to explore this summer.

August 23 - iPad and the Curriculum Lucy will be joined by Cheryl Davis,the curriculum and instruction technology specialist for the Acalanes Union High School District. Based on the input our administrative team gives Cheryl, she will customize a presentation that focuses on how the iPad can increase our productively and be leveraged as a remarkable instructional tool. She and Lucy will help us develop a set of workshops for the day that they and some of our more proficient staff members will lead.

Cheryl Davis

Very exciting stuff. Of course this is just a beginning. But we want everyone to know that Mercy 2.0 is first and foremost about education and people, not machines and software.

Unboxing the iPad

As we roll out Mercy 2.0 we are trying to communicate with transparency. We also want to give our community face to face opportunities to learn about and explore our new 1:1 device-- the iPad. We have scheduled some exciting events and activities

Flickr CC photo by ~Brenda Starr~

April 17 - Unboxing the iPad. Any staff members who want to become acquainted with their new iPad will have an opportunity to stay after school for an orientation by Dean Haratsaris from the Professional Group.


April 23 & 24 - iPad and Google Apps professional development for Mercy Staff by Lucy Gray.


May 14 - An evening event at school which will allow current and new families to explore the iPad and place an order through our web site. The Professional Group will also be exhibiting (and selling) optional accessories like keyboards.


Summer 2012 - The IT Team will be providing iPad orientations to students on the designated pick-up dates.