Presentation to 5th Grade teachers

On Tuesday, we had a district wide in-service day.

I had a great opportunity to present to the fifth grade teachers. By the end of the year, each fifth grade classroom in the district will be equipped with a Promethean board and ActiveStudio.

I downloaded a good presentation from Promethean planet that showcased how teachers can use ActiveStudio to create a better learning environment by making lessons interactive, adding some pop to the normal, using the board to improve classroom management, and doing neat and unexpected things. After that, I went through the basic tools on the tool bar and the power tools.

I only had 45 minutes to present (and might have gone over by about 15, actually). On one level, I was really excited, because that is the longest space I've been given to officially present ActiveStudio to any teachers. At the same time, I was a bit worried. No teachers had laptops, and I was not able to give any time for processing or practicing. I know that some of the teachers were very overwhelmed by the presentation. It was a lot of information to squeeze into just 60 minutes.

I was a little disappointed to reflect that, even though this presentation went well and was a great opportunity, I have not been able to give this level of training to the high school teachers I am supposed to be supporting. The longest I have been given for any training on ActiveStudio at the high school has been twenty minutes. I've had a few one on one opportunities to go through some of the functions, but that is generally on a teacher's planning period, where they can't really give me the full 45 minutes.

I'm hoping that the fifth grade teachers will provide positive feedback about the training. If the fifth grade teachers do more to use the boards effectively in the classroom, it will hopefully send a message that this type of training, and more, is needed even at the high school level.

I gave all of my contact information to the fifth grade teachers, and hope to hear back from some of them. Most of them do not have the program installed yet, and therefore are not needing an support for technical or integration issues. I'm planning on sending out a follow up email in the next few days, though. It is important to stay in touch with teachers, especially those who might feel that, because I am supposed to work at the high school, their questions are a bother to me.

I think that this was one of the most important professional development opportunities I have had so far at my school. Hopefully progress will come from it.

White Board in the English Classroom--Peer Review

I met with one of the English teachers to work on ActivStudio today.

I learn a lot from the questions that teachers ask me. I don't always anticipate the questions, problems, or misconceptions that people have. But, I do know that a lot of them are shared.

She asked if, in order to project a Word document, she had to convert it to a flip chart file.

Again, I'm better at showing than telling. So, we turned on her projector, and I showed her how everything on the computer gets projected. That part she had already figured out, and so I realized that she wanted to know about writing on the Word document. So, like I did with the Calculus teacher, I showed her the options of using the Desktop Annotation tool, and the Word Marker tool. As I anticipated, the Marker tool met her needs better--she wanted to be able to project a student paper, and peer review it with the class while marking up suggestions and corrections. (I find it a little easier to work with Social Studies and English teachers on the White Boards because I can anticipate what they really want a little better than Science and Math.)

After that, she asked about scanning documents. This was not as easy a question to answer. She had practice PSSA essays that she wants to peer review. I think it's a great idea. However, they are in pencil. Only the freshman teachers have scanners, but we were able to use one of those. The pencil essays were very light, and took awhile to scan. We only had time to practice with one. Later, we projected the one scan on the board, and it was very hard to read from the back of the room.

The teacher is eager to use the whiteboard, because her students are eager, too. And, she doesn't like wasting paper. She really wants to do this peer review project on the board on Friday. Unfortunately, I won't even be around to help her scan, because I'll be at a training tomorrow. After some conversation, she decided to take some of the papers home and scan them there (I gave her some tricks for darkening the text), and if that doesn't work, she'll do printouts as a back up.

I hope that this activity works. Its encouraging to see teachers eager to use the technology, and success will only encourage them more.

White Board on Observation Day

One of the English teachers is being observed today. I haven't worked with her a lot, but I have had the chance to chat with her from time to time. She tends to have a lot of connection issues with her blue tooth (I am so glad that the new boards aren't blue tooth).

Yesterday, she came down to my room. She said she wanted to use the white board for the lesson she was being observed during. She wanted to project a worksheet in word and fill it in. She wanted to know the best way to do it. I'm a fan of showing rather than telling with technology, mostly because I'm not sure I tell all that well (never sure what level of terminology is going to offend or confuse, and easily travel into tangents). Besides, showing gives the learner a chance to try it for themselves right away, which helps them remember. If they don't try it until they go back to their room, they are more likely to forget, and a lot of egos won't let abide by having the same thing explained again. So, we went back to her room.

The first problem, of course, was getting the entire word document to show at once. Fortunately, I'd just figured out where that button was in Word 2007. So, I explained where to click while she did it. I did the same thing to show her how to get ActivStudio to allow her to annotate over the desktop. This seemed a better option than using the Word Marker because she didn't want to save the annotations, and, with this being an observation, I didn't want her to have to deal with the same difficulties as the Calc teacher did--learning to wait for the program to scan the annotation, and having to remember to switch back to the marker.

After walking her through it, I closed everything down and had her try again without my help. I sometimes worry that teachers might feel that this is a bit condescending, but I find it effective. I set them up for success and let them succeed. If they can't get it without help, we start over. I try to not go too many steps without a pause for practice--that isn't going to help "set them up for success." I think that's a bit difficult for someone used to searching for the button that seems to make sense and just trying it. I can get ahead of myself if I'm not careful--and that is only going to confuse and frustrate the teachers. So I try to limit it to four or five mouse clicks in a row, then practice.

So, after getting it right, I left and let the teacher practice on her own. I promised that I would swing by right before the observation and make sure she still remembered everything and see if she needed anything else. And, I assured her, that if I was there observing, too "just in case" it wouldn't seem out of place to the Principal--the coach is supposed to observe.

This morning, about an hour before I was due to visit her, the English teacher showed up in my room with another question. She said that she had everything down, but wanted to know if there was a way to have students fill out the same form, one group at a time. I think I'm also better with being shown than told. I've found (and this is going back to when I worked at the help desk in grad school) that people who are having problems with technology don't always explain it in a way that I follow, and sometimes miss details. So, to avoid frustration on both ends, I've taken to the habit of cutting to the chase and asking them to show me, before I start trying to fix the wrong problem.

So we went back to her room. What she wanted was to put up the desktop annotation screen, write on it, minimize it, bring up a new blank one, and have the students write on it, minimize it, bring up another one, and have a different group write on it. Ok. Not a question I was actually able to answer right away. So I tried it with minimizing. Didn't seem to work--when I tried to start a new one, it just brought the minimized one back up. So, I went with save, close, open a new one. That seemed to be exactly what she had in mind.

I offered again to hang around. She decided she was nervous enough with one person observing. So, I told her I'd make sure to hang around my office and, should she need me, to just send a kid. I'll catch up with her after the observation and see how it went.

Promethean Boards and ActivStudio--Calculus Classroom

A few days ago, one of the new CFF teachers, a calculus teacher, got his equipment installed. He was very eager to get started.

His first question was how he could use the board to fill out a worksheet in MS Word in a way that, when he scrolled thought the document, the new drawings would move with the board. I went down to visit his classroom. I showed him how to use the Word Marker. He practiced a lot while I was there.

What he wants to do is use this to give students notes. I believe he is going to give the worksheet to students, and then fill it in with them--for their notes. There were pros and cons to using the board this way. Ultimately, it did what he wanted. It wasn't text recognition, which worked better--it allowed the students to clearly see the different between the pre-printed worksheet and the added notes. However, he found in very annoying that, once he paused in annotating, he had to wait for the program to scan his notes as images. Then, he was frustrated that he had to reselected the pen tool. And, we found out the hard way that trying to use the pen for anything while the program was trying to scan the annotations was a bad idea.

However, with practice, he got used to the steps he had to take. He later told me that he started using the board with classes that very day.

Yesterday, I got an email from him about ActivStudio again. This time, he was recording his flip charts and wanted to post them to his websites for students to review. However, he was concerned that students without ActivStudio at home would not be able to view the flipcharts. His fear was correct. I looked into the recordings, and at first recommended that he export them as swf files. I planned to see him at the beginning of the day today to show him how.

By the time I got there, he had not only figured it out for himself, but had also found that they wree not posting correctly to his website. When he clicked on the swf files, they didn't do anything. I was about to start trouble shooting, when he saw that he could export them as ppt. Since he was not concerned with the students following each pen stroke as an action, but was more interested in them being able to see the end product, this worked very well for him.

I was really impressed with this teacher for taking initiative, and learning by doing. This is the sort of skill that we want students to have. I think this teacher could be among the leaders in the school moving towards 21st century education.