Game Design as a Catalyst For Learning

Over the course of this school year, I have been fortunate enough to share ideas on technology integration with Judy Wilson, my children’s principal at P.S. 3 in Staten Island, NY.  Many of these conversations focused on my own son’s use of technology as a catalyst for creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking developed by playing Minecraft and using iMovie to storyboard and create his own movies.  These conversations eventually led Judy to include Nicholas in a pilot program at the school where students would be creating virtual reality games after the regular school day.  As someone who loves educational technology and knowing how much my son does as well, my wife and I figured this was an unbelievable opportunity that couldn’t be passed up.

My son and PS 3 student Nicholas playing a virtual reality game created by his peers.

After participating in the program for over three weeks, Judy invited us to see firsthand what the students had been doing.  This was where I finally learned about VR Quest™ developed by Warren Black.  Warren developed this program for middle and high school students, but Judy convinced him that elementary school students could do it.  With the help of teachers who stepped out of the box to work with the kids – Justine Kostenbader (Technology) and Mr. James Laieta (Language Arts) – the after school program was born.  The resulting pilot consisted of mostly fifth and fourth grade students as well as just two students in the second grade.  I cannot begin to explain how excited I was when I found out that my son Nicholas was one of the two second grade students authentically engaged in the design of games to solve complex programs.

VR Quest™ is a fun and educational project-based learning (PBL) model that integrates fully immersive Virtual Reality technology.  It enriches students’ lives by offering computer and real-life skill instruction delivered through comprehensive projects in the subject areas of science, history and social studies.  Each VR Quest™ project has a specific content area as its "lead" theme. As the project unfolds, a myriad of other subject areas and disciplines are woven into the mix to create a rich and challenging cross-curricular experience. Check out what some schools in Hawaii are doing with VR Quest™.

VR Quest™ students work as a team to create a Virtual Reality multimedia environment. They develop a vested interest in their project by becoming an integral part of a production crew and participating in a challenge or theme, which relates to their own lives. Creating their virtual worlds helps students develop skills in game design, art, storytelling, 3-D animation, computer literacy, research, reading, problem solving, critical thinking, and teamwork. Upon completion of the project, students enter their virtual worlds via a head-mounted display and interact with their creations.

The two lead themes that students could choose from were ancient Egypt and Mars.  Can you guess which theme most of them chose?  The entire activity is connected to the Common Core and consists of seven specific steps:

1. Define objective
2. Brainstorm
3. Research on Macs
4. Storyboard by hand
5. Build the interface
6. Pilot test of game created
7. Take completed project home to play

Below is a video highlighting the work done by these students.

It was so exciting to see what my son and his classmates had created.  It was apparent from their presentations that the project focused on essential skills sets (communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, global awareness) and was thoroughly engaging.  Just watching these young children line up to play each other’s games and explain what they had created at 7:00 PM was a testament to the effectiveness of this program.  I commend both Judy Wilson and Warren Black for providing my son with this enrichment opportunity.  Now I have to work on brining this amazing program to the students of New Milford High School.

To learn more about VR Quest contact Warren Black at 631-365-2506 or wblack@vrquest.com

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Integration of Digital Badges to Acknowledge Professional Learning

The following is cross-posted at Laura Flemings blog titled Worlds of Learning.  Laura is the new media specialist at NMHS and  has been challenged to develop innovative ways to create structures to recognize informal learning of both teachers and students.

As a 21st Century Library Media Specialist, part of what I strive to do is to serve as an instructional technology resource for both educators and learners.  In my new position here at New Milford High School, I face the exciting challenge of reaching as many staff members as I could at one time.  I threw around many models in my head until I finally found one that seems right for us.   

I am proud to announce Worlds of Learning @ New Milford High School, a digital badge professional learning platform. The idea behind this platform is to provide professional learning with a pinch of gamification.  For some time now, we have been hearing about digital badges and how they can be used to guide, motivate, document and validate formal and informal learning.  In recent years, Digital Badges have evolved from what were originally static images, to a tool used for capturing and communicating knowledge. Badges can now contain critical metadata that reflects who is issuing the badge, who has earned the badge, the date upon which it was earned, and any relevant criteria for earning the badge.  Digital badges are flexible enough to be able to recognize granular skills that one acquires as well as an individual’s entire learning.   I designed the platform in WordPress using a plugin called BadgeOS  - through this plugin, I am able to easily define the achievements and organize the badge requirements. 

Worlds of Learning @ New Milford High School provides a framework to allow our teachers to earn digital badges through learning about a range of technology tools and applications.  The platform has been designed so that its resources will help to prepare our educators to fully leverage the potential for mastering digital age skills embodied in the ISTE NETs Standards for Teachers, as well as the seamless integration of technology addressed in the Common Core Standards.  After registering, teachers can earn badges by learning about a tool and then demonstrating how they have successfully integrated it into their instruction. Teachers must register to access all features of the site.   Once completing tasks and earning their badges, they can then showcase their knowledge by displaying their digital learning badges in a number of possible ways:

• By putting them onto Credly, the free web service for issuing, earning and sharing badges - Credly is a universal way for people to earn and showcase their achievements and badges. 
• By putting them on Mozilla OpenBadge.   
• By embedding them into their own sites or blogs and pushed out to their social networks. 
• The badges will also of course be showcased on the Worlds of Learning @ NMHS site.

As technology convergence and integration continues to increase generally in our society, it is paramount that teachers possess the skills and behaviors of digital age professionals. Educators should be comfortable teaching, working and learning in an increasingly connected global digital society.   The real aim of educational technology is to modernize pedagogy and to shape the education of the future. NMHS teachers will be able to take the tools presented in this platform and seamlessly integrate them into meaningful learning that addresses the standards in their respective content areas.

By flipping our professional learning, teachers will receive job-embedded coaching and will be supported by face to face, personalized support.    I will be available to collaborate with teachers on implementing these tools into their instruction as well as offering both face-to-face and virtual support and encouragement. This platform was not designed to be used as a formal evaluation tool.  Instead the purpose of this platform is to track, share, celebrate and be given credit for informal learning.

Teachers at New Milford High School document their learning journey throughout the school year so that it can be incorporated into Professional Growth Period (PGP) portfolios (that teachers present at their end-of-year evaluation conferences.  The PGP, created by our principal Eric Sheninger, was launched in New Milford High School in September of 2011.   As a result, every New Milford High School teacher has two to three, forty eight minute periods a week, to engage in growth opportunities of personal interest.  Each staff member has to create and present a learning portfolio at his/ her end of year evaluation conference.   This learning portfolio articulates how they integrated what was learned during this time into professional practice.  The badges teachers that earn will be a part of their year-long action plan goal. 

I hope that New Milford High School teachers will be able to benefit greatly from this sustained initiative because of the professional learning flexibility an online platform provides as well as it being a means to document and showcase the skills they have gained and  putting their learnings into practice in the classroom. With only a handful of badges available to be earned on the site at the moment, I will be adding to the list considerably all throughout the school year. 

Needless to say I am extremely excited about how Laura has risen to the occasion and created a model for a program that will acknowledge informal learning of teachers that is aligned to professional standards. Once we have this up and running the next challenge will be to set up something similar for students.  In the meantime please share your thoughts on Worlds of Learning @ NMHS.

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Devices Need to Support Learning

So yesterday as I was scanning the #NJED hash tag on TweetDeck I came across this intriguing image shared by Mike Marotta.  It really puts into perspective why we make many of the decisions that we do at New Milford High School as to why we decided to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative and dont mandate the use of one specific tool to support learning.

His tweet contained this message, "Dont let the device drive instruction. Let it support learning."  When it comes to educational technology I often get the feeling that the learning is often secondary.  Using technology just for the sake of using it equates to a huge waste of instructional time that could be dedicated to deep, meaningful learning. It also equates into a huge wast of money.  All to often I have seen schools put interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in every classroom or go 1:1 with very little focus on learning. 

The key is to determine what we want our students to know and let them have a choice as to how they will demonstrate and/or apply their learning.  At NMHS we place a great deal of emphasis on creating artifacts to demonstrate conceptual mastery. Technology can become a nice pedagogical fit when viewed this way.  Our motto is pedagogy first, technology second if appropriate when integrating mobile learning devices.  Another image created by my friend Bill Ferriter puts into perspective the importance of establishing learning outcomes when integrating technology as part of the teaching and learning process.

Image credit: Bill Ferriter

When it comes to technology we must always ask ourselves how will this tool support learning and allow students to demonstrate conceptual mastery. There must be more of a concerted focus on learning outcomes, construction of new knowledge leading to authentic application, and the development/enhancement of essential skills (creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, digital citizenship, entrepreneurship, media literacy, technological proficiency, communication, collaboration).  The assessment and feedback pieces are also critical. Now let me attempt to tie this back to the first image contained in this post. Technology can be a powerful learning tool if we dont focus on the one marker, but instead what we want our students to be able to do with their choice of makers to support and demonstrate learning. I welcome your thoughts on this.

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Sensible Learning

Social Media is bad and has no place in education. It is a distraction to the teaching and learning process. If students are allowed to use social media in school they will stay off task or exhibit inappropriate behavior. Worse, teachers will spend countless hours “socializing” instead of educating. This is the misguided stigma that social media carries and, as a result, it is often banned in schools. However, there are a growing number of passionate educators who have embraced social media as a powerful tool for learning. When you look at how reliant the world is when it comes to social media use these educators look like geniuses.  Take a peak at the video below.

One must get past the stigma and truly experience what this free resource can do for our schools and students to appreciate its inherent value. Social media is all about conversations that center around user-created content. When structured in a pedagogically sound fashion, learning activities that incorporate social media allow students to apply what they have learned through creation. This fosters higher-order thinking skills and caters to a wide range of learning styles. Social media tools allow educators to authentically engage students as they encourage involvement, discussion, communication, collaboration, and creativity. These include mainstream examples such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, as well as, specialized ones such as Voicethread, Glogster, Animoto, and Prezi.

Blogs are an incredible social media tool that can be utilized in a variety of ways.  Teachers can set up a class blog to foster creative writing and reflection, or as an alternative to a school newspaper.  Blogs are not isolated to just writing, students can add rich media to posts such as pictures, videos, widgets, and gadgets.  The Holocaust Study Tour blog created by a New Milford High School teacher and her students who travel abroad to Europe on an annual Holocaust Study Tour provides is a great example. School administrators can use blogs as a powerful public relations tool in lieu of traditional newsletters and email blasts.  The ability to comment on any blog increases both student and community engagement.  

In our digital journalism class students are required to have their own Twitter accounts.  They are then empowered by the teacher to promote their articles and tweet out real-time school news as it happens.  This class provides our students with experience using real-world tools that journalists rely on more than ever.  It also teaches them about how social media can be used responsibly, to support learning, and as a professional tool.

For our students that have grown up in the digital age learning needs to be relevant, meaningful, and fun. Allowing them to use social media tools to achieve learning goals and objectives, of which they already are familiar with outside of school, makes sense in the globally connected, digital world we are all a part of. This, in my opinion, constitutes sensible learning.  A shift towards incorporating social media into education provides a golden opportunity to teach digital responsibility and citizenship to our learners, an area where many schools are failing. When doing so, we must ensure that policies are in line with this change, teachers are supported through professional development on how to effectively use social media in the classroom, and parents are educated on its value.

All of this makes sense to me as an educator, parent, and citizen. What about you?

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Writing Scaffolds to Meet Diverse Learning Needs

As students work to master the complex reading and writing standards demanded by the Common Core, Mrs. Montecuollo and Mrs. Westbrook collaborated to create writing scaffolds that address the diverse academic needs of their 9th grade students. These teachers believe that differentiation is about access points. Therefore, they used four support activities (scaffolds) to address different areas of difficulty they see their students face.

Image credit: http://www.masoncontractors.org/2010/03/10/the-adjustable-scaffolding-advantage/

Scaffold 1 & 2:  Student Generated Exemplars and Writing the “Recipe” for Literary Analysis

First, Mrs. Westbrook created a task that required students to identify and interpret the underlying meaning of a piece of literature and then to make arguments about it. She began by showing a student written exemplar (Figure 1) to demystify the task and give students a concrete model for their own writing. Then students generated a list of the characteristics of literary analysis demonstrated in the example.  This strategy allowed the teachers to delineate the requirements for the task and tied those requirements to specific writing moves used in good analysis (Figure 2). It also provided clarity for targeted feedback. For example, Mrs. Montecuollo and Mrs. Westbrook could read student responses and be clear about what each writer needed to add or change in order to meet standard.

Figure 1. Annotated Student Exemplar 

Figure 2. Teaching Chart:  Rules for Literary Analysis

Scaffold 3:  Cloze Writing Technique

Another key to the success of this lesson was the third scaffold The Cloze Writing Technique (Figure 3).  This scaffold provided students with sentence starters gleaned from the student exemplar and allowed them to focus on the content of their arguments without worrying about how to begin.  As students struggled to articulate their ideas, they worried that their writing sounded “so simple” and “so elementary.” By helping students articulate their ideas more complexly, Mrs. Montecuollo and Mrs. Westbrook honored each student’s thinking. Thus, students were more willing to take a risk and push themselves from summary to analysis.  

Figure 3. Cloze Writing Technique

Scaffold 4:  Class Blogs as Formative Assessment

Finally, students posted their pieces to Mrs. Westbrook’s class blog (Figure 4). After posting the students received differentiated feedback to help revise their responses. In addition, the blog is public, so students had a real audience and real responses to reference as they worked to fill gaps in their writing/understanding/learning. In this way, these instructors maximized the learning for all of their students and ensured the class met standard. 

Figure 4. English 9 Class Blog

English 9 students blogging using a combination of their own devices, Chromebooks, and  MacBooks. 

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Learning Artifacts

I routinely speak about the need for students to produce learning artifacts that demonstrate conceptual mastery.  Knowledge often comes to us via transcribed content or artifacts, which is derived from others knowledge. These are facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles (Clark & Chopeta, 2004). Thus, artifacts are used in the learning process for creating knowledge, while in turn, knowledge creates new artifacts. With the technological tools that are at our disposal today this has become easier than ever.  Providing students the ability to actively apply what they have learned in creative ways using real-world tools is as authentic as it gets.  Even in a Common Core world this can be accomplished if teachers are given the autonomy and empowered to develop innovative lessons that push students to think critically while having them showcase what they have learned.

Learn more at Learning With Artifacts

One New Milford High School teacher continues to push the envelop in this area.  Earlier in the year I blogged about Mrs. Westbrooks use of Instrgram in her English class as a means for her students to demonstrate conceptual understanding.  Today I was super excited to see yet another one of her impressive learning activities.  For their last project,  her 9th graders had to complete a video explication of a poem dealing with one of the four themes from the year. They used the videos from the Favorite Poem Project as exemplar texts and followed the basic structure of those videos. After Mr. Pevny, another NMHS teacher, gave her some suggestions on how to use iMovie, the kids ran with it.  

It them about a week of writing, rehearsing, and creating to finish the explications. In the final versions, students spoke briefly about a poems personal significance. They then read the poem aloud connecting to the poem’s message and its impact on their lives. The major focus for their work was on making personal and original connections and on demonstrating a deep understanding of the text. Therefore, the students emphasized interpretation and the thoughtful recognition of devices that contribute to tone and theme.  

Mrs. Westbrook is pretty proud of the results.  The video below show the explication of "If" by Rudyard Kipling where one of her students even added extra thoughts to the explication with a second video because he felt he could say more. In his explication, you hear him note the personal and universal significance of the poets message and make productive and substantive points about the poets diction.  It was exactly what I Mrs. Westbrook was hoping for. 

To view the complete project that Mrs. Westbrook developed click HERE.

How are you or your school using artifacts created with the use of technology as a means for students to demonstrate conceptual mastery and learning?

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Snow Days Dont Stop Digital Learning at NMHS

The now annual Digital Learning Day was set for Wednesday February 5, 2014. The only problem was that no one told the weather gods this.  As a result, the Northeast was once again hit with a huge winter storm, which came on the heels of one earlier in the week that dumped over 8 inches of snow.  This monstrosity brought more sleet and ice, which necessitated yet another day off from school.  

Image credit: http://www.edudemic.com/

Many of my teachers had specific activities planned for Digital Learning Day. Most schools and educators that suffered the same fate as us were probably demoralized by the fact that all of their planning was for naught.  This certainly was not the case for us at NMHS. Why might you ask? The answer is simple. For the past couple of years every day is treated as Digital Learning Day as we have moved to create a teaching and learning culture rich in authentic activities where students are engaged and take ownership of their learning. Below is a rundown of activities that were planned.  I have changed everything to the past tense, as there is no doubt in my mind that my teachers will follow through with these activities.  It is just what we do at NMHS.

• All students in Mrs. Chellanis Calculus, Pre-Calculus, and Algebra I courses viewed videos, utilized interactive apps on their cell phones, and employed the Socrative app on their cell phones to learn the content, understand its real-world applications, and foster and engage in class discussion.
• Ms. Chowdhurys students had been learning science mostly through taking notes and memorizing formulas while she was on maternity leave. In order for her students to start learning through the inquiry method starting from the middle of the school year, she needed to re-teach some concepts more effectively. She found a game website developed by a Rutgers University physics education program graduate called The Universe and More.  This website has amazing games that summarize most of the kinematics unit. Students often are not willing to learn the same concept twice thinking that they already know it. These games on the website are fun and challenging, and the students really have to understand kinematics in order to improve levels. Every next level is locked until they can pass the previous level. Some students may be inclined to guess to complete a level, but after a couple levels of guessing they will find a pattern to the guessing, which is really the goal of the game. This will help set the background knowledge for students to learn the next concepts of momentum, energy, electrostatics, etc.
• The Lance held (or will hold) the first ever live twitter chat party. Jelani Rogers wrote an article about the unique ways that students are inviting dates to prom ("promposals"). She posted a request using a specific twitter hashtag asking all NMHS students to tweet us their promposal pics along with a 140 character story of how it all went down. Responses are going to be incorporated into her article next week as a slideshow. 
• Mrs. Fleming collaborated with numerous NMHS teachers.  Dr. Asa-Awuku and the engineering class worked on creating innovative inventions using the Makey-Makey kits we have in our Makerspace.  Mrs. Beiner and her students went to the media center to work on molecular gastronomy. They learned how to follow a digital recipe and then later in the week will be making their own digital recipes. Mr. Groff and his students used Mozilla Thimble and HTML and CSS coding to create vintage historical newspapers. Mrs. Collentines class used TwitterMagnets to create original, creative sonnets.
• In Mrs. Vicaris Computer Apps and Business Strategy classes she showed students how to create a website using WIX.com.
• Numerous students always have the opportunity to work on IOCS projects and their virtual courses.

So what did you do on Digital Learning Day 2014? More importantly, how have you embedded digital learning consistently into your school culture so that every day students are engaged in authentic tasks and are empowered to take ownership of their learning?

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Personalizing Learning for All Students With OpenCourseWare

Cross-posted at SmartBlog on Education.

Around this time last year I received what I thought was an odd request. Juliana Meehan, a teacher from a neighboring district, contacted me and asked if I would agree to mentor her as part of her training to become an administrator as part of the NJ EXCEL program.  Now at this time my plate was extremely full and, as a result, I was very reluctant to take on this additional responsibility.  My tune quickly changed when Julie explained that she requested me specifically because she was so inspired by the Edscape Conference as well as the transformation currently taking place at New Milford High School (NMHS).  I agreed to act as her mentor.

During our first meeting Julie explained to me what my responsibilities were as a mentor.  She then informed me that one of the primary components of the internship was to develop a project requiring leadership that would impact students at the school level.  It was at this point that the internship became an opportunity to do something that could truly transform the learning culture here at NMHS.  As we floated around some project ideas, I became fixated on ways to personalize and individualize the learning experience for my students. This is where the idea for incorporating OpenCourseWare (OCW) into Julie’s project arose, and the Independent OpenCourseWare Study (IOCS) was born.

Julie’s challenge was to develop a framework by which students could engage in the OCW of their choosing over a set time period and then apply what they had learned.  Together, we mapped out what this learning experience would look like, when it would be offered, how it would be assessed, and methods to collect data.  The most difficult decision was identifying a group of students that could help us pilot such a program.  After some thought, the perfect cohort of students materialized:  NMHS seniors enrolled in one of the “Academies @ NMHS.”  The Academies @ NMHS is a program of concentrated studies in three well-defined, career-focused areas directly connected to university majors and workforce need: the Academy of Arts & Letters, the STEM Academy, and the Academy for Global Leadership.  The program seeks to cultivate emerging professionals who exhibit the knowledge, skill, character and the work ethic necessary for success in the global marketplace. This group seemed the prime test group through which to flesh out and begin to refine the idea of IOCS.

In the early fall we had a meeting with the 50 students who were enrolled in the Academies.  We explained that their Marking Period 2 project would be an independent learning experience where they would take a course from a prestigious university such as MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or other noted university via the range OCW offerings that they would find in an online resource that we would provide.  Furthermore, they were told that, after taking the course, there would be an exposition of learning where each student would actively demonstrate new knowledge and skills that were acquired through the OCW.  They were given complete autonomy and flexibility as to how they would articulate what they learned, but they were told that there would be an emphasis on application as opposed to a standard presentation.  They would be assessed using a project-based rubric, and each student would receive one honors credit for the project.  Over the course of the marking period, students identified courses, registered through our Google form, and went to work.  An example of one standout student project can be found here.

We learned a great deal after the student presentations this past February, and were pleasantly surprised by how seriously many of the students took this learning opportunity.  

MIT OCW discovered our project through social media channels and they eventually did a case study on IOCS.  

The result of this work has been the creation of the IOCS website.  All aspects of the project—including resources and the rubric to assess student projects—can be found here.  Julie and I hope that this site will provide tools and ideas on how schools can harness the free, world-class knowledge available to individualize and personalize learning for all students.  

To learn more check out this free webinar on IOCS over at at edWeb.net.

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E learning and Canned Instruction A Contradiction in Terms

The following is a guest post by Laura DeSena.

Not all online education programs are the same. Currently, most conversations on the topic on online education are oversimplified.  Complexities must be addressed on this topic for a true critical assessment of online education to actually happen.

Image credit: http://teamblearningmodalities.blogspot.com/

The first significant distinction that must be considered for the conversation about online learning to be valid is that between synchronous and asynchronous instruction.  In synchronous or live online instruction, students and teachers log on together in the virtual classroom. This is pure -- unfiltered by reflection -- interaction and in this live setting the social element of learning is not compromised.
 The exceptional moment occurs in meaningful inspiration and encouragement in the timber and inflection of a voice, in the subtleties of harmony of thought process in synchronous time and the authentic epiphany.

The teacher cannot be factored out of the equation of learning. Teaching in the moment is quite different from the packaged/canned asynchronous learning environment -- particularly in terms of critical discourse. Canned/pre-packaged curriculum with asynchronous online education does not embrace reflection in the way that Web 2.0 tools – like collaborative sites such as discussion boards  and online presentation tools – do and curation sites  -- like Pinterest -- do.  Synchronous fosters expression and  non- pre-packaged asynchronous encourages reflection – both elements of the learning process are necessary ones. . Oversimplification of the definition of online learning is not helpful to anyone and it seems that online learning has a negative connotation that it does not deserve.

Laura DeSena is a Teacher of English at West Milford High School (NJ).   She is also the Founder of Innovations in Online Education, Inc.  You can check out her blog HERE. 

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