Celebrating Teachers Growing as Leaders

Teachers growing as leaders amaze me! I celebrate so many educators with whom I am priviledged to collaborate and the extraordinary steps they continue to take to integrate technology, and as a result grow as leaders. Teachers, preservice teachers, and university instructors together are doing innovative things with technology to engage students.

This week Guy Trainin and I presented at two conferences. At the American Educational Research Association Conference (AERA) in Chicago we shared research conducted with five student teacher/cooperating teacher dyads working with a coach to integrate new literacies in elementary classrooms. These dyads collaborated in various ways to engage their students with technology. We propose a Triarchic Model of Teacher Preparation to support cooperating teachers as well as student teachers as they collaborate to integrate new literacies. These teachers continue to lead in their schools and district.
technology, incorporating ideas as quickly as the coach shared them. We propose a

At the Nebraska Educational Technology Association Conference (NETA) in Omaha Guy and I helped educators with self-directed professional development for 21st century teaching; using blogs, creating online PLNs, and locating online professional development resources and opportunities. It was exciting to see some of the teachers with whom we work attending and presenting at this conference!

I would like to share some of the ways these dedicated, resourceful teachers demonstrate leadership:
1. mentoring a preservice teacher integrating technology
2. attending a graduate course to learn what their preservice teacher is learning about technology integration
3. writing book chapters on using Minecraft in the classroom
4. organizing a student reading fundraiser to purchase a class set of iPads and a cart for the school
5. attending #edcampOmaha to connect and learn with other educators
6. inviting us to videotape their classroom as they used technology to invigorate their curriculum
7. writing and receiving grants to purchase iPads for their classrooms
8. setting up a Twitter account and participating in a #edchat
9. enrolling in TEC21 to grow and lead in their schools
10. presenting at Tech EDGE, NETA and ASCD conferences to share their innovative teaching ideas and student projects
11. creating a KidBlog as a student teacher and documenting 250 posts and 480 replies from motivated students!
12. presenting as a university student how they integrated technology into practicum LAST semester for THIS semester's literacy methods students
13. assigning preservice teachers to create a screencast in place of a lesson plan
14. dedicating hours of unpaid time to learn new apps and websites to create lessons that merge content, pedagogy and technology in exciting ways
15. locating additional devices to bring into the classroom so students can have one device for every two children
16. empowering children to play with new apps, choose the best app to complete an assignment, and share with the whole school!
17. planning Tech Tuesdays for their grade level classes
18. organizing teacher technology share days Wednesdays after school
19. collaborating with other teachers to have first graders write poetry and share multimodally
20. teaching new technologies to cooperating teachers as a literacy practicum student

There are many more examples to share another time, but now I am curious how are YOU growing as a teacher leader as you integrate technology!

"What Connected Educators Do Differently"

This week I began reading "What Connected Educators Do Differently" by Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul and Jimmy Casas. I learned about this book from teachers on Twitter, commented that it looked interesting, was invited to join an online book discussion #TBookC, ordered the book, and began learning! I enjoyed seeing how questions were posted in a Twitter book discussion similar to an edchat. This became what James Paul Gee defined as an affinity space where I met other educators interested in connecting professionally and supporting each other in the process. It held me accountable for not only ordering but also reading the book within a two week period.


Here are some of the ideas I am taking away from this book, well worth the read if you are trying to intentionally build your Professional Learning Network online.

1. You can connect to thousands of educators around the globe who are giants in our profession
2. Connected educators are more energized and positive than ever about teaching & learning
3. Each author found the Twitter platform to be easiest entry to building their PLN
4. Being connected means give and take, not just take
5. Taking time to reach out to global educators makes you better at what you do for kids!
6. Connected educators actively seek new opportunities and resources to grow professionally.
7. You get to connect with other equally energized teachers, at a time when amost half of all new teachers leave the profession within 5 years (Graziano, 2005).
8. Everyone has time to respond in Twitter's 140 characters so it's the go-to!
9. Authors suggest starting by making 4 Tweets a day (ask a question, share a resource, respond to a tweet, and share a bit about you.
10. You should care about your numer of followers, not because its a popularity contest, but because it allows you to make the greatest impact.
11. We need to be lifelong learners and model lifelong learning for our students! #studentswin

I challenge you to set up a Twitter account and begin to follow some key educators. The book suggests 5 new people to follow in each chapter! Consider joining the #TBookC chat below! Have fun connecting! You can follow me at @FriedrichLaurie!

Choice, Collaboration, and Gratitude!

This week was transformational for me as a social networker! I attended my first #EdCampOmaha and grew as a Tweeter!

I followed the Twitter feed prior to the event. I could tell there was an energy from great people with great ideas involved in this event! When I Tweeted that I was excited to attend my first Ed Camp, four people replied to me with messages of welcome. As I arrived at the event people helped helped me include my Twitter handle on my nametag and understand how the Ed Camp worked. It was great to see so many teachers I work with attending the event so we could learn together. I found sessions to focus as much on collaboration between educators as on content. Everyone was up and moving, learning and sharing ideas. In addition to meeting amazing teachers, I also met a new human robot named Nau and learned how it helps special ed students learn needed skills. By the time I left I had added many people to my Twitter PLN, and many now followed me also. And when I got home I was able to access session notes via the website, and I Tweeted and emailed ideas I shared to teachers I met. It was a growing time for me and I look forward to the next Ed Camp!

Since returning, my Twitter Professional Learning Network has continued to grow! Following the proposed stages of a Twitter User I describe my growth during this week as going from AHA! to Obsession and now it is a Part of Life for me!

Ten highlights I share that made a difference for me in this Twitter growth process:
1. Attend professional events where you collaborate and share your Twitter handle.
2. Follow up with educators you meet at conferences and with whom you may want to collaborate.
3. Share your Tweets widely. I used #edchat in addition to #nebedchat to connect with a wider audience.
4. #Follow and Learn from these Educators. My name was listed in a group of amazing educators and distributed by an amazing collaborator @ShiftParadigm who connected me with many, and I followed up!
5. It's important to thank people for following you! Connect on a personal level.
6. When you see something of interest reply to a Tweet. I got invited to join a book discussion!
7. Write a blog to share original ideas, in addition to retweets, and Tweet the link.
8. Enjoy meeting leaders from around the world! I connected with #aussieED and was wished a "G'Day" to start my morning!
9. Download Tweetdeck.Twitter.com to view your #follows in neat columns.
10. Have fun!

Immediacy of New Literacies Integration

Today I was inspired by our literacy preservice teachers! Just yesterday Kelsey and Ashley, preservice teachers whom I coached in new literacies integration last semester, came in to the current Literacy Methods class to present with me. Our goal was to share a variety of apps, websites, and technology tools that these practicum students could integrate into their Literacy Research Unit.

Using an effective Prezi format, Kelsey Schuettler broke down her new literacies integration by subject area to show how she used various apps and websites on her iPad during Literacy Practicum. Timing was perfect as she demonstrated how she used Popplet Lite and Inspiration Maps in guided reading to record ideas and foster comprehension. This week the current practicum students are creating online graphic organizers and using them in their practicum classrooms so now they have even more classroom examples. Kelsey showed how she used iMovie to create teaching videos on topics such as similies. And for review, Jeopardylabs.com proved to be a successful teaching and learning tool.

After creating a digital story herself in the TEAC 259B technology course Kelsey had her students create ebooks using Little Story Creator to change the ending of a current story. Kelsey honestly told about some apps she tried to use with students that did not work exactly as she had hoped they would. One example occurred as students created a Padlet.com board as a whole class. With everyone posting at the same time students had a difficult time reading because the screen kept moving down. A highlight included in the thematic unit she created and taught was empowering students to publish and share animal research and poems on Google docs. Current students were very interested in how long the process took of checking out laptop carts and publishing. And at just the appropriate time Kelsey introduced students to GoNoodle.Com for a movement brain break!

Ashley Rocke created an Educreations screencast demonstrating how to set up a KidBlog classroom. These step by step directions clearly showed each step in the process using screenshots. She shared ideas of how she had students blog at KidBlog.com to publish their friendly letters in her Thematic Unit. The amazing statistic that every student was successful in blogging during one writing period motivated current preservice teachers to consider blogging as a way of documenting research in their units. Noting that they would have the ability to approve all posts before they are added to the blog lessened the concerns of these preservice teachers. They could teach important social media skills in addition to publishing writing through blogging.

Motivated by these presentations and filled with technology ideas, within 24 hours our current practicum students implemented these ideas in their teaching. One preservice teacher created a KidBlog for her classroom and today she taught students and her CT how to blog! They will be documenting their research learning and process in the coming weeks!

Another preservice teacher created a Prezi to teach vocabulary to Kindergartners today! She effectively created one slide per vocabulary word demonstrating word, picture, sentence. Then she taught children actions to learn the words with meanings.

Yet another practicum teacher created an Educreations screencast to teach the concept of Goods and Services in Unit Studies. She showed the video to teach the concepts, stopping it after questions to encourage student discussion.

And in another classroom a practicum teacher teamed with his cooperating teacher to teach 2nd graders how to create Haiku Deck presentations. After conducting research using print and digital sources, these children created a storyboard to organize their findings. Today they turned their paper planners into very professional presentations where they searched for images to convey learning.

Many ideas are now being considered for the Literacy Research Units from those ideas presented. I continue to be amazed at how quickly teachers can implement technology ideas when they participate in hands-on sessions where teaching ideas are included with use of the apps/websites. I am excited to watch even more new literacies skills taught to children as they demonstrate their learning using multimedia. I would love to know how you integrate new literacies in your classroom!

What I Learned from a 4th Grader

This week I coached as a literacy practicum preservice teacher taught a creative vocabulary lesson. Students worked in groups of three using Trading Cards from ReadWriteThink.org to create vocabulary flash cards. The preservice teacher modeled how to locate the site, create the card, search for and save an image to insert, and email the Trading Card to their classroom teacher. It was amazing at how many of these new literacies skills these 4th graders were already proficient.

When selecting and saving an image one boy explained to me why he wanted to save the image as a PNG while his group members wanted to save as JPG. To explain why, he taught me a new word: "lossy" (los-ee). As this child explained, JPG's save pictures using "lossy" to compress the image making
it smaller to store but changing the look of the image. This process is permanent and can blurr the edges of a picture and make it appear pixilated. Although PNG's take up more space, they are an excellent file for Internet photos. They are "non-lossy" files that compress the image without changing the quality. I was impressed with this child's knowledge not only of how to save an image, but in what format the image should be saved and for what purpose. To make sure that I completely understood this new word "lossy" I did a little online research of my own.

Dictionary.com: "A term describing a data compression algorithm which actually reduces the amount of information in the data, rather than just the number of bits used to represent that information. MPEG and JPEG are examples of lossy compression techniques."

Wikipedia.org: "'Lossy' compression is the class of data encoding methods that uses inexact approximations (or partial data discarding) for representing the content that has been encoded. Such compression techniques are used to reduce the amount of data that would otherwise be needed to store, handle, and/or transmit the represented content."

In addition to the new vocabulary word I learned from this 4th grade technology expert, I was also impressed with the process and products created by the 4th graders in a relatively short class period. Not only did they learn new vocabulary, but they worked with words deeply as they located a picture to express the word, defined it, located a synonym, used it in a sentence, and accomplished all of this using online tools.

This preservice teacher was a risk-taker in the most positive sense of the word. She modeled the process of creating one vocabulary Trading Card. Then she empowered students to collaborate to create their own, while she and I walked around the room assisting as needed. We saw students helping each other and thinking critically as they collaboratively decided which websites, which images, which format to use. Now she would take their emailed Trading Cards and post them at Edmodo so students can access them to review vocabulary in class as well as at home. She expanded the classroom beyond the walls, and all this during a lesson where she was being formally observed by her cooperating teacher.

This preservice teacher understands the necessity of teaching new literacies and knows that students are capable of accomplishing much in a short time when provided with laptops/iPads/devices connected to the Internet. Everyone was a winner in this situation: preservice teacher taught a great lesson, cooperating teacher learned a new Trading Card website, coach learned a new vocabulary word, and students learned vocabulary words plus new literacies skills. Be a risk-taker for your students!

Innovation in Education

This week I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Milton Chen, senior fellow at the George Lucas Educational Foundation sharing innovative models of education at Edutopia.org. With a key understanding of the power of connecting media with education, Dr. Chen is the former director of research for Sesame Workshop and assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. GLEF transforms K-12 education to include creativity, innovation, inspiration, project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and access to new technology. This is the kind of school that I would like to work in and to which I would send my children.

Dr. Chen inspired me with a simple question: "What's your definition of a great school? Make it short and measurable!" This question has had me thinking all week. What is it that creates a great school and how can I state that in a single short, measurable phrase?

I considered Dr. Chen's 6 Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools: the thinking edge, the curriculum edge, the technology edge, the time/place edge which Chen describes as learning "any time, any place, any path, any pace," the co-teaching and co-learning edge, and the youth edge. Any great school gets students thinking deeply, using a curriculum that focuses on solving problems that matter in their communities and the world. Project-based learning can provide the format for students to ask important questions, search for answers, create projects that solve problems, learn from experts in their community and throughout the world, collaborate with others, and share their learning globally using readily available technology tools. Teachers empower students by putting mobile devices into their hands to change the world.

One of these edges that I have explored more deeply is the idea of co-teaching and co-learning. A great school today has access to information through a variety of sources: school leaders including teachers, principals, and paras who monitor and further learning; local experts from the community who visit classrooms to guide learners; global experts who join classrooms via video conferencing; and parents who share time and expertise in a variety of areas. When these experts co-teach the results can be greater than when any of them teaches alone. Together these co-teachers can challenge and support students by pointing them to appropriate Internet locations to inform their specific questions as well as answering student questions from a variety of standpoints.


Accompanying this idea of co-teaching Dr. Chen also emphasizes co-learning. In his presenation at the E. N. Thompson Forum, Chen compared how we used to call it cheating if you asked someone else about a question, to what we today call collaboration as we encourage students to bounce ideas off of each other, each exploring different aspects of the problem studied. Great schools encourage co-learning to prepare students for careers where they may collaborate with people from around the globe to solve problems that effect the entire planet.

So what makes a great school? At this point I say: A great school is one that empowers students to communicate, collaborate, and learn for a lifetime; encouraging innovation through co-teaching while challenging co-learners to solve problems and effectively use digital tools to share results globally. What's your definition of a great school?

Creative Cooperating Teachers

This week I discovered a very creative plan by a Kindergarten teaching team to include literacy practicum teachers in their planning and teaching. This team created a written form noting each teaching day by weeks of the semester. During team plan time they decided when practicum teachers will observe, team-teach, and then begin teaching the various subjects. This scaffolded plan builds upon the previous experience of literacy practicum teachers. First, they observe the way their cooperating teacher teaches the subject at this grade level. Then, after observing one or two lessons the cooperating teacher and preservice teacher team-teach that subject. Finally, the preservice teachers begin teaching that subject and they continue to teach it for the duration of the semester. Following this plan preservice teachers will be teaching all day for the final five weeks of the semester, allowing them to fully incorporate their literacy research unit and preparing them well for student teaching.


The semester teaching plan incorporates the technology projects these preservice teachers will be creating as part of their accompanying digital literacy course. By building into the plan a digital story, screencast, and a graphic organizer these preservice teachers will have real time content to teach as they prepare these projects. And they will actually get to teach using these digital tools. For example, while the preservice teachers are observing writing, they will share their digital story as an example of how children can publish their writing. And the following week while preservice teachers observe Unit Studies they will present their screencast teaching the vocabulary in this lesson. Next they will create a graphic organizer to use with children as a pre-writing activity. In the weeks following hopefully preservice teachers will help students create these projects to support and demonstrate their learning. Each technology project will be used directly with children to teach digital literacy skills, and both cooperating teacher and preservice teacher grow their teaching repertoire to include technology-integrated strategies. Last semester both cooperating teachers and preservice teachers noted that both teachers learned from each other about teaching methods and technology integration.

When I observe these dyads team teaching I see great benefits for all:
1. Cooperating teachers have an extra set of hands to work with students.
2. Preservice teachers are supported in technology set-up, questioning, and teaching strategies by their seasoned teacher.
3. Children receive individualized assistance and experience deeper discussions as both teachers ask questions and record responses.

In addition this teaching team organized for their three preservice teachers to plan a unit together and each teach it in the classroom prior to planning and teaching the literacy research unit required in their methods course. This offers opportunities for collaboration of preservice teachers with the guidance of their cooperating teachers. Planning the curriculum topic for their required units in advance provides resources and ideas preservice teachers can incorporate into their unit as they plan it throughout the semester.

When I visit with these three preservice teachers each is so excited about their practicum experience! They feel valued and empowered by their cooperating teachers and thankful to be part of such an inspiring grade level team. They know what they should focus on because they know when they will begin teaching that subject. Perhaps this model the Kindergarten team shared with me will inspire other cooperating teachers with ideas to make the literacy practicum the best possible experience for the preservice teacher, cooperating teacher, and especially the children.