Coding Fun with 

Thimble & Piskel 

For my Web Literacy project, I chose Participating with the project #allthestickerz. Working with the Participation tasks on the Mozilla Web Literacy Map provides opportunities to practice the 21st Century skills of problem-solving, communication, creativity, and collaboration. 

The #allthestickerz activity emphasizes coding, composing, connecting, evaluating, open practice, remixing, synthesizing, sharing, and contributing.

The project works with two open source web applications, Thimble (https://thimble.mozilla.org/en-US/) and Piskel (http://www.piskelapp.com). The pre-set code and directions are in Thimble and the real fun is in Piskel where you get to design your very own pixel art. Here is link to my published project https://thimbleprojects.org/climb3mtns/261594/. Students can create more than one Piskel art to add to the pre-set code.

We will be using this project in various classrooms for an end of year activity in CTE, (Career Tech Ed) classrooms and a few Math classrooms. Using this type of project exposes students to coding and provides them the opportunity to understand what coding is and experience it first hand. Many students find this type of learning beneficial in helping them decide if they are interested in coding for a career. Others appreciate it for the fun and creativity it provides. 

To Code or Not to Code

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My Opinion Stands

In reading the two articles, Kids Need To Learn Digital Literacy-Not How To Code, (Larson, 2014) and Code Literacy: A 21^st-Century Requirement (Rushkoff, 2012) my opinion stands with no, we do not need to teach our students how to code. What we do need to teach ALL of our students is the importance of how to work with technology and the important difference between learning to code and learning about code. (Larson, 2014). The analogy used comparing the care and maintenance of a car as opposed to rebuilding the transmission as a requirement to learning how to drive is very relevant to coding and learning technology today.

Mitch Resnick’s TED Talk (Resnick, n.d.) explained that being able to express yourself with technology is fluency. He equates browsing, texting, and gaming as being able to read but not write. Coding in this sense should be incorporated into our classes for engaging projects to draw on prior knowledge and enforce learned content. 

The California Common Core State Standards for writing grades 6-12 define four areas that students should understand and be able to do. They are text types and purposes, production and distribution of writing, research to build and present knowledge, and range of writing. (Kirst et al., 2010). I list these as a small sampling of the standards to relate back to my recommendation above stating that coding can and should be used to reinforce prior/learned knowledge.

What we do need to teach our students is the basic technology skills to understand the devices, software and communication we produce with (not just use) daily. Computer Science courses that encompass these skills and include Web Development, coding and more should become core curriculum rather than infused electives.

Lastly, I would like to qualify my opinion with my many years of experience as a network specialist and CTE instructor of computer repair and networking certification tracks and a technology support and trainer of staff and teachers. We do not need to learn to code, we need to learn drive and maintain the car.

Kirst, M. W., Straus, I., President, V., Burr, S., Cohn, C. A., Holaday, B., … Williams Jack, J. O. (2010). California Common Core State Standards English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Retrieved from http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf

Larson, S. (2014). Kids Need To Learn Digital Literacy—Not How To Code - ReadWrite. Retrieved April 24, 2017, from http://readwrite.com/2014/09/08/learn-to-code-digital-literacy/

Resnick, M. (n.d.). Let’s teach kids to code. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6LbV6bqaE&t=27s

Exploring Media Literacy in the Digital Age

Fact, Opinion, and Bias

In this lesson, students will experience the reality of fact vs opinion and the bias that can easily take place when reporting an event.

There will be two events that take place in the classroom:

Event #1 Three students will perform a roll play in the front of the class. One student will be sitting at a desk reading a book with a set of keys under the chair. The second student will walk into the room, pick up the keys and walk out of the room without any interaction between the two students. Student number 3 will videotape the event.

Event #2 Three different students will perform a second role play. One student will be sitting at a desk reading a book. There will be a closed notebook on the desk. Student number 2 will walk in the room and “snatch” the notebook off the desk and walk out of the room. Student number one will look up at the student after he snatches the book but does nothing. Student number three will videotape the event.

Create: Students will now play the role of news reporters. Assign Event #1 to half the room and Event #2 to the other half of the room. Using Google Docs/Draw/Slide or https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp each student will create a news headline and 2 to 4 sentence story of what they just saw. Students will have time to add some visual content or color to make the story look appealing or newsworthy.

Ask several students to share their headlines and text with the class.

Now review Fact and Opinion

Fact is something known with certainty that can be objectively verified. A journalist covering a news story is sent out to gather facts - who, what, where, when. The journalist is not meant to add his/her own meaning to the facts but rather to write down or broadcast everything they see in great detail. Facts are descriptive in nature and can be supported by evidence.

Opinion is belief or conclusion not necessarily substantiated by positive knowledge or proof. This is where the person relaying the story guesses, speculates or fabricates the details about what happened by interjecting his or her own interpretations or judgments. (Strongly held preconceived opinions are referred to as bias).

Analyze: Watch the videos without commentary, to remind the class of what actually happened.

Ask these questions:

What opinions were included?

Did anyone write that the keys or notebook were lost or stolen?

Did anyone report the feelings or emotions of either student?

Did anyone report that individuals were good, bad or misguided?

That the student was going someplace specific with the keys?

Did anyone design their story with visuals that show opinion or bias?

Explain how personal bias, past experience, stereotypes, or a desire to sensationalize contribute to the blurring of lines.

Discuss the consequences of presenting opinion as fact. Does it matter? Do we care? Why?

Explore: Compare to what could be reported in a critical news event.

Lesson from MediaLit Lesson Plan Archive, Did you see what I saw?
Lesson modified to add a second event and visual creation to analyze opinion/bias in media representation. http://www.consortiumformedialiteracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=12&Itemid=24. Retrieved April 20, 2017

Exploration of 
Literacy Elements

-Joanne M. Glantz

The basics of traditional literacy are the ability to read and write content and to engage in communication including graphical and auditory. Digital literacy has connections and pulls from multi-skills and modalities. Traditional literacy “consumes” information, sound, video, and learning where digital literacy “creates” information, sound, video, and learning.

21^st Century teachers and students, will need to develop the literacies of information described: Locating and filtering, sharing and collaborating, organizing and curating, creating and generating, and reusing and re-purposing (Summey, 2013)

Students should learn in multimodalities, gathering, processing, collaborating, sharing, and creating. By developing these skills rather than rote learning, students will be able to adapt to change.

In order for this to happen, teacher’s expectations must be that students own their learning and to facilitate the learning as much as possible. Administrators expectations will allow for teachers to take risks, explore, and learn with their students. Students with highly developed digital literacy spanning the emergent literacies (Summey, 2013) will be college and career ready.

The obstacles that I see in this process are the testing practices, both local and state mandated. Administrators and teachers focus on the traditional literacy methods being tested using technology as a substitution tool prefaced in the SAMR Model. (Kathy Schrock, 2011). Until we change the testing practices to measure mastery of skills, critical thinking, and effective communication, we will continue to struggle with digitally illiterate graduates.

Kathy Schrock. (2011). SAMR - Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything. Retrieved March 18, 2017, from http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html

Summey, D. C. (2013). New Literacies in a Digital World. Developing Digital Literacies: A Framework for Professional Learning.

Redefining Information Literacy to Prepare Students for the 21st Century Workforce

Robert Monge & Erica Frisicaro-Pawlowski

This reading couldn’t be more timely for me. We have identified a need to create a standard lesson plan for doing Internet research. We want this lesson plan to be available across all the curriculums and not just for ELA writing. Building a bridge between traditional and digital is not the only message here, but bridging between scholarly and work environment/classroom disciplines, information literacy (IL) skills are critical.

As defined in the text, there are three types of learning in a professional environment: Formal, Non-formal, and Informal. (Monge & Frisicaro-Pawlowski, 2014) For sake of this review, we will consider the professional environment as the various curriculum students will study in secondary.

Students and teachers depend on standard Google search and some Web 2.0 tools for citing. Originally, we were going to develop a standard lesson with Google Advanced Search, Scholarly, citing lessons and information on how to search the available databases purchased by the library.

After reading this article, we are going to customize lessons to fit the three types of learning and match more closely to career IL. The librarian and I, hope to work with the teaching staff to create guidelines for each of the various disciplines (p. 73). By working with the teaching staff they have by-in and they see why it is important to teach these skills.

We will be focusing on the recommended inquiry-guided learning strategies of Problem-Based Learning and Challenge-Based Learning (Monge & Frisicaro-Pawlowski, 2014) p. 69. Students learning how to search and discover legitimate sources while apply problem-solving and critical thinking skills will make their learning more significant and applicable to carry into the workplace of the future.

The Basics of Data Literacy

In reading The Basics of Data Literacy (Bowen, M. and Bartley, A., 2014) it was apparent to me why this chapter was chosen for an introduction to the essentials of digital literacy. The authors make it very clear that Science is a probabilistic endeavor (p.4) and data literacy is essential to science literacy (p.3).

Data literacies discussed in this chapter were open-inquiry, higher-order thinking skills, drawing conclusions, and messy data. I was particularly interested in the example provided with the dispersion (scatter) of data around averages. Because science in schools often draws conclusions on averages, (Bowen, 2014) this method of examining date by standard deviation offers a more in-depth analysis of data and the opportunity to draw more accurate conclusions.

This has a profound impact when relating to a conclusion of health decisions and social safety, such as cancer treatment or structural material deterioration rates and many other life threatening decisions made daily from data analysis.

Works Cited

Bowen, M. Bartley, A. (2014). The Basics of Data Literacy. Arlington, VA: David Beacom.

Encourage The Heart

                                      Recognize Contributions

There were so many suggestions and ideas in Chapter 10 of Encourage The Heart, it was difficult to pick just one. 
I settled on the value of quality recognition with the "Take Action" of linking recognition and rewards with performance outcomes so that only those who meet or exceed the standards receive them (Kouzes & Posner, 2012, p.298). 
When it comes to technology we should have clear goals/standards that need to be met in the delivery of digital lessons. Teachers that meet or exceed these standards need to be recognized with rewards that enhance their technology skills even more. There are so many rewards that can be offered from electronic devices for the classroom, upgraded laptop, to paid professional development of their choice. Who wouldn't want to win an iPad or better yet a trip to ISTE!!

Remain Humble and Human

I love that Chapter 12 listed Practice, Reflect, Remain Humble and Human and best of all, ended with a message of Love. 

"Being humble is the antidote for hubris." (p. 341) Hubris was considered a character flaw in Greek storytelling and is certainly one today. We all fall prey to self-confidence from time to time, so this reminder was critical. 

My personal Take Action for this one is to continue to read my daily devotional first thing in the morning, which always seems to have the right message for the day ahead and reminds me to not only be humble gentle and patient, but grateful as well. It's amazing how God works that way!!

Here is today's devotional. See how that works!!

Tech Leadership - Taking Action Part II

Enable Others to Act

-Structure Projects 

To Promote Joint Effort

(J. Kouzes & B. Posner, 2012) 

-Joanne M Glantz

Ah yes, another collaboration project. Just what teachers were looking for. We all feel that anxiety when we are tasked with yet another "thing" to do.

This chapter had so many personal, heart touching, goals for fostering collaboration that it was difficult to pick just one.

I did settle on "Structure Projects to Promote Joint Effort" because it sparked the process needed to get teachers sharing technology ideas and experiences across the large campus we work at and not feeling pressured to do one more task.

My idea is to start a Twitter Chat at Madera South High School.  As mentioned, it was difficult to select just one goal so you will see a few others surface as well. We need to create a technology-driven common goal for all teachers and that is to share and support each other with innovative apps that transform a student's learning experience. Being innovative and trying new things is risky and doesn't always work, so we need all the ideas, experience, and support we can foster.

We will begin having a Twitter Chat at noon on Thursdays. It will be promoted through e-mail and the use of #MUSDSecondary. Teachers will be encouraged to just watch as the more Twitter experienced folks take on the challenge. Teachers will then pair up with the active Tweeters and start participating. The chat will take on the Q&A numbered format and the sharing of ideas and fostering a growth mindset will be the theme.

This idea has many other methods to promote and build on, but to keep this blog short I will sum it up here. Goals that this project can foster include, building trust, sharing information about yourself, and reciprocity to mention just a few. To quote from the book, "By supporting norms of reciprocity and structuring projects to reward joint efforts, you enable people to clearly understand that it's in their best interest to cooperate." (p.239).

I see this project as a no pressure approach to foster collaboration and build global communication skills.

MUSD Professional Development - A Progressive Model

Madera Unified Education Technology Support

A Progressive Model

-Joanne Glantz

Madera Unified School District has a very progressive technology support structure. Four years ago the technology department was split into two. Infrastructure and hardware/software installation and support are covered by the Technology Support Department and instructional technology support is covered by the Educational Technology Department. The Ed Tech department is made up of fifteen (15) credentialed teachers that are pulled out of the classroom. We are commonly referred to as TOSA’s (Teachers On Special Assignment).

We collaborate together mostly by elementary group and secondary group. The secondary group was chosen based on subject areas of expertise. We have an English, Math, Social Science, and CTE teacher. We are lacking a Science person but there are plans to hire and this would be the criteria.

This model supports the effective practices mentioned in the video¹, having the true expert next door matching needs and expertise together. We don’t just support the “how to do” the tech, we work with the teachers to integrate it and pull from our collaborative strengths.

One of the areas I see lacking in our department is a more structured approach to our support delivery. We are assigned to school sites and support based on teacher needs. We are extremely busy every day but it seems to be “as needed” rather than planned. To sustain the much-needed integration of technology mentioned in both the video and the articles, we need to structure our support to include integration prior to lesson implementation on a regular basis with modeling, collaborative instruction delivery, and teacher follow-up.

¹[Sunnylands] (2014, Oct. 6),Professional Development - 2014 Educational Technology Summit, [Video file], retreived from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAq2KnUbUQ

Inspiring Action

A QQTP on:

 "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" -Simon Sinek

QQTP - Quote, Question, Talking Point

This quote cannot be ignored: 

"People don't by what you do; they buy why you do it." It could be added to the title of the video.

Additional powerful quotes:

"Inspired leaders and organization....think, act, and communicate from the inside out."

"The goal isn't to do business with everybody who needs what you have; the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe."

"Hire people who believe what you believe."

"He [Martin Luther King] did not go around telling people what needed to change in America; he told people what he believed."

"We follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to."

Questions:

• What happens when we have a leader we don't believe in?
• What happens when our organizations beliefs change due to change in leadership?
• How do we motivate students to believe in us as teacher-leaders?

Talking Points:

• Golden Circle: You know what you do. You know how you do it. Do you know why?
• The Law of diffusion innovation - innovators; early adopters; early majority; late majority; lagers. Where is your classroom in this curve?
• Think, act, and communicate differently.

Leadership Call          To Action

Reading leadership philosophy and stories of grand success seem to make being a great leader easy; just read and do. This weeks assignment is the "DO" part.

Model The Way - Set the example

I can't think of anything more important for a leader than to "Set The Way". As we evaluated the powerful, influential leadership of David, we see how a leader sets the way and everyone follows. His obedience to God and loyalty to his people set the example for all. He was consistent in his actions. David practiced, Live The Shared Values (Kouzes & Posner, 2012) daily.

Implementation Plan:

As an Instructional Technology Coach I have the opportunity and responsibility to set the example everyday with teachers. How you spend your time is the single best indicator of what's important to you. (Kouzes & Posner p. 96) Being in the classroom assisting teachers to use technology tools to drive student learning is not only important to me, it's a passion. To see a teacher who has no confidence in their own technology skills, turn around and understand they don't have to know it all and they can facilitate, fail, try again and let the student teach them, is what's important to me.

I will be spending at least 70% of my time in classrooms assisting teachers in digitizing lessons and preparing instruction that enables students to guide the learning process.

Inspire A Vision - Enlist Others

Enlisting others is very important for an Ed Tech Coach. You need to have a shared vision with your teachers to be able to work with them. I also realize I can't do it all myself and I have the unique opportunity to experience awesome teaching skills daily. Not every teacher needs a coach.

Implementation Plan:

My action to enlist others will be to implement what is called, The Pineapple Chart (Barns, Gonzalez-Boss. https://cultofpedagogy.com/pineapple-charts/). This method of sharing promotes pride in what teachers have to contribute. It shows that I listen to what they say by incorporating their input.(Kouzes & Posner, p. 153)

Challenge The Process - Experiment and take risks

Introducing technology in the classroom for most teachers is the definition of experiment and risk taking in education. 1:1 classrooms require a shift in the learning and a shift in classroom management.

Implementation Plan:

Kouzes & Poser (p. 210) suggest to use small wins to get things moving. This has been my strategy for this year and paved the way in getting Math teachers using devices up to 60% of the time in their classrooms. They still love paper and pencil, but at least students are getting a shot at conceptual learning with Desmos and Khan Academy on a regular basis. My goal is to have 100% of the Math teachers using these tools on a regular bases and implementing some project based learning (PBL) to re-inforce.

A Successful Vision for Technology

Successful Technology Leadership Vision

Reflecting back on the reading and my notes to answer the question: "To what extent have the technology leaders at my school been successful in setting a vision for using technology for learning?" I would say that our vision is not a written, publicized vision but rather a developing, personal growth and supportive vision.

I particularly related to the article by Levin and Schrum (2013) using the systems approach to analysis the implementation of various technology rollouts. Over the past seventeen years in educational technology, I have played a major roll in every technology rollout at our secondary schools beginning with the Digital High School Grant in 2000. In their research they examined the implementation as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle by stating:
   "Taking a systems approach means that all parts of the system have to be addressed in concert, and acknowledging that adding one component (such as technology) to a system disturbs other parts of the system."(p. 30).
Levin and Schrum (2013) define the eight pieces of the puzzle as: vision, leadership, school culture, technology planning and support, professional development, curriculum and instructional practices, funding, and partnerships (p. 36) I highlight these in bold because for me, they became the overarching theme of the reading for the week. Unlike adding a parking lot, basketball court or portables, which can affect certain aspects and departments of a campus, technology has a dynamic, transformational change that requires reframing institutional assumptions. Owen & Demb (2004).

To answer the question of our vision as technology leaders and the growth changes we have experienced, three areas stand out; Tools for school improvement (Levin & Schrum, 2013), building capacity (Owen & Demb, 2004), and sharing leadership (Owen and Demb, 2004). Our Information Technology (IT) Department split three years ago to Educational Technology and Information Systems. I remained on the IS team for two years and this year recently joined the Ed Tech staff. Our District is building capacity by increasing the number of devices, doubling and specializing the support, and weaving us into the Curriculum and Instruction support throughout all departments.

Reading, "The Leadership Challenge" (Kouzes & Posner, 2012) has encouraged me to change my approach for providing professional development. Where you spend your time is the single best indicator of what's important to you. (p. 95) This value direction has encouraged me to spend more time in classrooms with teachers, assisting them to implement technology tools to drive student learning. Relating this to John Maxwell's 5 Levels of Leadership (2013), being with teachers will strengthen my relationships and give me the momentum it takes to advance to Level III.

Through this weeks reading, I have a greater awareness of the need for our department to bond together by creating a vision statement that reflects the Superintendent and Director's values with our personal values leading to the creation of shared values for a meaningful statement.

What Defines Leadership

The Word Cloud of Leadership

Pondering the definition of leadership instantly brings to mind all the exceptional (and not so exceptional) leaders I have worked with and for. It then reminds me I, as a teacher, have led leaders in my classroom. Leaders are all of us, daily interacting in our capacities to be the best we can be and serve others.

The numerous text and videos we reviewed this week brought a profound awareness to the attention we all have now on leadership as we watch our government transition from one leadership style to a completely opposite leadership style.

Peter Northhouse examined leadership with traits, mentioning a person can't change out their traits.
He listed six:
Intelligence
Confidence
Charisma
Sociability
Determination
Integrity
I found these traits are all prevalent in the leaders I both admire and respect and also leaders I don't feel comfortable with; I don't consider leaders I would recommend or want to work with. This leads me to believe traits, while a constant, are not necessarily an attribute which determines quality of leadership.

The Leadership Challenge; Kouzes & Posner, video and text provided leadership practices mentioning they have been consistent over time.
The five practices of exemplary leaders:
Model the way
Inspire a shared vision
Challenge the process
Enable other to act
Encourage the heart
"Leadership is not about who you are; it's about what you do."

In the video Leadership Skills of Tomorrows Leaders, various scholars and leaders gave input as to the skills of a leader. There seems to be a common theme to the skills mentioned, personal values, and visionary skills.
Skills mentioned:
Trust
Mindful - notice new things
Character
Empathy
Devotion to others
Curiosity - inquisitive
Relentless
Desire to build capacity around them.
And my personal favorite was "They always explain why. Identify what."

The resources we used to research the question, "What defines leadership" were plentiful with positive and encouraging, traits, skills, practices, and more. Not only did the reading and research help me identify these qualities in others, they have sparked an awareness in my actions as I deal with staff and students daily.