These conversations are intended to help parents understand the ways that technology is changing society, and therefore, changing education. Every month we watch a short video and then discuss the implications on education and learning, always with practical examples from classrooms here at ISB.
We are already looking forward to continuing these discussions again next year (with even more parents)!
The wonderful parents who regularly spend the first Wednesday of every month with us have shared some of their reasons for attending:
I want to thank Tara, Kim and Jeff for hosting us ES parents at the monthly Technology meetings this school year. WOW! It is so wonderful to be able to explore and discuss how technology is affecting us as parents, not to mention learning what our kids are doing on the IT front…or want to be doing…or shouldn’t be doing…or will be doing whether we want them to or not. I’ve learned that by understanding what is “out there” and being able to have open discussions with our children about these things (instead of ignoring it) is paramount on the parenting front! Plus it’s always great to gain insight that can help us with our daily lives…whether or not we are currently in the work force or plan to reenter it in the coming years. Thank you and I look forward to these opportunities again next year.
- Darcy Eid, Mom to Gabrielle (G4) and Elizabeth (G1)
These quick and friendly appointments have represented a valuable opportunity for me to
get more familiar with the most recent technological updates, realizing how easy it could be just trying (podcasting - I did it and now we are getting addicted to it !)
finally starting to use the various instruments we have at our disposal (Facebook - I do not hide my name anymore, just know how to use it protecting our privacy !)
get a bit of understanding of the new world into which our kids are born and immersed and have a first clue about how different their learning experience is compared with ours
I also enjoyed the formula (monthly, about 1 hour long, right after kids enter their classes) and hope you will continue offering us these useful updates.
- Raffaella Ciapponi in Ricci
I attend the Parent Technology Meetings for the light, non-filling, breakfast items that complement the coffee. Just kidding…
I attend the Parent Technology Meetings to learn what my children’s world looks like and what their future holds in the realm of technology. How can we, as parent’s, help guide our children, if we are not familiar with their world. Today’s classroom (libraries, household, businesses)…today’s world is completely unlike the one I grew up with. It is continually changing.
These meeting give me a chance to become educated about technology. I am learning what my children are doing in school, with technology. I am learning how the technology works so that I can use and understand it. I am learning the benefits of technology.
These sessions give me a place to express my lack of understanding, my apprehensions, my thoughts. I share what I feel, I ask questions and I learn from others. We come from different points along the technology timeline, depending on our age. I am able to hear differing viewpoints. This allows me to evaluate and form educated opinions about technology.
The sessions are invigorating. I may not grasp everything that I learn, but I am trying. It will make things easier, because not just their world is changing, my world is changing as well. I don’t want to be left behind.
I feel privileged to be given the opportunity to learn more about technology through these eye opening sessions.
- Rufie Harr
We hope to see you next school year! We’ve already organized a great list of topics for our monthly sessions, if you’d like to plan in advance:
September 2009: An Introduction to the Ways Education is Changing in a Digital World: an introduction to the major technological changes that are currently shaping society and changing education. We will also give an overview of all of the sessions for the rest of the year.
October 2009: An Introduction to Blogging: What is a blog? How and why do people blog? How can parents get connected to all the teacher and student blogs being authored at ISB?
November 2009: An Introduction to RSS: What is RSS? How can it help me stay connected to learning happening at ISB, as well as more personal interests (like gardening or travel)? Bring your own computer and we’ll help you set up your own RSS account!
December 2009: An Introduction to Podcasting & iTunes: What is a podcast? How and why do people podcast? What are some great podcasts for students and parents to listen to and watch? Bring your own computer and we’ll help you subscribe (for free) to podcasts from ISB and around the world!
February 2010: An Introduction to Digital Literacy: What are the new literacies for the 21st Century? How is the understanding of literacy changing in education? How are ISB students learning and using 21st century literacy skills?
March 2010: An Introduction to Social Networking: What is social networking? How are your children using social networking both in school and outside of school? How can we use social networking strategies for learning?
April 2010: An Introduction to Wikis: What is a wiki? How and why do people use wikis? What is the controversy over Wikipedia? Plus, we’ll share some examples of wikis being used for learning at ISB.
May 2010: Summer Tech Activities With Your Kids! Some great tech-rich activities you can do with your children over the summer, like: starting a family travel blog, taking control of your summer vacation pictures, finding the top 10 kid-friendly podcasts for long car trips or plane rides, or making your own summer travel video for YouTube!
Please check your school calendars for the first Wednesday of every month’s Parent Technology Coffee Morning. The more the merrier!
This month we shared interesting and interactive ways that students are telling digital stories (or reading/watching/listening to them)!
We started by introducing a web-based tool called VoiceThread. VT allows users to upload images (or video) and then record audio about that image (or video). The great thing about VT is that it’s so easy to use, and it’s web-based so the digital stories can be shared with a wider audience - parents, other classes, and collaborators around the world can even comment on (or contribute to) our work!
We shared a few examples of student-produced VTs from all across the elementary school, including this excellent project from Mrs. Rodgers grade 3 class working on Structures of Life for for their FOSS science unit: Sprouting Seeds:
We also talked about the future of reading with new devices like the Kindle. Tara brought hers in to demonstrate how easy it is to use, and how the screen design makes it easy on the eyes. Being able to take a whole collection of books on a plane or to the beach without having to weigh down your luggage is a huge advantage to all of us living overseas!
In addition to the actual Kindle, Amazon has also released a Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod Touch which allows you to purchase Amazon’s e-books online (or on your iPhone or iPod Touch) and download wirelessly to your device. The application is totally free - you just have to purchase the books through Amazon!
Although sometimes it seems impossible that we could ever stop using books for reading, devices like the Kindle and the iPhone now make it possible to carry an entire library with you wherever you go (just like the iPod did for your music library).
Finally, we demonstrated the collection of iPods donated by the PTA last May. On our ES Learning Hub iPods we have all of the audio books in our collection! We have 10 iPods available for grade 3 - 5 students to borrow (8-day loans, just like our books) after the permission slip has been signed by both parents and students. Eventually, we would also like to house our student-produced digital stories on our iPods (like the VoiceThread shared above along with other fantastic student work happening all across the elementary school). Thank you so much to the PTA for so generously donating such an exciting resource!
Thank you to all of the parents who took time out of their busy day to attend this monthly session! We so enjoy learning with you and sharing new and exciting ideas from our ISB 21st Century Literacy Team!
Our next meeting will be April 1, 2009 at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Topic: Podcasting: This session will be an introduction to the uses of podcasting in the classroom, as well as a demonstration of how you can use podcasts to teach yourself all sorts of amazing things (time to learn Thai?).
We are so excited to be approaching our second Starbooks event of the school year! Please follow the link to RSVP for our exciting event: http://tinyurl.com/Starbooks2
When: Thursday, March 5, 2009 from 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm Where: The ES Learning Hub Why: To celebrate a love of reading
Basically, Starbooks is an evening event for all students and families in the ES to come to the Learning Hub and celebrate reading through a variety of fun activities. In the past, we have had over a hundred people attending! This is a great way to connect with other families around a love of reading!
We have several activities planned for our upcoming evening:
Author Baskets: Curl up with a book from one of your favorite authors in the Reading Zone!
Poetry Corner: Dive into poetry and enjoy creating your own poem in the Project Zone!
Reading and Technology: Explore some of our excellent technology resources to support reading and literacy in the Tech Zone!
Each family will have the opportunity to rotate through each activity over the course of the evening.
The timeline of our evening will run as follows:
6:30 – 6:40: Welcome and Introductions
6:40 – 6:55: First Activity
6:55 – 7:10: Second Activity
7:10 – 7:25: Third Activity
7:25 – 7:30: Closing and Thank You
Last week we had another great Parent Technology Coffee Morning. This time around we talked about the power of social networking, not only for students, but also for parents!
We started by watching the Common Craft video: Social Networking in Plain English:
The video prompted some interesting discussion about the hidden connections we all could discover with social networking. We talked about:
The fact that international school families move from country to country regularly, and online tools, like Facebook, enable our students to stay connected with friends from one school to another. Whereas when we were in school, we would have had to stay in touch via long-distance phone calls, students today can stay connected for free (or the price of your internet connection) using tools like Facebook.
Being able to stay connected with friends from previous schools helps students feel more at home in new locations and helps alleviate some of the stress when moving from a favorite school or city to someplace new.
In addition to being able to stay connected with “old” friends, we also talked about the potential for social networking tools to connect us with new friends - people in places that we’re moving to, schools that we’re going to be attending, or even places we just plan to visit. The best way to find out about a new place is to talk to someone who’s already there.
Finally, we talked about using social networking tools to stay connected with family and friends in our home countries. Quite a few parents (along with Tara and Kim) shared stories about reconnecting with old friends “back home” and keeping up-to-date much more regularly with family and friends.
For the last part of the session, we demonstrated the various ways to adjust your privacy settings on Facebook so that only the people you want to see your updates, will be able to see them. We talked about creating “friend lists” to differentiate the different groups of people you might be connected to, and offered advice on keeping students safe online by adjusting their privacy settings. For a quick overview, read this article: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.
Thank you to all of the parents who took time out of their busy day to attend this monthly session! We so enjoy learning with you and sharing new and exciting ideas from our ISB 21st Century Literacy Team!
Our next meeting will be March 4, 2009 at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Topic: Digital Storytelling: This session will be an introduction to the uses of digital storytelling in the classroom, as well as a demonstration of some of the digital storytelling tools that our students regularly use (for example VoiceThread). We will also have a hands-on session with our new iPods in the ES Learning Hub (thanks to the PTA for donating all 10!), and Tara will bring in her Kindle so we can all experience the future of reading!
Ms. Bellone’s amazing grade 4 class would like to share their fabulous stories with you!
With the help of our 21st Century Literacy Specialist, Ms. Cofino, this class has brought their stories to life by taking their written pieces from their Writer’s Workshop unit and turning them into digital stories using Garage Band and iMovie. Now that their movies are digital, Ms. Bellone was able to publish them on the video sharing website, YouTube, on a channel just for her class called Team Bellone (no personally identifying information has been shared).
Being able to share their work with a global audience is one of the most motivating and engaging ways to help students get excited about writing. Most of these stories have already been viewed over 50 times! How many of your writing pieces have been viewed by 50 people around the world? And that’s only the beginning!
This digital storytelling project also introduced these wonderful grade 4 students to two new technology tools: Garage Band (used for recording your voice) and iMovie (used to combine audio and visual elements). Both of these tools are standard on all Apple computers and are just right for elementary school students to learn more about audio and video editing.
Being able to hear (and see the audio input of) their own voices telling their story helped the students understand how important emphasis, emotion and tone are in their speaking and presenting voices. Having the opportunity to practice this type of animated speaking is great preparation for both face-to-face presentations as well as further technology-based work.
Learning how to combine audio and video input into one smooth, exciting digital story, is a great way to tap into students’ creativity and higher order thinking skills. They had to figure out just how long every picture should be so that each one perfectly matched to their previously recorded audio. Many students even had the time to add a title and credits to make their story more like a movie.
Becoming active producers of creative content in a digital format is a critical aspect of 21st century literacy and an essential experience for all students at ISB. This project is part of the foundation that students need to understand the potential, impact, and appropriate use of technology tools for communication and creativity.
It’s hard to believe this was their very first experience with digital storytelling! We’re already waiting for more amazing stories from Team Bellone!
We had another great Parent Technology Coffee Morning last week! We started by watching another video called Information R/Evolution, by Kansas State University professor, Michael Wesch:
The video demonstrates the different ways that we are able to access, use and create information in the digital age. Professor Wesch focuses on the needs of our students learning in this digital world, compared to our own experiences with more traditional management of paper-based information. As you might expect, this video prompted some interesting discussion. Here are a few highlights:
First and foremost we discussed the need for students to learn how to filter the massive amounts of information that we all have at our fingertips for everything from accuracy to bias to relevance to date of publication.
We talked about the need for students to be not only seekers of information, but also content creators. Their world revolves around creation (think YouTube), we need to be providing these same kinds of experiences in the classroom to teach them how to appropriately use these tools for educational purposes.
Jeff shared some effective searching strategies for using Google more effectively. You can watch a short video of similar (plus more!) very easy, very effective searching tips directly from Google, or download this one-page help sheet.
We also spent some time introducing our new library catalog system, Destiny. Tara shared some special tricks on how to do a visual search (perfect for our younger learners), as well as how to search the pre-screened websites (organized by age-level appropriateness) called WebPath Express, that comes as part of the Destiny catalog.
Thank you to all of the parents who took time out of their busy day to attend this monthly session! We so enjoy learning with you and sharing new and exciting ideas from our ISB 21st Century Literacy Team!
Our next meeting will be February 4, 2009 at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Topic: Social Networking: This session will be an introduction to the uses of social networking in the classroom, as well as a demonstration of some of the social networks that our students regularly use (for example Club Penguin).
We have updated our current library catalog to a new and improved system called Destiny. Destiny has tons of fantastic features for our students, including:
Book covers shown in search results (like on Amazon.com)
Related web searching, sites grouped according to grade level (when you search for a topic, the catalog will not only find our books, but also age-appropriate websites)
Rating system using stars (coming soon)
Book reviews to be authored by students (coming soon)
Check out the new and improved library catalog (from home or from school) here: http://eshub.isb.ac.th
We hope you will enjoy all of these new great features!
We had another excellent discussion at our Parent Technology Coffee Morning this week. This time around we watched two videos about the way students learn today, which is drastically different than the ways we learned when we were in school.
The fist video, A Vision of Students Today, was produced by a Micheal Wesch, a university professor in the US, with his Digital Ethnography class.
Although this video directly addresses university students, many of the points raised were equally relevant to our younger learners.
This video was also the inspiration for the second video we watched, A Vision of K-12 Students Today, which specifically addresses the needs of primary and secondary school students.
Both videos helped prompt a discussion about new and exciting ways to engage our 21st century learners here at ISB.
We talked about:
How quickly students are able to learn and work with these new tools. Although it may take longer for adults to use them (for example to take notes and highlight and add graphics), it’s very often the quickest and easiest way for our students to accomplish their tasks. Providing methods for students to use these tools within the classroom environment is critical to their engagement in their learning.
Along with embracing new tools, it is equally critical to remember that we need to achieve balance. Running and playing with other children (in the real world) is an important part of socialization and relationship-building. It is becoming a bigger task for parents to ensure that their children enjoy a successful balance between both worlds.
Although it is important for students to have basic knowledge, it is in the application of this knowledge to actually create something new that students can truly express their understanding. It is important for schools to provide multiple formats for the application of knowledge (some including technology, and some emphasizing other aspects of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intellegences) in order to provide balance, and to reach and engage all learners.
As usual, we had a lively discussion and we hope you will join us next time! Our next session is:
Wednesday, December 3rd: Information R/evolution: This session will be an introduction to the different ways that information is shared, stored, managed and found in our web 2.0 world. We will also offer a brief overview of the new library catalog, Destiny.
Did you know you can download any videos you find online from KeepVid? All you need is the website address (URL) for the video you would like to download, and this website create a web link you can right-click on to download the video!
ISB subscribes to a number of fantastic reading resources, and one of our favorites is Tumble Books!
Tumble Books is an online collection of electronic books (e-books), animated, talking picture books from a well-rounded selection of authors. We used Tumble Books in the Tech Zone during our first Starbooks evening and are proud to announce that it is now available from home through our ISB subscription.
Check the ES Learning Hub bulletin board for the username and password!
We had quite a lively discussion about online safety and responsibility this morning at our monthly Parent Technology Coffee Morning. We watched two US public service announcements about online safety and responsibility that we regularly show to students here in the ES to prompt discussion about appropriate behavior online.
Both videos prompt great discussions for students, parents and teachers. Some of the interesting points that came up during our discussion today were:
One of the most powerful ways we can help children understand about the need for responsible behavior online is to have these kinds of open conversations both at home and at school. Keeping the lines of communication open is critical to help children understand how to stay safe online.
Although technology is changing so fast, it’s important to note that parents already have all the skills and life experiences needed to guide their children through their online experiences. Basic common sense that applies to real life (don’t talk to strangers) can also be transferred directly to the online world. Although children may be more quickly able to use online tools, they still need the thoughtful guidance of their parents to help them determine what is appropriate behavior.
When these videos are shown at school (in grades 3 - 5, if/when a class begins an online project) we develop questions to help us make the best choices when we share and learn online. The questions that students develop demonstrate such thoughtful and deep understanding of online behavior that it is clear that these experiences are a part of their daily life. One question always comes up in every class: What will other people think of me if they see this?
We also discussed “red flag” warning signs for online safety. Here are a few things to watch for: anyone asking to meet your child in person, anyone asking to send your child anything through the mail, anyone asking to give your child a gift or to get specific contact information.
“Red flag” warning signs for cyberbullying can be: a child who usually loves to be on the computer suddenly doesn’t want to go anywhere near it (this could be a sign of being bullied), a child who is constantly online, snickering or laughing or shouting at the computer (could be a sign of a child acting as a bully).
As usual, we had a fabulous discussion. Thank you so much to all of the parents who take time out of their day to attend these monthly sessions.
Our next sessions will be:
Wednesday, November 5th: A Vision of Students Today: This session will be an introduction to the ways in which students learn differently than their parents did.
Wednesday, December 3rd: Information R/evolution: This session will be an introduction to the different ways that information is shared, stored, managed and found in our web 2.0 world.
Did you know you can download any videos you find online from KeepVid? All you need is the website address (URL) for the video you would like to download, and this website create a web link you can right-click on to download the video!
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