Name: Tod
Web Site: http://www.watchyourobobber.com/
Bio: I live in Tianjin, China with my wife Tatiana and son Gabriel. I am the NPK-12 IT Coordinator at International School of Tianjin. I advocate teaching and learning with technology that supports inquiry and action in otherwise unobtainable ways.
Posts by tbaker:
- Respect Yourself. I will select online names that are appropriate, I will consider the information and images that I post online.
- Protect Yourself. I will not publish my personal details, contact details or a schedule of my activities.
- Respect Others. I will not use technologies to bully or tease other people.
- Protect Others. I will protect others by reporting abuse and not forwarding inappropriate materials or communications.
- Respect Intellectual Property. I will suitably cite any and all use of websites, books, media, etc.
- Protect Intellectual Property. I will request to use the software and media others produce.
- give Twitter a try
- set up Google Reader
- subscribe to a Diigo educator’s account
- sign up for Flickr
- pull them all together on their Blogger blog, 4 Core Elements
- no screeds (Save those big ideas for meetings.)
- no spam (Yes, I’m in your address book. But that doesn’t mean I want to help you find your lost coffee cup.)
- send short, action-oriented messages (At work, email is a GTD tool.)
- Improve teaching and learning.
- Organize our school community.
- Promote our school.
- Gives first-time visitors a sense that they have been in our school before.
- Evokes a feel for our host country as well.
- Designed by finalsite.
- Comprehensive, informative, and current information supports cooperation.
- Inspires visitors to return frequently.
- Includes photos, videos, and text created by a variety of people.
- Distinguishes us as a unique school in Tianjin.
- Brands our school as family friendly, IB World School.
- Gives visitors an online store (coming soon) to buy school merchandise.
- One-stop repository of inquiries and actions throughout the school.
- Teacher sites (coming soon) provide space to reflect and connect.
- Amplifies our group communications and promotes change.
Hyperlinked Writing is The Most Powerful Writing
October 31st, 2009Hyperlinked writing or notebook writing — which one do students spend more time on?
Photo by Sancho Papa.
Cross posted on Watch Your Bobber.
It was just a side comment in Wesley Fryer’s Wordpress Saves Lives podcast earlier this week, “Hyperlinked writing is the most powerful writing.” But I’ve been riveted by this idea since I heard Wesley say it.
Why is it the most powerful? A hyperlinked writer connects with readers who care. Ideas bring them together, not spaces. This authentic audience influences writers because it can interact with them by commenting, like in blogs, and contributing, like they do in wikis. This helps writers to think deeper, write clearer, and refine ideas. In short, hyperlinked writing is the most powerful because it creates a community of learners. Notebooks struggle to connect people.
If hyperlinked writing is the most powerful, then it should be the most plentiful. But is it? I asked one team of teachers this week which kind of writing do your students do the most of notebook or hyperlinked? It was notebook. Why is that? Is it an access to technology issue? Or is it how we approach teaching and learning? I don’t know but I want to learn why, because I believe student learning improves when they share their writing with people who care. To do that well it needs to be hyperlinked. Soon one of our grade six classes will join This I Believe, a global project that brings out the students’ writing and speaking skills. I doubt they understand the influence this experience is about to have on them. I am not sure I do either, but I am very eager to find out. Will it prove that hyperlinked writing is the most powerful writing? I’m counting on it.
Technology for goin’ hero
September 26th, 2009If teachers are not careful and deliberate, technology tends to be used as a getting things done tool. That’s good but not good enough.
Photo by woodleywonderworks.
Teachers and students need to use technology to learn and do the things they could not without technology. My six-year-old’s favorite protector of Earth, Ben Tennyson, gets it right. He uses his Omnitrix for “goin’ hero.”
For personal productivity or goin’ hero, how does tech tend to be treated in your school?
AUP Driven by Vision not Protection
July 31st, 2009Note: Originally posted on Watch Your Bobber.
Here is my draft of an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for our elementary school. I’m eager to share it with our school community because I like the way it portrays the way we approach teaching and learning. I hope it shines light on our vision.
I hope it does not build a great wall of protection. I see an AUP as another force driving a school’s vision. A vision for literacy and an approach to teaching and learning should drive such policies…not fear. The need to protect children, although very important, follows the need to build the right kinds of literacy skills. If we do that, the digital citizenship (safe, responsible, and legal uses of technology) will fall in place.
This AUP needs to hear what parents, students, and teachers think. What are your thoughts?
ELEMEMENTARY AUP (DRAFT)
Introduction
Our students use technology to learn. Technology is essential to facilitate the creative problem solving, information fluency, and collaboration that we see in today’s democratic societies. While we want our students to be active contributors in our connected world, we also want them to be safe, legal, and responsible. This acceptable use policy (AUP) supports our vision of technology use and upholds in our students a strong sense of digital citizenship.
How We Use Technology
The integrated information technology program at IST develops in our students the literacy skills they need to contribute in a connected world. We use technology to facilitate creativity and innovation. We use technology to support communication and collaboration. We use technology to extend research and information fluency. We develop in our students a sound understanding of technology operations and concepts. We believe technology can be transformative and we encourage students to use technology to do what they could not otherwise do. We create a safe online environment for everyone. Filtering software keeps unwanted sites off our computers. And adults supervise our students’ computer activities at school.
Our Hardware and Software
Our students can access the Internet via both wired and wireless connections that cover the entire school campus. We are a PC and Mac school with more than three hundred computers distributed throughout mini labs in shared classrooms, on portable labs, and stand-alone computer labs. Digital projectors and interactive whiteboards in both the elementary and secondary schools facilitate group viewing and discussions. Elementary and secondary students each have access to a standard suite of software to support their learning needs.
Being a Digital Citizen
In the elementary school we use information and technology in safe, legal, and responsible ways. We embrace the following conditions or facets of being a digital citizen.
Consequences for Violations
I understand and will follow this Acceptable Use Policy. If I break this agreement, the consequences could include suspension of computer privileges and/or disciplinary action.
I also understand that my school network and e-mail accounts are owned by IST and are not private. IST has the right to access my information at any time.
Student’s Name (please print)
________________________________
Student’s Signature
________________________________
Date _______________
As the parent or guardian of this student, I have read the Acceptable Use Policy. I understand that technology is provided for educational purposes in keeping with the academic goals of IST, and that student use for any other purpose is inappropriate. I recognize it is impossible for the school to restrict access to all controversial materials, and I will not hold the school responsible for materials acquired on the school network. I understand that children’s computer activities at home should be supervised as they can affect the academic environment at school.
I hereby give permission for my child to use technology resources at IST.
Parent or Guardian’s Name (please print)
________________________________
Parent or Guardian’s Signature
________________________________
Date _______________
Sharing Policy for Students and Parents
The spirit of technology education is one of sharing. We create blogs, podcasts, videos, wikis, and other social media, but we don’t create them for one person. We create them to share with the class, the school, and the school community and, perhaps, the world, because we understand that a global audience drives achievement. We might share our work on websites like www.voicethread.com, class blogs, and wikis. These are teacher moderated sites, where students can collaborate online with teacher supervision. Student full names and personal information are always kept confidential and are not shared online.
Will you allow your students’ created content like videos, writing blogs, audio and video podcasts, which may include their images, to be shared on teacher moderated sites similar to voicethread, blogs, and wikis?
Initial next to the appropriate box:
Yes, it’s okay to share my child’s media on teacher moderated sites __________
It’s only okay to share my child’s media with the school community __________
It’s only okay to share my child’s media if I approve it first __________
No, please do not share my child’s media outside of class __________
Resources
Doug Belshaw’s Acceptable Use Agreements, Definitions & Digital Guidelines
Kevin Jarrett’s School AUP 2.0: The Definitive, Ever-Changing Guide
David Warlick’s School AUP 2.0
Harvey Barnett’s Acceptable Use Policies
Miguel Guhlin’s Acceptable Use Policy DRAFT
Gordon Dahlby’s AUP’s (Acceptable Use Policies) for students; for staff (Discussion)
Sylvia Martinez’s What message does your AUP send home?
Tony Baldasaro’s AUPs, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll
Creating Learning Communities in the Classroom and Online
March 19th, 2009Can learning communities in the classroom find similar success online?
Yesterday, I saw how two teachers at IST, Sam and Chad, create learning communities with their grade 4 students. They invited a group of teachers from BISS, Rego, TIS, and IST to attend their upcoming EARCOS Teachers’ Conference 2009 workshop presentation here at IST.
It is common for EARCOS teacher workshop presenters to practice their presentations in front of an audience at their home school. This not only gives the presenters valuable feedback about their presentation but it also gives those of us who cannot attend the conference an opportunity to participate.
Sam and Chad shared with us a picture of students and teachers as co-learners who evaluate learning activities through four lenses: engagement, empowerment, experience, and evidence. If any of those four conditions cannot be met, they reconsider their approach or abandon the learning activity all together. If they can be met, they move forward. In their presentation, they showed us how these four core elements gave students and teachers alike enough support to develop personal interests while helping others develop their own interests (engagement); take ownership of learning and contribute to the learning of others (empowerment); stay in and step out of comfort zones (experience), and reflect on individual and group experiences (evidence). Through photos and stories they unfolded a picture of a community of learners.
Sam and Chad intend to extend their approach to creating a community of learners in the classroom to a community of learners online.
Can they apply their successful approach, the four core elements, online as well? I think they can. In an online setting students can feel engaged and create their learning experiences. Going online can expose them to people outside of our school community who have valuable knowledge and ideas. Sam and Chad have the right spirit. Now need the right social tools.
So I recommend that they
With these social tools they can create a personal learning network online that will strengthen their community of learners in the classroom.
Read Mike Romard’s 12 Easy steps to build your Personal Learning Network and Personal Learning Networks are Virtual Lockers for Schoolkids by Vicki Davis for more details and discussion related to PLNs and learning communities.
Sam and Chad have an inspirational presentation to share, so if you are attending this EARCOS conference you’ll want find a seat for Creating a Community of Learners during session 2.
And if I were going I would be sure to check out Kim Cofino’s workshop called Connecting Classrooms across Continents: Planning and Implementing Globally Collaborative Projects.
Using Email to Support Collaboration, Learning, and Productivity
March 2nd, 2009
mailboxes, originally uploaded by dcJohn.
Last week my inbox was hit with a handful of poorly written Help me! messages from students who lost things like an Mp3 player, a goalkeeper glove, and an electronic dictionary. It’s challenging enough to effectively manage the messages in my inbox without it functioning as a student lost and found center. So I sent out this message today to all students in grades 3-12 via email and to the secondary students again via their daily bulletin.
Dear students,
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your IST email.
IST email: How can I use this powerful communication tool effectively and ethically?
DO
Use IST email to share information related to teaching and learning.
Create compelling subject lines.
Begin your messages with a greeting.
Write clear messages with formal language.
Sign off your messages with a closing.DO NOT
Use IST email to ask students and teachers to help you find something that you lost.Best regards,
Tod Baker
Grade 3-5 students will hear this message again this week when they have class with me. (NPK-2 students do not have school email.) And we’ll work on crafting a well written and organized email message.
Using email to support collaboration, learning, and productivity needs to be taught. Students just don’t pick up on that on their own, not even secondary students. But where should this skill be taught? Just in IT class? When it comes to using email effectively and ethically, who is responsible for teaching these skills and holding students accountable?
Make Them Laugh While They Give You Money
November 13th, 2008[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeaEczMry_4[/youtube]
You want to make them laugh while they give you their money. This is Andy Dorn’s approach. For IST’s latest Community and Service project, a Movember fundraiser for students in our sister school in Tibet, he created this promo video and shared it with our school community during both the elementary and secondary school assemblies, on his website, and YouTube channel. It has generated a lot of buzz, cash, and scruffy looking men around the school.
One of my projects this year is to help design and deliver effective educational technology professional development (ETPD) for the staff, faculty, and administration at IST. For guidance, I turn to ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•T) and Performance Indicators for Teachers.
Andy’s latest work reflects standard 3.c.
Model digital-age work and learning. Communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats.
Andy’s video, blog, and YouTube channel are giving this project a life beyond the halls of our school. His message is reaching the entire school community effectively and efficiently. We are seeing technology as a leadership tool being used to build communities that take collective action. And despite my chia pet look and itchy face, it’s great fun.
Not Another Paper and Pencil Committee
November 3rd, 2008Yesterday, in his keynote address at the EARCOS Administrator’s Conference, Alan November reminded me of a shift that I have been struggling with. He argued that our discussions about teaching and learning need to focus on literacy not technology. And about technology committees, he asked “Do we form paper and pencil committees?”
I am a member of what was the Information Technology Committee at my school last year. This year it transitioned into the Information Literacy Committee. So, it’s no longer about technology. Now it’s about literacy development and technology’s supporting role. That shift sent the committee in a new direction and we eventually found ourselves sitting at the table discussing our purpose and goals. After two meetings, we crafted the following agreement.
Purpose
To design and deliver effective educational technology professional development (ETPD).
Goals
Technical Support To establish a technology infrastructure that allows for the effective use of technologies and digital learning resources.
Ongoing Professional Learning To differentiate our educational technology professional development to meet the goals of individual teachers and address the day-to-day realities of teaching with technology.
Like those you-are-here maps, the clear purpose and goals showed us where we were and where we could go. But I could not yet see how to get to literacy or improved student learning. So, I turned to one of my most trusted resources – the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I pulled out an article that appeared in the June/July 2008 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology, ISTE’s flagship magazine, and found my answer in the article A Professional Development Menu.
“Technology infusion without professional development (PD) wrapped around it just doesn’t work, and can backfire. If frustration sets it, the digital divide becomes wider between the students who have a teacher who understands how to integrate technology and one who does not.” – Kimberley Ketterer
Our Information Technology Literacy Committee is heading in the right direction. I can drop my concern that this was turning out to be another paper and pencil committee, for now I see how our focus on technical support (we have a lot of shiny new technology this year) and ongoing professional learning (how can we use technology effectively and productively) can narrow the digital divide between students, create a more equitable access to the curriculum, and improve learning for all of our students. Now we have to make it happen.
Email is a GTD Tool, That’s All
September 11th, 2008Last Friday night. End of first week of school with students. Out on the patio celebrating. Waiting for our Indian food home delivery to arrive, an argument breaks out over the proper improper use of email at school.
My stand on email
About half of the crowd agreed me. What do you think? How should we use email at work?
Website Will Change our School Community
August 24th, 2008Just developing a website feels just like dating — together all the time but, you know, you can walk away when you want to. Now going live with that website feels like, you know, getting married — it’s a commitment. I have been coordinating the development of our new school website and yesterday I realized that it was time for our 10-month relationship to go to the next level.
Saddled with anxiety and excitement, I launched the new IST website early in the evening yesterday. Today, I feel a deep sense of relief and a determination to make this work. Here’s a look at the site’s new homepage and how it intends to change our school community.
Website Homepage, originally uploaded by todbaker.
Goals
Design
Content
Marketing
Teaching & Learning
Essentially, the website intends to improve teaching and learning, but as you can see it will change our school community in many ways.
I will be presenting the development and coordination of this website at Learning2.008 next month. Hope to see you there.
Website Homepage Old, originally uploaded by todbaker.
This is a screenshot of our old website homepage.
Tagging in Beijing and the Fail Whale: The Power of Open Content
July 20th, 2008Why should we put our work on the Web? Give it a Creative Commons license so people can share it and remix it? Why? What’s the use? Attribution? What for?
I’ve struggled with questions like these for years. Whether asking myself or responding to a colleague, my answers struggled to establish the value of sharing creative works beyond the peers in the classroom or school. I knew the value was there. I just couldn’t articulate it well.
But now I have two real-life stories to tell. Looking for a light read this drowsy Saturday morning, I chose The Story of the Fail Whale by Sarah Perez. Sarah captured my attention with her recount of the Fail Whale’s rise to stardom. But her story about the unknown Fail Whale artist’s work turning into a social media brand really woke me up. In the beginning, the artist of the Fail Whale, Yiying Lu, did not profit from Twitter’s use of the Fail Whale. Twitter grabbed the image from iStockPhoto and did not link to her. The more Twitter crashed the more Fail Whale grew in popularity. Strange, isn’t it? Anyway, a homemade Fail Whale t-shirt appeared at a party one night. It gained a lot of attention, so after the party the owner contacted Yiying Lu and encouraged her to open a Zazzle story where she could sell her work. She did and fans tweeted its arrival. What ensued, Perez describes as a “torrent of social media cooperation” that uplifted Yiying Lu and her work to high levels of recognition that gain her profits from sales and, most likely, some future design work.
Yiying Lu put her creative work out there for free. Eventually, it became a social object. The art work and the people who rallied around it built her success. Yiying Lu made it happen by sharing her work on the Web.
The story of Yiying Lu resembles that of JIm Gourley and his CCTV photos. Jim is an avid photographer, writer, and inspirational member of our school community. On December 4th of last year, Jim began to take photos of the CCTV construction project.
CCTV Headquarters Bldg., Beijing, China — December 5, 2007 Photo by Jim Gourley.
He now has thousands of photos in his Flickr collection called Beijing and Architecture. You can see his CCTV photos in its set called Cite Chaillot. He tagged them and opened them to all with a Creative Commons license. Eventually, some architects interested in the unique CCTV Headquarters rising above Beijing neighborhoods discovered Jim’s photos. In his blog post Footnoted, Jim seems reluctant to tell us “This obsession of mine has seemed to have gotten some notice. A few weeks ago the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine (CAPA), Paris, contacted me to use 120 of my photos of the CCTV Headquarters project in their upcoming exhibit “Dans la ville chinoise,” which includes an exhibition on Chinese contemporary emerging architecture. The show runs from June 18 to September 19, 2008.” Link
This is another example of a person’s creative work becoming a social object, helping to develop a community, and fostering creativity. How? He put it on the Web and leveraged the power of crowds.
The next time I’m challenged to defend a decision to put creative work beyond the classroom walls and bulletin boards, I can talk about the Fail Whale and the CCTV photos. They’re not Sputniks, but these successes can dispel the fear and doubt and cause change.
Note: I also posted this on Watch Your Bobber.
Great opportunities walk away
July 1st, 2008I entered my poster session last night intending to share the story of four students searching for sustainable solutions to the water problem in the Changmu village in the Qinghai province of China. In fact, I did tell visitors how these students are using collaborative technologies to learn how to approach this problem and implement a sustainable solution; how they came to learn about what life is like for villagers without easy access to water for their daily needs; how technology is set to transform their learning into a real-world problem-solving experience. And that’s what bothers me this morning. There was a lot of telling but little questioning.
The crowd flows into the poster session gallery last night at the end of the opening keynote speech by James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds.
I now see that I let great opportunities walk away from me. I shared my story with visitors, but visitors had related stories to share as well. I wish I had had the insight to draw them out last night. Next time I will do what I didn’t do this time. I will interview the visitors. In our conversations I will ask more questions about who they are, where they are, and what they do. I will ask about their experiences and get their opinions. Their stories can only enrich my own.
My time at table 36 last night challenged me to tell my story in compelling ways. Sometimes I succeeded and people, like Gary from CP Software, shared with me some fascinating solutions, based on the process of transpiration caused by solar heat energy, to the water problem in Changmu. Sometimes I stumbled, like when Dr. Idit Caperton, the closing keynote speaker, interviewed me on camera. My incoherent rambling will probably end up on the cutting room floor.
During my poster session last night, Dr. Idit Caperton interviews me about GIN ‘n Water.
I realized last night, that I was getting as much from presenting as I was giving. I thank all the people who stopped by last night. From you I learned to tell our story in compelling ways, to consider our experience from different perspectives, and to inquire more. I hope we can meet again and collaborate to help students take advantage of technologies that can transform their learning.
