Ready, Set, GO!

Last week was an exciting, extremely busy simultaneous culmination and beginning. We have prepared for the launch of a one-to-one tablet program for the last 1-3 years depending on how you define the start date which for some is when we renewed the discussion and for some is when the board said yes. The launch occurred this week when we put 450 tablets into the hands of 7th, 9th, and 10th graders. We also met with all the parents explaining our excitement about giving the kids a personal learning environment, a tool that paired with the right curriculum could help us all become a community of learners. With those events we move from imagining the possibilities to fulfilling them. We move to “GO Time!” and collectively we have all cylinders firing for what is sure to be an interesting ride.

Cylinder 1 and 2 - School Culture and Leadership

Two of the cylinders that have to be firing properly if a one-to-one program are to succeed is school culture and leadership. School culture is directly impacted by school leadership. They aren’t one and the same, but if leadership and culture are at odds you probably have a classic Collins’ case of people sitting in the wrong bus seats, particularly the driver’s seat. Our bus is in order and it is headed towards change. We might actually have created a culture that is embracing and welcoming change. Our Upper School Head opened the first faculty meeting explaining her concept of “Leader’s Intent” and pledged to bring clarity to our mission by unifying all the initiatives (Best Practices, Brain Research, Learning Style Differences, Classroom Instruction) of the past years as we move forward with one-to-one. She told us we had to embrace the change and likened it to an approaching rainstorm/flood –you can’t stop it but you can prepare for it and learn to swim or drown. She asked me to speak about all the curricular work we had done this summer and gave me 20 minutes. My talk was about the faculty’s work and helped to make the case that collectively we are moving forward. I concluded with this short video and also assigned them homework which included watching a 10 minute segment of Ben Zander and responding on a blog. Their responses are consistent with a culture of change and if you read nothing else, these might be worth perusing.

The school’s new tagline, “Changing Lives, Changing the World”, was introduced.

It was used to introduce conversations about

· changing to trimesters,

· modifying required courses to 2 of the 3 trimesters to allow students greater choice in what they studied,

· shifting to a 12 day rotation to allow for more possibilities than our traditional, restrictive schedule allows

· rethinking assessment- both how we grade and what we assign

The college counselor got up to give a short talk on school culture and began by saying he wanted to summed up the tone of the meeting. He had downloaded David Bowie’s Changes as a ringtone and played it for us. The meeting ended with our division head sharing a cartoon with us and then by being clear and firm about her Leader’s Intent:

"MICDS has all the resources to set the pace and the tone for 21st century education. That is my intent, to make the MICDS Upper School one that is known for its innovative, exciting curricular program that truly educates and energizes students to be their own teachers for the future."

Our leadership is supporting a culture of change and acknowledging and demanding that the change be intentional about what students must learn and the best way to help them learn in this information rich, rapidly changing world.

Cylinder 3 - Curriculum

Much of my presentation during the faculty meeting was actually about curriculum work that the faculty did to prepare for a one-to-one environment. Curriculum is the third cylinder and is equally as important as leadership and culture. It requires a willingness to be creative, to take risks, and to think about possibilities much like Ben Zander does.

It is also best designed if Essential Questions are properly identified and Wiggin’s and McTighe’s principles from Understanding by Design are utilized.

Collectively we have done this and the results are exciting. In general, faculty are embracing the use of Dyknow and OneNote as student note taking tools. They have collaborated with each other using blogs and wikis to build assignments and rubrics and in using those tools have identified places to leverage their collaborative power in the classroom with their students. Math teachers heard Darren Kuropatwa’s message and started their own blog to discuss student portfolios and assessment and have set up scribe blogs to use with their students. History teachers seemed to hear Julie and Vicki and several new ning networks have emerged. Alec Couros' impact on us seems to have emerged as an ongoing discussion of the use of media in our lessons and a greater willingness to explore a variety of tools. David Jakes left Humanities teachers paying attention to the research and writing skills that must be in place if digital storytelling is to be meaningful and productive learning experience. He also has us thinking about the many places maps can enhance student learning. There is an infectious attitude of exploring creative ways of redesigning curriculum- and make no mistake, it is about the curriculum not the technology. However, we finally seem to understand that leveraging the abundant new toolkit that technology affords us will allow us to create remarkable, innovative learning experiences that transcend the traditional definition of school. We will become not a school, but a community of learners and if we can continue to embrace change, the possibilities are limitless and powerful!

We believe so strongly that an innovative curriculum is the key to making one-to-one successful that our training units for one-to-one are deeply rooted in what we are calling integrated, interdisciplinary units based on essential questions that flow from the advisory themes for the 9th and 10th grade years. The units include field trips, speakers, and service learning. The 9th grade unit will teach library and research skills while exploring civilizations using Cahokia Mounds as a metaphor and as the location of a field trip. The 10th grade unit is centered around environmental impacts and will take students to work on removing Sandbags from the breached levee in Winfield MO. We will suspend the regular schedule and teaching assignments to provide students with an interdisciplinary research experience that familiarizes them with using their tablet as an educational tool. They are being graded against a fairly defined rubric and the only standard is pass or no pass. We are idealistically hoping to start their high school year with an emphasis on learning, not grades. A group of 12 teachers worked incredibly hard all summer to develop the week long curriculum for 9th and 10th grade.

It is also interesting to note that we have lots of places where technology is embedded into the very foundation of the course, so much so that if you removed the technology, you would not be able to offer the same quality course. The student’s learning would be impacted in a negative way. Below are two examples:

The Sudan Project – The Sudan course will be a team taught interdisciplinary course that will teach students about making documentaries encompassing bias, perspective and technical video editing. It will offer a look at literature and history. Summer Reading was They Poured Fire Down On Us From the Sky. The course is collaboration between 4 universities and 10 high schools with footage being provided by a professional journalist and the final project slated to be played for Congress.

US History (AP and Regular) – We are increasingly moving away from text books and both of these courses have moved to using online primary source documents. They have students write on public journal pages, make extensive use of xtimelines, give all tests electronically, and eliminated the final exam in favor of a research project that has the entire class produce an electronic museum.

It seems that everywhere, course teams and departments are really evaluating what their curriculum should be. Despite being a team of 4 with 3 teachers who are new to the school, the geometry teachers have articulated a plan and have an ambitious set of goals. They will be fun to watch this year. It is also interesting to note that our Art Department has written a tablet protocol that sets high standards for the entire department and represents a thoughtful examination of how best to help their students learn in a one-to-one environment.