I started blogging with my students again. This time 3 teachers are joining me! The assignment is the same in that the students have to create a story using a blogging platform to convey their writings, but also to give feedback on each other. The only difference is that I used a different platform to create the blog. I switched from Tumblr to WordPress because we had some difficulties last year when trying to give feedback to students who were already using Tumblr (had to do with primary and secondary blogs – see Tumblr Settings). I’ve had some great experiences using WordPress and felt that the students were competent enough to use this platform over the Tumblr experience. Another advantage was that the teachers could give comments without first creating an account (although I suggested they create a “school-e-mailaddress” to comment the different blogs while maintaining their privacy).

Like last year, I started with introducing the students to the WordPress-platform and showing them the basics in setting-up a blog. Then, the languages teachers gave their assignments and the students started blogging. One thing I noticed, was they had difficulty in finding each others blog, although we agreed upon using a specific method of creating the WordPress URL. Also, a couple of students showed a lack of digital literacy when figuring out different settings on their own. I thought about this and found that this can only be resolved if more teachers make good use of tools like blogs. This assignment may just be too small to have the desired effect on the students. Therefor I will be introducing next year students to blogging much earlier in the school year, so they have a platform to use even in other courses and create more of a portfolio than just a blog for this one assignment. To be continued…

The problem, in my opinion, is that these systems are designed to create some sort of deserted island where “education” happens. You log-in to the system and, depending on your status, you gain access to different parts of the educational online world of your institute. You can send messages, keep a calendar, provide course materials and links to other sources. You can even let the system provide a digital place where students can leave their assignments, hell, the system can even correct a lot of the work for you! Wiki’s, portfolio’s, it’s all there. So why would a teacher be unhappy with this tool? Well, let me start with the positives. It is indeed very convenient to have a central place for all your “school stuff”. After all, the moment you log-off, it’s like closing the door behind you in your classroom. You can leave school behind and do something else. All your work is safely stored behind the firewall of the LMS and you can rest assured that your work will be waiting for you in the morning.

However… I do think that this separate world doesn’t leave room for much creativity and serendipitous learning. Once the course is done, you leave that part of the system and it’s gone forever. No reverting to a course syllabus, links, etc. you’re out! In the connectivist view of OER’s (Open Educational Resources) and working in spaces that complement the students online experience, an LMS is just to formal and confining. In our institute we use the LMS to communicate between teachers, sometimes with students, but mostly it’s a big online file cabinet for storing all school related forms and papers. I’ve tried to take advantage of the system and implement different techniques to encourage student participation like using forums, offering web links, create portfolio’s, etc. but to no end. Every time I get stuck at the point where I’d like to export data out of the system and implement it elsewhere. Using different online (web 2.0) tools doesn’t make it easier because the LMS will not share. Even now, in the tablet age, where you want to move your things around the way you‘d like, it just isn’t possible…

So instead of trying to mold the system into something I’d like it to be, I’m convinced that I’m better off without it. There are more than enough tools out there that will give me equal, if not more, autonomy and yet provide the functionality that I need to function properly, but it is precisely this that could be a barrier for most teachers. Taking this leap of faith into the unknown and try to make it work. Relying on your own digital literacy to create your own PLN (Personal Learning Network) that consists of a lot more than just “tools for school”, is the challenge, but it’s one that will enrich you both as a teacher and a person!

What would I do? Currently I’m experimenting with a lot of (well-known) tools out there (Google Drive, Pinterest, Tumblr, WordPress, MindMeister, etc.) in order to show students what tools exist and to encourage them to create their own PLN. And some of them do pick up on that. I’ve created more that a few Pinterest and Tumblr fanatics. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get students to using these tools for school as well? For next year I’m working on an idea to start blogging earlier in the school year and make it the home base for all their assignments and reflections, maybe together with a wiki, for course materials, a few information gatherers (Pinterest, Diigo, Delicious) and social media (Twitter, Facebook). We’ll see what happens, but every time I use these tools, I feel like things are more fluent, they happen, you can construct things instead of moving in a straight line through a course. Just a liberating feeling!

In this final session, we discussed our different projects again and the difficulties we’ve encountered, so that people had the opportunity to give some tips and tricks to improve our writing. It was enlightening in that I need to find the balance to report on the project, but also on what I’ve learned. While implementing change, chaotic things can happen, hereby changing the initial goals set by the project. Here are some things I want to work on some more:

• What did I set out to do and how did I work it out?
• What strategy did I find myself using?
• Reflections from colleagues on my own role.
• Step away from the change and talk on my role in the project.

Implementing collected data from different stakeholders about the project, is another item on my list. As the data is still coming in, I need to find ways to turn it into a coherent story on what I have learned, not only on how the change-project has evolved. Still a lot of work to do, but again this journey proved to be very instructive and has changed my view on the way change has to be achieved in an organization.

The day after, our group met for a planned meeting where we discussed the thoughts of the PTA and tried to make some important, final decisions:

• We will not offer devices ourselves, but ask parents to buy their own.
• The choice was made to go with BYOD.
• We will construct a list of minimum system requirements to ensure that all students can execute the tasks we set out.
• To inform the parents properly, we wanted to offer some suggestions towards insuring the device, again not obligatory, but just to give an idea of what is possible.
• The pilot-group will consist of the Human Sciences students, not just one group, but the entire course (as asked by the parents).
• I will write a vision text to work with and refer to in the future and to present as a final offer to our management team and teaching staff.

After some debate about the possible lack of interest from the teaching staff, we decided that change can only happen when someone chooses to take the first step. As a group we are committed to take that first step to try to make a difference.

Bottom line, I’m happy! These last few months were interesting but also challenging in that the decisions we make today will have consequences throughout the rest of the project. I’m glad we were able to smooth things out and now have a clear view of what we are setting out to do.

The three of us were currently working on the more practical part of our assignments: evaluation and reflective analysis. We discussed different possibilities of gathering the necessary data and how to implement it in our project report. Still a lot of work needs to be done, but once again this meeting was very useful and stimulating.

Where action research is trying to implement change through small-scale intervention, design research look to create something. In this session we discussed the differences and how either could work beneficial in our projects. In the process of implementing tablets in my institute I’m currently mostly working on design research. In our group we are trying to create new ways of teaching (i.e. with a tablet) and we’re looking for  ways to implement this device as smoothly as possible.

As action research is more about intervention, I anticipate this kind of work will be explored as we move on to buying the different devices and actually using them in the classroom!

Questionnaires – Interviews – Observations

These tools can be very useful to use to receive date from our project. As we move on to the more concrete part of the project, when we are working with the tablets in the classroom, I’ll try to monitor the students and teachers in their change from traditional learning to e-learning. For the moment, I’m trying to talk with as many people as possible to gain as much knowledge on how to proceed with the project, but also to get a feel of where they stand in all this change. I find it important to do this personally to create a feeling of trust and allow for a climate where nothing is taboo and everything can be discussed. I’ll try to collect all the data from these talks and implement them in the next meeting we have scheduled. Hopefully this can help to keep the thinking process alive and generate useful and concrete solutions for the different tasks that lie ahead.

• structural
• human resource
• political
• symbolic

The type of change I’m trying to implement in my institute lead me up to using the theory of De Caluwé and Vermaak and Kotter’s theory. An overview:

Color-print Thinking – De Caluwé & Vermaak:

• YELLOW - negotiate a deal with people with power, looking for consensus, building coalitions, secretive, can deal with and avoid conflicts, execute power without anybody noticing, looking for feasible solutions, not necessarily the best one!
• BLUE - rationality, prove everything, think first and act later, make everything as simple as possible, analyse – plan – implement, result oriented, rigid, inflexible
• RED - motivation, seduction, people are human beings, they have feelings, treat them with respect, give attention, takes behavior in account, make change so attractive, that people want to change
• GREEN - learning, competent, intrinsic motivation – people want to learn and change, curious – like to wonder about the world and how complicated everything is, flexible, learning is satisfactory
• WHITE - energy, change is spontaneous, e.g. wikipedia – no boss, completely voluntary, can deal with uncertainties

I think I’m situated in the RED and GREEN ways of thinking. The red characteristics of passion, creativity, the idea of making change seductive so that people intrinsically want it, appeals to me. I recognize myself in it, but also in certain green properties: wanting to learn, being curious, wondering about the world and everything in it. I find it makes me somewhat of an idealist. Concerning the other colors, I can say that I have an admiration for white-print thinking because they can coop with chaos and always look for individual creativity. The power games of the yellow-print thinker are not quite my cup of tea. I’m absolutely not good at negotiating, the art of negotiating to achieve a goal. Lastly, the rationality of blue-print thinking is also appealing to me, gradually developing a plan, although the inflexible character and over-simplifying of things can be to narrow for me.

Kotter’s eight steps leading to change:

1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Creating the guiding coalition
3. Developing a vision and strategy
4. Communicate the change vision
5. Empowering broad-based action
6. Generating short-term wins
7. Consolidating gains & producing more change
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture

Kotter’s theory is also appealing because the eight steps try to implement change from an objective or neutral point of view: change is necessary, not “wanted” by one or two people, but fundamentally needed. Something that I recognize within myself. I also get a sense of cooperation throughout Kotter’s steps: starting with a coalition and the development of a vision that leads up to action and eventually new insights and approaches.

The following image shows a combination of De Caluwé’s and Vermaak’s framework and Kotter’s eight steps theory. I like the integration of both theories in this model because it suggests that while using Kotter’s theory you need to implement different characteristics set by De Caluwé’s and Vermaak. It also shows that the color-print theory is something more than a change theory. It is about people, who they are and how the can complement each other in an organization. All colors are needed to achieve the final goal.

Lastly we discussed Goleman’s leadership styles:

• Coercive
• Authoritative
• Affiliative
• Democratic
• Pacesetting
• Coaching

It was also interesting to hear from others how they were cooping with the assignments and how they perceived certain outcomes related to the project. Thinking about other projects than our own, offered a wider view on change management and the problems and opportunities they encompass. Enlightening!

We set a new date for a second meeting, where we will discuss the more practical parts of our project.

Last year, I had the opportunity to work with a friend/colleague (Bart Boelen) in this Geography project about tourism. We used iPads to get the information across. This year, no iPads… so I had to find a new interactive way to make sure the students were able to independently learn about the touristic qualities of a certain country. I decided to go for Google Drive. In the past, I’ve worked with this online office-suite and therefore knew its possibilities.

I started out with a lesson about Google Drive itself, just to get the students comfortable with it. I made sure that they already had an active Google account, because in the past signing up proved to be a challenge. Our IT-departement told me it had something to do with the school using one IP-address to connect to the internet. This causes online services to choke up, thinking they are “bombarded” with spam (i.e. multiple students creating an account from the same IP-address). It took me about 30 minutes to explain the basics after which I let the students experiment with the tool in groups, just to get a feel for it. They fooled around with typing together in a single document, the chat functionality, inserting an image, etc.

The second lesson I let them search for and discuss meaningful information for their given destination. They were invited to collect all relevant data in a single Google document so they could all see what was going on and what information they still needed to find.

The last step of this project was to be conducted at home: make a coherent presentation (using Google Drive) to present your findings/information about your country and share this with your teacher (me).

After the deadline, I let the students review Google Drive, using a Google Drive Form. They expressed their fondness for the online office-suite, some of them explaining that “this tool should be used by more teachers in school”. They found that it made working together very easy. Also eliminating “handing over” the presentation, paper, etc. and instead just sharing the file with the teacher was an advantage. The chat function was used a lot. In the beginning for less relevant communication, but gradually they found that this option certainly had its benefits in completing their task.

For me as a teacher, I liked the fact of NOT running around with dozens of paper folders, but instead being able to correct these digital presentations even on the go with my (personal) iPad. I asked my students to fill out a certain page of their book that accompanies the assignment, next year this will be digital too!