Simply put, backchanneling is the process of designating a medium for facilitating the conversation happening around a particular event.

Whenever an event is taking place, there is a swirl of conversations occurring around that event. In the classroom, it can be two kids talking in the back row, passing notes, or sending texts or emails. At public events, these conversations happen all over the place, and tapping into that backchannel helps you tap into the pulse of what your listeners (or students) are thinking right now.

When entertaining the idea of establishing a backchannel in your classroom, the first thing you should realize is that the backchannel already exists; these conversations are already occurring, even if it’s merely inside someone’s head. What you’re doing is establishing a medium through which these conversations can take place that you can tap into.

The other great thing about backchanneling is that it gives students who may be less enthusiastic about sharing during class the freedom to express themselves without the fear that prevents them from raising their hand.

The mediums suggested here have varying levels of privacy and control, so choose the one that suits your desires and objectives.

The first and most obvious backchannel is Twitter, and there are plenty of success stories for classroom use. This video showcases a high school example, whereas this longer video is in a college setting. The benefits to Twitter are that many students already use Twitter, it’s easy to create a hashtag and get started, and students can use their cell phone to easily post comments. With any projector, you can follow that hashtag and use it as a basis for continuing discussion.

The drawback to Twitter should be obvious: you have no control over who uses the hashtag, so external users can drop random tweets into the feed for everyone to see. You also can’t control what your students are saying either, nor can you force them to use their real names (at least not within Twitter itself).

In terms of dedicated backchannel platforms, two were mentioned during the chat: CoverItLive and TodaysMeet. CoverItLive is a live engagement platform targeting bloggers and reporters covering live events. Much of its impressive feature set can be accessed for free without advertising, with 5k reader limit, which should be fine for any classroom. However, because it has such a wide set of features and is targeted towards event coverage, it may be more difficult and slightly overwhelming to get it plugged into your classroom.

TodaysMeet takes the opposite approach and makes the system really simple to use. You go to the home page, create a “room,” and get a link to provide to your students to access that room. From there, it’s effectively a private chat room. Your students enter their name and are able to chat with each other and the teacher during class. It also has a transcript view, providing a chronological view of the chat, as well as a projector view, in reverse chronological order, for live discussion. This makes it easy to get up and running, but doesn’t provide a lot in the way of customization. For most classrooms and teachers getting into backchanneling, this is a great way to get started.

Do you have any experience with backchanneling? Let us know what you think in the comments section.

[Cross-posted at BYOTchat.com]

However, I would like to describe a recent initiative that has led to both professional and personal growth AND a positive outcome.

Approximately a year and a half ago, my principal shared with us that our school was going to pilot a program called Time To Know.  It was described as a web-based literacy and math program that we were going to use in order to supplement our work with the students in both ELA and math.  We received three days of staff development prior to the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.  We were also told that there would be additional staff development opportunities provided for us throughout the year.

As a teacher of over 20 years, I have been on both sides of new initiatives.  I have been on the ‘teacher’ side where I was expected to implement a program that my administration had decided upon.  I have also been on the ‘staff developer’ side where I was responsible for helping teachers implement the initiative that was being presented.

When this program was introduced, I knew that I had two options.  I could either be resistant to change and do lip service to it, or I could embrace it and see what I could learn from the experience.  I decided to put aside my own pre-conceptions and reservations and make the most of the opportunity that was being afforded to me, my students and my school.

The first year was challenging. I had many questions and there were various operational issues that had to be worked through.  I had many meetings with Time To Know staff in order to work through operational issues, determine ways to make the program more workable for the children, and help me integrate the program into my curriculum in a meaningful way.

However, I fought for this initiative to work.  I made the implementation of this program the focus of an action research project that I was doing so that I could reflect on the challenges that existed.  I spoke regularly with colleagues and others in order to get fresh perspectives on what I could change.  I took data and surveyed the children via reflection journals in order to see what was working and what needed to be improved upon.  I had regular contact with the T2K instructional coaches in order to discuss the school curriculum and how to incorporate Time to Know in a way that would be meaningful for the children. I did these things because I believed that there were many exciting possibilities for both me and the children if I persevered.

I am glad to say that the second year of this program has been much more meaningful to me and my students.    I have now been able to incorporate Time To Know into our weekly schedule in a way that it allows me to see small groups of students and work with them in different content areas.  Being able to have this small group time during the day is crucial in order for me to be able to address individual needs of the students.

Not only has the experience with Time To Know helped my students, but it has helped me as well. This initiative, which I first met with trepidation and concern, has become one that I have been able to grow and learn from.  It has also given me a chance to collaborate and share with professionals from as far away as Japan and Singapore.  This program, which I could have rejected as ‘just another initiative’, has become one that has helped develop my own teacher leadership skills and enabled me to grow both personally and professionally.

“…to the teachers, what GOOD PD have you experienced? What made it good?”

There were a few enlightening responses; @cbraryman1 said the best PD he ever had was hands-on learning, and @hugghinss said Twitter itself was the best PD!  @40ishoracle mentioned a “tech petting zoo,” and shared with us a picture of what that would look like.”

This lead to a discussion about how to approach PD.  More specifically, how structured should BYOT PD be?  @SteveHayes_RB60 said the best PD is self-motivated learning, but commented that not all teachers are able to dedicate that time and energy into figuring out which resources are good, who to connect with, and how to integrate some of those resources into their classroom.  I suggested part of PD be aiding teachers in establishing a method for continuing self-study – blogs to subscribe to, Twitter users to follow, and other websites with useful resources.  In addition, the need to merely provide time for teachers to collaborate with each other and share came up a few times, with a reference to “Google 20% time” as a model.

The entire question of what level of guidance versus on-your-own-learning was never quite settled; a lot of it really depends on the comfort level of the teachers involved.  If most of the teachers are at a point where they’re just beginning to use technology, then the PD process has to be more hand-holding, whereas teachers who have some level of comfort with technology may just need some help with classroom use.

The discussion focused mostly on the actual learning of the technology, rather than getting into how to deal with various issues that may come up during the day.  In our previous chat, we talked a lot about how to manage tech support for many devices, and including this information in PD is necessary, but we didn’t touch on it during the chat.  This EdWeek article talks about some of the policy issues that can arise with BYOT, and I expect we’ll discuss some of these issues in more depth in future chats.

Ultimately, PD has to be focused on the needs, desires, and time constraints of the teachers using it.  Some teachers prefer to be more collaborative, some need more structure, some just need more time, and providing the right learning environment for teachers is crucial to successful PD.

[Cross-posted on BYOTchat.com]

“If Henry Ford were here today, the only thing he would recognize is today’s high school.”

The modern education system in the United States was born out of the same need for industrialization as Henry Ford’s car, but while industry has continued to evolve with new technology, classrooms have remained the same. Digital Learning Day highlighted some of the challenges we face as a country in advancing our education system into the 21^st century.

In attempting to do so, DLD had to tell a very broad story. We got to see a number of great case studies and examples of schools and institutions implementing technology in different and exciting ways, which really highlighted the fact that “digital learning” covers a broad range of approaches to instruction, based on the needs and resources of the schools, students, and teachers implementing them.

Students these days are immersed in technology on a day-to-day basis, and pulling that away from them in the classroom when it is what they’re most engaged with seems counter-intuitive. It’s a lot of work for an individual teacher to be engaging to students for an hour a day, every day, for 280 days a year, so let’s give them the tools to do so.

And students want this; Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a story of a kid who sat in his car in the library parking lot, using the building’s wifi to get online after it was closed. It really goes to show you the amount of work they are willing to do to get connected.

So let’s connect them. And, in the process, connect to them.

The topic of the first chat was “What should be the first steps to take in implementing BYOT?” and even before you get to any actual actions, setting expectations for all participants was the first place we started. Getting all your stakeholders (administrators, teachers, support staff, parents, and students) all on the same page is hugely important to getting everyone to buy in to the idea, as not everyone is always sold on the use of technology in the classroom (especially cell phones!). @cybraryman1 has some great resources on Acceptable Use Policies.

However, the distinction between “acceptable” to “responsible” use is an important one – students (and teachers!) must learn how their actions in the digital space impact the real world. You can’t have students goofing off with the technology in class, and everything you do online leaves behind a digital footprint which can be found and used by anyone with access. What it means to be responsible in the digital space is an idea that’s still being developed, but having an open conversation about consequences and pitfalls online is going be a real help to students.

But not only students – adults too! We typically know what it means to be responsible (online and off), but taking the time to crystalize it is helpful in passing on those skills to students while they use tech in this classroom.

If all of this feels a bit “high-brow,” what it leads to is the real need for Professional Development (PD). Everyone who participated last night was in resounding agreement that the only way you can implement an effective BYOT program is by supporting teachers. You need to make it easy to integrate technology into the classroom, and you need to provide the resources to do so. @hauquitz suggested the development of an app list, broken down by device, subject, and price.

PD is not merely a “teaching of teachers” – it’s also a forum for teachers to connect with each other. As @mluhtala said “Don’t try to convince the unconvinceable – just work with the open minded ones. The rest’ll come EVENTUALLY” – and it’s true. The early adopters become the ones who test different techniques, and PD becomes an avenue for them to share their experiences with other teachers. Once they see that, yes, it is, in fact, possible to use technology for learning in the classroom, they’ll do it. Twitter itself has become a great resource for that as well. As I said myself, sometimes the best cheerleaders for BYOT are other teachers.

Ah – but not just teachers: STUDENTS! Kids are increasingly more tech-savvy than their older brethren, and they have a lot they can share with us. I mentioned myself that we have a lot of students in Time To Know classrooms who support the teachers with the technology. “Students must be at the center of district decisions. Teachers must be open to student point of view.”

Students can also do their own tech support. “@dimatiata is the @nchslmc Director of Mobile Devices. He’s 17. Kids can handle it!” Which is I really think is awesome – go @dimatiata! Tech support would be inundated with requests if every problem you had with your phone went to them.

Once you’ve laid the groundwork, the last thing is getting the network to support this level of bandwidth and connectivity. @SteveHayes_RB60 asked me if we needed to support 2-3 devices per student; I responded that they tend to have that many, but that you didn’t necessarily need to support that much bandwidth. However, I was quickly corrected – @msmith833 didn’t agree, and @MyTakeOnIt said he recommended aiming for 3 devices per user. I would amend my statement now to say you should aim for 3:1 but don’t fret if you don’t get there – supporting any level of BYOT is a step in the right direction.

This discussion lead to the question of control – @msmith said she was fighting with admins who want to get control of students, and even some parents don’t think devices should be used in schools. The fear of student distraction is a strong one, but one that should be easily overcome with proper integration. @MyTakeOnIt and I both made similar comments about technology being engaging on its own, and students won’t be distracted if they’re too busy using them for good. @mluhtala morphed a quote into “Don’t let media distract from learning, let learning distract from media!”

And that’s really the point here, isn’t it? Technology fosters more engaged learning, and ultimately better learning.  And that’s why we want to do this.

There was a ton of mini-conversations about smaller topics not covered here, and I highly recommend you read through the archive.

I look forward to doing this again next week! Look for a poll about next week’s topic on Monday.

[Cross-posted @ BYOTchat.com]

Meitar, a successful businessman, has been involved in numerous educational initiatives for more than a decade. He founded Time To Know in 2004 in Israel as a philanthropic endeavor and expanded the company’s comprehensive digital teaching platform into an international business to help transform K-12 education. “I’m honored to receive this award because of my own personal struggles in school as a child,” Meitar said. “Seeing the results from students succeeding in school is, for me, the most valuable thing in my life.”

When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic I Have a Dream speech in 1963, the US was facing a crisis of equality and civil rights. Today the US is facing a larger, deeper crisis—and that is the crisis in education.

We see the effects of this crisis on multiple levels; from the day-to-day struggles of an unengaged individual student, to large groups of students not graduating with proficiency in math and language skills that will make them successful in the real world. We also see groups of students not graduating at all. We must face this crisis by asking ourselves the age-old question: how well does school prepare our young people to be successful in the real world?

For example, I am a reject of the educational system in Israel. I was a failure in school. However, I’m proud to say that when I got into the real world, that track record of failure ended. I’ve founded and run many successful businesses and, I hope, made a positive difference in society and in the lives of the people I’ve worked with. So you might say I know both what it feels like to fail as well as what it feels like to succeed.

How did this happen? Does it mean the measures of success within our current educational structure and the real world are not aligned?

I would argue that the answer is yes. During the last few years, I’ve dedicated myself to improving education because I believe this is how we better our society, bridge conflict worldwide, and help our children lead productive, enriching lives.

One area I’ve invested in is helping at-risk kids prepare for and graduate from college through a non-profit I founded called Academia. We bring together the resources needed, such as tutoring, social services and financial assistance, to help kids through high school and college. Due to the outstanding success of this program, I was honored by the I Have A Dream foundation in June.

After working with academia, I’ve since broadened my mission. I see the opportunities available to reach students at the elementary grades, before they get seriously behind or develop more challenging issues to overcome. The companies I’ve led have used technology to transform the business world, and we started Time To Know to similarly use technology to transform teaching and learning in the classroom.

All of us involved in educating children want to make in a difference in the lives of these future workers, businesspeople, politicians, leaders and, yes, educators for the next generation. At Time To Know, we’re changing how education is delivered. Each student and teacher has a computer. Teachers monitor student work in real time, and provide the resources students need to be successful.  The system incorporates best-in-class teaching practices, which helps teachers become model teachers.

In the global economy, we need to invest in our education system and build the human capital necessary to compete and sustain growth for our country. A tsunami of technology is rapidly changing our world. Just recently it was reported that desktop PCs would be obsolete by 2015 due to mobile devices and tablets, just one example of our rapidly evolving use of technology. Let’s give teachers the tools they need to deliver results in the new digital world.

At Time to Know, we are delighted to hear of Apple’s push into digital education – it’s been too long!  Apple’s leadership will accelerate the adoption of digital tools in schools – creating opportunities for more engaged and interactive learning.  We look forward to educators using the digital textbooks as the building block for a more comprehensive full digital pedagogical experience for students.

These new digital textbooks will include everything that you’d expect in a standard textbook – full screen, full color texts with easy navigation.  They also included new highlighting and note-taking features, which allow you to run your finger over the portion you wish to highlight in several different colors and then quickly turn your highlighted sections into flash cards for later study.  In addition, the new etextbooks will be able to include “interactive animations, diagrams, photos and videos” embedded throughout the text, as well as inline quizzes for immediate feedback, would should make the modern-day textbook more engaging than when I was a student.

Currently, Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have signed on to the new initiative, which accounts for 90% of the textbooks sold, according to Engadget.  However, you don’t have to be a large publishing company to produce an etextbook for iBooks 2; Apple also unveiled a content creation app called iBooks Author, which allows anyone to develop and publish their own etextbook for distribution through Apple’s iBooks platform.  The books are capped at $14.99 or less, although there is still some confusion on that point, as “the company said ‘high school’ books, so it’s unclear whether the cap applies to all books.”

The last part of Apple’s announcement included some additional features for their iTunes U, which has been a part of the iTunes Store but now is a stand-alone app.  The app will allow students to download full courseware from iTunes U, as well as giving professors more customizability by adding office hours, assignments and class notes, in addition to wide range of different multimedia the professor can distribute through the app.  Numerous universities already use iTunes U, including UCLA, UC Berkeley, and University of Paris, but K-12 schools will now also be able to participate in iTunes U.

There were some complaints; some initial reports suggested some bugs with the new iBooks, and there’s the ever-looming worry about Apple’s vertical integration of its platform and content, as anything produced with iBooks Author cannot be sold elsewhere, but the possibilities of Apple’s new educational offerings cannot be understated.  I’ll be playing around with iBooks Author myself and will be producing a review in the coming week.  If the program is as easy-to-use and complex as they have suggested, then it could really produce the revolution in digital education everyone is hoping it will.

Simon Olswang serves as Trustee of Langdon College of Further (Special) Education in Salford, England. He founded Olswang, a media and communications law firm in the United Kingdom, in 1981. Now retired, Mr. Olswang has served as a non-executive director of a number of companies and organizations, including Aegis Group plc, The Press Association and the British Film Institute. Mr. Olswang travels extensively and blogs about his travels at http://simonolswang.wordpress.com.

Observing Time To Know in the classroom

Which makes me ask why split?  Can’t we do better than that?  Can’t we weave?

The Khan Academy video tutorials span a range of primarily STEM concepts.  They provide a traditional approach to learning—very similar to lectures—but the videos have a personal style, and make it easy for students to master basic and complex topics.

We need students to master these topics in order to become competent. More importantly, we need students to think critically about math problems and explain their reasoning.  Students need to be able to internalize learning and apply it.

To accomplish the goal of creating competent math students, we need a combination of resources. We need basic resources for students to master the content –this is where Khan comes in –and problems that push students to think and apply the content. We also need re-teaching tools to reach all students. Finally, all of these resources need to be tied to curriculum standards.

A policy that relies on individual teachers to competently, consistently integrate curriculum and digital tools in a far-reaching way is unlikely to succeed. Teachers are already overburdened, and the job of integration heaps more work onto an overstretched teaching staff.

I see the need for digital systems that integrate the components required to create quality curriculum.  Confusion is inevitable if tools and curriculum are not integrated—if basic content is not related to the problems presented, or if students are asked about concepts that were not covered in the content. Even if the presented problems and concept are related, students can still become confused if the concepts are covered using unfamiliar tools or a different pedagogical approach.

We need coherent systems that weave digital tools with quality curriculum to create excellent thinkers.  Integration of curriculum, professional learning and technology is the future of the classroom.