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By Vanessa Vartabedian on June 18, 2010 8:02 AM
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I have been working with an exceptional group of educators from the state of New Hampshire for the past six months via online professional development around the integration of the new media literacies across curriculum. The goal, ultimately, is that these teachers, technology integrators an library media specialists will be able to pass this new expertise on to other educators, and facilitate guidance around adopting the practices and skills they have been exploring with others statewide.
Of course, they first needed to adopt these ideas as valuable to their own classrooms, attempting to make direct connections to the relevance it has to the lives of their students, and their curriculum. Throughout this professional
development, the early adopters have taken on the role of 'teacher as
researcher'. This has required some rethinking of their pedagogical practices and even a consideration toward a paradigm shift in terms of the teacher/student relationship to a more co-configured approach-where they are facilitators of student learning, rather than experts delivering content.
The nml skill Play, which is the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving, made intuitive sense to most of these educators in terms of learning, yet they initially feared trying it out in their own teaching.
This is not a criticism of these teachers. On the whole, they struggle with what most educators in America are up against - preparing students to be expert test-takers and competent autonomous learners armed with a specific body of knowledge. Most of the time, play just seems like too much fun.
As most of us know, 'play' does not mean unstructured learning, but it does require the willingness to learn by failing. And with the pressure to provide students with a "21st century education" - technology has become the primary focus. Of course equipping schools with new technological tools doesn't mean we know how to engage students in meaningful learning with them, nor are the skills students need always best taught through technology. Technology is, after all, a tool, the means by which we should engage students in learning the content and broader skills they will need as citizens and workers of the world. Learning the tool, for students anyway, is usually the easy part - they play with it all the time. But for teachers who experience technological-access inequity, or lack the professional development opportunities to explore the relevant affordances these tools can have to their curriculum, the frustration factor can be a stunting experience for professional growth and student engagement.
Below is a re-blog from Wesley Fryer, who visited one such risk-taking early adopter in her classroom earlier this spring. Maria Knee is a kindergarten teacher whose educational practices have evolved at the speed of technology, and has been lucky enough to receive a tremendous amount of support from her school in doing so. When these factors are in place, it is interesting to see just how a teacher includes technology in her practices without making it the end goal of learning.
We Can all Learn a Great Deal From a Great Kindergarten Teacher - From Moving at the Speed of Creativity, The Weblog of Wesley Fryer
 Today was a real treat. My 9 year old
daughter and I spent most of the
day at Deerfield
Community School, in Deerfield, New Hampshire. While Sarah was
hosted by a wonderful Deerfield student and enjoyed learning about their
upcoming science fair projects (as well as other topics) I met with
teachers in several grade levels and was amazed to learn about some of
the wonderful digital learning and collaborating they are doing together
with students. It will take SEVERAL posts, I'm sure, to adequately
reflect on all the learning of the day, but for now I'd like to share
and reflect on what an absolute JOY it was to spend time in Maria
Knee's kindergarten classroom. Maria secured permission for me to
take photos during my visit, and these are several I took with Pano.
 
I have a vast amount of respect for every teacher, but am particularly
in awe of kindergarten teachers who are able to masterfully facilitate
student learning as Maria does. When I visited this afternoon, students
were engaged in a variety of center-based activities which involved
reading, writing, creating art, solving problems, building structures,
and interacting with peers as well as adult classroom assistants. Notice
how the students in the photos below are scattered all over the room,
and are busily at work at different learning tasks. You'll notice in the
first photo below, Maria actually appears twice! That's because she was
moving around the room checking with students and helping as needed!
The iPhone
Pano program stitched together about seven different images to make
this composite panoramic image.
 There was a lot of WRITING going on in class today. The student on the
left in the above photo was writing about a picture he'd drawn, using
Google Documents. In the photo below, the student on the left is writing
on Maria's
classroom blog, hosted for free by David
WarlickClass
Blogmeister.
The six netbooks in Maria's classroom really got a workout this
afternoon. Netbooks are perfect because of their size and (in the case
of these eePCs) their long battery life for a kindergarten classroom. In
this photo, a student and an adult were reading together on the screen.
Students were not only doing lots of READING and WRITING during center
time, they were also sharing and speaking. These two boys were working
cooperatively to record an audio overview of a picture one of them had
drawn. Once the student with the recorder was ready, he rang a bell to
let others in the classroom know it was "recording time." He announced,
"Recording!" and then his partner told about his illustration.
When you see clocks like those below in a kindergarten classroom, you
know some very unique learning must be going on. Maria's students have
partner classrooms in both Canada and Australia, and they keep clocks
set to the local times in those classrooms so they'll know if the time
is right for a Skype call collaboration.
These students were taking care of their group's dogs on Nintindo
DSi's, playing the game Nintendogs.
Students share the pets and have to work together to decide how to
spend their "virtual money" on their pet. Lots of great conversations
and discussions ensue about economics, pet care priorities, etc.
I'll close with this photo of Maria's class rules.
In case you can't view the
Flickr image, I'll type these out. The rules are very simple but
powerful:
- Take care of yourself.
- Take care of your friends.
- Take care of everything.
- Do your best work.
If we all followed those simple rules every day, wouldn't the world
be a much better place? In the safety and security of a caring classroom
like Maria's, somehow the world seems to make a great deal of sense.
Her students are extremely blessed to have her and the other teachers as
well as parent volunteers helping them learn at Deerfield.
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