The Kids Voices Are Loud And Clear on the IWB Challenge

I’m really excited to announce that we already have our first challenge video completed! Jeff Jackson, from Penders Grove P.S here in Melbourne, decided to undertake Challenge 3 first - the transparency challenge set by Danny Nicholson of ‘The Whiteboard Blog‘ fame. Jeff’s first video was made by his kids. They are showing the different angles they found around their school, and it’s a fantastic example of how transparency can be very useful. Here it is, with Jeff’s description:

1. Angles

This was great fun for everyone. I am fortunate to have my Year 4 students for 45mins each week where we can plan nd construct a response to a challenge. Here students photographed angles around the school and then delivered the lesson to their peers. I was reminded again the power of peer tutoring not only as the Year 4 students energetically participated but also as the Year 3 students were captivated by the presentation (a strength of peer leadership and the IWB).

A Vitual Learning Community For Teacher IWB Professional Development

This post is Part 1 of my report for FLE Assignment 2 - Virtual Learning Environments. This has also been posted at The IWB Challenge Blog. Feedback is very welcome.

I decided to create the Interactive Whiteboard Challenge because I have been asked over the past couple of years to give quite a few workshops on how to use IWBs and I have found that teachers really don’t feel that they have had enough training and professional development in using this tool. I’ve been told by a few teachers that the whiteboards were just installed and they were expected to just jump in and start using them. Rather than just give a one-off workshop I thought it would be important and useful to create an ongoing resource that teachers could access in order to get ideas and support for the use of their interactive whiteboard. I have also found that teachers really appreciate examples of what other teachers have done (as opposed to sales-pitches by IWB companies) and so that was the motivation behind asking several teachers I know to show how they use their IWB by setting a challenge and making a video that other teachers could watch.

Enter the Interactive Whiteboard Challenge (IWB Challenge). The challenge involves several teachers who are advanced users of IWBs to set a challenge to other teachers that focuses on a particular IWB skill - like adding audio, cloning, or using the IWB for reflective activities. Whatever suits that teacher. These challenges (7 so far with more coming) have then been added to the IWB Challenge wiki, which is the base for displaying challenges, and for participants to create their own page to display the videos of the results of their completed challenges.

Trudy Sweeney of Flinders University in South Australia writes about transforming pedagogy through interactive whiteboards, saying that the effective use of IWBs requires (among other things) ongoing teacher professional development and engaged communities (Sweeney, 2010). The main aims of the IWB Challenge are to provide a resource for teachers’ ongoing professional development as well as create a virtual community where teachers can connect with other teachers who are also interested in improving the way they use their IWB.

Creating an online virtual community allows teachers to access learning materials at a time that suits them, avoiding the constraints of a full teaching day. David Wetzel writes that approaches to online professional development for teachers that consists of watching slides or self guided screens lacks “sustainability because there is no follow-up or collaborative effort” (Wetzel 2009). I (and hopefully some others) will be facilitating the IWB Challenge in order to see how participants are progressing, to get real time feedback from them about the structure of the challenge, and to offer them timely help and feedback on the skills they are developing. I’ll also be encouraging participants to reflect on their learning by writing about it in their wiki pages, and by interviewing them for the IWB Challenge podcast. This ‘facilitated format’ will gives teachers not only opportunity to reflect on their work with the support of accomplished users of the IWB technology, but also gives teachers time to go back to their classrooms, attempt a new strategy, then reconnect with facilitators and peers to discuss successes and failures and hopefully sustain their engagement in the professional learning (Wetzel 2009).

The structure of the IWB Challenge in respect to the tools used to build it is outlined here. All of the tools used (wiki, blog, Twitter, YouTube, Diigo, and Facebook) are common Web 2.0 tools. Using these tools is not only convenient and free for me, but also then introduces participants to using these tools to develop their own online personal learning environment and network. In this way, focussing on improving IWB practice is acting as a ‘gateway’ to learning more about Web 2.0 tools as well.

As part of the evaluation process for this assignment, I received some really constructive feedback and really appreciated the peer review process. The main suggestions were to have more specific guidelines for the discussion forum on the Challenge wiki, as well as more specific guidelines on what part students play in the activity. I’ve done that but also think I need to add a few more short instructional videos on how to manage certain parts of the wiki.

The other suggestion in the feedback was to have a page with brief discussions of the educational theories underpinning the challenge. I think this is a great idea and could really stimulate some good discussion on the use of IWBs. This topic will be something that I’ll work on throughout the challenge and I’ll use it as a conversation starter in the Facebook and Diigo groups. I’ll also find someone who I can interview about educational theory and IWBs for the podcast.

I also plan to use an article called 10 IWB Features Every Teacher Should Know About by Chris Betcher which will also provide a basis for discussion during the challenge. I hope to interview Chris for the podcast at some stage during the Challenge.

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References:

Betcher, Chris (2008) ‘10 IWB Features Every Teacher Should Know About,’ Eastern Shores School Board Website, www.essb.qc.ca/recit/more/iwb/10%20IWB%20features.pdf accessed: 22/05/10

Fawzi, Hala (2007) Out of Isolation Circles: Web 2.0 for Teacher Professional Development: http://www.slideshare.net/halafawzi/out-of-isolation-circlesweb-20-for-teacher-professional-development accessed: 10/06/10

Nikolov, Roumen (2007) Towards Web 2.0 Schools: Rethinking the Teachers Professional Development: http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/1064 accessed: 10/06/10

Sweeny, Trudy (2010) ‘Transforming pedagogy through interactive whiteboards: Using activity theory to understand tensions in practice,’ in Australian Educational Computing, Vol, 24, No. 2, p. 28

Wetzel, David R (2009) Virtual Professional Development for Teachers - Online Continuing Education for Educators is Rapidly Expanding: http://continuingeducation.suite101.com/article.cfm/virtual_continuing_education_for_teac hers accessed: 10/06/10

Image is author’s own.

Building The IWB Challenge

This post makes up Part 2 of my report for FLE Assignment 2 - Virtual Learning Environments and has also been posted at The IWB Challenge Blog. Feedback is very welcome.

The IWB Challenge has been set up to encourage teachers to try new ways to use their Interactive Whiteboards. Participants have to complete as many challenges as they can in a given time frame as well as post their own challenge for other teachers to complete. Read this page of the wiki for a description of exactly how it works.

The IWB Challenge uses various Web 2.0 tools in order to create a virtual learning environment:

1. The main tool is a Wikispaces wiki, which houses the instructions for the challenge, the participants information and the challenges that have been set. The wiki is edited by me, but will also be edited by those who are preparing and posting challenges as part of the overall activity.

Rationale: I used a wiki because of the ease of editing the pages and embedding videos, not just for me, but for the other people who will set challenges and for the participants who will edit the wiki to write about themselves and add the videos of the challenges they complete. Plus, it is a platform that many people are familiar with, and if they aren’t, it’s straight forward enough to understand and navigate. I chose Wikispaces particularly as that is the wiki service that I am most familiar with.

2. The second most important Web 2.0 tool involved in this VLE is YouTube. The IWB Challenge has a YouTube channel where I have favourited relevant tutorials I found, as well as uploaded a couple of short instructional videos on how to use the Challenge wiki. When the challenge is underway (starting on June 15th), participants will be using the YouTube Channel to upload the videos they create before embedding them into their pages of the wiki. (Videos from the first 7 challenges set are hosted on TeacherTube and Vimeo but I’m encouraging participants to all use the same video hosting service).

Rationale: I chose YouTube for a few reasons:

because of the wealth of IWB material that is already on there
it is a site that people are already familiar with
because of the audience that YouTube has, videos posted there are highly likely to get an audience outside the original intended group, which may help to extend the community surrounding the VLE.
the ease of embedding YouTube videos into a Wikispaces wiki.

3. The IWB Challenge Twitter account is for broadcasting updates on development of the project, including starting dates, when new challenges are posted, links to resources etc. The hashtag for the challenge is #iwbchallenge.

Rationale: I am already a regular Twitter user (@jessmcculloch) and I have a strong network there so I wanted to use it to get information out about the IWB Challenge. I also created a separate Twitter account for the IWB Challenge in order to build up a following of people who are specifically interested in IWBs, and also so the challenge would have it’s own identity on Twitter. Twitter is becoming a very mainstream tool and using it for the IWB Challenge is one way of introducing participants to it who may not have otherwise used it yet.

4. The IWB Challenge blog and it’s associated podcast (coming soon) are going to be used to write about and record what participants are doing, sharing stories of different challenges, and interviewing participants and those who have actually set the challenges about why they like IWBs, how they think it enhances their teaching etc.

Rationale: I will use a blog as well as the wiki because the blog offers a chronological journaling type service which will be more conducive to conversation and discussion. The pages on the wiki can be updated, but in the way that you would edit a rough draft - changes will erase what was originally there. The blog allows updates of conversations, reflections and ideas with the previous ones being kept for later reference and to see a progression of idea development. I also want to create a podcast because that will offer another way for people to engage with the activity. I’m hoping participants will enjoy hearing the voices of people how are involved in the Challenge - but also it may be another way of growing the Challenge audience, especially if the podcast is available in places like the iTunes store.

5. There is also a (pre-existing) Diigo bookmarking group that will be used to collect links that participants find. The tag is ‘iwbchallenge’ and I’ll also be encouraging people to use that tag on any of the bookmarking services they use.

Rationale: As participants work through the Challenge they will no doubt come across resources that they will hopefully want to share. For those using Diigo, it will be easy for them to do this with the Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom group. The problem here with social bookmarking is that people use different bookmarking sites, which is why I have specified the tag ‘iwbchallenge.’ I’ve then added the RSS feed from that tag on different sites (presently Delicious and Diigo) to a single page on the wiki. This will allow participants to go to just the one page to access new bookmarks, which will hopefully help them with their learning.

6. The IWB Challenge Facebook Group will be a place for further discussion and somewhere else to help get the message out about the Challenge. I didn’t realise quite how many education related ‘friends’ I’ve got on Facebook until I went through them all to see who I could invite to the group.

Rationale: There is a question of course as to whether there should be so many groups/places for the one thing - surely people will get confused? Well, some might, but people do have their preferences of where they like to be so I think it’s worth trying to cater to the major ones - Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs.

All of these tools have been mashed together to create a virtual learning environment that will support teachers to learn more about the use of interactive whiteboards.

http://iwbchallenge.wikispaces.com

Image is author’s own.

What Is The Interactive Whiteboard Challenge?

This challenge involves participants creating videos and / or screencasts of some of the great things they are doing with their IWB to share with teachers and students across the globe.

http://iwbchallenge.wikispaces.com

Remember this challenge is for teachers AND STUDENTS so please get your kids involved! We’d love to have some input from students and I’m sure they will come up with some great ideas. You can use the challenge as a classroom activity or unit of work. Read more ideas for that on this page.

The aim is to complete as many challenges as you can in the 10 weeks of each round AS WELL AS contributing a challenge of your own. There are 12 Challenges to do already on the site. Step by step, this is how it works:

How to get started:

1. Add your name and contact details to the table on the Leaderboard page and then create your own individual page by placing two square brackets at each end of your name while in Edit mode. Then, write an intro about yourself on your page - where you are from, why you are interested in the challenge, links to your blog etc. Maybe even leave a photo!

2. Complete a challenge which means:

Chose a challenge to work on
make a video or screencast of yourself or a student using the skill presented in the challenge
upload the video to the IWB Challenge YouTube Channel (I’ll give you the password when you need it)
embed that video on to your page of this wiki
add the amount of challenges you have completed to the Leaderboard column (on the page you signed up on) and add a comment about how you are going

3. Repeat Step 2 as many times as you can before the Challenge ends

4. Post a Challenge of your own! In order to be eligible for a prize you need to have posted a challenge to other teachers. You can add your challenge to the Challenges page with you name as part of the title. You can add it in any form you like - have a look at some of the others for examples.

There are 2 Rounds of the IWB Challenge in order to cater for those living above and below the equator:

Round 1 is Down South (June, July and August)
Round 2 is Up North (September, October, November)

You can join either or both rounds!

Why join the Interactive Whiteboard Challenge?

1. To get some great new ideas on how to use your IWB
2. To take part in discussions with colleagues who are interested in improving their IWB practice as well
3. To work alongside students who are interested in using IWBs and helping teachers to use IWBs better
4. To share the great things you are doing with your IWB
5. To make important connections and help grow your personal learning network

Other information you may be interested in: