Marzano: Setting Objectives

This post is part of a series on integrating the McREL research on classroom instruction that works with videoconferencing.

Setting Objectives: Generalizations

  1. Setting instructional goals narrows what students focus on.
  2. Teachers should encourage students to personalize the learning goals the teacher has identified for them.
  3. Instructional goals should not be too specific.

Recommendations

Use these to improve your practice.

  1. Set learning objectives that are specific but flexible.
  2. Allow students flexibility in personalizing the learning objectives or goals.
  3. Communicate the learning objectives or goals to students and parents.
  4. Contract with students to attain specific learning objectives or goals (Pitler, et al., 2007, p. 17-18).

Brainstorming for Videoconferencing

At first glance, it seems this doesn’t really apply to videoconferences. Certainly, I don’t think we can make a project template out of it, do you? Just the same, we can improve our practice. What about these ideas?

  • Have students make a KWL or KWHL chart before a videoconference or a unit with a videoconference included. Make sure it includes what you want the student to learn (your objectives) and what they want to learn (personalizing learning). Student motivation is higher when they set at least some of their own goals.
  • The KWL could create a foundation from which to prepare questions, for ASK programs, asking questions of the other students, Lest We Forget programs, and any program with a content provider who includes a Q&A time.
  • What if, before a videoconference, the two classes created a KWL together using a collaborative drawing/brainstorming tool? Dabbleboard looks cool! Do you think this would work? I’m thinking about Read Around the Planet, learning about each others’ communities, and EcoConversations.
  • Take your state standards and use them to create a rubric for the students on what they will learn from this videoconference.

Share Your Ideas!
So, what do you think? Do you have any other ideas? How do you currently set objectives for students as they prepare for a videoconference?

Reference: Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Creating New Marzano VC Project Templates

As part of my studies, I’m looking in depth at Marzano’s Instructional Strategies That Work. To learn more, I recommend the following books:

As you know, I’ve been sharing/publishing the Planning Kid2Kid Videoconference Projects booklet for the last 3 years. For this summer’s revision, I want to add templates for Marzano’s instructional strategies. As I’ve learned in a workshop on Marzano’s strategies, we as teachers may feel that we’re using that strategy already. However if we can improve and refine our practice of that strategy, we can raise our students’ achievement. So it seems worth our time to consider how we can create videoconference project templates that can refine our use of these instructional strategies.

Note to content providers: To those content providers reading this blog, I encourage you to evaluate your current programs to see how these strategies could also improve your practice!

The 11 Strategies

The Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works book reorganizes Marzano’s original nine strategies into eleven. Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback are split in two, and Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition are split in two. In addition, the strategies are reorganized around four guiding questions as follows.

What will students learn?

  • 1. Setting Objectives

Which strategies will provide evidence of student learning?

  • 2. Providing Feedback
  • 3. Providing Recognition

Which strategies will help students acquire and integrate learning?

  • 4. Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
  • 5. Nonlinguistic Representation
  • 6. Summarizing and Note Taking
  • 7. Cooperative Learning
  • 8. Reinforcing Effort

Which strategies will help students practice, review, and apply learning?

  • 9. Identifying Similarities and Differences
  • 10. Homework and Practice
  • 11. Generating and Testing Hypotheses

Invitation
So as I think about these strategies in the next 11 posts, I encourage you to comment and share your thoughts, ideas you have, and questions that are raised. Let’s create some new ideas together!

Unique MysteryQuest Clues

Still doing MysteryQuest USA sessions. For today’s sharing, I thought you might be interested in some of the really creative and unique clues.

  • “Peaceful is a synonym for this time zone”
  • A morse code clue: -..  ..-  –  -.-.  …

And some more math problems:

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What unique clues have you seen students give in a program like this?

MysteryQuest USA Visuals

It’s MysteryQuest season again, and I can sure tell that the classes have benefited from additional instructions on making good posters.

These posters are from Nate Moyer’s class from one of Oswego BOCES school’s in NY. Look how easy to read they are! Students read the clues from the back of the poster.

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Benefits of VC: In the Words of a Teacher

I have another session of the Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections class starting this week. We have 9 participants and two are from Guatemala! (We could squeeze you in if you register today or tomorrow.)

In the first week, the participants read some articles and share the benefits of videoconferencing. One of the participants, Kelly Hawn, is a teacher at F. C. Reed Middle School in Bridgman, MI, here in my service area. This year, Kelly has done Eco-Conversations and been an audience for a KC3 contestant class in Alberta. Here is her list of benefits of videoconferencing:

  1. Students are more engaged in learning from others than from textbooks.
  2. Students like presenting to other schools and they practiced their presentations ahead of time, therefore reinforcing their content.  They took their presentation much more seriously because they were presenting to someone they didn’t know. It’s so much better than presenting to their own classmates.  They put in more time and did a much better job than they would have if they just presented to their classmates.
  3. Students were allowed time to ask questions about the other school (weather, class schedules, favorite things to do, what music they like, class size, school uniforms, and so much more).
  4. The students became pen pals with students from other countries and states and we also exchanged gifts and pictures.
  5. The students want to reunite and show and learn more.  Currently my Social Studies class is studying Europe and they want to do another VC with England to ask them about some things we are learning in our textbook.
  6. The students love the fact that they can see and interact with another school with immediate feedback.  The Alberta school was amazed at how big our school was compared to theirs (and our school is small).  Students in England wore uniforms and was an all girls schools.

How about you? What do you see as the benefit to videoconferencing in schools?

History of Jazz

This post is an attempt at documenting the history of the 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing workshop. I’ll include who participated that year, and any major contributions/changes from that year. Please comment and correct and suggest additions as needed!

Updated 8/3/2010.

2005

Participants

  • Lamar Consolidated ISD, Rosenberg, TX, Ken Conn
  • Paris ISD, TX, Bennie Tschoerner
  • Berrien County ISD, Janine Lim

Uniqueness

  • Schedule: Monday am intro to VC, Tues am Academic Challenges, Wed am MysteryQuest Beaches in the morning and ASK as a guest speaker in the afternoon, Thu am exchange simulation
  • Moodle on Bennie’s server
  • First time that MysteryQuest Beaches was used in a workshop
  • First attempt at cross site groups, inspired by Carol Fleck and Kim Perry‘s presentation at Keystone 2004

2006

Participants

  • Lamar Consolidated ISD/Data Projections, Rosenberg, TX (Ken Conn and October Smith) (lead)
  • El Paso ISD, TX (Ashton Graham)
  • ESC Region 8, Mt. Pleasant TX (Adam Martinez and Vicki Allen)
  • NYC DOE Region 4, New York (Andrea Israeli)
  • Berrien County ISD, MI (Janine Lim) (lead)
  • Cooperating School Districts, St. Louis, MO (Rebecca Morrison, Ruth Block and Martha Bogart)
  • ESC Region 12, Waco TX (Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard)
  • Temple ISD, TX (Paula Yezak)

Uniqueness

  • First year of two simultaneous groups joining together
  • Roxanne Glaser consolidated handouts into one file for the handbook, a major contribution
  • First year of the quick contact list and connection charts (thanks to Roxanne)
  • Settled on the morning simulations: Monday exchange, Tuesday Math Marvels, Wednesday MysteryQuest, Thursday ASK.
  • Guest speakers were: Monday: Paul Hieronymous with his Jeopardy game; Tuesday:  Teacher Testimonials with Stacy Bethel, Kim Pearce, and Pam Hamilton; Wed: CSD with Racial Dialogs and Trial by Wire and Andrea Israeli with Poetry Slam; Thu: GNG and Robert Symberlist from UKERNA

2007

June Participants

  • Berrien County ISD, MI (Janine Lim) (lead)
  • ESC Region 12, Waco TX (Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard)
  • El Paso, TX (Ashton Graham)

July Participants

  • Lamar Consolidated ISD/Data Projections, Rosenberg, TX (Ken Conn and October Smith) (lead)
  • El Paso, TX (Ashton Graham)
  • NCOESC, OH (Kathy Mohr)
  • Berrien County ISD, MI (Janine Lim) (c0-lead)
  • ESC Region 12, Waco TX (Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard) (co-lead)
  • ESC 8, TX (Jodie Ingram, Melodie Wahlert, Adam Martinez)
  • ESC 10, TX (Vicki Allen, Lori Colwill, Bob Avant)

Uniqueness

  • Roxanne started us using Flickr to build community
  • The year of the cockroaches
  • First year with two sessions: June and July
  • The June session was an experiment in doing Jazz in 4 days instead of 5
  • Guest speakers: Monday Greenbush, Tuesday Teacher Testimonials and the Shane Howard show, Wednesday Global Nomads, Thursday CSD, MO and NOECA, OH

2008

June Participants

  • Berrien County ISD, MI, Janine Lim (lead)
  • EduTech, ND, Kim Owen and Tabitha Lang
  • El Paso ISD, TX, Ashton Graham
  • Torfaen LEA, Wales, Steve Roberts
  • ESC Region 12, Waco, TX Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard (lead)
  • Humble ISD, TX, Angela Conrad
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill

July Participants

  • Berrien RESA, MI, Janine Lim (lead)
  • ESC Region 7, Kilgore, TX, Mary Smith and Glenda Hickey
  • El Paso ISD, TX, Ashton Graham
  • ESC Region 12, Waco, TX Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard (lead)
  • NCO ESC, OH, Kathy Mohr
  • Fort Bend ISD, TX, Sally Staner
  • Lamar Consolidated ISD/Data Projections, Rosenberg, TX (Ken Conn and October Smith) (lead)
  • ESC Region 8, Mt. Pleasant, TX, Jodi Ingram and Melodie Wahlert
  • GST BOCES, NY, René Carver
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill and Vicki Allen

Uniqueness

2009

June Participants

  • Berrien RESA, MI, Janine Lim (lead)
  • Torfaen LEA, Wales, Steve Roberts
  • SCOCA, OH, Melissa Higgs-Horwell
  • ESC Region 7, Kilgore, TX, Mary Smith
  • Hays CISD, TX, Christie Rickert
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill (lead)
  • El Paso ISD, TX, Ashton Graham
  • Fort Bend ISD, Corlette Hill
  • SD 73, Kamloops, BC, Tracy Poelzer

July Participants

  • Lamar Consolidated ISD/Data Projections, Rosenberg, TX (Ken Conn and October Smith) (lead)
  • NCO ESC, OH, Kathy Mohr and Paul Hieronymous
  • Gladewater ISD, OH
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill, (lead)
  • El Paso, TX Ashton Graham
  • Region 4, TX, Diane Edgar
  • EduTech, ND, Kim Owen and Tabitha Lang
  • ESC Region 12, Waco, TX Roxanne Glaser and Shane Howard (lead)
  • Fort Bend ISD, TX, Sally Staner
  • GST BOCES, René Carver

Uniqueness

2010

June Participants

  • Berrien RESA, MI, Janine Lim (lead)
  • Hays CISD, TX (Christie Rickert)
  • Killeen ISD, TX (Debbie Alston)
  • Torfaen LEA, Wales (Lisa Bodenham and Steve Roberts)
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill (lead)
  • EduTech, ND, Kim Owen and Tabitha Lang
  • El Paso ISD, TX, Ashton Graham
  • SD 73, Kamloops, BC, Tracy Poelzer

July Participants

  • Lamar Consolidated ISD/Data Projections, Rosenberg, TX (Ken Conn and October Smith) (lead)
  • NORT2H, (Paul Hieronymous)
  • Gladewater ISD, OH (Glenda Hickey)
  • El Paso, TX (Ashton Graham)
  • Dallas ISD, TX, Lori Colwill, (lead)
  • Berrien RESA, MI (Janine Lim)
  • CNYRIC, NY (Amy Spath)
  • Fort Bend ISD, TX (Corlette Hill and team)

Uniqueness

Graph of Participation

The following graph shows the total number of sites each year. If a site was in the June and July session both, they are counted two times.

Reflection Question:

Those of you who have participated in Jazz, what am I missing? What do you see as the greatest contribution of Jazz to your use of videoconferencing? Those of you who haven’t participated in Jazz, what questions are raised?

The Circle of Sharing & Learning

Give and it shall be given unto you… (Luke 6:38).

This week for my studies I’ve been thinking about collaboration, and I’ve been getting ready for the beginning of 5 weeks of MysteryQuests and HistoryQuests starting April 20.

The “quests” started with us participating in Where in the USA with LearningSpace, an organization that closed its doors in 2004. Soon after we started running our own MysteryQuest USA, MysteryQuest World, and this year we added HistoryQuest5 and HistoryQuest8 to address new MI curriculum needs.

In the meantime, several spin-offs occurred, starting with Joan Roehre‘s Wisconsin History Mystery. She asked for permission to adapt our materials. So did Roxanne and Angela with Texas History Mystery, and Heather with MAGPI’s MysteryQuest USA.

It’s taken a few years, as they have grown their programs, but now the learning is coming back this direction. It circles around.

PPTs for Facilitation
Last fall I facilitated a Landmark Challenge for Roxanne and discovered the beauty of PowerPoint visuals to supplement the visuals. I’m a visual learner, and have a hard time with audible only instructions. Why didn’t I think of that before? So this week I asked Roxanne for her Texas History Mystery PPTs so I could get them up and running for my quests next week. The PowerPoints include:

  • A reminder to mute
  • The agenda
  • List of schools/teachers participating
  • Some little puzzles to guess related to the topic
  • A reminder on materials

Tips for Camera Ready Presentations
Heather just posted a great list of tips for camera ready presentations. I’ve incorporated this link into my “presentation reminders” email for my quests. What a great list!

So, are you wondering if you should share “your stuff”? Then… my answer is, YES, of course! The returns will come back to you eventually! As others use, modify, and improve “your stuff” it gets better!

What are YOU sharing with the K12 videoconferencing world?

Pauses Revisited… Meeting Best Practices

JazzToday the lead facilitators for the Jazz workshop had a 2+ hour planning meeting. As usual, our videoconference meeting was supported by other technologies:

  • a Skype chat to share URLs
  • GoogleDocs – a schedule file and a notes and todo file
  • Twitter to share interesting tidbits, side comments or resources with our peeps
  • Phones to cause the vc buzz and take a pic (ok that didn’t really support the meeting!)

What I really noticed today though, was our pauses. After a particularly confusing topic with varied viewpoints, when everyone’s voice had been heard, we paused. We thought about it. We processed. No one told us to, we just did it. And after a sufficient time, we moved on.

Think time is really important! Having a way to visually see the discussion topics/issues in GoogleDocs also was critical to our thinking.

What about you? What strategies work well in your VC meetings?

Lit Review: Virtual Team Leadership

Lit Review: This is a post in a series focusing on the research studies on videoconferencing.

Hambley, L. A. (2005). Virtual team leadership: The effects of leadership style and communication medium on team interaction styles and outcomes. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertation. (AAT NR05638)

Summary

This dissertation has a mixed-methods design. The quantitative study compared transformational and transactional leadership against teams meeting face to face, videoconference and via chat. No significant difference was found on leadership styles. Constructive interaction score was higher in face to face than VC and chat teams, but not significantly higher in VC than chat teams. In addition, team cohesion scoares were higher in face that face and videoconference than chat, but not significantly higher in VC than chat.

The quantitative study was done with 228 undergraduate students who had a mean of 4 years of full time work experience and 4 years of part time experience. The Meeting Effectiveness Situation was the simulation used to measure task performance.

The qualitative part of the study consisted of interviews with nine virtual team leaders and members in the actual workplace.

Definitions

A virtual team is not a learning network, community of practice, or web-based interest group. It is a group with specific tasks, shared outcomes and interdependency. Jazz facilitator teams certainly fit this definition.

Semi-virtual teams may have a local subgroup as well as remote team members. These groups can have the increased challenge of in-group and out-group issues. I wonder if some Jazz facilitators sometimes are an in-group as we’ve all seen each other face to face, whereas others may feel more out-group because they haven’t been with us as long or we’ve never seen them face to face?

Virtual teams differ on four dimensions (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002):

  • temporal distribution – the degree to which the team coversw boundaries of space and time
  • boundary spanning – the degree to which the team spans varies organizational and cultural boundaries
  • lifecycle – short term to long term
  • member roles – keeping the same role or members holding multiple roles

Virtual teams tend to focus less on relationship building, which can lead to less effective teams (p. 10).

Other Theories

Media Synchronicity Theory: Asynchronous communication is better for less complex tasks which require reflection and minimal collaboration. Synchronous is better for tasks that are more complex and require interdependence and feedback.

Media Richness Theory:  Explains how different communication media affect task performance. Videoconferencing is a richer medium than text chat.

Qualitative Results

The interviewees felt that a face to face kick-off is important for a virtual team. “Face to face meetings have important impacts such as facilitating the development of trust, comfort level, and rapport” (p. 87). They thought that virtual teams should meet face to face once in a while if at all possible.

Virtual team leaders need to be able to build a virtual team – facilitate trust building, establishing the vision etc. The team leader should have training in leading a virtual team and should make sure everyone feels a part. They should have very good facilitation skills. They should invest time in getting to know the followers. They should have good project management skills. They should be able to know what to do if the technology fails. I’m thinking that the best modeling of this that I have seen has been by Roxanne.

The qualitative section is rich with tips for effective leadership in virtual teams, including addressing challenges, the use of the phone and email, and tips for the videoconference.

Question for you…

Are you on any virtual teams? How do they work? Do you see good leadership or not-so-much? What makes it work well? Do you use VC? Does it work well? Feel free to comment….

Stigmergic collaboration: A theoretical framework for mass collaboration

Continuing work on my 5th competency:  Servant Leadership in Technology Facilitation and Collaboration.

Elliott, M. A. (2007). Stigmergic collaboration: A theoretical framework for mass collaboration (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Melbourne, 2007). Retrieved from http://mark-elliott.net/blog/?page_id=24

Notes (instead of a summary)

This work is incredible, detailed, and presented in an attractive way. I feel that I can’t do it justice, but here are a few notes.

Definitions: “Collaboration is the process of two or more people collectively creating emergent, shared representations of a process and or outcome that reflects the input of the total body of contributors” (Elliott, 2007, p. 31).
“co-created emergent shared representation” (p. 45).
“Stigmergy is a class of behavior in which collective activity is coordinated through the individuals’ response to and modification of their local environment—one agent’s modification becomes another’s cue (p. 8). (swarm intelligence)

Some principles: Non zero sum outcome (i.e. win win)
Includes creative activity (not just cooperating together); must create (p. 40).
Generate multiple solutions to a problem and one is selected by the collective (p. 40)
Collaboration transcends and includes cooperation which transcends and includes coordination (p. 41)
The Internet is fundamentally a stigmergic system in that it supports mediated indirect communication and inspires users to respond to its encoding by further encoding it (p. 92).

What does it take to create the environment for it?

The individual must relinquish some control to the collective, including sole authorship (p. 49)

Collaborative output requires “constant attention and redevelopment” through out the process, and the purpose needs redefining daily, each moment (p. 50)

Procedures must be previously agreed upon (p. 51).

What are the participants like?

Multiple participants with varying social capacities, personalities, histories and relationships (p. 53)

An ideal prospective collaborator…
1. is enthustiastic about the subject of our collaboration
2. is open-minded and curious
3. speaks their mind even if it’s an unpopular viewpoint.
4. gets back to me and others in a timely way.
5. is willing to enter into difficult conversations
6. is a perceptive listener. (p. 54)

Communication happens through all types of mediums, and may not stay in the same medium. It also isn’t two-way, it has multiple paths and multiple participants.

What does it take for digital stigmergic collaboration to happen?

Someone has to:

“Define an objective for which collective creative contribution is required in order to build value through user contribution.

Define a set of procedures designed to provide the capacity for participants to make such contributions.

Develop an online environment which caters for these contributions and enables the emergence of collectively created shared representations, and cultivate a community which supports the objectives.

[Then]  “Compliant participants make creative contributions and benefit from collective efforts.” (p. 104)

——

Reaction:

Wow. This deserves much further thought! Preferably stigmergic collaborative thought.