Participants Develop New Ideas to Use in Their Classrooms For Bob Amses, a fifth-grade teacher in Phoenix, Arizona, an ongoing classroom challenge is drawing students into conversations that explore topics in depth. "Students are comfortable giving a short answer, a yes or no. What's lacking is the long discourse, the back-and-forth dialogue that encourages them to explain their thinking," he says. Recently, Amses attended the new Intel® Teach to the Future Workshops on Interactive Thinking Tools and learned about Visual Ranking and Seeing Reason. The tools and associated resources, available on the Intel® Innovation in Education Web site, are designed to encourage students to develop higher-order thinking skills. Seeing Reason uses causal mapping to help students investigate cause-and-effect relationships in complex systems. Visual Ranking includes a collection of resources for ranking and comparing lists. "As soon as I saw Visual Ranking demonstrated in the workshop, I thought it was incredible. It creates a necessity for discussion among students," says Amses, who teaches in a technology-enriched classroom at Kyrene del Milenio Elementary School. "I could see immediately how to use this to promote better discourse. It dovetails perfectly with what I'm trying to do as a teacher. I know it will be a huge part of my class in the coming school year." Time for Sharing Ideas The new workshops are designed to help teachers effectively integrate thinking tools into their learning projects. The face-to-face, hands-on format means teachers have the opportunity to use the online, interactive tools in a technology lab. The workshops, which last from eight and twelve hours, are led by Master Teachers, allow time for teachers to plan projects that meet their learning goals and to design assessments that measure results and are aligned to standards. Julia Fischer says workshops allow time for brainstorming and collaboration. Julia Fischer, another recent workshop participant, said she appreciated having the time to brainstorm with fellow teachers. "Getting to collaborate with other teachers and explore ideas together takes you to a deeper understanding of how these tools could work in your classroom," says Fischer, a sixth-grade science teacher from Kyrene Akimel A-Al Middle School in Phoenix, Arizona. Fischer was using Seeing Reason for class projects even before attending the workshop, but says she found the workshop discussions valuable. "You can go to the Web site and learn to use these tools on your own, but the workshop takes you to a deeper level," she says. "Your projects will get better as you understand the tools more fully." Fischer also liked hearing other teachers' ideas. "The discussions helped me think of many different ways I could use these resources. I also appreciated having time to work with my curriculum and my standards, and produce a lesson that's ready to use in my own classroom—tomorrow." Sustained Professional Development For teachers already comfortable with using classroom technology, the workshops offer ongoing professional development and the spark of new ideas. Fischer, for example, has been teaching for 10 years, and teaching with technology for the past six years. "I'm always looking for new tools to use with my students," she says. Bob Amses appreciates thinking tools that promote active class discussions. Amses began teaching three years ago, shifting from an earlier career in television and film. In 2002, he participated in the Intel® Teach to the Future Essentials Course, which gave him a good understanding of how to integrate technology into project-based learning. The new workshops are designed as a follow-up to the 40-hour Intel Teach to the Future Essentials Course. Amses says he is deliberate about when and how to integrate technology. "It's best when applications serve the end result—the learning goal," he said. He brings technology into learning projects "when it helps to stimulate students' thinking, encourages them to collaborate, and helps with the display of their understanding." Amses says he likes the thinking tools available from Intel Innovation in Education because they promote collaboration, inspire class discussions, and use visual representations to help students organize their thinking. "The process of creating a well-textured answer increases student understanding," he says. "Until students write down their ideas in a logical sequence, they don't fully understand. That's just as true in math as it is in language arts," he adds. Students use the interactive tools to create graphic representations of their thinking. As students acquire new knowledge and their thinking evolves, the maps and rankings display the resulting changes in understanding. Comment features prompt students to explain their reasoning and create more opportunities for discussions with the teacher, as well as with fellow students. Even for a veteran teacher like Fischer, using these powerful tools requires new classroom strategies. What has she learned? "As a teacher, you have to facilitate students' learning. Guiding questions are important, and it's important to be asking questions during the project and not just at the end," she says. For example, when using Seeing Reason, Fischer talks with students while they are making maps to represent cause-and-effect relationships. "It's important to get discussions going with students while they're making the maps. That's when you get to visualize their thinking," she says. The workshops allow experienced teachers to share their valuable insights with colleagues who may be newer to using interactive thinking tools. After using Seeing Reason for several science projects, Fischer has started to notice a shift. "My students are giving more in-depth answers. Their thinking is going deeper. That's exciting." To learn more about Intel Teach to the Future Workshops on Interactive Thinking Tools, visit www.intel.com/education/teach. To access the interactive thinking tools available from Intel Innovation in Education, go to www.intel.com/education/tools.
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