The Avant Gardist

August,11 2010



Elizabeth Gianfrancisco - Teacher
Myron B. Thompson Academy

I’m very excited to be a part of the 8th grade redesign team. I’ve been working with a team of teachers since last year to build a strong, engaging, and meaningful curriculum for 2010-2011. The 7th grade redesign was a huge success last year, so I am eager to work with the 8th grade Language Arts class in conjunction with Mr. Perih’s Social Studies class.

Mr. Perih and I have developed an interdisciplinary curriculum for history and English. The historical material students learn will be enhanced by novels, narratives, and short stories while historical documents, a study of US government, and a foundational understanding our country’s principles will bolster the literary content. We have found some incredible resources so far and we can’t wait to share them with the students.

One of our new books, The United States Constitution: A Graphic Novel, will allow students to learn about the Constitution using illustrations to explore the creation of this living document. Students will study how the Constitution came to be, the people who were instrumental in its creation, and how the document continues to transform and grow with the changing needs of our country. We will also take examine some of the heroes of early America, from the well-known presidents to the ordinary men and women who came to do extraordinary things.

This dynamic curriculum will challenge students to think about what it means to be an American citizen, how the individuals of America have the power to actively shape our government, and consider the ramifications of our actions in society. These studies will tie into our oral communication course later in the year.

I look forward to a fantastic year!

The Avant Gardist
May 26,2010

Bocar Wane, 7^th grade math, Geometry, is currently presenting at the e-Learning Conference: Africa in Zambia. His presentation is entitled Anywhere, Anytime – Lessons to Be Learned from an Online School in Hawaii. He will be sharing information about Myron B. Thompson Academy, and how we operate in a virtual setting. Bocar will also be researching some new trends in online learning.

May 24, 2010

Bocar Wane, Myron B. Thompson Academy, USA

Dateline: Lusaka, Zambia

Day 2: The day started very early for me. I got up at 5 30 am and I went for a 5 mile run in the streets over Lusaka, a city that I barely know. The morning was nice—some people were walking on the street, and some Zambians and foreign nationals were running in the early dawn. On my way back from running, mundane activities started to pick up and the sun was shining a little more. The morning was brisk. We had continental breakfast near the lodge’s swimming pool.

After breakfast, we went to Cairo Rd, the main business district. It looks like downtown Queens, for those of you have been to Queens in New York City. The streets were busy with people although today was a holiday in Zambia, Africa Freedom Day. Most of the shops were closed. The food businesses were however open. There were lots of unregistered taxi drivers and people with various merchandise standing on the sidewalk trying to get business out of you. We decided to eat at a Lebanese restaurant. We both had a shwarma sandwich, which was good.

We then went to Arcade, a shopping mall where lots of activities were happening in celebration of Africa Freedom Day. Local and traditional dance, bands, and flea market—were all entertaining many people in the shopping mall. We sat outside of a cyber coffee shop listening to the performers playing and dancing music while catching up with our emails. We then went to the Kabwata Cultural Village, a craft market about 3 to 4 miles from where we were. There we found beautiful local crafts in soapstone, wood, and fabrics. The market is constituted of several huts where the goods were displayed. We bought a few things that we really liked.

We went back to Arcade to witness the final hours of the holiday festivities. We then had diner at La Gondola, an Italian restaurant. The T-bone steak I had was so lean that you wonder if there was any meat in this cow let alone fat! We however enjoyed the atmosphere in the restaurant made up of locals and foreign nationals. The service was good. We went back to the lodge to gracefully call it a day.

The Avant Gardist
May 24,2010

Bocar Wane, 7^th grade math, Geometry, is currently presenting at the e-Learning Conference: Africa in Zambia. His presentation is entitled Anywhere, Anytime – Lessons to Be Learned from an Online School in Hawaii. He will be sharing information about Myron B. Thompson Academy, and how we operate in a virtual setting. Bocar will also be researching some new trends in online learning.

May 24, 2010

Bocar Wane, Myron B. Thompson Academy, USA

Dateline: Lusaka Zambia

Day 1:

My wife and I arrived in Lusaka, Zambia from London, England for the E-Learning Africa Conference on Monday, May 24, 2010 at 7am local time. The total trip time from Honolulu, Hawaii was 36 hours. My first impression of Lusaka, after driving from the airport to the hotel (about a 15-minute drive) was that Lusaka is no different that any other African city I have seen thus far. The streets are more or less clean, people jaywalk haphazardly, and to my big surprise, people drive on the left side. I guess the Zambians picked up that culture from the Brits.

I travelled with my wife, and this is the first time for both us to have ever set foot in Zambian land. Our hotel was modest but with character and charm, at least the outside of the hotel. Actually, the hotel is called a lodge; there are only 10 rooms total. It is more like a modified house. Our room appeared to be clean but it was very small and cluttered so we are going to change to a bigger room tomorrow and see how it goes. The staff at the hotel are very friendly. We ordered lunch at the hotel., and the waiter/cook recommended a local specialty, roasted quail, which was delicious. We also ordered grilled fish and Nshima, which is the local starch staple—a pounded porridge of maize flour—a Zambian type of poi!

After resting a bit, we walked around and went to the two major malls in Lusaka. The first mall we went to is called Manda Hill Mall. It is undergoing construction so the sound of construction resonated everywhere. We did, however, find a nice coffee shop called Kilimanjaro, decorated in Kenyan/East African style. We had coffee and homemade lemon iced tea and then walked to the other mall, Arcades. There we walked around and had dinner at Arabian Nights. The food was good; Ann ate Afghan steak, a seasoned steak, and I ate grilled lamb chops. Both meats were well seasoned. We also ate delicious naan bread and a great Pakistani chopped salad made of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, parsley…and tons of chopped hot chili peppers. I had to stop eating it but Ann kept on going until her lips were swollen and red.

Internet connection at the hotel is beyond slow. I hope that tomorrow we’ll get to town to an internet café so that I can send this. After so much travelling, I am beat—today ended early, at 8:30pm. More to come tomorrow.

The Avant Gardist
May 11,2010

Nicholas Perih
Social Studies / Civics Teacher

Hi, my name is Nicholas Perih and I am new teacher at Myron B. Thompson Academy. When I was given the opportunity to teach online at MBTA, I jumped at the chance to reach and connect with students all over Hawaii. While I had teaching experience and even understood the benefits of using technology in the classroom, I had never actually taught in a virtual environment. Thus far, my experience has been exciting and positive!

As a traditional classroom teacher for the past few years. I was beginning to see the limits to a “bricks and mortar” school. For example, students in my first class of the day were often tired and sleepy. These students explained to me that if they had their own way, they would prefer to learn later in the day when they would be more perceptive. I don’t blame them! It can be very difficult to focus at seven o’clock in the morning.

Another issue was the pace of my class. Students have different learning styles, and some need more time than others to complete various tasks. What works for one student does not always work for another. The class structure at MBTA allows my students to work around their own schedules and at their own pace. A current student recently told me that this took a lot of pressure off him, and in turn has improved his overall focus and the quality of his work.

I have come to discover that teaching online is a highly interactive process where I have gotten to know most, if not all of my students on a personal level. I have been able to access my students and them me, at all hours of the day and night. This type of individualized attention is unparalleled in any other institution of learning of which I’ve been a part, and the benefits for students have been astounding.

In my opinion, Myron B. Thompson Academy is unique from other institutions of learning in that there is a profound focus on both student learning and teacher development. My students live in a world where technology is a large part of their daily lives, and I have been given the tools to create engaging learning opportunities using technology to meet the needs of these learners.

The Avant Gardist
April 26, 2010

Jerelyn Watanabe
Assistant Registrar

The volcano of ahi tartare arrived at our table literally smoking from the dry ice hidden in the base. Rob’s eyes widened. He dug in.

We all devoured our meals, sitting at a small street-side table in downtown Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley. Men and women dressed in suits held business meetings at nearby tables. Every make and model of fancy sports car drove down the street.

So how do Myron B. Thompson Academy teachers fit in to this scene? More on that later, for now, I’d like to share a little about how curriculum is cultivated at our school.

Hours of conversation and shared insights from books and educational papers all led to the idea of a revised 7^th grade curriculum. This new curriculum would help transition a “brick and mortar” or home-schooled student into online learning at Myron B. Thompson Academy. Students would learn to use the latest in technology and tools while deepening their understanding of the core subjects of math, social studies, language arts and science. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) goals guided the development of our student outcomes but there was a missing piece.

That’s where slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, written by Nancy Duarte, entered our discussion. We needed our students to work in teams even though they might be geographically separated, perhaps even living on different islands. We hoped that students might communicate their ideas using the latest technology and tools in the most effective format. The slide:ology Workshop promised to show us how to create a really effective presentation (after all, Duarte Design helped Al Gore with his slideshow on global warming). We felt hopeful that we could then teach our 7^th grade students this skill.

We lived slide:ology for two days, one day attending the workshop and the next day completing a project for the school using the slide:ology ideology. During the two days we heard stories (after all, isn’t that what a presentation is?) and told our own. We used hundreds of sticky notes. We put ourselves in a “bathtub” to think (a variation of thinking outside the box) in loaned conference room at Duarte Design. We learned how vitally important visual elements are to a presentation. And we went to lunch in downtown Mountain View.

The slide:ology Workshop provided us with tools to create compelling presentations for our students, their parents, and for other teachers. This experience helped us all feel more comfortable taking risks in order to communicate our ideas. This in turn helps us become more effective as individual teachers and collectively as a school.

For the record, after eating his volcano of ahi tartare Rob tried tofu for the first time.

The Avant Gardist

April 5, 2010

---Diana Oshiro

Principal

SHARE, REMIX, REUSE – “LEGITIMATE PLAGIARISM?”

I returned from a three day conference held on the shores of California’s beautiful Monterey Peninsula with a renewed commitment to transform education. Thompson Academy, an active member of the National Repository for Online Courses, has been working with colleagues from other states to further expand our collective knowledge of online learning. It is quite evident that online courses and web-based technologies are transforming education. So what will be the new role of our teachers and expectations of our students in this new environment? Will we be held hostage by online curriculum providers who will not allow the teacher to customize, individualize and differentiate instruction using the set content? Will our teachers be able to create courses, share content and redesign assessments that can be distributed to anyone?

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open licensing are hot topics in technology and education circles today. The OER movement has increased tremendously from 2005 when the first collaborative content creation projects were funded by the Hewlett and Shuttleworth Foundations. Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

• Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
• Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
• Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

Are we possibly doing something illegal by taking available content, re-mixing and then redistributing to anyone who wants it? Does this practice border on “plagiarism”? No, not if everyone agrees to share. This movement may be a new and better way to capture the strongest content, best instructional practices and highest performing students. As our community of learners begins to recognize the importance of shared knowledge, every learner and teacher will collectively benefit and grow. Perhaps this can be called “Legal Plagiarism.”

Thompson Academy has always engaged in innovative, “cutting edge” opportunities that informed new instructional practices and transformed educational environments. Another such opportunity has presented itself. I believe Thompson Academy should play a major role in creating and using OER to improve learning while maximizing and extending resources. This year we provided students from 28 public schools with courses for credit recovery or acceleration toward graduation. This is done without cost to student or regional school. If we share our resources, our teachers and instructional content with all students desiring our services, perhaps we will begin to see how external circumstances like lack of resources, furlough days and derelict facilities will no longer matter. So, what should be our next steps? Developing a plan and strategizing ways to redesign courses, remix content and share it with everyone in the form of credit courses for students or professional development for teachers is the first step. This will not be an easy task but can be done. We’re all about “proving the concept” and Thompson Academy will attempt to “prove this concept” in the near future.

The Avant Gardist

March 29, 2010

---Lindsey Chang

7th grade Team, 7th grade English

Interdisciplinary Learning at MBTA

In an effort to prepare our seventh graders for the 21^st century, we created a course with 21^st century learning skills in mind. We produced an interdisciplinary course between language arts and social studies which allowed the students to achieve a deep understanding of the subjects as well as work on essential learning skills. In the first term, Hawaiian Literature was fully integrated with Modern Hawaiian History, and in the second term, Pacific Island literature was taught in conjunction with Pacific Island Studies.

Interdisciplinary learning is thought to address one of the recurring problems in education, which is fragmentation and isolated skill instruction. In the real world people must use knowledge from all disciplines to solve problems and come up with creative solutions. With this in mind, we created a course which allowed students to progressively build on their knowledge throughout the term, and incorporate ideas they learned from the social studies class into English and vice versa. We encouraged the students make connections between related ideas, and analyze how parts of the whole interact and affect each other. For example, in Hawaiian History, students learned important dates and facts about the arrival of the missionaries to Hawaii. They attained a good understanding of the numbers of missionaries, where they came from, where they settled, and how they gained political and economic power. In English class, the students were able to read deeply personal primary documents written by missionaries themselves. This gave the students an opportunity to really get into daily living for the missionaries and understand their thoughts and intentions intimately. In this way students were able to process the events which occurred in Hawaii on a deeper level and understand how events, personalities, politics, and economic interests created the Hawaii we know today.

Based on the feedback we received from the students, the interdisciplinary approach to learning was an overwhelmingly positive experience for the students. The sum of this integrated class truly was greater than its parts, and the students proved this. At the end of just 10 short weeks the students had proven to be well versed on Hawaiian History and Literature and well on their way to mastering 21^st century skills.

The Avant Gardist

March 22, 2010


Sharon Abrigo - Curriculum Director
Myron B. Thompson Academy



Thompson Academy is making a concerted effort to stretch student thinking beyond the simple recall of facts. While there are important dates in history, verb conjugations and math formulas that should be etched in the minds of all students, simply being able to recite these doesn’t necessarily indicate an ability to think. For example, naming all 50 states with their capitals is quite a feat of memorization, and while important, it basically represents a recall task. Being able to explain how the Southern states differ from those on the Eastern seaboard politically, economically and socially requires a person to process information. Devising a plan to attract tourists to a particular state or region requires a person to recall the facts, process them and finally create something new with the information.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote the following poem in the mid-1800s.
The Three Story Intellect
There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights.
All fact collectors who have no aim beyond their facts are one-story men.
Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labor of fact collectors as their own.
Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict–their best illumination comes from above the skylight.
This poem served as the inspiration for the simple design of a house with 3 floors, created by educator/author Robin Fogarty in 1997. Each floor represents a different level of thinking. Teachers are expected to move students up and down all floors during the course of a lesson or unit. Thompson Academy uses this model along with Bloom’s Taxonomy, which breaks thinking into 6 levels, as they plan instruction and assessment. The idea is that students should not stay on the first floor (Bloom’s recall level). They also need opportunities to process, analyze and apply.
While there are still quizzes and exams, which require the recall of facts, there are also written and oral assignments that require students to show an understanding of the facts. Additionally, there are projects that ask students to create products and original work.


Encourage your children to explain how they arrived at an answer to a question. This gives great insight into their thinking. See if you can determine which level of the house some of their assignments target.

The Avant Gardist

February 26, 2010

Sharon Abrigo - Curriculum Director
Myron B. Thompson Academy

It has taken awhile to get our MBTA blog underway, but we are finally ready. There will be a weekly post, generated by faculty and staff. The focus will be on current activities that highlight the continuous improvement and forward movement here at Myron B. Thompson Academy. While we have some topics in mind to get us started, we’re also open to your ideas. Additionally, we invite your comments and questions about anything you read in the post. However, we do reserve the right to moderate posts.

So let’s get started. In the last two years, many changes have taken place at MBTA, including:

· Greater emphasis on higher order thinking vs. simple regurgitation of facts.

· Development of performance assessments to balance traditional multiple choice and short answer

· Intense math instruction and interventions

· Professional development of staff, at home at and out of state workshops/courses.

· Redesign of 7^th grade curriculum, with a focus on interdisciplinary learning and use of the latest tech tools

· Emphasis on active teaching

In various planning stages are:

· Redesign of 8^th grade curriculum

· Design of two 6^th grade online courses

· Attention on scholarly behaviors

· Focus on middle school

· Strengthening of secondary departments

We believe that blended learning is the future of education. This means a combination of face to face or webcam instruction with online instruction. Myron B. Thompson Academy is committed to strong, quality teaching and learning. Our principal likes to say that we are an incubator of ideas where students and student learning come first. We strive to be avant garde, utilizing creative ideas, styles and methods to advance education.

We want to share what we are doing and where we are headed with you. Future blog posts will be on some of the topics listed above.