Blog Refresh

Its been too long since I blogged.

This post is acknowledging that I need to start afresh and begin reflecting through blogging again. Recording my ideas and my thinking is a good way for me to document my reflection and also a way to look back on what I've done.

I also start my Masters of Educational Technology and Design in the fall (Hoefully - I'm still waiting on final confirmation) and this will be a good way to reflect about my professional learning.

As I move into my 2nd year as a specialist (I have completed a year in a temporary role and now I begin the first year of my 3 yr contract) I'm finding I have many opportunities to reflect and share my thinking. I don't expect anything back but rather, want to share what I learn as well as use this space to think about my own thinking.

I will start my first post right way...

What is Fair?

Image: Unknown original source - This from a post from Joe Bower

Today I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Damian Cooper, author of Redefining Fair. A book that is about planning, assessment and grading. What a great topic to read and learn more about in today's education climate. In Alberta right now there is so much talk about Education and curriculum and what this is going to look like in the (near) future. We are in the midst of a curriculum redesign where the government is committed to completely revamping the K-12 curriculum so it matches and works for tomorrows students. There is so much talk (some good and some bad) about what good learning and teaching looks like. The public are talking a lot about math and what that should look like in the classroom. There has also been a lot of buzz about no-zero policies and academic awards in junior and senior high schools. 

Today's session was aimed at what we should be doing in the classroom, meeting the needs of our students. It was about the things we do and say to our students. The tasks we ask of our students and how they are assessed. It was about how we should be using the curriculum despite what most educators feel they should do.

Cooper talks about 5 main imperatives. I find these to be very much in-line with Alberta's Teacher Effectiveness Framework by Sharon Friesen. Cooper's take on these are as follows:

1. Curriculum must be meaningful, coherent and relevant
2. Instruction must be responsive to students’ needs
3. Assessment must be informative
4. Grading must blend consistency with professional judgement
5. Communication about learning must be truthful and transparent

The main points that I took away from today's workshop can be captured in the following Storify:

Personalization

I saw this tweet from Davis Truss (@datruss) this morning and it resonated with me.  It shows three great metaphors of what good learning and teaching looks like. I think these are the things we're trying to do to help change education for the better! And what's best is that they're all student focused!

Metaphors to create greater Educational Flexibility (post: http://t.co/m2oRqxL16L ) pic.twitter.com/woT0r2dOuR
— David Truss (@datruss) April 10, 2014

Apple Summer Institute 2013

I'm on board flight AA2189 bound for Austin, Texas. So much excitement is in the air with the four new ADEs on our flight. TeamYYC is ready for whatever hits us this week. 

The anticipation for this trip has been building for months. Since being inducted into the Apple Distinguished Educator Class of 2013 in February, I have connected with so many amazing educators from around the world. This week will be a chance to meet and connect some of them. With 300 innovative teachers converging in one place, I'm sure there will be lots of action, fun, and learning to be had. I'm told it will be the most amazing 5 days of my career. I'm sure I will be in awe most of the week. 

That being said, my plan is to take in as much as I can, meet as many people as I can, and learn a whack sack (love this word used a lot by Dean @Shareski) of new things. I'm sure I will feel overwhelmed at first but I'm hoping to get over that fast and get into the swing of things straight away. I don't want to miss any opportunity I come across this week as this will more than likely be one of lonly a few trips I do like this in my career. 

I have never been to Austin, Texas. I hear it's an amazing city and one of a few technology hubs in the U.S. According to our ADE13Austin schedule we do not have a lot of time to explore outside of our conference centre (a top secret location;). Any free time will be at night time and early morning will be the time to explore Austin. This could be difficult as a lot of the networking and connections with people apparently happen 'after hours'. Maybe the connections will happen while tiki touring or in a bar or mall? Who knows? Whatever happens I'll embrace it with open arms.

So they said rest up before the institute - Yeah right! My first two weeks of my summer break has been busy with spending time with my family and doing my usual beginning of summer jobs around the house. With my parents arriving from New Zealand two days after I return, the house needed to be ready for the 'king and queen' before I left. Realistically, resting was never going to be an option. I'm sure I'll run on adrenaline for the next 6 days and the well see what happens after that. 

Throughout this week, I plan to reflect daily at the end of each day or through the day and share share by tweeting and taking photos on Instagram of things I have learned. I know we work on projects while we are here and so hopefully I'll be able to share those as we work through them. 

One of these projects will be my 'One Best Thing'. We have been asked to think of something that we have done that was amazing. Something we could share with others and that could be replicated by anyone else. I have been thinking about doing something about making Learning Visible. This has really has been what has got me where I am today. Without all the sharing I have done, I would not have collected all the evidence of learning that I now have. Although this is a very broad topic I may still make this my One Best Thing. If not the visible learning avenue, I may look at doing one 'easy to replicate' project that I did on iPads with our kindergarten students. We called it real world math and it was something that a lot of other classes/teachers connected with in our building. More to come on that one...

I really hope I can keep up my reflection through blogging this week. We'll see how long the adrenaline lasts and the energy to reflect at the end of each long day.

• Reflect via my blog at least three times (hopefully every day)
• Tweet aha moments and interesting things
• Take photos to tell my story
• Connect face to face with those I have meet online
• Learn more Final Cut Pro X - an Apple video editing suite
• Establish my One Best Thing
• And most importantly, have FUN!

Here's to #ADE13Austin! 

Effective PD

I've been thinking about PD Days. What makes a great one?

This year I've been to a few great PD sessions/workshops/conferences/unconferences and quite a few have been focused on discussion. Talking with colleges about areas of interest and/or passion.

Wow! - That discussion has been pow-ER-ful!

 Today, we had our last PD day for the year. In my mind, it was another great one. We did the following:

1. We talked about reflection in learning - Everyone on staff was then given the opportinity to go and reflect for the purpose of sharing something they have learned from the year.
2. Next, we focused in on some particular Apps on our iPads and then had some time to learn how they worked. The idea was to come up with something that we could use by the end of the year in our classroom setting.
3. LUNCH - We had a amazing pot luck lunch with everyone and had some good bonding time.
4. After lunch, we had a World Cafe discussion. We focused on two different themes that we have been working on throughout the year, peer & self assessment, and improving reading. You were allowed to choose which discussion you wanted to be a part of. I chose to be involved in the assessment.
5. Then to finish off the day we had some teacher planning time.

I would say one of our strong points as a staff is the professional discussions we have. We have really come so far in the last couple of years. One problem we do have is it's often the same people sharing their ideas and the same people who button-up and just listen or zone out. I'm one of the talkers, so I have tried to hold back at times and let others share, even when I've had a burning desire to talk (this is hard for me). 

So, what I'm wondering is, how often should we just discuss and how often should we be doing something. Should we always be walking away from PD with something. Something we made or something we were given rather than just memories of what we talked about. When we just engage in dialogue, I'm sure we take something away or have those 'aha' moments but how long do those memories last?

We know that powerful and deep learning happens when our students create things. We ask them to apply their knowledge in a new situation, or even apply it by creating a own scenario, or by making an artifact of learning.  I wonder if we as a staff should be modeling this process during our PD days.

I think we need to balance our PD days with discussion, presentations and by creating or making something. 

I wonder if we can do that next year by planning ahead somehow or by creating some kind of standing schedule for PD days. Something that might look like this:

1) Presentation - this could be in the format of someone presenting, or everyone trying something new, or some kind of sharing activity.

2) Discussion - This could follow the presentation by relating to it, or be about something entirely different. We could make sure everyone shares somehow by changing the kind of discussion format. It could be done in a full staff group or in smaller chunks of staff. We could even look at doing this online too.

3) Application - this is the time where we would be making something based on the theme of the day or something we have been working on, or maybe even something that we will continue on with next time. The idea of taking something away would mean that we have something to take back to our classrooms to try. It could be a resource, a technique, or plan for a lesson or unit. 

These are a few ideas going around in m head right now. I think we need to rethink our PD Days to a similar model as to what were expecting teachers to do in their classroom. Let's lead by example and engage our staff in some really authentic professional development. 

Apple Distinguished Educator - Class of 2013

YES!! YES!! YES!!

I got in!

About this time last year I heard about this "club" called Apple Distinguished Educators. All over Twitter, I started discovering teachers from around the world that were part of this program. I was continually in awe of what I saw these people sharing. I wanted to be a part of this community!

After a little digging, I found out that ADE's are only selected every 2 years or so, or at least once a year, so would have to wait for my time. In November, the email came to say that the doors were open for applications. So I decided to take the risk and do it.

As part of the application process, I had to answer the following questions in written format and also a video response.

1. How have you as an educator transformed your learning environment?
2. Illustrate how Apple technologies have helped in this transformation?
3. What successes have you seen with your learners?
4. How do you share these successes to influence the broader education community?

The application, even thought it seemed relatively easy to answer these questions, was a rigorous process. The video took me between 30 or 40 hours to edit a 2 minute video. Here is my video response.

After my acceptance on February 14, 2013, I am now a humbled member of an elite group of educators  (about 2000 people from around the world). ADE's share what they know with each other, as well as the wider community. Every ADE has a goal of improving teaching and learning in their own field as well as helping others to maximise their own learning opportunities.

ADE Roles

ADEs have four primary roles in there. They are as follows:

Advocates

ADEs are passionate advocates of the potential of Apple technologies and they provide expert assistance and best practices to educators and policy makers. ADEs are frequent presenters at local, state, national and international educational conferences.

Advisors

ADEs provide valuable input to Apple on the realities of integrating instructional technology into learning environments.

Authors

ADEs publish authentic work to share with peers such as teaching and leadership best practices, exemplary lesson ideas, and a range of content items that showcase Apple products and technologies for the advancement of education.

Ambassadors

ADEs are innovators in building community and capacity for teaching and learning in a global context. Through online projects and collaboration tools, they empower each other to expand the walls of the classroom and bring global experiences to classrooms everywhere.

I promise...

My pledge, as I begin this new journey, is to share what I learn from other ADEs with other people I interact with. Through my interactions with other ADEs around the world I hope to learn a ton. I vow not only to learn more about Apple products but also to keep an open mind in what technology is available to students and teacher to help them learn more successfully. I promise to be an active ADE community member and share what I do within my setting too. I will continue to blog about the amazing learning I see happen in my school and my two blogs, www.A3lc.blogspot.ca and www.marlboroughipads.blogspot.ca. I will carry on sharing my learning on Twitter via @stevewclark and I will also learn to be as active as I can be within the ADE community too.

I look forward to the challenge laid out before me. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

See you Austin, Texas,  on July 14-19, 2013, for the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute.

If you would like to apply to be an ADE follow this link

Continuing the Work

To follow up on my last post, I have also been thinking what I need to do in order to make the best possible impact in the work I do. Here's what I'm thinking and am going to do in my work:

• Work with and encourage as many people as possible in the building to use technology as a learning tool.
• Step back from controlling and focus on coaching the use the Learning Commons.
• Continue to suggest ways in which technology can be integrated into learning tasks.
• Encourage colleagues to share their ideas with each other.
• Continue to build capacity to understand the learning commons as a learning space.
• Run mini workshops and brown bag lunches to support teachers and students.
• Continue to make the learning visible in the learning commons so others can see what happens in there.
• Keep doing what I'm doing...

I also don't think there is any one 'correct' way to do this, I just have to continue to focus on good learning and teaching. Hopefully it will stick and others will want to continue the work.

Introducing the AMAZING iPad!

We have had iPads in our school for all of 3.5 months. We are certainly not experts with them yet but we are trying different things and have some ideas for other schools wishing to deploy these amazing learning devices.

Our Experience So Far

First of all we borrowed some iPads and iPods from our Innovative Learning Commons with their Explore program. We had them for about 8 weeks and during that time we explored possible uses for iPads and/or iPods in our school. We decided to go with iPads due to the larger screen size and the possibility of more than one student working with the device at a time.

We created a website of our exploration during those two months. Find it here.

The website focuses on the Apps that we experimented with when deciding on what devices we would buy.

We quickly realized that the iPad is more than a game device, where students play game style, or drill and practice style Apps. What we found out was the iPad's most powerful tools came from the camera, speakers, microphone and also the ability to manipulate something on the screen.

With our new found understanding of learning this tool fits perfectly into today's classroom. The iPad allows students to focus of their strengths by utilizing them to express an understanding of what they are learning about.

Kathy Schrock has collected a lot of information about 'the best Apps' for learning. She shares and organizes them through Bloom's Taxonomy. Click here to see her other recommendations for mobile devices.

This is Kathy Schrocks revised 'Blooms Taxonomy' guide to possible learning tasks.

Here is a link to some of the favourite Apps compiled by teachers from our school as well as a few from colleagues that wanted to contribute to our list  (via Twitter). If you would like to contribute to this list, please fill in the form below.

There are many other versions of Apps aligned with Blooms Taxonomy. A quick Google search will bring up many different recommendations.

We have also shared more engaging and exciting learning projects that may or may not include our iPads, or mobile devices from other schools we're connected with. Find them on our collaborative Learning Commons blog - Area III Learning Commons.

Management of iPads

Managing a set of iPads has its challenges that's for sure. We bought 32 devices. We currently have 29 in our iPad PowerSync Cart by Bretford (which we also purchased).

We chose the PowerSync cart as we do not have enough iPads to go around the whole school (although I would definitely entertain the idea of a 1:1 ratio with iPads). We also want to keep them secure and also manage them easily from one computer. Pedagogically, I believe this is not the best idea as an iPad is designed to be an personalized mobile device as opposed to one that is used by a wide range of people. 

Because a lot of different people use each of the iPads, at different time, and for different purposes, they all fill up with different work pretty quickly, and therefore are hard to keep streamlined and 'clean'. In our building, we are working hard to educate our students to erase their work after it has been exported from the iPad.

Change of Plan

As our understanding of the value that iPads will bring to our students, we have decided to make a few adjustments to the way we deploy them. Just this week we decided that we will put one device into each classroom and leave the remaining 18 devices in the cart so they can be booked by classroom. The idea at this stage is to have the classroom teacher manage the Apps and settings on their classroom iPad. This means they will be able to build up a collection of Apps to use in their own classroom and help personalize learning for students in their own class. Obviously, one iPad doesn't go very far, but we hope this will help teachers gain a deeper understanding of their value.

We still need to work out how we will will manage the buying of Apps.

• Who will pay for Apps that cost?
• What happens when the teacher leaves the a school - What happens to the Apps if it was their own account that purchased Apps
• How can we keep control of the 'buying'?
• How do we encourage the buying of 'good' Apps?
• What is a 'good' App?
• What email will we use for the iTunes account?

There will be other questions that will arise, for sure. We also have some answers to the questions above that we will explore in the coming days and weeks.

Have I missed anything? Probably.

I am excited to see where our journey goes next with iPads in learning. I look forward to sharing our journey. I welcome any questions or comments that others may have.

Social Media Forever

The things we don't think about, or realize, about social media - One of our grade 5/6 classes were discussing Terry Fox and a way to find out more about him. One of the students thought they could look up his Facebook page - "because it might be still around from when he was alive". The class agreed that would be a great idea! Of course, Terry would've had a Facebook page - everyone has Facebook.

Little did they know,  Facebook wasn't around, or even close to being around, in 1981. These grade 5/6 students just assumed that Facebook has been around forever. Social media is such a normal part of their young lives that it must have been their for everyone.

Another class that I was working this week (a grade 4/5 group) was discussing Terry Fox as well. I thought we could tie in what the other class had come up. So we decided to make a Terry Fox bulletin board (Faceboard) and imagine what his Facebook page might have looked like when he was alive. Our question was "How might Terry Fox go about promoting the Marathon of Hope if he was still alive now?".

Some of the students had a hard time thinking about this and implementing. Some thought that they couldn't do it as they weren't allowed a Facebook account. Others were fine with the idea and fully understood the concept.

Students were to post messages to Terry Fox to thank him, ask questions, write them from his perspective.

This is what they came up with.

The first posts were exactly what I imagined they might look like. Relatively weak and lacking any kind of substance. After some feedback students were able edit their thoughts and give their post some more oomph. This is something we will definitely work on and develop in the future.

What a great discussion about the positive power of social media and the reason why some people use it. It also showed students that us old teachers even value Facebook and that its OK to talk about it and include it in our learning experiences.

What next? 

We thought we could leave the main part of this bulletin board up and change the contents. It would be a great way to promote Social Media for a good cause. We thought we could even try real time posting, where students could post notes using post-it notes or something else similar.

I wonder what else we could do? How else could we promote the use of Social Media as a learning tool to elementary students?

Pleas feel free to comment. We would love feedback.

Learning to Share the Learning

5 Days in and I'm still bubbling with enthusiasm about school this year...

My Problem:

I'm excited about all the NEW learning that will happen this year, in and out of the classroom. Over the past year I have learned that, as a teacher, I learn so much from both students and colleagues. The power of social media has really hit me hard lately. However, I have a problem - I need a clean and powerful way to share this learning tool to other teachers I work with. How can I prove that this will the best PD that they will ever be involved in. How can I hit them over the head with Twitter hammer and knock some sense into them?

What Tools Do I Use Now?

Currently I utilize the following social media and Web 2.0 tools to document and share my learning:

Twitter

Twitter is my main hub for learning through social media. Everything else I use came from Twitter in some round-about way. I browse through Twitter and find tweets that interest me from people within and outside of my Personal Learning Network(PLN). I find new people to add to my PLN through retweets(RT) and mentions. As my PLN grows I find it harder and harder to keep up with it all. Maybe I have to start using a different Twitter client other than the Twitter App itself, or simply find better ways to filter the amount of information.

Blogger

Obviously (as you're reading this) I use my blog to reflect on things I learn about or things I wonder about. I use it primarily for myself but love to share my thoughts with the wider community.

Pocket (formerly Read it Later)

I use Pocket to save articles I find on Twitter so I can read them at a later time. I have never referred to one of those articles or shared one from my Pocket account.

Evernote

I have been using Evernote for a while now but this year have started to focus on using it to help myself become paperless. I do use various Apps to help me cut down on stickies and other paper, but Evernote is great for making notes, jotting down ideas, and other times when I need to write something down and save it. I also write some of my draft blog posts using Evernote. Another reason I like this App is because it is so accessible. I can access it on my phone, iPad or laptop.

IFTTT

This is an automation website. It works on a simple formula of - IF That Then This. As impersonal as automated tweets might seem. IFTTT allows me to do things such as record or be notified of tweets from specific people or hashtags. IFTTT allows me to filter my twitter feed easily. I also use IFTTT in conjunction with Buffer.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media client that allows you to post to social media sites at specific times. This allows me to post when I think  might be a better time to post a tweet. At the moment I mainly use Buffer in conjunction with IFTTT to thank people who follow me on twitter.

Diigo

I transitioned from Delicious social bookmarking to a new Diigo account early this year. I believe that Diigo is more powerful than Delicious, especially for teachers. With Diigo, I can follow other educators and the webpages and notes they save. At this point I haven't really utilized it that well. I have recently just begun to bookmark interesting websites again that I find through colleagues and my PLN. My Diigo account can be found here http://www.diigo.com/user/stevewclark

Google+

I saw this great video advertising Google+ yesterday http://goo.gl/O02TW. I have a Google account but have not really started using Google+. I use Facebook and have not seen the point in using book of these Apps. Although, I think Google+ is more powerful for educators as it allows you to share in many different ways. My Google+ account can be found with stdevo@gmail.com.

Facebook

Facebook for me has always been a way for me to stay in touch with friends and family. I made the decision, when I joined Twitter, that I would use one Facebook for personal connections and Twitter for my professional connections. I'm starting to think that they will merge in the future. We'll see.

Where Next?

After looking at this list, I begin to think that I have too many things to think about. However, each one of these Web2.0 tools have unique uses and offer me something that other ones cannot. Also, as time is precious to me, I wonder if juggling all of the different accounts is too much. I guess I will continue to use them all and if one drops off the radar then so be it. 

My real dilemma and the reason I started thinking about this post is that I need to share what I learn from twitter with the Face-to-Face colleagues I work with. Most of them do not use social media as a professional learning tool but do for personal social networking. Not many use Twitter and do not understand how it works. Once I have them on-board with joining up I will be able to run little workshops and tinker sessions but first I have to get them to believe in it and buy-in.

What I need is a way to give a picture of what twitter is about. I need to keep certain tweets, articles and examples of how powerful it can as a learning tool. I think I will try to expand my blog and add pages for the different purposes of sharing. Here I can also house a hub for my different Apps and their associated accounts. I'll post more on this development as it unfolds.

An Inspiration to all

I'd also like to thank the people that have inspired me to share and learn from others as well as develop my own PLN are the greatest advocates for social media as a PD tool. Here are some snippets of their work.

George Couros (@gcouros)- George is a Division Principal for Innovative Teaching and Learning in the Parkland School Division in central Alberta. This video is a presentation George did at Syracuse to promote twitter and PLNs http://goo.gl/O02TW - The work that George does is documented on his blog website http://georgecouros.ca/blog/.

Dean Shareski (@shareski)- is a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I love the way Shareski shares. He has a slick blog that has different pages that presents himself and what he has learned.http://www.shareski.ca/ simply has links to the social media sites that he shares on.His blog site can be found at http://ideasandthoughts.org/about/.

Alec Couros (@courosa) - Is George's older Brother and another advocate for social media in learning. Dr. Alec Couros is a professor of educational technology and media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. Through Twitter he also shares plethora of amazing links and stories about social media as the best PD tool. His blog can be found at http://educationaltechnology.ca/

A Learning Commons Teacher: What would THEY do?

I wrote this post after our first day of school last week. I forgot to publish it ~ Take 2!

Today we had our first day. It was great to see our students settle fast into their new classrooms with their teacher for the year.

As it was Tuesday, we also had our first staff Tuesday Staff meeting for the year. Our heads were already spinning from a great first day but we still had it in us to discuss a few things. One of those being my position in the Learning Commons (LC). As it has been undecided, it's important we all get an understanding and also have some input into what I will be focusing on right from the beginning of the year. The discussion went well. This post is some of my my thoughts after the fact. A chance for me to think about what value I can add to learning in our school.

Some of the things that were mentioned were the following:

• Our school will continue to focus on working and developing Galileo and Inquiry Based Learning principals. We will focus on using the Disciplined based model of inquiry.
• We will have a full time teacher working out of the LC. We also discussed that the LC is an extension of the classroom.
• My position would not be solely going into classrooms to teach a particular App or technology based tool. I would more than likely compliment or add something extra to the learning in a project ~ Small group work, displacing a teacher, adding another teacher to a group to enable more diverse grouping, 1-on-1 work with particular students, etc...
• That my position would not be providing any Non Instructional Time (NIT) for teachers, as originally thought.
• Teachers could think about how I could be utilised that would work for them and their students.
• We also talked about the fact of making learning visible. The dream that I have is to showcase the learning happening in our building with the wider community ~ that being within our system/district as well as in the global classroom of Twitter :)

What a great opportunity - To be able to work both students and teachers and be engaged in some amazing learning.

What do I think I can offer the students of our school? What is it that I really specialise in? I am certainly not saying that I'm the only expert in inquiry or technology in our school. As I mentioned in our staff meeting, I actually struggle to always think about the big picture. What I think I can do is think in a digital sense. I can take an idea and thinking how students might be able to present that idea using technology. This ability comes from being aware of Apps and tools available to us and to be able to make a connection between a specific tech tool and the curriculum.

One of my main focuses as the LC teacher will continue to be on student engagement. I enjoy the challenge of trying to get students who sometimes struggle to engage themselves in learning tasks, to take ownership of their learning and express what they know about something in a way that is meaningful to them. I try to find something technology related that may be able to help them. Of course, technology based learning tools aren't always the best answer but I do believe with some creative thought, technology can definitely make learning more accessible for many of our students.

I will be interested to see when my position goes this year. How much teachers will value having someone else to turn to. There will need to be a fair bit of change in the way we think. In my experience teachers often don't like giving up the control in their classroom. I do agree it is hard to see your students walk out and work with someone else. I'm not sure why but with guidance, hearing testaments and seeing it work through modelling, this new way of looking at learning will be more widely accepted and grasped by educators everywhere.

It's not going to be an easy journey but I do believe it will be well worth it.

New Year, New Ideas!

This blog post has taken me all summer to write and complete. Well, actually summer has past and now we're back in school - Back to the grind!

Yee-Haa! We're back in school, and after the amazing way I finished the last school year off, my excitement has continued into this new 2012-2013 school year and I'm keen to get things rolling. We have so many changes this year in our building and I'm hoping they're all going to help us (as a staff) continue to focus on being better educators.

Some of the changes we have experienced are:

Change in Demographics

At the end of last year we lost the students from a community that was being fed into our school. They now have their own community school at another site. We now only have the students from our own community in our building. This will affect us in a couple of different ways: (1) We now only have approximately 230 students after having around 450 in previous years. Having a smaller school will allow us to develop different relationships with our students. (2) being that we only have kids from our local community, we will be able to be a community school in the true sense of the word. We will hopefully really be able to connect with our students and their respective families at a deeper and closer level.

Increase in Admin Personnel

With the loss of students our school would have been almost half vacant. To solve this problem, our school board moved the area office into the empty side of the building. This means we have our Area Director, AISI Teaching Specialists, Curriculum Specialists as well as a Student Learning Team (psychologists, speech therapist and other specialists). Wow! So many more adults around. With around 45 extra people, this will add another dynamic to our staffroom, our hallways, our parking lot etc etc. What an amazing opportunity to have all these wonderful educators and learning specialists so close to us. We will be able to celebrate learning and share ideas on a regular basis. It will be great to be able to connect with so many different people with so many different expertise.

Change of Staff

At the end of the last school year. We obviously had a lot of people leave our staff. We had teachers that retired, teachers that needed a a change, and teachers that kindly chose to surplus themselves. We have been fortunate enough to keep an amazing group of educators and gain a couple of new ones. It will be very cool to get to know everyone at a more personal and closer level as well as work and collaborate with each other more easily.

We also lost most of our School Assistants from last year and now have only have 3 as opposed to 8-10. This will be a challenge for us as teachers as we will not be able to rely on extra help in the classroom as much as we have in the past. We have been lucky enough to retain our two Educational Assistants who work with our most challenged learners. They will be busy ladies this year. :)

My New Challenges and Goals for 2012-2013

This year I do not have the title of Learning Leader attached to my resume. With the drop in numbers, we lost the allocated budget for that title. However, I am lucky enough to have kept my non-classroom based position of working in our learning commons (library). I want to take this position to another level this year by accessing some of my new found resources and knowledge gained from colleagues and other professionals around the world (Thanks Twitter!). Although I write these goals down now, I'm sure they will change and be altered as the year continues. I will come back and revisit them on a regular basis. My work portfolio will always be treated as a working document. It will be edited and tweaked to suit.

140 Character PD

Two of the finest connected educators have inspired me about the power of being connected through Twitter (@gcouros and @courosa). They travel the globe promoting change in education and the power of collaboration with colleagues from all around the world.

My goal this year is to spread the word in my building, and beyond, about the power of twitter and the amazing PD teachers can gain from 140 characters.

The Learning Commons

One of my main focuses in the last three years has been working towards changing our school library to a 21st century library. A learning commons where students work to their strengths, a place to go to find information from books and from the Internet, a space to work in to create and build knowledge in way that is meaningful to themselves, a place for learners to express their understanding in many different ways and forms.

After two years of experimenting in our learning commons, we are ready to step it up a notch and try as many different things as we can. With our smaller staff we can almost all be a part of the learning commons team. We can continue to build this amazing learning space to suit our students as best we can.

I will continue to find new people to connect with around our district (and of course around the world) to help get feedback about things we do. We love to share what we do in our learning commons and we will be searching for others who want to share their projects as well.

Two of my main sources of inspiration have been Erin Hansen (@HansenEP) and Mike Mackenzie (@Mik_enzie). Erin was one of the people who inspired me to begin this journey. She has been supportive and encouraging throughout. I appreciate her support and look forward to continuing the conversation. Mike works at a school a few blocks from me and has just begun the learning commons journey in his building. We have begun to work closely together to share ideas and try new things. Mike's enthusiasm with his school's new learning commons has inspired me to rekindle our own journey - Thank you both! I look forward to sharing ideas getting feedback from you both.

Mobile Learning

At the end of last year we got 30 new iPads. We begun to learn about the power of mobile learning and how they will benefit our students. This year I hope to gain a deeper understanding of how to manage them successfully in our building.  Through twitter and it's plethora of iPad resources we will share what we do with these amazing devices. For an insight into what we have begun to explore, check out our Mobile Learning Website.  

Inquiry Based Learning & Project Based Learning

Half way through last year our area was involved with www.galileo.org in PD series of workshops aimed at all Area III based learning leaders. The series focused on the different aspects of disciplined based inquiry.

My focus for the upcoming year is to continue to develop a strong sense of understanding of inquiry through the 8 disciplines. I mentioned these in an earlier post at the end of my #30 Day Challenge. I'm hoping to connect with the AISI Learning Leaders in our building to reflect with as well as other learning leaders from within Area III.

Round Up

This year will bring some exciting new challenges and I can't wait to encounter them. I have never been so excited as a teacher to get going with the new year. This new found enthusiasm is due to the connections I have made over the past year. Thank you all! We really are in the best profession!

I plan to post a reflection after a few days in with the students. I will of course give some 140 character anecdotes along the way :) - Follow me at @stevewclark.

Mobile Learning: An Exploration

Here is web site I have been working on. We have just begun exploring the value of iPads as a learning tool.

My impression so far is - AWESOME!!

http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/marlborough/mobile/Exploration/Home.html

Meaningful Engagement and the Countdown

Something that has hit me over the last couple weeks is the idea of engagement and the end of the year. I never really thought they went together. I've always been inclined to think that it's hard to get any kind of meaningful work done in the last couple of weeks as the kids start to lose focus, and the interest, to learn. This has certainly been the case for me in my classroom before and I'm sure it's happening all around in many North American classrooms right at this moment.

As a non-classroom based Learning Leader, my job is to support teachers and students by helping to design and implement engaging and authentic learning tasks/inquiry based projects. I've noticed my schedule become more and more empty as the year has come closer to an end. At this crazy time of year teachers are:

• busy getting their report cards finalized
• cleaning their classrooms
• prepping to move to another classroom
• getting ready to move to another school or retire from the profession
• and in some cases, getting classrooms ready in preparation for building alteration work to be done over the summer. 

At our school all of the above is happening. It's crazy!

So my question has always been, why do kids 'lose it' at this time of the year? Why can't they be bothered to work? I've always said, and hear a lot of colleagues say (with regard to their students), "they're so ready summer" or "they're so tired and in need of a holiday".

After visiting another school today, I confirmed what I have been wondering lately ~ Is it our students who need the break? Or is it more us that need a break? Are we still focused on student learning? Or are we focusing on other things that are going on in our school? Are we planning authentic learning tasks right up to the final whistle? Are we, even as teachers, learning all the way to the final day of school? My assumption would be that towards the end of the year our brain and/or our attitudes begin to slow down and focus on other things rather than what our students really need, want and deserve.

As I toured the school I visited today (Calgary Science School) I saw quite a different attitude. Even though it was their Sports Day throughout the morning and also the fact that there is only a few days few days of school left, their was meaningful learning going on where ever I went - It was awesome to see. The tasks students were doing were similar kinds of tasks you might see going on in our school during the year, but this is the final week and they're still slogging away at the work.

Back in my own building, a new teacher who has only been teaching for a few weeks (she's fresh out of university), has her grade 5 students engaged in reflecting about a novel they just finished reading. They are presenting their feelings about certain parts of the book through the medium of making a movie using iMovie. They choose a particular part of the book reflected through a picture copied from the book. Then, importing the photo in to imovie and incorporating classical music, they are using Ken Burns effects to talk about the feelings of certain characters in the story. The work they are doing is focused, meaningful to the class, it's fun and certainly authentic. It been a breathe of fresh air to see. And also reconfirms my thoughts. Here is someone who is fresh into the profession and she's rearing to go. Long may her flame keep burning!

As a whole staff, I wonder how we might go about things differently next year when approaching a holiday or the end of the year. How can we ensure that we are still working on meaningful projects, even at those silly times of the year?

Do we need to have direction from the top? Do we all just need to refocus our attention on the job all the way to that final buzzer?

I guess we'll see again next year...

ShowMe an Awesome App

ShowMe

Over the past few months, we have been exploring the what possible uses and value that iPads and iPods could could bring into our building. Apart from the buzz that each and every student had whenever these mobile devices were in the classroom, we have found some amazing Apps that could be so valuable in the classroom.

One of those Apps was one that a colleague found in her personal exploration of iPad resources. That App, called ShowMe (ShowMe on Twitter - @showmeapp), is an amazing way for students to show their understanding of a topic or concept, or share an idea by drawing and talking about it. It works somewhat like Smart Recorder does for a desktop computer. It records whatever you do on the screen as well as your voice. You can also record your voice over the top while playing back.

An account does need to be created in order to share www.showme.com recordings. An account is free and very little personal information is shared. Students under the age of 13 would need to have an account ShowMent made for them (either one that a parent acknowledges or a teacher created account). I would try to make an account for my class to access.

However, a way around creating an account is to playback ShowMe's directly form iPad. With a Apple VGA adaptor cable you can mirror whatever is on your iPad screen through a data projector.

Here is a link to the ShowMe website with some of their ideas for using the App in the classroom - http://www.showme.com/about_classroom

During the City Planning Project students were given a plot of land and a question:

• You are given a piece of land for sustainable and responsible development.  How can we organize this area while meeting the diverse needs of plants, animals and humans?

Groups of students then worked together to plan out their piece of land. Through the discussion of ideas and sharing of opinions each group designed their plan together. Groups then shared their plan to the class using ShowMe. This was an amazing way for students to plan, collaborate, draw and colour their ideas, change and adapt their work and finally present.

Thanks to Laura Hildebrandt and Kate Logan for sharing this App making learning more engaging for our learners.

This video shows the Recording being shared. I speed the video up through the middle to show more progress.

Yawwwwwwwn - Fractions are boring!

Day 5 - #30DayChallenge

Fractions - one of the hardest concepts for elementary kids to get a grasp of.

Today I invited myself into a grade three class that were learning about fractions. The lesson was not deep inquiry or problem based but more of an exploration around understanding 'part of a whole'.

The students had completed some preliminary activities around finding the shaded fractions of shaded areas. I think in most cases students were able find and write or describe fractions of 'pizzas'. I walked in during the class discussion about they'd already done.

I helped out with the lesson and by the end I noticed that some students were yawning, bored and still struggling with what we has been talking about. I know that the understanding of fractions won't happen in one lesson but I also wonder if we could have had the students work on more engaging work.

How could we make this more authentic and engaging for these grade threes. To me, the biggest problem was the timeframe we had to work with. The exam is next week and there is still content to be covered (a typical problem, I'm sure for many gr3, 6, and 9 teachers.

My ideas for making the work more engaging:

• Real Problem - designing a real life problem for students to solve - This would possibly a longer project so not good for this time of year
• Add in some authentic tasks - building, making, cutting, drawing, explaining, and finding fractions from our community/school building
• Using technology:
• Smart Notebook for solving problems and building fractions
• iPads - Finding and taking pictures of fractions
• Using ideas from Marion Small - using "Big Ideas" as building blocks for developing understanding
• Doing a range of different activities to help reach all learners

Have any other ideas? Please share!

Student Choice - Too Much or Too Little?

Day 4 - #30DayChallenge

These days in education we always seem to be talking about giving students more choice.

Today's focus is on a project I have been involved with in a Grade 4 Social Studies class. The teachers wanted to to have their students engaged in Social Studies project where they learned about the past through telling stories about artifacts. The focus of the project was to study artifacts from Alberta's history and then find out what that artifact meant to Alberta and its people. The artifacts came from a variety of sources such as The Glenbow Museum, the CBE Aboriginal collection of artifacts and teachers' personal collection of artifacts.

The following is what the students were able to choose:

• Each student chose an artifact they were interested in and research information about it.
• Students chose/found their own source of information - in print and/or Internet
• Each group (that the teacher formed) got to choose a format to present their stories
• As a class, the students help choose (co-created) the criteria of what and how the project would by assessed

Positive takeaways

• From the moment I was involved with these classes they were ENGAGED. They have been so into what they are learning about. The excitement on the faces of these Grade 4's has been a sight for sore eyes! They have been so enthused to share their knowledge about the origin and history of each particular artifact.
• The students acted like archeologists to find out more about their artifacts. They really felt like experts.
• Almost all student have found success with their learning. Some student have needed more coaching than other but all have been able to learn something about their chosen artifact.
• The small amount of information that most students found was enough for most to infer, or guess, the value of that artifact to Albertans and the stories it might tell.

Negative takeaways

• This project has been hard to manage. The students had 7 or more choices of ways to present their information. This made it hard to give enough support/feedback to each and every group.
• The artifacts were hard to research. We did not come up with enough sources to help the students. The information we found was not necessary what we needed to know about the artifact.
• Students who often struggle to access information and pull important and relevant information found it hard to infer a deeper understanding of the artifacts.

What would I repeat what I would change next time?

• I loved the enthusiasm this project brought to Social Studies, a subject I have always found hard to make exciting. I would definitely do a project like this again - Acting like archeologists, and presenting their findings was a powerful way to learn about our history.
• I think the range of choice when it came to presenting the information was too broad. Next time we could suggest everyone presents in a similar way, such as a video for an online museum, a page out of a brochure, an audio recording for a radio show etc
• I would make the research more successful ~ give certain websites to use or narrow down possible research sources. This was hard to do with such a wide range of artifacts the students had to learn about.

Things I wonder?

• I wonder how to find sources of information without making it a HUGE task ~ Is this possible?
• What are some other ways to engage students with artifacts?
• Were there enough choice in this project?
• Were there or to many choices?

I will post some photos of students working on this project soon...

My #30DayChallenge

Here we go!

Developing a PLN has its benefits. It also has its downside. You become more accountable ;) Here I was, quietly passing on some ideas and next minute, I've accepted the #30DayChallenge myself! 

Thanks to @amydawnpark, @candicecshaw and @deirdrebailey. You've all inspired me to take up the challenge too! The only problem I have is that school finishes in less than 30 days so I'm going to have to be creative! However, I do promise to take up the challenge again in the new school year!

Engagement

This year my focus has been on engagement. As a Learning Leader in my school my job has been to help colleagues engage their students through authentic and exciting learning tasks! I'm also responsible for the implementation and transformation of our Library to Learning Commons. This has been a great way to think of a learning space such as the Learning Commons as a place to engage students in projects they choose to get immersed in.

My first half was a write-off. I was off on a couple of leaves (due to a beautiful baby being born and a trip to my motherland, NZ:) so I felt like I hardly got anything achieved in the first half of the year. When I returned after Christmas, I was on board to tackle the rest of the year as best I could.

In January, along came Galileo. Our Area III office invited all elementary Learning Leaders (LL) to participate in a PD opportunity with Galileo that consisted of 6 full-day workshops. We have had the chance to co-create and collaborate with other LLs from within our Area. It has been a great opportunity to grow and develop my understanding of planning and implementing engaging tasks for a variety of students in our K-6 setting.

The #30daychallenge for me is about culminating what I have learned this year by reflecting on what goes on in the teaching and learning I'm involved within my school. I don't have a homeroom so I have the added benefit of working with kids from Kindergarten up to grade 6. I'll also be watching and learning what other teachers do and reflecting on that too. I plan to visit two other schools to gather some more ideas and feedback. My reflection will be based on the 8 areas of the Galileo Discipline Based Inquiry Rubric:

• Authenticity
• Academic Rigor
• Assessment
• Beyond the School
• Appropriate Use of Technology
• Active Exploration
• Connecting with Expertise
• Elaborated Communication

I'm aiming at posting at least once a week and also tweeting articles and reflection from other educators through my PLN on twitter (@stevewclark)

WISH ME LUCK!