Making Great Learning Go Viral

This week I attended a workshop (Create, Innovate, Voice) run by the one and only George Couros this week. While what we learned, wasn't really all that new to me, I took away a tonne. It also got me thinking a lot about how we can, as a school district, celebrate the amazing things that happen in our classrooms.

Our school board, the Calgary Board of Education (hashtag #yycbe on Twitter) is the second biggest school district in Canada. It turns out we have one of the smallest presence on social media platforms out of many school boards in Alberta, let alone across Canada.

Our organization/school district hashtag is overrun and dominated by the media and the general public. It is predominantly associated with negative comments and news articles about things that are happening in our district. We, as a large group of passionate and caring educators, can change this negative view of  #yycbe. We have amazing things happening in the CBE and we also have a 10 000 strong staff that can help with spreading the word!

What I think we need to do is take away some of the fear away from sharing outside the walls of our own school, maybe even outside the four walls of our classrooms. If we embrace that change that is happening, instead of hiding from it, we can make a difference.

It is so easy to, and feels so much safer to isolate ourselves within our own context. If we really want to grow as educators, I believe we need to be reaching out and connecting with others more often. This reaching out helps us think outside the box. It gives us different views and other ways of doing things. It also can confirm the great things that we do in our own practices. We also need to remember that every one of us has something different to offer and can offer something to each other too.

In our workshop, it was awesome to see other people get excited about Twitter as a networking tool. There were not many people that had previously joined twitter but after the session, we had a whole lot more people willing to experiment and learn more about this amazing networking and PD tool.

It's exciting to thinking about the challenge of increasing our Social Media presence. We have a big job ahead of us but because our sheer size, we also have the possibility of going big, very fast. All we need to to start gaining some momentum.

Let's do this #yycbe!

Here is the story that was told through Twitter throughout the day with George Couros (@gcouros). It was fun seeing new people tweet and connect through this medium. Let's hope it continues!

  

ADE2013 ~ Scattered Reflection

Wow. That was a grossly over estimated goal of writing a reflection a day or even any during that conference! Throughout the week my head was exploding with ideas of innovation as well as the many new connections I made!

Picture by @Liz_Castillo

As many other ADEs have expressed in their written reflections (see @techgirljenny's post to see some more), to describe last week in words is a difficult task. The overwhelming feelings of nervousness of what was coming, excitement about being a part of it all and the feeling of "why the heck should I be here", were apparent in almost all new ADEs. The amount of times I heard these words or ones similar, astounded me. There were others feeling the same way as me!

Kind of happy to be there!

We were welcomed to the conference centre by checking in and registering through 5 or 6 stations. We even got our own personalized stickers. This was so we could meet others and swap stickers to add to our own passports. With 300+ people attending this was going to be big job!

It was an unbelievable feeling being welcomed in as the new class of 2013. 49 educators from

across Canada, 90 odd from USA and roughly 11 from Mexico were all welcomed in. It was amazing. the Alumni that were present did an unreal job of welcoming us in and making us feeling welcome and incredibly special!

As I wanted to post something almost everyday, I started writing a couple of things. Here is a couple of things I started during the institute:

One of the biggest things I am finding with this experience is the connections I'm making already. It's so unbelievable to meet people that you've spoken to online and/or follow on Twitter. People that are new Apple Distinguished Educators and people that have been in the ADE community for a longer period of time. Everybody here shares at least two same passions and probably more. The first is for education. Every single person I have encountered is passionate about teaching and speaks with enthusiasm about what they do in their building. That has been so refreshing to hear and is getting me excited for the new school year all over again.

The other passion people (all 300+ of us) have in common around here is obviously a love for everything Apple (and technology in general). This is my biggest WOW! The things that all of these people are doing in schools and universities are unbelievable! The innovation I'm seeing this week has blown me out of the water. It makes me feel like I've only just begun to use technology. It has made me feel incredibly humbled to be a part of this community of educators.

The tiredness kicked in after day 2 finished and day 3 started. It was exhausting (but still awesome) flying high all day, every day attending professional development workshops, attending full group sessions, eating with newly made friends, and even seeing a couple of Austin sites.

I was lucky enough to be included in a special @MrHooker. We saw the famous Bat Exodus where up to 1.5 million bats leave daily their home daily just before sunset. Then we ate some BIG FAT GORDOUGHs (unhealthy but amazing donuts). We also went out for a Texas style BBQ lunch the next day. It was amazing to experience these few things in an already jam packed schedule.

My roomie and fellow bow tie buddy, Jon Patry and I also ventured out on the last day to see the awesome sight of the Texas Longhorns COLLEGE football stadium. And of course I snapped a few token pictures of the University of Texas Clock Tower, which was right down the road from our conference centre.

I tried to remember (and of course I missed a ton of people) to take pictures of all the tweeps I met and have conversed with on Twitter prior to the Institute. I managed to snap some selfies!

I also got to try out Google Glass, thanks to Christine DiPaulo who was amazingly willing to share the experience!

Here's is some of what we did throughout the week:

Authoring

The work that we would do throughout the week was centred around Authoring our One Best Thing in iBooks Author. We attended workshops that would help supplement the work we do to write our chapter that could possibly end up in a Multi-Touch book published by Apple. If that will happen my work will have to be the best professionally produced work possible! We learned our way around iBooks Author and let me tell you, this is an amazing App that produces the most amazing multi-touch books for iBooks on iOS devices.

Apple iPad image used by agreement

The 4 As

We learned more about the the four As of the ADE program. These are the 4 primary roles of Apple Distinguished Educators.  I would love to write more about these and plan to in the near future. The following descriptions come from the Apple Distinguished Educator Home Page

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.

The following video is also made by Apple to describe who and what ADE's are about. This copy is from YouTube (and I'm pretty sure is not authorized). I'm not sure that I can upload the original file but will do, if I can, once I have found out.

App Developer Session

One of the evening sessions included a chance to meet 28 different App developers. The highlights for me was meeting the three following people. I know most people would be highlighting these three people too but I just have to. All three apps have inspired a lot of the work I have done in the last year.

Evernote and Skitch Apps

It was amazing to meet these guys. Skitch was probably the first app I came to love when we got our iPads. Such an amazing tool to taking photos and drawing/writing over the top. 

Evernote and Skitch Developers

Book Creator App

I've tweeted Dan Amos before and shared some amazing work that students have done using Book Creator App . Meeting him was amazing!

Dan Amos - Book Creator!

Explain Everything

Reshan Richards is responsible for creating Explain Everything. He also a fellow ADE Class of 2013. Enough Said! Reshan is Awesome guy and an inspiration to many of us! It was funny, as earlier that day I was partnered up with Reshan to play an Improv game showed to us by Rebecca Stockley. I had no idea who he was!

Reshan Richards - Explain Everything

I hope this post doesn't seem to scattered. It certainly still feels all scattered in my head!

There will be more to share as my brain decompresses. I plan to write more as I think and use some of my new found knowledge, also as my One Best Thing unfolds.

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. 

Focus on Assessment

Our school is focusing on developing and improving the assessment strategies we use in our classrooms. We are focusing on Assessment for Learning, Criteria for Success and also Feedback. The more we discuss assessment in our staff meetings and PD Days, the more I think it's way more than just the assessment strategies we use. 

For some teachers, it's a huge shift in the way they interact with students all day, everyday! The more I work with different teachers, the more it makes me realize that although assessment is so important for moving learning forward as well as helping students reach their maximum ability, I think it's more about the way a teacher interacts with students all the time, not just when it comes to 'assessing' them. We should always be assessing them, whenever we open our mouths we need to think about the impacts of what we are saying. 

The following questions are some of what I have been asking myself lately:

• Greeting children - Do we make an effort to say 'good morning'. Do we set an example for how we would want our students to behave?
• Asking questions - Do we ask our students questions that empower them to think and answer in a way that makes sense to them?
• Answering questions - How do we answer questions that are asked by students? Do we always give answers? Do we turned the questions back on the student to make them think more for themselves? Do we bring the question to the class to answer. Do we stop the class to address the question together?
• Setting up projects - What do we ask our students to do? Something that suits us as teachers? Do we get them to work on projects that help bring control to our environment? Do we look for innovative ways to learn things? Are we introducing our students to new and exciting ways to learn? Are we learning with our students?
• Sharing Work - Do we share effectively? Do students share with each other? Are they encouraged to talk about their work? Are they given regular opportunities to share with us as teachers, with each other, with the whole class, or with their parents?
• Opportunities for Feedback - Are students regularly given time to give each other feedback? Do we teach them how to speak to each other in critical, yet positive ways. Are we open to feedback from our students too?
• Do the students know what and why they are learning? Is the criteria clear? Is it posted? Is it referred to often? Did the students really help write the criteria? Is it written in way that they understand?

To help our students become more successful in learning, I believe we need to really think what we do and how we do it, what we say and how we say it. Our students look up to us as role models and for direction. I think we need to help them find their way in learning so they can also become life-long learners.

Teachers have so much power in the classroom! Because of this power, we can help students succeed or we can cause them to tumble too. I'd prefer to be a part of their success. I'm going to really think about what I say and do in the classroom more often.

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

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.

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.

That's a Wrap: #30DayChallenge and Year End Post

Wow, where did that 30 days go?


I feel this is going to be a fairly lame post. I have nothing except excuses for the my lack of posts for in my first 30 Day Challenge.


At the end of May, when a couple of colleagues (and fellow PLN members - who were half way through their own 30 day challenge) encouraged me to get going on my own 30 day adventure, I decided to take the plunge and challenge myself.

What an awesome concept! 30 solid days of reflection and delving into my own practice (and in my case, the practice of colleagues) to find things I liked, didn't like, things I did well and things I could improve on.

I decided to focus on engagement through inquiry which has been my personal professional focus for more than half of the school year. The inquiry portion of my focus came from working with other Learning Leaders from Area III and also with The Galileo Network and Amy Park (@amydawnpark). From day one I was so inspired by this new understanding of what inquiry based learning actually is. Rather than just big projects and always having a big umbrella question to explore, inquiry as I know it now, is a dynamic and engaging way of teaching and learning. It's an intentionally planned learning process by looking through different lenses/disciplines such as the following:

• Authenticity
• Academic Rigor
• Connecting with Expertise
• Appropriate use of Technology
• Active Exploration
• Elaborated Communication
• Beyond the Classroom
• and Assessment

As a staff, and through out PD with Galileo, we have learned to assess our IBL projects through the Galileo designed Discipline Based Inquiry Rubric.

Over the course of my 30 Day Challenge, I tried to look into the projects I was involved in and find elements and disciplines of inquiry. While it was hard on some days to find my way into classrooms and actually be a part of the learning,  I did see that the people in our building are now trying to incorporate some of these disciplines into their teaching. As we have found out, we're not going to get this over night. It's going to be a long process to change our way of thinking from the teacher always being the holder of knowledge and transforming it so that our students become the experts. They become scientist, authors, mathematicians and historians and in turn become totally engaged in their learning.

For a while now my strengths have been in the use of technology in the classroom. My passion is finding new ways of presenting and expressing an understanding of concepts. What I have really learned by thinking about my practice, is that I need to ensure that the technology we use in the classroom matches or compliments the concept, or idea that students are inquiring into. I have begun to think entirely differently when it comes to the use of technology in the classroom. I now think about what I want the students to know or understand and then think about how technology will help them throughout the learning process. Sometimes, it might be to help understand how a concept works, or how to express an understanding of that concept at the end of a project. Sometimes it might be to communicate with others, in the their own classroom, or from outside the school and on the other side of the world. Teachers might also use technology (and this is my new personal favourite) to give students critical feedback. My enthusiasm for technology as a learning tool is stronger than ever!

This past couple of months we have been exploring iPads as a learning tool. These powerful little devices have really blown me away. They really enable teachers and students to do everything I mentioned in the above paragraph. The other cool thing about iPads are that they are so new in education that we are learning more and more about them as a learning tool everyday. Through an exploration program facilitated by our [CBE] Innovative Learning Commons (#cbeilc ~ twitter conversation), we were asked to share projects, student work, examples of Apps and anything else we could that may help others understand the value of the iPad in the classroom. 

We decided very early on that we would steer away from drill and practice style Apps. I realized that the iPad has way more potential than game based applications and that the students plays and then forget about. We focused on Apps that used the camera and audio capabilities. Most of the Apps we liked and have explored thus far use one or both of these iPad features. The Apps we have enjoyed using so far as follows:

• ShowMe
• Stop Motion Studio HD
• Comic Life
• Skitch
• Voice Recorder for iPad

For more information on our exploration with iPads please visit the website I made to showcase our learning ~ http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/marlborough/mobile/Exploration/Home.html. We have got more plans to develop this site next year. I will more than likely change domains due to the discontinuing of iWeb. I will post any changes to the domain as they happen. 

This year has been an amazing one for me. I have never finished the year off so excited to come back in September. Don't get me wrong, I am loving my summer and spending time with my wife and kids. However, I look forward to the challenges ahead.

My next post will be about my wishes and aspirations for the 2012-2013 school year!

Delicious to Diigo

This week, I made the transition from Delicious to Diigo. I have hardly heard anyone mention Delicious as of late. However, I've heard everyone talking about and recommending Diigo. I have yet to find out the extra capabilities but I'm sure it's better for my needs as an educator. I now need to make it come alive for me as a resource. Sharing it through my blog is one way for me to start this process.

It was easy to do. I was able to export all my bookmarks (including tags) from delicious to my computer's desktop. It saved the file as an HTML document. Then once my new account in Diigo was created, I just imported the saved file and BOOM! It was done!

The next job is to go through my bookmarks and find obsolete ones. I'm hoping there is a tool for that.

Here are my ever-changing Diigo tags displayed in a cloud.

My Diigo Tags

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!