Year Start - Time for Change!

As I come up for air, I want to reflect briefly on starting off the year in a new school.

When I look back over the last few years I can’t believe how far I’ve come as a teacher. As someone who was just interested in technology as a learning tool I have always learned new ways of doing things in and out of the classroom, using technology. Over the past couple of years as I became a connected educator my eyes have opened to so much more in the world of learning and teaching. Being connected has also opened many doors of opportunities.

In the Spring, when only two positions were posted that even remotely interested me, I was worried whether this was going to be a year of change for me. After seven years in the same school, it was time for me to move. At first, neither of the jobs seemed perfect. The great thing was that both positions were advertised as full time non-classroom based learning leaders to begin the transformation of their respective libraries to a learning commons. A movement that has been the basis of what i have done over the past three years. 

However, the first one I looked at was in an Arts based program school at the opposite end of the city. I loved the sound of the school and their vision of what they wanted the learning commons to become. It just wasn’t going to work on a personal level as it was too far from home and also a later start school which meant my day would change completely. I was disappointed to say the least.

The second school was a good distance and similar hours. However, this one was a Traditional Learning Centre (TLC), An alternative program in our district aimed at fulfilling the needs and wants of parents in a growing number of communities. The program, as far as I was aware, was focused around direct teaching, students sitting in rows, mandatory homework and a uniform. From what I originally understood, inquiry wasn’t really encouraged or practiced in TLC schools. Applying for a job in a TLC seemed far too stretched as far was my role in the building and how I would fit in. Most would say my work is far from a traditional kind of teaching and learning.

After much deliberation and discussion with my wife and also other colleagues, I decided I really needed to apply for both. If I happened to get interviews they would be at least be great experience for future job applications. It turned out I would get an interview at the TLC school first. It went well, really well! I felt like the job was mine but didn’t want to commit until I knew what was happening at the other school. They called me the same day and wanted to set up an interview, which I did. Over that weekend I my stomach churned multiple times. I finally made my mind up that I would not go to the second interview and I would focus on the more “controversial” position as I had a good gut feeling (for the most part). Within a few days I was offered the job and I accepted.

After a couple months to get used to the idea, I started back this Fall in my new school. I am now a full time Learning Leader in a Traditional Learning Centre. I will be responsible for transitioning the current library space to a fully fledged high-tech Learning Commons where innovation is the norm. The school (all 32 teaching staff, 10-15 support staff, and 630 students) have given me an amazing welcome. All nerves have since disappeared and I’m totally focused on making the most of this new position.

What an amazing feeling to be in a building amongst new people, who are all keen to learn with me and move their practice forward. This is an opportunity I do not want to miss. I have already seen and felt amazing support from my administrators as well as the other staff around me. I really feel that this learning commons will make leaps and bounds throughout this school year. 

I am already proud to say I am part of this strong staff in the TLC program. I even like my uniform - thanks to the bowtie!

BRING IT ON! I’m ready for anything and everything!

The Amazing Year That Was...

Wow!

What a year that was! I can't believe that 10 months of learning went by so fast. I remember thinking this time last year how excited I was going into summer and how much I was looking forward to the 2012-2013 school year. For some reason, I had a feeling it was going to be HUGE!

And HUGE it was! My 9th year of teaching would turn out to be my biggest year yet! After getting connected on twitter (stevewclark) and through blogging the year previously, I knew my learning would explode throughout this year. I just didn't know to what extent.

I started, and finished, the year off as the lead teacher of the learning commons at my school. Our learning commons was beginning its 3rd year of transition and the school had made the decision from the start to have a full time teacher working in the space to work with students and teachers on inquiry based projects that included the integration of technology. This was a dream job for me and one that I had worked my way towards through a lot of hard work (and convincing of) with the staff at my school that this would benefit all stake holders in an around our learning community. In the previous 2 years we had tried a varitey of staffing models in our learning common and finally it was decided that it would be best to have someone dedicated to the space to build capacity in teachers and support learners in a variety of ways in our school.

Throughout the year I worked on a wide variety of projects with a wide variety of grade levels using a wide variety of technologies. Man, did I learn a lot! I documented a lot of what I did through two of my learning blogs:

• www.a3lc.blogspot.ca - A collaborative Learning Commons blog that I co-created with and amazing and passionate colleague (@Mik-enzie) to celebrate the amazing learning that is happening in learning commons within our area!
• www.yycipads.blogspot.ca - A blog I started to share amazing projects we did on our iPads.

Early in the year of 2012, I had signed up for notification when the Apple Distinguished Educator program would be open for new applications. In November, I received an email that the doors were open for applications. It took me a few weeks to muster up the courage to go for it. After a few tweets to a colleague, (and now good friend @jtpatry) we both decided to go for it. My winter break consisted of making a 2 minute video as well as a written portion. I couldn't believe how much time I ended up spending on making a short video, even after collecting a ton of evidence through my first few months of the school year. In February 2013, we both received an email to say we had been accepted! This is something, to this day, I still cannot believe (I will have another post about this coming later in Summer - After our Apple Summer Institute in Austin, Texas). 

As well as sharing my/our work online, I had numerous visits to our learning commons from people within our system looking for ideas and/or feedback, or just to see what a learning commons looked in action. It was great conversing with many other colleagues about this amazing and exciting concept that makes a space, what often is a dull and boring place where books are just stored, into an engaging and dynamic learning space that students want to visit on a regular basis.

As the year went on, I kept revisiting the thought of what my professional future might look like. I was having such an amazing year that it would be easy to stay and continue with the work that was happening in our building. Or, after 7 years of being in the same building, was it time to try and move? After the Alberta budget restraints hit our school board it would become apparent that there was going to be very little movement within our system. In a board that is around 10000+ teachers strong, there would surely be a ton of people who would want to move and not many jobs to move into. I wanted to be particularly fussy about what job I would want apply for but was nervous about the prospect of actually finding/getting anything. After becoming a resident expert in the learning common concept, I was hoping that my expertise would be 'noticed' by another admin/school, if there were any job postings.

When the 'quietly released' postings came out, I was told there were a couple of positions that might interest me so I applied for both. After being offered an interview for both positions and visiting one of the schools, I was beginning to get excited about the prospect of a new job. Both settings were incredibly different. One being an Arts Centred Learning school and the other a Traditional Learning Centre (TLC), meant I had some difficult decisions to make if I happened to have both jobs offered to me (I seemed to be fairly confident and excited about both). After my first interview, at the TLC, I nervously awaited the call-back. While I was ready and waiting for my appointment day to attend the other interview and got 'the call' that they wanted to hire me at the TLC. I made the tough decision to take the job with a lot of thought and discussion with my wife. I must admit, the Arts Centered School sounded like a dream job but was geographically a LONG way from my own community and also started and finished much later in the day. It was going to be too much of a challenge for our young family. It was a commitment that I couldn't make at this point in my life. I was very pleased to accept the job at a the TLC (what some would consider a controversial decision for someone like me). I was/am nervous about this new placement but I'm suer excited for the challenges that lie ahead!

My thoughts on next year will be in another post - coming soon!

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.

Continuing the Legacy

What happens when you start something great and then move on?

This is a question I have asked myself a lot recently.

First of all, I think my work and the things we have developed at my school have been great, but do others? Is the work that I do valued by my colleagues?

So, three years ago we started transforming our school library into a learning commons. In a nut shell, we changed the space from a book storage area to a dynamic and engaging place to work - A place where students want to come and work on exciting and intellectually engaging learning projects.

My day-to-day work involves engaging students and teachers in projects that are laced with technology. Being a technology specialist, my expertise lie in being able to think digitally when it comes to different ways of expressing understanding. I help students through technical aspects of expressing and representing their work as well as introducing new ways to do so. We often learn how to use a new application together. I also have been given the opportunity to help build capacity with my colleagues. Through a learning coach kind of a roll, I help teachers integrate technology through the lens of discipline based inquiry.

I'm coming to the point in my career where I need to move on, or make a change, in order to continue growing as a professional. I have learned so much in the past year in my position and have never enjoyed my work as much as I do and now. I'm so excited about where I might end up next and what I might be doing.

My main concern is what will happen in my current setting when I have left. Will the learning commons continue to flourish? Will people still continue to use the space in creative and engaging ways with their learners? Will the school replace me, or will the dissolve my position and start something new? I also realize and respect the fact that it's not all about me and my school will survive without me. Although I do feel like I'm being be pig-headed sometimes, I now that it's not only me that has made our learning commons successful. I do however take my work seriously and want it to continue when I do leave, hence the questions I am asking.

Should I even be worried about what happens after I have left?

I guess it is up to the school whether or not they continue building on the work that we have done in the learning commons over the past three years. I guess if the work is valued by the greater community, then I will be replaced with someone willing to continue the legacy.

Time will tell - I'm sure a visit to the same site in the future (at some point) will give me the answer. This I will have to follow through with one day.

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.

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.