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...

Blogging: DC & the Importance of Respect

To me, one of the most important things to remember when you are blogging is that everyone has different ideas and opinions. While it OK for me to disagree with someone, I still need to remember to respect their opinion.

When we share our own ideas with other people it often helps us understand that idea in a better way. By describing what we think about something we often have to think about other perspectives that are out there. When someone disagrees with my opinion, it often makes me think of other ideas, or perspectives. Sometimes its hard to take/read/listen to other opinions but I need to remember that it’s ok for others to disagree and that we’re all entitled to share our own thinking.

It would be great to get some feedback from this post. I am working with a group of grade 4 students and we are learning about the purpose of comments and engaging with other people's blog posts.

I wonder how other people feel when their ideas are challenged?

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.

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! 

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!

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.

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.

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!

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...

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...

Day1 ~ #30DayChallenge

Engagement Through Inquiry: 

As I was thinking about what to post today, I met with a teacher to talk about our plan for next week. Sitting in the centre of her classroom was a student made city - The City Project - I asked her how about it. It started off as a simple French project and then turned into an integrated inquiry projecting. They integrated Math (Area and Perimeter) , Social (Democracy), Science (Trees and Forests) and French (Places in our city).

WHAT AN AMAZING PROJECT!

Students have been totally engaged in this project throughout the past two weeks. The inquiry question was as follows: 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?

A lot of city planners decided to incorporate rooftop gardens to their buildings

WHATS MADE STUDENTS WANT TO BE ENGAGED?

I believe that the engagement in this project comes from the fact that the students owned it. They did the planning, they made the decisions, they made the mistakes, and they made adjustments. Through collaboration, students had to plan and decide on a city that met everybody's needs.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Since starting this blog (just yesterday), I have been given a few different opinions on blogging. Some good, some not so good. So, it got me thinking.... What is the point of a blog for me? Why bother?

Well, this year has been for sure the biggest, most influential year of learning I have had in my short career as a teacher. I started playing around with Twitter and I quickly found a ton of resources, insights and opinions about teaching and learning. My head begun to spin shortly after. How the heck could I store all this new information? How could I process it and even begin to think about how I might take new these new ideas and use them in the classroom.

One of big goals this year has been to find an effective way to make the learning (and teaching) that happens in my classroom more visible. My blogging venture will help make this more of a reality.

After being involved in a professional development series within our area, I begun to network with people in different schools that are in a similar position to me. Through face-to-face discussion the idea of blogging as a way to reflect on what I learn begun to take shape. My main problem was how I might possibly find the time to blog. After thinking and thinking and having a day to play, I took the chance. Why not!??

My questions for others would be:

• Why do you blog? 
• What do you get out of it?
• What's the point?
• Is it worth it?

Learning Through Reflection

I used to blog. When blogging first became popular, before the days of Facebook, I tried it. It was a way for to keep in touch with family, to share my news and give my friends and family in New Zealand an idea of what my life looked like in a different country.

Then Facebook showed up and my blogging came to a halt.

Now I turn back to my Blogger account with a different goal in mind. A way for me and others to reflect professionally. Another way for me to collaborate with like-minded educators. I'm hoping this might turn into a way for our staff to reflect on our teaching practise and to move our work forward.

In the past few months, I have begun to discover a prolific amount of new information. Digital media has been a way for me to find new and exciting ways to improve my understanding of my job.  Through Twitter (@stdevo37), I have started to build a PLN (Personal Learning Network). I have started connecting with colleagues from around the globe to help grow my knowledge and ability both in and out of the classroom.

Being enthusiastic about technology as a learning tool, I am always looking for new ways to help engage students in learning tasks. For me, this year has been all about engagement. At my school, we have focused on UDL to help reach all of our students. Our goal has been to personalize learning so that success can be found by all. We have also looked into Inquiry Based Learning (as described by Neil Stephenson - Link). I have been lucky enough to have been involved with a professional development series with Galileo and other CBE Area III Learning Leaders. We have learned so much about learning and how students learn best - Another post to come about this soon!

Through this blog, I hope to be able to document my progress as an educator who is passionate about learning.