Voices...Ownership... reflections...

I was very fortunate to be able to take part in 1:1 International Computing Conference in Atalanta Dec 2nd &3rd. international11computingcon2013  (please visit conference schedule for presentations).  I would like to thank the Canadian Educational Association  http://www.cea-ace.ca/ an amazing team who speaks to learning and thinking for accepting my proposal to take part in the conference. I am proud to have had this opportunity to meet many educators from around the world who put students voice and thinking first.

Jane Hill my principal at St. Gabriel School also presented with me. She set the tone as how principals need to trust their teachers and support their learning and students' learning.  Every student,

• should feel he or she belongs, feel safe, be a valuable contributor and have the opportunity to succeed

1-Yes students need to own their learning as teachers, we need to step back and have a classroom without a front podium.
2-Students need take risks, have clear expectations that they have deconstructed from the curriculum. Students need to  have a purpose for learning with rich tasks that allows  ownership of learning.
3- Many tools could amplify students' thinking like Google Apps, IOS Apps. Teacher need to weave these tools with a purpose for thinking and for students to speak to their thinking. (metacognition)
4- Learning is visible though consolidations and pausing for reflections in order for students to learn from each others and  build a community of trust and ownership.

I am also fortunate to have a large PLN online support through twitter from educators who I have also  learned and reflected from their experiences. @shareski @KristinZiemke @gcouros @KleinErin @permillripp @HeidiSiwak @soxnevad @kathyschrock @tombarrett  and so many more including all Learning Connection Team from Ontario my colleagues at school and at the board office who listen and appreciate students' thinking.  I would also like to thank my colleagues from the board office who invite me for many opportunities and ministry initiatives projects throughout Ontario. I owe my learning to my students who engage me in thinking and learning from them. My students who open up their hearts and minds to learning and enjoy our time together in the classroom. I am trying to keep up to my professional reflections, and time is speeding and hoping to catch up. I am focusing on the classroom blog on a weekly and sometimes daily basis than daily tweets this year. The blog is by the students, their voices on learning and how we learned.  http://ensemble-together.blogspot.ca/

My thinking that I shared at 1:1 computing conference I will share on the blog.  My learning is like a working document that requires updating and enhancing on a regular basis. Today I am following many colleagues in Montreal at #gafesummit who are confirming my experiences in the classroom. The presentation is a summary of my learning with my students. 

International11computingcon2013 

What amazes me is when you invite students to interact they do take ownership in planing, decision making and even voicing in class "I love school"!

Examples of students communicating and planning. Google presentations are attached to the classroom calender that becomes part of the daily plans. 

Comments on the presentation become reflections to our daily plans. 

Students also reflect on a daily basis what I have learned and I have accomplished and what to improve on. 

I continue to explore and learn on a daily basis and I almost wish I had Google Glasses to capture all my learning. I need to take notes as I observe my learning from my students and update my blog. Thank you to all colleagues and educators who share their learning online. 

Teacher collaboration project – Math journals

I have written briefly about one of the teacher collaboration inquiries that has been going on in our three schools.  In this post, the teachers have written an explanation of their work so far.  I am hoping that more of our teacher groups will do the same so we can post their work on this blog.

These rest of this entry is written by Teresa Zappavigna, one of the teacher triad members.

Our Triad team came together in early October to determine an area of focus for our students in our junior grades.  After examining EQAO scores, last year’s records, and our personal running records to date, our next steps became quite evident.  The attitude toward math and in particular, problem solving, needed to be addressed. Many times, students have the skills, but are thrown by the math language.  Students needed to find a tool to help students break down math  problems (scaffold their thinking) in order to understand:  “What do I know?”; “What do I need to know?”;  and “How can I help solve the problem/ What strategies can I use?”. A tool was introduced by our partners from St. Daniel’s.  They were in the process of working on interactive Math journals which help guide a student’s problem- solving process and encourages them to demonstrate their understanding of new math concepts in a personal and creative way (through re-enactment, art, poetry, music, crossword puzzles, etc.,).  Our intention is that if we explicitly teach problem solving strategies and provide opportunities for students to prove, explain and reflect on their learning in Math journals, then students will have more success in explaining their thinking while problem solving.  By allowing students the opportunity to express themselves creatively (be it literacy, numeracy, arts, verbal, kinesthetic, tactile,) we hope to make math fun for students who shy away from math.

We are still in the process of developing a routine using these journals with our students.  Our observations so far have been positive.  Students have been eager to share their rap songs, cartoons etc with the class and are often asking the teachers if we will be working on our “journals today”.  The atmosphere is changing and we hope to continue these “brag books” as a tool to help students develop efficient problem solving strategies.

Video of a student conference…Please watch both (one is the continuation of the other) In this video, teachers can see the importance of conferencing with students on their journals, EVEN if the student puts a GREEN traffic light on the activity. He or she might not fully understand the concept. The example is a student working on Place Value activities.

samples and photos from the teacher inquiry

Sample of a grade 4 journal – this is a collaborative project in grades 4, 5, and 6 being carried out in three schools

Image Posted on November 21, 2013

Making it real – oral language in French class

This is the first Triad (St. Gregory, St. Daniel, St. Monica) whose work is being featured on this blog.  I sat with them last week as they established their baseline for their inquiry.  The group has already recorded a good deal of student work to act as their baseline.  They do have plans to continue to share work using different forms of social media including Skype.

The oral component is always a priority in second language teaching.  Our goal is to make it authentic and usable in the real world (e.g. salutations, good manners, every day basic vocabulary).If students are engaged in authentic conversations in the class and are taught the necessary vocabulary, then they will feel comfortable and be able to converse amongst themselves in the classroom.  This activity is very rich because it brings language arts components to real life situations.

The FSL Triad met on Friday to discuss our Baseline results. Our junior kids were paired up and they asked each other questions EN FRANCAIS about their family.  Some teachers gave them “sentence starters” such as Quand (When…) Qui (who…) Ou (Where…) Est-ce que (Does…) others chose not to.  We noticed some were easier to use than others.  For our mid-line, we will interview another class in the same school (e.g. Jennifer Kealey’s class will meet with Caroline Ghaffari’s class). And our final activity will be to SKYPE with a class from another school.  The question will vary a bit – we will ask “what does your family do at Christmas”.

The students will converse with a partner and ask one another questions about his/her family. For our midline assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in our school. For our final assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in one of our triad schools, through Skype. Results will be examined to see whether the students are more comfortable speaking and if they are using more complex vocabulary and sentence structures.

Paul McGuire

Safe Place: Record your Kinder Parens

In our classroom we practice, conscious discipline which is a self-regulating program that integrates social-emotional learning and discipline.  According to Dr. Bailey, ”Discipline in not something you do to children.  It is something you develop within them.”  

Through the Shubert’s books, the students are learning that our safe place is a corner where they can go to change the inner state of mind from upset to calm or sad to happy in order to maximize learning.  The children are learning to identify their feelings and choose helpful strategies to calm their bodies.  There are different breathing techniques that they are learning to use, for example they can do the pretzel, the drain, the balloon… Also, the students are learning to identify their emotions and choose to self regulate their behaviour (e.g., I am angry that you don’t want to share with me, instead of hitting you, I am going to go take 5 deep breath, relax and then talk about it to find a solution).  When the students go to the safe place, there is a “calm you body bin” where there are different sensory objects to help them relax.  We have squishy balls for touch; a motion wand for sight; aromatherapy scent bottles for smell; and a recording of an I love you message from parents for sound.  

When, I tweeted in September that I was planning on recording my parents at my Kindergarten meeting saying an "I love you message" with the iPad. Then QR code, print it and insert it in a scrapbook for our safe place. I got many retweets and questions regarding how I did this.   Well, it was very easy and one of the best things I've done this year. Here is what I did:

First, during Kindergarten interviews in September, I recorded the parents in their first language saying an I love you message to their child.  I used the app called Fotobabble to snap a picture of the parents and then the parents recorded their special message for their child.  The parents were thrilled to be able to do this for their child. Some parents had tears in their eyes and all their messages were unique and special.  Some even said: "I wish my parents could of done this for me when I went to Kindergarten! Technology is amazing!"  Next, I used the QR code generator extension in Chrome to QR the Fotobabble link. I printed it and the students had fun making our family scrapbook.  Each student brought in family pictures, drew pictures and glued the QR code on their page in our scrapbook.  Then, the scrapbook was placed in our safe place. When the students were sad or when they were missing their parents, they went to the safe place, scanned the QR code with the i-nigma app and listened to their parents. When the students heard their parents message, they felt better right away. It was so comforting for them to hear their parents voices! It was great to see the children's eye brighten up as they heard and saw their parents. It made them feel instantly better. The scrapbook continues to be in our safe place and is readily available to the students! 

Google Forms at Learning connection

Teddy created a blog for the session in order to guide OCSB teachers through the process of Google forms and calender. Blogging as a platform for engaging and collaborating during a session.

http://lcocsb.blogspot.ca/

Why spend time learning to collaborate?

This is the updated post on my professional blog on collaboration. I credit my learning to my students and all colleagues and the professional learning community on twitter from around the world.
This is the updated post: http://learninginprogess.blogspot.ca/

I will soon be sending the OCSB Learning Community a reminder about posting and connecting on Google+ for a sharing session.

Thank you to colleagues who continue to contribute and update our blog on our learning from our classrooms.

GRA/dropittome

This year, my class is participating in the Global Read Aloud Project. We are studying the author Eric Carle.  Our first book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Last week, we had a great opportunity to video chat with two different classes from the USA via Skype. Mrs. Jones Grade 6 students read us the book in a creative way and lead a discussion.  We loved the props they used! Mrs. Andrew's Kindergartens taught us the cycle of a butterfly.  We loved their drawings! In addition, my Kindergarten students, used the app Draw and Tell app to create their own representation of a butterfly.  Each student recorded his/her name, where in the world he/she lived and shared something about his/her butterfly.  My students work will be part of a collaborate iMovie video with 3 other classes: Mrs. Lirenman's grade 1's from Vancouver, Mrs. Sargent PK-1st from Massachusetts and Mrs. Goold Kindergartens from California.  This was a lot of fun!

Ms. Lirenman taught me a cool way to share my student's work created on an iPad with her, who is far away. And I was able to do all of this all with my iPad! It's called dropitome! First, I saved the students work on my camera roll. Next, I opened Safari and typed in the http://dropitto.me/  address that Ms. Lireman created and shared with me. I typed in the password, uploaded the file (student work) that I wanted to share with her and hit send! That's it! It was very easy to share my students work with my global read aloud partner.  Thank you to Ms. Lirenman for teaching me how to do this. I've already shared it with some colleagues and they also think it's pretty cool too!

Aurasma App in K

After reading Mrs. Wideen's Blog post on how she used the Aurasma App in her classroom, I wondered how I could purposefully use that app with my Kindergarten students.  The Aurasma app allows you to create an overlay over a picture making your own augmented reality.  In other words, your picture comes alive! Thinking ahead and planning for Meet the Teacher/Open House, I decided that this would be a great way to engage parents and give them a sneak preview of how I embed technology tools in their child's learning. Yes! I had learning goals.  Let me explain how I did this.

First, I wrote this message in chalk outside in our yard and took a picture of each child with it. I got the pictures developed.

Next, I downloaded the free app.  I tried to figure out how this app worked but I was unsuccessful. I turned to Google search for some help and came across this fabulous video tutorial on Two Guys and Some iPads Blog. Now, I was ready to make some magic happen. 

I video taped each student individually using the camera on the iPad. I asked the students to explain to their parents what happens in our Kindergarten class and what they enjoyed the most.  I opened the Aurasma app, pressed the triangle at the bottom, pressed the plus sign, pressed device, pressed the plus sign on the top, got the video for student 1 from my camera roll, selected the video, took a picture of the trigger image (kindergarten =awesome for student 1), pressed the arrow to the right at the bottom, named the aura, added the aura to my open house channel and finished!  It sounds complicated but it's really easy!  

Then, I created a bulletin board outside my classroom with a note to our parents. In order for me to remember that the pictures were AR, I just put a white label with a purple triangle on the picture.

On the day of our Open House, the parents were curious to see the special message from their child.  I had iPads available for them to use for those who did not have a device. The parents reactions: "That is so cool! I wish I was in Kindergarten!" Some parents had tears in their eyes and were happy to hear or see their children communicate with them what they were doing in class.  

 

What were my learning expectations:
Personal & Social Dev: talk about their interest & preference, recognize personal interests
Oral: use language to talk about their thinking, to reflect
Media: create a video to communicate their feelings about Kindergarten (The intention was to teach the students how to do the auras but since I was having wireless connection issues, this was not possible. I am confident that they will be able to create some auras)
Differentiation: for ELL students, record their message in their first language; for non-verbal students, I video taped them at a learning center.

Augmented reality is another cool tool that we can use to embed the K program purposefully! 

21st Century frustration?

I'm feeling a bit spoiled! Having always had access to multiple forms of hardware (Smart Board, LCD projector, iPods, iPads...the list goes on), I find myself in a portable with exceptionally limited access to technology.  It's frustrating and yet, the reality for so many.

Trying to overcome this, I've been given access to 10 iPods (thankfully, I teach primary, so we are in a 2:1 situation).  I'm looking forward to having a SmartBoard in my classroom again!  Funny how lack of "tools" can quickly become a road block.

Any creative ways to incorporate 21st c. thinking/learning/collaborating with limited tech are greatly appreciated!  In the meantime...Google is my best friend!

FYI:  the "tweet" in the photo was eventually popped into our classroom Twitter account...by a student :)

JK

Looking forward to the start of the new academic school year next week. Very excited to meet the Grade 6 and 5 students. This infographic represents the path of explorations for setting up ownership of learning and building our classroom community of respect to sharing and reflecting. As we go along the path I will be attaching evidence of our explorations.  More infographics will be developed covering the process of learning of many skills and strategies of learning.  Very exciting to explore, reflect and share with a new community of learners this year. We will embark in our own learning journey and we will be sharing our pedagogical process.

A few things to share...

Hi All,
Here are few resources for you. Feel free to use, delete, change and share!

Permission Form for Classroom Technology (Page 2 & 3 of this document)

Kidblog - Excellent safe site for blogging or eportfolios

•  Mrs. Martel's Class Blog
• Ms. Lirenman's Class Blog

Global Resources - Looking to join some fun projects....

• The Global Classroom Project
• The Global Read Aloud
• Dot Day (September 15th)
• Primary Blogging Community

DPA Smart Notebook Files

Evernote Tutorial - A starting point if you would like to use Evernote for eportfolios

Enjoy! Have a great start to the new year!!

Marcie

www.mrsmartel.ca

www.digitalprimaryteacher.ca

@mrsmartel2

Let's explore and connect!

Time is approaching as I am sure most of you will be visiting their schools and dusting the classrooms. I will be meeting with 3 colleagues on Monday at 11:00 o'clock for a chat about eportfolios. If you are interested please join us. we will be meeting at the board office at the link entrance.

I am hoping that we will be able to connect our classroom ideas on the blog. Inviting each others into our classrooms through sharing and collaborating what we do in our classrooms and how we cover the process with our students.

New article published on the web that you might find helpful with the iPads:

7 Time-Saving iPad Tips For Teachers

"Primary Bobcat iPad Contract " Graphic for students

4 Apps to create Designs with Words

Wishing you all a great start of the year and looking forward to sharing and connecting together.

iPads Apps

More Apps!!

Remember don't overwhelm yourself with apps just choose a few and explore with your students. I came across a list of  27 apps this morning  for the elementary school.  The list is an overview of Math, Storeytelling Science, Social studies.

Just an overview to check: 27 iPad Apps for Elementary School

Enjoy exploring and please share on the blog  examples of apps from your classroom  that we explored on the 20th.

Thanks.

ThreeRing

Thanks Rola! That was a great morning of learning. Lots of ideas and information shared by all the participants. 

Came upon this on Twitter today.....very timely since we were looking at the potential Three Ring offers for the documentation of student learning. It looks like students can now upload on their own. Very key piece, especially in junior. 

Thank You

Thank you for attending today, it was great to learn, explore and exchange ways of using the apps. I have added the archive button on the side to refer back to todays' session, the articles and the slides about the apps.

Enjoy the rest of August and please continue sharing and learning together.

Thanks Rola.

Online Professional Learning ... my best and favourite PD!

Hi everyone!

It was great to meet several of you today at +Rola Tibshirani's workshop on Capturing Student Thinking. I hope that we are able to connect even more in the coming months!

I just wanted to share a link to my website, in case anyone is interested! I have just started blogging and sharing resources I have created on my site and it's been a really great experience for me. Twitter has allowed me to connect with so many amazing and inspiring educators. My Twitter professional learning network is one of my most valuable tools in helping me learn about great ed tech initiatives to try and share!

If you are just starting to integrate technology and learn about new tools, don't feel overwhelmed or discouraged! There is a LOT out there and it's easy to feel like you're drowning in a sea of information! Choose one or two things to start with and slowly build on what you have learned. Many of the experts who are doing tons of great things have been doing this for many, many years! Everyone has to start somewhere!

I look forward to connecting with you and sharing new professional learning opportunities with you in the near future!

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you want to touch base about integrating technology in your classroom!

All the best! Enjoy the last bit of summer!
Megan

Twitter: @MsValois
Website with blog and resources: www.meganvalois.com

Hi Everyone,

Wow, what a great session today--could easily have been a full day.  I guess my own Next Step is to choose which app/apps I'm going to explore and get comfortable with and have my students access.  I also am interested in learning more about e-portfolios.  I don't have much tech experience so I've never explored this but with some app training and ideas now, this also seems like a logical Next Step.  I wonder if some of you are of this mind set?

Question (I am a beginner tech person so apologies if this seems very basic):  Where do you find the "How To" information regarding all the uses of Google/Google+?  Clearly, our Board wants us to use this but I confess, I know nothing about it....maybe it's all on Blackboard and I've missed it?  Thanks in advance for guiding me the right way!!

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Lisa
Phys Ed/Grade 4, St. Anne

Thank you Rola! What an exciting morning of learning and sharing. Can't wait to try some of these ideas in the classroom.

Thanks!

Such a great morning full of learning and collaborating! So anxious to get started!

Looking forward to further community building and sharing with you all!

JK

www..jenniferking.ca
@jennifernking

Summer Session: Capturing Students Thinking

August 20th Summer Session

I am very excited to be facilitating the summer session with Julie on Capturing students thinking. We will be sharing our experiences from our classrooms about capturing the learning process and continuing to learn more with you as team as we will be exploring students thinking during this academic year.

We all bring strength to learning as a community by sharing the learning and reflecting on our experiences. It doesn't matter where you are on your learning journey, as a team, learning together will also be valued at any level of entry as long as we will continue to pursue risks and sharing. I am hoping that we would all be able to connect and develop a rich learning network online through this blog. You are invited to contribute on this blog either by attaching a link from any doc, site or blog with a short and brief explanation about the experience of students' learning and your learning. Let's all take this learning risk as a team and share the positive and negative experiences from our students.

I spent the summer learning online and sharing with #ocsb on twitter from Boston, Austin, Chicago and Newfoundland.  Also joined #cyberpd by reflecting on the book "Who Owns The Learning?" by Alan November.  My learning online continues to globalize and connect to my students and the school, the board and the community.  I would like to share some tweets that resonated with me on technology:

• RT @c_durley: Networks are key to personalized learning. @courosa #blc13

• RT @amyburvall: @courosa nothing's real unless we document and post it, right? #blc13 #ocsb

• RT @c_durley: “We shape our tools and our tools shape us.” McLuhan via @courosa #blc13 #ocsb

• RT @NLearning: The greatest challenge facing teachers is shifting the control of learning to the student @globalearner #BLC13 #edtech

• RT @ictregister: RT @NLearning: What are the contributions students can make to the learning community? #BLC13 @globalearner #edtech < #ukedchat #dlchat
  
  
• RT @1stgradethinks: "Learning is social. It’s a group event. The power of the group beats the power of the individual." via @globalearner #BLC13  AMEN to that!!

• RT @CathDoesMath: Technology is a tool, NOT a learning outcome. #blcbyob #blc13 #ocsb #plocsb

Articles on the importance of establishing a collaborative learning community and the learning process:  

It is very important that the learning intentions or goals and criteria are clear for students while using technology as a tool to amplify their thinking and document their learning, share new learning and determine next steps. It is really about designing tasks for students than learning 100 apps.

"One simple way of understanding our pedagogical theory of iPads is that we don’t want them to just become replacements for notebooks and textbooks, we want them to be objects to think with. We want students using them to mess around with the world around them and their courses of study." From Mindshift The iPad as a Tool

Learning Learning Learning Not Apps Apps Apps

A Practical Guide For Teachers Who Just Got iPads

The iPad as a Tool for Creation to Strengthen Learning

Technology Is a Tool, Not A Learning Outcome

5 Questions For Every Leader #leadershipDay13

iPad Apps Resources:

iPad Paperless Workflow infographic

44 Education Apps For K-6 Open Ended Learning On The iPad

Teaching Literacy with the iPad form Kathy Cassidy

A Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy For Evaluating Digital Tasks


The link to our summer session slides:   Summer Session Slides