Category Archives: Assignments

Summative 10 minutes

Then:
 
I was an emailer
I had accounts to things like Twitter and so many more that I got for my first course in the Diploma program but had not made any attempt to integrate into my life. At all.
I didn’t really think I had an online presence.

I have realized that I need to rethink my own attitude to ICT.
Now:

One of the many things that has struck me during this course was the idea of learning with about and through digital technologies.
I am questioning things and ideas more and thinking more about my audience and the origin of ideas (like who can up with this 21st century skills idea anyway) I have spent more time actually looking into the corporate affiliation of various proponents of educational reform that I have done in the past. I have also spent more time looking into some of the hidden curriculums on the Ministry of educations wesite.

I am still processing many of the concepts and ideas that have been introduced through this course. No doubt this process will continue in the weeks to come.

I have developed part of a vision for the continued integration of technology into my teaching practice, and ideas for collaboration with my new teacher librarian. I am looking into my new school and the culture that it seems to have around technology (se post about my post). I am thinking about ways that I can pursue my own learning goals beyond the boundaries of the diploma program.

I have some platforms and projects that I am eager to try out on real students, oh those lucky gineau pigs!

THings I would like to use:

www.sandilandsclass.weebly.com

Discussion forms
Genius hour

BYOD

and many specific web 2.0 applications to which I have been introduced….

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Flexing and learning… new plan as of Wednesday

I am now assigned to a new position at another school. As a result my mind is whirling and the possibilities are again endless. so how to focus on what I want to do with my vision for my future. plan 2.0

  • in my teaching I would like to use Edmodo to share files, push notifications, organize communication, and connect with parents.
  • I would like to have a website and use blogging with students. I would like the blog to serve as a kind of electronic portfolio, and these blogs could be used for student reflection
  • I would like to do some kind of Genius Hour, a student driven inquiry project to use as a platform for teaching information and digital literacy skills.

http://www.sd43.bc.ca/Resources/DigitalCitizenship/PermissionLetters/Permission%20letter%20for%20using%20non-Canadian%20Internet%20services%20-%20Edmodo.pdf
Permission Form for Edmodo (PDF)

I am going to create a new class website using Weebly at www.sandilandsclass.weebly.com

The pages on this class website will each have a rational and resources for embracing each of these ideas: Edmodo, BYOD, Genius Hour. It will also link to a class blog and to students own blogs.

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First news about my new Position

Here is the email trail surrounding my new position (I have pasted the text only):

My offer:

Hi Merrin,

 We would like to offer you posting #76 a 1.0 continuing contract at Maillard Middle teaching Grade 6/7.

 Please be advised that in accordance with the collective agreement, you have 48 hours to either accept or decline the offer.

 Thank you

My response:

Hello XXXXXX,

I would be happy to accept the grade 6/7 position at Maillard Middle.
This is the first position I have had at a new school in many years, and I am unsure of the next step. Should I contact the principal myself? How will I get more information about this position? Should I wait to be contacted? I realize you are busy but any info would be appreciated.

Merrin Sandilands

Sent from my iPad

 

 
Then I received this:

Merrin,
Welcome to Maillard! I am pleased to hear you have accepted the 6/7 position at Maillard. I am sure you have many questions and would be more than happy to help you. Perhaps e-mail is the best way to do this now? XXX, our principal and I will be in and out of the building all summer but we will be back to work full time on August 19th. If you would like to meet, we can let you know when we are going to be at the school. Or, I’d be more than happy to touch base with you in Port Moody where I live. I am around all summer but XXX will be away for much of the summer with his family.You mention that you have been at one school for some time. Where were your last teaching assignments? If you’ve never been at middle, it’s a great place to be, lots of high energy and wonderful magical things going on, regularly!             

I look forward to meeting you and to learning more about you in the months to come! Congratulations on accepting a change as I know it is not always easy to move.              

Enjoy the beautiful sunshine and your summer!

So I sent: this take note of the bolded line because that is the reason I have posted this entire thing)

Hello XXX,

Thank you for your welcome! I was very happy to receive your email, as I was busily trying to draft one myself.

I am very happy to be joining Maillard. I have been at Citadel Middle School for the last six years (though in different positions) so this will be my first experience with joining a new school at the beginning of a school year. Most recently I was teaching grade 8 humanities and math, but I have also taught grade six language arts, student services and library. Although I was sad to leave, I am excited to experience a new school, meet new people and try new things. I am very glad to have been given a Middle School Position, and am excited to be get started!

 I would welcome a chance to meet, though I will be in Ontario from July 30 until August 20. I am currently working on a diploma in teacher librarianship, and am at UBC completing a course entitled “Media and Technologies in the School Library Program”, and must be on campus during the day until Friday. I live in Vancouver but would be happy to come out to the school at your convenience.

Some initial questions include: what will my specific teaching position be? What are the configurations of teams at Maillard? Are there are any other new staff coming to Maillard? Do you have a new staff orientation? Because of the nature of my coursework I am also very curious about available technology and its use at Maillard. I am sure that there are many more questions as well, but I will start with those few.

I look forward to meeting you, Mr.XXX, and the rest of the staff!

 
And now I wait…

 

 

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Considerations of Audience and where I am at today

Originally when thinking about my plan, my “Future Vision for encorporating ICT into my practice”, I was imagining presenting my plan to a group of colleagues at my former school where I knew there was a postioin that I may get. I envisioned trying to pursuade them to join with me to experiment with BYOD, Edmodo, and blogging. I imagined us then having had some results qnd being able to go to the wider staff group in order to encourage a greater adoption of ICT in the school. I felt that in order to reach the more technophobic member of staff it was important to present a limited number of new ICT resources so as not to overwhelm them and to provide real local examples of it in use in our school context so that those teachers could see the benefits of using ICT both for students and for themselves.

Now that my teaching position is settled however I am looking at another audience for a presentation of my own personal plan. I will create a plan for myself for the upcoming year in my new class and present it to our LIBE477 class, as well as my PLN for feedback and support. Perhaps a screen cast or movie with a demonstrations of how elements of my plan fit together? I could then post the that at my own personal blog to get feedback from others.

Looking for my Domain name on godaddy.com

I have yet to decide how I will present it, but my attempts to manipulate my public site are getting mixed results.  I am at the moment (as of 7pm) experimenting with Weebly for Education and have looked into purchasing my own domain name. I am using advice from thesitewizard which lists GoDaddy as the worlds largest Domain name registrar. In this picture it shows that sandilandsclass.ca is available as a domain name and that I could register it for $12.95/year. I am not quite ready for that level of commitment at the moment, though it is an idea. If I own my own domain name I can still use Weebly to build the site, for free. If I used Weebly to register the domain they charge a whole lot more.

One Benefit that I have encountered so far to creating student blogs using Weebly is that the student interface uses drag and drop just as the teacher site does. It will be much easier for the students to modify and customize their pages in comparison to SharePoint. It seemed like bulk adding student was very easy and I added two test students Student A and Student B. It appears that you are able to add unlimited student accounts, though to get full functionality (like letting student’s upload multimedia) requires an upgrade to Pro.  I am going to work now on content regarding BYOD, Edmodo, and blogging to encorporate into my site.

 

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visual literacy and design based learning

what is design based learning?
“Design-based learning (DBL) is a form of project-based learning in which students learn what they need to learn in a just-in-time fashion while trying to design something” http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schunn/research/design.html
Here is an example of a school that is using this approach to teach a multidisciplinary program at the middle school level:

How does this apply to me? I am teaching myself to use an application with a URL that I can present as my final project. As I design this final product, I am learning the things I need to know as I go.

At this moment I am looking more deeply into SharePoint, so that I can decide if I want to continue to use it for my class website and to create class and student blogs. I was provided this link by our staff Development department “SharePoint Blogs” (I don’t think you can get in without a username and password).

So I have included several screen shots. They have provided examples templates, and How to Documents.

Example of Teacher Blog page

Example of the Student Blog

Both of the example templates shown here look very “SharePoint” and I am not sure that I am a fan of the layout or the possibilities for personalization for me or my students.  There is not the easy of use that other Blogging platforms have. Especially Weebly, which with its drag ang drop style, is my favourite  to set up so far. That being said, the page provided by the district has many useful document and links related to creating and using blogs including:How do I create a classroom Blog  ,    Connecting Blogs to Windows Live Writer XP, and perhaps most usefully of all Blog Rubrics.

There is also a link to a site called “Teachers First Blog ideas for the classroom“, which has some good ideas about how to use the blogs.

I may not be tied to the idea of SharePoint, but the idea of having the district supported platform does have some appeal both because there will be no FIOPPA related issues, but also because from my initial explorations into the digital world of my new school I can see that there are several teachers making use of their SharePoint websites and no evidence of links to any non SharePoint teacher/class sites. It may be best to start off here and then look into other possiblities when I have a chance to settle in. To this end I have put in an IT request to migrate my site to my new school and have put in a request to my new admin for more info.

A next step is to further investigate Edublogs, as that is the only blogging site for which a permission form exists on the  district’s “Cloud Tools” page.

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future vision project: Action plan for 2013/2014

I’m thinking the moment that my future vision project will encompass next year imagining that I am at my same school that I’ve been teaching grade 7 on a new team. I am thinking about this because I know there’s a job available and it’s possible that I’ll be recalled to this position, but I find it easier to plan
1. I’m going to create a virtual classroom and begin using Edmodo
2. I’m going to implement a BYOB program in my classroom.
3. I’m going to combine ICT teaching and learning with information literacy learning language arts and social studies curriculum incorporating genius hour.

In order to do this I’m going to enlist other members of my team and try to make this a team wide policy. I want to prepare a presentation to show my team. Provided that this goes well on the team level the presentation could also be given to the administration or the entire staff at a staff meeting in fact should be given to the administration in order to get permission to implement these programs.

In order to do the three things above I need to create the Edmodo environment
and figure out if I would need a class website in addition to the Edmodo interface. I think I need to provide blogs for students in order to support their own learning and sharing through the course of their genius hour projects. I will need to organize and personalize the permission forms for this.

I need to look into the necessary structures for BYOD within the school’s code of conduct, whether there is room to create an individual classroom policy.

Another new idea coming from someone’s 10 minutes of Fame: Genius Hour
I found this comment about Genius Hour:
“One thing that you probably thought about when you first heard of genius hour is that you don’t have time to do something like that in your classroom. I’m here to tell you that simply isn’t true. It’s human nature to challenge a new idea when it first enters your ears. We can’t help ourselves but try to poke holes in why something can’t be done. The path of least resistance is often the easiest route to take, because we don’t have to take any action.”

I would love to focus on collaborating with the TL to work on the Genius Hour project with advice from the MACC teachers who do this kind of projects already with the gifted students and why should they have all the fun?

During class today I learned that the position that I was dreaming of was giving to someone else. I am a bit at see, but am not changing the framework of my project unless I get an offer before the end of the week. I really find it easier to imagine a concrete situation.

I have been offered a grade 6/7 position at a different Middle School. Their APL says “This year, several of our grade 6/7 classes are participating in the 1 to 1 Wireless Writing Project, which provides each student, and their teachers, with a laptop computer.” This is all I know about the school and its technology I don’t know when I will be able to get more information.

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Making meaning of week 2

Where I was:

  • consumer of content
  • introducer of content
  • collector of resources
  • list keeper
  • social media phobe
  • user of tech to do course work but not elsewhere

Where I am:

  • blogger
  • connected educator
  • collaborator
  • contributor
  • curator
  • organizer
  • ICT appreciator
  • learner and enthusiastic user of ICT for learning

Where I am going(what am I going to do…)

  • continue to develop my PLN
  • use PLN to improve my practice
  • encourage students to create there own PLN to pursue their ‘spark’
  • use ICT to for many purposes:
  1. to connect better to students
  2. to allow students to connect to each other
  3. to allow students to create and share creations with the world
  4. to connect students to experts and sources of local interest/expertise
  5. to connect better with parents

I am also trying to find out what is happening in our district and why I don’t know about it, and how I can help others know about it. For example I just found out about the social networking tool called yammer which apparently is available in my district. It is sort of a corporate Facebook style interface, so my next job is to find out about that and why we have it when nobody’s using it and maybe encouraging people to use that as a tool within our district for connecting and collaborating and sharing ideas.

Our sociological discussions this week about socio-cultural homeostasis, dynamic conservatism, institutional isomorphism, autopoeisis, structural coupling and linguistic cognitive domain, have been thought-provoking, interesting, depressing, hopeful, daunting, energizing and inspiring.

Out of all of that what I feel at the end is that what I need to do is to work on using ICT resources to further my own practice, to learn to create exemplary lessons in which students learn with, through, and about technology. I have to learn To take more risks to allow learning to be more students centred than ever before. As I do this I have to leverage my connections, my connectedness to try to inspire, influence, or persuade others to join the ICT side.

I think providing inspiring examples sharing successes and being a reflective learner and teacher, and sharing what I’m doing is a way to effect change slowly, authentically, sustainably, and organically. Certainly that’s how I’m starting to learn from other people. One of the first things that I’m going to do in the wider school context (providing that I am at the same school) is to bring the idea of asking why to more aspects of our practice. Why did we bring iPads into the school? why are we doing what we’re doing? I think we go back to the why we will do more well.
If I’m not at the same school if I am in a new school environment I think that the way to deal with the dangers of institutional isomorphism and other factors against innovation and radical change is to continue to seek out people outside of my school (PLN) with whom I have common goals, so that I can continue to develop my own practice.

Looking back at this post I notice that I’ve got lots of adjectives and lists of adjectives I wonder if that’s a symptom of how full my brain is.

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Developing World Libraries

However you slice it developing a worldwide library collection or digital libraries in developing countries is being seen as a way to provide access for people who are under serviced by libraries. Programs for providing infrastructure in the developing world abound such as Global libraries through the BIll and Melinda Gates Foundation and many others. All over the world cellular technology is putting cell phones in the hands of people faster than land lines. According to water.org more people have cell phone than have a toilet.
Oraganizations such as UNESCO are attempting to create digital collections “in multilingual format, [of] significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.”
http://youtu.be/xhBYGI6Tfzo
see their site: http://www.wdl.org/en/

Another resource is the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/ founded by Brewster Kahle.

Kahle states: “It’s not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway, we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to put the best works of humankind within reach of that generation. Through a simple Web search, a student researching the life of John F. Kennedy should be able to find books from many libraries, and many booksellers — and not be limited to one private library whose titles are available for a fee, controlled by a corporation that can dictate what we are allowed to read.”[12]

There are digital collections for young people like the International Children’s Digital Library which is particularly interesting because part of their mandate: “The ICDL Foundation promotes tolerance and respect for diverse cultures by providing access to the best of children’s literature from around the world.” The site is available in English, Spanish, French, Mongolian, and Russian. Books are often available in more than one language, and their stated goal is to have all their books translated into 100 languages. They even have a training manual for teachers to use the digital library. The training manual contained this interesting definition of digital libraries:

Digital Libraries

William Arms, creator of D-Lib Magazine, gives a simple yet effective definition of a digital library. He defines a digital library as a “managed collection of information, with associated services, where the information is stored in digital formats and accessible over a network” (Arms, 2000, p. 2). Digital libraries are considered extensions of the physical library, not replacements. They have benefits such as being “open” twenty-four hours a day at a relatively low cost, bringing the library to the user, allowing for powerful searching and browsing, being able to share unique collections, and providing access to up-to- date information (Arms, 2000).

One of the concerns our group, which has been discussing equity and access related to BYOD,  brought up while discussing the issue in class was that much digital content available is in English. How then can it be accessed by non English speakers? This is another issue around BYOD that I have been contemplating. If your students are doing inquiry based learning, do we care if ESL students are reading all of their materials in English? If our purpose for the activity is for that student to learn English then yes but if our purpose is to decide which french speaking country they would like to visit if they were given $3000 dollars to go on an adventure holiday, then maybe not. Is it more important to have students learn and understand about the content, than that they use English to do every single task? Having the option of completing some tasks in their first langauge can enable ESL students to complete learning tasks in a timely manner. At any rate if we want tasks to be authentic and if we want students to practice their 21st century skills we are going to be looking at how that student interacts with the internet outside of school and I am sure that will involve them using Google Translate and accessing content in their first languages. Having their own devices with their own apps would help facilitate this.

As a TL this means that we need to create our own libraries digital presence in such a way that it acknowledges and takes advantage of these resources. Teacher Librarians need to draw peoples attention to digital resources just as they promote new print books, and should be mindful of how their materials are being accessed to ensure positive user experiences. Does your school library website have a mobile app?

 

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Fighting the forces against change at my school

Sociocultural Homeostasis, dynamic conservatism, institutional isomorphism oh my! How can we effect change in our own schools?

I think that the best way for me at my school (if i were back there again) would be to proceed into the brave new world of ICT by finding like minded souls who are interested in pursuing connectedness, ICT and other related issues and quietly collaborate with them on various projects. This way we will have results that we can share with others.

If I were the teacher librarian at the school I think what I would start by doing this by carving out for myself time to staff meetings to present various topics in ICT. I would also think about setting up a series lunch time proD workshops maybe offer ‘workshop Wednesdays’ and invite staff members to come into the library and collaborate and share around ICT. I know that there are some teachers who would be interested in any of these topics right off the bat. Getting them onside and getting ideas from them would be a piece of cake. But those really aren’t the people that I would be looking for. I would be looking for the people who say “this is the way I do things I’ve always done them this way” or for the people who think “look at my website, I already am doing digital technology”. I would be looking for the people who need a push to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones.
The topic that we covered today that struck me the most was our discussion of linguistic cognitive domain. The idea that the way that you frame a new idea the words that you use and the way you introduce it will affect other people’s perception of the concept, will Influence their willingness to adopt new techniques used new resources step out of their comfort zone and try new things.
As the librarian you’re in the ideal position to introduce new ideas for several reasons:

  • In your role as a teacher librarian you are creating a website and virtual library so you’re more likely to be familiar with a lot of these things
  • You’re the person that works with all the members of the staff and all the members of the student population
  • You are the one (in the minds of other teachers at least) who has time to invest in learning about ICT because you don’t have lesson planning and marking to do. (some of them think this I know)

So time and care must be put into planning how you can introduce new ideas and how you’re going to change the culture of your school to try to counteract some of the forces like institutional isomorphism that make change more difficult.

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So they are going digital with Edmodo

As I mentioned in my previous books one of my colleagues has decided to with his team go digital classroom. I decided that I would look into what they are planning and look into whether or not BYOB is part of their plans. So through Twitter I was told that they are going to adopt Edmodo. This is a platform that my colleague who teaches the Middle Ages Gifted Cluster Class (MACC) has raved about all year.

Today she tweeted “luv Edmodo for: st engagement, book club connections, PLN, ongoing parent communication”. I haven’t taken the time to learn even what it is and what it can be used for, so I decided that tonight’s task was to spend some time looking at Edmodo.
I started out by looking for video tutorials related to Edmodo and I found a quite lengthy one on the website called www.teachertrainingvideos.com. Here’s the link to that Edmodo introductory video:

http://youtu.be/DZHB6FfRjnQ

Some key things I’ve learned about Edmodo are that it allows you to create a Facebook style interface in which you can create groups for each of your classes and your students can sign up and be members of the designated groups. You will be given a group code to enable students to sign up. You can create assignments and have students turn them in. It also allows students to post items on the groups wall. You can create quizzes and those quizzes will be marked and students can be given feedback instantaneously, which is a feature that I appreciate. Apparently you can also give parents a parent code.
Here are some other tutorial videos that I watched on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/x0f9Syv8yCI
http://youtu.be/BILtGaDe3qA
Part 1: Getting started with Edmodo

Part 2:Assignments

Part 3:Using the Calendar

http://youtu.be/UoVfi10qqvM

I learned how to assess an assignment and provide feedback to individual students. I learned how to manage a class group and find the parent codes for each individual students. I learned how you can embed video directly into the wall of your class groups. And those few there were only a small portion of the available tutorials of varying lengths that have been created and put up on YouTube regarding

This video introduces sort of comparison between Edmodo and another application called Moodle which I have never heard of, I have no idea what it is. Maybe that’s the next thing to look at.

The MACC class which have been using this Edmodo platform is essentially a one to one class with a BYOD policy. It is a unique program in that it is a district program that pulls kids from all over the district not merely from our catchment area so a lot of the parents actually drive the kids in from a relatively great distance to purchase paid in this program and those students are asked to bring in there on the laptops I believe I don’t know that they’re given the option to use other kinds of devices. In this class the teacher reports that the students love using Edmodo. They love being able to message each other and get involved in debates. She likes that one of the features is that she can keep track of who hands and assignments on time and to track work habits marks. She’s a fan and I think she’s starting to convert the others!

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