Category Archives: Assignment Three

July 19, 2013 · 10:19 am

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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July 18, 2013 · 11:21 am

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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July 16, 2013 · 7:45 pm

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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· 7:32 pm

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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· 4:55 pm

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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July 15, 2013 · 10:28 am

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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