Its All About The Tech

Many articles, tweets, and posts about integrating technology ttell us that it is not the technology,  but how we use it to change our teaching that matters. I agree,  how use technology within the classroom is important and that it is a tool not an end in itself. We should  use technology in creative and collaborative ways.

However. I think in my classroom its all about the technology.

 We have 5 ipads, and a cart of Macbooks that we can use daily, and the students can BYOD. If we had more we would use more, but it is certainly not essential to have a 1:1 setup. In fact, even when avaliable we usually work in pairs or teams to ensure collaboration, and to promote peer to peer support. I would much rather have 5 iPads all the time than sign out class sets that we share with the school. We use them exclusively for creating: making videos, slide shows, photography, blogging and skyping. We need them to be available at all times because,  just like our other classroom tools, we use them throughout the day. Having our own class iPads means they are always charged; they are always updated; they only contain our apps and content; and they do not get too full. We have them synced through iCloud and they are very manageable with little effort.

Now, back to the all about the technology...

Technology has transformed our classroom. It enables us to reach out to the world through daily blogging, skyping, Youtube and Twitter, We are able to share our learning with others and to participate in other classes' projects, experiments and blogs. It has enabled us to experience first hand sources for research such as the pictures, maps and diary entries within Passageways  and the information from the Government of Canada to become explorers and to blog about our travels.

It enables us to use rich resources such as Discovery learning, or to watch video  clips from credible sources such as the BBC,  NASA, and National Geographic,  to better understand what we are learning  and to produce our own videos and share them with others on Youtube.

Technology has enabled us to publish our learning in our blogs and given new importance to our writing and artwork while providing parents and others a window to our work. We have been able to reach out to others and to share globally through initiatives such as Global Read Aloud and given us choices in how we present our learning. Publishing and sharing has brought us confidence and inspired us as we learn. It has given us purpose, self direction and choice.

Our Class is all about the technology: http://mrsdycksclass.weebly.com/

IDL Yr. 2, Failure and Success

June Reflections

This year has flown by. I tried to take on new challenges as the year unfolded and I have ventured into the global stadium. Our class joined The Global  Read Aloud and I encouraged and mentored the teachers that wanted to integrate iPads and computers into their classroom.  We acquired more iPads and opened up their use to all of the teachers in the school and some have started to use them.

Even after years of using technology with children I always find new challenges to overcome. When I see new Apps, or great new ideas, or opportunities for my class to take on  a new way to build learning it excites me. I have to take it on. I can't always do it all, but I like to find great new ways to help my students succeed.

 I understand how hard it is for some children to communicate, to fail even when they have given their all. I understand how difficult it can be to march to  a different drummer. I have a special spot in my heart for children who struggle because school is not always an easy place for them to navigate. I know that many gifted children face challenges as diverse as others special needs children. Children come to us eager to learn, eager to please and eager to be accepted, Some make it look so easy, and some struggle every day.

I came to teaching as a second career after having children. I was hooked on education after seeing the new directions that learning was taking at the time. I visited classrooms that made teaching and learning an adventure. Along the way I took many courses on using technology as a tool to provide open ended learning opportunities for children with learning disabilities including giftedness.

I learned how helpless it feels to fail. School always came easy to me and I never quite understood how some people struggled to understand a new concept or remember a lesson. I always just knew how to write an exam essay, how to memorize a textbook, or how to anticipate what questions would be on an exam. Then, out of the blue, I learned how to fail... How desperate it feels to try to understand, how frustrating and powerless you feel.

In my last year of Education at University I ended up in a class "Elementary Mathematics From Advance Standpoint" A great math class for soon to be elementary teachers..right?? Not so. It was a class that looked at advanced mathematical proofs using whole (elementary) numbers. A class in advanced number theory. A class that only serious Math scholars and unsuspecting education students took. The Faculty of Education had mistakenly thought it was a class in basic math for teachers of primary students. The first day we were told all of the education students would fail. We did. All of us. We could not withdraw as it was required for a Math major and those of us enrolled were all a few courses from graduating. Withdrawl meant not graduating.

I was a mother of three and a student. I cold not, not graduate. The stakes were too high. The cost of daycare, classes and raising family had taken its toll and we needed to move into the land of the working. Every day I went to class and took notes, I got support from a doctoral student. I redid every question over and over. I still failed. I started to freeze on our daily quiz. My mind totally blanked out. Panic flooded me. I went to the Dean Of Education to get help. He told me to relax, my marks were high,  I would be fine. I wasn't. I turned to the Professor, a semi retired math genius, for help. He said married women  belonged at home  with their family, and education wasn't a real subject. I tried harder, I started to memorize all the proofs I could. The problem was we were never given the same type more than once.

In the end, I failed. I couldn't retake it as it was only taught by one professor. However, the course was removed from the the Faculty of Education requirements and without being required enrollment dropped, and the course did too. Too late for me. I was able to complete two independent study courses to graduate, and  more importantly I learned what it was like to fail. I have never forgotten that course. I still have the hundreds of pages of proofs I wrote out and memorized and my heart jumps when I see that look of confusion and fear in a child's eyes.

How does this relate to my teaching over the last year? It is with me always. I need to find new ways for children to succeed and be confident learners, to be able to take risks, collaborate and feel good about themselves, not the panic, fear and emptiness I felt.

This has changed my perspective on learning. I don't believe in Mastery learning, or in final answers. I believe that if you write a math test you should be able to take it home, get help, correct it, and rewrite the very same test, or take it home to practice with mom and dad first. I believe that we are there to help children succeed, to find ways to help them support their own learning, take risks, and to celebrate their success. I believe there are better ways to learn and the children will find them. If we let them.

This is what drives me to push them to do their best, to help them find new ways to succeed, to work together, to create, to engage in authentic tasks that compel them, guide them and inspire them. This year blogging was the most important tool in my box to make that happen. We invited in First Nations people to teach us to weave, to drum, to draw, to make button blankets, to listen to their stories and to appreciate their history. They taught us Arctic games, showed us their tools, and how to build an igloo. We went to Fort Langley and documented the trip, blogged about what we learned and then took time to learn about explorers from The Government archives and public domain logs, maps, and pictures. There was no test. We participated, blogged, and shared. We taught each other about the explorers we followed, and joined them on their journeys.

Every year I worry that I didn't actually test them. I listened. I read, I talked with them. They wrote, drew, and even made videos. I am not sure that every child learned everything about every explorer. But they did learn about some of the explorers, they learned about our past, and they learned how to learn more. They participated actively in first hand, authentic interviews and Aboriginal activities. They can tell me their stories.

For me the journey has been inspiring. I have seen some of my reluctant learners step up and become writers, Some have become directors and some have had their chance to shine, They blog for fun. They blog from home. They have a purpose to draw and their artwork is amazing. (Could be a book on its own.) Others have become mentors and and have been inspired to publish more. Their blogs are growing rapidly now and have become eportfolios of their year with me. They have added field trip photo galleries and some will add their artwork too. I love to see them take pride in their work and consider it important.

Now, having said all this, I must say that we have not commented as much on each other's work as would have liked. Most likely, because we do so verbally. Next year we will have to find a partner class to blog with to solve this. In fact I saw an amazing site that sets weekly blog challenges for students. It leads them through activities to learn about blogs, blog rolls, commenting, reaching out, and connecting.

I think this will be a great way to reach out and get in a weekly blog club. Also we will go ahead with Global Read Aloud again and as we make new blog partners we will Skype more.

I have started BYOD and some of my class have done so. It was done with little fanfare and students use them as they would the class iPads, We have used Creative Commons and public domain images or their own pictures for all their work. The year started slowly, but in January we reached a tipping point and the blogs took off. Now the year is running out and it feels like we just got started. When I think back to September I am amazed at all the class has accomplished and how much they have grown.

Why I Became An Educator? What Legacy?

 

 

Why did I become an educator??

I was actually going to be a Commercial Artist and worked briefly in the industry. At that time it was a field that few women were working in and an adventure in itself. However, I found that there was very little opportunity to create. I painted huge murals on buildings, trucks, windows, and even created and screened museum exhibits. After a awhile, every street I drove down had some of my work on display and every piece of clothing I owned had paint on it somewhere.  But..I was always producing someone else's creations.

 Next came Computer programming and I enrolled in Computer Science. I took an elective course in education and the rest fell into place.

Opportunities to create abounded. One of the best parts of teaching is being able to create a space where learning is an adventure. Every September is a new beginning. Every year has its own challenges and rewards.  Creating activities and opportunities to challenge and inspire my students and then watching them surpass my them is always rewarding. Every new project we take on inspires new ones.

I enjoy working with children, and each year they become mine, but for me it is the way a classroom takes on a life of its own.


What legacy do I want to leave behind? 

 That is harder. I have never thought of teaching in those terms. I  have always been passionate about integrating technology and have spent many years striving to do so. I want the world to see elementary school students as the powerhouses they are. Too may times we underestimate their abilities. I have heard:  the children are too young to learn how to save their work, or how to logon to their accounts, or that they don't need the computing capacity of older students because they only write short stories. I would like the world to see that these kids are fearless, quick to learn and capable of taking on many of the challenges we assume only much older students can do.

 I would like my teaching legacy to be that I have shown my students, and the world what amazing things they are capable of.  I want them to believe they can do it all. I want to open your eyes and make you understand that too.

In Flanders Field

Today we made our first video of the year. It was actually a slideshow made with iPhoto and soundtrack made with Garageband. I wanted to use an App but I could not find one that let us do everything we wanted.

Month 2,October Reflections

Blogging, again.

We are up and running again and have restored most of our lost work. We have just finished our Global read Aloud novel and are now busy looking into the endangered status of elephants and gorillas through the World Wildlife website. We have been skyping weekly with our new buddies from a neighbouring school. It has been exciting to meet with them weekly and share our pictures, blogs, and predictions.

This was my first Global Read Aloud. It has been a lot of hard work, but we enjoyed the book,  made new friends, and learned how to blog. We are going to work with the other school to create a joint final project. If all goes as planned we will make our first 1 minute video on the book.  This is our first inter school collaboration. It has encouraged us to take the time to share and provided  new pupose and deadlines for our hard work.

We have also started to use Book Creator to publish our first ebook on Ivan, and made a slide show with Animoto as a pre-read prediction activity.

I attended the first dinner meeting with @shaeski  on Digital Storytelling and I tried to use ideas from the session during October as part of my commitment to Designs For Learning. Usually I have students write about their reading and then create illustrations to add to their writing. For October, I flipped that. I started each reflection on the book by having the students make a picture to show me what Ivan or Stella felt, who their favourite character was and what their favourite part of the reading was. After we drew we wrote about our drawings. During this time we also did a impromptu write on Halloween. One thing I observed was that my weaker writers did better with the picture to jump start their thoughts. It gave them a tronger, more visual starting point than a word web or a brainstorm, or a class discussion. I think I will use this more often and next time I will extend it by getting students to focus on describing the setting and characters from their illustrations to add detail and enrich their writng.

As November starts we will be having a seies of First Nation workshops on drumming, weaving, salmon, drawing, potlatches and button blankets. We will be writing about our learning and recording our expereinces with video and photographs. I will take most of the footage and pictures as they work. Usually the students journal or blog about the workshops. This year I will have the students make a video or a digital collage to describe their experiences and then use them to present what they learned as well as blogging like we usually do.

Our next project is Remembrance Day. We have made torn paper poppies and we will spend time finding pictures of the war and using them to make a slide show to remember. We will share with the school at our assembly as our contribution to the service.

I am excited to begin November.

 

The One And Only Ivan 6 word stories

Ready to Go!!

 

Sept. 28thWe spent the day getting ready for the #glread12 - The One And Only Ivan. After going to the Digital Stories @shareski dinner meeting I am ready to try a few of the digital story ideas he showed us. We are going to integrate them into our Global read Aloud project that we start October first. We have a a new twitter account and will start using it too. 

October 1 

First up - 6 word stories

We started with 6 word stories or  "twitter stories". We uploaded our illustrations of Ivan to our twitter feed and then added our twitter predictions to the illustrations to share with our new buddy classes.  We are also made an Animoto slide show of them.

We will be meeting in Google Hangout with Mr. Hong's class and Ms. Thiessen's class to share as we read. We are also going to use Weebly to blog about the book. We will be starting them as the week unfolds and we read the first 78 pages. We will also read the blogs those of our buddy readers and share comments with them.

A busy week ahead.

Innovative Learning Year 2

Last year was a true adventure in learning for me. I have always used technology in my teaching but I have never had so many opportunities to integrate.  Access to technology, availability of new apps, online space to blog and the emergence of iPads have opened new doors to us.

 Today I went to the first Innovative Learning meeting of the year. It was exciting to see and hear of the changes moving forward in project based learning.  As part of the day's activities we re-considered our progress and re grouped for a fresh start as each of does every fall ready to take on another year of learning. We made short artifacts of the year that was as we looked ahead.

 This year I want to find new opportunities to support my class and new resources to individualize learning for each of my students. 

1. In year 1 of the Project we dabbled with Pinterest and although we only managed to dip our toes in and bookmark our work to share, I can see now that there are other great possibilities for this year. I want to set up separate boards for each child:

•  to post links to their online blogs, movies and to post photos of their artwork;
•  to pin the resources they find and the photos they use in their creations. This year we used dropbox but Pinterest makes it much easier to bookmark and collect resources because it is so visual.
• one for me to post resources and links to new projects. I make webpages for each of our projects with video, links and instructions and I think Pinterest will help me organize and make them quicker to access. Also the class can add new links they find that we should use or share Then they become part of the assignment creation phase.

2. I will continue to make movies with the class. Last year we made two.  Both were follow up projects to novels. The class loved making them and it helped them develop a stronger understanding of setting, character, key events, and plotlines. They said it made them become the characters and they learned to work together and value each other. This year I would like to open up opportunities for them to use this format to make documentaries of our First Nation's workshops and research Owls. Now that Book Creator can hold videos we can embed our videos and then write about making them. Or perhaps create a book that contains them all and allow a question and answer  or comment section to go with each video. Lots more possibilities.

3. I would like to find more opportunities to give students choices. They love to take charge of their own learning. I think that after they have tried a variety of presentation and research projects they should have the opportunity and the confidence to decide which ones they want to try again.

4. Sharing. Last year we shared our books and videos at assemblies and through YouTube and our blogs but we did not have a partner class to work with to get feedback.This year I will involve at least one other class and help them to start their own class blogs,  publish ebooks and I will mentor other teachers as they work on their own class projects. Also I will find another class that is blogging and link up with them to comment and share our work and give my class an opportunity to appreciate the work of others. I want to set up groups to share online resources and ideas with others on our new Surrey Schools website and I hope others will add and share theirs with me.  I would like to find a way to meet with some of my twitter colleagues  to share,  compare, plan and engage in collaborative projects together.

5. Assessment:  Last year we did school wide writes and as I looked at the fall and the spring writes I was amazed at the growth. The new writing is focused and far more detailed. The students edited more,  their stories had better overall structure, and their voice shone through. I will need to see if the same is true next year.  When they published their research on the CPR with Book Creator they were able to publish their findings in their own words - a big step for grade four. Was this just a one time event or does blogging make such a major difference in student writing? Some of the most dramatic changes were made by my lowest students. 

Year 1 was inspiring and I am looking forward to an another great year.  I am sure that more opportunities and ideas lie just around the corner. Starting all over with a new class of "rookies"  seems daunting, but I know  that  jumping right back in always works,  the children always amaze me and the year flies by. 

On to year 2! 

In Our Own Words!

This is a documentary made by my students about our year long journey in project based learning with technology. The students interviewed each other and mixed in clips of their work. I asked them to  think about how the technology changed the way they learned and what they learned.

This is their voice.
This is what they want you to know about their adventures along the way.

"Using the blog is incredible because we can share our projects with the world

 When making our movies we cooperate with each other and get closer

A textbook has limited information when the web has millions of results

computers are very fast for searching up stuff

When we did our Barkerville journals it felt like we were there

When we are on Youtube looking at our movies it looks like we have fame and people we don't know, know us

In a group you an share your ideas and create something amazing

Kids feel like they have more trust 

Blogging about a book or something makes you feel like your in the book

If you bring your own technology you can work on your stuff at home too

Putting movies on YouTube might make it go viral

We learn by doing it

When we do blogs we have to research things and by getting information we are learning 

When you have a blog you can share your information with everyone elsse I really like our website because you can look back on it all"