My Reflection on PLCs

I am fortunate enough to be in a school board and school that has focused on PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) for many years.  My school dedicates 30 minutes, every other week to staff working together in small groups as PLC time.  We have also been given the afternoons of many of our PD days to work in our PLC groups, an annual day with Allison Zmuda for our departments and (I believe) an on going offer of release time if we feel it necessary or beneficial to have more time to work on something specific with our group.  I have the impression that this is not the norm across the province, and I feel lucky to be in a board/school that dedicates this much time to the opportunity to work together.

(Can you hear the “But…” coming?)

Earlier this semester we were asked to share what we were doing in our PLC groups.  This was my reply:

_______ and I are currently using PLC time to work through the new Big Idea in 2D, and make sure our assessments match the Essential Questions for each unit.   I guess our goal is to have common assessments that we are comfortable with that focus on the Essential Questions and have a Big Idea that we can work with.

I hesitate to call this a Professional Learning Community, because I'm not sure what it is we are learning or that 2 people make a community.  I am disappointed that we do not have a clearer focus and I feel that we are on the same path we were on 4 years ago.  

I am also sad that no one else expressed interest in the book The Big Six, as I thought for sure that could be a unifying focus for history. ______ had told me she was willing to read it when I first mentioned it the first week of PLC. [Another colleague] didn't respond to the email about the book because she [is still working on a project in a different PLC], but she thinks she will be done by the next PLC time.  She is interested in reading the book, whether in a group or on her own. I was so sure this was would happen that I actually put it down on my ALP for my department goal.  

Lisa Unger

My concern was (is) that we are changing things simply because we have been given the time to work on something, and we don’t know what else to do.  The big idea and essential questions we have developed are not that much of a change from what we had before, and are not getting us better results.  I had previously suggested that we spend PLC time studying the book The Big Six to help us learn about teaching disciplinary skills in history.  I thought this would help us focus on our learning in our Professional Learning Community.  This had gone nowhere.  The response I got from my email was basically to stay the course.  That it was better to have 2 people making decision about a course than 5 so that something could be accomplished and that we are great teachers and will come up with something that everyone could use.

This past Friday we had Steven Katz as a guest speaker for our PD day.  He spoke about the importance of learning in a professional learning community.  Here are a few of my tweets from the session:

I really appreciated his message, and felt it fit really well with where I was in my PLC journey.  My challenge is figuring out how to make that learning happen.  I recognize that not everyone is in the same place in their journey.  One of my problems is getting to the “learning conversation” rather than “great discussions.”  In my PLC I have a problem with what Katz called being “superfice” (his word - cross between superficial and nice).

Our PLC has changed the Big Idea and Essential questions for each unit.  We keep playing with trying to come up with the ‘right question’ to ask grade 10 students that they can answer using evidence well. I feel like we are on a hamster wheel - we keep going around and around, but don’t get anywhere.  I think we need to figure out (i.e. learn) how to get students to use evidence better.  I am not convinced that it is about finding the exact right question as much as it is about increasing their skills with using primary sources or other evidence.  I just don’t know how to get off the hamster wheel to do this.

Read&Write for Google part two

The following was originally written for my school's staff newsletter (Bear Essentials), but was never published there.

Previously, I wrote about using Texthelp as a marking/feedback tool. You can refer to it here.

This time I’d like to share with you how to use Texthelp as a tool to annotate .pdf files.

If you have a .pdf in your Drive (you can save .pdf files in your Drive without converting them to google), right click on the document, choose “Open With”, then select “Read&Write for Google.”  This will open your document with Read&Write capabilities.  

By selecting text, you have access to highlighting tools (4 different colours), dictionary, fact finder, translation, and picture dictionary.  If highlighting is used, you can collect all highlights as a separate google doc if you want. Selecting text only works if the text in your .pdf is recognized as text, and your .pdf doesn’t act like an image.

There are 2 different ways of creating notes on your .pdf as well.  You can choose the T at the top of the screen and it will allow you to choose a place within the .pdf to type your own note.  That note will stay there, on the .pdf (you can relocate it or delete it, but it’s right on the document). If you print your document from Read&Write, your notes will appear on the printed page. Or you can choose the thumbtack with the comment looking box beside it and place a thumbtack on your document.  You can then type your annotation in a box that will disappear from the document, unless you click the thumbtack to open it. These will not appear if you print your document.

I was a little concerned that I didn’t see a save button.  I didn’t know if I had permanently changed my .pdfs or not.  (Since I was randomly playing, and I didn’t know if I wanted them permanently changed or not, I was kind of scared.)  I discovered if I close the .pdf and reopen it not in “Read&Write for Google” I still have my originals with no notes.  If I re-open the .pdf with “Read&Write for Google” all my notes, highlights and thumbtacks are still there. You can also share the document in Read&Write for Google with someone else and they will be able to see your comments/notes.

I just started playing with this.  It was relatively easy.  I’d be glad to help you play if you want.  I’d also be interested in feedback if you use it.  How can you or your students use this?  If you share .pdfs with students for notetaking purposes, can this help them take notes on line? Can you see this being useful as a research tool?

Read&Write for Google part one.

The following was first written for my school's staff newsletter (Bear Essentials) May 30, 2014. Bracketed and italics have been added after publication in Bear Essentials.

Have you enabled Texthelp in your ugcloud account?  If you have, you see a gold and green pull down tab at the top of your documents.  Or maybe it is already pulled down and covering your document title - you can click the little up arrows and make it almost disappear.  But don’t do that, because I want to talk to you about how useful it can be.

(If you are not part of UGDSB, Texthelp, also known as Read&Write for Google is a Google app you can add to your account through the chrome store.)

If you are familiar with it, chances are you are in special ed and are using it as a text reader with some of our students.  It is a replacement for kurzweil in some cases.  It works for text documents, webpages and .pdfs if they are opened through Drive.

But it can do so much more.  There are 4 highlighters that you can use, much faster and simpler than using the highlight tool in the menu bar across the top of your document page.  There is also a button that will collect your highlights and collate them in another document.  There are a number of reasons both teachers and students might find this useful. The following ideas come from Rebecca Grimes (@glblcanuck), a fellow teacher in UGDSB.  

Ideas for Teacher Use in the Classroom

• Teachers could use the highlight tool to provide visual feedback --> provide students with a legend of what the colours mean, then just highlight the common errors without having to write the same comment over and over again (ie: verb tense = pink, sentence structure = yellow, missing citation = green)  If you make the legend consistent in your class or department it will be easy for you and your students.

• You could then use the "Collect" option to create a list of sample errors you could use with the class quickly and easily.

Ideas for Student Use in the Classroom:

• In Language classes, students could use the different colour to identify required language components in assignments.

• Students could use a colour to identify the facts that they've included in their assignment.
• Similarly, based on the business department’s self-evalution, they could use the different colours to demonstrate where they’ve met the requirement for the assignment.

• In English, students could identify quotations used in their essays.  (Use a different colour for each book if doing a comparative essay or, one colour for quotations from the novel and another colour for quotations from secondary sources.)

• Students could use the "Collect Highlights" feature to collate the highlighted information into an overview document that they could then share with their teacher.  

• For study purposes in any subject, students could highlight their notes and then export their highlights to create a page of key facts / ideas / etc to study.

Rebecca’s original blog post can be found at http://mllegrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/04/improving-feedback-and-student-self.html

A Few Keyboard Shortcuts for Chromebooks

This post was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, March 28.

Chromebook shortcuts

Many of us have been using the chromebooks with our classes a lot.  Here is a short list of keyboard shortcuts to hopefully make life easier for you and your students.  Some of them are the same as any computer, but not everyone is familiar with keyboard shortcuts at all.  I’ll start with the more common ones:

Cut = ctrl + x

Copy = ctrl + c

Paste = ctrl + v

Our chromebooks don’t have a caps lock.                            

If you want capitals locked on =  alt + the search button  

To take a screen shot (of the whole screen) = ctrl + the 3 overlapped boxes in middle of top row

If you just want part of the screen, = ctrl + shift + same button as above

Here’s the last one for today.  And maybe it’s all you really need?

Source:  http://www.omgchrome.com/10-shortcuts-every-chromebook-owner-should-know/

Reflections on Student Trip

This post was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, May 15, 2014.

At ECOO this year (I think this was the place) Jamie Casap (I think it was him) said that for today’s young people wifi and being connected is expected.  He likened it to electricity for everyone else.  No one alive today walks into a building and says “Hey!  They have lights in here!  I can see where I’m going!  This is awesome!”  We just expect it and are quite concerned when something happens to take it away.

For young people today, the ability to connect (wifi) is almost as expected. They are more confused and feel like their needs aren’t being met if it is not available, than they are surprised when it is.  I saw this with our students in Washington last week.  Everyone (OK, including me) expected that the hotels would have free wifi (I really resent having to pay for wifi in a hotel) - and they did, thankfully.  On our bus, one student noticed that there was another bus in Gettysburg that had free wifi on board. The comment wasn’t “hey, that’s cool.”  The comment was “hey, why don’t we?”  

What was interesting to me was that the ability to be connected wasn’t just about talking to their friends at home, or posting instagram photos, it was also about verifying information and answering questions they had.  They heard things on tour and wanted more information, or wanted to find out if what they heard could be validated.  One group desperately needed to know who the 3rd Prime Minister of Canada was. (They didn’t know all 22, but they really wanted to know the 3rd for some reason.)  When at the next lunch break they found wifi, and discovered the answer they came back and let us know - because obviously Nelson and Unger should know this as Canadian history teachers.

I think about questions my friends and I may have had on tour and I see them as fleeting wonderings.  By the time we got somewhere we could have looked up the information (a library or back at school), we wouldn’t have remembered or cared anymore.  

It’s not a big deal, but it goes to the assumption that information and connectivity is ubiquitous or should be.  I think that’s amazing.

BTW, did you know that the UN ruled that internet connection is a basic human right in June 2011?  (http://mashable.com/2012/07/06/internet-human-right/)

Thank-you fellow lifelong learners!

I love learning.  I love the challenge of learning something new, as well as watching others struggle with dissonance, then have their ‘aha’ moment.  It simultaneously stimulates me and wears me out.  I was lucky enough to spend the weekend at the Ontario Google Summit with 600 other educators getting google-y.  It was energizing and inspiring for all of us there.  Although by Sunday morning many were feeling a little dazed and feeling like their brains were full, there was still talk of what was next, and how people were going home to change Monday’s lessons.  Thank-you Upper Grand District School board and Bill M (@bmackenz) for allowing me to go and participate in this!

Today (Monday) I get to participate in more PD - I will be attending another board sponsored session with TC2‘s Garfield Gini-Newman (@ggininewman).  In my school this is a hot ticket and I feel lucky to be one of 3 who get to go this time.  But it also came with it’s challenge that I can’t let go…

When we were discussing who in our department would get to go one member said he didn’t need to go because he was too old.  I would have accepted almost any other excuse (can’t miss the teaching day, coaching right after school, not interested in the speaker) with the thought “oh, that’s too bad.”  But to say you are too old to learn/grow/change/share?  And to put this in a little bit of context, this person is about my age, and will retire after I do (in 11 years).  It frustrated me.  How can a teacher think that it is OK to quit learning and growing?  How is it possible to believe that you have nothing more to learn?  Or that for the next 11+ years you will not change?

I strongly believe in the idea of lifelong learning.  I want my students to see that learning is something that they need to participate in all the time, not just during school hours for credit.  I want to model learning for them.  I also want to thank the colleagues and members of my PLN who have modelled that you are never too old to learn.  There are many people I respect who have retired and continue to model lifelong learning.

At the risk of leaving some out, thanks Doug (@dougpte), Hal, Norm, Jamie who have all retired, but continue(d) to challenge me and model lifelong learning/thinking.  And thanks to those who model excellent professional development throughout their career and support and challenge me regardless of proximity to retirement: Peter (@peterskillen), Brenda (@brendasherry), Garfield (@ggininewman), Bill, Becky, Sheila (@SheilaTLKHPS), Melissa (@melissa_roth), Alanna (@banana29), Sarah (@sarle83), Adam (@adamvick) and ... everyone I follow on twitter.

Today, thank someone who challenges you to continue growing and learning.  Feel free to use the comments to do so publicly!

Diigo for organization and collaboration

This post was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, March 21, 2014.

According to their website, “Diigo is a powerful research tool and knowledge sharing website.”

Personally, I use it as a cloud based bookmarking site.  I bookmark websites, articles, blogs, online videos that I think I will want to return to; much in the same way you may use “favourites” in your browser on your personal computer.  Because it is cloud based, I have access to them no matter what computer I am using.

I have also used it with a number of different PD groups to share resources.  It is very easy to create groups so that you can all collect and share resources.  You can tag articles so they can be easily found at a later date.  You can also mark up the website or article with highlighting or “sticky notes” or other “notes”.  If you are sharing resources with a colleague for a course, why not try Diigo?  You just need to create a login and start saving!

If you want more information, here is a video showing you how it works: