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:

Mystery Skype

This was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, November 22, 2013.

One of the great things about going to a large conference with a colleague is you can divide and conquer - each person goes to a different session then shares over lunch or dinner.  At ECOO, one of the sessions I didn’t attend was on Mystery Skypes.  But even though I didn’t see it, I’ve learned quite a bit about it over the past week because Sarah went to the session and was inspired to try it. (Skype is a free video calling service on line.)

The idea behind a mystery Skype is that you connect your class to another class somewhere else in the world and each class tries to figure out where the other is located.  It is a great way to start talking about location, weather, or culture.  It inspires curiosity and engagement.  It forces the students to ask specific questions that will help them solve the mystery of where the other class is.  It also forces the class to think about where they are in the world, and how it might be discovered by another class.  Excellent option for getting students thinking about perspectives or point of view.

Over the past week, Sarah set up 2 mystery Skype sessions with 2 different classes.  The first was only a mystery for Sarah’s class, as they skyped with a friend of hers at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.  The class is studying the holocaust and creating a museum to demonstrate their learning.  They skype session was able to give them access to an expert to expand their research.  Sarah’s second class will do a mystery Skype with a First Nations class as both classes are reading The Rez Sisters play in 3U English. In this case, both classes are in the dark about the other’s location.

But mystery skype is not the only way to use skype.  There is a website with ideas for using skype in your classroom (https://education.skype.com/‎) that suggests using skype to collaborate with other classes around the world, to invite experts into your class or take a virtual field trip.  Here you can find all kinds of ideas for using skype in your class (experts, lessons, topics, classes looking for a connection).  There is also a skype blog, twitter feed and facebook group if you want to see what others are doing.

Update, after this was put in Bear Essentials.

See Sarah's reflection on her first Skype session with her friend at the Holocaust Centre. Her reflection on the second Skype session should follow soon.

taking notes with videonot.es

This post was originally written for my school's staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, November 29, 2013.

image from http://www.videonot.es/img/logo.png

I ran across this very cool new chrome app/website recently.  It came to me through one of my circles/communities in Google+.  It would be great for blended or e-learning classes, but useful for anyone taking notes on videos.

The app/site is videonot.es and it allows you to take notes while you are watching a video - side by side, on the same screen.  Each point you type is automatically tagged with the minute/second in the video when you typed it.  When you go back through your notes, if you click on a point, it will load the video to that part of the video.

The video and corresponding notes are saved in your google drive.  This means that you could start watching and taking notes on a video notes at school, then go home and pick up right where you left off.  You (or your students) can also share it with others and take group notes.  There is also an option to export to Evernote if you are an Evernote user.

To use videonot.es you need to go to the chrome store, find the app, then install it.  When you install a chrome app it is connected to your chrome id and therefore is with you on any computer with chrome that you are on.  To use it (after install), type videonote.es into your URL, or from Drive, go to create and find the app in the list.

There is a youtube 3 ½ minute demo you can watch at http://goo.gl/H0EccN (shortened URL is case sensitive) or in Youtube, search for “Videonot.es as Demo”.

Geek Squad

I have a dream  (I mean) I have a vision of a school in which all community members are free to use technology for the sake of student learning and are well supported while doing so.  Here’s my vision...

We would have a number of students who are comfortable with chromebooks, ugcloud, UG2GO (including databases, e-books), and other educational apps (like bitstrips, prezi, screencasting...) and they would be able to help the rest of the school population with whatever.  I envision a few peer to peer training sessions in which I lay out the common trouble-shooting issues or FAQs for using chromebooks or ugcloud, and in which they peer to peer train/learn various common applications so they can help others.  Maybe each one becomes an expert with a specific software or web-based educational application, or maybe they are all expert trouble shooters and on the spot learners/helpers.  I would also work with them on some tutoring/social skills so they can work with a variety of school community members (staff and students, one on one or whole class).

Once comfortable with technology and the idea of being used as resources, I see a few ways this “Geek Squad” could be used.

1) They could run “lunch and learns” in the library Seminar Room or in the Bear’s Den every other week.  These could each focus on a different application or web resource.  These could be open to staff and students.

2) They could have ‘shifts’ in the library before/after school and at lunch to help students or staff with technology problems in course work.

3) They could be ‘pre-booked’ by a teacher/class to help introduce or get students started on a new project with new applications or software.

My rationale:

• I am committed to allowing students to use GAFE and other Web2.0 tools to demonstrate their learning.  I would like to see other teachers develop the confidence or find the support required so they can allow their students to best demonstrate their learning in whatever ways suits the students’ purposes.  
• In order to do this I would like to grow a culture in the school of co-learning, where students and teachers can learn together. This supports and models the idea that we are all lifelong learners, and we can all respect one another’s strengths and weaknesses and we can support each other in our challenges and grow.
• Having students use their expertise to help teachers encourages that community of co-learners.  It also gives the students a voice in how they would like to learn or demonstrate their learning.  
• There is a fair bit of resistance in many teachers to trying new technology in class because they don’t feel confident enough with the tools/resources.  In such cases, the students in geek squad would become a resource for the teacher and the class.  It takes quite a bit of pressure off the teacher, and may allow that teacher to learn the new tool or device along side his/her students, again modelling the importance of being a life-long learner.

I’d love some feedback on this.

What would you like to see if something like this were offered at your school?

Is "Geek Squad" offensive? Is tech team or tech club better?

Would you use student experts as a resource? Would other teachers you know?

I am going to try to get this idea funded, so any and all feedback you would be willing to give is greatly appreciated.

Read & Write

This was originally written for my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials" October 11, 2013

You may have seen this app on your chromebooks. It often pops up as an add on app, and students randomly click on install or not without a reason.  Then they complain that there is a bothersome tool bar at the top of their screen that looks like this:

You can hide the bar when it shows up by clicking on the green and yellow square.  The pull down menu will stay and you can click on it again to bring it back.  So why would anyone want this or use this?

It is a text to speech app.  It will read what is on your document within google docs.  I think it’s a great tool for students to edit their work.  I often tell my students to read their work  aloud and listen for mistakes or awkward wording.  This does that out loud reading for them.  It is a simple replacement for kurzweil that doesn’t require extra software downloads.  It will work for pdfs that are saved within your Drive as well.  Students can scan text, upload to google Drive and open with Read&Write for google (you can choose “open with” by right clicking on the document name in Drive).  You do have to highlight the text you want read.

I’m sure it will do lots of other stuff, but I haven’t played with it very much.  But if you or your students use kurzweil, or you know students who have trouble reading or editing their work you may want to check it out.

This was first posted October 4, in my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials."

I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head right now that I think are related somehow.

The first is reflection on the staff meeting Monday.  I haven’t received much feedback, but what I have gotten has been positive. (might be selective sharing)  What I liked about it is that a) it was to some extent self directed PD, and b) it was based on things real teachers are actually doing in their classes.  I also think that having the ALPs as a shared document was a very practical way of giving staff practice at using ugcloud.  I’m not certain, but by the sounds of it, more people finished their ALP this year during the session than previous years.  Hopefully fewer people will be chased come November.

The second thing going around my head that I want to share is the title of a session I might go to at ECOO this year.  It’s called “It’s OK to be right where you are (it’s not OK to stay there).”  I love this idea.  It can be both affirming and a challenge.  I think it can speak to the life-long learner in all of us.  You are OK where you are, but how can you grow?  I think the ALPs ideally address this as well.  Think about what you’ve done to get where you are, set some new goals, and plan out how to get there.

The third related idea is the SAMR model.  It is a model of technology integration.  Like the ECOO session name, it’s OK to be at any stage at any given time, but you need to know there are other option for growth and change.  The challenge is thinking about how you most use technology for student learning, and thinking about how you can try new things.  Here’s the model: