Category Archives: Learning

Process over product. And baby steps.

There is no finish line

Photo by Fabienne Wassermann via Flickr Creative Commons

So, here I am, just days away from the final Cohort 21 session. The final session. Yikes!  I’ve written my final brief reflections up in a Prezi which you can access here. But is this the end?

In my school, we emphasize process over product with the boys. It’s an approach I like a lot because it allows me the freedom to not finish some activities perfectly (case in point – the Powerpoints the boys made about how to play certain sports were unfinished when they wrote their reflections. And that was ok!). It also allows me the freedom to change course part-way through an activity if it’s not working.

Ok so this might sound like I just teach on the fly and decide what I am doing in my classrooms at the spur of the moment – but it’s not like that, I assure you! Rather, it’s about being a thoughtful practitioner, sensitive to the needs of one’s students and to what is working with a particular class. Because, at the end of the day, you can have an awesome project on paper but it just might not work with a class (I find the way projects work varies dramatically from group to group from year to year) and when that’s happening, you need to be able to step away and change course.

My Cohort “plan” has been a little bit like this. Here’s what I *thought* I might like to work on:

C21 Action Plan Mardi Michels

And to a certain extent I have done just that.

I’ve read a LOT (about digital citizenship in particular, education and 21st century learning in general).

I’ve attended talks about digital citizenship.

I’ve connected with people on Twitter, broadening my Professional Learning Network and following hashtags that interest me (#digcit #aimlang #iPadEd).

I’m just having a hard time with the fact that my “final” Cohort presentation doesn’t have to include any formal conclusions.  My action plan (which I was, being the multitasker that I am, using to complete my Folio Collaborative project for this school year) was to come up with a “cheat sheet” for teachers who want to teach their classes about copyright for kids. I do have a lot of that information already in place (although the pieces are all over the place!). And I’ll be collating that information over the next couple of weeks.

But at this point, I realise I’m nowhere near “finishing” my Cohort “work” as much as I would have liked – I guess in my head I had thought my “project” would wrap up but it’s not like that, is it? It’s ongoing.  Because it’s about continuing education. For teachers. There is no finish line.

Digital citizenship – where to start?

the-definition-of-digital-citizenship

(source)

Even though in my last post I talked about how the learning process of being involved in Cohort 21 was enough, I’m going to be using some of what I learn though my Cohort readings and endeavours to support a project I must undertake over the course of this year as part of the Folio Collaborative. After delving into some articles that were shared by the folks I follow on Twitter and on Diigo, and attending Clive Thompson‘s talk the week after our first Cohort Face to Face where he touched on a couple of things that have been on my mind for a while, I’ve really been thinking about the whole “digital native” concept and about how to teach digital citizenship. I attended a talk at Social Media Week Toronto 2013 called The Digital Classroom where one of the panellists suggested that the old “technology” class is obsolete and that technology should be integrated into all subjects. I couldn’t agree more.   Here are some of the tweets I sent after Clive’s talk (ironically there was no cell phone service in the room he presented in!)

then this I saw on the very same evening fly by in my Twitter stream…

In my teaching environment, we are surrounded by #AlltheTechnology – we’re very fortunate for sure. However, I don’t feel we always take advantage of small, yet important “teachable moments” that happen each and every day to help our students function responsibly and confidently in the online world. Now I’m not talking a huge project or writing a whole curriculum, by any means.

An example that really helped me make a firm decision on this – I happened to be walking by a small group of boys working on presentations on their laptops a couple of weeks ago.  I stopped, as I tend to do, to take a look at what they were up to. They were looking for photos to use and I noticed they were just pulling photos willy nilly from the Internet – with no regard for where they were coming from or if they were copyright or not. Now I know that in a school environment, their work won’t be public, and they certainly won’t be making any money so it’s not like they are using someone else’s hard work for a profit.   But watching them and realising that they probably just think that because it’s on the Internet then it’s free, made me think that there are certainly a few areas where even very small changes can make a huge difference. And it’s not about changing what they are doing, but how, and also how they think about it.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to take on a small project where I’ll do some reading about digital citizenship over the course of the year and turn that reading into a short presentation (perhaps a digital poster/ infographic?) to present to my Grades 3-6 colleagues at the end of the year. I’ll aim to give them information like this:

Searching Flickr for free images to use in a classroom setting
The basics of copyright and Creative Commons
Instructions for using Creative Commons images in blog posts

As someone who spent years running teacher training courses and someone who attends conferences on a regular basis (on both education and food blogging), I am very aware of the need for “quick bite-sized takeaways” for busy teachers. Technology should really make our lives easier, not more complicated (but that’s not always the case as we all know!) and I hope my reading and research over the year will help my colleagues teach our boys to use technology effectively and respectfully.  I loved this infographic attempting to define the concept of digital citizenship and may print this out for myself!

Now… about that research question…. As they say en français, à suivre….

Got some spare time? I’m really enjoying Clive Thompson’s Smarter than you Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better.

Smarter than you think

 

Buy it on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.

(Disclosure: affiliate links: I make a few cents if you purchase something after clicking through)

 

 

 

 

Best laid plans… and making plans…

 

So, umm it’s been a lot longer than I thought it would be between blog posts. Not to say that after our initial Face to Face session on October 19th, I wasn’t completely fired up and gung-ho about being included in Cohort 21. Quite the opposite, in fact!

Thinking cap

(source)

Nope, I’ve just had my thinking cap on. Big time.  So much information to digest from that one day. So many inspiring people. So very humbling.

So, apart from feeling a little overwhelmed in this new (non food-related) digital space that I find myself in, what have I been doing over the past month?

I’ve been keeping myself very busy playing working with Diigo. I’ve been busy reading articles, bookmarking others (and sometimes even getting around to reading those ones) left right and centre. I am really enjoying having one place where I can keep my “academic” (school-related) reading sorted into lists (I actually have some lists started for food-writing related articles too *ahem*) and I’m starting to think about using Diigo to share articles with my colleagues. I find it a nice, one-stop solution to electronic filing.  Apart from the Cohort 21 group, I have joined a few others but admit to being a bit overwhelmed at the number of articles being shared there. I’ll get there eventually! It’s just a matter of…

alarm clock

(source)

Ah yes, the great enemy – time!  After initially being all fired up about “all things Cohort” (Diigo, Twitter etc…), I came to the realisation that, just like my food blog (and all the social media that surrounds it) takes me a lot of hours a week to maintain, maintaining a presence (and doing it well) in my new digital space was going to take some time too. And that would require being even more organised than I like to pride myself on being! But anything worth doing – especially something I am extremely interested in and that I enjoy – is worth making the effort so after I spent a couple of weeks kind of floundering with all the new “stuff” I suddenly had on my plate (and to be honest, kind of ignoring it), I sat down one morning with my daily planner (yes, I am old school for that and have a book that I write in. With a pen.) and each week, I set aside two spare periods where I would work on “Cohort stuff.” That could include reading articles, reading other people’s blogs, sending articles of interest to colleagues, testing new apps on the iPad – you know, the list goes on and on….  And as I sat down in the first “Cohort period” I realised something. This “stuff” is fun. I love it. And actually it felt a little bit like I was playing truant from my “real” job.  It sort of didn’t feel like work

This brought me back to Garth’s comment on my last post when I was concerned about “what project” I would be working on for Cohort and he responded:

Your Cohort experience can be as classroom focused as you like. Becoming a “networked educator” and tapping into the global FSL community can be you focus here as well. As you said technology needs to “fit a need” and in a class of beginning language students the fit has to be right. There is no pressure here to make “tech fit”. In fact it is that critical lens that we want to develop as well as plug you into all the other amazing FSL learning happening in CIS Ontario schools and beyond.

And I realised that the time spent having fun working on my Cohort “stuff” is me becoming a networked educator. Which is so important. And, it’s enough.

 

Initial thoughts on Cohort 21 2013-2014

 

Cohort 21 is a unique professional development opportunity open to teachers and school leaders who are seeking to build a learning network amongst CIS Ontario member schools. The Cohort 21 community will be built on a foundation of collaboration and innovation and together, will investigate and refine 21st century teaching and learning best practices through the rich experience of “learning by doing”.

It’s taken me a good night’s sleep to gather my thoughts from yesterday’s first Face to Face session with this year’s Cohort 21 group. What an exciting, whirlwind of a day, packed with information and ideas – it’s hard to stop thinking about all the possibilities presented at yesterday’s session. Of course I saw so many ideas that I thought “Wow, that would be neat to do on Monday morning” but of course, these things require time. So I am grateful for the year-long aspect of this “project” / undertaking though, obviously, being a teacher is also being a life-long learner. You never stop learning in order to better your practice.

Even though I was familiar with a number of the tools we learned about (Twitter and Word Press in particular) using them for a different purpose than my food blog places me firmly back at square one (as in, hardly any followers, and learning my way around a new Word Press theme) which sometimes feels like a tricky place to be but it’s good to be challenged and it’s especially good to sometimes feel a little like our students must feel every day – a little overwhelmed and confused and needing to work hard to understand what’s going on. Yesterday was a good reminder of what it’s like to be a learner again. It was a little scary but I’m pleased to be on this journey with so many like-minded souls. I am sure together we will find our way!

My two big takeaways from yesterday in terms of practical “stuff”? Google Chrome and Diigo. I’m excited to see what a powerful browser Chrome is and all the possibilities it affords and Diigo looks to be exactly the tool I have been looking for to bookmark and save articles of interest all in one place. These are tools that I feel can really help my own productivity as a teacher which is a great place to start when you are embarking on a journey of discovery like Cohort 21.