Category Archives: Teaching

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.

Reflecting on the Creative Commons Search tool

 

Continuing on from my last post where I introduced the Grade 5s to the Creative Commons search tool, today I thought it would be interesting to share the student reflection process we completed at the end of the unit.

thinking-31254_640

Image via Pixabay

When we complete work units, I will often sit down with the boys and have them tell me the process we went through to get to the final product.  It’s always interesting for them to think back on all the steps because really, the projects are a lot of work and steps. I mean I don’t just tell the boys “Off you go and make a Powerpoint” and they get to work.

Prior to completing this project, the boys had worked in groups to re-write the story from the unit we had completed, using their imagination and creativity to personalise the play.

Using those sports discussed in their group stories as a starting point, they then worked to make a PowerPoint presentation about how to play each of these three sports.

Their presentation had to include:

  • Text (from the script)
  • Images (from Creative Commons)
  • Audio (voice recordings)

Here’s an excerpt of the boys’ own words retracing the steps of their project using Creative Commons Search.

We learned about copyright ©
Why? To be aware of what is and isn’t ok to use according to the copyright on an image/ music/ videos etc…
Why is it important to know about copyright?

  • Because respecting copyright is doing the right thing.
  • Because everything that lives on the Internet isn’t just there for us to use, some of it is protected.  It’s protected so that other people can’t use your work to make money off something they didn’t create.
  • Because it’s not fair to take credit for something you didn’t do, not fair to make a profit from someone else’s work.
  • Not respecting copyright is not legal.
  • In a classroom situation, we don’t have to worry too much because our work is just for us, not commercial but once we are working in the real world, it does matter.
  • So we can teach others about copyright – pass it on and have more people doing the right thing.
  • So that we can develop good habits when we are working online.

All this is from the boys themselves, and I think this demonstrated a pretty decent understanding of why we need to be aware of copyright and why it’s important to “do the right thing”.

At the end of the reflection, I asked the boys to tell me about any specific challenges they had (with the entire project, not just with using the Creative Commons Search tool) and here’s some of their comments relating to using images from CC:

“Getting the URL the first time was hard”
“Following the instructions for how to list the source of the image (there were a lot of steps) was challenging”
“Making the links was hard because there were a lot of steps”
“The most challenging part was searching the images because there was less of a selection [than Google Images]”
“Making the links was hard (even with instructions)”
“Making the links was challenging because it was complicated with copying and pasting the URLs then making them look neat”
“The steps to making links were complicated.”

Ok, so MY learning from this activity shows me that:

  1. I need to find an easier, more clear way to explain the steps of making links.
  2. Very few boys complained about the smaller selection of images available in Creative Commons Search.

Interesting that so many boys found the “link creating” to correctly source their images so challenging but it just proves that it’s something they just need a little more practice in. Goodness knows that I create dozens of links in all kinds of documents every day so it’s definitely something that will be useful for them to know.

A suivre… 

An introduction to Creative Commons

So, lots and lots of reading. And thinking. And waiting for the right time in my curriculum. Finally at the end of last term, I  got to do my “Intro to Creative Commons” lesson for my Grade 5s. We had just finished a big unit of work where the boys completed a lot of research about how to play various sports and at the beginning of the unit I had shown them some PowerPoint presentations that boys in previous years had made in French, planning to complete our unit with a similar type of activity.

Well now, as my curriculum never works in the same way for two different classes, I ended up with not nearly enough time to complete a long presentation (10-12 slides) with each boy. So with just 2 weeks to go, I decided to go for a much smaller project in terms of the “French” component and focus on Creative Commons as a search tool for the images they would need.

Creative Commons image

We started out by discussing the © symbol and what it meant, where you would see it and why. It was interesting to hear the boys’ take on what “copyrighted material” meant (some of them actually thought it meant that the symbol meant Copy+Right = “it’s ok to copy”.  While we, as adult might be surprised to hear they don’t know or completely understand copyright, I had to take a step back and ask myself “Well why would they?”

I showed them this short video which I thought made the “big picture” pretty clear.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtJdfHXk_u8[/youtube]

Of course, many many questions ensued – and not just about using images from the Internet – but also about using other people’s music, films, writing etc…  Talk about a can of worms…  Also, little boys being little boys, a few of them were a little stuck on the “illegal” part of using other people’s work without permission and there were quite a few “So you mean if I did X, Y or Z, I’d go to jail” type questions…. 😉 I managed to successfully move the conversation back to the use of images in the classroom, telling them we’d discuss that another time (and I plan to!) and at the end of the lesson, I asked for a summary about why we had this lesson about only using images that we have permission to use when it’s *just* a classroom setting and the best answer had to be “Because it’s about doing the right thing.”

I’d say that was a successful first intro to Copyright for Kids, wouldn’t you?

 

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)

 

 

 

 

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.