The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.
Posted in Uncategorized
Like lots of folks the new year brings renewed determination to shed the extra 
pounds that I’ve been carrying around, and get back in shape once and for all! In the past I’ve used an App called Lose it that helps you track what you’re eating and add your fitness as well. It keeps track of your daily calories in a few different ways and it’s the easiest one I’ve found in terms of the huge database for varieties of foods and exercises.
Well, I’ve opened the app after some time now and set a new goal (this time I will get there! – Oh no…did I just say that publicly??) and there’s a great new feature. If I can’t find a food in the list (which may happen more frequently in Canada) I can just use my smart phone to scan the bar code on the box from my cupboard and it adds the nutrients and calories count from that food in an instant! I did this for cereal this morning and it works like a charm!
Wish me luck – maybe the app will be the help I need! 
I’m reading The Connected Educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall and one of the cool elements is the challenge to connect at the end of each chapter. Chapter 3 was about what we need to learn, unlearn or relearn as a 
connected educator and the tool this chapter was Wallwisher. If you’ve used wallwisher you already know that it’s a short and sweet kind of posting on a notice board, and if you know me you know that sometimes I’m just not that great at ‘short and sweet’ responses…especially when something is muddling around in my head.
Therefore, I’ve had to expand a bit here and I hope you’ll provide some push back or ideas for me. In terms of being a connected educator, I think that conceptually and practically I’m good at allowing students to take charge and to support them in directing their own learning. My experience is that this usually takes us to a place that exceeds formal curriculum expectations so I’m happy, parents are happy, and students are happy! That’s great!
What I need to relearn, is how to effectively document and plan for this….or get over the fact that you really can’t! I like to deviate from plans (always do!) but I also like having a plan and I’m going to confess that this is where I feel weakest in my classroom practice. Part of this comes from not using pre-fab lesson plans (I just can’t teach the same thing over and over) not gravitating toward the stand and deliver style (PBL is my preference) and every year and every group of students means different ways to inquire about topics – it changes all the time.
I need to ask for some examples from my network to help in this area. I should connect with people like Shelley Wright for some concrete examples of how she is making shifted control work in practice. I loved her ideas about have students select 3/4 of their assignment for her to assess in order to encourage risk-taking and playing around with learning (page 53). This reminded me of working with student portfolios in the past and it’s really doable. I need to search out some other examples and put them into practice for my AQ course so that I can model these new approaches for planning and assessment.
What do you do? How are you shifting and what are the practical implications for planning and assessment?
I always find it exciting when I come across someone who is willing to take a chance and try something new they don’t know much about. Jen Apgar 
(@jenapgar) and I did some working together last year when her class was getting ready for Digifest 2011. We got chatting about some new things we were hearing about – and QR codes kind of came up.
Did we know much about them? Nope.
Did we know much about how they worked? Nope.
Did we have some ideas about how we might use them with kids? Yep.
After a bit of chatting we decided that since we were both the kind of teachers who liked to struggle and learn along with the kids we’d jump in with both feet on a project for this year.
And so began the diigo-ing of links and resources, collecting what we could find, photographing QR codes wherever we could find them, and reading up on what my network was sharing on twitter and on blogs. I began to collect the resources here on Tech2Learn if you’d like to check it out.
Jen teaches a congregated gifted class of Grade 4′s who recently made a transition to a new school. New students transition into this program every year, and this involves a school visit and info day during their Grade 3 year. Jen’s class this year has decided to make some documentaries about what it was like to transition to the gifted program and to a new school and then to lead the visiting students through a QR scavenger hunt in May.
The kids are asking this question, “What will kids who are coming in new to the program, want to know? How can we get them excited about coming to their new school?”
They’ll be learning lots about documentary film making and the art of creating media to convey a message to a particular audience. Then they’ll plan a scavenger hunt about the most important elements of school life. Lots of critical thinking in decision-making about what stays in and what gets cut out. Lots of teamwork in pre-production planning, production and post-production. Lots of hard work planning clues and uploading clips, audio, images to the web to be linked as QR codes. Lastly, they’ll create the QR codes and post them around the school. They’ll test it out and get things ready for the younger students. A complex project for an authentic audience!
I can’t wait…this is going to be fun!
It’s hard to build community in an online network. When people gather from around the world to share, collaborate and co-create, there needs to be an element of fun, trust and getting to know one another. In our Canada & New England PLP Network, we’ve been spending the first little while having conversations around our beliefs and experiences in education, but also doing some fun stuff!
I’m excited about this new tool I’ve learned about called Fotobabble. We are playing a little game where folks choose something that is a passion – something that others might not know about them. They upload a picture and then create three clues about that passion, hobby or interest. We embed these in a discussion and have a go at guessing! It’s good fun and really easy to do!
We’ll try it tonight in my AQ Course IICTI – Part 1 because I think this has good potential as a tool in the classroom. Many of the teachers in the class are looking for ways to provide alternate ways for students to demonstrate their thinking. Imagine quickly snapping a picture of art, a science experiment, or a math solution, and then having students create a fotobabble!
Check it out below…and then perhaps share an idea with us…how could you use this in your classroom?
This post will also appear on the ECOO Website for a little while, but I couldn’t resist starting with my blog – it just seems like the right place! 
To ECOO Volunteers, Participants, Presenters and Exhibitors – THANK YOU!
Wow! What a great few days of learning we’ve just had in Ontario at the ECOO Conference!
On behalf of the ECOO Conference Committee I’d like to thank you for your support of our recent conference, ECOO 2011: Inspire, Connect, Learn to Play – Play to Learn! In planning and organizing a conference such as this, it really is a team effort from a learning community that makes it happen!
photo courtesy of aforgrave on flickr
To the conference attendees, your participation, both in person and virtually, made this conference a great success! We really appreciated your patience when needed and your jumping in to have fun when we had hoped you would. Ontario teachers know how to have a good time!
To our keynote speakers, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson, we thank you for modeling such great 21st Century practice, providing an interactive
photo courtesy of digitalnative on flickr
keynote, and getting us connected to share our learning. We love the fun you provided to get us connected and learning about and through social media, all the while having fun playing an alternative reality game to save Periwinkle the PLP Penguin.
To the presenters who spent countless hours preparing for the one-hour sessions or the full-day Minds on Media facilitation, we are so grateful to you for sharing your knowledge and experience with us. Many of you provided links to resources and contact information that can be found here on the online planner or here on the Minds On Media Wiki so that your impact is on-going – we appreciate your generosity as we learn from you.
To our exhibitors, it’s because of your sponsorship that we are able to remain at such a nice venue. Thank you for designing interesting exhibits and prize draws that kept us engaged and chatting about new hardware and software.
Finally, to the wonderful members of the ECOO conference committee, thank you for 3 amazing years of learning and laughter! You provided me such awesome support as a newbie conference chair as we all tried to realize our vision of celebrating Ontario teachers, focusing on learning first and technology later, and growing a connected and networked group of Ontario educators! I know I speak for the ECOO Board of Directors when I express my gratitude to all of you for the time and energy you’ve put into these events!
photo courtesy of aforgrave on flickr
Alison Slack, the upcoming conference chair, is in for a treat as she meets many of the Ontario teachers that will help to make ECOO 2012 even better! Please stay connected to the ECOO community to continue learning and I’ll look forward to meeting again next year!
Sincerely,
Brenda Sherry
Posted in learning, PD, technology
Tagged #ecoo11, conference, ecoo, ontario, technology
It’s the eve of beginning teaching my first AQ Course at Laurier University. I’ve got my class list, I’ve taken a wonderful eCourse from the PLP Network over the 
summer, I’ve prepared the syllabus and planned my first few nights for students. I’m looking forward to negotiating the content with them and responding to their strengths and interests as we work together as a learning community to move our teaching practices forward.
I know that I’m going to be asking some educators to move out of their comfort zone a little bit, or perhaps a lot. We’ll be taking some steps toward being more connected learners and teachers and along with that will come some transparency about our learning and indeed, about where we want to go as educators and what we want to learn. I’m understanding of the discomfort that this may cause some, but I’m so passionate about the advantages that learning communities afford us as teachers, that I hope that I can provide the right balance of pressure and support that will help students deepen their own practice.
And…I’m no exception in this group of teachers! I’m hoping to learn a lot too!
As a beginning teaching in this blended environment, I want to get a lot out of this course for my own learning. I’d really like to push myself to examine my assessment practices over this 12 week course. Do the assignments that I’ve created authentically assess the kinds of changes in practice that happen as a result of the use of technology? Do I provide a wide variety of instructional strategies – ones that reflect the vision of what we want to see in our classrooms? Will I ask the kinds of questions that will encourage teachers to think deeply and question traditional practices? How will I know if I’ve been successful? What will success look like?
I’ve got lots of questions — but I do know one thing…I’m really looking forward to working together with this group of educators this fall!
This tweet came through my twitter stream this morning and I was immediately taken back to a keynote that I’d heard delivered 2 years ago by Sir Ken Robinson for CODE. Sir Ken mentioned how good we are at measuring things…it’s just that we haven’t figured out how to measure the most important stuff.
That stuck with me and I think of it often. Now, here is Andy Hargreaves suggesting that we should measure things of value…and we shouldn’t ONLY value what we can measure. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should…sounds familiar.
So help me out…what should we be measuring? What do you believe are the important things that have value in learning? What we you love to see measured?
It’s been a great journey with the PLP ConnectU group from Australia so far. We are developing a unit in order to explore “What is Creativity” with students. Kynan Robinson, who has been studying creativity for some time now, shared some readings with us recently and I’ve finally had a chance to do some reading and thinking.
Some of the things that have jumped out at me from the readings he shared are:
To foster creativity, children should possess a specialised knowledge of the relevant area, think divergently as well as convergently, have the capacity to analyse and synthesise the problem, and be able to enact self-planning and evaluation strategies (Cropley & Urban 2000).
The following was from a study around problem-solving with technology construction:
It is important that students have sufficient background in the topic and also in the methods of construction. Preliminary classes that deal with an investigation of the topic and allow students to use a variety of construction techniques are crucial for full development of the task. Specific teaching may be required. After the introduction to the task, the students need an incubation period so that their ideas can be fully developed. (ALISTAIR WEBSTER ET AL., 2006)
Useful tips for teachers: (from John Munro)
I think our group is on the right track in that we’ve discussed trying to include higher level thinking skills such as analysis and synthesis. I’m wondering how can we provide the incubation time necessary and also ensure that students have good deal of background knowledge about the topic? I can see how Kynan and Kristen will be doing that with their gaming unit, but I’m wondering how we’ll do that we our very broad question, “What is creativity?” How can our learning activities focus on gathering some of that background knowledge? What background knowledge is necessary to have?
photo courtesy - TheGiantVermin on flickr
Connecting, collaborating, creating, and critical thinking are the 21st century ‘C’ words we hear a lot about these days. I’m wondering if we need to add cocoon to that list — is it as important a part of transformation as our connectedness?
I guess it’s not a surprise that the longer I delve into understanding learning, and try to find those opportunities to go deeper, the more complicated it gets. That’s a good sign – I’m sure. Last week was a chance to join my colleagues in the PLP ConnectU Community in Australia as they delve deeper into their journey as a connected, networked, learning community interested in deepening their practice with respect to PBL and developing a PLN.
My mentor and critical friend, Peter Skillen and I both attended the excellent sessions led by Will Richardson with a focus on networks and communities. Will mentioned this new landscape of networked learning where we have the potential to be learning 24/7. Peter and I have had many chats lately about the effectiveness of our PLN and our need to put some checks in place to make sure that, as he puts it, we are ‘zooming out’ in order to see the big picture.
Largely because of this post by George Siemens which I found through Stephen Downes’ blog and because Peter has been pointing me to some other folks who are thinking more critically about connectedness (and in particular social media), I’m attempting that zoom out. Although there has been some push-back about social media, it continues to be a big part of my learning these days and I think some time spent thinking more metacognitively about balance and purpose is where I’m at. Couple that with the thinking my PLP group has been doing around promoting creativity in the classroom and some questions arise for me:
I’m finding that a big part of learning in this new space where information flows so freely is to know when to cocoon, take some alone time, do some reflecting or solitary thinking and then emerge once again to join in the conversations!
What about you…how do you try to keep a balance? Or do you?
courtesy of Creativity+TimothyKHamilton
Posted in collaboration, learning
Tagged learning, networks, pln, plpconnectu, plpnetwork
