Google Forms and Siri Unite For Recording Anecdotals

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I’m a big fan of using Siri on my iphone and have been ever since I began using speech to text software with students in about 2006.  Boy, has the technology improved since then!  I now use it to create … Continue reading →

#IICTI Learning @MakerEd Toronto

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It was great to visit the York School this week to attend #MakerEdTo.  This was a fantastic opportunity to connect the #iicti AQ course members to a network of educators interested in constructivist and constructionist uses of technology.  An added … Continue reading →

Making Some Bread

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About 28 years ago, I remember taking some Saturday cooking classes with my Mom.  We played around learning to make pastry with techniques and recipes that I still use today, and also played around with a little bit of bread … Continue reading →

Think Tank: Transforming the learning experience

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This week I had the honour to be invited to contribute to a panel of amazing people at the recent Think Tank session from CECCE, one of Ontario’s French School Boards, along with well known thinkers about transforming educational environments.  … Continue reading →

Automatic Attribution on CC Search of Flickr

Creative Commons is not a new concept, and many people have been aware of its existence for some time, as well as the need to credit the work of generous people who offer to share their creations with us.   It’s also great when something comes along that makes it a little easier for media creators to cite the work of the original author.

While talking to my brilliant colleagues Jac Calder and Peter Skillen recently, I learned about an online tool to make citations within Flickr, a fabulous source for images, even easier!

This beta site was developed by John Johnston and it allows you to choose a flickr image and, with the click of your mouse, have the citation of the original owner placed on the image which you can then use in presentations or other media that you are creating.  I usually teach students how to use an online photo editor for this purpose, but this removes a step and makes things a bit easier for students, without removing the understanding and diligence involved with acknowledging the original author of the work.

We’ll have to get this added to the OSAPAC resource about Digital Citizenship — it would be a great addition to the resources section under Creation and Credit!

 

What Do We Mean By Learning Anyway?

A Connected Educator Month 2015 Event starting on October 1st!

Join Peter Skillen and me in a collective, month long, discussion to:

• extend and deepen our understanding of the term learning
  • What Do We Mean By Learning Anyway?
• participate in a knowledge building approach to collaboration
• model deep practices for our professional learning environments (colleagues and/or classrooms)

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Brief Description (see full site for details)

We will spend the month exploring, unpacking, and discussing what we mean by the term learning. This will include:

• building background knowledge through sharing and reading resources related to the topic
• introductory Twitter Chat
• co-creation of a slidedeck of our ideas
• reflective Twitter chat
• contemplative rewriting of our slides
• culminating creation of reflection statements

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We will use a knowledge-building approach to this event.

“If Knowledge building had to be described in a single sentence, it would be: ‘giving students collective responsibility for idea improvement‘. In Knowledge Building, students work together as a community to build and improve explanations of problems of understanding that arise from the group itself.” (We will be the students in this project!)

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So please join us! Go to What Do We Mean By Learning Anyway? for all the details to get started!

Sincerely,

Peter Skillen & Brenda Sherry with the support of OSSEMOOC

Invent To Learn – A Must Read for Schools

Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom

by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager, Ph.D

One of the greatest joys of being a connected learner is the fact that I’m meeting so many friends from all over the world who are also people from whom I learn so much.  Meeting them virtually sometimes leads to meeting them f2f, hanging out at conferences, working along with them, and reading their blogs and articles, but I’m getting a kick out of buying their books!

I bought Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez’s book, Invent to Learn, sight unseen, because I know their brilliant work and applaud their mission to elevate much of what we see in educational technology implementation (not always a pretty sight)  to higher levels. This book is a must read for all educators and administrators who are interested in muddling through the many choices for technology use in your school with STEM in mind — it will help you see the light!  They provide enough theoretical background to provide you and/or your teachers with knowledge of the giants who came before us, and to more deeply understand effective learning theory (constructivism) and effective teaching theory (constructionism). They also mention pioneers in the field of ed tech that every educator ought to know, but, strangely enough, don’t always (e.g., Seymour Papert, Cynthia Solomon, Brian Silverman, Sherry Turkle to name just a few). They then suggest 3 “game changers”  for your school or classroom  – fabrication, physical computing and programming.  I was thrilled to see that we are on the right track at my school with a recent grant award that focuses on all three of these! :)  Gary and Sylvia also provide lots of information and ideas about the practical planning of how to get started with these interesting game changers.  As a teacher I have always loved that blend of theory and practice in resources that I choose.

What’s critical in a book like this, and what Gary and Sylvia accomplish really nicely, is that the concept of maker space is outlined within the context of a school culture that puts authentic student learning and passion at the forefront, along with an acceptance that co-learning along with students is a great way to model our learning stance as teachers. Great advice from the authors to the educators reading this book is: “Less Us, More Them”. The tinkering mindset and the cycle of making — which they call TMI (Think, Make, Improve), and the fact that students are empowered agents in their own learning, are just as important as the making itself.  For this reason making can involve technology or found materials or art supplies. It’s more about a bricolage approach…working with the best of what you have on hand.

If you are interested in more about what the current interest in coding and maker spaces can offer, this is a great book for you!