pdZone

Manitoba Education’s Literacy with ICT Across the Curriculum provides some very impressive information and resources for the use of ICT in all curriculum areas. It is developed around the philosophy that teaching ICT skills should not be an educational goal. Rather, we should be developing good instruction, providing students with rich learning experiences into which the use of ICT is integrated.
Must come back to this resource!

I was at a workshop today on the use of LMS, specifically Blackboard. The presenters, from the Ottawa-Carleton D.S.B., told us about how they use Bb for blended and online courses, as well as for professional learning communities. As the day progressed, I had a look at Bb and compared some of its functions to those of Moodle. I took a few notes through the day and thought about how I could apply some of what I learned here in my own system. Here are my (very brief) notes:

• Very interesting
• There are a lot of similarities between Blackboard and Moodle. Bb does have a few more tools available, but I do like the open
• source nature of Moodle. I really enjoy the quick development and modules that are available in a project like Moodle.
• I would like to put board- or school-developed documents into a wiki and allow individual teachers to modify tasks and rubrics.
• This would allow teachers to have input into the process. It would also allow those who make the final decisions to see what the classroom teachers think about the process. This could be done in Moodle.
• Desire2Learn is licensed through OESS, but only for courses that are completely online.
• OCDSB has an “Intro to elearning” course for 7,8,9 students before they move into high school. What a great way to get the kids ready for those learning experiences that they will encounter as they progress through secondary and post-secondary learning!
• Use LMS as a vehicle for teacher PD.
• Professional Learning Communities could be organized in Moodle with PD courses for teachers. Teachers could also have the opportunity for sharing, asking questions.

In his post Representing Information, Clarence makes a good point about “How we represent information, what it looks like, and the forms that are possible, shape our thoughts about it.”

I have thought about the other side of this, but this makes so much sense. I am comfortable with the idea that we make meaning in what we read based on our own experience. It seems so obvious then that we continue to shape our understanding of a concept when we represent it. I recently went to a workshop on differentiated instruction, and Clarence’s statement makes me think about strategies whereby the students are given more options in the way that they demonstrate their learning. If the way in which we represent information helps to shape the way in which we view that knowledge, it stands to reason that we need to give students as many opportunities as possible to select those strategies that best suit their own learning.

Will we encounter students who will take the easy way out and select those strategies that simply require the least effort and which lead to minimal learning? Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s going to happen, if we allow it. I suppose it comes back to us to guide the kids to choose the strategies that will be most effective for them (we should know or kids well enough to have a good idea what will work best).

What about a topic like mixing colours of light, for example? Which kids will benefit from demonstrating their understanding of this concept through a structured written task? What about a demonstration with ray boxes? How about a computer-based activity in which the students demonstrate their understanding by mixing colours of light in the cells of a table? They all address the same curriculum expectations, but each student could develop his/her own understanding of the topic through the mode of presentation/writing representation that he/she chooses.

I have a meeting on Monday morning and I think I might refer back to this.

This week at school, we were discussing how to help the children learn how to learn how to write adventure stories. I stumbled across this great lesson idea for hypertext “choose your own adventure” stories (from ReadWriteThink). As I read the lesson, I tried to think how best to allow the students to write their stories and create new pages for the different branches of their stories. The challenge - for me, anyway - is to do this with younger students.

I thought about how best to tackle it. With older students, I wouldn’t hesitate to have them create a series of interconnected web pages. I opened up my wiki - my own little brainstorming area - and began to jot down a few ideas. That’s when it hit me: a wiki! It would be so easy for the students to create the pages they needed for the different branches of their stories. With a little bit of tweaking, we could set the ACLs so that students could only edit their own pages. I realize that this is somewhat heretical in the world of wiki, but it also recognizes reality. I know that it is easy enough to undo changes that other students might make, but I don’t want to discourage any students from sharing their own stories when we are just starting out. The next step could involve some sort of shared authoring of a story.

The next question is: which wiki engine do we use? I have played a bit with Wikka, but it would be nice to have some sort of control (there’s that word!) over group permissions. WikiniMST offers convenient group management, but I don’t have the time to translate all of the text into English. I think we may go with MediaWiki in the end. I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’m excited by the thought of the experiment.

I love being a teacher!

I have been following a public/personal dialogue at Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog. Mr. Johnson provides a couple of responses to Jim Holland’s When Teachers Don’t Get It: Myths, Misconceptions, and other Taradiddle. He begins with his own post entitled When Techies Don’t Get It and follows that up with The Teacher’s Technology Manifesto and Apology to tech directors.

As I read these posts, I thought about how the success of any kind of enterprise is really dependent on the commitment of all parties involved. Techies need to be sensitive to the diverse needs and level of experience of teachers, differentiating and providing scaffolding (whew, teacher words!) to allow those teachers to be successful. At the same time, teachers also must be willing to take chances and try new things. Just like in the classroom, we cannot depend entirely on one party to compromise for the other.

My 2¢

I was browsing through the Innovation in Canada web site (thanks Clarence!), and I got to thinking about our place in the grand scheme of things.
Key quote:

Today’s children and youth will spend their entire careers working in a knowledge-based economy. They need a solid learning foundation upon which they can realize their aspirations, develop skills in adulthood, and fully participate in Canada’s economy and society.

It is so easy to sit back and try things that were successful five or ten years ago and say, “Well, it worked then. It should work now. It’s the kids who have changed.” Yes, the kids have changed.

Can we expect that we can magically transform them into the students of 1995 or 1985? (Psst! The answer is “No”)

Should we expect them to change into our ideal of how it was in the good old days? Someone once told me that she had been teaching for more than 30 years and that when she started, the older teachers would often talk about “the good old days”. She said that she walks into the staff room now and still hears veteran teachers talking about the good old days. She told us that their good old days were the previous generation’s horrifying new “now”. The only thing true about the good old days is that they are old.

When I think about the leaps in technological innovation that we are experiencing today, I can’t help but think what it must have been like when the ballpoint pen was first introduced into schools. Did educators, accustomed to the slow pace of students writing with a quill and inkwell, complain that schools were going to hell in a handbasket? Were they concerned that the calligraphic style associated with this writing instrument would be lost with the distraction and unappealing product of this new gadget. Children would not be able to do things in the same way that they were done in the previous generation. “An inkwell was good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you! Can’t things just stay the way they were?”

Innovation itself can be intimidating. The pace at which innovation is occurring today can be overwhelming. We must be forward thinkers. I can’t remember where I read it, but I recently read that we should not be teaching students content. We should be teaching them to learn. One of the most important things we can do for our students - and our own children - is to help them to do just that.

IF CANADA IS TO MEET THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES OF THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY, IT IS CRITICAL THAT ALL OUR CHILDREN AND YOUTH HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO FULFIL THEIR LEARNING POTENTIAL.

It all seems so obvious!

Update: Will’s post on the flattening of the world makes me continue to ponder what I have written above. Looking at how quickly the “developing world” has developed, it makes me wonder if western society isn’t headed down the quagga trail (sorry Alan - I had to use it!).

I love it when this kind of thing happens!

I am at a workshop today and tomorrow. We are talking about what it means to be literate in the 21^st century and how to teach students to be literate in the here and now, and in the future.

I came back to my hotel room and began to catch up on some reading. I had a look at John Pederson’s blog. In particular, I read his post Getting Disruptive, Part 3. It dealt exactly with what I was discussing today with some colleagues. We even watched the cat herding video that (I think) he mentions in this post.

I love it when the pieces of the Universe come together!

I had what I think is a good idea for integrating technology into Language Arts and Visual Arts. It’s not entirely new - it builds on ideas that I have read over the past couple of years - but I think it meets some needs specific to our school environment.

Here’s how I see it:

• students write script for short movie - any number of genres (documentary, play, cartoon, narrative, etc.) - students could select their own subjects/themes, or be assigned by teacher (responding to reading)
• take digital photos (themselves, cartoon characters, buildings, nature, etc.), scan artwork, create digital images - to be used in movie
• if photos are taken with a bluescreen, the background colour could be removed and students, objects, artwork, etc. could be placed in setting as part of story
• use storyboard in Windows MovieMaker to organize their work
• students record narration, modify timeline, add titles, music, effects/transitions, etc.
• students could export their work to disk/DVD or upload it to school web site (contact parents!)

I think this could be a great writing activity. It could also serve to show of some of the work of our talented students. This could be good for many students who are reluctant to present work in front of the class, or as an alternative assessment (book report or documenting a science experiment, for example). Any thoughts or suggestions?

I was just looking at humanclock.com again and thinking about some possibilities for school. With literacy and numeracy being a big push for us, I like the idea of doing our own version of this. It’s an activity that could take place throughout the community, taking pictures at various points around town. We could do something similar for the date on our school page. Thanks, Will! (Yes, I am aware that I am six months late. It just took me a while to get back to Will’s post!)

In his post School Walk Out Organized Online, Tom Hoffman writes about the importance of trying to find ways to use web sites like Sconex.com to help understand what is going on in the lives of teenagers. Not that long ago, most of what went on between children was played out in front of us, or at least within earshot. Now, so much of the social interaction - the good, the bad, and the downright ugly - of young people is now played out online, much of it under a cloak of anonymity.

The social dynamic among young people continues to evolve, as does our own. I really like Mr. Hoffman’s suggestion of employing counsellors to examine some of the disclosures and interactions that take place online. It certainly would give us a better understanding of what is going on in the lives, and in the heads, of our youth.