Sharing Our Learning

Thanks to Doug Pete, who shares some amazing things at his blog, I am reposting one of his latest blogs on “Creating Interactive Stories“.  Please check it out below and share any comments of how you are thinking of using it in your classroom.

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One popular activity that students enjoy is the Interactive story form known as “Create Your Own Adventure”. I’m sure that most people have fond memories of working your way through one or two. You read a paragraph or two and then you’re presented with options for where to go next. One branch takes your story in one direction or another branch takes you in another.

If you go back far enough in computer gaming, you may remember the role playing game Zork where you explore an imaginary universe with commands like “GO WEST”. I worked with an annoying person who felt compelled to repeat over and over “WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE IT”.

inklewriter is a free online tool that lets you create your own interactive story. Rather than creating a contrived example, click here to try a real story! In this case, “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”

inklewriter is very easy to work. Features include branching and looping, including images, and formatting of your works. The interface, web-based, makes for easy creation of your story.

But, it would be very easy to get lost in the story with all the branching! To make this understandable, a Map option displays an overview of your story.

In that respect, inklewriter is a wonderful tool to take a task that we might normally do and moves it to the world of the electronic. I was wondering…could it be used in other ways?

Driving through town last night, I noticed a sign for Grade 8 orientation night at the local secondary school. Lights went on. What about a “Create your own adventure” to tour the school?!

For example, entering my old school would look something like this. I could create a little adventure just exploring the school. I’m starting to really like this. I wonder…

As you’re editing and creating your story, not only do you add text and branches, remember I said that you could add images? Why not include images of the rooms or artifacts that you might see along the way? And, if we can do that, we could certainly insert a QR code linking to oh, say a YouTube video interviewing a teacher or student at a particular location?

inklewriter is a very easy powerful creating environment. The website even includes an offer to convert your story to an e-book for a small fee.

I could see this as a very motivating and exciting tool for young authors. Give it a shot and see if you don’t agree.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Plug Us In

I have been off and on writing this “weekly” post but I think that it is important to recognize some of the great content that I am reading out there that may have been missed in tweets and I like trying to culminate some of my favourite content for others to share in one space.  Here are a few things that I thought were great to share:

1.  Teachers Should Change How They Teach Students Today – There constantly seems to be a back-and-forth about changing teaching practices vs. teaching the way that worked for us as students.  In this great article that was a response to a New York Times piece and then offers a comparison to another article discussing students in an Ethiopian village and how they had learned to hack into a device and do some pretty amazing things:

Kids without schooling, without literacy, HACKED the Androids to turn the camera back on . . . without instruction.  That is a breathtaking example of how learning can happen with new technology if we are open to new ways of peer, community-based, shared learning…What the teachers in the NY Times piece need to take from this Ethiopian experiment–what all of us as educators on every level have to take from this experiment–is that, if we do not think learning is something so dreadfully dull that it has to be regulated, assessed, made compulsory, rule bound, divided into disciplines, and in all other ways “measured out in coffee spoons” (as T. S. Eliot would say), then the potential of kids and all of us to learn is enormous.  I have had to unlearn a lot of my own didactic forms of teaching over the years and have had to learn how to practice what I call “structuring possibilities for openness.”   It means biting my tongue, not solving the problem or coming up with the answers, but providing the opportunities in which students can help one another to learn and having faith that, if I stay back, they will in fact learn because, as humans, learning is what we do, it’s how we thrive.

Has learning changed or the opportunities that make it more conducive and engaging?  Just a question I thought of when reading this article.

2.  The Daily Routines of Famous Writers – I just love some of the quotes and thoughts from this article as that many people are exploring blogs and how we can have students engaged in their own writing.  What I get from the article is that there is not “one-size-fits-all” approach to this but we just have to just start:

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

But if we are blogging do students have to write?  Darren Kuropatwa offers a different perspective on what the blogging medium provides and how text is not the only option.  What are some tips that you have to get students and/or teachers to write?

3.  Freedom < —  A Vehicle For Leadership – Kristen Swanson refers to a recent Leadership 2.0 session offered by Chris Wejr and shares thoughts on the differences between “Freedom From” and “Freedom To”:

Chris caught my attention by talking about freedom. While everyone wants freedom, some people want “freedom from” and others want “freedom to.”

In unhealthy, fear-based organizations, people want FREEDOM FROM the rules that exist arbitrarily. They want to escape the entire situation. They seek points, credit, dollars, or some other external reward. A leader in this type of organization must constantly monitor the team’s compliance.

In vibrant, collaborative organizations, people want FREEDOM TO innovate, create new structures, and solve problems. A leader in this type of environment simply needs to nurture the ambitions of the team.

So here is my question on this…can a healthy organization have elements of both?  For example, if a leader provides “freedom from” boring staff meetings so that teachers have the “freedom to” spend more time focused on professional learning, is that not what we want?  Kristen discusses this in her own post but what are your thoughts? Is one more important or is there a correlation?

So Star Wars and Disney have created a partnership and I love this “Disney Song” that was created from the movie.

Enjoy!

I have loved watching a couple of videos from Calgary Science School and Fraser Heights that not only tell their story, but share their vision for learning.  Check them out below:

Calgary Science School

Calgary Science School – Our Story from Calgary Science School on Vimeo.

Fraser Heights

As Parkland School Division continues to make their Mission and Vision come to life, I hope that our schools will look at sharing how they are achieving this vision within their own schools through the use of video and varied voices to tell their story.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by gcouros

I have been on the road a considerable amount in the last month so I have decided to blog on stuff that has inspired me and write in a spontaneous manner so the “you should read…” post that I have tried to write on a weekly basis has been something that I have skipped in the last couple of weeks.  I still think that it is important to share what I have been catching on Twitter and learning from others.

1.  7 Kinds of Thinking Keeping Your School or District from Transformation -This article by John Robinson was fascinating and he is ideas shared are fantastic, but what I like most about this post was that he actually offered “antidotes” on how to cure each ailment:

“We’ve always done it this way thinking.” In public education, I have found this kind of thinking the most common. You can easily run up against this thinking by simply questioning a policy or procedure, or by suggesting a new way of doing something….The best antidote for this kind of thinking? Asking the simple “Why” question. If the answer is, “Because we’ve always done it this way,” then the underlying rationale might be suspect..

Many people will read this and think of someone they should send it to.  Administrators may blame teachers, teachers blame administrators, schools blame government, etc., and so on and so forth.  I truly believe that we should look at ourselves first, especially in this context and ask what are embodying to others and giving “solutions” as John offers, as opposed to simply discuss problems.

I tweeted the below in a discussion and I believe it is essential to school transformation:

@ebertsr I think if you really want to make change, it is not top down or bottom up.It is all hands on deck. #whatisbestforkids

— George Couros (@gcouros) November 4, 2012

The more I connect with educators, the more I am loving that they are seeing that they are part of the solution.

2.  Why Kids Need School to Change – A fantastic article discussing the importance of what we do in our schools and the need to change in our current environment.

The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive.

Most of us know this, and yet making room for the huge shift in the system that’s necessary has been difficult, if not impossible because of fear of the unknown, says educator Madeline Levine, author of Teach Your Children Well.

“People don’t like change, especially in times of great uncertainty,” she said. “People naturally go conservative and buckle down and don’t want to try something new. There are schools that are trying to do things differently, and although on the one hand they’re heralded as having terrific vision, they’re still seen as experimental.”

The author offers the idea of “project based learning, alternative assessment, scheduling, climate of care, and parent education” as ways to improving school.  What would you suggest regarding these ideas? What would you add or change?

3.  7 Basic Types of Stories – I am fascinated about the role of stories in the current context of schools and I love watching what organizations outside of education do to leverage this.  You can easily take an hour to go through this post, but I think that there are some pretty engaging ideas.  Does the following quote apply to schools?

“Brands are stories,” he said. “They want to embody a story. When we start working with a client, we don’t want to take a brief. We don’t want to just say, ‘What’s your problem?’ We want to go right back to, ‘Why was your company started? What’s your mission?’ We talk about mission all the time, and it’s just another way of saying, ‘What kind of story are you on? What kind of story do you want to tell?’ … Part of our job as an agency is to reignite that and really figure out what that story is.”

I would love your thoughts so I can further my own learning in this area.

BONUS –> Just as something that I would like to share as one of those videos that makes me smile every single time I see it, I thought that I would share this video from “The Flight of the Conchords” which is guaranteed to make you smile (I will buy you ice cream if it doesn’t).  You can also get the karaoke version of the song if you want to sing it with your kids

Have a great week!

Royan Lee shares some helpful tips if you are wanting to do filming with mobile devices.  Please take the time to view it below and share it with your students:

I saw this great post from Hugh McDonald, and with his permission, he has allowed me to repost it here.  Please take a look as it could be a VERY powerful project.

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Below is a video shot in a relatively short time span this morning while my wife was running errands and I was hanging out with my 3 year old and my 21 month old. It is a video inspired by colleagues Jodi Pulvers, Antonio Vendramin, Gallit Zvi and projects created by groups of grade 6 students at our school. They created videos using sixty – 1 second video clips to tell a story. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Dean Shareski (@shareski) who introduced this version of digital story telling to Surrey teachers at the opening dinner of Surrey School District’s Engaging the Digital Learner Series this past September. The great thing about twitter is even though I was unable to be there for this first event of the dinner series I was able to get the full experience of Dean’s presentation from those that were there. Thank you Twitter PLN! Here is my sixty in 60 seconds filmed on a beautiful fall day in October 2012.

Antonio also did this activity with our school iPads with all the grade 6s at our school while we were away at camp earlier this week. Our students were excited to share their creations. Some of their final products can be viewed on Antonio’s youtube channel.

I must say my inner director was working over time today as I was shooting and editing my video. I loved every second of crafting it! Planning, adjusting, filming, counting frames, reshooting frames, uploading to iMovie, shortening clips to get each to the desired 1 second each, and finally carefully choosing the audio made for an engaging experience that I cannot wait to try again with a different story. The editing process was surprisingly easy once I got going. iMovie on the iPad is user friendly and even had royalty free music to test and use in my video. I can see how activities like this engage the digital native to learn and explore elements of telling a story. I’m excited to learn and explore more ways to help our students use digital tools to engage themselves in new ways of telling their story and other stories.

I can see this as a popular choice for my students to demonstrate their learning during Genius Hour this year. It engaged me to challenge my creative talents. I am positive opportunities like this will continue to challenge my students to make the seemingly impossible possible. I am excited to see them create and explore their wonders and unlock the creative genius within!

Anyone else have a digital story telling idea that they have used with their students? I would love to see it. Here are a some videos that inspired me to make the video above:

Seconds Of Beauty – 1st round compilation from The Beauty Of A Second on Vimeo.

Hugh McDonald

@hughtheteacher

hughtheteacher.wordpress.com

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by gcouros

I missed sharing this post last week as I decided to take a Sunday off from everything and just watch some football There is a ton of great stuff and the article this week really pushed my own thinking about what can be happening in schools right now to push what we do in schools.

1.  What it might be – As our own school division embarks on the second year of digital portfolio implementation, I really enjoyed this post by my friend Jabiz Raisdana who shares not only some thoughts about student blogging, but shares his own experience with blogging as well.  I really believe that if we are to be effective with kids in teaching this skill, we must not have knowledge, but also some experience with it as well.  Whether that is in a personal blog or a classroom blog, seeing both the benefits and negatives is powerful.

I think back to my own experience blogging and how I started off with the idea of “blog as a portfolio” but really started to fall in love with the writing process.  My style has developed over time and now I find that blogging is crucial to my own learning, both personally and professionally.

Jabiz ends the post with some great advice for students to get into the flow of blogging:

If you want your students to blog effectively, give them the freedom to experiment and write about what interests them. Stay away from portfolios and forced reflections on their learning, at least until they get the hang of it. Wait until they find a voice, find an audience, and become involved in the conversations around ideas, before you push your agenda of meta-cognition and reflective learning. 

Seriously, read the entire post.

2.  5 Critical Mistakes Schools Make with iPads – Too many times, I watch schools/organizations focus on the tool as opposed to the learning. That has led several schools to buy mass amounts of hardware (including iPads) and have many teachers not understand what their purpose is or see it as an add-on.  Many school leaders may not think that, but if you talk to their teachers, they may have a different point of view.  That is I have found this Edudemic article such a great guide to start for implementation of iPads (or any technology) in a school.  The last point in the article is the most important in my opinion:

5) Failure to communicate a compelling answer to “Why iPads?”
Many school administrators simply fail to communicate to their constituents why they’ve purchased iPads. As a result, many initiatives face resistance from teachers, parents — and even students – who don’t understand why these devices are being introduced into their classrooms. Letting the purchase speak for itself isn’t enough – districts need to explain why they’ve invested in these devices.

I encourage you to read this before you implement anything in your school.  If you have already done so, still read it and ask yourself, “what have we missed?”

3.  Learning Today Looks Nothing Like in the Past – Karen Lirenman, a grade one teacher in Surrey, BC, shared some of the things that she is doing in her classroom and when I read her post, my jaw literally dropped.  It is amazing what a grade one classroom can look like now but is this the norm?  Is it even something that many are aspiring towards?

Some of the things that Karen listed in her post that she does…Quad blogging, Skyping, blog for classroom collaboration, high school/elementary school collaboration, global read aloud, and much more.  This is in a grade one classroom!

So a couple of things popped in my head while reading this.

a.  When I hear teachers in elementary classrooms say that kids are too young for technology, I can easily send them to this post (and I probably will).

b. Many may take Karen’s post as that she is not doing some of the traditional “literacies” in her classroom and think it is technology focused. I saw Yong Zhao this past summer and he said something that stuck out to me.

“Reading and writing should be the floor, not the ceiling.”

Karen is shooting for a much higher ceiling then she probably has before, probably because of all of her own learning that she has done.  A master teacher always grows and Karen is exemplifying that in her work.

c.  What happens to these students after Karen’s class? What is her admin team doing to ensure that these types of activities are continued after next year with this group of students?  What is Karen doing with the teacher’s of the next grade?  It has to be a team effort in a school where we must all push each other’s learning to do what is best for kids, not just the sole responsibility of the “admin team”.  This is where we go beyond “classroom teacher” to the notion of “school teacher”.  Leadership can come from many different avenues in a school.

Hopefully you have some food for thought this week from these posts.  I know that definitely with these three articles alone, my thinking has been stretched significantly so I hope they have given you some food for thought as well.

Just as an “extra” share, I wanted to share this awesome song by The Avett Brothers.  I love their music and just started listening to their new album (is that what you call it nowadays?).  Below is my favourite song from it.

Have a great week!

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by dkuropatwa

Every now and then, I like to go back through my old Diigo bookmarks and look at articles that I have shared in the past in the “You Should Read” category as I know many readers will have missed these at the time when they are posted.  It is truly hard to become a “classic” on the Internet with the number of articles coming your way, but I think through the use of social bookmarking sites such as Diigo (which is how I have always used to compile these lists), we can easily come back and revisit these posts.

With that being said, here are some articles that I have shared previously that I think are worthy of revisiting.

1.  The Creativity Crisis –  I loved this article and often come back to it in the work that I am doing.  The term “creativity” is something that is being used by schools and many organizations, and seen as an essential skill.

The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

Yet many say that with the structure of schools, creativity is something that we struggle with, yet the author offers a different perspective:

Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.

This is a great article to discuss at a staff meeting.  Ask the question, “how do you promote creativity in your classroom?”, and then have them make that thinking visible.  It is imperative that we share these practices.  (As an addition to this, watch this video on the importance of giving time when wanting our students to be creative.)

2.  The Top 10 Ways to Improve Student Achievement and Create Learners – One of the key words that I have seen overtake conversations has been the word “learning”, which is something that we should focus on in schools.  Although that should be the focus, regurgitation of facts is still the norm with many.

One of the major negatives is that change is rarely welcome. People tend to like the status quo and do not want the apple cart overturned. Our first year was fraught with change; change in vision, strategies, instructional methods and materials. Through it all, our staff preserved as we worked on our improvement.

Here are a couple of the interesting ways that were shared in the article:

8. Teach Students How to Learn – Students are taught what to learn. In order for them to be successful as learners, they also have to discover how to learn and to develop an appetite for learning. I’m convinced that one of the reasons some students do not succeed in college is that they sail through high school learning the prescribed curriculum, but never learn how to learn.

9. Teachers as Learners Environment – Teachers are all about instructing their students. Teachers should also invest in themselves. I’m referring to teachers actively pursuing knowledge because they want to know more. The best teachers continue to grow and don’t rely solely on school designated professional development hours as their outlet to learn new concepts and ideas about education. This could include reading professional development books, blogs, or articles online. One powerful way to continue to grow as an educator is to join an online personal learning network and/or develop one on Twitter.

How do you focus on creating a “learning environment” in your school?

3.  Pupils do get better at school if teachers are not fixated on test results – Just coming back from the US where, unfortunately, the talk often turns to the “Common Core” and standardized testing, I still think this is a valid argument on how you can focus on other things as opposed to tests and still have students do relatively well.  If students become “learners”, can they still not do well in exams?

“Nowhere is this more apparent than in science learning where relentless preparation for tests and exams drives out the important and engaging aspects, especially the practical work,” he said. “All the evidence suggests that ‘teaching to the test’ results in superficial learning and a level of boredom that can turn pupils away from science.

As a final video, I wanted to share this Arnold Schwarzenegger video below.  The words are powerful yet his character (rightfully so) is often questioned.  His words are inspirational, but because of his past, would you share this video with students?  I would love your thoughts.

Have a great week!