Sharing Our Learning

This past week, I had the opportunity to work with a large group of educators on moving forward with Google Apps and Digital Portfolios within the school division.  The hope is that through this process and diving in altogether, we will have the opportunity to share best practices throughout the division while also tapping into the knowledge that exists throughout the world.  I am extremely excited about this initiative.  Take the chance to read about the project and the pedagogy behind it: Our Digital Portfolio Project.

Also this week,  I had the opportunity to visit Spruce Grove Composite High School and they are planning to put all of their class resources on one wiki for their entire school.  With this resource being totally open, it will not only be a way for their students to get information, but also for anyone in the world to tap into this as well.  Learning should be open and transparent and it is great to watch SGCHS setting up a resource to embody this.  You can check out the wiki as it unfolds here: Panther Pages.  It is a work in progress, but as educators, we have to get past the notion that we have to have all information up before we go public.  If we stuck by that thought, we would never be able to finish anything!  Learning is continuous and the process should mirror that!

This week, I have found some great articles that I wanted to share with all of you:

1. Up hill both ways in a snow storm – My good friend Cale Birk, wrote essentially a rebuttal to the “Inside the Entitlement Generation” post that was essentially a ” scathing account of the younger generation of today.”  Ultimately Cale decides to take the “optimist” approach and look for the good things that are in our youth today and I would 100% agree with him:

In my opinion, our students of today are as intelligent and motivated as students at this age have ever been.  I would also say that students are much more well-rounded than I ever was–they are more socially responsible, more globally aware, and more tolerant than any generation before them.  When graduates cross our stage at commencements, I absolutely marvel at how involved they are in their academics, the arts, athletics, the school, and community issues.  I wish I went through high school with the same verve and alacrity that our students do.

This article discusses the importance in believing in our students, and in reality, we can look at them as “entitled” but what does that help?  Chris Wejr also wrote a post on the same topic, and to me, these are the kind of educators that we need in schools.  I know both Cale and Chris personally and they are very real about the work and challenges that we have to do, but they both approach education in the way that it is the positive relationships that we have with our students that makes the biggest impact on the work that we do.  I encourage you to read all of the articles linked in this post.

2. 10 Reasons to Trash Word for Google Docs – Jeff Utecht, an educator located in Bangkok, has a great blog that I have only come across recently (although I read it for a long time that first night!), and in it, he shares how he feels the use of Google Docs is advantageous over Word.  Personally, I have not used Word for a long time as I find Google Docs much easier, and I am glad that this suite of tools is available to all of our students and staff in Parkland School Division as it really serves the work that we are trying to do with students.  Here is an excerpt from his post:

10. Because it’s the future
We’re headed into a fully web-based world. Even Microsoft is working to make Word fully online in a few years…see I told you they were old school. Get a jump on the future and get use to working on the web now so you’re not playing catch up later.

The one major reason that Jeff did leave out (although it is implied continuously) is that it is just faster.  If you have a stable Internet connection, Google Docs just makes it easier to do things in the classroom.  We could all use more time right?

3. Cybersafety: Do fear and exaggeration increase risk? – Sylvia Martinez shares an excellent presentation  about some of the misconceptions that are out in the public regarding Internet safety and cyberbullying which actually lead to more of the behaviour.  Yes, there are some threats, but are they as bad as they are made out in the media?  Here is what Sylvia writes about the presentation:

Be sure to view this slideshow all the way to the end, where Larry gives examples of “positive norming” as an alternative to fear-based messages about cybersafety and cyberbullying. Positive norming is when facts are presented about what most people do – and most people do not bully or engage in risky online behavior. Focusing on behavior that is NOT the norm makes it seem like it’s more prevalent than it actually is.

Please take a look at the presentation and feel free to use it as you see fit:

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

This upcoming week, I am looking forward to working with several staff on looking at Google Apps and Digital Portfolios for education.  These tools, if used properly, can truly be transformative in our use as they give students to easily collaborate with a wide range within our community, the opportunity to create different items, as well as making their learning truly transparent and open.  We are looking forward to doing this together as a school division as we can share some of our best work and practices with one another.

Below are some articles that I found interesting and wanted to share with you this week:

1.  Interview with the Teenager – Royan Leeis an extremely innovative and progressive teacher located in Ontario, and in this blog post, he interviews a student asking about the connection with technology and learning in school.  You may or may not be surprised with the response from the student, but this post shows that all of us (students and staff) have a long way to go in connecting mobile devices to learning in the classroom.  There is definitely potential but this is something that we will need to learn alongside our students.  I enjoyed this question and answer that ended the interview:

” If you were the boss of all the schools what would you change first?Instead of making us use paper and pen for everything, I’d want them to use more technology and computers. I just wish they’d give us more freedom.”

2. If school isn’t for collaborating, why does anyone come? – Ira Socol, someone who does some amazing work in Universal Design for Learning, discusses learning environments and what we could do in schools to ensure their relevance in our current world.  Ira truly believes that we need to open up the digital tools that we use in our schools to prepare our students for their future, let alone our world today:

“A technological environment which supports collaboration across every barrier. Sorry, if you have purchased a single device for all of your students – you’ve made a major mistake. If you don’t have open internet access in every room …you are denying your students basic tools. If you prohibit student-owned devices or block social networking, you are failing your students in the most basic ways. Students need to learn how to function in this world, not the one your grandma grew up in. Every place they go, people will be using a flood of differing devices. Every place they work people will be Skyping, Twittering, Chatting, Texting, working together in Google Docs,translating, searching for information and data, and building social networks. If they are not learning the best ways to do all this, your school is a failure, because your students will lack essential knowledge and social skills.”

3. The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education - In this very interesting Forbes article, you can see a focus on the importance of truly shifting our organization to focus on inspiring our schools to become communities of active and lifelong learners.  From this very detailed article, the following quote sticks out:

“.. I believe that the single most important idea for reform in K-12 education concerns a change in goal. The goal needs to shift from one of making a system that teaches children a curriculum more efficiently to one of making the system more effective by inspiring lifelong learning in students, so that they are able to have full and productive lives in a rapidly shifting economy.”

The article has some very clear cut suggestion for what to change in education and some of the changes that should happen.  It is definitely an interesting read.

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

Spending some time at a “technology” conference this week, I was pleased to see that the emphasis was not on tools that are being used in schools, but how to create learning opportunities that have high impact for our students.  As technology becomes more ubiquitous in our schools, the process and content that is being created is obviously becoming (as it should) the focus.  The conversation at the conference was absolutely amazing and I appreciated the chance to learn from many innovative educators.

This week, I wanted to share some links that have impacted my learning/thinking:

1. Schools, technology, test scores, and the New York Times – The New York Times wrote a very interesting post discussing how technology has not improved test scores in schools, yet Scott McLeod questionsthe focus of the article and how technology, when used effectively, can transform our schools and classrooms.  His quick summary of the article says the following:”We have schools and classrooms that are still doing what they’ve always done, but with some additional infrequent and marginal uses of new learning tools. We have educators who don’t really know how to use the tools very well and who also have little access to those tools, reliable IT support, and/or regular integration assistance. For some reason we expect changes in certain learning outcomes to occur anyway, despite these environmental factors and despite the fact that those outcomes may not be what the schools were striving for in the first place. And, if we don’t see those outcomes, we’re going to claim it’s the fault of the technologies themselves rather than human and system factors and then we’re going to claim that traditional analog learning environments are just fine in a digital, global world.”
   
   Both articles are very interesting reads that should definitely look at.
2. Where is reflection in the learning process?- As a big advocate of blogging and reflection, this article was absolutely fantastic, not only on the impact that reflection has on students, but also on educators.  The author also discusses the importance of educators role modelling this process to their students:“The only way that educators can teach and promote reflective practice by their students (of all ages) in their own classrooms is to engage in, embrace, and fully understand this process themselves.”
   

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by teach.eagle

This week, I had the pleasure to visit schools on the west end on the first day of school, and then had a longer visit with Greystone Centennial Middle School on Friday morning.  I am hoping that I can document some of the amazing things that are happening in schools in Parkland, and that our division, as well as others, can learn from these practices.  It has been exhilarating to be in the schools and connect with so many passionate learners.

Here are some interesting articles/ideas that I wanted to share with you this week:

1. 10 Reasons to Ban Pens and Pencils in the Classroom –  This is a satirical article comparing the “dangers” of pens and pencils that we as educators have let go for several years in the classroom.  If you read closely, you will see that the same reasons that we would consider for the banning of traditional writing utensils are the same ones we use for mobile devices in schools.  I wanted to share one of my favourite reasons but they are all kind of funny, so please enjoy the article!
2. Personalize Learning with 20% Time- The idea of 20% time is something that is catching on not only in business organizations, but also with schools.  Here is a quote from the article discussing this idea:“One concept Google is where employees work 80% of their time on Google projects and the other 20% of their time they can devote to any project they want. Google found this to be very successful both in employee satisfaction, but also their workers have come up with projects that have made a difference in peoples lives! They can use the time to develop something new, or if they see something that’s broken, they can use the time to fix it. During the 20 percent time, engineers developed features in the labs and other very popular tools. Google teachers realized the idea of using 20% of your time on something your passionate about seemed like a good idea for schools.”This is an exciting idea for our classrooms, and helps our students build upon their own creativity and passion.
3. High School Grading for the 21st Century – Tom Schimmer, a Principal and international speaker, has a great presentation on assessment geared towards high school educators, but the ideals can be used in any classroom.  The presentation slides are below:

I hope you all have a great week of learning! Please feel free to comment or share your thoughts on any of the articles posted.

Thanks,
George Couros, Division Principal

I would like to welcome everybody from Parkland School Division back to the 2011-2012 school year!  It is always nice to come back to school and connect with colleagues for the first couple of days when we are all well rested, and then see the return of our students.  I hope that all of you had a restful summer and are excited for another great school year with Parkland School Division!

Just to introduce myself, I am George Couros, and I am currently in the position of Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning for PSD70.  I am looking forward to not only connecting and sharing learning with all of the schools in our division this year, but more importantly, I am hoping that I can help connect some of the great teaching and learning practices that are happening in our schools through my position.  Being able to be a part of different schools within the division, I have seen so many amazing things that are being done by our teachers and my hope is that we can help to facilitate different ways we can share these best practices with each other, and with the entire world!  There are some amazing things that are happening in Parkland and we need to share this with the rest of the world to improve learning for all students, while also learning from those same people.

If I am successful in my position, I will have helped build leadership within our division at all levels, while also helping to connect best practices throughout the world and implementing them within our division.

As the year progresses, I will be sharing projects and initiatives that we are co-creating within the division.  I will also try to share some of the best links that I see through my participation in my own Personal Learning Network (PLN) and archive them here throughout the year.  I would love to not only share these with you, but it would be great if you were willing to comment and share your thoughts.  This idea came from a colleague of mine, Jill Gough, from Atlanta, Georgia. Through these conversations is when we truly get better.

Here are some of the great links that I have began to cumulate for this school year that may help you in your practice or at least start some conversations:

1. Chris Kennedy, a superintendent in British Columbia just wrote a post regarding commenting on blogs that may be helpful to share as I take on this new endeavour.  Chris states, “In the education world,  we need to model how we expect students to behave and engage”, which I believe is so important.  This is a great way to model our learning by being open with our own practice while being able to have some respectful conversations with each other as a school community.
2. As many schools are interested in looking how to create digital portfolios for our students, and we are currently looking at how to successfully implement this across Parkland, this post regarding digital portfolios is fantastic to share some of the benefits of this learning.  Check out “5 Reasons why Our Students are Writing Blogs and Creating Eportfolios“.

Just as a footnote, I would love to leave you each week with a Creative Commons licensed picture on this blog that shares a quote or something to think about.  To find your own pictures, please use this search engine: Search Creative Commons

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by jenn.davis