Author: Richard Roberts

Innovation and asking why

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

As I process our discussions, from the first workshop with George, read The Innovator’s Mindset, read tweets, seek out contributors, and generally reflect on my practice as a teacher, a learner, and a member of a learning community, I have been thinking more and more about what innovation is, what it looks like, where to find it, and how I can get there.
For the last year or so, I have been trying to dig a little deeper into what I do as a teacher and learner, and question myself. I ask “why am I doing this thing, in this way?” When the answer is that it’s working and meeting my needs, I am happy. But, if I’m thinking of more innovating, I need to ask what can I do to make it better? When this answer is “because I have always done it this way”, I get worried. I think that this idea is the biggest jumping point and stumbling block for innovation. A practice/routine/system existing simply because it always has isn’t a good enough answer anymore.
I am challenging myself to look at what I do as a teacher and learner, and ask myself why. I am challenging myself to find those things that are no longer working for me and change them up. Maybe that makes me an innovator. Maybe not. But I do know, that doing things the way I always have because that’s the way I always have just isn’t good enough anymore.

More to come. . .

Michelle Wolfe
Lord Nelson School
Cluster 1871

Old School to New School

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After listening to George Couros speak it became ever so clear to my work colleague and I that the students are evolving faster than we give them credit for. After school hours there is a tremendous amount of learning going on through the internet, games, and applications to only name a few. As a technological world we are extremely fortunate to have inclusive applications that can bring learning to life for all types of learners. No longer are we only communicating with peers in our class but learners from all over the world are just a click away.
Mr. Couros is a prime example of how learning can be extended from not only classroom to classroom but from schools and scholars around the world. Learning is no longer stagnant to the community and environment in which we live but it is dynamic in the sense that it never stops moving forward.
If we fail to modify our learning goals as educators we will be stuck in the “old school” generation; without adaptation our “new school” students may be stuck teaching us more than learning from us!

Scott Smoke
Prairie Rose Elementary Team
Clulster 1871

Empowerment – The Missing Piece of the Learning Puzzle

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

Walking into the March session with George Couros, I really didn’t have a clear idea of what innovative practice meant.  Throughout the day, I began to understand this concept and realize how innovation in the classroom (and school wide) allows students to feel empowered in learning.  As educators, we focus strongly on engaging students.  I still believe this remains a crucial part of the learning puzzle, but empowerment seems to be the missing piece.  Students need to become more invested in their education through practice and to effectively transfer new knowledge outside of the classroom in real life situations.
 
To help students further explore concepts introduced within the classroom, we need to provide them with the means to think critically, ask questions and seek answers.  Communication is key – allowing opportunities for students to converse with their peers and teachers promotes a safe environment where they feel comfortable taking charge of learning.  Conversations may even begin via social media sites.  Students can be resourceful by sending their questions out to the virtual world as learning happens everywhere.  Students can gain independence and build connections through doing so.
 
I think introducing the use of Twitter in the classroom is a cool way to safely expose students to the benefits of social media sites for educational purposes.  Being new to Twitter, I am looking forward to discovering ways to make use of the tool in the classroom.  I am willing to take on a ‘growth mindset’ as we continue forward with the sessions in this professional learning series.

Jillian Chaykowski
École Lansdowne
Cluster 1971

My reflection on the first session

Richard Roberts Group 2 ,

I believe it was Bill Gates who once said that, “technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” This is how I view the use of technology. While I try to use technology as much as possible because it is, and should be a part of the daily learning of our kids in the 21st century, I try to motivate and engage the kids, not only with technology, but with fun and innovative activities that interest them; including hands on learning, inquiry projects, and things that I know I would have fun doing myself.

I don’t want to use technology just for the sake of using it. I want it to be a means to an end, and not an end in itself. When I was told ahead of time by my admin that at our session with George we would be signing up for Twitter, I was a little skeptical that this would be one of those times that I would be doing something just for the sake of doing it. My experience with divisional PDs has possibly made me a bit skeptical, as for the most part, they are just training sessions on a new assessment tool. I was skeptical that these sessions wouldn’t necessarily have any benefits for my kids’ learning. I’m glad that I was totally wrong.

In our first session I asked George the question, “How is me signing up for Twitter going to help my students, of 8 and 9 years old, learn?” George had some good answers. For example, I could show them how to safely use and understand this tool because they will certainly be using something of the sorts when they get older (whether it’s Twitter or not). He also explained that I could set up a classroom account and the kids could participate with the account by making posts that I can put online myself. This could be a great tool to share what is happening in our classroom with parents and other teachers. I thought this was a pretty cool idea. I was surprisingly unaware that teachers were using Twitter for their classrooms, as I always thought Twitter was too much of an “unfiltered” environment for an educational setting.

However, what really struck me as the major benefit of signing up for Twitter was that I could learn and get new ideas from other teachers similar to myself. In fact, the very minute that I signed up for Twitter, I followed another Grade 3 French Immersion Teacher; someone who I do not know, and otherwise would not have connected with, but whose ideas I immediately resonated with me. I immediately saw a picture of her kids doing an experiment in science that I would love to do with my kids; an activity which I think would engage them immensely. Right away, within 5 minutes, Twitter provided me with a 21st century solution to some of the problems of collaboration by helping me follow people with similar interests to myself.

In the end, after this first session with George, I now realize the benefits of using Twitter. It will certainly help me connect with other teachers, and to give me new and interesting ideas to be innovative in the classroom. It will also be a great place to share what is happening in my classroom with the outside community.

Ari Sarbit
Ecole Lansdowne
Cluster 1871

ITLL Innovation Blog Post

Richard Roberts Group 2 ,

The Winnipeg Fire Department – Fire Hall 17, has been working with the students at our school. Through this program, they have been building positive relationships and helping students connect with their community. Captain Jack and his crew come in to do presentations that enrich learning outcomes in science, math, health and safety and provide engaging hands on experiences for the students.

Debby Medeiros
Shaughnessy Park School
Cluster 1871

ITLL Blog Post

Richard Roberts Group 2 ,

As I sat in the session on March 23 listening to George Couros, my initial reaction was to be overwhelmed by the endless opportunities that technology provides us to innovate as educators. In my experience this feeling often leads to inaction. I feel that I don’t know where to start and am much more comfortable with sticking with what I know and so as amazing as innovative teaching could be, I don’t engage it fully.

I made a decision, though, that even though there was only one day left before Spring Break, my best chance for stepping out again into the ocean of innovation and technology was to act on some of the inspiration I received from George the very next day. So, with a bunch of over-excited grade 8 math students on the day before Spring Break, we jumped into using Office 365 to develop a community board in One Note to display pictures of what the 3 different models of fractions look like.

The focus in the room was quite extraordinary considering that we were at the end of our spirit week and were scheduled to have a school-wide gym blast in the afternoon. I found that they were excited to engage in the learning task and even helped me as I navigated a new way of teaching, learning and presenting learning. I found that students were up out of their chairs helping each other when they came to problems much more readily than they do during my normal math class. There was a real spirit of collaboration in the class with me just being one of the learners along with them. Since the break we have continued to push into the use of this program and others. I am working to communicate with them electronically and found one student in particular who has trouble engaging in my math class has sent me more messages from her phone than she has asked verbal questions in class.

So, I continue to grow as an educator, we must do so. Although the risk and seemingly infinite opportunities have the potential to incapacitate and overwhelm me, I will continue to choose to embrace at least one small innovating teaching practice each week in order to grow as a learner and to engage with my students more effectively.

Sincerely,
Steve Nikkel
Isaac Newton School
Math/Science Teacher

ITLL Blog Post

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

Innovation. It’s the new buzz word, and it could change your whole teaching life. The way I see it, innovation is a way of thinking. By definition, innovation is something new or different introduced. This really is open to interpretation. In my teaching practice innovation is incorporating choice and freedom into learning. Letting students be able to take control of their learning so that it encompasses and guides them. I see it in lots of places already; their choice of topics in an extreme weather project, their choice of science fair focus or the book they read & way they present a book report. But HOW do you make innovation a daily practice? I wonder about the chaos…how do we make sure that everyone is on task? How do I accommodate those that are not focused and able to stay on their chosen topic task? It’s scary. When everyone is doing the same task in the classroom, there’s a great sense of comfort in knowing where everyone is and what they’re doing. They’re engaged.
But innovation. Engagement is not the same as empowerment. How do we empower the students without losing those in the class that are the most susceptible to loss? How do I deliver a sense of empowerment in education to those students that find it tough to attend on a regular basis? That find school a challenge? OR…. Are they the ones most needing of empowerment? Stay tuned.

Torrie Vicklund
Stanley Knowles School
Cluster 1871

ITLL Blog Post

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

What do we mean when we say “innovation?” Education, maybe more than any other professional field, present a large glut of words – detractors will often call them buzzwords – that hover in the minds of teachers. These words and their intents inform the way teachers are told they should teach. Usually, these words do not come from the teachers themselves, but come from someone else: a principal, a superintendent, a consultant. As a result, the teacher has little connection to the word or its application to their practice in anything more than an abstract way. It’s no wonder they think them to be buzzwords. With so many buzzwords flying around teachers heads, they’re like insects. Like insects, teachers often swat them away.
Part of this problem is that we don’t give teachers time or ability to buy into the concepts. I’m glad that we have these sessions, because this presents an opportunity for teachers to come together and better understand what innovation means and how it relates to our practice. When you think about it, this is actually a colossal investment that is being made on the strength of a single word. So to prevent this from becoming a weak foundation on which to build our understanding, we must define it. Winnipeg School Division has done our work for us, it would seem. From the latest memo, we see the definition – protected by copyright! – that reads that “Innovation is creating new and improved ways of thinking and doing that inspire and empower learners ~©Winnipeg School Division” Hopefully they are not set in stone on this definition and will let teachers contribute to this definition. Hopefully there is not a fee involving changing copyright. Because time and time again, initiatives with “buzzwords” fail when teachers do not feel involved.
Not that there is anything wrong with this definition at all. It is a perfectly good definition, and I hope that all teachers embrace it. However, we will always run the risk of initiatives faltering when teachers feel like they are being talked at and not with. This is the same of a good classroom. We want students to explore and think before arriving at a solution. This is the same of our teachers. We want them to imagine what innovation means. We want them to get stuck and flummoxed and find their way. This is the way of learning. We need them to ask, “What happens, for example, when industry defines “innovation” in a different way? How will we react?” Certainly educational definitions of words such as these vary in different professional discourses. How will we not only define innovation for ourselves, but how will we navigate a world where these definitions can mean different things?
This is more than wondering which social media platform we’ll use in the class or how we’ll do things differently. But if we don’t understand what we mean by what we say, then what we say means nothing.

Devin King
Sister High School

What I’ve learned about ITLL from the Star Wars prequels

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What I’ve learned about ITLL from the Star Wars prequels

by Jonny Liewicki, Isaac Newton School

I’ve been really intrigued at the prospect of “shaking” things up in my classroom for quite some time now, so for me to say that our last session with George Couros was an eye opener for me would be an understatement – my eyes were already wide open, Mr. Couros simply provided me with the super glue I needed to make sure my eyes stayed open forever.

I left the building that day ready to throw out everything I had worked so hard to achieve in my 7 years of teaching. All the worksheets I worked so hard to create from scratch (I’m dynamite at creating work sheets), all the carefully laid out unit plans – GONE!!! I was excited for a new beginning to a journey that was already so familiar.

Quite simply, I was becoming George Lucas circa 1994, when he began work on a script for a movie that would eventually be known as Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

For those familiar with the world of Star Wars and Lucas’ highly scrutinized “Prequel Trilogy”, you may have an idea of where I’m headed… my most recent obsession with new technology was set to ruin childhoods where my own ego and desire to “shake things up” was a dark force more powerful than Vader, Palpatine and Dooku combined.

I finally had a moment of enlightenment as I was watched the newest episode of Star Wars on blu-ray. It is a movie I adore. I saw it three times in theatres and have already watched it twice at home, including most of the bonus features. But it wasn’t until my second viewing where I was able to make the connection between the newest Star Wars, why I loved it so much and how I should be using ITLL in my classroom.

A main reason people hate the prequels so much is due to Lucas’ over reliance on technology – CGI, green screens, you name it… Lucas embraced it. The abundance of technology made the film feel less authentic and strayed quite a bit from the world we became accustomed to in Lucas’ original trilogy from the 1970s and ‘80s. The newest Star Wars film chose to use more practical effects, similar to the ones used in the first three films. This resulted in an overwhelming response from critics and fans alike that echoed the heartwarming response of a returning Han Solo in The Force Awakens…”Chewie, we’re home”.

This was now the Star Wars we grew up with. The Star Wars we loved. The Star Wars we were comfortable with.

Certainly my students deserved similar treatment. A balance between the more practical methods teachers have used for decades mixed in with some of new technological advances that would not only benefit student learning but make their learning feel more authentic. That is the journey I want to take.

As wonderful as technology is and as much as it can help teachers teach and students learn, I don’t think that it should be something we rely on just because it is new or might be cool. It has to be authentic or just like The Phantom Menace, will be universally panned by the world’s greatest critics – students.