Author: scornwell

Slow Starter

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Weeks leading up to the PD with George Couros, my Vice-Principal approached me about an opportunity. I consider myself an open-minded person that is confident in what I do but I lack in my integration of technology within the classroom.  With that in mind, he thought I would be a perfect candidate for Mr. Couros and I agreed.

During the first session with George I was trying to wrap my head around how would I use twitter in my classroom. I knew very little about twitter and it’s capabilities before the session. I was a little reluctant during the session to sign up for twitter because I just couldn’t figure out if this was a gimmick or something that would benefit me. I am also the individual that has an old cell phone that can’t even access the internet from it. I really enjoyed George’s presentation and it made me really think about my own teaching. Later that week, I decided to sign up for twitter and added co-workers, friends and professional people that I thought would be interesting to follow. I immediately saw the benefit that twitter provided. Every time I signed in, I was able to see a lot of great ideas in teaching Math (I teach Math and follow people involved in the Math world). I didn’t even have to search for anything, the ideas were there on my homepage.

Within my classroom, I feel that I do a lot of hands on activities that makes learners really think and grasp concepts that are presented. Students seem to be engaged and excited about Math. For example, students would estimate how much candy rockets would fit into a three dimensional object and then go and find the actual volume using water and a graduated cylinder. We also compared our findings with the formula calculation. As a class, we were then able to discuss our findings. Is this lesson innovation?

I will be the first person to say that I am a beginner on the journey of innovation and technology within the classroom. However, I am constantly growing and looking for ways to make the material more current to the culture of today’s society. I already see the benefit that twitter can have in getting ideas for me in teaching and I know I am just scratching the surface in terms of what twitter can do in the classroom.

 

 

Tim Holfeld

River Heights School

1965 Cluster

ITLL Reflection

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Well…here I go. My first crack at writing a blog entry.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about becoming a ‘blogger’ before. It seemed like a fun and trendy thing to do as I was finishing up my Education degree. THEN… I thought about it a little more. What would I even write about?! It was also at this point that I remembered that even though every year I had a New Year’s resolution to keep a journal… I would write in it once or twice and end up tearing the pages out because I didn’t want to go back and read what I had written one day and think about how silly my thoughts were. SO it turns out I wasn’t so keen on becoming a blogger after all…you know writing that could be accessed by anyone and would be much more permanent than pages I could later on rip out of a journal.

Anyway I’m sitting here typing (and biting my nails a lot due to nervous feelings of this being read by my colleagues) and thinking that this too is something I am doing that is pushing me out of my comfort zone!

My lovely comfort zone…the comfort zone I might have been content in remaining in before attending our first session with George. Since that day in March I have 1) stopped using Instagram to creep on people ( I have now made 3 posts!) 2) joined the world of Twitter AND 3) am thinking, very seriously, about starting a classroom blog.

I had recently told someone that I was fine with ‘being maxed out with technology’. I was fine with using what I know and not bothering to learn anything new unless it was completely necessary. After reading George’s book I realized that I’m not okay with this. I don’t want to be left behind. I want to ‘keep up with technology’ and use it to be more innovative in my teaching. Don’t get me wrong…I use technology everyday and love the projects that I am able to do with my class. I’m not even sure why I felt like I was okay with closing my mindset to technology. It seems a little ridiculous now that I think about it!

Now I realize that I can blog about what I know and what I know is…teaching Grade 2! I read other people’s blogs when looking for ideas for my own classroom. Maybe it’s time to return the ‘favour’ and share things that I do in my class with others. Reading The Innovator’s Mindset has made me think about many things. I have revisited my desire to continue my own learning. It also made me think about teachers who keep their best ideas to themselves. I want to be a teacher who pays it forward and continues to learn from a network of really great people!

 

Danielle Shrumm

Weston School

Cluster 2010

Innovation

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Innovation is one of those words that gets thrown around in all circles, though its true definition is highly dependent on the person using it. It seems as though it’s relatively large in terms of a concept in education, but to me it’s about creativity, forward thinking, and impactful, purposeful actions.

Before our first session with George in March, I thought a lot about what innovation actually meant to me, and what kind of implications it would have on my students and in my classroom. I also thought a lot about how it could affect the school on a larger scale, involving everyone in our building as well as those in our community. To be honest with you, my mind was inundated with ideas and possibilities, but they were all over the place.

After the session, I found George’s insight very helpful to help me focus my ideas and determine practical ways to implement them going forward. It also opened up all kinds of new possibilities and ideas of things I wouldn’t have thought about before. The idea of using Twitter as an educational and professional development resource was honestly not something I would have considered. Who knew it wasn’t just for news about the NHL?

The fact that today’s world is different than it was for us as students, and it continues to change, speaks to the importance of looking at the way things work in our schools. It’s an exciting prospect to think of   all the possibilities to help us tap into potential of our students, and help us grow as educators. As we continue through this journey, I am looking forward to continuing the process of delving into those possibilities and exploring some important changes toward the traditional thinking of schools and education.

 

Colin Jones

École Laura Secord School

Cluster 1965

Innovation

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When you hear the word “innovation”, it can come across as something intimidating, something scary or something exciting. Many people will have different perspectives when it comes to change. Some will see it as good; others may not feel the same way. Change is inevitable, and as we are seeing more and more that technology is huge part of this upcoming change. We have already made numerous modifications within our classrooms, as well as the school, which reflect the influx of technology in society. We use computers for research, instead of relying solely on books and we use email to send newsletters, rather than printing on thousands of pieces of paper each month, etc. The changes that have been made already have been great, and the list will only continue to grow from here.

The first session with George Couros left me thinking how I can start applying some of his suggestions to my daily teaching. Technology is something that has become a huge part of society. Some students in our classrooms have more knowledge about technology than teachers do. If we could incorporate the use of technology, such as twitter into our classroom, some students may become more engaged and eager to learn in this new “style”. I have the privilege of working with all students in the school, and am blown away by their level of knowledge when it comes to anything related to technology.  As teachers, there is so much we can learn from our students. The results we are trying to achieve within our classrooms as well as our schools, is something that is not going to happen overnight.

There are so many questions that come to mind when thinking about how I will make this “transformation”, not only in my classroom but within the school. What is a reasonable starting point? What does this look like realistically? Are the goals and ideas achievable? The list of questions can go on. None the less, I am looking forward to being part of ITLL team and being a part of these positive changes that are ahead.

Brittanie Haworth

Laura Secord School

Cluster 1965

Our Day with George Couros

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Our day with George Couros on March 22 was a day fraught with an equal mix of fear and excitement of the projects to come.  George is right.  It is scary to move out of your comfort zone whatever that might be for each person.

We understand that learning is personal and every student learns in his or her own unique way.  And so do we.  That became evident during that March 22nd day.  Each adult was at a different place in their own personal learning process.  And that was okay.

As we listened to the anecdotes, stories and watched the videos one resounding fact was evident.

While we see that delivering personalized learning plays out differently from student to student, from classroom to classroom, from school to school we also see that technology plays a central role.

“To start, change one thing, not everything”     George Couros

On the first Monday back after Spring Break this statement was whirling around in my mind.  Just like any other procrastinator I came back to discover that we had only 2 days to prepare for our school assembly.  Also I was informed that I would be moving out of my classroom Tuesday night as the floors were going to be retiled.

We held a class meeting to discuss our Assembly theme of Earth Day.  As we brainstormed ideas and format the discussion went from making posters (static) to taking pictures and doing a powerpoint to making an imovie.  The students just flew with the idea and took ownership.  We were able to film, insert music, find props, narrate and complete our project over the next 2 days.  It was so fantastic to see the excitement and learning that took place.  I let go and ran with it.  The kids designed the learning and directed where it would go.  I followed.

It was such a whirlwind that the class saw the completed movie at the assembly for the first time along with everyone else.  My satisfaction came by watching their faces.  It really was a collaborative, meaningful, and exciting project.

I’m glad the students and I were able to “step out of the box” together.

Looking forward to other adventures.

 

Debbie Gapka and Tim Evason

River Elm School

 

Innovative Teaching and Learning Leaders Reflection

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Let’s talk about moving from “pockets of innovation” to a “culture of innovation.”  An interesting statement.  My initial thoughts when I was asked to attend the ITLL sessions was fear of the unknown mixed with the new challenge of learning more.  I teach EAL to senior high students who are often on a tight timeline to finish their high school education by age 21.  I often feel that I don’t have time to do anything except the meat and potatoes of the course.  I appreciated the workshop with George Couros on March 22nd because it helped me to realize that using innovative strategies in the classroom and the school community is much easier and more beneficial that I first thought. The videos that were shared during the session were informative and interesting.   I really enjoyed the video of the students speaking to the senior online.  It was emotional to see how the students and seniors became so important to each other.  What a wonderful way to share. Thanks.

 

Jill Stefanyshyn

Gordon Bell School

Cluster 1965

To Infinity and Beyond…

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Last year, I started a classroom Twitter account as a way for parents to get a glimpse into our day to day activities. I had thought of starting a blog but it just seemed too time consuming at the time. Take a picture, tweet it out! That seemed easy enough. My phone was always in my pocket anyways. I could just pull it out, snap a picture and write a sentence about what we were doing! It was great! A fast and easy way for me to have some extra communication with parents. Parents liked it because they could get more than the usually “Nothing” answer when asking their children what we had done at school that day. The students liked it because they were on the internet, which meant they must be somewhat famous.

As the year went on, I began to find additional benefits to having the Twitter account. It became a timeline for me to refer to. I could easily scroll back to see something we had done a few months before.  We made a few connections to the Twitter world, including a Human Rights activist who liked a picture that we had posted about Human Rights. Students were so excited to look him up and see where he lived in the world. I thought that was pretty neat too! We connected with Callie from Callie’s Backpacks for the Homeless, which led into a huge project where we collected items to fill backpacks for her.

This year, I continued to use the account as I had the previous year until I watched a TedTalk by George Couros at a PD session. I instantly followed him on Twitter and quickly realized that he was, at the very moment, doing a session with administrators. It was a neat experience to see so many teachers, directors, administrators, support teachers, and consultants join Twitter. Suddenly, I was making connections with people all over the division. It has been awesome! Following George on Twitter opened the door to an amazing network of educators outside the division as well. It is like having a mini PD session every time I open my app. There is always at least one great article being shared by someone I follow. Our classroom has connected with another classroom in the division. We have had a couple of Skype dates and it has been neat making those connections. My students are always very excited when we are going to Skype and share our learning.

Discovering that our division was focusing on innovation in education was a very empowering moment for me. You see, this year I had already begun to make pretty big changes in my classroom. Over the summer, I was inspired by a thesis I stumbled upon, while researching articles for my own (completely unrelated) thesis. As the queen of procrastination, I immediately stopped working on my thesis, and began planning for the following school year. I change my teaching every year based on the students in my classroom. That isn’t new.  However, this year I decided to completely rearrange my classroom set up, and revamp the way I taught Social Studies and Science.

I decided to teach my Science and Social Studies completely as Inquiry projects. Not anything new to education but new to me! (I do at least one Inquiry project a year and have noticed how much more engaged students are when given choice). We call it Explorations and spend our class time researching, discussing, experimenting with a lot of hands on projects. Students go home and find information on their own to bring back to share to the classroom. I check the frameworks to make sure we are hitting all the outcomes and have been amazed at how we have accomplished more this year than in the past years. Science and Social Studies is completely integrated and watching my students make connections across many different subjects makes me realize that I will never go back to my old way of teaching Science and Social Studies as separate units. Recently, after looking at magnets and beginning our study of ancient civilizations, one student was very excited to discover a whole section on magnets in her book on Ancient China. I found another student looking at the wall map (yes, that archaic thingJ) to try and find the Buried City of Pompeii. She later went to a computer and found it on Google Earth as well.  In Explorations, we don’t END a unit. We just introduce a new topic and carry on our inquiry. Our research of Structures continues into our Ancient Civilizations. Using technology, we can go on virtual fieldtrips (which I learned about on Twitter) and explore structures from around the world, including those who have been built many years ago (such as the pyramids).

I was very excited to be chosen to represent our school as an ITLL. After our session with George my head was buzzing with ideas and information and I had a massive headache! There were so many new things I wanted to try! Google Docs, Storify, Skype, the list went on! I was also excited to share with my colleagues and determined to get more of them onto Twitter!

I went back to school and decided to try something new by making a Storify about a structure challenge we had tried in class. My students were really excited about it and we decided to use Storify as a classroom newsletter. Students will take ownership and write about what we are doing in the classroom. We will then share it on Twitter and by email (for those parents without a Twitter account). We also decided to start another Twitter account, solely for the students to post from. Our shared account had turned more into my professional learning network and the time had come to separate. We started a classroom Instagram as well and we now have Tweeters of the Day and Instagrammers of the Day on our job chart! We will be using Snapchat for a writing exercise next week!

There are so many awesome things out there that I can be doing and I want to do it all. I find myself getting overwhelmed, at times, and feeling as though I am behind in my use of technology. However, I will keep chugging along and trying to do what is best for my students. I’ll focus on what I have changed this year and remember that next year there will be plenty of time to add something new! The possibilities are endless and as Buzz Lightyear says “To infinity and beyond!”

 

Geneviève Sprenger

Ecole Sacre Coeur

Cluster 1965 

Diving In

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but this is the first time I have ever written something that other educators will read. This makes me nervous and thankful that Dove makes an anti-perspirant with a “Clinical” tag. Writing is not my forte. It doesn’t come naturally for me. Sports, technology, eating cinnamon buns…those are easy.

I am a worrier. I write and re-write and spend a lot of time worrying that if I don’t use smart words, or say insightful things, that people will think I don’t know anything. Why I do that? No idea. If I could stop it, I would. To have an assignment like this that puts me out of my comfort zone, makes me very uncomfortable.

Incorporating technology and innovation into my classroom is something that I love to do. My passion is searching out and learning new ways to get my students engaged and excited to learn. I spend my weekends learning how to code, going through online courses, watching and trying to plan ways to integrate what I have learned into my practice. I joined Twitter, and began co-managing a team for Destination Imagination at my school. This experience has shown me the true potential of my students. I have brought the “Instant Challenge” component of DI into the classroom and the students continuously crave more. I can honestly say I have bought twice as many straws this school year as I have in my entire life.

Our class has pen pals from Rankin Inlet, and we are currently setting up a Skype connection with a classroom from Kansas. These can be seen as innovation. What I have never had the courage to do is write something for my peers. I ask my students to take risks all the time, yet here I am, sweat dripping on my laptop, because I am doing exactly what I ask and expect them to do on an everyday basis.

A good friend and mentor of mine started her own blog this year. She has encouraged me to think about doing the same. I don’t think that will happen…well at least not this year.  William GT Shedd wrote, “A ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what a ship is for.” This quote first off, makes me think of my home in the east coast (Shout out to my fellow Nova Scotians). Then it makes me think there is no sense of being innovative in your own classroom if no one can see it. I feel honoured to be part of this learning experience and I look forward to collaborating with everyone to see where it will take me.

Marcel Laroche

Ralph Brown School

1971 Proud

 

ITLL Blog Post

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Prior to taking part in a presentation by George Couros I was very “green under the collar” so to speak about the term “Innovative Teaching.”  What is innovation in the realm of education? What does innovative teaching look like? How would innovative teaching benefit the early year’s classes I work with in Phys. Ed?  How would I introduce innovative teaching to students and other staff I work with? Most importantly, with our society transferring so rapidly into a digital world full of technological advances and internet usage, what steps must I take to ensure the students I am teaching are not leaving me behind if they haven’t already done so?

So like any person would do I decided to login to the laptop, open up google and try to answer the questions that were making this term “innovative technology” so foggy.  It didn’t take long to find an answer to my first question, which was the root of all other questions I had. Innovation is creating new and improved ways of thinking and doing that inspire and empower learners ~©Winnipeg School Division.  

Reading and re-reading the definition of innovation, I couldn’t help but think of myself as being an innovative learner.  I empowered myself to use technology to research questions that were blocking my path from moving forward.  Therefore, if I can be an innovative learner, surely the students I teach have the ability to do so as well, providing they have a positive model to follow.  To go even further they would see how technology is used as a positive tool rather than a tool where we watch them under a microscope to prevent poor choices such as cyber bullying etc.

So where do I go from here?  I have a theoretical understanding of innovation and how innovative technology can be so beneficial to education, but in a practical sense how do I apply innovative technology within the parameters of Early Years Physical Education.  I guess being a life-long learner has never been more important than it is right now.  Let the learning continue.

Chris Yaremkiewich

George V School

Cluster 1965

Innovation in Small Steps

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My problem is thinking too big.  To the point of being unrealistic in my expectations of what I might accomplish.  That’s a bit frustrating…feeling hugely inspired but at the same time not knowing where to start.  I think one of the reasons that The Innovator’s Mindset resonated with me was that it did inspire me greatly, but also reminded me to find a practical starting point for myself.  So that’s what I did.  Halfway through George Couros’ book I signed up for Twitter.  I started looking at what fellow educators are doing differently.  I decided to redesign the classroom that I get to spend my days in, and enlisted my students’ help.  I asked colleagues for input and received numerous articles via Twitter relating to classroom design.  Together, the students and I made changes that allow for more choice throughout the day, and demands students to take responsibility for their learning.  Not to mention that our room just feels better and more inviting, and the community has been strengthened even more.  I’ve also had a couple of students making stop-motion videos with their own devices (something they are very passionate about).  As well, students have been using our classroom ipad to record themselves presenting projects, and then using the recordings to self-assess their work.  They can re-record as many times as they want before submitting their final product.  When they have all submitted their recorded presentations (it’s taking time!), we will hold a learning celebration and project their recordings onto the SmartBoard.  I’m looking forward to surprising the students with a trailer I am creating using Movie Maker…it will be fun to hype up the celebration!  These have been the small, innovative steps I have made in the past month or so.  Looking back, they don’t seem so small!

Dillon McMahon

Lord Selkirk School

Cluster 1965