Participant Post

Using an Innovators Mindset to Facilitate Positive Mental Health in our Students

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

After the first session with George Couros, I learned about how powerful and useful technology can be with regard to innovation. I was also excited to open my own Twitter account and have been using it regularly to connect with educators around our division as well as the world. I have made a few comments but I am mostly just doing a lot of “retweeting”. As someone who has never communicated with others on social media, I am finding it exciting when people message me or comment that they appreciated my “like”. I am also amazed at how much I am able to learn from other colleagues in the mental health field with just a few clicks on my phone. I now feel inspired to find different ways to use technology and innovative practices with the students I support that are dealing with a variety of mental health disorders.
On page 21 of his book The Innovator’s Mindset George comments that it is important to create a teaching environment that is “best for this learner”. I agree that we have to think about the future of each of our students and what type of education is going to serve them the best to achieve their goals and be successful even when there are difficult obstacles to overcome. We need to develop as many of the positive characteristics he suggests of an Innovator’s Mindset in order to create new and exciting learning environments for all of our students.
The comments below from the families I work with describe the challenges that some students face every day going into a building where they don’t feel connected to staff or able to succeed in the classroom.
“She wants to leave school and stay in her bed all the time”
“She doesn’t feel like she belongs at school”
“He has gotten into a rut about not attending school”
“She wants the teachers to understand the accommodations she requires to succeed at school”
“Sometimes she is just too much and tiring for them to handle at the school”
An empathetic and observant teacher recognizes the individual needs of all his/her students and strives to find ways for them to feel connected to their learning. This is not an easy process but the educators that are able to do this are responsible for some of the positive comments I hear from families and schools.
“He smiles more and seems more engaged”
“She is going to school every day and doing well”
“Right now he is firing on a lot of good cylinders”
“Many of the teachers are understanding of her situation”
“She is flourishing in the Technology Program”
I look forward to the upcoming sessions where I can continue my journey of learning and develop an “innovator’s mindset” with the hopes that it will help me empower the students and families on my caseload.

Laura Ateah, ISS Support Teacher, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, HSC.
Cluster Group 1871

Reflection on Innovative Practices

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

Prior to this school year, I had not heard a lot of talk about innovation in the classroom. To be fair, this is technically my first year of teaching full time since having children and I haven’t been in the loop as much as I probably should have been. What amazes me is how quickly things can change, even when it has been said that change in our educational system is rather slow here in Manitoba. Since I have been back though, I have been really excited about these new approaches to learning.
At École Garden Grove School, we have been lucky to have Jaymie McLure do some great, innovative work with our students. From Destination Imagination Instant Challenges to Story Starters using Lego, I have certainly learned a lot. Not only are we thinking outside the box and moving away from the incessant worksheets that are available to us, we are providing our students with new, creative and collaborative ways of learning.

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Although at times it is hard to imagine how different our world will be in twenty years from now, I know that this shift into different and more innovative ways of teaching is only going to help better prepare our students for their futures. If we can have open minds and learn with and from one another, I think that we as educators will benefit along with our students.
I know that I have already altered my way of thinking about this whole process and having an open mind has definitely been helpful. I look forward to what we have yet to learn in our next sessions!
Nicole Lavallee
École Garden Grove School
Cluster 1871

Focus

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

I am glad to see that so many educators had the same feelings about our day with George Couros. I had no idea what to expect on our first session. Twitter? Google Docs? Storify? All of these were new to me.
I was a computer/LWICT facilitator for 20 years and was comfortable integrating technology with all areas of curricula. Word processing, morphing, audio recording, animation, green screening, video editing and more, were used to show student understanding. I collaborated with teachers to plan “computer” projects. Students would come to the lab, complete their projects (hopefully), and move on. Now, after 20 years, my role has changed. I am a grade 5/6 classroom teacher and am loving having my own students to work with!
I have seen many changes with technology over the years and all have been innovative. Our first session with George was about Twitter and using it with our students. What? Social Media in the classroom? How can that be? Sites that were previously locked and blocked? Wow!
I teach my students about their digital footprint by creating Twitter posts that are displayed on our bulletin board outside the room, create “Fakebook” pages and video our Book Talks. All of these are contained within our school, but now students may share their work with the world through Twitter.
I came out of that session with many ideas. So many that I became frustrated with myself about where to start, and getting nowhere fast. Focus girl!
I made a personal and classroom Twitter account but have not made any tweets. I get inspired by all the creative things I see educators doing with their students. Focus girl and make that tweet! I introduced my class to Learn 360 to collaborate on an informational article. I also created a survey in Google Forms and bit.do for our grade 6 students to answer questions about ideas for their Farewell. The outcome was fantastic! I showed the students the site and they went with it. I still have many ideas but it is a start. I just need to focus!
Wendy Groot
Tyndall Park School
Cluster 1871
Participant

Capturing Enthusiasm One Clip at a Time

kstrachan Group 1, Participant Post ,

Making Movies

Over the years, I have dabbled in making short movies with my students for a variety of reasons. Some on camcorders with the mini tapes where the batteries consistently failed, others on my Canon camera with tiny images. Both set up for a nightmare in editing post project. It would be a collaborative enterprise, but it would still fall on me. Not this time. iMovie on iPad is a convenient and easy way to drop and drag your way into a quality movie with high student involvement every step of the way.

This year we read aloud Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler which lent itself well as a feature film because of its size and storyline. It is a tale about a little boy who was always told he was too little and ends up becoming a hero. As we read, we started by creating a large story board to track characters and main ideas through drawing and writing. It emerged through class discussions that since we had iPads for a period of time, maybe we could make the characters come alive in a movie of the book and the rest was history.

The student engagement, commitment and cooperation were immediately evident. Once characters were selected, scripts were written by scene and by the actors. One student took on filming and direction; others were in charge of background music and spent hours experimenting in Garageband and doing voice-over narrations. Groups of students worked on props, made invitations and posters for our premiere.

We filmed over a series of weeks and students maintained their enthusiasm the entire time because of their ownership in the project. It didn’t stop there. To get a complete experience, actors created cast photos and bios, decorated a viewing room with a red carpet and invited parents to a Popcorn Premiere Party to celebrate their efforts and receive their own DVD for posterity.

Where it gets interesting… students with speech issues were determined to have speaking roles. Students with focus and attention issues were dialed in. A quieter student became the director. Dramatization deepened comprehension for all students.

It was a learning journey for me too. I was introduced to the lightning projector cable (which was great because now I use iPads as document cameras in other parts of my day). I learned what the sound limitations are of the iPad microphones for the next project. And finally, I learned to share large files through Dropbox saving me extreme frustration.

Believe me, I don’t own shares in Mac and I’m not selling anything new – many teachers make movies with their students. But for my learning journey, this was a student and teacher friendly way for me to step back and my students take the lead. Having easy to use technology is one of the keys, but without the iPads in first place, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. But that is a story for another time. 😉

Shelagh McGregor
Inkster School
Grade 3/4
Cluster 1971

Innovation in Collaboration

Richard Roberts Group 2, Participant Post ,

There are three grade 1 classrooms in our school. At the beginning of each unit and throughout the unit, we meet to exchange ideas, resources and materials. This ensures that our units don’t become static. We are making changes and adding something new and interesting each year.

We recently completed a unit on Canadian Bears. The children worked in groups and came up with questions about bears and what they wanted to learn. We also frontloaded a few questions of our own that may have been missed. The children listened to informational books about bears and read their own books looking for answers to their questions.
We found some short You Tube videos of bears in their natural habitat so that the children could see what a grizzly bear, black bear and polar bear’s den looked like and where they built it. The children had an opportunity to roleplay and pretend they were a bear building a den and hibernating. We watched short You Tube videos of actual wild bears looking for food and learned how climate change affects their ability to find food. Again groups of children had an opportunity to roleplay being a bear and looking for food, while the rest of the class had to guess what type of bear they were depicting. We printed pictures of the different types of food bears eat and had the children sort the food using a Venn diagram. This year, one of our colleagues borrowed an actual bear fur pelt from the Living Prairie Museum and each class had an opportunity to examine it up close. Once most of our research was complete, and the children had their information recorded on their rough copy sheets, they transferred this information onto a publisher template on computers. They typed their information, drew their bear’s habitat and added the clip art to support their writing. The children printed their work and created folders from their projects. See photos below.
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I don’t think our unit on bears would be as interesting and dynamic for the children, if it weren’t for how well all three classrooms collaborated with each other. When everyone is working together to share ideas and support one another great things are achieved.

Francesca Bova
Meadows West School
Cluster Group 1871

The Promise of Twitter

kstrachan Group 1, Participant Post ,

If you had told me I would be going to a PD seminar that highly promotes using Twitter as a classroom tool, I would have been very skeptical of the relevance and use that it would have to my classroom. However, I was surprised that I have been converted. It was during the PD seminar that I first registered for Twitter.

That evening I was telling my fiancée, who is a teacher in the LRSD, about the PD. In his division Twitter is highly encouraged for teachers to use. His school’s Twitter page is amazing! I highly encourage all of you to check out @wyattLRSD. Teachers frequently post projects and events that are happening in their classrooms as well as reminders for days such as school closures.  I am not a parent, but I can only imagine how much parents would value this page. I am told the most common response to “what did you do today at school?” is “nothing” or “I don’t remember”.

I would love for Gladstone School to have a Twitter page like Victor Wyatt School’s but I do see some obstacles. Firstly, I can’t see many of my coworkers buying into Twitter. Secondly, can Twitter be added to WSD’s Media Consent form? Having the students’ faces makes most of the posts much more meaningful.

Erin Rogalsky
Grade 2/3 Teacher
Gladstone School
Cluster 1971

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

A Learning Journey

scornwell Group 1, Participant Post ,

Reflection on March 23rd,  just after the first ITLL session:

Positive energy and optimism!  George Couros empowered a room full of teachers from the moment the day started, and the energy stayed high all day.  I’ve been in this same Room 106 so many times in my career but this was brand new – bigger than I could have anticipated, even after reading “The Innovator’s Mindset.”  I’m grateful to participate in #WinnipegSDITLL with this amazing, open-minded, and eager group of teachers.  It’s also refreshing to shed my reluctance to come on-board with social media after feeling restrained and annoyed by it.   I not only started tweeting, I gained followers today! There’s so much power in numbers, most of these tweeters were strangers and they’re suddenly important to me.  We share values and interests – we all want to empower our students – and we can help each other find answers to questions and inspire each other with ideas.  I’ll be testing this out.  I am invigorated and feeling ready for whatever any naysayers might throw my way, because I know my already strong powers as a learner and a teacher are growing, and becoming stronger as I think with artistry about what I am doing.  This isn’t just sustainable; it will grow and evolve as opportunities are created.  I’ll be starting with Google docs and forms and will explore the potential of these with my students and with colleagues.  I’m already considering possibilities for Family Studies and Guidance, and am keen to use them and offer them as tools for my inquiry learners.  I wonder how students’ll expand my understanding with their experimentation, and hope their freedom and playfulness with technology will stimulate creativity.

Over the last few weeks:

It’s been both inspiring and overwhelming.  I’ve connected to educators from all over the continent.  I’ve surveyed students on their social media journeys and we’ve wondered how to smooth out this bumpy transition from no personal electronic devices in the classroom to learning with them. My students are young mothers with a multitude of demands on them and they struggle to stay on course. Despite best intentions, some claim it’s too easy to waste time while others easily started integrating smart phones into their learning. One of my students complained that despite building prioritizing skills for inquiry, social media distractions grow bigger along with project challenges.  If an obstacle appears it’s always a relief to ignore the problem and have a completely unrelated connection and conversation on social media.  If anyone has a kind solution I’d love to hear about it. I have so much to learn! I have to remind myself that it’s one step at a time – go narrow and deep. This journey has not been the smooth sailing I’ve envisioned, but I feel like I’m in good company and I anticipate great things on the horizon.

Lois Friesen

Adolescent Parent Centre (WAEC program)

Cluster 1871