Geography Walk meets TwitterTour

ccoffa Connected-Learning

How often have you found a bug in the park and wondered what it is? Would you like to have the services of an entomologist at your immediate service?  Have you wondered what the street you are walking along looked like 40 years ago?  Your answers can be at your fingertips 

Many teachers can relate to taking students on a neighbourhood walk.  Commonly they are trying to get students to notice things either from a scientific, geographic, civics or historical viewpoint.    Often we have used cameras or sketchbooks to record our observations. Today, I watched from a distance whilst a group of Year 3/4 students embarked on such a walk but they had an added value component planned.  Prior to the day, their teacher contacted Museum Victoria Education staff, responding to their #twittertour of Melbourne idea.

Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 5.00.22 pm

Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 5.01.20 pm

What followed is detailed in the Storify below, but what I believe, is that the teachers have modelled a new way of learning to our students.  We have shown how we can seek information in a number of ways, that there are a number of sources of information and technology can enhance that in so many ways.  By making their learning and their questions visible they were challenged as well as informed to a far greater extent than a simple walk in the park may do.    Read the Storify to get the feeling of the interactions.  At their young age, they cannot use Twitter or most social media tools on their own but they are being modelled the concept of being connected learners. They have seen their teachers reach out to experts and receive feedback. They were involved in the conversations to create the questions and responded to the answers.  Wonderful modelling in my opinion. 

Thanks to Museum Victoria Education Team and congratulations to Michelle for seeing an opportunity and running with it!





Google Apps for Education

ccoffa GoogleAppsForEd

I have some renewed enthusiasm to curate useful resources for Google Tools in the classroom since the recent introduction of Chromebooks at my school.  So I have updated the Google site I began a while ago.    It is an area that is hard to keep up to date but  I find the process of collecting and organising the resources worthwhile as it makes me evaluate them and sort them and the fact that many resources are in the one place certainly helps me in my work.

With so many tools at our fingertips, I am wondering where to start. Our students have already got their heads around Google Drive but as with all things there are many opportunities to learn.   I think I will ensure that they are introduced to the flexibility of Chrome as some immediate efficiency measures can be very worthwhile and quite engaging as well.

https://sites.google.com/site/whygafe/home Google Apps umbrella

Decisions and moving forward

ccoffa Teaching

If you waited till you thought you had the absolute best answer, sometimes you would never make a decision.

ImageI watched today as the result of a long decision making process was rolled out – 1:1 Chromebooks for some students, 1:2 for others and shared Win8 tablets for others.   These are new devices supported by the existing ones and new Wireless.  This was the decision of a hard working group of teachers, students and parents when asked to consider the issue of enhancing the personalisation of learning through technology.

Many schools when making choices about upgrading technology, leave the decision to a few ‘leaders’ – making well thought out but less consultative choices.  I am proud of the process we explored, which although time consuming provided a result that is considered, consultative and above all focussed on the needs of the teaching and learning and ultimately improved outcomes.  I don’t deny we may have made acceptable decisions without this process but I am extremely confident that the community understand this decision, it is justifiable and above all supported by all.

Our process can be roughly summarised like this:

  1. Determine a need for change and define an ambition. In our case, “To investigate and identify devices to personalise the learning for students.”
  2. Form a representative team to lead the process and consult with other stakeholders – leadership, parents and students
  3. Carefully analyse the needs and possible pathways
  4. Investigate options – research, consult (this included vendors, other schools, alumni etc)
  5. Decide based on criteria from all involved as well as important considerations such as budget !
  6. Consult stakeholders and inform

In the end we had a solution and it is now being enacted and it is exciting to watch and be part of.

 

Through my Window

ccoffa Connected-Learning, Teaching
Child's Sketch based on written description only
Child’s Sketch based on written description only

I am always keen to find opportunities for our students to see themselves as learners in a wider context than their school.  As they grow, they will be connected in so many ways I could never have imagined 20 years ago.  So when we can find purposeful opportunities to enhance their learning and model the potential of connected learning I jump at it.

Recently, we conducted a Mystery Skype and it reminded me of many years ago, before I began blogging and before I was very aware of the wonders of Web 2.0 when  I worked with a class on a collaborative project called “Through my Window”.  In 2009 it went like this :

  • 4 classes connected (via email in those days)  They were based in varied environments, rural, city etc.
  • Each class took photos of scenes outside their classroom windows
  • They then wrote a Descriptive piece describing the scene in great detail – much work went into the language required : foreground etc
  • Each class then exchanged written descriptions by mail (NOT photos)
  • Each class then proceeded to draw the scene described to them
  • We then exchanged the images and were able to see how well our descriptions portrayed the scenes.

The learning involved was enormous, the ability to write a very clear description of a scene down to fine details, then the ability to decipher another person’s detail.  The students worked in teams and allocated roles, it was a wonderful task.  Probably my first experience with being a connected teacher and certainly the first time our students had collaborated in a meaningful way with students from other parts of the country.

Image

Step forward  into 2014 and we participated in our first Mystery Skype.  This is also not new, but whilst looking at the level of engagement I was struck with the potential of this activity.  We are in Metropolitan Melbourne and were Skyping a class of older students from rural Victoria about 280kms apart and had prepared questions to help determine their location.  For 9 and 10 year olds, this is a challenging task, involving mapping skills, geographical knowledge and language, thinking skills, powers of deduction.  They utilised a variety of tools including atlases and digital mapping skills.  The digital maps proved essential as we narrowed down the possibilities as our destination did not actually appear on any of the printed maps we had.

The teachers had prepared the students very well with possible questions but as you can imagine the questions were only one element, it was just as important to make deductions from the answers and this requires high level thinking.   As this was our first practice we were thrilled to be working with a very experienced globally connected educator, Anne Mirtschin.  Despite having lots of students crammed in to one working space, they remained engaged, enthusiastic and respectful throughout.  We will definitely be arranging some more experiences like this to expand on the learning and extend their geographical knowledge.  I think it would also be good to re-invent the Through My Window project.  Our blogs would make that process much easier now.  In either case, we are helping our students branch out, learn with and alongside students in other schools and gain perspectives otherwise not possible.

Community ~ Curiosity ~ Creativity

ccoffa GoogleAppsForEd, Professional_learning

Community ~ Curiosity ~ Creativity 

#GTASyd 2014

This morning, I am feeling a sense of community, curiosity and creativity : combined with a little bit of travel weary, end of term exhaustion.  These were the themes of the mentor presentations at the Google Teacher Academy I attended during this whirlwind week, which began with sharing the Google Apps for Education Summit with 10 of my school colleagues and 400 other teachers in Melbourne.

The GTA experience this year was facilitated by Tom Barrett and Hamish Curry from NoTosh, leading us through the Design thinking process.  Thankfully we had been slowly immersed in the process and our ideas by connecting to our Teams in the weeks prior – being introduced and starting the conversations that would lead to much discussion, work and deliberation.

If you came to the GTA expecting to come away with a whole heap of Googley technical skills you would have left disappointed.  If you came expecting to be a passive learner, you would have been very challenged.  If you came along to see how community, curiosity and creativity can be enacted, you would be very happy.

The process was outward looking, in that,we all had been asked in the month or so leading up, to consider a ‘Moonshot thinking’ exercise from our own context.  We were guided through many steps that had us thinking, questioning, giving feedback, re-thinking, ideating and then developing an idea through to an action.  Many people found connections between their ultimate Moonshot questions – in fact in reading them I found connections everywhere.  We are all challenged to continue the process and take actions back in our wider communities.

Hexagonal thinking which I had explored a little beforehand, proved to me to be one of the most powerful ah-ha moments!  I witnessed the struggling in others and in my own thinking but the  strong links it can provide and yet the flexibility it can enable.

I loved hearing Annie Parker from Muru-D discuss entrepreneurial hacks and then Brett Morgan, a Google Developer Relations engineer discuss the Design process and seeing such strong links in the ideas and the process we were experiencing.    All this taking place in such a ‘cool’ environment as the Google Office space.

It was a lot to take in and it is only the beginning and it will be great to see where my moonshot goes and to watch and support and hopefully be involved in a few others as well
BGK GTA

Thanks to all those involved.  Google’s Suan Yeo as well as Tom and Hamish the energetic facilitators, the team of mentors including the gentle and skilful Abi and of course the new members of my professional learning network – the participants.  #gtasyd14