We are all storytellers. Here is your chance to learn from the master storytellers at Pixar through this Khan Academy course which takes you through the process of telling an effective story.
There are videos and activities that make this a great process for you and your students regardless of the medium you are using to tell your story.
Adobe Spark Video
A number of our grade levels have been creating movies with students and a fantastic tool to explore is Adobe Spark Video. It provides excellent structures to help students understand the elements of various genres of videos.
You can easily log in with your Google account (students can log in with your class account).
When Social Media Breaks Bad: Why I STILL want my Students Using Social Media
Things don’t always run smoothly when using social networks. It would be easy to shut down access and avoid having to risk potential problems. However, our students need us to support them in dealing with conflicts, such as the “11 year old troll” mentioned in the article. This is a great read from @MrShoenbart, which we encourage you to check out!
What do our learning spaces say about our learning?
I’ve begun to assemble a Flipboard on Learning Spaces. This magazine is meant to compliment the broader reading the Learning Spaces Book Club will do. Our first text, is on it’s way here: feel free to read along with us, and join us in the #uwcLearnSpaces conversation to be, found on Twitter. If you didn't sign up for the club, but you'd like to have someone pass on their book to you, please let us know by commenting to this post.
If you want to learn more about 'next practice' for learning spaces, here are three amazing people who are leading the thought-athon on that topic. If you aren’t following these big brains on Twitter, stop reading this post, and bring them into your PLN now:
If you are reading this right now, and you have a favorite text/resource when it comes to learning spaces–or if you have a great question to ask when it comes to classroom redesign, please share in the comment section.
The folks at Edutopia have put together another great article on ways of incorporating more kindness into your classroom. With detailed suggestions and resources, you are bound to get some new ideas to enhance your personal and social education lessons.
We could all use a little more kindness in our lives.
Starter Questions for Seesaw reflection
During a twitter chat on the weekend about portfolios, one of the teachers shared a padlet of questions prompts and sentence starters that students can use for reflection. Sometimes, reflections can become “same-y” and a little stale. Why not refresh your reflections with this padlet?
Spreadsheet Activities for Every Subject
Eric Curts has put together 5 ways spreadsheets can be used by students. Check out his webinar, or scroll down to explore each of the 5 suggestions in a shorter format. I think the pixel art challenge could be a fun activity!
Apple recently launched their Apple Teacher programme - a series of self-paced professional development modules for educators. Gain badges which help move you to becoming an Apple Teacher for Mac and/or for iPad.
Commenting in Google Docs
Take your commenting in Google Docs to the next level. Many people know that you can leave written comments but did you know that you can leave voice comments, video comments and hand-written comments too? To do this, you will need to use some Chrome Extensions. This article take you through the process one step at a time.
Why Drawing Needs to be a Curriculum Essential
This article from the Guardian explains how images are a primary visual language and we need to create images and also be able to understand them.
If you've recently been thinking about ways to make use of ePortfolios next year..or next month: this post's for you.
Wait. Back up a minute. Why should we use online portfolios?
In addition to inherent components of reflection, which traditionally have been viewed as internal (thinking about one’s own learning and that thinking primarily benefiting ourselves), we need to take a closer look at amplifying reflection by sharing our reflection transparently (learning how to articulate and make our thinking visible to others and the learning benefiting ourselves AND others). By sharing our reflection beyond a teacher or a classmate, we acknowledge our voice as learners and the role that it can play in the learning process (our own process or the one of others).-Silvia Tolisano
(The full pitch on how to Amplify Reflection is here)
You mix it up. You think about the plethora of styles and approaches to building your portfolio. Here are a few ways to go about doing just that:
But I don't want to be the only lone ranger using portfolios...
We don't want that either. Here's what a few of your amazing colleagues have to say about experimenting with the approach:
Ok, then. So how far can blogging/portfolio curation fly? Outer space. Seriously. Meet three astronauts who blog from a long, long way from home. (PS you can leave them comments and strike up a conversation too)
Book Club conversations are an important part of a UWCSEA literacy education. Thinking deeply about a shared text, sharing understandings and connections, and - crucially - listening to the perspectives of others, all contributes to our reading experiences.
As teachers, we know these conversations are valuable, but we can only be in one place at one time. Listening to one group's discussions has the opportunity cost of missing out on the other conversations.
Podcasting book club conversations has a number of benefits - not least of which being teachers have the opportunity to gain an insight into more conversations.
Knowing a conversation will be recorded adds a layer of accountability for students, meaning they tend to take it more seriously. They consider their word choice more carefully, ensure they provide evidence for their assertions and listen with greater consideration.
G5 teacher Andrea McDonald began the podcasting process for her students by listening to great examples. Book Club for Kids has a whole host of age-appropriate options. They also listened to a charming episode of the Modern Love podcast called 'What it's like to fall, quite literally, in love'.
Andrea provided an A3 planning sheet for students to write sentence starters to use as prompts for their discussion. The class wanted natural sounding conversations that were largely unscripted, to give it that sense of authenticity they love when listening to podcasts.
Here are some documents Andrea created in support of the planning and preparing, including some examples of student work.
Once planning had been completed, the groups found quiet spots to record. We decided on using iMovie for easy editing later, however, GarageBand would be another great choice.
To enhance the quality of audio, we used headphones with a microphone placed in the middle of the group. Students recorded their discussion in chunks on a shared iPad and airdropped their footage to their individual laptops afterward.
One thing we learned (the hard way!) was not to record in 1080p, but to change the settings to 720p instead. We had some difficulty getting the footage to individual computers due to the sheer size of the files. The students were very patient with this frustrating aspect of the process.
Next, it was time to edit. Adding clips to iMovie was pretty straight forward, so we just showed them how to detach the audio from the video clip, and replace the image so the emphasis could be on the conversation itself.
Making decisions to cut aspects of their conversation was really hard for many! But always good practice to learn about cutting to strengthen the overall process. Most podcasts ended up between 10 - 15 minutes in length.
Below you will find a few examples of our finished podcasts. It was our first attempt, but a great learning experience for us all.
After you take your students through the lessons you can share more images from the New York Times section, What’s Going on in this Picture?
The Adaptable Mind
What are the skills that prepare us for a world that is constantly changing?
Isn’t this the question that all teachers want to know? This excellent 10 minute video takes the viewer through the 5 skills that we need to foster in our students.
16 Educational Podcasts
Check out these great educational podcasts from teachers, professors, innovators and skeptics where they share their thoughts about the world of education.
The podcast topics include teaching strategies, the beauty and difficulty of learning, interviews and ideas that will challenge your thinking.
